30 September: Parsnips

In the French Revolutionary Calendar, a different plant, tool, substance or creature was celebrated each day of the year. 30 September is the turn of the  Parsnip.

1. The Latin name for the parsnip plant is Pastinaca sativa. It is related to Carrots (well, you can see the family resemblance there!) and parsley.
2. The word parsnip doesn't come from a combination of Parsley and Turnip, as some people believe. It comes from the Middle English pasnepe, which derives from a Latin word for a type of fork. The generic name,  Pastinaca, is probably derived from either the Latin word pastino, meaning "to prepare the ground for planting of the vine" or pastus, meaning "food". The species name, sativa, means "sown".
3. The parsnip is native to Eurasia and people have been cultivating them since antiquity. The Romans liked them - the Emperor Tiberius was willing to accept parsnips as payment of a tribute owed to him by Germany. The Romans believed they were an aphrodisiac. However, written references to parsnips from those times need to be interpreted with care, as they could be confused with carrots.
4. Italians today aren't so keen. They are mostly fed to Pigs in Italy today, in particular, the pigs bred to make Parma ham.
5. The root is fine to eat, but the sap of the plant is toxic, so care must be taken handling the stems and leaves. The sap contains chemicals which evolved to protect the plant from being eaten by animals. Parsnip sap can cause a condition similar to that caused by poison ivy – a chemical burn which can cause redness, burning, and blisters.
6. People used to believe that eating parsnips was a remedy for toothache or tired feet. This isn't true.
7. When exposed to frost, some of the starch in the root turns to sugar, making the vegetable sweeter. In fact, parsnips were a source of sugar before cane and beet sugars were available.
8. A 100g parsnip contains 75 Calories and 375 mg of Potassium. Most parsnip cultivars are about 80% Water, 5% sugar, 1% protein, 0.3% fat, and 5% fibre. They also contain several of the B-group vitamins and Vitamin C, but these can be lost once the vegetable is peeled and cooked.
9. The most common cultivar of parsnip is called “Student”. This cultivar is actually the result of an experiment by James Buckman at the Royal Agricultural College in 1859. His purpose was to show how the plants could be improved by selective breeding.
10. As well as the obvious use for parsnips as one of the veg in a Sunday roast or Christmas dinner, they can be made into crisps and even Wine. Parsnip wine tastes similar to Madeira.

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29 September: All Angels Day

Today is All Angels Day. Here are 10 things you might not know about angels.

1. The word angel derives from the Latin word angelus, meaning "messenger".
2. The Bible only mentions two angels by name - Michael, the angel who helped God cast down Satan and who leads the heavenly armies, and Gabriel, the messenger angel who announced the coming of Jesus. The angel Raphael is mentioned in the Apocryphal book of Tobit.
3. The theological study of angels is called angelology.
4. According to the Bible, there are nine different types of angels, arranged into a distinct hierarchy. Archangels aren't at the top. Not even close. The Seraphim are at the top, followed by Cherubim, Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Powers and Principalities. Archangels are second from bottom with only Angels below them.
5. This lowest category would be the ones that are most likely to be the “guardian angels” who assist, guide and possibly even save lives. It's likely they look human, for the Bible says that if you entertain strangers, you could be entertaining angels without realising it.
6. Cherubs are not fat, cute, naked babies with wings. They are humanoid, but have hooves instead of feet, four wings and four faces - the front face is that of a man, the right face is a Lion, the left a bull (or ox), and the rear face is that of an eagle. Their wings are covered in eyes, and they glow as if on Fire. So they are described in Ezekiel 1:5–11.
7. Angels were created by God and in the Christian tradition, have free will. Most of them chose to serve God but the fallen angels, the best known being Lucifer/Satan, were the ones who chose not to.
8. In 1978, over half the people in the U.S. who were asked, said they believed in angels.
9. Most, if not all the major religions believe in angels. In Islam, angels are made of pure light, so are usually invisible. Angels in Islam don't have free will.
10. Sometimes angels are depicted as women, sometimes as men. So which gender are they? According to scripture, they're neither.

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28 September: Save the Koala Day

September is Save the Koala Month, with the last Friday being Save the Koala Day. Here are 10 things you might not know about koalas.

1. The word Koala comes from an Aboriginal word meaning “no drink”. It's true they don't drink much. Females get all the moisture they need from the eucalyptus leaves they eat, although males sometimes need to drink a little Water.
2. Their Latin name is Phascolarctos cinereus, derived from the Greek words phaskolos "pouch" and arktos "bear" (although they are not Bears, or even distantly related to them. Koalas are marsupials and their nearest relative is the Wombat). The specific name, cinereus, is Latin for "ash coloured".
3. Koalas are the only non-primate animal to have fingerprints. Their fingerprints look exactly like human ones. They also have opposable digits, to help them climb trees.
4. They're only found in the wild in Australia. They feature in Aboriginal mythology and cave art. One myth state the Koala helped row the boat which brought people to the continent. In another, a koala was killed and its guts used to build a bridge. It lost its tail because the Kangaroo cut its tail off to punish it for being lazy and greedy.
5. They're not the sharpest knives in the drawer. A koala's brain weighs just 19.2 g (0.68 oz). It has one of the smallest Brains in proportion to body weight of any mammal. If a koala is presented with a pile of plucked eucalyptus leaves, for example, it can't figure out how to eat them.
6. What it doesn't have in brain size, the koala makes up for in gut size. Its caecum is 200 cm (80 in) long and 10 cm (4 in) in diameter—the largest proportionally of any animal. The reason for this is that it's diet is made up of nutritionally poor and toxic eucalyptus leaves. They can retain leaves in their guts for up to 200 hours, where they ferment. This releases more nutrients. They deal with the toxins by producing cytochrome P450, which breaks down the poisons in their livers.
7. Because there isn't much in the way of nutrients in their diet, koalas spend most of their time asleep. They sleep up to 20 hours a day and spend most of their waking hours eating.
8. They're not very sociable, either. They only spend about 15 minutes a day interacting with each other. Mothers and their offspring remain together only until the mother gets pregnant again, then she will chase her offspring away. Adult males communicate with loud bellows that intimidate rivals and attract mates, and sometimes, they'll fight, but on the whole, fighting is a waste of their limited energy.
9. People in Europe had never even heard of a koala before 1789, when the first encounter between a European and a koala was recorded. The first picture of one was drawn by naturalist George Perry in 1810, and the first detailed description of them was written down in 1814 by Robert Brown.
10. The koala has a body length of 60–85 cm (24–33 in) and weighs 4–15 kg (9–33 lb). Their lifespan in the wild is 13 to 18 years.

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27 September: The Letter S

Today is S Day, according to the Immortal Society. 

1. S is the ^19th letter of the Latin alphabet and the seventh most common letter in the English language, and the third most common consonant (after t and n). It's the most common letter for words to begin and end with.
2. In many western languages, adding S to the end of a word makes it plural. It is also the regular ending of English third person present tense verbs (eg. He runs).
3. It derived from the Greek letter Sigma, (Σ) which in turn derives from the Greek word for “to hiss”. The letter as we know it came about by people dropping one line from Sigma.
4. The equivalent in the Jewish alphabet is Shin.
5.  … and in the NATO phonetic language, it's Sierra.
6. In medieval times there were two versions of the letter s in English. As well as S as we know it they also had the minuscule form, known as the long s, originally used in Visigothic and Carolingian scripts. It's most often seen on old gravestones and commemorative stones in churches, and looks rather like a letter f. It mostly fell out of use during the second half of the 18th century, although it remained in occasional use into the 19th century. The long s was used in the body of words while s as we know it usually only appeared at the end of words.
7. S is the chemical symbol for sulphur.
8. Also in science, it is used as the symbol for entropy, the S-block of the Periodic Table, which includes alkali metals, alkaline earth metals, and hydrogen and Helium, Serine, an amino acid, and a computer programming language dealing with statistics and graphics.
9. In British postcodes, S denotes Sheffield and surrounding areas.
10. Percy Bysshe Shelley used S as a pen name.

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26 September: TS Eliot

TS Eliot, poet who wrote The Waste Land, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats and plays like Murder in the Cathedral, celebrated his birthday today. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948, "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry". Here are some things you might not know about him.

1. He was born in America, in St Louis, to a prominent family from Boston, but at 25 he moved to Britain, and became a British citizen in 1927. He renounced his American passport and even his religion – he was brought up as a Unitarian but converted to Anglicanism.
2. His interest in literature began when he was a child and suffering from a congenital double inguinal hernia. This limited the physical activities he could take part in, and he was isolated from children his own age. So instead, he'd curl up with a book.
3. He wasn't a full-time writer. Unlike many aspiring authors, he didn't even aspire to be. He believed that working in ordinary jobs (such as teaching and working for Lloyds Bank) made him a better poet. It took the pressure off – he wasn't dependent on his writing to make a living. Another reason was that he thought that writing for too long reduced the quality of his writing. He imposed a limit on himself – no more than three hours writing a day. He said, “I sometimes found at first that I wanted to go on longer, but when I looked at the stuff the next day, what I’d done after the three hours were up was never satisfactory. It’s much better to stop and think about something else quite different.”
4. He once got out of a period of writer's block by writing poetry in French.
5. He had a number of famous friends, including James Joyce – he and Joyce disliked each other when they first met - Eliot thought Joyce was arrogant, and Joyce doubted Eliot's ability as a poet. However, they later became friends. The opposite was true with Groucho Marx. Eliot was a fan and wrote Marx fan mail. The two corresponded for years, but when they met in person it was a disappointment for both of them. Marx wanted to talk about literature while Eliot wanted to talk about Marx's film, Duck Soup.
6. He invented a common swearword. He wrote a poem dissing his critics and called it The Triumph of Bullshit. The Oxford English Dictionary credits the poem with being the first time this word ever appeared in print.
7. His first marriage was a disaster. In 1915 he married Vivienne Haigh-Wood, a dancer and socialite. She suffered from a number of physical and mental health problems and the couple drifted apart. Vivienne ended her days in a mental hospital where she'd been committed against her will. Her husband never visited her. He claimed the marriage was so bad it inspired his famous poem, The Waste Land. Eliot later married his secretary, Esmé Valerie Fletcher in secret with only the bride's parents in attendance. He was 68, she was 30. The 1994 film Tom & Viv is about Eliot's first marriage.
8. A book of poems written for his godson, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats was set to music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and became the hugely successful musical, Cats.
9. He is responsible for many famous quotations, including “April is the cruellest month” (The Waste Land) and “This is the way the world ends; Not with a bang but a whimper” (The Hollow Men).
10. Eliot died of emphysema at his home in Kensington in London, on 4 January 1965. His ashes were taken to East Coker, the village in Somerset from which his ancestors had emigrated to America. He'd written a poem about the place and a quote from it is on a wall plaque there: "In my beginning is my end. In my end is my beginning." A quotation from another of his poems is on his commemorative stone in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey. This one is from Little Gidding and reads "the communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living."

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25 September: Psychotherapy Day

Here are ten quotes and quips about psychotherapy for Psychotherapy Day.

1. A psychiatrist is someone who hopefully finds out what makes a person tick before they explode. Alfred Neuman
2. Psychiatric examination A check up from the neck up.
3. My psychiatrist said I was cured of indecision, at least, I think that’s what he said.
4. I'm a big believer in talk therapy. Every time I tell a bartender, "I'll have another", I feel much better.
5. A man went to a psychiatrist and was diagnosed as a workaholic, so he had to take a second job to pay for the therapy.
6. Sign in psychiatrist's office: I'll listen to you as long as you don't make sense.
7. Anyone who goes to see a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.
8. Getting some treatment sure can work wonders. I went to this psychoanalyst for years - and now I find I get put down by a much better class of person. Woody Allen
9. Psychiatrist: I’m glad to say, you’re cured. Patient: Some cure. Before I came to you I was Emperor of France - now I’m nobody!
10. Patient: I keep thinking I’m covered in gold paint! What’s wrong with me? Psychiatrist: You’ve got a gilt complex.

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24 September: F Scott Fitzgerald

Born this date in 1896: F. Scott Fitzgerald, US writer best known for The Great Gatsby. Some facts about him:

1. The “F” stands for Francis, as he was named after a distant cousin called Francis Scott Key. If that name sounds familiar, it's because he was the man who wrote the words to the US National Anthem, The Star Spangled Banner. Fitzgerald's father rowed Confederate spies across the Potomac River when he was nine years old.
2. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote five novels and 160 short stories. It was the short stories which were most lucrative in his lifetime. His first two novels did all right, but his most famous one, The Great Gatsby, only sold 20,000 copies and was out of print by the 1930s. However, during the second world war, the book was identified as one that American soldiers serving overseas might like. They clearly did. The book now sells 500,000 copies a year.
3. As well as novels and short stories, Fitzgerald wrote poetry, plays and screenplays. While at Princeton, he wanted to be a poet and wrote a number of poems. When America entered the first world war and Fitzgerald dropped out of college to enlist, he thought he might become the American Rupert Brooke. It occurred to him that like Rupert Brooke, he might not survive the war, so he wrote furiously hoping to leave a legacy. While he started off writing poems, his writing eventually became his first novel, This Side of Paradise. He never got to serve in the war, though, as the Armistice was signed just before he was due to be shipped overseas.
4. He wrote a play called The Vegetable, which wasn't a great success. It was a fairly sceptical look at “the American dream” which didn't go down well with the audience. It ran for just one night. Later on, Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood and collaborated on a number of screenplays for a number of movies including Gone With the Wind, but he was only ever credited for one, a 1938 film called Three Comrades.
5. In 1920 he married Zelda Sayre. The wedding was such a small affair that not even their parents attended – just three of Zelda's sisters, and there was no party afterwards. Zelda was a modern woman of the time, the quintessential “flapper”. They became quite the “it” couple in literary circles. Zelda was an accomplished painter, dancer and writer in her own right. It wasn't all parties and fun, though. Zelda struggled with mental illness and spent much of her later life in sanatoriums, while Fitzgerald himself struggled with alcoholism.
6. Jay Gatsby may have been based on Fitzgerald’s maternal grandfather. Philip Francis McQuillan, who had emigrated at eight from Ireland, started poor but by his late 30s owned a business and became very rich. Daisy, however, was not based on Fitzgerald's wife, but on socialite and debutante Ginevra King, a woman he had a crush on while he was at college. Isabelle Borgé in This Side of Paradise was also based on her.
7. He kept an amazingly detailed diary of his life and career. Most of it was about his work and his income, but in one section he wrote what he called “Outline Chart of My Life” detailing what he did in every month of his life from birth. From this we learn that his first word was “up” and that he was 5' 3” tall at the age of thirteen.
8. For a time, he was a good friend of Ernest Hemingway, but Hemingway disliked Zelda intensely and saw her as an obstacle to his friend's writing. By 1937, they'd fallen out. “I talk with the authority of failure,” Fitzgerald wrote. “Ernest with the authority of success. We could never sit across the table again.”
9. Toward the end of his life, he reportedly drank a quart of Gin and 12 bottles of Beer a day.
10. He died of heart failure at the age of 44, four months after receiving his last royalty payment, which was $13.13. At the time, he was writing another novel called The Love of the Last Tycoon, in attempt to get himself out of debt. It was published a year later even though it was only half finished. Some critics said it was Fitzgerald’s most accomplished work.

More details about my books. Follow this link if you like Superheroes, Psychics and/or quirky short stories. 

I've listed the themes each novel touches on here for easy reference.

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