Having This Particular Digression

What the hell is “sassafras?”  Do you know?  I know you could approximate.  I know you could look it up.  But dead cold, if pressed, could you accurately define it?  I could not.  But I can think, indeed I can’t help but think of the countless things one could rhyme with it.  It’s on my mind as its, I’ve learned, in my yard.  There was nondescript, green plant that had sprung up anew where the trail I take the bike through the woods meets the old rail line and my Seek app told me it was Sassafras.   

  

And here, I thought it was a mere plant.  Come to discover we’re talking about a proper tree.  Wiki informs me of many things, like the fact that the one in Owensboro, Kentucky, is “over 100 feet high and 21 feet in circumference.”  Maybe I should consider moving the little fellow up to a more prominent position, more in line with its commanding name.  No invasive, immigrant, Sassafras Albidum is a North American native and it has medicinal and practical uses aplenty.  The Native Americans used their sticks as toothbrushes and as rubbing sticks to start fires with.  I’ll have to go back down now and look at that sassafras anew.  From now on, you’re part of my word hoard, at least.   

Loud question number two in this missive:  Who was the Scarlet Pimpernel?  You’ve heard the name just like I have.  Do you know the reference?  Candidly and until the next paragraph of this blog is written, when I will have gone on-line and confirmed the context, I do not know the reference.  Thoughts of a roughish, eighteenth century English character, who breaks hearts and is somehow forgiven in the end, is what my mind begins to conjure.  A reasonable question might be:  why are we even having this particular digression John?  Biking home today I spied an unassuming red flower amidst the roadside weeds, placed the phone up close to focus and was told by my Seek app that I’d identified a Scarlett Pimpernel.  Right.  So, which came first?  The literary reference or the flower?

Now I know.  I got the century right and it was an Englishman, but I hadn’t realized it was set during the French Revolution nor that the protagonist leads classic superhero dilemma:  by day he’s a dweeb but with his costume on he is a master swordsman.  I’ve already dropped four dollars and thirty cents with Amazon and Baroness Emma Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála "Emmuska" Orczy de Orci, of Hungary’s early twentieth century classic is on its way here.  Loyal readers know we were just looking at Jacques Louis David with my little on and perhaps I can get her interested as well. 

Ahh, but chickens or eggs?  I’ve left an important matter unexplored:  The plant “pimpernel” antedates the avenger Pimpernel by many years it seems:  “Late Middle English (denoting the great burnet and the salad burnet): from Old French pimpernelle, based on Latin piper ‘pepper’ (because of the resemblance of the burnet's fruit to a peppercorn).

Monday, 06/15/20