That reminds me of another of the valuable lessons I learned from Mr. Helm, who remarked on one occasion, “The past is what happened before now. ‘History’ is the stories we tell to make sense of the past. The responsibility of the historian, therefore, is to tell those stories with ever-greater accuracy and objectivity, so that people can better understand the present without deluding themselves about the past.”

And the corollaries, "History is written by the victors," etc. And mine. There are no objective story tellers. The official version is always suspect. And so on.

What surprises me is how definite folk can be when their only evidence is partial trace hundreds of millions of years old.

I don't say it as often here anymore but I used to reply to questions that I'll be happy to answer their questions even if I have to make something up.

Frosty The Lucky.

I had a few Greek (and Roman) history classes, but not language ones.  A couple of my classes were on the top floor of a 19th century building.  To get there, you passed a doorway that opened onto a narrow set of stairs.  Next to the doorway was a laser-printed sign with an arrow upwards that said "Attic Greek."  

Latin looks bad until you start just doing it with a willingness to screw up at first, then it's pretty easy, except keeping straight which version of it you're in, classic, vulgar, church, pig... Greek I haven't played with yet, but it's on the list. Modern first, then some of the older varieties whenever I get done beating my head against the wall trying Hindi and Devanagari script. I can read the bloody difference on the close sounds, but I can't hear it.

I like Napoleon's version of Mr. Helm's statement, "History is a set of lies agreed upon."

Boomers, I think, Frosty, must stem from the nitrate family.

Perfer et obdura, dolor hic tibi proderit olim. Et illegitimi non carborundum  

Churchill is supposed to have said something like "I will leave my actions to be judged by history.  And I shall write the history."  (And whether or not he said it, he certainly did it.)

Uh Huh. How about, "Oh dieu quelle est cette puanteur"?

But I didn't WANT to learn Latin, Greek or Ogham, I just wanted to know what the name of that dinosaur means. Some years ago I read "Wonderful Life" by Stephen Gould about the Burgess shale in the Canadian Rockies and the preservation of 500 million year old soft body parts and life forms. There are actually fossils of algae and such. The site was discovered in the late 19th century IIRC and at the time the experts fitted everything they found into existing taxa.

Then in the early 1960s new guys and new tech started seeing these critters don't fit any taxa, some not even close and started re-classifying them. It is a fascinating subject filled with names of species based on almost silly combinations of different era Latin and Greek words. Some of the weird combinations make logical sense because none of the languages have descriptors that even come close.

More recently other similar sites containing fossils from the Cambrian, some even earlier have been discovered in widely separated areas, one of the closest is Greenland, one of the most extensive is in China with it's mixing bowl of regional dialects. And now that paleontologists know what to look for Lagerstatt formations are being found everywhere, there must be a dozen in the USA, last I looked.

Trying to follow or correlate Cambrian explosion taxa names makes Latin and Greek refreshingly easy to follow.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

You drove me to my copy of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations and then the internet, "I consider that it will be found much better by all Parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself." My favorite Churchillism was the one on naval tradition, but that's not repeatable here.

That puanteur was probably me, beans for lunch, sorry...

You should try green moose chili and unfiltered homebrew beer some time. Makes beans a recipe for cologne.(perhaps spelling that colonge! is more fitting) The moose meat was actually a little over aged, green, it tasted great but OH the puanteur! Add a dose of homebrew beer yeastiness for volume and one serving would clear a good sized cabin faster than gunfire.

Frosty The Lucky.

I completely believe you, haven't encountered that, but did an eight-hour bus trip in California one time with a full load of young Army linguists topped up with kimchi, soju, cheap beer, and hard-boiled eggs. I never found out but always hoped they destroyed the bus afterwards. Ah...DLI.

Sounds memorable in an eye watering way. Good thing nobody struck a light or it would've solved itself quickly. Did it make the linguists curse in different languages? 

After I'd posted my last "contribution" I remembered one of the early oral meds I was prescribed for type 2 diabetes. Even the tiniest poot was foul enough to make the dogs leave the room. It was like chemical warfare, I could blow a short quiet raspberry and the dogs would wrinkle their noses, bare their fangs and jump to the floor to get clear. Deb got hypersensitized to the sound and reacted with similar horror as she fled.

It didn't take long to figure out which med it was I was only taking two and I told my GP to prescribe something else and why. She wanted to see me again first and I demonstrated which called an end to my "checkup" and an early lunch for the office. A new scrip was called in immediately. 

At least the green moose chili ambiance smelled like it came out of a human!

Frosty The Lucky.

Ah, but did it strip the seasoning off your cast iron? THAT would have been a powerful blast!

If you're referring to either the green moose chili or oral meds venting, the oral meds would probably make the seasoning flee, the cast iron having been re-seasoned would be the perfect birthday gift for someone you really don't like.

Frosty The Lucky.

We didn't need kimchi and beer farts for that, we cussed in other languages all the time. The funny part was watching the Korean teachers try to pretend they didn't cuss when we learned half of it from overhearing them. We also amused ourselves a lot by translating American idioms and euphemisms, then waiting for them to figure out what we meant.

Haven't smelled the meds but used to be able to spot diabetes from the acetone smell or sweet smell in urine.

Incidentally, some etymology on flatulence, peter out stems from the French peter, meaning to fart, and it's where we get the word petard, as in "hoist by his own", to describe a mine. In the old French, you have pertis (from Latin perdix, from Greek perdix from peresthai (to fart). The partridge gets its name from this, because the sound of one flying is supposed to sound like clapping cheeks during the, erm, explosive event. And now we're back to discussing Greek again, ain't it grand?

Fizzle comes from old English fist, which also meant to fart, through the intermediate term "fice" and the term feist comes from a fisting dog, i.e. small barky dogs were also thought to be stinky. I love etymology.

Being a linguist would would involve a more advanced version of slang, a private "in" language the adults or outsiders don't understand.

The breath odor associated with diabetes is Ketosis, your breath smells of ketone, similar to but not acetone. Ants being attracted to a toilet is a sign someone using it regularly is diabetic or maybe pre-diabetic. 

Sugar in the urine is an all the time symptom. Ketone breath tends to occur during dangerously high blood sugar spikes. When it devolves into acid ketosis your blood PH is getting out of range. Ketosis is a B A D sign, my BGs were running in the 600-700 range at that point.

Perhaps we should consider our train of etymology, it's straying towards feculence. 

Frosty The Lucky.

 

For the stubborn stuff you’re dealing with, lye soak is the logical next step. Easy, cheap, and no fumes once it’s mixed. Electrolysis works great too but more setup. Skip the carb cleaner - too harsh and unnecessary. Lye bath for a week and you’ll be down to bare iron. Good luck.

On 11/7/2025 at 1:53 AM, Nobody Special said:

Hello all,

As I'm getting older, I rely more and more on the cast iron in my kitchen - a comal, an old Lodge skillet, a mystery dutch oven and a medium size skillet that is either vintage or was very expensive because the finish is baby bottom smooth. Oh yeah, and some decorative Pioneer woman pan that I use for cornbread because it makes my wife happy.  I like the carbon steel and what not, but the cast iron is my go to. The big Lodge skillet and the Dutch oven are old scarred warriors , sentimental favorites from the beginning of Marriage Number 1 (I'm on 3 if you're wondering, hooray for military tradition) and I've finally gotten tired of fixing the seasoning and to strip and start over from scratch. Too much flaking, too often, and it's got fissures around the corners.

Yeah, you can kind of scrub or sand em down and reapply til it's more or less even again, but it just ain't the useful, smooth surface it used to be. It's not just overseasoning, although it might have been some of that too at some point - it's the damage caused by a few thousand meals and the abuses of various family members through three marriages. Yeah, I know everyone fights about everything on cast iron, but at any rate I already started, so here's the problem - I've gone my usual route for stripping it - spray with oven cleaner, throw in a plastic bag on the porch, knotted off, let it sit for a couple of days, rinse, scrub, repeat until bare.

And that works usually. But I guess in this case the detritus of 30 years of seasoning ain't coming off easy. I've been repeating this for a week and it gets a bit more every time, but I'm at the point where I have to put a fourth application on or go another route. Never had a piece quite this tough., but usually I'm just cleaning up something found at a thrift store or antique barn on the cheap. I'm thinking about putting it in a lye soak, and the words "carburetor cleaner" have crossed my mind a few times. Or maybe the electrolysis route. Ain't got a self-cleaning oven and wouldn't want to risk the warp if I did. Thoughts?

I feel you on those battle scars from Marriage Number 1, my Lodge looks like it survived a war too. After three decades of buildup like that, oven cleaner sometimes just licks the surface. I went through the same frustration last year with a family heirloom skillet and finally built a lye bath in a five gallon bucket from the hardware store. One pound of crystals to four gallons of cold water, drop the piece in for three or four days, and it comes out completely bare with zero scrubbing. That method is actually very similar to how commercial bakery ovens are deep cleaned of polymerized grease, you can read about the industrial scale of it here but for home use lye is gentle on iron and won't warp anything like heat would. Electrolysis works beautifully too if you have a battery charger and some scrap rebar, but lye is cheaper and less fuss. Just wear gloves and goggles because that sludge is nasty. Your skillet will look like the day it was cast, then you can build one thin layer at a time.

I'd skip carburetor cleaner - too harsh and unnecessary.