Fencing, Fencing and Women's Fencing

 Yes, this week my FaceBook Page is all about Fencing!  Especially Women's Fencing!

Why?

Because Audible.com has thrown up an ad there for the new The Privilege of the Sword (TPOTS) audiobook, and I want to see it!

It is one of those things that pops up in response to your interests - and my liaison there (She Who is Known as Neil's Representative on Earth) rather cleverly thought that while the Olympics were on, we could bag a lot of eyeballs from Women's Fencing Enthusiasts, and bring them over to Riverside.  But in order to see the ad pop up myself, I must mention mittens fencing. And so must all my friends!!!  In comments on my page, I guess - and maybe even, as one person suggested, on their own?  ("Try getting your friends to mention women's fencing as well.. that sometimes helps direct the ads.") 

We are having a lot of fun in the Comments.  And I am learning all sorts of things about people's pasts with swords - Who knew Jane Yolen was a fencer in college? that Tiffany Trent does Chinese straightsword? that Lucy Sussex's student is "writing a book on a C17th French woman fencer and opera singer. Also burnt down a nunnery."  ?

Come join us - it's a great lark!  (FYI:  I am happy to accept pretty much anyone as a FB friend. Feel free to drop me a message letting me know who you are - but it's not a requirement anymore.)

In other news: I have a new computer.  And I fell down a manhole in Lowell.  But I am, as you can see, all right.*  


*I will write it up later today, as it's not the sort of thing that happens often - and, yes, I was thinking as I sat nursing my pride and my wounds, "I can use this!"  So don't want to forget.  A brief spasm of concern for the fact that latest research shows if you've experienced a traumatic incident you're supposed to think of fluffy puppies & like that, rather than to dwell on it . . . But so far my dreams have been benign and my bruises are healing, so I think that's all right.  One of the nice things about having a short attention span.

"House Bat Management,"

 or, "Why Should I be the Only One Laughing this Hard?"

OK, so on my FaceBook page today encouraging everyone to talk about Women's Fencing, the subject of Bats came up. (Don't ask - but feel free to trawl the page to find out!)  And I referred to one of the great Bat Stories of my youth - when we all lived on W. 110th Street, and found weird stuff in the paper and read it to each other . . . Possibly the greatest clipping ever was a NYTimes editorial letter referring to a Federal pamphlet on House Bat Management said you could get rid of them by playing a Mexican band arrangement of "Cascade of Roses."

I know.

There's no way that could be real, right?  I was pretty abstemious even then, but surely something potent had been slipped into our morning coffee . . .  . 

IT'S REAL!

Although previous experiments had failed to induce bats to leave their roosts permanently and take up residence in his first bat tower, Campbell was ready to try something else. He hypothesized that since bats located their food through a highly developed sense of hearing, certain types of sounds might prove disagreeable enough to cause them to move and not return. Noting that bats frequented churches and belfries with no apparent aversion to organs or bells, he further surmised that brass band music might provide the right measure of disagreeableness to sensitive bat ears. Since the home he had provided "in which all the conveniences any little bat heart could possibly desire" was only a few hundred yards away, he felt confident that the evicted bats would gratefully move in. ....

Beginning at four in the morning, the bats of the hunting lodge were serenaded with the "Cascade of Roses" waltz as played by the Mexico City Police Band. Cornets, clarinets, piccolos, trombones, drums and cymbals created a cacophony of sound that greeted the bats on their 5:00 a.m. return. Campbell reported that the astonished bats circled the building again and again before giving up and disappearing into the dawn. The concert was resumed the next morning, but the bats, likely knowing what was good for them, never put in an appearance. Campbell repeated the musical production number at a nearby abandoned ranch house occupied by bats. This time he drove the bats out with "the first fortissimo" an hour and a half before their usual emergence time.

The following evening he waited for the bats to leave his bat tower. The emergence that had only taken five minutes a month before now lasted for nearly two hours. The bats never returned to either of the two houses, and Campbell was convinced he had succeeded in concentrating his disease-battling bat forces.

See?

Deepest thanks to FBFriend Ed Dantes of Frankfurt, Germany, who took the challenge and found this for me.  I swear I've Googled it before, to no effect.  Magic!