Silent movies - so it begins

"I have noticed lately that my attention span is shorter than it used to be. ... Movies are much too long. ... Have any of you noticed that your attention span has shortened?"
This is what one of my fellow Jewelry Artisans Community members chose as her topic for the daily thread a while ago.
Here's part of my own reply:
"It depends. Sometimes I notice that I have several devices turned on. It's okay for me to have background noise like a movie while I'm working on something (for myself, that doesn't include work for the library), but a movie, a blog post, and talking on the phone at the same time simply doesn't work, and sometimes I don't even notice I keep jumping back and forth between them. ... I have started trying to concentrate on one device or medium or activity. ..."

My life changed when I discovered wire crochet. I hadn't expected that because I always felt rather craft challenged from my experiences in school. I only started serious knitting after starting library school because it was more productive than the endless doodling which I used up paper like crazy with. Those were still the times when most teachers allowed knitting in class as long as it wasn't too loud - is that still a thing? - and all the other crafty things I tried seemed to be doomed from the start.
When I started crocheting with wire, it was a surprise not just for me how much patience I could muster for something creative.
For years, I wasn't happy if I didn't fiddle on something. I always carried some wire and my trusted crochet hook with me, on the train, in waiting rooms, for breaks. Over time, more techniques came along, some didn't last for long, some managed to hold my attention, most of those didn't work for taking them along, though.
I also always carried a book when I was out, but at home I read less and less. There were my crafts and the Internet and I could have background noise with my crafts (I was also one of the kids who always needed music for doing homework or housework), but audiobooks didn't work for me. Then I started working from home and didn't have my long commute for reading anymore.
Also, as mentioned above, I noticed how I kept jumping from one to the other much too quickly when I was stressed out by something - which was a lot over the last years.

I really feel I have to do something about it. Get back into books (and reading to the cats which helps me concentrating and they seem to enjoy it), actively turn off devices when turning on another one (and I don't even have a smartphone to carry around with me all the time), consciously do one thing at a time. Listen to radio again.
I wish I could say it's going fabulously, but while at the moment progress is still bumpy, I still seem to see at least a bit of improvement already.

Public domain via Wikipedia

Are you wondering now what that has to do with silent movies?
Watching silent movies has never been easy for me although I grew up with them. No, I'm not that old, they were re-runs on TV, thank you very much.
I mentioned around Christmas that I wasn't able to make it through "Little Lord Fauntleroy" with Mary Pickford because it didn't even have any music. You need a lot of attention for a silent movie and some are really long, too.

So I thought that could actually work quite well as a part of my "training". I'll be watching silent movies and writing about them here. Probably each post will say something like "typical silent movie overacting, dramatic/no/weird music (depending on who added music or not), had to watch it in two parts because it was so long", but I'll be doing my best.
There won't be a dedicated weekday, I will just have to see how it goes.

The first movie is already chosen after I watched a later "talkie" version today, maybe there will even be a comparison at some time.
I hope it will be not just training, but also a bit of fun for an old-fashioned lady like me.

10 on the 10th - Irrational things

10 things I would do that are just a little or a lot irrational.
Marsha from Marsha in the Middle's choice of this topic was inspired by Pi Day which has officially been celebrated since 1988. Pi is an irrational number.
I asked if that meant things I would want to do or things I did in the past and got the permission to choose whatever I felt like.

What is irrational in humans, though?
The Cambridge Dictionary tells me that "irrational" means "not using reason or clear thinking".
It's a stereotype that women tend to be emotional and irrational while men are logical and rational. Being in customer service for decades, that's not a stereotype I can subscribe to myself. From my experience, there are often just different words used for the same behavior. Women are emotional and irrational about a topic, if men behave  the same, they are for example called passionate.

You can tell that I'm already thinking about this too much, typical for me. Just keep in mind that irrational may be relative, but yeah, some of my 10 may surprise you.

1. No one has asked me yet which is a darn shame, but I would totally join a search party for Nessie if the boat isn't too small, not because I'm afraid Nessie would knock it over, but because I'm claustrophobic.
It would be harder to join one for Bigfoot because I don't see myself hiking through the woods anymore.
I think the reason for this is obvious - to speak with Fox Mulder, I want to believe.

2. Anthropomorphizing - giving feelings and/or talking to inanimate objects.
Yes, I do talk and sometimes even apologize to inanimate objects, but not with all of them or not all the time. It's actually not that unusual for people to do. I never felt the urge to marry my toaster, though - wait, I don't own a toaster - ok, my hand mixer although we have been together for 35 years.
The nice thing about them is that they don't talk back. Everyone likes a good listener.
In the picture is my teddy, ingeniously named Teddy by me. I got him for my birth although I have no active memory of that, and I was without him only once (except for vactions for which I shamelessly left him alone at home) when the very young daughter of a friend of my father's fell in love with the "talking bear" and my mother lent it to her for the weekend without asking me. I was about seven and devastated. That changed to outrage when he was returned in a plastic bag and standing on his head. The indignity! I had very strong opinions even at that age.

3. This is Hannah. She was my employee of the month in October 2020 helping me to tackle the hardest part of one side of my beaded HeatherCat shoes. She was also the only needle to ever get a name and blog feature from me. If persistence had a shape, this would be it.
I also thank broken needles for their commitment although I don't put them in tofu or konnyaku. Confused? Look up Hari-Kuyō and you'll understand.

4. My bookmarks and the icons in my taskbar have to be in a certain order. If they aren't, something terrible will be happening. Or maybe not, but I need my order, so I can hit them blindly, more or less.
It's hard enough that I haven't learned completely yet how to use my new TV remote control blindly. Who needs that many buttons?

5. I can't stand hearing people eat loudly, but I'm absolutely fine with animals doing it. A big favorite of mine at the zoo were the porcupines even if they weren't as talkative as Teddy (not my Teddy).
Snoring can drive me nuts - unless it's my cats. So cute.

6. I haven't worn a wristwatch for years now, but when I still did, it was always set to California time ever since I visited there for the first time. At first, it was just to keep the vacation feeling a bit longer when we were back home and then it just stayed.
It confused the heck out of people, for example the watchmakers who put new batteries in. I remember one time when one of them said "oh, let me set it, that's the wrong time" and my sister just shook her head at him lightly indicating to leave it 😂

7. If I buy my favorite tortilla chips (nacho cheese) or peanut flips (a German snack you may not know), they have to be on sale, but even then I don't buy them every time because they are very dangerous to have around.
I eat them using chopsticks because I hate having the powder on my fingers. Although I'm very much right-handed which was very tough when I had a cat bite, I'm better at doing that with my left hand.
Wait, is that even irrational?

8. I know a lot of people feel the same way about this one. It's the reason for the site called "Does the dog die?" although that has all kinds of trigger warnings now. We can watch a thriller, mystery or maybe even horror movie, but insist they stay away from the animals. I have DNF'ed books that I knew to have monsters, but I was tired of yet another dog getting killed (yes, Preston and Child, I'm looking at you, do you have a personal problem with dogs?).

9. No elevators for me. As mentioned, I'm claustrophobic and it has got worse with age.
Elevators are the worst. It started when I got stuck twice at work - different buildings - since then every little hiccup made me extra nervous until I couldn't use them anymore at all.
I'm aware it's irrational, but panic is panic. You will also not find me visiting a cave anymore and I will probably never become a submarine captain. I'm still blaming Poe.

10. I love crafting sounds, a needle going through fabric, the little pop of beads settling between the warps on a bead loom, the clacking of knitting needles etc. They have something soothing for me.
I also love documentaries about crafts, and sometimes when I craft, I pretend to be in such a documentary and play through in my head how I would explain what I'm doing right now.

There, now you know the complete horrible truth about me (you don't, but we can pretend you do)!
But hey, I got an extra for you, rebel that I am.

11. As a child, someone told me that a vampire was living in the space underneath our cellar stairs, well, or rather not living. I must have been about five or so at the time, and I swear hearing the lid of the coffin shut more than once. You could see through the steps of the cellar stairs and while I was too scared to look into that space, I was deeply convinced that the vampire would reach out and grab me if I went down there.
Although I eventually didn't believe the story anymore, I never lost that weird feeling on those stairs.

There you go, now you really know everything.

Random Saturday - Diamond Painting

When I'm downtown, I usually take the bus home, and since that particular bus only runs every hour, I try to plan my appointments around that.
Sometimes, however, that doesn't work perfectly and I have some time to kill, most times not enough to do any big shopping, but too long to spend on a bus stop bench, especially if it's cold.
One way to do that was to go to our version of a dollar store which has now moved to another location, so the one option in the area is the discount retailer which has a bit of everything.

I always head to the crafts and office corner where I sometimes pick up little stuff like pens, brushes, glue or whatever things I see that could be of use to me. Often they offer the same items as our dollar store.
Last time I was there, they had diamond painting kits. I had never thought about picking up diamond painting as a hobby despite having seen some beautiful pictures.
I have an online friend, however, who does really large canvases and another friend picked up a kit when she temporarily didn't have access to her jewelry studio and said it was more fun that she had expected. So I thought it would be interesting to try it just once.

I had never thought about the history of diamond painting before.
From what I read, it was invented in Asia in the early 2000s and then went worldwide.
You use small plastic "diamonds", so-called drills, which can be round or square (there are also special shapes), and put them on your sticky canvas to achieve a sparkly "painting". At first, velvet was used for the canvas and superglue to stick the drills on. Nowadays, the canvas is pre-applied with adhesives and you use a stylus with wax to pick up the drills. The canvas, oilcloth or velvet that is used today is pre-printed with the pattern by numbers or symbols. You can even have a picture of your own turned into such a kit, but when I once thought about giving one as a gift, I saw reviews that the colors don't always come out right.
It really reminds of cross-stitch or of painting by numbers which was basically invented in the 20s, but started its success story in the 50s, only with drills instead of floss or paint. Also if you use round instead of square drills, you will of course have gaps in between. There is even such a thing as partial drill which means you only cover part of the canvas.

The very small kit that I chose is partial drill and it set me back incredible $2. Obviously I expected no masterpiece for that kind of money, but only a small glimpse into what this was all about.
The first thing that didn't convince me about this kit was were the two spots in the tail and leg that are not covered because there are butterflies "in front" of them. As the butterflies are just in the print, they don't work with the 3D of the fox and to me he looks as if his leg is missing a part. There were loads of extra drills, so I could have used some glue - because those spots aren't sticky - and put some on, anyway. I didn't because this was supposed to give me an idea of diamond painting, not a piece to keep.
I did, however, add three black drills for the nose (that spot was sticky) because that hole looked disturbing and the smile in what looks like a beard instead of the chin and breast was a bit creepy, too.

If you go to pages where kits are sold, you will also find facts about diamond painting and explanations about the benefits and why it is so popular.
I could tell rather quickly myself that it's not for me, even with such a small kit that was finished in a short time, as I never found a good way to sit and therefore cramped up. After the second color I just wanted this to be done somehow.
I don't think it's because the pattern is what it is and I therefore lacked motivation, after all I hadn't expected anything, it really was a matter of doing this comfortably and painfree. Had I found the perfect position and had a really good pattern, I could absolutely see how this could become meditative and calming, even if I would not want to exchange it for any of my other crafts.
What I don't see is how my online friend manages to do this with a cat around, he really must be an extraordinarily well-behaved boy!

The Sun Never Sets

Welcome back to the "Winter of Fairbanks Jr." with Lisa from Boondock Ramblings.

Today's title says it all. "The Sun Never Sets" - yes, we are back with the British Empire, this time the Colonial Office, a government department of the Kingdom, which was responsible for much of Britain's Imperial territories.

The Randolph family have a long tradition of working in colonial service.
Grandfather Randolph has a big map full of little flags for each Randolph doing their duty in one of the colonies. If one of them is transferred, he moves the flag, if one of them dies, the flag gets "buried" in a little chest.

Clive (Basil Rathbone) and his wife Helen have just come home from a mission in the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana).
At a family gathering, his younger brother John (Douglas Fairbanks jr.) declares that he doesn't intend to join the service and moving from one mission to the next. His family is not only sure that he will change his mind, they are just as surprised that Phyllis, whom he's in love with, supports him in this.
Then, however, his grandfather persuades him to give it a try at least, Clive pokes him by saying he might not even be accepted, and suddenly Phyllis also changes her mind, so John decides to join and go to the Gold Coast after all, but without her as he has to find out by himself what he really wants.

Via Internet Archive

Surprisingly, Clive has to go with him, tasked with finding out where mysterious broadcasts keep coming from that spread throughout the world and cause much distress.
A suspect is Doctor Zurof, a scientist claiming to research ants, but who has secretly set up a radio station plotting to plunge the world into war in order to then profit from selling the molybdenum from the mine where the station is and to take over the world.
The pregnant Helen has accompanied Clive although she is not happy about going back.
Just when she's in critical condition, Clive gets called away by an urgent message with a secret code although John doesn't understand how he can go in this situation. So, when Doctor Zurof turns up, he manages to trick John into calling Clive back to keep him from discovering his secret station. Clive expects there to be an important message, instead he is told the baby has died. He knows he has failed and will be losing his job with the service. The shame! He and Helen go back home, and John stays behind.

The broadcasts keep stirring up the world, but John doesn't know what to do when another urgent message arrives.
Phyllis turns up and although he doesn't want her to stay at first, they finally get married.
They get the orderly drunk, the only way for him to remember all the messages, this way they find out about the important one which makes clear what Zurof is up to.
So, John pretends to be drunk to get access to the mine, from there he sends out a broadcast that only his family can understand.
Clive leads a bombing mission to the mine in which Zurof and his men get killed, but John survives. I just hope the native workers were fine.
In the end, both couples are welcomed at home by Mother Randolph and you see them standing in front of Granddad's map moving flags together. So glad they found their place in the family, their own and the colonial service ...

You may have deducted from the way I told the plot that I didn't like the movie.

Too many stiff upper lips, too much imperialism, too many brave and dutiful British men - and dutiful women standing behind them and their decisions.
All of them were packed into a strange plot. I have questions, here are just a few of them.
What were those mysterious broadcasts that they had such a quick effect on the whole world?
How exactly would Zurof have become a dictator by selling his molybdenum and how quickly?
When did Clive write that book about "the ant world" which made Zurof go "THAT Randolph."? I know this isn't the most important question, but if he joined the service as a baby ... okay, I'm exaggerating, but honestly, when did he find the time to become an expert on ants working his butt off for the service?
Why could no one convince Helen to stay at home?
How did John survive when Zurof and ALL of his men in the next room died on the spot without even moving? So glad the ant crawling across Zurof's forehead survived, very symbolic.

This was not a box office hit and people blamed one another or the beginning of the war for it.
It is said that C. Aubrey Smith, who (of course) played the grandfather, told Fairbanks jr. on the first day of shooting "Rotten title. It already has set."

As usual, some people think this is an amazing adventure film while others - me included - want their 1 1/2 hours back.
To speak with one reviewer "At least we get some quality mussed hair moments from Doug." Well spoken, THAT I can agree on.

The Scarlet Empress

Last week I presented the movie "The Rise of Catherine the Great" within the Winter of Fairbanks jr., and I mentioned planning to watch "The Scarlett Empress" from the same year - 1934 - with Marlene Dietrich to compare.
So that's what I did spontaneously on the weekend and now I'm trying to convey my feelings about that movie to you which is not going to be easy.

I wrote this in my post about "The Rise" (you'll forgive me for shortening the title from here on).
"It covers the time from when Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst arrives in Russia to marry Grand Duke Peter, nephew and heir of the childless Empress Elizabeth, to her taking the throne from her husband with the help of those officers devoted to her."
"The Scarlet Empress", however, begins with a short scene of Sophie as a child (Dietrich's own daughter) and a reference to the hangman which is followed by a sequence showing the torture and executions that happened in Russia before (very clearly pre-code!) before cutting to a playful and innocent teenaged Sophie on a swing in the garden.
A messenger, Count Alexei, arrives to take her to Russia for the wedding with Peter. When she asks him about Peter, he tells her that he's most handsome. During the trip, he lets her know he has fallen in love with her and kisses her.
When they come to Russia, Sophie is shocked to discover that Peter is mentally deficient and unstable (as mentioned in the other post, historians don't necessarily agree with that anymore) and not the handsome young man she has been promised. Empress Elizabeth expects her to be a faithful wife to her nephew and give Russia a male heir, nothing more.
Sophie - now called Catherine - starts to change from the innocent girl into a confident women. Disappointed by Alexei whom she avoids after she discovers him to be Elizabeth's lover, she begins taking other lovers. Peter also has a lover of his own who hopes he will marry her once Elizabeth has died and Catherine has got rid of.
After Elizabeth's death, Peter places Catherine under house arrest and spreads the rumor that she's dying, but her lover Orlov and her loyal troops help her to escape and start the coup during which Orlov kills Peter - making Catherine the new Empress.

Like "The Rise" this movie is not a history lesson.
What is it, though, and why did I say in the introduction that it wouldn't be easy to tell you my opinion about the movie? One word - OVERWHELMED. Yes, in big letters.

This movie was very different from "The Rise".
Let's start with the set because it starred at least as much as Dietrich did, if not more.
It is absolutely bizarre, over the top, dark, and grotesque. A lot of people are fascinated by it, call it beautiful, striking, but to me it was mostly very distracting.
I couldn't help it, it felt like I, instead of listening to the people, mostly stared at the distorted orthodox icons on the huge doors and even more at the sculptures that were simply everywhere, some smaller, some hugely towering over the humans, holding slim, long candles, yes, even making up the throne.

Nothing against an elaborate set and I even understand people being fascinated it, but I easily get claustrophobic which is a real problem at times for me personally and therefore it was way too much for me.
It was the same with the costumes, they all seemed to be huge, all the fur, the skirts, the jewelry; I guess they were meant to show the decadence of the upper classes opposed to the situation of the peasants.
Some of Dietrich's outfits were really wild.
Not that it mattered much, though, because the dialog seemed to take second place after the visuals, anyway.
Actually, there were a lot of passages that reminded more of a silent movie with the music transporting the mood of the situation, playful or very dramatic. Sometimes a scene felt endless and needlessly repetitive, too. Having intertitles enhanced the feeling of a silent movie.

Now how does Dietrich in this movie compare to Bergner in "The Rise"?
I didn't care much for the portrayal of innocent Sophie. Maybe it's something I couldn't imagine Dietrich to do, I don't know, but I didn't buy it from her any more than from Bergner, eyes wide open, whispering, breathless.
In the second part of the movie, however, as the confident and seductive - lots of play with symbols here - Catherine who is ready to do anything to stand her ground at court, Dietrich is more in her element and a lot better than Bergner in my opinion. She is also always center stage, a shining light on a dark and grotesque stage. In the end, she rides right up to the throne on a white horse, dressed in a white version of a military uniform.
"There is no Emperor, there is only an Empress."

That brings us to the Emperor.
I said that Fairbanks jr. seemed more spoilt than really crazy in "The Rise" and I very much preferred that.
There were moments when Jaffe's madness was creepy, but most of the time he just grinned with eyes wide open and turning his head back and forth, and it made me think a lot of the way he played Gunga Din who was not crazy. In fact, that too had a silent movie vibe to me, but not in a good way. It soon started to annoy me more than creep me out.

I did like Dresser as Elizabeth, but I liked Robson a lot better. Other than Robson, Dresser didn't seem as much an Empress to me as a matriarch who wanted to keep the household running by demanding a male heir for Russia and not tolerating anything preventing it.

Count Alexei, hm. He was not quite as seductive to me as he was probably meant to be.

All in all, I think "The Scarlet Empress" is better than "The Rise", and I'm glad I watched it as it was definitely an interesting experience, but to be honest, I wouldn't put either on my re-watch list for very different reasons.
I can't help not getting over the set and believe me, the picture above is just a tiny glimpse into it.

I guess you'll just have to watch and judge the movie for yourself. If you do, I'd love to hear what you think.

The "Queens of Crime" - Agatha Christie, the life

In this post about Agatha Christie's work and my personal dilemma with it, I mentioned her interesting life.
What do I mean by that?

Agatha Christie was born in Torquay on September 15, 1890 as the youngest of three siblings in a wealthy upper middle class family.
Although it wasn't encouraged by her mother, she learned reading at the age of four, and she was home-schooled in reading, writing, basic arithmetics, and music.
At the age of 11 she lost her father, a year later she started attending a local school, and when she was 15, her mother sent her to Paris where she completed her education.
When she came home again, she and her sick mother decided to spend three months in Egypt.

In 1912, Agatha was introduced to Archibald Christie whom she married in 1914. While Archie was in France during the war, Agatha first volunteered in a hospital and then qualified as an apothecary assistant working at the dispensary which inspired her to use poisoning as the method in her first detective story featuring Hercule Poirot, the Belgian detective who had come to England as a refugee.

In 1922, the Christies joined Major Belcher's promotional tour for the British Empire Exhibition. During this tour they learned for example how to surf and were among the first Britons to surf standing up. I don't know about you, but the picture of an old/er Agatha is so ingrained in my mind that I have a hard time imagining her on a surfboard, but she enjoyed surfing thoroughly.

In 1926, Archie asked Agatha for a divorce after falling in love with a friend of Major Belcher's, Nancy Neele. After a row, Agatha disappeared which of course led to a huge news story, but also to an extensive search with hundreds of police officers, thousands of volunteers, and even aeroplanes.
11 days later, she was found at a hotel where she had registered under a false name. She never gave an explanation and opinions about whether she disappeared in a fugue state or consciously are divided. Public reaction was mainly negative, also due to the costs of the extensive search.
The divorce went through in 1928, Agatha retained custody of their only child, Rosalind.

In autumn of 1928, Agatha travelled to Istanbul with the Orient Express and on to Baghdad where archeologist Leonard Woolley and his wife Katharine, who was a fan of her novels, invited her to the site of Ur. She became friends with them and they invited her to return in 1930.
During that second trip, she met Woolley's assistant who was ordered by Katharine to take Christie on a conducted tour of the country - Max Mallowan who was 13 years younger than her. The way she took everything during that tour in good humor, even getting stuck in the sand of a dry river valley, convinced him that she would make a wonderful life companion, and so he proposed to her just six months later.
This was the beginning of a second life on a different continent for Agatha beside that of a successful writer.
Katharine Woolley, however, didn't want another wife at the site which is probably the reason why the couple went to Nineveh next. In "Murder in Mesopotamia", which Christie - she used the name Mallowan outside her writing career - dedicated to the Woolleys, the victim was inspired by Katharine. According to Mallowan's biographer Henrietta McCall, Katharine was aware that the as difficult portrayed character was based on her and enjoyed the notoriety.

In 1932/33, Max and Agatha worked on their first own dig in Tall Arpachiyah near Nineveh. Both Agatha's celebrity status as a writer and her money helped Max' archeological career as this was the time when digs still had to be sponsored with private money, at least partially.
During the season - fall and spring - they were at the sites, in summer they were in England with Rosalind, and the rest of the time they spent either traveling or staying at home.
Max led the excavations, Agatha, who had taken a drawing course, started by doing drawings, but that wasn't really her thing. So instead she wrote in the morning, in the afternoon she recorded finds and put together broken ceramics.
In 1934, they travelled to Egypt and took a Nile River cruise which inspired one of her most famous novels, Death on the Nile.

Eventually they moved on to digs in Syria.
Agatha found her role by becoming the official photographer which was a hard, exhausting, and demanding task, both the photographing itself, but also the developing of the negatives. She didn't just take pictures, however, but also filmed, black/white and in color. In 1937, she even took a photography course in London which led to more creative experiments, not to her husband's joy as he would have preferred purely scientific photos to creative ones.

Part of their team in Syria for several years was the young architect Robin Macartney who not only assisted by drawing finds, maps, and plans, but also designed an expedition house.
Fascinated by Macartney's drawings, Christie asked him to design a book cover for her. In the end, he designed four dust-wrappers between 1936 and 1938. What she liked best about them was that each cover told something about the story by using elements from it, such as the Ramesses II statues and the Nile cruise steamer for "Death on the Nile", and I totally understand that because it seems to be a concept that publishers struggle with from covers I have seen myself.

First edition of "Death on the Nile"
with the dust jacket by Robin Macartney
via Wikimedia Commons
under CC BY-SA 4.0

Excavations came to a halt when WW II broke out, but after the war they came to Nimrud, a site Mallowan had long had his eye on. He became the first director of the British School of Archaeology and thus secured the necessary support for the excavation.
The couple was there throughout the 50s, they lived in the School's building, and while Agatha had a small writing room added to the team house, she also assisted again by collecting, recording, and cleaning artifacts, taking photographs, and restoring ceramics.

Nimrud Ivory "Lion of Nimrud"
By Unknown - M0tty, CC BY-SA 3.0,
via Wikimedia Commons

During the war Christie had written the book "Come, Tell Me How You Live" about their time in Syria.
Nimrud was the last site she went to.

Bull plaque, one of the Nimrud finds,
via Wikimedia Commons,
by Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg)
under CC BY SA 4.0

Agatha Christie died on January 12, 1976 at Winterbrook House.

Did you already know about Agatha Christie's "second life"? Have you maybe even read her book about it? If so, what did you think?

Sources:
- Agatha Christie's adventurous 'second act' plays out in Mesopotamia in: National Geographic March 21,2019
- Bridget Roddy: Agatha Christie and Archaeology, An Understated Connection on: Trowels and Tribulations: IUP's Archaeology Blog, March 11,2022
- German documentary "Agatha Christie und der Orient" 2021
 - BBC Archive 1977 - The World This Weekend, Sir Max Mallowan
- Agatha Christie on Wikipedia

Random Saturday - Mugs

Mugs - we probably all have them and we also probably have a favorite mug.
This is not the first time I'm talking about mugs.
There was of course another random Saturday when I showed you my yellow custom made mugs which I still love as much as on the first day and which are my personal favorites.
Also a few days ago, a friend of mine showed a picture of a cupboard full of mugs using the hashtag #alletassenimschrank (for your information, not to have "alle Tassen im Schrank" = "all cups in your cupboard" is a German idiom meaning something like "having a screw loose").
That picture reminded me of the time I shared a picture of my own cupboard full of cat mugs and told the story of my Miss Piggy mug - 15 years ago! - inspired by another blogger asking people for their cups and mugs stories.
Wow, I said mugs a lot in this introduction, didn't I?

Since then my collection hasn't become smaller, in fact I have so many mugs that it's downright ridiculous for a single person who usually never has more than two other people over.

What's the history of mugs? And what's the difference between a mug and a cup? Why is it so hard to get rid of mugs even if you only use the same ones over and over? Why are mugs such a popular gift (yes, the majority of mine were gifts which is part of the answer to the question before)?

Let's start with the history.
Mugs have been around forever, well, not forever, but for a very long time. They were probably a popular gift even back then. I have found different information from 12,000 to 10,000 BC to over 8,000 years old to 3,900 BC, and I could have kept going. To be on the safe side, I'm just going to say they have been around for thousands of years.
Ancient mugs were made from wood or bone, then clay shaped by hand, leather, different metals until the invention of the pottery wheel and finally of porcelain which allowed to make the walls of mugs thinner.

I still grew up using cups myself and somehow it feels as if Miss Piggy was actually my first real mug. Maybe it was my first own one and therefore stands out. I still have a bunch of both tea and coffee cups in my coffee set, too.
What is the difference between a cup and a mug, anyway?

All mugs are cups, but not all cups are mugs.
A cup is an open-top drinking vessel. It can be made from all kinds of materials and it has no pouring lip (because then it would be a jug, but I have to admit that I usually use my milk jug for drinking, anyway, because I never intended it for pouring milk), also it typically has a handle, but sometimes it doesn't although it really should be called a beaker if it doesn't, but there are beakers to drink from without a pouring lip and beakers in laboratory use with a pouring lip, also older people like me expect a saucer with a cup while younger people don't anymore because a cup can even be from paper and who would expect a saucer with that, oh, and of course it can also be a kind of trophy, it can have a stem or not, and by the way, in Asia cups often have a bowl shape and no handle at all and .... yeah, I think you get the idea.
A cup can be pretty much anything.
I'm sure you have your own personal idea of what a cup is.

My favorite childhood set "Arabella / Boston"
by Royal Sphinx Maastricht

So what is a mug?
Mugs are usually intended for hot beverages (mine usually aren't), they have handles and are larger than "ordinary" tea or coffee cups. They typically have a straight-line profile, often cylindrical, but there are flaring mugs, too.
They don't have saucers and they are usually considered to more informal. You remember I mentioned the old-fashioned "Kaffeekränzchen" some time ago? The idea of using mugs for it and not a perfectly matching coffee set is ... I can't even find a word for it.
In German we use both words for a mug, the one for cup = Tasse and mug = Becher which can also be a bit confusing because a "Becher" is really a beaker.
I suggest you call them all "open-top drinking vessel" from now on to avoid any confusion 😂

Why is it so hard to get rid of mugs even if you don't use them?
Maybe I'm the only one who has that problem and maybe it doesn't help that I have used up my space more or less, but haven't really run out yet.
Practically all of my mugs have a story, about why I got them - mostly as gifts as already mentioned - where or when I got them. Most of them have cats on them - for some reason people seem to think I like cats - but there are a few others, too. I can't throw out cat mugs, Bast would strike me down, no doubt.
There have been mugs I threw out, though, promotional ones, for example, that made their way here through the ex, from companies or conferences. Because that's the fun thing about mugs, isn't it? They can be plain, they can be colorful, they can have pictures, quotes, names, they can be souvenirs reminding you of a trip or an event, they can be "magic" and change from black to white with a picture if you pour something hot in, they can be fun, they can be commercially made or elaborately made by hand, there is simply one for every occasion and if there isn't, you can have one made.
No wonder they are such popular gifts.

Let me show you a few of mine.
So - DO you have a favorite mug?

One of the few mugs I actually bought
myself. This one was on sale because
the strainer was missing.

Not just the answer of my cats when I ask them to
clean their litter box, but also my own mood a lot
these days - especially after watching or
reading news. I got two from a very good friend,
one for home and one for work, but then came the
pandemic, so both of them stayed here.

A gift by a co-worker many years ago.
Great size for a mug and I love the handle!

You know my love for little panthers ❣
I think it's funny that the cat on the mug is
sitting in a cup. I'm easily amused sometimes.

This was a gift from another co-worker.

The token non-cat mug, gift from a friend 😉

"To Nanny Ogg he was merely a larger
version of the little fluffy kitten he had
once been. To everyone else he was a
scarred ball of inventive malignancy."
(Terry Pratchett: Maskerade)