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#120816 01/22/04 07:24 PM
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wwh Offline OP
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Our heroine got fired when she slapped the boss' face for
pinching her arm suggestively.
"Hetty mounted with her rib beef to her $3.50 third-floor back. One
hot, savory beef-stew for supper, a night's good sleep, and she would
be fit in the morning to apply again for the tasks of Hercules, Joan
of Arc, Una, Job, and Little-Red-Riding-Hood."

Who can tell us who "Una" was ?


#120817 01/25/04 10:52 PM
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#120818 01/25/04 11:00 PM
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wwh Offline OP
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Dear Consuelo: I think you have hit it. O.Henry would have
read everything Poe wrote. So Una could be a Wide Area Girl.



#120819 01/25/04 11:06 PM
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#120820 01/27/04 02:14 AM
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Pooh-Bah
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You wanna take this one?


#120821 01/27/04 11:45 PM
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the tasks of Hercules, Joan
of Arc, Una, Job, and Little-Red-Riding-Hood."

Who can tell us who "Una" was ?


Una is of course the goddess of coal - known to the Romans as "Anthracite", she has seen fit to grace mortal man and woman with a Board whereon she communes with the faithful:
http://unaboard.coalgoddess.net/

(For the uninitiated: although it is currently and temporarily known as "Cypress Creek" for reasons best known to Una, it is normally called the Unaboard, and is another favoured haunt of Sparteye and me).


#120822 01/28/04 12:08 AM
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I was wondering of the connection between anthrax and hard coal: Latin anthrax 'carbuncle' from Greek anthrax 'charcoal' yields anthrakitis 'a kind of coal; a gem'.


#120823 01/28/04 03:31 AM
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take our word for its, an wordy newsletter, covered anthrax/anthracite connection back when anthrax was in the news, and we had a side discussion here, too...
http://www.takeourword.com/current/page1.html
the link is to the current issue, you'll have to search for anthrax.

my grandparents heated their council house with anthracite coal, and i still associate the scent of a coal fire with good things..(i was(am) naturally an early riser, (in a family of slug-a-beds) and the summer we visited my grandparents, I alone was permitted to go to the coal shed and fill the scuttle with coals. (when my mother learned that i thought this a privledge, she sneered... i suspect that she was right, and if the 'privledge' lasted more than a few months, i would have seen it as chore.)

but early each morning, i was up and dressed, and helped my poppa by filling the scuttle with coals, and laying a fire, (and lighting a match and lighting the fire!) what a privledge! Nana had banned all of children from the coal shed, and she was more frightening in her ire than my mother, but while she quitely snored, my grandfather urged me to disobey her.(how could i not love him!)


#120824 01/28/04 02:51 PM
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Interesting story, of troy! Great to collude with a grandparent!

In reply to:

anthrakitis 'a kind of coal; a gem'


I can imagine this 'gem'--solid, highly polished, valuable. Would such coal be similar in appearance to that beautiful black volcanic rock?



#120825 01/28/04 04:06 PM
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wwh Offline OP
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And "anthracosis" is "coal miner's lung" one of the many
forms of pneumoconiosis.


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