Golden Graham Plates

 I wrote about happening upon the Claremont signs and symbols on my run in the post Running with Claire.  

This was on Saturday, and the time stamp for that photo had me at that spot at 8:29 am PT.  Earlier that morning, I took a picture of a cereal box, of all things.  When we visit my folks, the kids of course love that they get to eat cereals that they would never get to have at home.

One such cereal this last weekend was Golden Grahams.  I swear I didn't even know that they still make this cereal, but they obviously do.  It was on the kitchen counter, and as I walked by it, I suddenly became very interested in the cover of this cereal box for reasons I couldn't quite explain at the time.  I think at the moment I was remembering some of my earlier writings and winks regarding honey and graham crackers (see The Honey Maid OR:  What crazy people see on graham cracker boxes and Oreos).  I also noticed the 'retro recipe' call out, and it just caught my attention.  So I took a picture of it, and then didn't really give it too much thought afterward in terms of trying to understand why I felt I should take the picture.

Here it is:

I took this at 7:24am, and then left to go on my run shortly afterward, coming across Claremont about one hour later.

Given that I attribute the Claremont events on that run to Claire, I sort of have to lay the blame on her for my sudden interest in the Golden Grahams box.  She would seem the likely suspect.  And in hindsight, this kind of felt like that type of experience - right there with the Honey Maid, Oreos, Sunflower Lady, Gold/Silver audio jack little symbols, and whatever else.

And I didn't know what to do with it, but was after reading a bit more of William Tychonievich's recent interest in Plates, I thought back to this Golden Graham box and imagery, and looked into a bit more.

My first thought was couldn't these Golden Graham cereal pieces resemble Plates like one would find in a book?  Flat little rectangles or squares making up a little bowl of Golden Plates.  The horizontal lines on each one even appeared to me to be like the lines one finds on notebook paper to facilitate writing.  You could engrave on this little Grahams in nice straight horizontal rows using these guides if your stylus was super small.

My attention was soon drawn to the "retro recipe" marketing tag.  This had popped out to me when I first noticed the box and took the picture, but I couldn't quite determine why.

"Retro" means something from the recent past, it seems.  Etymonline says more specifically "formerly, in the past; backward, behind".  In this case, on the back of the box was a bunch of 80's references with the tagline "Remember the 80s" (which was kind of funny because if you notice quite a lot of my winks and little references have been from 80s pop culture, songs, and movies).  I didn't take a picture of the back of the box, but did find it online:

"Recipe" is pretty interesting.  I am obviously familiar with the word from cooking and baking, but its origins tie in pretty neatly to recent topics.  The word is French in origin (of course), and per Etymonline originally meant: "medical prescription, a formula for the composing of a remedy written by a physician"

OK, so recall that we have a theme here of 'sickness' in my investigation of the Numenoreans.  I have suggested that both Pharazon and the Numenoreans (including most of the original Elvish Fathers) were sick, and thus not themselves, in the course of events that culminated in the assault on Eressea.  William's own writings and themes seem to tie into this, with references to "ailers" in one of those poems.  More directly, in his recent post Feuilles-oh, sauvez la vie moi, which is the one directly about "Leaves" saving lives, he mention that the lyrics/ words of both Arthur Rimbaud and Art Garfunkel mention being sick, and that both imagined Leaves as a remedy or cure.  Here is how he specifically put it:

Rimbaud imagines preserving his lost youth by writing it on leaves of gold. Garfunkel sings, in French, "Leaves-oh, save my life!" Both Rimbaud and Garfunkel go on to talk about being sick.

Putting Retro Recipe together with these definitions, we literally have something like "A medical prescription from the past".  In other words, we have a medical cure for sick people, which is something that is written out (as prescriptions are), and both the cure/prescription and when it was written come to us from the past, preserved on Golden-ish Plates.

I find that a pretty fascinating fit with everything.  Maybe just me, though.

Further, the Golden Grahams marketing is all about nostalgia and lost childhood, specifically mentioning the 80s, the decade of many of our childhoods (definitely for both William and me).  Some of the specific references on the back of the box are funny in light of this tie in to writings on plates potentially preserving the record of a time long ago.  Statements like "The taste of your childhood!", or my favorite, the mention of 'waking up' on Saturday with a bowl of Golden Plates, I mean, Grahams.  Too funny.  I love it.

Anyway, so looks like it was more than just a run under Claire's influence, but there was a wink or two earlier that morning as well that seem to tie into William's recent Plates-Leaves focus.