Stories below the fold

FountainOfEliasBlog reminds us that July 26 celebrates the story of St Anne, the mother of Mary and grandmother of Jesus. So yes, we grandmoms have a patron saint.

Everybody needs a Jewish grandmother. There is no need too small or insignificant for St. Anne to concern herself with; she is at home among the pots and pans, in the garden, the grocery store, and especially in the labor and delivery room. I can even see her standing in the living room in the middle of a family fight, trying to intervene. She is powerful with God. Her shrine in Quebec is among the most beautiful in the world.

Her story comes from one of those "suppressed" gospels, the Gospel of James, which was so obviously a made up romance type story that church fathers refused to put it in the bible. But the stories were great, so they were read by laypeople in various retellings.

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Brian Sibley remembers NASA's first Mars landing in 1976, and Bradbury's Martian Chronicles.

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Egypt is making a new Suez canal?

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Lost in Space: 50th anniversary of the TVShow

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your choice of music reveals your thoughts

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South American gene links to Australians.

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 da plague da plague....

and it didn't stop in the middle ages: TeaAtTrianon links to an article on the plague in Marseilles of 1720

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a new book about the Inklings has been published.

I actually bought the older book the Inklings by Carpenter.
 But since Carpenter had published a biography of Tolkien, the older book mainly was about Lewis and Charles Williams.
This newer book includes a lot about Tolkien too.

me, I'm waiting for a book about Tolkien that includes stories by his students, a lot of whom were women who were "adopted" into the family by his wife Edith. (And I wonder if the Professor and his wife in That Hideous Strength was based on them, as the Ransom of Out of the Silent Planet, who plays with Hrossa cubs, was based on Tolkien).

I have one book of these types of reminisces about Lewis...
the best one is by his gardener, who contrary to Warnie's dislike of Mrs Moore in her dotage, paints a picture of a lady who in her younger days before the paranoia of Alzheimers set in,  always had a handout for the hobos (sort of like The Lady in the Great divorce, who adopted every shopkeeper's son as her own?)

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LightReadingBlog links to a NYT article about Oliver Sachs.

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 via Incredible Things: Cats eating.