Atlas

Atlas (pronounced at-luhs (U) or At-lass (non-U))

(1) A bound collection of maps, named after the Greek god. Since the sixteenth century, pictures of Atlas and his burden have been used as decorations on maps.

(2) A detailed visual conspectus of something of great and multi-faceted complexity, with its elements splayed so as to be presented in as discrete a manner as possible whilst retaining a realistic view of the whole.  Most associated with anatomy, especially of the human body, it’s long been used to describe detailed collections of drawings, diagrams etc of any subject.

(3) In anatomy, the top or first cervical vertebra of the neck, supporting the skull and articulating with the occipital bone and rotating around the dens of the axis.

(4) In stationery, a size of drawing or writing paper, 26 × 33 or 34 inches (660 x 838 or 864 mm); in some markets sold in a 26 x 17 inch (660 x 432 mm) form.

(5) In architecture, a sculptural figure of a man used as a column; also called a telamon (plural telamones or telamons) or atlant, atlante & atlantid (plural atlantes).

(6) A mountain range in north-west Africa.

(7) In classical mythology, a Titan, son of Iapetus and brother of Prometheus and Epimetheus, condemned for eternity to support the sky on his shoulders as punishment for rebelling against Zeus: identified by the ancients with the Atlas Mountains.

(8) A very strong person or who supports a heavy burden; a mainstay.

(9) In rocketry, a liquid-propellant booster rocket, originally developed as the first US intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), used with Agena or Centaur upper stages to launch satellites into orbit around the earth and send probes to the moon and planets; also used to launch the Mercury spacecraft into Earth orbit.

(9) in military use (US rocketry) & astronautics, the SM-65, an early ICBM (inter-continental ballistic missile), re-purposed as the launch platform for orbital vehicles (satellites) and later used with Agena or Centaur upper stages to send probes to the moon and planets; also used to launch the Mercury spacecraft into Earth orbit.

(10) In astronomy, a small satellite of Saturn, discovered in 1980.

(11) In astronomy, a crater in the last quadrant of the moon.

(12) In astronomy, a triple star system in the Pleiades open cluster (M45) also known as 27 Tauri.

(13) In psychiatry, as Atlas personality, a term used to describe the personality of someone whose childhood was characterized by excessive responsibilities.

(14) As the ERA Atlas, the original name for the UNIVAC 1101 computer, released in 1950.

(15) In differential geometry & topology, a family of coordinate charts that cover a manifold.

(16) A rich satin fabric (archaic).

1580-1590: From the Latin Atlas, from the name of the Ancient Greek mythological figure Ἄτλας (Átlas) (Bearer (of the Heavens)), from τλῆναι (tlênai) (to suffer; to endure; to bear).  The traditional translation of the Greek name as "The Bearer (of the Heavens)" comes from it construct: a- (the copulative prefix) + the stem of tlenai (to bear), from the primitive Indo-European root tele- (to lift, support, weigh) but some etymologists suggest the Berber adrar (mountain) as a source and argues it’s at least plausible that the Greek name is a "folk-etymological reshaping" of this. Mount Atlas, in (then) Mauritania, featured in the cosmology of Ancient Greece as a support of the heavens.  Atlas had originally been the name of an Arcadian mountain god before being transferred to the mountain chain.  In Arabic script atlas was أَطْلَس‎ and Atlas Mountains جِبَال ٱلْأَطْلَس, Romanized as jibāl al-ʾaṭlas.  The Atlas mountain range lies in north-west Africa and separates the Mediterranean and Atlantic coastlines from the Sahara.  The noun plural is atlases for the collection of maps and atlantes for the architectural feature.  Atlas is a noun and atlas-like is an adjective; the noun plural is atlases.  When used as a proper noun to refer to the figure of mythology, it's with an initial capital.

The first use of the word atlas (in English translation) in the sense of a "collection of maps in a volume" is thought to have the 1636 edition of the 1595 Atlas Sive Cosmographicae Meditationes de Fabrica Mundi et Fabricati Figura (Atlas or cosmographical meditations upon the creation of the universe, and the universe as created) by Flemish geographer & cartographer Gerhardus Mercator (1512-1594).  An impression of the Titan Atlas holding the globe was imprinted on the frontispiece and many subsequent atlases followed, creating a tradition which has endured until today. Mercator died prior to publication of the atlas, the first edition of which he had already largely complied and assembled; the final editing was undertaken by his son who would also pursue a career in cartography.

The adjective (resembling or pertaining to Atlas) was atlantean which from 1852 extended to “pertaining to Atlantis".  The mythical island (even sometimes a continent) become widely known in Europe only after circa 1600 after translations of Plato’s Timaeus and Critias (both written circa 360 BC) became available.  Even then, like some previous medieval scholars who knew the texts, many thought regarding Plato as a historian as dubious and considered Atlantis entirely an invention, a device used to illustrate a political cautionary tale.  Still, given a long history of earthquakes and sea-level rise since the last peak of the ice-age (in which we’re still living), it’s not impossible there are buried settlements which would, by the standards of the time, have been thought large.  The Greek Atlantis (literally "daughter of Atlas”), is a noun use of the feminine adjective from Atlas (stem Atlant).

A brace of Atlantes at the tomb of Louis Phélypeaux (1598–1681), seigneur de La Vrillière, marquis de Châteauneuf and Tanlay (1678), comte de Saint-Florentin, church of Saint Martial of Châteauneuf-sur-Loire.

In European architectural sculpture, an atlas (also known as an atlant, atlante & atlantid (plural atlantes)), was a (usually decorative) support sculpted in the form of a man and either part of or attached to a column, a pier or a pilaster.  The Roman term was telamon (plural telamones or telamons), from a later mythological hero, Telamon, one of the Argonauts, the father of Ajax.  Pre-dating the alantes in Classical architecture was the caryatid, an exclusively female form where the sculpture of a woman stands with each pillar or column.  Usually in an Ionic context, they were traditionally represented in association with the goddesses worshiped in the temples to which they were attached and rarely were they full-length forms, usually crafted as a conventional structural member below the waist, assuming the female lines above.  One difference between the male and female renderings was the atlantes often bore expressions of strain or had limbs bent by the effort of sustaining their heavy load.  The caryatids were almost always purely decorative and carved to show a nonchalant effortlessness.

Tower of the Koutoubia Mosque (1943), oil on canvas by Sir Winston Churchill (1974-1965).

In January 1943, Winston Churchill (1874-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) and Franklin Roosevelt (1882-1945; US president 1933-1945) met at Casablanca to discuss Allied political and military strategy.  One of the critical meetings of the war and one which tends to be neglected compared with the later tripartite conferences (which included Comrade Stalin (1878-1953; leader of the USSR 1924-1953) at Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam, it’s remembered for a statement which emerged almost casually at the end of the ten day session: that Germany, Italy and Japan must surrender unconditionally.  The phrase "unconditional surrender" came from the president and surprised many (including Churchill) and it proved a gift for the ever-active Nazi propaganda machine. 

Churchill prevailed on the president to stay another day before returning to Washington DC, insisting one couldn’t come all the way to Morocco without visiting Marrakech and seeing the sun set over the Atlas Mountains.  They stayed at the Villa Taylor on 24 January and the next day, after the American delegation had departed, the prime-minister painted his view of the Tower of the Koutoubia Mosque, framed by the Atlas Mountains.  He’d visited Marrakech during the 1930s and completed several paintings but this was the only one he would paint during the war.  It was sent it to Roosevelt, as a present for his birthday on 30 January.  Churchill was a keen amateur painter, even having published Painting as a Pastime (1922) but never rated his own skills highly, often when speaking with other amateurs cheerfully admitting their work was better but he did think the 1943 effort was “a cut above anything I have ever done so far”.  He would have been surprised to learn that on 1 March 2021, Tower of the Koutoubia Mosque sold at auction at Christie’s in London for Stg£8,285,000 (US$11,194,000).

The Farnese Atlas (left) which historians concluded was a Roman copy (circa 150 AD) in marble of (second century BC) work typical of the style of the Hellenistic period.  It depicts Atlas holding the world on his shoulders and is the oldest known representation of the celestial spheres and classical constellations, Napoli, Museo archeologico nazionale (National Archaeological Museum, Naples, Italy).  Lindsay Lohan (right) reprises the look in an aqua swimsuit, Mykonos, Greece, July 2017.

After the war Churchill was amused to read that but for a misunderstanding, he may never have got to paint in Morocco at all.  The wartime meetings of the leaders were all top-secret but in something of a coup by North African agents of the Abwehr (the German military-intelligence service 1920-1944), the details of the meeting at Casablanca were discovered and Berlin was advised to consider a bombing mission.  Unfortunately for the Abwehr, the decoders translated “Casablanca” literally as “White House” and the idea of any action was dismissed because the Germans had no bomber capable of reaching the US.  Casablanca had originally been named Dar al-Baiḍā (دار البيضاء (House of the White) in the Arabic, later renamed by the Portuguese as Casa Branca before finally being Hispanicized as "Casablanca".

Group photograph of the political leaders with the Combined Chiefs of Staff Committee, Casablanca Conference, Morocco, 14-24 January 1943.  It was at this conference the president unexpectedly announced the allied demand for "unconditional surrender" by the Axis powers and historians have since debated the political and military implications, one theory being it was something which mitigated against the possibility of any attempt within Germany to depose Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945).

Sitting: Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR, 1882–1945, US president 1933-1945) (left); Sir Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) (right).

Standing, left to right (retirement ranks used): General Brehon B Somervell (1892–1955; head of US Army Service Forces 1942-1946); General of the Air Force Henry H "Hap" Arnold (1886–1950; head of US air forces 1938-1947); Fleet Admiral Ernest J King (1878–1956; US Chief of Naval Operations 1944-1945); General Lord (Hastings "Pug") Ismay (1887–1965; chief of staff to the prime-minister in his capacity as minister of defence 1940-1965); General of the Army George C Marshall (1880–1959; US Army chief of staff 1939-1945); Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound (1877–1943; First Sea Lord 1939-1943); Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke (1883–1963; Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) 1941-1946); Marshal of the Royal Air Force Lord (Charles "Peter") Portal (1893–1971; Chief of the RAF Air Staff 1940-1945); Admiral of the Fleet Lord (Louis) Mountbatten (1900–1979; First Sea Lord 1955-1959).

Scapulimancy

Scapulimancy (pronounced skap-yuh-luh-man-see)

Divination of the future by observation of the cracking of a mammal's scapula (the shoulder blade, the bone connecting the clavicle to the humerus), sometimes after having been heated by fire or a hot instrument.

1870–1875: The construct was scapul(a) + -i- + -mancy.  Scapula was from the Late Latin scapula (shoulder), from the Classical Latin scapulae (shoulders).  The -mancy suffix was from the Latin -mantīa, ultimately from the Ancient Greek μᾰντείᾱ (manteíā) (divination).  In English it was appended to convey the sense either of (1) divination or (2) in fantasy, varieties of magic, especially those controlling or related to specific elements, substances, or themes.  The synonym is omoplatoscopy and the alternative spelling scapulomancy.  Scapulimancy is a noun, scapulimantic is an adjective and scapulimanticly is an adverb.

Sheep shoulder blades.

Divination was from the Latin divinare (to foresee, foretell or predict; tom make prophesy) and is a general term describing attempts to gain insight into a question or situation by way of an occultic ritual or practice, usually involving either (1) some object or objects in which special qualities are said to be vested, (2) an alleged contact or interaction with supernatural entities or agencies such as spirits, gods, god-like-beings or the other forces “of the universe” or (3) the interpretation of signs or omens, variously defined.  As a cultural practice, divination has been identified in many cultures and at the root of it is probably a desire to have explained what is by all other means available, inexplicable.  That obviously offers some potential for exploitation by those seeking social, political or religious authority but it can also be a business model and between that and religion especially, there’s historically been some overlap, something alive and well today.  The notion of using the shoulder blades of slaughtered animals for this purpose may seem strange but as a method it seems no more or less convincing than instruments such as the tea-leaf, rune stones, Tarot-cards or the movement of objects in the heavens, some billions of miles remote from the apparent randomness of events on Earth.

Butchered & dressed lamb shoulder chops (left) and lamb shoulder chops with garlic and rosemary (right).

Although much-associated with priests, magicians and prophets (again, the overlap not hand to find), divination was practiced also by those for whom religion (in the way the word is conventionally understood) wasn’t a significant force.  The Hun of the Eurasian steppe, best remembered for their fifth century invasion of the Roman Empire, may have Turkic language (though one much infused with words from others), are known to have never developed writing and never seem to have flirted beyond the vaguest with God or gods, the only devotional aspect of their culture a kind of “nature worship”, something which would probably now attract much sympathy.  There may though have been something of a cargo-cult in that various objects seem to have been associated with a kind of veneration, notably swords or weapons linked with military success and generals down the ages, however practical and pragmatic they might have been in other matters, are recorded by historians or in diaries as being fond of consulting soothsayers the night before a battle.  The Huns definitely practiced scapulimancy, the logs of travelers and merchants recording how a shaman-like figure would take from the fire the shoulder blades of the roasted sheep, “reading the patterns” on the surface to make predictions for the days, the foretold omens revealed by pits, stains ridges & hollows which made each bone as unique as a finger-print.  This use for the sheep’s scapula adds another layer to the oft-repeated observation about the reductive efficiency of the steppe peoples in the husbanding of their scare resources: “For some purpose, they used every part of the sheep”.  Because the Huns left no written records, all that is known of their scapulimantic technique comes from third-party observers but as far as is known, their practice was in the “pyromantic” tradition (the “preparing” of the bone by leaving it for a time in the embers of the cooking fire), the “apyromantic” (examination after the flesh had been cut from the bone) method most known in Europe & Northern Africa.  Both these descriptions came from the work of nineteenth century anthropologists.

Lohanic scapulae; a tetrad:  Four photographs of Lindsay Lohan's shoulder blades.

It’s not only in the post-Enlightenment West that divination has (mostly) been dismissed as silly superstition, many thinkers from Antiquity pointing out in their writings the absurdity of the idea and their most effective criticism was probably not the abstract arguments philosophers usually can’t resist but a simple “fact-checking”: comparing predictions with outcomes, the success rate found predictably low.  In the text of one sceptic however, there appears to be the first mention of the efficacy, even in the age of climate change, of one reliable prediction about the weather: “three times out of four, the weather tomorrow will be much the same as today.” (YMMV).  However, despite the two-thousand-odd years of intellectual scorn, the lure of prediction by dubious means remains strong, some otherwise respectable publications regularly including a horoscope, even though there’s nothing to suggest astrology is otherwise taken seriously.  It seems star-sighs exert a special fascination and many identify with their birth sign and read the horoscope, even if usually for amusement.  For some though it’s serious.  Nancy Reagan (1921–2016; US First Lady 1981-1989) regularly consulted an astrologer (on the White House payroll for a reputed US$3000 a month) after one warned her husband Ronald Reagan (1911-2004; US president 1981-1989) would be “in danger” on a certain day; on that day he survived an assassination attempt.

Others couldn’t quite decide.  Being interviewed by a prison psychologist in 1945, Rudolf Hess (1894–1987; Nazi Deputy Führer 1933-1941) claimed he’d made his bizarre attempt to secure a negotiated peace between Germany on the UK (his flight to Scotland in May 1941 on the eve of the Nazi’s invasion of the Soviet Union) because the year before “…one of his astrologers had read in the stars that he was ordained to bring about peace”, adding that both Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) and Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945; Reichsführer SS 1929-1945) “…had come to have an abiding belief in astrology.”  It was a claim he would repeat to a journalist in the 1980s.  Despite that, as soon as the news of the flight was brought to Hitler at the Berghof (the Führer’s alpine retreat in the Bavarian Alps) the party hierarchy instantly was summoned from Berlin and the scramble was on to find the most plausible way to spin to the world an explanation why the “second man in the Reich” had delivered himself to the enemy.  In the circumstances, madness probably was the best option and the task was made easier by the British who made no attempt to exploit the defection for propaganda purposes.  Dr Joseph Goebbels (1897-1975; Nazi propaganda minister 1933-1945) put out a statement saying Hess had fallen under the influence “…of soothsayers and fortune-tellers” and had become “...a deluded, deranged and muddled idealist, ridden with hallucinations traceable to World War (ie the 1914-1918 conflict) injuries.”  Immediately, just to make things more plausible still, the state security apparatus (a well-oiled machine) conducted a crackdown on soothsayers and fortune-tellers, locking up many until the scandal had passed which it did remarkable quickly.

All must have been forgiven by 1945 when in the Führerbunker Goebbels, after reminding Hitler of the “miracle of the House of Brandenburg” when the death of a czarina had saved Frederick II (Frederick the Great, 1712–1786, Prussian king 1740-1786) from defeat, consulted two horoscopes kept in the files, one written on 9 November 1918 (the date on which the Weimar Republic (1918-1933) was formed), the other from 30 January 1933 (the date Hitler was appointed chancellor).  According to Goebbels, both documents predicted “…the outbreak of the war in 1939, the victories until 1941, and the subsequent series of reversals, with the hardest blows during the first months of 1945, particularly during the first half of April.  In the second half of April we were to experience a temporary success.  Then there would be stagnation until August and peace that same month.  For the following three years Germany would have a hard time, but starting in 1948 she would rise again.”  Confident that “…according to historical logic and justice things were bound to change”, he must have felt vindicated a few days later when the new broke of the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR, 1882–1945, US president 1933-1945); history had given Goebbels his czarina: “Bring out our best champagne!” he commanded, adding “And get me the Fuehrer on the telephone!”  Unfortunately for Goebbels, while he might have felt he wrote his will across the sky, the stars dimmed and fell, the horoscopes no more a reliable predictor of the future than scorched shoulder blades.

Croissant

Croissant (pronounced krwah-sahn (French) or kruh-sahnt (barbarians))

A rich, buttery, often crescent-shaped, roll of leavened dough or puff paste.

1899:  From the French croissant (crescent), present participle of the verb croître (to increase, to grow), from the Middle French croistre, from the Old French creistre derived from the Classical Latin crēscēns & crēscentem, present active infinitive of crēscō (I augment), drawn from the Proto-Italic krēskō. The ultimate root was the primitive Indo-European ḱreh (to grow, become bigger).  Correct pronunciation here.  

The Austrian Pastry

Like some other cultural artefacts thought quintessentially French (French fries invented in Belgium; Nicolas Sarkozy (b 1955; French president 2007-2012) from here and there; the Citroën DS (1955-1975) styled by an Italian) the croissant came from elsewhere, its origins Austrian, the Viennese kipferl a crescent-shaped sweet made plain, with nuts or other fillings.  It varies from the French classic in being denser and less flaky, made with softer dough.  First noted in the thirteenth century at which time, it was thought a “sweet” it was another three-hundred years before it came to be regarded as a morning pastry.  Tastes changed as new techniques of baking evolved and around the turn of the seventeenth century, recipes began to appear in Le Pâtissier François using Pâte feuilletée (puff pastry), these being the first recognisably modern croissants.

Culinary histories include a number of (likely apocryphal) tales of why the croissant adopted a crescent shape.  One suggests it was baked first in Buda to celebrate the defeat of the Ummayyad (the Umayyad Caliphate (661–750) was the second of the four major caliphates created after the death of the prophet Muhammad (circa 570-632)) forces by the Franks in the Battle of Tours (732), the shape representing the Islamic crescent moon although more famous is the notion it was designed after the battle of 1683 when the Ottomans were turned back from the gates of Vienna.  A baker, said to have heard the Turks tunneling under the walls of the city as he lit his ovens to bake the morning bread, sounded an alarm, and the defending forces collapsed the tunnel, saving the city.   To celebrate, bread was baked in the shape of the crescent moon of the Turkish flag.

Portrait of Marie Antoinette (1769) oil on canvas by Joseph Ducreux (1735-1802).

The official title of the portrait was Archduchess Maria Antonia of Austria and it was created as the era’s equivalent of a Tinder profile picture, the artist summoned in 1769 to Vienna to paint a pleasing rendering of the young lady the Hapsburg royal court planned to marry off to Louis, Dauphin of France (1754-1973) who would reign as Louis XVI (King of France 1774-1792)).  Tinder profile pictures can be misleading (some pounds and even more years sometimes vanishing) so the work must be considered in that context although she was barely fourteen when she sat so it may be true to the subject.  Ducreux’s portrait was the first glimpse the prince had of his intended bride and it must have been pleasing enough for him metaphorically to "swipe right" and the marriage lasted until the pair were executed with the blade of the guillotine.  As a reward, Ducreux was raised to the nobility as a seigneur de la baronnie (lord of the barony, the grade of of baron granted to roturiers (commoners)) and appointed premier peintre de la reine (First Painter to the Queen), outliving the royal couple.

A more romantic tale attributes the pastry to Marie Antoinette (1755–1793; Queen of France 1774-1792), who, as an Austrian, preferred the food of her homeland to that of the French court and, at state dinners, would sneak away to enjoy pastries and coffee.  There is no documentary evidence for her having re-christened the kipferl as the croissant but the story is she so missed what she knew as kipfel (German for crescent) that she commanded the royal baker to clone the treat.  More prosaic, but actually verified by historical evidence, is that August Zang (1807-1888), a retired Austrian artillery officer founded a Viennese Bakery in Paris in 1839 and most food historians agree he is the one most likely to have introduced the kipfel to France, a pastry that later inspired French bakers to create crescents of their own.  The first mention of the croissant in French is in French chemist Anselme Payen’s (1795-1871) Des Substances alimentaires (1853), published long after Marie-Antoinette’s time in court, the first known printed recipe, using the name, appearing in Swiss chef Joseph Favre’s (1849-1903) Dictionnaire universel de cuisine (1905) although even that was a more dense creation than the puffy thing known today.

Breakfast in Paris.

Although the famous shape is much admired, for purists, the choice is always the un-curved croissant au beurre, (butter croissant), the more eye-catching crescents being usually the ordinaires, made with margarine.  The taste in the English-speaking world for things like ham-and-cheese croissants is regarded by the French as proof of Anglo-Saxon barbarism although they will tolerate a sparse drizzle of chocolate if it’s for children and food critics reluctantly concede the almond croissant (with a frangipane filling, topped with slivered almonds and a dusting of powdered sugar) is “…enjoyed by younger women”.  Generally though, the French stick to the classics, eschewing even butter, a croissant being best enjoyed unadorned and taken with a strong black coffee and while some will insist this should be accompanied with a Gitanes, that is optional.

The cube croissant, an Instagram favorite.

Although much focused upon, the shape of a croissant of course becomes less relevant when eaten when the experience becomes one of taste and texture.  For that reason the pastry used has long attracted those chefs for whom food offers architectural possibilities and while for more than a century one-offs have been created for competition and special event, in recent years the phenomenon of social media has been a design stimulant, Instagram, TikTok et al fuelling a culinary arms race and patisseries have built (sometimes short-lived) product lines in response to viral videos.  Fillings have of course been a feature but it’s the shapes which have been most eye-catching (and by extension click-catching which is the point for the content providers). There have been “croissants” in the shape of spheres, discs, pyramids, spirals, wedges and cubes, the last among the more amusing with chefs referencing objects and concepts such as dice, cubist art and, of course, the Rubik’s Cube.  Many have been just a moment while some have for a while trended.

Dominique Ansel's Cronut, stacked and sliced.

Some have endured for longer such as the Cronut (the portmanteau’s construct being cro(issant) + (dough)nut) and so serious was New York based French pastry chef Dominique Ansel (b 1978) that in 2013 he trademarked his creation.  In the familiar shape of a doughnut, the composition was described as “a croissant-like pastry with a filling of flavored cream and fried in grapeseed oil.”  Interviewed by Murdoch tabloid the New York Post, the chef revealed it took “two months of R&D (research & development)” before the Cronut was perfected and the effort was clearly worthwhile because after being released in his eponymous bakery in Manhattan’s SoHo neighbourhood, the city’s food bloggers (a numerous and competitive population) responded and within days photographs circulated of dozens waiting for opening time, a reaction which prompted the application to the US Patent and Trademark Office.  In the way of such things, around the planet “clones”, “tributes”, “knock-offs”, “imitations”, “rip-offs” (the descriptions as varied as the slight changes in the recipes introduced presumably to fend off a C&D (cease and desist letter)) soon appeared.  Predictably, some were called “Doughssants” (the Germanic eszett a nice touch) although others were less derivative.

New York Post, August 16 2022.

Monsieur Ansel in 2015 released Dominique Ansel: The Secret Recipes, a cookbook which included the Cronut recipe and the thing in its authentic form was clearly for the obsessives, the instructions noting making one or a batch was a three-day process.  In its review of the year, Time magazine nominated the Cronut as one of the “best inventions of 2013”, prompting one cultural commentator (another species which proliferates in New York City) to observe the decadence of the West had reached the point the breakdown of society was close.  There may have been something in the idea the new “Visigoths at the Gates of Rome” were actually pastry chefs because in the wake of the Cronut the city was soon flooded with all sorts of novel sugary treats, mostly elaborations of croissants, doughnuts and, it being NYC, bagels.  By 2022 the New York Post was prepared to proclaim: “Move over cronuts! NYC's hot new baked good is the Suprême”, the defenestrator from Noho’s Lafayette Grand Café and revealed to be a “unique circular croissant filled with pastry crème and topped with ganache and crushed up cookies.”  Again of the Instagram & TikTok age, queues were reported even though at a unit cost of US$8.50 it was two dollars more expensive than a Cronut, the price of which had increased fairly modestly since 2013 when it debuted at US$5.00.

All the recent variations on the croissant are built on the theme chefs have for centuries understood is the easy path to popularity: FSS; add fat, salt & sugar, the substances mankind has for millennia sought.  Once it took much effort (and often some risk) to find these things but now they’re conveniently packaged and widely available at prices which, although subject to political and economic forces, remain by historic standards very cheap.  Often, we don’t even need to seek out the packages because so much of the preparation and distribution of food has been outsourced to specialists, mostly industrial concerns but the artisans persist in niches.  That’s certainly true of the croissant, few making their own whether basic or embellished and one of the latest of the croissant crazes is FSS writ large: the crookie.

Miss Sina's crookie (without added topping or powered sugar).

A crookie is a croissant stuffed with chocolate chip cookie dough and its very existence will be thought particularly shameful by some Parisian purists because it was first sold in December 2023 by the Boulangerie Louvard, located on Rue de Châteaudun in Paris’s 9^th arrondissement which, in an Instragram post announced the arrival: “Our pure butter croissant, awarded the seventh best croissant in the Île-de-France region in 2022, is made every morning with a 24-hour fermented milk sourdough and layered with Charente butter.  For our cookie dough, we use one of the best and purest chocolates in the world, from @xoco.gourmet.”  Offered originally in a test batch to test the market, the boulangerie soon announced “The concept was well received, so we're keeping it.  Available every day in-store!”

Unlike a Cronut which (at least in its pure form) demands three days to make, the charm of the crookie is its elegant simplicity and Instagrammers quickly deconstructed and posted the instructions:

(1) With a serrated knife, cut open a croissant lengthwise, leaving a “hinge” at the back.

(2) Add 2-3 tablespoons of your chocolate chip cookie dough (from a packet or home-made).

(3) Close the two sections of croissant wholly encasing the dough.

(4) When the dough is almost cooked (time will vary according to oven and the volume of dough but it takes only a few minutes), remove from oven.

(5) Add more cookie dough to the top of croissant and return to the oven for final bake.

(6) When the outside is crispy and the centre gooey, remove from oven and top with a dusting of powdered sugar.

Some crookie critics don't recommend either adding the second lashing of dough or the powered sugar because they tend to "overwhelm" the croissant and limit the surface area, thereby denying the dish some of the essential crispiness.  

The croissant in fashion

Louis Vuitton Loop (part number M81098).  Created by Nicolas Ghesquière (b 1971) for the Cruise 2022 Collection, the Loop is described as a "half-moon baguette" and was inspired by the earlier Croissant bag, the original a less fussy design.

Lindsay Lohan in T-shirt with croissant theme.

While a handbag lends itself well to the shape of a crescent, it does inherently limit the efficiency of space utilization but this aspect is often not a primary goal in the upper reaches of the market.  With garments however, although actually a common component because the shape makes all sorts of engineering possible such as the underwire of the bra or other constructions where any sort of cantilever effect is demanded, it’s usually just an element rather than a design motif.  As a playful touch, a distinctive crescent moon or croissant might appear on a T-shirt or scarf but it’s rare to see a whole garment pursue the theme although they have appeared on the catwalks where they attract the usual mix of admiration and derision.   

Sarah Jessica Parker in "croissant dress".

Sometimes though, such things escape the catwalk.  In 2022 the actor Sarah Jessica Parker (b 1965) appeared in HBO's And Just Like That, a spin-off (2021-2022) of the Sex and the City TV series (1998-2024), wearing an orange Valentino couture gown from the house’s spring/summer 2019 collection.  It recalled a large croissant, the piece chosen presumably because the scene was set in Paris although it must have been thought the viewers needed the verisimilitude laid on with a trowel because also prominent was a handbag in the shape of the Eifel Tower.  A gift to the meme-makers, admiration for the dress was restrained.

Deracinate

Deracinate (pronounced dih-ras-uh-neyt)

(1) To pull up by the roots; uproot; extirpate; eradicate.

(2) To isolate or alienate (a person) from a native or customary culture or environment (especially to expel people from their native land and into exile).

(3) To liberate or be liberated from a culture or its norms. 

1590s: A calque of the French déraciner, from the Old French desraciner (uproot, dig out, pull up by the roots), the construct being dé- +‎ racine +‎ -er.  The de- prefix was from the Latin dē-, from the preposition dē (of, from (the Old English æf- was a similar prefix).  It imparted the sense of (1) reversal, undoing, removing, (2) intensification and (3) from, off.  In French the dé- prefix was used to make antonyms (as un- & dis- function in English) and was partially inherited from the Old and Middle French des-, from the Latin dis- (part), the ultimate source being the primitive Indo-European dwís and partially borrowed from Latin dē-..  Racine was from the Old French, from the Late Latin radicīna (a little root), from the Classical Latin radix & radicis (root), from the Proto-Italic wrādī, from the primitive Indo-European wréhds & wrād- (branch, root).  The prefix –er was used to form infinitives of first-conjugation verbs and was from the Latin –are, from the Middle High German –ære & -er, from the Old High German -āri, from the Proto-Germanic -ārijaz, from Latin -arius.  The -ate suffix -ate used in the English formation was a word-forming element used in forming nouns from Latin words ending in -ātus, -āta, & -ātum (such as estate, primate & senate).  Those that came to English via French often began with -at, but an -e was added in the fifteenth century or later to indicate the long vowel.  It can also mark adjectives formed from Latin perfect passive participle suffixes of first conjugation verbs -ātus, -āta, & -ātum (such as desolate, moderate & separate).  Again, often they were adopted in Middle English with an –at suffix, the -e appended after circa 1400; a doublet of –ee.  Deracinate, deracinates, deracinating & deracinated are verbs and deracination is a noun; the noun plural is deracinations.  The noun deracinater (or deracinator) is non-standard.

In English, deracinate is used mostly as a decorative alternative to the descriptive but brutish "uproot" and is probably one of those words which has survived to enjoy it's infrequent appearances because it appears in the Duke of Burgundy's speech in William Shakespeare's (1564–1616) Henry V (circa 1599); the Shakespeare connection has headed-off a few linguistic extinctions.  Use in agriculture and horticulture appears to be rare (the punchier alternatives better understood) although it might be expected when gardening is a part of a literary novel.  In figurative use, the inferences tend to be negative and focus on isolation, alienation, deportation and the cultural separation sometimes felt by diasporic communities.  In English, since 1921 it has been used to mean "uprooted from one's national or social environment" (especially to expel people from their native land and into exile).

Lindsay Lohan gardening with a lopper, decapitation a less demanding path to destruction than deracination, New York City, May 2015.  She appears to be relishing the task. 

However, in figurative form deracinate can carry a positive connotation.  It can mean "to liberate or be liberated from a culture or its norms" and in that sense sometimes appears in right-wing commentaries on certain aspects of the culture wars,  There the point being made relates to the different ways "cultural alienations" are treated, depending on who is being alienated from what.  Someone who is a white, middle class Christian and rejects the beliefs and cultural traditions of their church to emerge as a materialist atheist tied to Enlightenment values is not regarded as "culturally alienated" or a victim of "cultural oppression", indeed, if their transformation is noted at all it may be to call them a "rational" or "an intellectual".  Some might call them "a heretic" but gleefully a rationalist would anyway agree.  For others however, it's argued they can only ever be seen as "a victim".  This seems especially to apply to those from indigenous populations who, if they reject belief in or adherence to the sorts of things Christians are entitled to dismiss as "superstitions", they're treated as "oppressed" and "alienated".  In that sense, the critics say, being something like indigenous (or another ethnic or cultural minority) is "compulsory", some of the very intellectuals who are themselves proudly (and by choice) alienated from a cultural inherence of perhaps centuries declaring those from minorities similarly separated must be victims of hegemonic cultural oppression.  In this sense the critique is something like that made of Western anthropologists who opposed modernizing influences being allowed to "infect" traditional cultures, presumably so they could be preserved in their "unspoiled state" for anthropological study.

Although right-wing politics might seem an unusual source for such arguments, it is intellectually consistent and the internal logic conforms with their hierarchy of priorities.  Although usually they decry post-modernism and most flavors of critical studies (critical race studies (CRT) a particular target) as little more than glossings of nihilism, the right to adopt a world-view at variance with one imposed by cultural tradition has a long history and the importance of defending it well explained by the French philosopher Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet; 1694–1778) and more succinctly still by the Anglo-Irish Whig statesman Edmund Burke (1729-1797).  In the prevailing climate, minority ethnic & cultural identities do seem to remain compulsory (though it may be the converts to post-modernism wisely keep quite about it) but in the the culture wars, no truce has been declared.

Duke of Burgundy's speech (Shakespeare, Henry V Act 5, Scene 2)

My duty to you both, on equal love,
Great kings of France and England. That I have labored
With all my wits, my pains, and strong endeavors,
To bring your most imperial Majesties
Unto this bar and royal interview,
Your mightiness on both parts best can witness.
Since, then, my office hath so far prevailed
That face to face and royal eye to eye
You have congreeted. Let it not disgrace me
If I demand before this royal view
What rub or what impediment there is
Why that the naked, poor, and mangled peace,
Dear nurse of arts, plenties, and joyful births,
Should not in this best garden of the world,
Our fertile France, put up her lovely visage?
Alas, she hath from France too long been chased,
And all her husbandry doth lie on heaps,
Corrupting in its own fertility.
Her vine, the merry cheerer of the heart,
Unprunèd, dies. Her hedges, even-pleached,
Like prisoners wildly overgrown with hair,
Put forth disordered twigs. Her fallow leas
The darnel, hemlock, and rank fumitory
Doth root upon, while that the coulter rusts
That should deracinate such savagery.
The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth
The freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover,
Wanting the scythe, withal uncorrected, rank,
Conceives by idleness, and nothing teems
But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burrs,
Losing both beauty and utility.
And as our vineyards, fallows, meads, and hedges,
Defective in their natures, grow to wildness,
Even so our houses and ourselves and children
Have lost, or do not learn for want of time,
The sciences that should become our country,
But grow like savages, as soldiers will
That nothing do but meditate on blood,
To swearing and stern looks, diffused attire,
And everything that seems unnatural.
Which to reduce into our former favor
You are assembled, and my speech entreats
That I may know the let why gentle peace
Should not expel these inconveniences
And bless us with her former qualities.