An irregular hodgepodge of links gathered together … Omnium Gatherum for March 26, 2020

Here’s some things I’ve found that you may be interested in checking out:

• $5.85M Tudor ‘castle’ in Westchester has a fireplace from the Vanderbilts and church bells from France—”The 17-acre Crocker Estate was built in 1905 for Aimee Crocker, the youngest daughter of Southern Pacific Railroad founder Judge E.B. Crocker.” Check out some of Aimée Crocker‘s writing.
• What studying disasters has taught me about COVID-19
• 10 years ago: “Hello, Good Evening, and Remain Indoors!”
• Tweet with video: “In Italy today, a priest decided to live-stream a mass due to COVID-19. Unfortunately he activated the video filters by mistake.”
• “Living With Being Dead. This terrifying disorder turns people into zombies, into living, breathing ghosts; they believe they died, or never existed. And somewhere in their brains may be the key to human consciousness.”
• “All 16 Dead Sea Scroll fragments in the Museum of the Bible are fakes. ‘We’re victims of misrepresentation, we’re victims of fraud,’ said CEO Harry Hargrove.”
• Dismantle Omelas: Build Something New, an essay by Anthology Artist T Thorn Coyle.
• The Ice Cream Van: A Faery Story by T Thorn Coyle
• Surviving Mysterious Disease by Townsends
• Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic, edited by David Frankfurter, Religions in the Graeco-Roman world series, from Brill—”In the midst of academic debates about the utility of the term “magic” and the cultural meaning of ancient words like mageia or khesheph, this Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic seeks to advance the discussion by separating out three topics essential to the very idea of magic. The three major sections of this volume address (1) indigenous terminologies for ambiguous or illicit ritual in antiquity; (2) the ancient texts, manuals, and artifacts commonly designated “magical” or used to represent ancient magic; and (3) a series of contexts, from the written word to materiality itself, to which the term “magic” might usefully pertain.” Check out a review by Markham J Geller at Bryn Mawr Classical Review.
• Silent retreats—”If you can’t get away, you can dip your toe into the silence with a small-scale silencing at home.”
• Plague Poems – Week One; See also twitter account Plague Poems—”Face masks / are ugly, / hazmat suits / look vile. Sackcloth /however / is always / in style.”
• On Tumblr: “The Order of Emergent Magi asking all magicians to simply place a rake in front of their home if possible. Let’s give Pesta a rake to use instead of a broom in order to stop the spread.”
• Genesis Breyer P-Orridge 1950–2020
• “Locust crisis poses a danger to millions, forecasters warn. Experts fear swarms like those seen in Africa will become more common as tropical storms create favourable breeding condition.”
• Tweet with video by Patrick Stewart: “When I was a child in the 1940s, my mother would cut up slices of fruit for me (there wasn’t much) and as she put it in front of me she would say, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” How about, “A sonnet a day keeps the doctor away”? So…here we go: Sonnet 1.”
• “Europe’s coronavirus crisis seen from the sky. The European Commission is using its own space data to tell capitals to ease up on border checks.”

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