Category Archives: Research

The historical, geological, scientific & gadgety interests that inform and propel my writing.

September 5, 2026 · 10:00 AM

History of Everyday Objects Undusted: Needles

As far back as humans have needed to bind materials together, they’ve found ways to do it. The oldest sewing needle dates back 60,000 years and was found in Sibudu Cave, South Africa (made from a bone, most likely a bird). Needles have also been found in Russia, dating back 50,000 years, and in China (from stone), dating back 9,000 years. These and other archaeological finds show that people around the world developed similar solutions. The material used depended on availability in their region, including boar bristles, bones (including antlers and tusks), cactus needles or other thorns, stones, and various metals (the first copper needles were found in Armenia, dating to around 7,000 BC; the first bronze needles appeared during the Bronze Age, around 1200 BC). Earlier needles had grooves on the side for holding threads of sinew or strips of bark or other fibre. They were not only used for making clothing or shoes, but also for weaving fishing nets or heavier materials like tents or ships’ sails.

Boar bristles are still used today in some leatherworking: The bristles are attached to a tapered linen thread with a sticky wax, giving the thread a stiff leader to get through awled stitch holes. This technique would have been used regardless of the needle material until the eye came along. Eyeless needles are still used, for example, as modern medical suturing tools for both external wounds and surgical procedures.

The first needle with an eye is dated to around 25,000 years ago, during the Upper Palaeolithic Period. Some ancient Roman needles have been found with two or even three eyes toward one end; one paper suggests that the multi-eyed needle may indicate their use in making fabrics with the nålbinding technique, which would make them stretchy. Some ancient Roman needles have also been found with the eye around mid-length; this might have been used to push and pull threads through tougher materials; some modern nålbinding needles also have this feature. I wondered if the multi-eyed needles might have been used to combine several colours, and this video confirms that. Incidentally, this technique was the ancestor of the two-needle technique we know as knitting today.

Ancient Roman Needle

As you can imagine, the work that went into creating a tapered piece of bone or stone made these items valuable; as soon as they were created, a casing to protect them likely soon followed. Cases have been discovered the world over, ranging from simple hollowed-out sticks to hides to elaborate gilt and jewelled cases; the oldest known needle case that I could find information about is from early Iron Age Russia, approximately 37,000 years old; it was made from bone, found in a cave in the Caucasus Mountains. Another was found in Siberia, made of Rhinoceros bone, and dates to around 33,000 years ago. Think about that a moment: Rhinoceros… in Siberia. Climate change is nothing new.

Ancient Norse Needle Case, Swedish Museum

Personally, I have several kinds of needle holders, for various-sized, -shaped, and -purpose needles: I have wooden cases with a wooden cork (bought many years ago at a Native American trading post); I have an empty lipstick tube (the base is blocked with a piece of sponge to keep the needles from falling through the holes in the corkscrew section) – this makes accessing the needles easy, as I wind them up to select one; other cases I have are more conventional. I have metal needles, but I also have plastic ones; the latter make it easier to get, e.g., elastic or a cloth cord through a seam.

The next time you have a threaded needle in your hand, take a second to think about its long history, and bless the day when needle eyes, smooth threads, and the self-threading needle for sewing machines came along!

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August 22, 2026 · 10:00 AM

History of Everyday Objects Undusted: Sponges

Today, let’s dive into the topic of sponges.

Natural sponges are sessile (immobile) marine invertebrates of the animal phylum Porifera (pore-bearing). They lack complex nervous, digestive, and circulatory systems but rely on constant water flow through their bodies to take in nutrients and oxygen, and to remove waste. There are nearly ten thousand known species; some feed on planktonic bacteria; others host symbiotic organisms to thrive, and some have even developed predatory survival strategies in nutrient-poor environments.

Natural sponges have been used by humans for thousands of years; archaeological excavations have found evidence of sponges used to plaster and paint the queen’s walls at Knossos (the Minoan culture of Crete, c. 1700 to 1400 BC). They have been found on Greek pottery from around 760 BC in depictions of thermal scenes or as status symbols. Oppianus Cilicius (2nd C BC) was the first to write about those fishing for sponges, including details about the spongers’ lifestyles and diets, and the dangers they faced from shark attacks (for an interesting video on the topic of modern spongers, click here). Aristotle (384–322 BC) described the “elephant nose-like tube” used by the sponge divers to breathe. In the Iliad and Odyssey, Homer makes reference to sponges as hygienic utensils. Pliny the Elder (AD 23-79), among others, described the uses of sponges in agriculture and cooking. Cicero (106-43 BC) referred to their use in washing or cleaning. Roman legionaries were supplied with sponges to stuff into their helmets, for personal hygiene, and for drinking (their ancient solution to a water bottle); let’s hope that those were three different sponges allotted. This explains the presence of a sponge at the cross in Matthew 27:48/Mark 15:36/John 19:29.

The first use of a sponge with inhaled surgical anaesthesia is recorded in AD 1025 by the Persian physician Ibn Sina, who used a concoction of potent (=poisonous) sedatives of opium, mandrake and hemlock. Medieval European physicians sometimes used crude herbal mixtures or opium sponges to administer a type of anaesthetic, but it was a far cry from what we know today; at best, it got the patient drunk or high enough not to scream as loudly.  Ether vapour as an anaesthetic didn’t make its way into use in Europe until 1846, at the London University College’s theatre.

By the mid-twentieth century, overfishing brought both the sponges and the industry close to extinction. Overharvesting strained the sponge populations around the Mediterranean and the Caribbean; other stresses include storms (which can suffocate them with sand and debris, or rip them loose from their anchors) and climate change (disease outbreaks occur more frequently in warming ocean temperatures). The depleted population also puts stress on the entire environmental chain: Sponge feeders, such as parrotfish or angelfish, move on; without their presence, rapid-growing sponge species smother reef-building corals, which in turn reduces breeding, hiding, and feeding places for other marine species. Changes in harvesting policies and practices in some regions may mitigate these issues: By cutting the sponges loose rather than ripping them out, sponges have a chance to regenerate. But as more people in the First World become concerned with using natural products, marine sponges will continue to be (over-)harvested.

Sponges today are usually synthetic, invented in 1937 by the German scientist Otto Bayer, who (in the good ol’ fashioned way a lot of discoveries have been made) accidentally created polyurethane foam. By the 1940s, the DuPont company had begun mass-producing sponges made from wood pulp, hemp fibres, and sodium sulphate. By the late 1950s, dual-purpose sponges were introduced.

An alternative to both the marine- and synthetic sponges is the Loofah (Luffa) gourd: Besides being a food in the earlier stages of its cycle, when these gourds are left on the vine to dry out, they become a fibrous, natural sponge. For a short video on how to harvest and use a luffa gourd sponge, just click here. If I had a garden, I would certainly try to grow these!

What kinds of sponges do you have in your home? I hope this helps you appreciate the humble sponge, whichever form you use.

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August 15, 2026 · 10:00 AM

History of Everyday Objects Undusted: Garment Fasteners

For as long as humans have worn clothes, they’ve needed to find ways to hold them on, up, around, or to their bodies. Genesis 3:7 tells us that, once Adam and Eve realised they were naked, they “sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves”. They likely sewed them with some kind of twisted or stripped plant fibres such as grass blades, green twigs or even fibrous roots; this method was used for millennia.

In Ancient Athens, tunics were fastened together at the shoulder by long dagger-like pins. That is, until a group of angry Athenian women used their pins to stab an Athenian soldier to death; according to Herodotus’s Histories, a law was passed forbidding the Athenian style of tunic in the Roman Empire thereafter. Understandable, that, but I wonder what Athenians used to fasten their tunics immediately after that decree…

Clothing fasteners (hardware or notions used to connect two or more pieces of fabric together to open, close, or secure a garment) used today vary: Buttons, whether plastic, wood or metal; zippers; hooks and loops (commonly known as Velcro); eyelets (aka grommets); snaps; buckles; suspenders with clips; hooks and eyes (such as those found on skirts or bras), and even safety pins.

But before any of these came along, people literally sewed their garments on; even into 18th Century Europe, women were stitched in or pinned in by maids; Jane Austen alludes to this in Northanger Abbey, when Mrs Allen complains that a needle holding her sleeve in place was jabbing her, and she was afraid it would rip the muslin, for which she paid “but nine shillings a yard”. Every evening, they were either “unsewn” out of them, or they slipped some garments over their heads if possible. Corsets, as well as fashionable garments, were laced on, easier to remove than put on. When metal fasteners became increasingly available, it introduced new possibilities in fashion: it allowed for more fitted garments, and gave women the freedom from the need of being dressed by maids (or, if lower classes, of being dependent on a relative to help one dress). It didn’t dispense with corsets, but the metal front-fastening busks enabled women to put on their own.

If shoes are to be thought of as clothing, their history probably goes back as far as that of clothing itself: The oldest known shoes were sandals made of woven bark, dated to around 10.5 thousand years old. The first known leather shoes, found in Armenia, date to around 3,500 BC. Oetzi, the Austrian Iceman, wore shoes constructed of bearskin soles, deerskin side panels, and a bark cord that held them onto his feet. The modern shoelace, with the stiffened aglet, or tip, was invented by the Englishman Harvey Kennedy, patented in 1790. Before that, shoes were held on with buckles or buttons.

Today, some people (like me) usually have slip-on, fastener-free clothing articles like T-shirts, or trousers with elastic bands that require no other fasteners. What kinds of fasteners do you typically have on your garments today?

(AI Image)

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August 8, 2026 · 10:00 AM

History Undusted: Everyday Objects

In the past several years, I’ve looked into quite a few everyday objects that captured my curiosity at the time; here is a list of such objects for those interested:

Lately, I’ve been thinking about a few everyday objects that I’d like to explore the history of, so I’ll take you along for the ride, starting next week.

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March 4, 2026 · 4:59 AM

The Art of Journalling

From cave paintings to stone tablets to modern paper forms, people have been expressing themselves and capturing moments in time for millennia, driven by an innate desire to record their lives. My personal belief is that our creativity is an expression of our Creator’s own character, whether we know Him personally or not; it’s what drives us to share our lives with others, to relate our experiences and preserve them for posterity.

With the dawn of the internet, interconnectivity has become something we often take for granted, but it is amazing nevertheless. No other generation before us has literally had the world at its fingertips. We can not only learn about a country on the other side of the planet, but we can also learn something from someone on the other side, too. Seeing things from others’ perspectives and allowing their ways of seeing the world to teach us new skills is a privilege.

In modern times, journalling has never been easier and has never had as many possibilities; they come in all shapes, sizes and varieties:

The first that comes to mind is the daily journal: That may be something as simple as recording what you did in the day or making a note if you bought something like a new laptop or a household electronic gadget; it may also be a place to record deeper ideas, or to form thoughts that help us work through an issue we’re facing. I’ve been keeping a daily journal since I was around 8 years old, and with few exceptions, I still have all of those journals on our library shelves! One, from my time in Hawaii, was lost somewhere along the way, and another was in a suitcase stolen back in 1992 when I was living in Scotland. We may not think that recording such mundane, daily things has any significance, but in a hundred years, scholars will be clambering to find out how much things cost back then, or what common people did daily. There are many museums which collect journals for that very reason.

Sometimes people need a boost of focus with what’s known as a productivity journal: This might be used to record specific goals and timelines, or measurable progress toward a project or health goal such as weight loss (this could be called a food journal if your sole focus is dietary). It can be used to track steps toward a goal, a hobby or a target. Closely related to this journal is what’s known as a bullet journal: This includes things like to-do lists, checklists and trackers. I use this method when I’m in the proof-reading phase of a book; the more experience I have in writing, the shorter those checklists and watch-out-for lists get, but it’s still a useful method for staying focused. Related to these is a planner journal, also known as an agenda, used to plan appointments and events and to remember activities and birthdays. Some people like these as physical paper, while others have phone or computer apps with the same functions.

A gratitude/happiness journal is another type of motivating diary. In it, you record things you’re grateful for; you practice mindfulness and focus on the positive. In this batship crazy world we live in, such a journal is almost a necessity!

A reading journal is a way of tracking what you’ve read, impressions or side notes while reading, and a to-be-read list.

Travel journals are another popular form of recording holiday memories. Whenever we have travel holidays, e.g. renting a motorhome, I take along a homemade notebook. I keep track of mileage, expenses, and where we stop or visit along the way. I will also put things like postcards, ferry tickets, or tourist brochures in the notebook. We have a growing collection from holidays in Scotland, Norway, New Zealand, and across Switzerland.

The journals above are primarily text-centric; but another variety focuses on the aesthetic and visual, a way of expressing creativity while practising mindfulness through colours and textures.

One visual form is a nature journal; among the most famous of this kind is The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady (1906), by Edith Holden. It’s still in print, and her drawings, as well as her handwriting, are exquisite!

Edith Holden's Diary

Another visual form is commonly known as a junk journal; I would say it is the modern iteration of scrapbooking, though there are differences: Scrapbooking is focused on preserving memories of certain events or phases of life through photos and/or memorabilia like theatre tickets. Junk journalling began as a freeform way of journalling using (as the name implies) junk – packaging, recycled materials or papers, and things that might usually be thrown away otherwise. Nowadays, many junk journalists use craft papers, digital graphic kits, and many make their own digital visuals and use their social media to promote and sell their products by showing how to use them in “junk” journals. The camps are divided on the issue – can it still be called a “junk journal” when it’s mainly comprised of printed materials specifically for that purpose? I personally don’t junk journal, per se – I appreciate many of the techniques developed to fill such a journal, but I tend to be more of a practical crafter – if it can be aesthetically pleasing and practical, I’m all in; but I have neither time nor space to fill a journal with random tags and stuffers just to make it thick and interesting. One journal I have made is a book of writing prompts; it’s of practical use, with interesting pages drawn from junk journalling techniques. Nothing is in the book just for show; everything is there to inspire toward creative writing.

Other types of visual journals are art journals: These can take the form of painted pages, mixed media, or hand-drawn artwork. I have three types of art journals: One is a book I take with me on holidays, in which I mainly draw calligrams – impressions, nature, street art, or museum exhibits drawn from words. I usually do a sketch first, then research the topic, then fill in a condensed version of that research to fit the drawing, replacing the shape and contours with words. Another art journal I maintain is a mixed media journal; I add to this one as inspiration and time collide. The third art journal is what I call my inspiration book: When I come across an idea that I want to remember, such as a way to make a journalling pocket or insert, I will make a sample and put it in this book. I have things in the book that I have sold in our annual Advent market – samples of popular items with measurements and details to remember.

Another type of art journal, perhaps closely related to the food journal above, is a recipe journal: It’s an artistic expression with the purpose of creating an heirloom book of favourite or family recipes. They might be made as a bridal gift, birthday gift, or retirement gift.

There are a dozen other ways to journal: Bible journalling, therapeutic, morning brain dumps, dream journalling, mood tracking, and the list goes on.

Question:

Do you journal? If so, which form does it take? Do you use several journal expressions, and if so, are they used in combination or separately?

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June 4, 2025 · 10:00 AM

Who’s Who in Quotes: John Bertram Phillips

Deciding who to highlight here in this space sometimes comes down to a moral choice; some of the people I’ve investigated as a result of a quote from my collection have turned out to have lived lives that are, frankly, not worthy of my spending time and effort to share their history. One was a multi-billionaire who was a womanizer and a miser who loved tormenting people under his control. He lived a miserable life and died a lonely death. As Jesus said, “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” (Mark 8:36). Others, while they may have lived lives worth remembering, made strings of unwise choices that led to scandals and/or dodgy associations with corrupt foreign powers. While a quote or two from such a person might hold a grain of truth or wit, I personally find it difficult to un-see the stains behind the curtain, as it were, and so I choose to highlight lives that have something worth learning from or from those people who’ve done something worthy of our respect.

The person I’d like to highlight today is John Bertram Philips (1906-1982), best known for his translation of the New Testament and part of the Old Testament into modern English. This work wasn’t done in a stuffy theologian’s office, but in the bomb shelters of the London Blitz of World War 2. During that war, he was the Anglican vicar of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Lee, London, and he realized that the young people in his church had difficulty relating to, or understanding, the Authorized Version of the Bible, aka the King James Bible, which was first published in 1611*. By the mid-1940s, English had changed fundamentally, and it has continued to grow and adapt; the older version of the biblical translation was and is (for most people) stuffy and unrelatable. [For those of you wondering which version of the Bible is most accurately translated from the original Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic texts, the NIV Bible adheres most closely to them; 2011 saw a major revision to the NIV translation, based on recently published critical editions from biblical scholars.]

[*The history of how The King James Bible came to be the king’s Bible is long and sordid, littered with spies, political intrigue and betrayal, ending in the gruesome martyrdom of William Tyndale, whose translation was basically appropriated after his death, which is ironic, as he was tried because his translation was illegal…”unauthorized” by the Holy Roman Empire political elite… but that’s another story.]

Encouraged by his friend, C.S. Lewis, Philips published the first section of the New Testament, starting with Paul’s letters to the churches, in 1947, with the Gospels following in 1952. The final compilation of the New Testament was published in 1958. In the 1960s, he translated and published parts of the Old Testament, though this was never finished within his lifetime.

As a minister and translator, a communicator at heart, it’s no wonder that there are numerous quotes taken from his writings, sermons, and letters written during his lifetime; in some ways, like Tyndale, he was ahead of his time in his understanding of God and our relationship with Him. As the saying goes, we today see further because we stand on the shoulders of giants. Whether or not you believe in God, if you live in any nation with Judeo-Christian foundations, you benefit from those shoulders in more ways than you know.

If you’d like to read more about the life of this complex man, who struggled with clinical depression most of his life and yet remained firm in his faith, please click on the link to an article titled, A Bruised Reed Firmly Planted.

Without further ado, here is a selection of quotes from John Bertram Phillips:

  • “The refusal to be committed and the attitude of indifference can, in fact, never be neutral.”
  • “Christianity is not a religion at all but a way of life, a falling in love with God, and through him a falling in love with our fellows (fellow man).”
  • “Christ is the aperture through which the immensity and magnificence of God can be seen.”
  • “God is not discoverable or demonstrable by purely scientific means, unfortunately for the scientifically minded. But that really proves nothing. It simply means that the wrong instruments are being used for the job.”
  • “All poetry and music, and art of every true sort, bears witness to man’s continual falling in love with beauty and his desperate attempt to induce beauty to live with him and enrich his common life.”
  • “It is refreshing and salutary to study the poise and quietness of Christ. His task and responsibility might well have driven a man out of his mind. But He was never in a hurry, never impressed by numbers, never a slave of the clock.”
  • “You can throw the whole weight of your anxieties upon him, for you are his personal concern.” (from his NT translation)
  • “There is… no easy answer to the evil and suffering problem and no easy road to its solution. But Christ tackled the matter radically and realistically by winning the allegiance of a few men and women to a new way of living…They were to be the spearhead of good against evil.”
  • “Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. It is, in fact, the one thing that still stands when all else has fallen.” (from his NT translation)

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March 26, 2025 · 12:09 PM

What Rubber Ducks Tell Us about the World

Before we dive into today’s topic, let’s talk about two of my favourite words: Flotsam and Jetsam. I just love the way they sound! The way I understand them, the difference between the two is intention: Flotsam are things unintentionally donated to the sea – things washed overboard from a ship, or things blown off land by a storm. Jetsam is rather something intentionally jettisoned – if a ship needs to lighten its load to avoid sinking, for instance; in the case of the great garbage patches, it is a mixture of both: Without proper disposal systems in place, such as municipal garbage disposal, or education in ecological footprints, social debris is simply tossed and forgotten. But it ends up somewhere, often finding its way to the ocean through rivers and streams. And this leads us to the topic of ocean currents.

Today’s topic is a fascinating dive into a world of global trade; research has shown that around 90% of international trade is carried by shipping containers, and the World Bank statistics show that in 2019, nearly 800 million were shipped annually; given the increase over the past few years in online shopping, I can imagine that figure is by now significantly higher. The unit used for measuring how much a ship can carry is TEU (Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit); the chart below shows the adaptation of ship sizes over the years, driven by global trade:

(Source: https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter5/maritime-transportation/evolution-containerships-classes/)

Now, imagine a shipping container stacked at the top of a pile that’s the height of the actual ship; add to that ocean swells and waves. I’ve been on ships in the Atlantic facing waves so high, I could count fish through my window. I’ve been on ships in the “Sailor’s Nightmare” – the Pentland Firth passage between Scotland and the Orkney Islands – which is characterised by rough bathymetry (the underwater equivalent to topography) and extremely high currents (which also ricochet and collide off of the coasts of the islands and Scottish cliffs), tossing anything on the surface like a leaf in the wind. The World Shipping Council estimates that, over the past 16 years, an average of 1,500 containers have been lost at sea annually. Every year, the contents of those containers are carried along until the container is breached by either corrosion or impact. Then the contents are carried by ocean currents; where they finally make landfall depends on where they entered the ocean. If you were marooned on an island and tossed out an SOS in a bottle, it could make landfall anywhere between two and one hundred years – or never, if it’s caught in a gyre (more on that later). A message in a bottle was found on a beach in Norway that had been sent off 101 years earlier.

So what does that have to do with rubber ducks? In 1992, a shipping container with a consignment of what has been dubbed Friendly Floatees – 28,800 yellow rubber ducks, red beavers, blue turtles and green frogs – was washed overboard (along with 11 other containers) into the Atlantic. Because they are designed to float on water, they have survived at sea for an amazingly long time. Seattle oceanographers Curtis Ebbesmeyer and James Ingraham, who were working on an ocean current model, OSCUR (Ocean Surface Currents Simulation), began to track their progress; and those wee toys went on all kinds of adventures: Ten months after they broke free, some began showing up along the Alaskan coast; some showed up in Hawaii; some went to see the site of the Titanic sinking before getting frozen into ice, eventually emerging again and travelling to the US eastern coast, Britain and Ireland, making landfall around 2007. The researchers contacted coastal regions, asking beachcombers to report their finds; they recorded findings and began to accurately predict where landfall would occur. Over the years, the ducks and beavers had faded to white, but the blues and greens had retained their colours.

Flotsam and Jetsam have played key roles in helping researchers understand not only how ocean currents travel, but also how the areas known as garbage patches, oceanic gyres, are formed and retained by the swirl of ocean currents. Currently, five patches are known; many of the rubber ducks are likely caught in such currents, so we may hear about more white ducks finding their way to beaches in the coming years.

So the next time you see a rubber duck, think of all the adventures its siblings have been on!

If you’d like to see for yourself how ocean currents work, click here for an interactive map; just click on any area of the map to see how and where the currents carry debris from that point.

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August 22, 2024 · 3:12 PM

Yuka: Shaken Awake

All of us can relate to having some form of ruts in our lives: Favourite meals, restaurants, seats in places we visit often, clothes we prefer, products we buy, food brands or makeup brands (if you wear it); all, patterns of movement or place or things. Recently, I heard of an app that made me curious to try it out; when I did, it was an eye-opener about how many things I use that I’ve taken for granted that their claims are accurate – I know that’s naïve, but part of that naivety is that greatest of marketing tools, willful ignorance.

Case in point: Speaking to the women out there, you probably have favourite makeup products or brands that you’re used to. But what if you found out that half of their ingredients build up in your system, damaging your liver, your thyroid, and the environment? That’s exactly what I have learned lately, and it’s shaken me awake: the app I cannot recommend highly enough is called Yuka. If I had known years ago what I know now, perhaps I would still have a thyroid; tumours put an end to that several years ago – but I can prevent further damage to my body by being aware of what’s in a product and buying safe alternatives.

The app works like this: You scan a product’s barcode – anything from food items to makeup to body products such as shampoos and hand creams; the app then ranks the products on a set list of 100 points and tells you whether it’s excellent, good, poor or bad; it then lists the ingredients and gives you the option to read more about each one, ranking the ingredients (colour-coded) as hazardous, moderate risk, low risk, or risk-free. If the products rank as poor or bad, below them will be a list of alternative products, with their rankings and ingredients for further information. The recommendations are unbiased as they are not supported by any company. The app also keeps a record of products I’ve already scanned; if I’m at the store, and scan products I don’t buy because of their rating, I can then delete one or several items from the list to keep it streamlined to my products/foods.

There are things that this app is NOT: It is not a substitute for medical or nutritional advice; it is not the be-all and end-all for telling you what to buy. But what it IS: A good guide to weighing the benefits vs. the disadvantages of using one product over another. Some of my products may clock in as “poor” – but when I consider why that rating is given, I may decide to continue its use until something better becomes available in my area.

For me, I’ve found that one ingredient pops up in most makeup and hair products: Phenoxyethanol; it is listed as a potential endocrine disruptor, potential allergen, and irritant. In the EU its use in cosmetics is regulated – but not in the USA or in Canada. In itself it may be within regulatory limits in a product; but accumulatively (several products, from shower gel to lip balm to foundation) it exceeds the limit and becomes a health concern. Knowing this has helped me find new, healthier products. Even within a product range, the ingredients may vary; for example, one lip balm may be good, but another colour of the same brand differs to produce the colour or gloss and ends up being listed as bad. Honestly, I won’t buy a product now without knowing it’s healthy. It’s not that I can’t and won’t think for myself and let an app tell me what to do, but I can use it to weigh a decision.

This past week, I wanted to find a lip gloss to replace the one I’d been using which was marked as “hazardous”; but the store I was in didn’t have customer wi-fi, so I bought a small Vaseline, thinking, “This has been around for ages, so it must be simple and safe”. Wrong. When I got home, I scanned it: Petrolatum is the mineral oil used, which has a moderate risk with a big BUT: this oil may contain problematic residues, such as MOAHs (genotoxic carcinogens which promote cancers and damage DNA) and MOSHs (these accumulate in the body, particularly lymph nodes and the liver). These oils should be avoided, especially in products that may be ingested… such as lip balms (and these two residues were present in half of all tested lip balms!) So now, that little jar is in my craft room to be used as a lubricant for my tools.

We all need to take steps to protect ourselves; big companies are not putting customers first, but customers’ wallets. If we don’t shake ourselves awake and work against our own willful ignorance, we shouldn’t be surprised when health issues pop up; but who would associate lip balms and blush and hand creams or canned foods and pre-made packaged food with those bigger issues? We need to start looking into it for our own sakes.

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June 14, 2024 · 4:04 PM

Fieldnotes

A few months ago, I began something that has added a layer of creativity and organisation to my life which, to be honest, is fairly creative and organised as it is. But this little addition adds a nice colour: Fieldnotes.

The original concept of taking fieldnotes comes from the scientific disciplines: An archaeologist in the field, taking notes on where, what and when something was uncovered; a geologist, botanist, ornithologist, or entomologist taking notes on observations, perhaps drawing an illustration of a specimen or a map of the landscape.

Fieldnotes can include writing, diagrams, drawings, or visual clues within an entry such as arrows or other visual connectors. They differ from a daily journal in that the fieldnotes are concise… rambling or expanding on a thought belongs elsewhere, but not in a “quick-draw” situation (pun intended).

Creative thinkers have jumped on the idea for reasons other than scientific observation: As a writer, fieldnotes help me capture snippets of ideas, dialogue, or an observation when out in public (I love to people-watch), or something I read – sometimes the comments on YouTube videos are a great capsule of humour! I also use fieldnotes to keep track of tasks on a busy day – lists of to-dos, to-writes, and so on. When I have a creative project, I take notes on the steps taken – such as making giant flowers that no one else has ever made; how to scale up a smaller version of a crepe paper flower is not always straightforward, and if I have several to make, it helps to have those detailed notes of the prototype phase for the next time around.

Taking fieldnotes might help get your creative juices flowing. If you’d like to start this practice, here are a few tips:

  1. Use a small notebook – one that can fit into a shirt pocket, man-bag, or purse. I’ve made my own with 70gsm blank paper, which allows me to make the same size and style repeatedly. But if you can’t do that, just use something like a moleskin notebook; these come in various sizes, with or without lined pages. There is also a company with books called Field Notes, though they seem a bit pricey for what you can do on your own…
  2. Use a good pen, or pencil, or coloured pencils if you want to sketch something with colour.
  3. You can either take chronological notes, such as dating each entry, or you can organise your notes into groupings: One page per character, scene or topic, or for a to-do list, or whatever you want to capture on the go.
  4. Use visual cues, such as boxes around certain elements or arrows connecting one thing to another. Use illustrations or draw diagrams; attach images from magazines, printouts, etc.
  5. Highlight tags or keywords; consider numbering each page and keeping an index at the back of the book to help you find things later on.
  6. One book that might help kick-start illustrative note-taking if it’s new to you is The Sketchnote Handbook, by Mike Rohde.
  7. Think about how you’re recording things on the page: Do you always want to write straight, top left to bottom right, or do you want to mix things up and write diagonally, sideways, or even backwards? Yes, sometimes that’s a thing; Leonardo da Vinci wrote privately in a mirrored direction, only writing normally when he wanted others to read his notes; he also developed his own shorthand.
Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, with mirrored writing.

I also have my own shorthand for many things; Sometimes I use what I call pigeon Asian (I use this when I don’t want anyone else to read it); it’s something I learned when living in Hawaii. It looks like Kanji (the logographic writing of Japan), but it’s not – that’s all I’ll explain! I also use logographs, such as the ancient Anglo-Saxon rune of daeg, which includes the concept of day, dawn, intuition or breakthrough; I use this to designate those times when I’m writing: Rather than writing, “Today, I wrote/worked on the manuscript for...” I just write that symbol plus the name of the manuscript and details. I have a whole series of such shorthand symbols that I use daily.

While there are note-taking apps available (and I use one, called “Keep My Notes”, on my phone for things like shopping lists or feedback notes for singing students or bands that I take during performances and review with them later), sometimes it’s helpful to get away from digital screens. Sometimes I’ll write whole scenes away from the computer – I don’t use my fieldnotes for that, though it will probably be used to outline a scene that comes to mind until I get to another notebook. Something about writing long-hand sparks a level of creativity that might not come while working at a computer; hand-eye coordination should never be underestimated in creative endeavours. Once a scene has developed enough away from the screen to be integrated into my current manuscript, it then takes on another reiteration as I type it in, tweaking and changing… it’s what I call a “ripening process” as a wine metaphor for the creative maturing process a scene goes through by this method. It gets my head into a new space figuratively, literally, and literarily!

In an age when we are constantly bombarded with visuals wherever we go, sometimes it’s healthy to go back to good ol’ pen and paper. On those days so busy that I can’t remember what I’ve actually done, it’s helpful to look back at my fieldnotes as I write out my thoughts in my daily journal.

Do you write? Do you ever make lists for shopping, chores, people to contact, or things to do? If so, how have you kept track of such things so far? If it’s a system that works for you, brilliant! But if you find yourself wanting to switch things up or wanting to improve your use of time, would you consider taking fieldnotes? Please comment below!

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March 22, 2022 · 2:36 AM

Rabbit Holes

These past few weeks have flown by so quickly, I’ve hardly had time to look up from my keyboard! Except when I went to the optometrist for new glasses (there might have been a slight connection between the two). I’ve been editing my final sci-fi draft. When I need a break from editing, I’ve been reading into articles by the new ebook company I’ll be working with, Draft2Digital, which has recently merged with Smashwords (my current and former platform). And in the context of editing, I’ve been down several rabbit holes:

Dashes

Back when I learned English, we had the good ol’ hyphen and the dash. Somewhere along the way the en-dash and the em-dash moved in, and they turned out to be worthy additions to the conversation. Now to make things confusing, 2em-dashes and 3em-dashes have elbowed their way into the punctuation party. I’m not sure how I feel about them yet, but their definitions seem to have squeezed the others so close that they often overlap or exchange places on the definition and usage dance floor. Until I need them to fix me a drink, I’ll probably ignore the party crashers.

Strunk and White’s The Element of Style is a cornerstone of grammar and writing style and is widely considered timeless; in fact, it was listed by TIME in 2011 as one of the 100 best and most influential books written in English since 1923. The irony of this cartoon is that when I recently pulled out my copy to find out the nitty-gritty of using en- and em-dashes in dialogue, I found not a jot or tittle about them in the entire book. It covers hyphens and dashes, both briefly, but nary a word beyond. Every website that I looked at had contradictory definitions and usages of all types of dashes; so until an authoritative source comes up with a defined set of rules, I will continue to use them the way I’ve learned them, and just be consistent in my punctuation within my current manuscript.

Dialogue Tags vs. Action Tags

Another rabbit hole I went down was a learning curve on the two types of tags. On one hand, I’d never honestly thought about the fact that there could a difference in punctuation between the two; on the other hand, for the most part, I’ve intuitively done it right, though not always, which is why I’ve added it to my checklist of edits – and something I will keep a closer eye on in the future. Here’s an example:

He said, “Oh, the irony of ignorance!” – This is a dialogue tag with its attending punctuation. Dialogue tags are any verb that can be spoken – said, cheered, whispered, etc.

He nodded. “I hadn’t thought about it, but that makes sense.” – Nodding is something done, and this is, therefore, an action tag. Notice that its attending punctuation is a period separating the action tag from the dialogue.

Two things make less logical sense to me; if you have insight on them or experience using them or reading them in novels, please comment! [Keep in mind that these are American English rules; I am writing my current novel in American English, though until now, I’ve written in Commonwealth English (I use that term rather than British English because it is used beyond Britain).]

  • How often have you spoken and laughed, chuckled, or smiled simultaneously? These are, for me, nuances in spoken vocabulary, and not action tags. Would you rather write: He smiled, “I thought you might say that.” or He smiled. “I thought you might say that.” ? In this particular instance both would work, but there are times when it has the potential to break up the rhythm of a sentence or scene too much. Which do you prefer?
  • When an action interrupts dialogue, it needs to be separated with (IMHO) rather odd punctuation, for example: “From what I’ve read about these dwellings” –he looked at the woman kindly– “they’re far from mud huts.” My years as an English teacher mean that missing commas and attached en-dashes hurt my eyes; maybe that’s why I needed new glasses!

Euphemisms

Another tangent this week has been looking for creative swear words. Nothing irritates me more, when reading a book, for the author to fall back on standard F-bombs. That just says too lazy to be creative to me. It’s unimaginative. It doesn’t make a character stand out from the rest of the lazy crowd. There are so many fun alternatives, there really is no excuse! Here are a few I’ve come across and found myself smiling:

  • People cussing in a foreign language; it sounds better to them.
  • Fart knocker (e.g. “you little fart knocker”)
  • Sun of a nutcracker! Sun of a biscuit!
  • Cheese n’ crackers!
  • Shoot a monkey!
  • Shiitake mushrooms!
  • Well, butter my bum!
  • Clusterfluff!
  • In a type of Chinese Whispers, “Hells bells” became “hells bells, conker shells”, misunderstood by kids as “hells bells, taco shells” – now that family just yells, “Taco shells!” when they’re upset!
  • Names as swear words might backfire if you happen to meet someone by that name; here are a few: Christopher Columbus; Gordan Bennett (in Scotland); Gottfried Stutz (here in Switzerland – I actually taught English in a company that had an employee with that name!)
  • Sugar Honey Ice Tea!
  • Sunny Beaches
  • Fudgenuts
  • Someone I used to know would say things like “bug knuckles” or “dog feathers” or “ants pants” when she was upset.
Credit: Getty Images

These are just a few of the areas I’ve delved into in the past few weeks; I’m still deep in the editing/proofreading process; once that’s complete, the “behind the scenes” checklists begin – those are the things readers will never see: The number of hours put into finding the right images and designing the best cover art possible; choosing the right fonts; formatting for the various mediums online and print; writing blurbs, preparing marketing bits and bobs, and setting up all the dominoes in a row for the final push of publishing!

Clusterfluff! I’d better get my fanny in gear!

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