Yealms and Broaches.

I’m a sucker for the technical vocabulary of traditional fields, the more obsolescent the better (cf. retting flax), so of course I enjoyed Rukmini Callimachi’s NY Times piece (archived) on the beleaguered master thatchers of olde England and the roofs they thatch: For the most ardent traditionalists, the only true thatch is “long straw” — typically cereal straw, like wheat, which is threshed to remove the grain — believed by historians to be England’s original roof. Then there’s water reed, the more durable alternative that is increasingly imported from abroad. For master thatcher Stephen Letch, the difference is unmistakable. The problem is that for almost everyone else it’s undetectable — which is one reason long-straw roofs are going extinct. “There’s 20 or 30 long-straw thatchers left in all of England,” said Mr. Letch, 66, who has spent much of his life trying to preserve this dying art. “We’re the last and we know we’re the last — and we know that once we’re gone, those skills…