Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Kathy at the Bermuda Onion where you "can share new
words that you’ve encountered or spotlight words you love. Feel free to
get creative!
I have been reading Beneath the Sands of Egypt: Adventures of an Unconventional Archaeologistby Donald Ryan [too much about him so far and not enough Egypt! I hope the balance improves soon!]
So here are some random words ...
A gaffir is a guardian - like a watchman or, in this context, they are tomb guards.
A gaffir at the Kushite tomb at El-Khurru from Source
howagas (apparently) means foreigners - I have seen one suggestion it come from 'hat-wearers' but I can't verify that. I am also having a heck of a time getting any kind of etymology for this word. Hummm... (it seems to really mean idiot in some cases though.) Anyone know Arabic ? aish baladi roughly translates as 'peasant bread' according to Ryan. Aish baladi is a form of pita bread that is unique to Egypt and is a staple of most meals.
Egyptian woman baking aish in a traditional clay oven. SOURCE They have posted a recipe.
koshari (Egyptian Arabic: كشرى, [ˈkoʃæɾi]) is rice, pasta (like macaroni or vermicelli) and lentils (and/or chickpeas) mixed with tomato sauce. It originated in the mid-19th centrality. It started out as an end-of-the-week throw in everything that is left over sort of dish. It is a ubiquitous street food in Egypt.
shawarma (Arabic: شاورما / ALA-LC: shāwarmā; Urdu: شاورما) which is more of a preparation than a specific food. Meat (lamb, turkey, beef, chicken, whatever) is put on a spit and slow roasted all day. The meat is shaved off from the outside and served on a plate or more commonly in a sandwich. The accompaniments depend on where buy it. Again a ubiquitous street food.
Which totally means that I have to throw in a still from that bit at the end of the Avengers movie where they are eating shawarma because Tony wants to try it ...
Maybe next week I will actually remember which day of the week is Wednesday (doesn't seem likely though the way things are going).
I haven't been able to participate in TTT in ages but this one sounds fun so I wanted to put together a short list for "underrated" mystery authors. I am not sure how much each of them count as underrated as much as currently under the radar or once rated but now disappeared? Something like that.
1. Janet Neel (Janet Neel Cohen, Baroness Cohen of Pimlico) a a British lawyer who wrote seven mystery novels staring Francesca Wilson and John McLeish, plus a few stand alone mysteries. Very British, contemporary and I found them to be very well done. My favorite was Death Among the Dons (which to me has something of the feel of Dorothy L. Sayers' Gaudy Night.
2. Sarah Caldwell (Sarah Cockburn) also a British Barrister, like Janet Neel, wrote four mysteries stories that centered around the lives of a group of young barristers practicing in Lincoln’s Inn and were narrated by a Hilary Tamar, a Professor of Medieval Law - an odd combination of mentor and hanger-on. One hook for the books is that the gender of the narrator is unknown. She passed away in 2000.
3. Kate Ross (Katherine Jean Ross) is an American mystery author who wrote four books set in Regency-era England about an enigmatic, poor, and superficially foppish dandy named Julian Kestrel. She passed away in 1998, way too young. The first book is entitled Cut to the Quick.
4. Diana Killian is the author of two mystery series that I know of - one is called the Poetic Death series, starting with High Rhymes and Misdemeanorsand stars a vacationing American school teacher and a reformed British jewel thief. They take rather a high level of suspension of disbelief but are great fun. I also like that the relationship between Grace and Peter developed throughout the four books. It takes time. Killian also has a Yoga mystery series, but I haven't read those yet. 5. Edith Skom is the author of three detective novels featuring Professor Beth Austen, who specializes in nineteenth-century literature. The first book is The Mark Twain Murders. I found these when I was looking to fill the hole left by Amanda Cross (also books starting a female professor and the best of them all had an academic setting) when she stopped writing.
6. Sparkle Hayter is a Canadian author and journalist. She wrote a series of mysteries (six of them I believe) starting Robin Hudson and some stand alone books as well. I am not entirely sure how to explain her books - The first one is entitled What's A Girl Gotta Do? and Robin is a journalist for a, well, trashy television news channel. The cover to the first book both helps and isn't right at all.
To give you an idea of our protagonist, she thinks her apartment may have been burglarized because it seems tidier than when she left it. I started reading these at the same time as the early Stephanie Plum books came out. I thought these were funnier. But then I am considered strange.
7. Katy Munger (who also wrote books under the pseudonyms Gallagher Gray and Chaz Mee) is an American author - the books that I enjoyed were her Casey Jones series, starting with Legwork. They are very hardboiled detective stuff staring a female detective - kinda if the femme fatale were the detective instead of Sam Spade. It is an interesting take and also stands in stark contrast to Stephanie Plum in terms of competence.
BTW - I never heard of Tart Noir until today. Wished I had heard about it at the time.
8. Joanne Dobson is an American mystery author whose books feature Karen Pelletier, an English professor at the fictional Enfield College in ritzy Enfield, Massachusetts. I see that I have missed a couple will have to catch up. The first book was Quieter Than Sleep: A Modern Mystery of Emily Dickinson. The books do have some unfortunate tropes in them, but they were still quite enjoyable.
9. Victoria Thompson - author of the Gaslight Mystery series set in turn-of-the-century New York, staring midwife Sarah Brandt. Not underrated I suppose, but her books have been hard to find in the bookstore. I have to start over and get caught up. I see that she is up to 15 or 16 books now.
10. Donna Andrews - author of the Meg Langslow mysteries, starting with Murder with Peacocks, that I have already talked up several times. I guess she really doesn't count as underrated but I think she is a bit under-appreciated. 11. Carola Dunn - she has bunch of Daisy Dalrymple mystery series is set in England between the wars (I wonder if she is running out of time here and will have to introduce WWII ? We are on book 21 now). I haven't read any of her Cornish mysteries yet. Also not really underrated, but her books are a nice change of pace from most of the things I see out there, so I wanted to give her some blog love too.
The world seems to be supplying material for next summers HAZWOPER course a little early this year. Or at least forcing it to my attention.
Last Wednesday at the Discovery Museum in Reno, Nevada, 13 people, including 8 children, were injured by a chemical explosion during a "routine" fire tornado simulation (so they have been doing this, roughly this way, for years). All of the children and one (or two - the news reports conflict on this) adults were transported to the hospital with smoke inhalation and chemical and/or acid burns (this is from the news reports - though as far as I can work out basically we are talking about burns caused by exposure to flames - not chemical burns and it shouldn't be acid burns either). All but one child was released the same day. The children suffered 1st and 2nd degree burns.
This picture gives you an idea of how close the children are to the demonstration table.
As you can see, the children were sitting on the floor approximately six to 10 feet away from the demonstration table. The Washington Post reports that the
museum runs the experiment as a simulation of a dust devil or tornado,
using methyl alcohol and boric acid.
According to the Washington Post article Reno Fire Chief Michael Hernandez said, "the order of the chemicals got
switched and caused a two- to four-second chemical flash." Then we have Reno City spokesman Matthew Brown telling the Associated Press "that the
demonstration was more of a chemical flash than an explosion, “similar
to if someone threw gasoline on a fire.” ??? Novel definition of the terms chemical flash and explosion here. ???
and commonly used to make "green fire" or "spirit fire." Basically you put some amount of alcohol into a safe container, add a teaspoon or so of boron and then use a lighter to ignite it. The resulting flame is green and very smokey.
So the idea here is to put this whole thing on a Lazy Susan or spinning table, surround it with a mesh screen (commonly a metal trash can) and then spin it to create a 'fire tornado.'
Here is one a really nice video showing you the experiment and also how to create different colors of flames.
(DISCLAIMER HERE - This is FIRE and ALCOHOL. The typical disclaimer here is - Don't try this at home. If you are one of our HAZWOPER people - you are still on your own and if you burn anything, it is your own fault!)
Anyhow, um, I have no idea what Mr. Hernandez or Mr. Brown are thinking but no - we call already tell that their explanation of what happened is not correct. The order of adding the alcohol and the boric acid has nothing to do with what happened (you can watch demonstration videos of people adding boric acid to alcohol and vice versa). This is not some exothermic reaction run amok. The problem lies elsewhere.
You find out from the video that the demonstrator has forgotten to add the
alcohol (you can clearly hear her say that). So she reaches to the end of the table, grabs and opens a gallon bottle of methanol that is only partly filled, thus full of alcohol
vapor, and then pours the alcohol onto what appears to be a hot burner
(the video in the news report is out of sequence, but it looks like
there was a flame on that burner then the demonstrator put the flame
out, and removed that mesh screen you can see in the back).
Here you can see the flammable symbol on the REALLY BIG bottle
of alcohol. Plus the bottle is only about a quarter or so full.
This happens almost immediately when she starts pouring. Looking at the angle
of her hand, lots of that alcohol got poured out over the table towards the left.
It is hard to see but it appears that the bottle rockets out of the demonstrators
hand, flying off to the right with flames shooting out of the bottle.
The flames go along the table then start to spread along the floor.
Looking at this still, you can see there are actually two flames there - one is yellow-orange and is from the spilled alcohol, the other is green and would be the remains of the 'flame tornado' demonstration. The green flame disappears pretty quickly as the boric acid was used up ...
And now you can see that the flames are all basically yellow-orange.
So - how many issues can you pick out here ? This one is a perfect example for the HAZWOPER class - it combines classroom chemistry with emergency response. Everyone who did the 8-hour should be able to pick out several things that need to be re-thought here. What do you think?
Admittedly, I am basing my analysis on obsessive re-watching of the video clips that are available and what has been reported in the news, so I could be wrong about what caused the accident - but I think my version is much more plausible than that of the Fire Chief, which is clearly incorrect (maybe he is thinking of the whole add acid to water not water to acid thing?).
I wonder if the CSB (Chemical Safety Board) is going to weigh in on this one. There are routinely accidents in classrooms involving methanol and fire so, sadly, this is just the latest variation on a theme.
Oh, geeze there are YouTube videos of kids doing this experiment in their garage! With no safety gear! And other videos suggesting you use charcoal lighter fluid for this.
The Screaming Staircase Lockwood & Co. Book 1
by Jonathan Stroud
Format: paperback (finally!)
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion (Reprint edition August 26, 2014)
Copyright: 2013
Pages: 416
Genre: middle grade fantasy-horror-mystery
Source: purchased
Summary from the back of the paperback: A sinister Problem has occurred in London: all nature of ghosts, haunts,
spirits, and specters are appearing throughout the city, and they
aren't exactly friendly. Only young people have the psychic abilities
required to see-and eradicate-these supernatural foes.
In The Screaming Staircase,
the plucky [I hate the way they use this word!] and talented Lucy Carlyle teams up with Anthony Lockwood, the
charismatic leader of Lockwood & Co, a psychic detection agency that handles the dangerous work. After an assignment leads to both a grisly discovery and a disastrous
end, Lucy, Anthony, and their sarcastic colleague, George, are forced to
take part in the perilous investigation of one of the
most haunted houses in England. Will Lockwood & Co. survive the
Hall's legendary Screaming Staircase and Red Room to see another day?
I have been waiting impatiently for this book to come out in paperback ever since I saw the hardback in the bookstore. Now that it has - squee! - I devoured it in just a couple of days. I would have read it faster but silly things like work and feeding the kids interfered. I believe that I can even go so far as to call it a rollicking good read - the pages just flew past. Since The Screaming Staircase won the 2013 Cybil Award for Elementary/Middle Grade Speculative Fiction, I am sure that lots of people are already aware of it, but just in case you are not - if you have any interest in the book based on the description get it ! What fun!
The main characters are distinctive and realistic feeling - as long as you accept the premise that has been laid out to explain why children/teenagers would have to be acting as the front line here the story holds together very neatly (as long as you don't start thinking too deeply about it). The book is written so well that it is pretty easy to suspend your disbelief and start adventuring.
The plot uses several common tropes - for example the authorities being against our heroes and not as good (the classic Sherlock Holmes - Lestrade dynamic) - but uses them well enough to skirt becoming trite. For a middle school reader, this is a good introduction to the gas-light horror/mystery genre. Adult readers of mysteries will probably know where things are going but will still enjoy the ride. It does have ghosts, murder, and some scary descriptions but it is handled well so that the horror doesn't overwhelm the story and shouldn't put off an interested middle school reader. (My son is not interested in horror books at all, so at the moment I won't be trying to get him to read it. I will try in a couple of years.)
The worldbuilding was for the most part really, really evocative. In fact, it worked so well in conjuring up the classic foggy streets of Sherlock Holmes' London that references to modern items were sometimes quite jarring. This is the one thing that was off kilter for me - I wasn't able to quite pin down the 'when' of the story. You have donuts and electricity along with gaslight and fireplaces. I get the idea that the Problem slowed down human advancements, but it was still all somewhat willy-nilly.
I also don't understand why Lucy wore skirts so often. Given the job description the disconnect between her 'work clothing' which included a parka and the references to times she was wearing a skirt started to really get on my nerves. In fact the whole girls are more sensitive, less threatening and normally wear skirts subtext felt totally archaic given the rest of the story. This was one of the reasons the time period felt more like the 1800's than the more modern world. The fact that Lucy was pretty fearless, competent and effective helped make up for these anacronistic attitudes but they were still annoying. It would helped if there more female characters (ghosts don't count) but there really weren't. They exist - there are important women mentioned - but other than eyeballing the Fitt's girl we don't meet any.
I really liked that one of the stray thoughts I had while reading - something like "if those things work against ghosts, why don't they try ..." - and then the book took me up on it and introduced something like what I was thinking about towards the end. Cool! Sorry to be vague but otherwise it would be a spoiler.
I loved it so much that I have already pre-ordered the next book - yes, sigh, in hardback. The first book doesn't end in a cliff hanger per say, but with a shoe that drops with a resounding thud. I need that next shoe! So I will be waiting impatiently until the 16th, when the next book comes out.
