{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/204",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "whorl",
  "thread": {
    "id": 204,
    "subject": "Betel & Quetzal",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "1997-04-15T01:05:35+00:00",
    "last": "1997-04-15T15:30:00+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0004-0052@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Ranjit Bhatnagar",
        "address": "ranjit at gradient.cis.upenn.edu"
      },
      "date": "1997-04-15T01:05:35+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) Betel & Quetzal",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Why is the extremely minor (?) character Maytera Betel\nalways carefully described as dark and sleepy-eyed?  It's\nbothering me.  Sounds dangerously like a deliberate clue,\nlike Tussah's coarse skin.  I can't think of any other\nsleepy-eyed characters, but Poppy of the yellow house is\ndark, and named, like Betel, for a narcotic plant.  Could\nBetel have reenacted Rose's shame more recently, and do we\ncare?\n\nBy the way, there seem to be two different, unrelated plants\ncalled betel, both of which are narcotic.\n\nAlso, I don't remember anyone commenting on the passage in\nIII, p17, in which Quetzal removes a powder puff from a\ndrawer across the room, without leaving his chair.  So does\nhe have a chair with wheels, or telekinesis, that's what I\nwant to know.\n\nI just watched Disney's _Jungle Book,_ and now Quetzal makes\nme think of a cross between Disney's serpent Kaa and the\nSimpsons' Montgomery Burns (as playing a vampire in the\nHalloween special).\n\n\tr."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0004-0054@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "m.driussi",
        "address": "m.driussi at genie.com"
      },
      "date": "1997-04-15T15:30:00+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) Betel & Quetzal",
      "in_reply_to": "<whorl-v0004-0052@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Reply:  Item #5599352 from WHORL at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET00#\n\nRanjit,\n\nI agree with you--that Betel is a puzzler.  She was a sibyl at Sun\nStreet and might have been senior sibyl when Magnesia the maid of all\nwork posed for the painting (see Q&D \"Magnesia\" entry for the tangle\naround the painting).  I also agree there is something of the \"shame\nof Rose\" going on, also linked in with that painting thing, where we\nare told \"the artist was a relative of the senior sibyl,\" \"the artist's mother\nposed as Molpe,\" (the painting perhaps took place at the manteion, otherwise\nwhy would Magnesia be around?); so how many relatives in this scene,\nand why were they all at the manteion?  Unless there were just the\nwoman (sibyl) and her son (artist)?\n\nEven if that doesn't pan out--Betel may have been the sibyl whose\ndeath triggered the need to bring a chem sibyl into the manteion.\n\nGood hunting, Ranjit!  Tell us what you find.\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}