An illustration of yellow and red flowers against a lush, green background.

Willa Magland

More on Bees, Croutons, Cooking, and Canned Coffee

Posted Sep 11, 2023

Hi there! How do you like the new website? Not too bad for (checks notes) $10 annually. I've been prodding the other members in my family to make their own websites, to be hosted on their firstname.magland.org. How distinguished!

If you got a message about the site being insecure, it's because this site is being hosted on a dusty old laptop in my bedroom, and I haven't gotten around to making it HTTPS, but it'll come soon.

  1. New research shows air pollution prevents pollinators from finding flowers. Despite what I had originally assumed, this has nothing to do with visibility, but scent. This is scary because, according to the article, 75% of our food crop relies on pollination.

On a similar note, check out this Wikipedia article on "Telling the Bees:"

Telling the bees is a European tradition in which bees are told of important events, including deaths, births, marriages and departures and returns in the keeper's household. If the custom was omitted or forgotten and the bees were not "put into mourning" then it was believed a penalty would be paid, such as the bees leaving their hive, stopping the production of honey or dying.

  1. My mom bought a salad kit for us to eat for dinner, and it only had six croutons! And it was labeled to feed four people. Anyway, if you're ever need an extra crouton...

  2. This site only exists if it's being looked at

  3. Watch the Kingfisher dive in slow motion and snatch a fish...right out of the water!

  4. Perhaps payphones are a thing of the past, but a new one has popped up on this Washington DC street, providing amusement to the local neighborhood.

  5. We've done canned everything... but what about canned coffee? One from Nippon covers the beverage's entrance into Japan's culture, and its vending machines.

  6. Recipe websites are riddled with adverts, popups and useless anecdotes. I couldn't care less about your weekend in Cape Cod, just give me the recipe! Based Cooking does just that. No ads, no offers, just recipes, and a donation link.

  7. And to close things off, a poem by James Lee Jobe.

two valley oaks together we drink our roots move through the dark earth toward a dampness a creek or an underground pool so much drinking now we are drunk two old trees hoping for some music

Until next week,

~ Willa

Current Status ☕

a little dancing guy