Back to Tuesday morning, on patrol for my feet, with food diversions. Previous posting: shoes, Sushirrito, and Umami Burger. This one: pedicures and mangosteens.
The pedicure, my first from a nail salon (a suggestion made by my family doctor, as an alternative to the podiatrists at Palo Alto Medical Foundation), at a relatively recent addition to the neighborhood: Mangosteen Nails & Spa, 156 Hamilton Ave. in P.A. Very nice experience, not expensive, and it came with a foot massage (but without the advice on foot health that the podiatrists provided).
So I asked the (Vietnamese-born) proprietor why the place was called Mangosteen. Turns out it was her childhood nickname.
So on to mangosteens:
From Wikipedia:
The purple mangosteen (Garcinia mangostana), colloquially known simply as mangosteen, is a tropical evergreen tree believed to have originated in the Sunda Islands and the Moluccas of Indonesia. It grows mainly in Southeast Asia, southwest India and other tropical areas such as Puerto Rico and Florida, where the tree has been introduced. The tree grows from 6 to 25 m (19.7 to 82.0 ft) tall. The fruit of the mangosteen is sweet and tangy, juicy, somewhat fibrous, with fluid-filled vesicles (like the flesh of citrus fruits), with an inedible, deep reddish-purple colored rind (exocarp) when ripe.
Biological and linguistic note: mangosteens and mangos are not related biologically; the similarity in their names is an accident. Brief etymologies from NOAD2:
mangosteen: ORIGIN late 16th cent.: from Malay manggustan, dialect variant of manggis.
mango: ORIGIN late 16th cent.: from Portuguese manga, from a Dravidian language.
Back to my feet. Watching a young woman tend to my toes inevitably led me to the English nursery rhyme “This Little Piggie” (with fingerplay), known since the 18th century:
This little piggy went to market, [wiggle the “big” toe]
This little piggy stayed home, [wiggle the “long” toe]
This little piggy had roast beef [wiggle the “middle” toe]
This little piggy had none, [wiggle the “ring” toe]
And this little piggy cried wee wee wee all the way home.
[wiggle the “pinky” toe and tickle the bottom of the foot]
And then, I suppose inevitably, this led me to the song “Piggies”, which isn’t about toes at all. From Wikipedia:
“Piggies” is a song by the English rock group the Beatles from their 1968 album The Beatles (also known as “the White Album”). Written by George Harrison as a social commentary, the song serves as an Orwellian satire on greed and consumerism. Among several elements it incorporates from classical music, the track features harpsichord and orchestral strings in the baroque pop style, which are contrasted by Harrison’s acerbic lyrics and the sound of grunting pigs.
… In the context of the turbulent political climate of 1968, “Piggies” was adopted by the counterculture as an anti-establishment theme song.
A potent earworm that stuck with me through the rest of the day.
September 2, 2016 at 9:24 am |
I assume you’re familiar with the fractured-French version of the rhyme from Mots d’heures, gousses, rames, starting “dissolu typique…”.