Assorted associations

I cleared out the stubble of last year’s plantings and turned over the soil in my pots this afternoon and found worms in one of them. Awesome! But where the hell did they come from? The back 40 (inches, not acres), as I like to call it, is all concrete, and fenced in. I can’t see any other dirt, although there is some in the wasteland to the west and northwest.

Remember my turtle plastron? I’ve discovered that some 3000 years ago, the shells of tortoises were carved (scrimshawed) with signs & meaning, it's portability making it a form of early book. Codex bonex. Meanwhile, check out this guy’s scrimshaw.

The roots of my paperwhites. They're over.

In etymological-genealogical news: according to the Wikipedists, the name Marilyn was very rare in the US through the 1920s, when Marilyn Miller was a huge star on the NYC stage and beyond. An all-around vaudeville baby, Miller was actually born Mary Ellen; her stage name came from joining her own name with her mother’s middle name. She called herself Marilynn until Flo Ziegfeld suggested she drop the final “n.” If you’re in the Times Square area, she’s one of the four babes on the old I. Miller building at SE corner of 46th and 7th Ave, the statues by Alexander Calder’s dad, A. Stirling Calder. She died in 1932, at the age of 37, and by then Marilyn was the 16th most popular girl’s name in the US. It was my mom’s name.