Total Recall

I just had a slightly surreal phone call...but other than that, here I am, blogging two days in a row. I would not say my day was hard, but long...a steaming pile of work (Hot Mess was a J! answer tonight, which amused the shit out of me), and then I met someone from the local Catholic Credit Union with a car full of turkeys for what will be the Xmas Hot Meal...  It was 18, but I do believe that each one provides enough meat for a dozen or so people, so...

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2015/11/the_art_of_memory_by_frances_yates_the_historian_who_recovered_the_story.single.html

I saw the headline, read a couple of paragraphs, and was like...hey, I've read this book.  I really liked it, too; I tried to integrate some of the techniques (my mind flits too much) but it was a good read...one thing that struck me was that BEFORE the invention of a book, there was no way to store knowledge, save for one's head, and thus people had to engage in these sorts of memory constructs to do so.  I seem to recall that such works as The Iliad were memorized in such a manner, as well as Beowulf and all of the other classic texts.  It's pretty amazing, actually, if you think about; some of it of course was simply rote memorization, but a lot of it -- particularly the richness in detail -- was constructed one mind room at a time.  I bet the next time I forget something on the grocery list I'll feel like an ever bigger shit than usual.