Besotted with tales of medieval knights and ladies, Edwin Austin Abbey collected fabrics, read histories, and studied original artifacts to ensure the authenticity of his work. He described this troubadour as a “Gringoirish¹ Barnaby Rudge² kind of Blondel-like³ person,” naming two medieval minstrels and the character of a fool from Barnaby Rudge, by Charles Dickens.

I love using footnotes in my blog posts. I feel (probably wrongly) more sophisticated by using them. Being an engineering student in college, I never had much call while writing Fortran for using footnotes in school.

On every April 1st I operate with “shields up”. Yesterday, Anne was fooled by a joke that claimed that an executive order had just been issued to chop down all of the cherry trees in Washington. With this administration it is easy to believe such outlandish stories. With them it is hard to know whether they are being serious or not. I guess when ICE beats down your door, then you’ll know.

I am especially wary of NPR today. They frequently have a prank news article. Something that they inherited from the BBC, who famously broadcasted an article in 1957 about Swiss spaghetti harvesting. A practice that friends and us once recreated. This was in the era of homemade pasta machine. Anne was coaxed into dressing up as a rural peasant, and we photographed her picking limp pasta noodles off a “spaghetti tree”. I wonder if Bob still has those pics?

The BBC reported, “Spaghetti cultivation here in Switzerland is not of course carried out on anything like the tremendous scale of the Italian industry. Many of you, I’m sure will have seen pictures of the vast spaghetti plantations.” They eventually had issue a retraction, because they were being inundated with requests for where one could get a spaghetti tree.

These days with politics being what they are and with AI looming overall, it is harder to find humor in such foolery. Another example of why we cannot have nice things anymore. But maybe if I use my noodle, I can come up with one.

1. Gringoirish (Pierre Gringoire): Refers to the 15th-century French poet and playwright, often depicted as a starving, eccentric, or idealistic traveler, famously featured in Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.
2. Barnaby Rudge: The title character of Charles Dickens’ novel, known as an “intellectually handicapped man-boy” who is simple-minded, innocent, and often wandering with a pet raven.
3. Blondel-like: Refers to Blondel de Nesle, the 12th-century French troubadour who is legendary for traveling to find his imprisoned king, Richard the Lionheart, symbolizing loyal, romantic artistic devotion.