Babbles

“In Russian, Baba Yaga’s name is not capitalized. Indeed, it is not a name at all, but a description—“old lady yaga” or perhaps “scary old woman.”  There is often more than one Baba Yaga in a story, and thus we should really say “a Baba Yaga,” “the Baba Yaga.” We do so in these tales when a story would otherwise be confusing. We have continued the western tradition of capitalizing Baba Yaga, since the words cannot be translated and have no other meaning in English (aside perhaps from the pleasant associations of a rum baba).  There is no graceful way to put the name in the plural in English, and in Russian tales multiple iterations of Baba Yaga never appear at the same time, only in sequence: Baba Yaga sisters or cousins talk about one another, or send travelers along to one another, but they do not live together.  The first-person pronoun “I” in Russian, ‘ia,’ is also uncapitalized. In some tales our witch is called only “Yaga.” A few tales refer to her as “Yagishna,” a patronymic form suggesting that she is Yaga’s daughter rather than Yaga herself. (That in turn suggests that Baba Yaga reproduces parthenogenetically, and some scholars agree that she does.)  The lack of capitalization in every published Russian folktale also hints at Baba Yaga’s status as a type rather than an individual, a paradigmatic mean or frightening old woman.  This description in place of a name, too, could suggest that it was once a euphemism for another name or term, too holy or frightening to be spoken, and therefore now long forgotten.”

I own a book of folktales that includes a Baba Yaga story which describes the witch as “a Baba Yaga,” making it clear that this is a type of witch, not an individual name.

What're you looking at? I'm not afraid of you, ya know. Even if you are my elder!!!

If you want the main character to be a woman, go find stories about women. If you don't think those exist, your two options are either, stop assuming the media you want doesn't exist and learn to look for it, or figure out how to write.

As a neurologist, I’ll give you the pretty name for it: cognitive reserve.

Two truths and a lie, tagged by @bitbrain86

Oof. I just put a batch of vintage clothing in to soak, which is a whole big production requiring putting a plastic tub in my bathtub (because they’re going to be soaking for at least a full day and I still need to shower in there tomorrow) and filling it up with yellowed dresses and Retro Clean.

I can’t remember if I told you guys this but my grandpa paid a guy to put up a rock retaining wall in the backyard when my grandparents moved into their house in 1966. They live at the bottom of a mountain. The wall finally collapsed this year and my grandfather with dementia was PISSED OFFFFFF and he wanted so badly to call the guy who did it and chew him out for doing a bad job. My grandma is trying to explain that the wall lasted 60 years and the guy who did the work is probably dead and it TURNS OUT HE IS STILL ALIVE. Now we’re worried grandpa is going to get through to him (small town) and we’re going to see two 85 year old men come to blows over a rock wall that has been there since the mid-60s. My grandpa is a scrapper, he’s been to jail over a bar fight, the possibility that he WOULD fight this guy is high.