Legit medieval unit of measurement: the ass-load. pic.twitter.com/hytzNQiEIp
— Dr. Renée Trilling (@ReneeTrilling) November 16, 2021
Dr. Renée Trilling is a professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her teaching and research emphases are in medieval English literature, so it is no coincidence that she discovered this passage in Natural Materials of the Holy Land and the Visual Translation of Place, 500-1500, a scholarly anthology published in 2017. Her photo is from p. 119 of Dr. Lucy Donkin's contribution titled "Earth from Elsewhere: Burial in Terra Sancta beyond the Holy Land."
Donkin's passage here relates to the movement of dirt from the grave of Saint Peter by Saint Lolan, an 11th Century Scottish bishop. That's a long haul from Rome, but four well-built asses were up to the charge.
-via Rebecca B
Comments (7)
Its empire was bought for Billions at a time when billions dollar deals were rare.
Too often fidgety management seems to feel like they ought to be *doing* something. "Helping", in their minds. Don't. We got it. That one *little* thing you want to change for no reason beyond whimsy? It's not little when I have to redo the models and the drawings and lag the machine shop who just got done doing the tooling. And that's not even considering how many other issues your *little* addition is creating inadvertently that now have to be addressed. So, while I know it bruises your already ropey ego, shut up, go away, and let me do my job. Don't you have a report to file or something?