stinky springtime links

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Some fresh stinky tidbits to send you into your weekend (May it be fragrant!):

• Hitting right in the sweet spot of Nosy Girl's Smells & Stories Venn diagram is this New York Times piece, "Your Brain on Fiction:" 

"Words like 'lavender,' 'cinnamon' and 'soap,' for example, elicit a response not only from the language-processing areas of our brains, but also those devoted to dealing with smells."

• Also squarely in that sweet spot, a beautiful, pertinent passage from The Art of Fielding, a book I finished yesterday and highly recommend: 

  "He could smell the way Owen's life and habits--weed and gingery cleaners; bookbinding glue, stiff white soap and garlicky tang of his skin; hardly a trace of Henry except for a faint bouquet of ribbed gray sock--had imagined themselves deep in the walls and floorboards of the place."  

• Nosy favorite D.S. & Durga gives New York magazine a peek at their studio. I love the details and the promise of those tiny bottles. Woodyamber! Beaver extract!  

 The makings of East MidEast must be on those shelves somewhere! [photo by Wendy Goodman]

• In a column called "Politics, Odors and Soap," Nicholas Kristof mentions a study that found people "offered harsher, more moralistic views after 'fart spray' had been released in the area."  He also notes that conservatives "secrete more skin moisture when they see disgusting images, such as a person eating worms. Liberals feel disgust, too, but a bit less." Does this make for sour-smelling conservatives who grow harsher and more moralistic in the company of their sour-smelling brethren?
• Do you read the blog Letters of Note? They recently posted a letter of advice, well worth a read, from F. Scott Fitzgerald to his daughter. The letter referenced Shakespeare's Sonnet 94 and this couplet burrowed into my brain: "For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds/Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds." 
• Thanks to Britta, Beth, & my dad for these last quick links:
• Astronauts lose their sense of smell in outer space (so they crave hot sauce and look like Charlie Brown).  
• Hot on the heels of their story that spicy foods may promote heart health, NPR reported that "intense aromas lead to smaller bites." This story does not address the inverse phenomenon of instantly needing to take a giant bite of anything yummy that you smell.
• The pope gets his own fragrance, and you'll never wear it!