The French Republican calendar usually features a plant, animal or tool every day but during the month of Nivose (December/January), most of the days have a mineral associated with them. Today's mineral is slate.
My goal is to find a way to interact with the item of the day every day. And the minerals seem a bit difficult. My first thought was to go to the online magazine Slate and read it. So I did.
I started thinking about why they named their magazine Slate. And I looked up all the different definitions of slate in the dictionary. Slate, the metamorphic stone, that splinters into sheets and is often used to make shingles for slate roofs. Slate on which you can write with a piece of chalk, the earliest form of blackboard. And eventually, slate as a list of items on an agenda (he is slated to appear at 5 pm) or candidates.
My American Heritage Dictionary says that slate and slat are related and both come from Old French, esclat which means splinter. It even sounds like a splinter.
Found a fascinating map that shows where slate is found in England. Now I'm looking for one that will tell me where slate can be found in my neighborhood. I'm also going to walk around looking for slate paving stones and walls.
