What is mildew, exactly? And does it have any redeeming features whatsoever?
Hmm. Now I'm not sure whether to call my invader mildew or not. Mycologists, or those involved in the study of fungi, would probably call this mold, reserving the name of mildew only for the type that grows on plants. Moreover, there are two types of mildew, and they belong to two different plant kingdoms, "powdery mildew" which is a type of fungus, and the "downy mildew" which is part of the protista kingdom--largely the one-celled among us, but not always. Frankly, we are getting way deeper into biological plant classifications than I particularly want to go at the moment, particularly since I am unlikely to be able to figure out exactly which type has taken up residence anyway.
Well, maybe.
Whew. Where is Anatoly Liberman to sort all this out when we need him?
Well, luckily, there is also Charles Hodgson. He talks a bit about mildew over on the Pod Dictionary. Thanks to Hodgson, I now know about Sir Robert Bruce Cotton. After Henry the VIII dismantled the Catholic monasteries of England, Cotton singlehandedly rescued many of the manuscripts that suddenly were without a safe home. Mildew shows up in the Cleopatra Glossary A.III. Whether Cleopatra ever spoke about mildew is irrelevant. Cotton had busts of famous people on the tops of his bookshelves, and this document resided within her domain. Nice system, don't you think?
Considering the value of the documents that Sir Robert housed, I really have to hope that he did not have the same kinds of mildew problems that I do.
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Mildew is a word crated by buliders so that they can charge more for very simple work. Ask my brother ...
ReplyDeletePerhaps, Paul, but they were builders of 600 years ago.
ReplyDeleteIt's a shame your brother doesn't live in Northern California, because pricey or not, someone ought to look into the structural problems here.
So, did you find out what kind you have and what to do about it?
ReplyDeleteMy brother said he could 'sort that out for you, no problem. but it'll cost.' Oh,and 'there's mildew and there's mildew'. There you go!
ReplyDeleteGlenna, unfortunately, there may be more than one kind here. I'm just a renter, so the what to do about it part is probably just to move.
ReplyDeleteI'd say you should stay on good terms with your brother, Paul. Sounds like he'll go far.
I thought Downy Mildew was one of Brigid O'Shaughnessy's aliases in The Maltese Falcon.
ReplyDeleteThanks for another interesting discussion. Your posts, if not your dwellings, are always based on sound foundations.
Cotton (and his son and grandson) will be familiar to art historians and their students. They preserved some great treasures.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Yes,it would be nice, and entertaining to have Anatoly Liberman weigh in on this. I always feel smarter after reading your posts. Mildew and mold are nasty, especially that black, spotty version. There are plenty of houses around New england that have been condemned because of mold, er mildew, er whatever it is.
ReplyDeletePeter, yes, downy mildew does have such a nice ring to it. I am ashamed to admit that I still haven't read the Maltese Falcon.
ReplyDeleteAny solid foundations here are borrowed, believe me.
I am very curious about the Cottons now. I haven't come across them before.
Sean, I did actually google mildew and Anatoly Liberman, to see if he had weighed in on it. Not so far as I can see, but it did for some reason bring up this very interesting article on rum.
ReplyDelete"But before I get to the point, I would like to make a remark on the amnesia that afflicts students of word origins. Etymology is perhaps the only completely anonymous branch of linguistics. When people look up a word, they hardly ever ask who reconstructed its history."
I remember the Cotton name mainly because of the Cotton Genesis, a Late Antique manuscript thought to be crucial in the transmission of classical style from the classical era to its revival during the "Carolingian renaissance" under Charlemagne. It was intrumental, in other words, in ending what less-enlightened folks than we once called the Dark Ages in art. The manuscript comes with the additional detail that I was largely destroyed in a tragic fire during the life of Cotton grandson (or maybe his son).
ReplyDeleteIt was that later Cotton whose collections formed a basis of the British Museum, so the name is one the most important for our understanding of a whole lot of our artistic and intellectual past.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Er, make that the British Library.
ReplyDeletePeter, I thought I had responded to this, but never mind. What's really odd is that after reading that article about the Cotton Genesis, I was at work today and looking at a new Believer article about books and their passing (you can find the beginning of it anyway here) and came across the name Tischendorf in relationship to medieval manuscripts. Tischendorf? I thought. Why does that name sound so bloody familiar? But sure enough it was he who had deciphered much of that selfsame ruined codex.
ReplyDeleteTischendorf is certainly a name to be reckoned with, and I shall reckon with it soon, perhaps. I had not heard the name before.
ReplyDeleteI must amend for the sake of accuracy before I move on that they turn out to be two different people. Tischendorf was a 19th century German biblical scholar who decoded medieval manuscripts, while Jan Tschichold was a 20th century German typographer, who studied the same manuscripts for principles of good design. Not really very similar in anything but my own associative processes, actually.
ReplyDeleteTschihold's work if not his name will be familiar to most people because of his overseeing of 500 Penguin paperback titles between 1947- and 1949.
They are distinctive, but frankly, do not look much like medieval manuscripts.
Tscic
Tischendorftschicholdwissenschaften ought to be a German word it is not one already.
ReplyDelete