Tlingit Hootchinoo

Alaskan moonshine, source of the word 'hootch'. Giving ear to words is a fine way to spend a day too hot to be outdoors. I can take a walk after sunset, or in the fog of morning. The wife of an earl is still called a countess. "If you hate graffiti, sign a partition." "Soft words butter no parsnips." The word 'write' maybe comes from the Old English writin which means 'to scratch runes into bark'. Reference book overload. I had to stop and put everything away before I could start all over again. Qualities of light sound like musical words for the opera list: luminescent, opalescent, translucent. Even with 2X reading glasses, two hours in the OED brings on a headache. A wee dram and a wet cloth is all it takes. A wild batch of thunderstorms are supposed to move through tonight, so I made a cream soup, that I can drink cold, and I have some good cheese and olives. An electrical storm, they're promising, heat lightning, with enough rain to put out the fires. We'll see about that. The green, right now, is heavy and sodden. I have the passing thought that you couldn't light it with a blow-torch. Lightening, when it strikes, might be a million degrees, hardwood might burn at a thousand, 1500 degrees, but it's still hard to start a fire. Only once have I actually desperately needed to start a fire. when I might be dying otherwise, and it wasn't that difficult, I just beat rocks together until there was a spark. Oh, right, that's what you were saying. It's all artifice, smoke and mirrors. I'd better go. It's getting violent outside.