Sep 17 2022 - The Urine Bank

 

Do you hate those squirrels that bother your garden?  Urine is an animal repellent. There's a lot of nitrogen in Urine so it can be useful in the garden.   It is a fertilizer when diluted with water.  The chemical industry used it in the manufacture of gunpowder.  A nitrogen source, it was used to moisten straw which was kept moist and allowed to rot for several months to over a year.  The resulting salts were washed from the heap with water, evaporated, and crude saltpetre crystals were collected.   Or what about fermenting urine to produce a solution of ammonia to wash cloth and clothing.  That's the story of fulling. Fulling has specific urine requirements.  Here's the story from Judy Zinni. In the Scottish highlands and in Cape Breton (and Ireland), the local people would gather together to “full” the cloth - although the term used in Scotland is “waulking” and in Cape Breton “milling” or “fulling”.  Harris tweed fabric was processed in this manner, traditionally.  A long table, often with ridges carved into it, was used.  People sat around the table and the woven fabric was stitched together at the ends to make a long loop/coil.  The fabric was wetted down with a solution of water and aged urine (the urine of a young boy was preferred), which helped to shrink the fibres and cause them to become water resistant (in more modern times, a soapy solution was used instead). The people then sang waulking songs, a capella, which consist of short verses with a common chorus (in Gaelic). The songs had strong rhythms which were used to keep rhythm while pounding the cloth against the table top.  They would pass the cloth to the person next to them during the procedure (remember the cloth is a big loop), this would ensure that the cloth would be evenly worked along its entire length.  People from the community would save up their newly woven cloth and bring them to this community event (much like barn raising is a community event), and all the cloth would be worked at the gathering.  In Scotland, the waulking was done mostly by women.  This tradition was brought to Nova Scotia and was practised in Cape Breton, where it was done apparently primarily by men, although I’ve seen photos of groups of men and women together participating.  After all the hard work, a “lunch” was served (usually in the late evening) and there would be music and dancing.  In Ireland, the waulking was apparently done differently in a tub using the feet. The waulking songs have survived through oral tradition and some tell of tragedies or events from the areas in which they were sung.  A “leader” would sing the short verse, and the rest of the workers would sing the chorus together.  In Cape Breton, there are sometimes demonstrations of this, known as milling frolics, and are put on for tourists.

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Nov 8 2021 - My Dog and Me

 

I have never wondered what the difference is between dog urine and human urine.  But somehow, people seem to ask this question  a lot as it comes up at the top of Google question/answers. Cuteness.com wants to answer this.  Millie was pleased as the site had videos of dogs running in their first snow fall.  Here's what they say: The only difference between dog urine and human urine is that they come out of differing species.... Dog urine contains water, bacteria, ammonia, uric acid and dog hormones.  It's these hormones that are different from human urine.   Any dog nose can smell these hormones to know the sex, health and even the breed of the dog that urinated. When the dog urine dries, it does so in tiny crystals that can release their smelly messages when they are moistened again from humidity or being sniffed through a dog's wet nose.  How did we get the expression 'pee' - that's the command I use for Millie when she is sent outside.  It is 18th century euphemistic use of the initial letter of piss.  Shakespeare was  among the first to use the letter "P" to stand in for the word "piss," in Twelfth Night. The letter sound, written since at least 1880 as "pee," has been in use ever since. And piss? This from the New Republic: "To piss derives ultimately from the Vulgar Latin verb pissiare. The proper Latin verb meaning to urinate was mingere, which gives us medical words like micturition. Via the medieval French verb pissier (12th century), to piss crops up in many medieval English texts, including Chaucer." And if one wants to emphasize to Millie that she really is to go pee, then it is "go pee-pee".   This is considered a reduplicated form of pee.  And French and German have these versions, too - e.g. pipi in French. And here's our joke on the topic: When you really have to pee, you're Russian to the bathroom, when you walk out, you're Finnish, so what are you while you're inside?  European! This is the Japanese Garden display at the Chrysanthemum Festival.