RememberNichelle

Apparently there was a historical event in the 1950's in Communist-ruled China called "8000 Hunan Girls Sent to Xinjiang" or "8000 Hunan GIrls Sent to Tianshan."

This was when high school and college age girls from Hunan province were encouraged to apply to work at high-status agricultural and industrial jobs in Xinjiang province, or to become female soldiers. It was promised that they would be able to get continuing education on the side.

Even some junior high girls applied and were accepted, and many did so without getting parental consent or letting them know.

So the women/girls showed up, were loaded on trains, and began heading out to the frontier. And suddenly, whenever they had a t

WGN in Chicago did a nice video about the chapel, and the Catholic priest who's assigned there.

Like a lot of people, I've gone to Mass there between flights, and it helped a lot. Mass lasts about fifteen minutes, without seeming rushed or irreverent.

Oh, man, another buried scholarly joke. Maybe this is in one of the Tolkien supplement books I hadn't read, but it was new to me.

Apparently the IRL Origo Gentis Langobardum, and Historia Langobardorum, both tell the story of how the Longbeards/Lombards got their name.

They were originally called the Winnili, and were a "small people." And their leader was a woman named Gambara, who had two sons, Ybor and Aio.

When the Vandals (Wandali, Wendilenses, Vendill, Wendelas, Wends) invaded, their kings Ambri and Assi demanded tribute or war.

Ambri and Assi asked the god Godan for victory.

Gambara, Ybor, and Aio asked Godan's wife Frea for victory.

Godan said that whoever he saw first at

I was just listening to William Albrecht's YT channel, and he was talking to a legally blind fan of his.

And the guy asked why he can't get an audiobook version of A Complete History of the Biblical Canon in the Christian East and West: Vol. 1: Greek, Latin, and Slavic Biblical Canon from the New Testament until AD 1500, by Dr. Christiaan Kappes and William Albrecht.

(Because their other scholarly books are available on Audible, no problem.)

And William said the audiobook has been stuck at 99 percent "under review," since 2023.

They hired a human narrator and everything, and they haven't gotten any response from Audible over the entire time.

So obviously the legally blind guy was pr

Yup, it's a name from Kazakhstan. Ali the name, + -bi, which means ruler. (Apparently from Turkic "bek.")

Probably a Shi'ite Muslim name, and probably not ever a Sunni one.

I know this name has come up before, as a potential tragedy/tragedeigh; but apparently this variant is just a normal ethnic name.

I found this out while browsing onomast.com, which seems like a good site for both Russian names, and for those of other ethnicities in central Asia. There's also a huge list of Orthodox namedays, for Christian names of various ethnicities. I don't know why the search engines hid this from me before, as it's in English, but I'm happy to have found it.

Cafe now has every register order also showing up on the Scan and Go screen.

Nobody told us this would happen.

It is very difficult to search for an actual Scan and Go order, when 20 or 30 register orders have popped up on a screen that is outside of your peripheral vision.

Yes, of course we'll adjust. It might even be helpful sometimes.

But holy cow, we did not need one more new thing on the pile of changes we've gotten in the last month or two.

And we definitely, definitely didn't need it showing up as a surprise. Even our team lead didn't know about it.

More and more, I feel like there's somebody in Arkansas with a lot of time on his/her hands, who thinks that being an executive

Apparently there's a Dutch town named Brielle, on the Brielse Meer. It's very important in the history of the Dutch war for independence. It's apparently pronounced BREE-luh. It's also called Den Briel (in Dutch) and Brill (in English).

There's a Brielle, New Jersey, that was settled by the Dutch (in New Amsterdam times), and was named after the Dutch town. I do not know how people pronounce its name today.

Mind you, I think almost everyone in America who is named Brielle, has parents who think it's a French, Irish, New Jersey, or "unique" name.

So I guess if people are pronouncing it the NJ way, the name would not be a tragedeigh. If they are pronouncing it differently from both the

Basically it's a polyester-lined box to put around your pillow area. However... it includes net pockets for your stuff, clear pockets for your electronic devices (on the ceiling and both side walls), and tiny blackout curtains across the front, for sleeping while the sun is up (or blocking outdoor/indoor lights at night).

The length of the curtains is adjustable. There's also tiny ventilator flaps on the outside sides.

It's made for Japanese houses, which are sometimes a bit cold/damp in the winter and hot in the summer; and I expect the blackout curtains also make it a bit warmer/cooler. They also fold flat.

It's made by Bibilab, and it's available in the US on shopping sites.

So yeah,

Basically the Dominicans are sending this relic around to all the other Dominicans, and the US is going to get its turn.

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/260619/skull-of-st-thomas-aquinas-to-visit-washington-dc-on-international-tour

This is a pretty exciting opportunity for folks who like St. Thomas Aquinas.

Sadly, he died of a head injury. So this is an important relic both for his work and for his death.

The story: Dominicans never rode horses or donkeys, as part of their rule as friars. But St. Thomas was ordered to do so, because he was sick, and in order

There's a parody song that used to be sung quite a lot in the 1990's. It's a parody of "The Bed for Me," which was a cute little kid song by (I think) Peter Thiesen. (I found the recording from the Yankee Doodles album, on YT.)

The parody was "The Room for Me," which was about the proper place to go to the bathroom.

So the chorus of "Bed for Me" was "Moles doze in a hole, dolphins dream in the sea," etc.

"Room for Me" was "Bears go in the woods, dolphins pee in the sea," and so on.

Well, believe it for not, I know a little kid whose parents think he would greatly benefit from a song differentiating between places for animals to go and places for people to go.

I don't necessarily need

A lot of times, the English translations of books by St. Alphonsus de Liguori, which were written for popular reading, do not include footnotes or bibliographies of the sources that he is using.

This was a great savings at the time, of course, but it's a little hard on people quoting Liguori in Internet arguments.

There's an academic website called Intratext, which is basically for word study by linguists rather than for reading. But it has the original versions of lots of public domain books, and that includes the Italian versions of Liguori books.

And they included all the footnotes, and often the original quotes in Latin that Liguori was drawing from.

So if you're wondering who "a

I just ran across something interesting that isn't mentioned in the usual online sites, so maybe it's something other Tolkien fans would find interesting.

St. Guthlac of Crowland was a warrior who repented of various things (including raiding), and went off and became a hermit. He set up his hermit hut, and a cross, on top of a burial barrow.

He has a Latin life, upon which a couple of Old English poems were based. These poems are called Guthlac A and Guthlac B.

Guthlac A is all about Guthlac setting up as a hermit. An angel and a devil argue with him over what he should do, and he listens to the angel.

Subsequently, when Guthlac moves onto the barrow, tons of demons threaten him and ar