April 30th, 2010
‘Rari Quippe Boni’ (The good, alas, are few)
A reader of Curated Secrets wrote to let us know about the recent death of a beloved family friend, a classic, well-mannered American gentleman of a type now rarely encountered. This reader went on to say a bit about his late friend Andrew Orr, a lifelong Philadelphia Main Line resident. Educated at the Haverford School [...]
April 28th, 2010
Some ‘Painlore’ and ‘Nipperlings’ to go with your mystical Runes?
Given the apparent interest in Runes and Runic writing systems, I’m surprised that enthusiasts haven’t yet connected with the 19th Century attempt to purge English of all that isn’t Anglo-Saxon in origin. Clergyman and linguistic dabbler William Barnes created new words to replace those of Latin, Greek or other “foreign” origin. The results were amusing, [...]
April 26th, 2010
Map to a truly lost world
This fascinating diagram shows a world which existed around the time of my birth. Whether there is a path back I can only hope…
April 23rd, 2010
‘Hidden Forces’ and ‘Hot Impulses’ – for a satisfying Totalitarian brand experience
April 20th, 2010
Ancient and Accepted Rite at Downside Abbey
If you’ve ever come across an Old Boy of Downside, the Benedictine school near Bath in England, you’ve probably encountered a well-spoken gentleman with a kind of debonair Anglo-European panache. That’s been my experience in any case, and there’s also no denying the serene beauty of Downside Abbey and the rarity of the incunabula in [...]
April 19th, 2010
Geographic oddities and mysteries: is Taiwan actually part of the United States?
The eyes of the world this past week were (at least partly) on Poland, given the chilling news of the presidential aircraft’s crash in Smolensk en route to Katyń. Many of the news stories also noted that a second Polish president perished in the crash: Ryszard Kaczorowski, who was the country’s last president-in-exile in London [...]
April 16th, 2010
A mist of vague occultism thickened by a persistent drizzle of sentimentality
Gerald’s last post for Curated Secrets alluded to Haitian Voodoo. On the one hand, the public’s Halloween-spiced interest in the syncretic religions of the Caribbean, Gulf Coast, Mexico and Brazil has been shaped by some eight decades of bad B-movies and pulp fiction. At least the 1973 James Bond film “Live and Let Die” had [...]