ARSI Line - MARCH, 2013
Recent Developments in Advanced Rutabaga Studies
Carved and Dyed Finno-Ugrian
Rutabaga Deity (c.270 B.C.E.)
DATELINE MARCH 1, 2013:
The 14th Annual Rutabaga Curling World Championship was held on December 17, 2011, at the Farmer's Market in Ithaca, NY. Commissioner Steve reports that "this year's curl was great as usual" and Gold Medal Winner Steve Paisley will surely be a great ambassador for our sport." Steve adds that Mr. Paisley's enthralling account, "The Man with the Huge Oblong Rutabaga", was "done so well that it really gives the flavor of our event from the eyes and mind of a contestant!" Highly recommended!
It is with some sadness, but also with profound gratitude and congratulations, that we note the following from Commissioner Steve:
"I myself am stepping down as Commissioner (16 years is enough!) but am handing the role into the able hands of our Ithaca Farmers' market to be run by a Curl Committee as it seems like it will take at least 20 people to replace me!"
Steve, rutabagans everywhere will miss you and your unwavering support for global rutaculture -- be sure to keep in touch!
DATELINE MARCH 3, 2013: Visit our blog for the latest news on an exciting scientific breakthrough that could fundamentally alter the human organism and expand global rutabaga markets!
DATELINE MARCH 4, 2013: Our guest blogger of the month at The Rutabagan offers an eloquent summary of the rutabaga's many virtues. A tip of ARSI's hat to Diane at the world's fare, a blog that amply deserves a bookmark and regular visits. Thanks also to Diane for bringing to our attention this astute comparison between the rutabaga and the turnip by Garrison Keillor on NPR's "Prairie Home Companion:"
"So many people confuse rutabagas with turnips. They're not alike at all. Rutabagas have a pleasant yellow-orange color, large friendly-looking leaves, and a smooth dense texture. Turnips are fish-belly white and purple on top like a bad bruise and have hairy leaves and taste brackish, like swamp water. Rutabagas are the root crop that any sensible person would prefer."
DATELINE MARCH 12, 2013: Meanwhile, The Oregonian, via its OregonLive website, has belatedly recognized the existence of ARSI and the International Year of the Rutabaga.
DATELINE MARCH 19, 2013: A crack team of
Uzbeki exobotanists speculates that the rutabaga may have had
extraterrestrial origins. Fossilized rutabagas from the area
surrounding the Syrdar Crater in southern Uzbekistan were distributed
in a "splatter pattern" characteristic of ejecta, the debris from
meteorite collisions. Incredibly, it appears that the rutabaga spores
survived the impact of the meteorite and quickly seeded the area.
Many hardy clusters of adult rutabagas flourished in this arid region
for several millennia. Carbon dating of the fossil rutabagas indicates
the collision occurred 1.6 billion (+/- 100 million) years ago.
Spectroscopic analysis indicates that the large meteorite bearing the rutabaga seeds may have originated from Sycorax, one of Uranus' outer moons.
DATELINE MARCH 16, 2013: Garrison Keillor, host of Prairie Home Companion, has declared that "the meaning of life is a rutabaga." We at ARSI couldn't agree more, and we have invited Mr. Keillor to bring his show to our International Headquarters in Forest Grove (see our blog for more details).
NEWSFLASH MARCH 14, 2013: In late-breaking news, a libelous story in an Idaho trade publication claims that ARSI's plans to increase human and animal consumption of the rutabaga "would have disastrous effects on the world's climate by increasing emissions of greenhouse gases, specifically methane and sulphur dioxide." The author offers a bogus chemical analysis to prove his preposterous claim that the rutabaga is "nearly indigestible and [is] associated with pathological levels of flatus production." ARSI's relentless team of litigators is preparing a lawsuit against the turnipite source of this report, the GLAT [Gotta Love a Turnip] Times of Ketchum, Idaho.
Experimental rutabaga fields near
Forest Grove
DATELINE MARCH 7, 2013: The ARSI Hotline has been up and running since last April, thanks to the generosity of a local benefactor. This toll-free number is 1-87 RUTABAGA (or 1-877-882-2242). The line was added to relieve the constant pressure on ARSI's switchboard operators, who must field over two thousand calls per day. Rather than add one of those annoying IVR (Interactive Voice Response) systems, we offer either human operators or a simple voicemail program when our operators are swamped. (In fact, we hope to receive a commendation from Gethuman's outstanding site.) To date, about 50% of our calls come from lay people who are simply curious about ARSI's research. Many of them want to arrange tours. Unfortunately, our overworked staff is unable to offer tours to the public at this time. Besides, our rutabotanists are hard at work preparing this year's experimental spring crops.
DATELINE MARCH 5, 2013: As the result of experiments performed by Italian graduate students in Pisa last October, geophysicists are investigating the possibility that the extreme density of ordinary rutabagas is sufficient to confer upon them a measurable gravitational force. In a repetition of Galileo's apocryphal experiment, students from the University of Pisa simultaneously released rutabagas and spheres of platinum-iridium alloy from the top of the famous Campanile ("Leaning Tower of Pisa"). Amazingly, the rutabagas landed 0.00004859 (4.859x10-5) milliseconds before the spheres in apparent defiance of Newton's Universal Law of Gravitation.
Stunned geophysicists speculate that the gravitational attraction between the rutabagas and the earth was sufficient to accelerate their fall beyond the expected 9.80665 meters/second2. These findings have profound implications for gravitational theory in such areas as the Bouguer anomaly, gravity lenses, gauge bosons, the existence of the graviton and the general theory of relativity.
DATELINE FEBRUARY 28, 2013: Astrophysicists at NASA, intrigued by the experiments in Pisa, will place an oversize, genetically-engineered rutabaga on an upcoming flight of the Space Shuttle. The giant rutabaga will be placed in geostationary orbit at 24,000 miles to permit the Hubble Space Telescope to determine whether light from the distant star Aldebaran is bent by the rutabaga's gravitational field. This effect was predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity and subsequently proven, but never with an object so small as a rutabaga.
DATELINE FEBRUARY 26, 2013: A federal lawsuit has been filed in Houston to prevent NASA's proposed experiment to demonstrate the astonishing gravitational force of the rutabaga (see above). The plaintiffs, representing a coalition of citizens' groups and millennarians, fear that the giant rutabaga (weighing 1,348 pounds/612 kg.) will cause catastrophic damage when it re-enters the earth's atmosphere and collides with the surface. Attorney Brenda Kraven claims that "our team of physicists calculated that this hideous object will generate as much kinetic energy as an ordinary meteorite four times its size."
Meanwhile, an investigative report in this month's Bulletin of ARSI Scientists reveals that Kraven and her client organization, "Defend Our Fragile Earth," are intimately linked to various turnipite front groups.
DATELINE FEBRUARY 28, 2013: ARSI paleobotanists actively pursue their research on the exciting hypothesis that the rutabaga is the missing link between the mineral and vegetable worlds. Indeed, in 2003 they discovered that the latticed molecular structure of Brassica napus bears a striking resemblance to certain feldspars mined from the beneath the plains of northern Saxony in Germany. Carbon-14 dating has now revealed that the oldest feldspars are, in fact, fossilized rutabagas from the Precambrian era.
Check out the
ARSI Dateline Archives for previous monthly issues.
Visit THE RUTABAGAN now and blog with us!
Send An Email Message to Obie MacAroon III, ARSI President for Life,
at obie(at)rutastudies.org
[Fight spam: just replace (at) with @ symbol!]
NOTE: Due to the huge volume of correspondence, we regret
that we are unable to guarantee a personal response.
Or call the ARSI Hotline toll-free at
1-87 RUTABAGA (or 1-877-882-2242),
The Rutabaga in the Arts and Sports
In the U.K., the traditional Somerset sport of mangold hurling receives loving attention at the site of the Mangold Hurling Association. Includes advice on perfecting one's skills that applies equally to all "ballistic root vegetables," including the rutabaga.
Each November the children of Richterswil, in the Swiss canton of Zurich, carry elaborately-carved rutabaga lanterns through the streets during the Rabeliechtli festival. These lanterns, and the giant sculptures made from them, are impressive and authentic works of folk art, as demonstrated by the fine photographs of Michael Sengers.
The great Paul Shelasky, despite a few botanical inaccuracies, captures the essence of rutaculture in his classic Rutabaga Boogie:
I got rutabaga skins for the clothes that I wear.
Rutabaga extract to wash my hair.
Rutabaga vapor instead of gas.
Rutabaga paper to wipe my ... nose.
Do the rutabaga boogie.
Come along with me.
With a fresh rutabaga pulled right off the tree.
Do the rutabaga boogie.
Do it all the time.
With a fresh rutabaga pulled right off the vine.
--From "The Good Ol' Persons" album (Bay Records, 1977)
Get back to your musical roots with "Veggie Music" from the Wyld Men, who craft fine instruments from various vegetables (including a "slide potato" and a kazoo made from a red pepper). And be sure to listen to the melodic intricacies of the Rutabega [sic.] Blues, apparently played with a rutabaga flute. [Just follow the link to a 2-minute MP3 version of this classic.]
Soupsong: Patricia Solley's dazzling and irreverent tour of the world of soup on the web's most literary food-related site. Plan on getting lost in this vast enterprise, and be sure to subscribe to the email list. Here's a sample from the rutabaga page:
"These fibrous yellow turnips, or swedes as they're called (Brassica napobrassica), were immortalized in my young mind by Carl Sandburg's short tale How They Broke Away to Go to the Rootabaga Country."
And so if you are going to the Rootabaga Country you will know when you get there, because the railroad tracks change from straight to zigzag, the pigs have bibs on and it is the fathers and mothers who fix it." And don't forget your "long slick yellow leather slab ticket with a blue spanch across it."
The lowly rutabaga has even made an impression on modern erotic art, as demonstrated by David Gilhooly's ceramic work Frog Seducing a Rutabaga in an Overstuffed Armchair (shown as an animated GIF).
More on ARSI and the Web
Selected Bibliography on the Rutabaga
On the Evolution, Spread and Names of Rutabaga, by Hannu Ahokas, Interdisciplnary Biology, Agriculture, Linguistics and Antiquities 1:1-32 (2004). [Note: This is simply the best and most comprehensive scholarly work ever done on the rutabaga, with the possible exception of the following.]
History of the Advanced Rutabaga Studies Institute [Vols. 1-26], by Obie MacAroon III, ARSI President for Life (Forest Grove, OR: 2002)
Esprimienta dei Aceleratione Gravisimma: Il Rutabagia Cadere di Campanile a Pisa, by P.E. Verza, Guido Ripieno and R. Fagioli, Giornali di Qualcosa Cardere, Universita di Pisa (Italy), Volume 357: 211-386 (September, 2002)
Celtic Rutabaga Cults and Ancillary Druidic Rites, by Susan N. Dusan,
Journal of Rutabaga Science and Cultural Research Volume 78: 116-531
(1999)
Superplant: The Rutabaga in the Demographics of Pre-Potato Ireland and
Scotland, by Erin Go Bragh (Dublin: 1904)
Rutabaga Vodka: A Folk History with Recipes, by K. Kowalski (Warsaw: 2003)
The Undiscovered Miracle Food: Nutritional Qualities of the Rutabaga,
U.S. Food and Drug Administration Policy Study No. 97-1452A (2000)
Das Untermolekularishistes Gestructionimus Des Rutabagas und
Feldsparein Ubersaxonishes, by Gerhard Vielbig von Gasthutte in
Paleobotanishes Studieren der Rutabaga XVI: 38-416 (Berlin:
September, 2000)
A Deconstructionist Analysis of 'Hallowe'en' Semiotics, Jacques
Derrida and Marilyn Manson (Paris: 1998)
Etudes Culturelles et Scientifiques Rutabagiennes, Julia Kristeva
(Paris: 1999)
Mark Trail, by Dodd and Elrod, "The Sunday Oregonian" (Portland:
10/26/97)
ARSI Line: A Survey of Recent Developments in Advanced Rutabaga Studies.
