inkbluesky

What IS the secret of Silbury Hill?

We are about to enter some rather iffy tunnels dug into Silbury Hill, in Wiltshire, a 4,400-year-old man-made pyramid constructed entirely from chalk.

It will be wet, dark and nasty in there, so we need to take precautions. There is talk of wearing hard hats, stout footwear and highvisibility jackets.

Sorry to be a spoiler, but he ends up telling us more about the kindly eccentric that serves as the Hill’s guardian and some history of the Druids then why the hill was built and how it was used. It was built by the Druids, but they left no historical writings that I’m aware of, thus a large void as to the details of the Hill at Silbury and their daily lives. They were polytheists and believed that even trees and rivers could have spirits; which probably accounts for their popularity with certain New Age groups. The best second hand account of their history comes from the Roman emperor Caesar in his Commentarii de Bello Gallico.

scorched, difficult to play with the dynamic range of a photo that had such a small color range, but i thought it turned out to look interesting.

Families Find One-Stop Shopping For Food, Other Items No Longer Does The Trick

The Food Marketing Institute, a trade group, has surveyed buying habits since 1974. For the first time this year, the group found strong evidence that shoppers have abandoned one-stop supermarketing.

“They’re buying their staples canned goods and cereal at discount retailers and warehouse clubs, and then they’re going to a conventional supermarket for their perishables,” said institute spokesman Bill Greer.

That’s quite different from they way Amanda Hurwitz’s parents did their marketing. It is a common way of life these days, but it comes with dangers worth watching out for chiefly, buying and spending too much, especially at specialty and warehouse stores.

Even Stew Leonard Jr., president and chief executive officer of the grocery chain of the same name, Stew Leonard’s, has said that his wife has to do a “deep shop” once a month at another grocery store to buy all the things that his store doesn’t carry, like mops or bags of dog and cat food.

“Dual-career families can’t afford to run out of toilet paper in the middle of the week,” said Joan Salge Blake, a nutrition professor and clinician at Boston University. “You’ve got to have 72 rolls of toilet paper in the basement, next to the 42 rolls of paper towels next to enough detergent to do the laundry for a small village for a year.”

The Hurwitzes, who have two children, say they spend between $500 and $600 a month on groceries, including non-food items such as paper towels and detergent. Each month, the family spends about $200 at BJ’s; $160 at Stew Leonard’s; $120 at Price Chopper; and $100 at Trader Joe’s.

The pluses: maybe consumers are breaking away from the big chains and giving smaller local businesses some traffic. Wholesale clubs being the exception. A family of four just  can’t afford not to take advantage of bulk shopping. The negatives: people are spending more time running to a few different places rather then one or two. Gas consumption eats up some of the savings and doesn’t do mother earth much good either.