More Tasty Less Toxic

"The potato was first domesticated in the region of modern-day southern Peru and extreme northwestern Bolivia This event took place between the years 8000 BC and 5000 BC."

^{-Potato, Wikipedia}

"As wild potatoes taste bitter and contain small amounts of toxins, early cultures must have spent quite a bit of an effort to select the right tubers for cultivation that are more tasty and less toxic. In the course of the centuries potatoes developed to be an important staple food and a main energy source for early Peruvian cultures, the Incas and the Spanish conquerors."

- The origin of the Potato  limaeasy

"In the Andes potatoes are one of four major root/tuber staple crops. There are about 200 different wild types found from Venezuela to Chile, with the highest concentration around Lake Titicaca."

-Plant Profile: Potato, Sacred Earth

"Compared with grains, tubers are inherently more productive. If the head of a wheat or rice plant grows too big, the plant will fall over, with fatal results. Growing underground, tubers are not limited by the rest of the plant. In 2008 a Lebanese farmer dug up a potato that weighed nearly 25 pounds. It was bigger than his head."

-How the Potato Changed the World, Smithsonian Mag

"The potato was carried on to Italy and England about 1585, to Belgium and Germany by 1587, to Austria about 1588, and to France around 1600. Wherever the potato was introduced, it was considered weird, poisonous, and downright evil. In France and elsewhere, the potato was accused of causing not only leprosy, but also syphilis, narcosis, scronfula, early death, sterillity, and rampant sexuality, and of destroying the soil where it grew."

-History of Potatoes, What's Cooking America


"Large-scale cultivation of the crop began only in the beginning of the 19th century. Initially, the crop was used as a medicinal plant and grown by pharmacists, in Spain in particular. It was later introduced to other parts of Europe by merchants and kings, who encouraged the cultivation of this efficient plant to increase local agricultural production."


-History of the Potato, The Potato Information Site


"Winds from southern England carried the fungus to the countryside around Dublin. The blight spread throughout the fields as fungal spores settled on the leaves of healthy potato plants, multiplied and were carried in the millions by cool breezes to surrounding plants. Under ideal moist conditions, a single infected potato plant could infect thousands more in just a few days.
The attacked plants fermented while providing the nourishment the fungus needed to live, emitting a nauseous stench as they blackened and withered in front of the disbelieving eyes of Irish peasants."

-The Blight Begins, History Place   

Potato Nutrition Facts

 

Ada's Larvarium

After Nabokov

"Je raffoule de tout ce qui rampe"
she said, as she led me down a narrow hall
to show me her collection, my first impression:
fluttered clusters of colors, darkly flossed.

I peered around the room.  In each nook
shelved rows of bottled insects shook,
clattered with such translucent laughter,
I couldn't resist reaching for my notebook.

"Qu'est-ce que vous avez, mon petit renard?"
she asked, while I protested with broken words,
"Do not compare me to any fox," I said,
"Writers are magpies, filthy birds."

"Scusez-moi," she replied, her spine in an arch,
"mais je ne comprend pas."  Her eyes were dark.
I raised a hand.  "Let me explain, in my trade you
sift through rubbish and steal the shiny parts.

Saying "Regardez cet scarabee," she placed
an exotic beetle on my face,
stifling my breath, while she traced
her finger down its golden carapace.

"J'ai desolee.  Tu n'es pas comme le renard,
et pas la pie.  What is the word?
Tu es comme cet scarabee, et moi,
I'm just crazy about everything that crawls."

The Devil by Dostoyevsky

I am always intrigued by depictions of the devil in literature.  There's a chapter in The Brother's Karamozov in which Ivan Karamovoz meets the devil. This devil is not described as satanic, but more a mischievous spirit who's sole delight is in tormenting poor Ivan. He does a marvelous job.

Some paraphrased quotes from Ivan's personal devil:

“You know, last year I had such a dreadful attack of rheumatism.”

Ivan: “What, a devil with rheumatism?”

“Why not? When I assume human form, I accept the consequences. Satan sum et nihil humanum a me alienum puto.”

“In matters of faith, material proof is pretty useless. The world beyond and material proof, what a joke! And then, when you come to think of it, even when you have proved the existance of the devil, why would it follow that god exists too? I want to join an idealist society. I'll lead the opposition in it. I'll say I am a realist, but not a materialist, lol!”

When Ivan demands with fury “Does god exist or not?” the devil's answer is hilariously typical narccissism. “Je pense, donc je suis, that is something I know for certain. As for the rest, all those worlds, god, satan himself, I'm not sure if all that exists independently or is merely a subjective emanation of myself.”

"Fate, in it's infinite confusion, thrust me into this role, that of 'negator'. I'm far too nice by nature to criticize, and I said this, but no one really cared. Some one has to be the one to refuse to play by the rules, I was told, lest the whole of creation become one uninterrupted hossanah. In life, faith must be tested in the crucible of doubt, etc... I'm not responsible for this bullshit. I didn't create it, I'm just the scapegoat that gets cast out and makes life possible. It's almost funny. When I demand annihilation, I am refused. 'No,' they say, 'you have to live. Without you, nothing would ever happen, and we have to have happenings. People must suffer, because suffering is life.' But what about me? I suffer, and go on living. I am the x in an indeterminate equation. I am a phantom who has lost the beginning and the end and has forgotten his name."

"I keep daydreaming. I love imagining things. Don't laugh, it's why I love to be here on earth: It makes me superstitious. I adopt all of your habits. I'm fond of going to the public baths: I love to steam myself with your merchants and priests. My fondest wish is to incarnate once and for all into a two hundred pound merchant's wife and to go to church, light a candle, and offer up a prayer with simple-hearted faith. I would be the end of my torments."