I might copy a few other passages from it later, but if anyone is looking for a really fantastic history read I'm currently going through Ida Pruitt's "Old Madam Yin" and it is just fantastically interesting.
C.W. and Anna Pruitt were baptist missionaries who moved to a small village in China in the latter half of the 19th century. They believed in social flexibility, and typically dressed in Chinese fashion, learned the language and culture, and really seem to have spent most of their time educating rather than preaching. Their eldest daughter Ida was born in 1888 and raised in China before returning to the US for an education (she gets sent away in 1900, so I'm assuming she was sent away because of the outbreak of the boxer rebellion), but eventually returns to China where she'll spend most of her life as a social worker. She was bilingual and bicultural, and from her writings you rather get the impression that if anything she's a bit more Chinese than American. During the Japanese occupation of Beijing her (chinese-style) home compound was a safe house for Chinese resistance members.
She was also one of the few Americans to still be allowed into China after the communist revolution, and after the state department revoked her passport for travelling to a banned country she sued the government with the ACLU to get it back. She died in 1985.
Her writings include an autobiography and two books about Chinese female friends of hers and Chinese female life - Old Madam Yin, about an upper class matriarch, and Daughter of Han, about a lower class peasant woman.
From Old Madam Yin, Pruitt is getting a first-time tour of Yin Lao's family compound, sometime around 1926.
"These plants are as much trouble to me as children. Morning and evening I must see to them." Lao Tai-tai laughed in delight. "My children tell me I work too hard over them, but what do they know?"
"Come up the hill", she said when we got to the south end of the garden, and she led us up the artificial mountain of rocks and earth piled up against the street wall. "The women who lived here in the old days could not get out as we do, and this was the only way they could see anything of what was going on outside. The men liked to sit here too in the cool of a summer evening and catch the breezes." We followed her up the brick and stone path that wound around the rocks, as the Pilgrim Paths wind up around the hills to the great temples, and through the tiny valleys until we reached the little square pavilion with open sides, on top of the highest peak. We sat on the round stone stools around the stone table and looked into the street, and thought about the funeral and wedding processions that would have brought the women of the household here in the old days. They would have heard the horns blowing and the gongs beating and have come up to see the many-colored banners, the sedan chairs of red and green and gold, or the catafalque. Perhaps they sat here to watch the dances given by the different guilds during the month after the New Year, or in the Fifth Moon, when they went on pilgrimage to the temple of Miao Feng Shan. There would be lion dancers, swooping with their green and gold heads and tails of paper-mache and bodies of painted cloth. There would be stilt walkers dressed in long embroidered robes and elaborate headdresses to represent the Immortals. There would be sword dancers with their red sashes and baggy black trousers. They would be parading through the streets from the temples where they practiced and where they kept their gear and their god. These things we could think as we sat on the stone stools and imagined ourselves women of the past. The twelve-year-old granddaughter looked around curiously. Perhaps she had not been up before. She had no such need to peep at the world from afar as she would have had if she had been born to this house a few decades sooner. She went each day in her own rickshaw through the streets and hutungs to a modern school.
Kana on
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Consent of the Governed Day of Note 4/25: The United States declared war on Spain on this date in 1898. Hostilities ceased by August 12th of that year and by the end of the summer the U.S. had added Cuba, Guam, Hawaii, Philippines, and Puerto Rico to what may now be termed the American empire.
From Sarah Vowell's "Unfamiliar Fishes":
On March 7, 1900, Henry Cabot Lodge delivered a speech in the Senate in which he took up the crucial question of whether or not the imperialist developments of 1898 were a betrayal of the ideals of 1776. “Our opponents put forward as their chief objection that we have robbed these people of their liberty . . . in defiance of the doctrine of the The Declaration of Independence in regard to the consent of the governed.”
The evil genius of Lodge’s argument is that he bypasses the question of whether the United States has received the consent of the islanders now governed by smacking down the notion that consent of the governed is even possible. He exposes the twofaced irony of the Declaration, pointing out that a healthy percentage of English colonists circa 1776 were loyal to the British crown. “Did we ask their consent?” he said of the decision to sever ties with England. “Not at all.”
Then, after mentioning the founders’ obvious disenfranchisement of white women and inhabitants of African descent, Lodge calls Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration’s author, “the greatest expansionist in our history” for negotiating the Louisiana Purchase. Lodge wonders, “Did he ask the consent of the thirty thousand white men at the mouth of the Mississippi, or of the Indians roaming over the wide expanse of the Louisiana Purchase? Such an idea never occurred to him for one moment. He took Louisiana without the consent of the governed, and he ruled it without the consent of the governed.”
Lodge goes on to mention that after the Civil War, “we forced the Southern States back into the Union” without their say-so; that the U.S. bought Alaska from the Russians without asking the permission of anyone living there; and that in his home state of Massachusetts, women and children are disenfranchised, thus restricting registered voters to one fifth of the state’s population—and only half of those registered voted in the last election.
In short, Lodge asserts, American government derived from the consent of the governed “has never existed.”
I’m not sure what is more disturbing—that the annexation of the Philippines, along with Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Guam in 1898 is a betrayal of the principle of self-government established in 1776 or Lodge’s allegation that the principle of self-government was, is, and always will be a delusion. (excerpt)
Consent of the Governed Day of Note 4/25: The United States declared war on Spain on this date in 1898. Hostilities ceased by August 12th of that year and by the end of the summer the U.S. had added Cuba, Guam, Hawaii, Philippines, and Puerto Rico to what may now be termed the American empire.
From Sarah Vowell's "Unfamiliar Fishes":
On March 7, 1900, Henry Cabot Lodge delivered a speech in the Senate in which he took up the crucial question of whether or not the imperialist developments of 1898 were a betrayal of the ideals of 1776. “Our opponents put forward as their chief objection that we have robbed these people of their liberty . . . in defiance of the doctrine of the The Declaration of Independence in regard to the consent of the governed.”
The evil genius of Lodge’s argument is that he bypasses the question of whether the United States has received the consent of the islanders now governed by smacking down the notion that consent of the governed is even possible. He exposes the twofaced irony of the Declaration, pointing out that a healthy percentage of English colonists circa 1776 were loyal to the British crown. “Did we ask their consent?” he said of the decision to sever ties with England. “Not at all.”
Then, after mentioning the founders’ obvious disenfranchisement of white women and inhabitants of African descent, Lodge calls Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration’s author, “the greatest expansionist in our history” for negotiating the Louisiana Purchase. Lodge wonders, “Did he ask the consent of the thirty thousand white men at the mouth of the Mississippi, or of the Indians roaming over the wide expanse of the Louisiana Purchase? Such an idea never occurred to him for one moment. He took Louisiana without the consent of the governed, and he ruled it without the consent of the governed.”
Lodge goes on to mention that after the Civil War, “we forced the Southern States back into the Union” without their say-so; that the U.S. bought Alaska from the Russians without asking the permission of anyone living there; and that in his home state of Massachusetts, women and children are disenfranchised, thus restricting registered voters to one fifth of the state’s population—and only half of those registered voted in the last election.
In short, Lodge asserts, American government derived from the consent of the governed “has never existed.”
I’m not sure what is more disturbing—that the annexation of the Philippines, along with Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Guam in 1898 is a betrayal of the principle of self-government established in 1776 or Lodge’s allegation that the principle of self-government was, is, and always will be a delusion. (excerpt)
That's fascinating in lots of ways! Thanks for sharing it!
0
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Unfamiliar Fishes is a real good book, I finished it just a couple weeks ago
I highly recommend it if you're interested in the past/present/future of Hawai'i
+1
MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
The Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in the City and Diocese of Washington, aka the Washington National Cathedral, like any good cathedral, took a ludicrously long time to get completely built. The very first foundation stone was laid on September 29, 1907; President Theodore Roosevelt gave a speech. In the presence of President George H. W. Bush in 1990, the final filial (the ornamental spiky bit thing at the very tippy top) was placed and the cathedral was finished after 83 years.
Also like any good cathedral, in order to protect the masonry from erosion and other water damage, grotesques and gargoyles (which are specialized grotesques with a water spout built in, often so it looks like the water is spewing from their mouths when it rains) were carved and placed all over. You know the usual type, the fanciful but often kinda freaky-looking carved animal/monster creatures, but it could be pretty much anything so long as it deflects water in some fashion or another. And since the cathedral was still being constructed as of very recently...
Yes indeed, that's Darth Vader glaring down eternally from the national cathedral. National Geographic ran a contest in the 1980s for children to design grotesques for the cathedral. One of the winners was a boy from Nebraska and presumed big Star Wars fan with his detailed drawing that is now immortalized in limestone.
So a significant chunk of my day-to-day at work these days is working through our collection of several thousand immigration stories submitted by people and cleaning up their DB entries - making sure they're all connected to other interesting stuff in the collection, making note of places named in them for some possible future work, etc. Basically just making sure anything past the simplest of submissions has lots of branching-off points which people could use to explore the collection in their research, that sort of thing.
Obviously this involves actually reading said stories, so as far as database drudgery goes I'm rather okay with this.
Anyway, today I was mostly reading stories by people who came to Canada in the immediate postwar years - like VE day through 1950 or so. (They pretty much all came from Europe since the country still had its effective whites-only immigration policy at the time.) A lot of stories in that era are, well, very much talking about a Europe that's a tiny bit different from the one we've got now.
One example involved a story from a guy from Germany who came here a year or two after the war, possibly as part of the displaced-person wave but possibly on his own. Single guy, about twenty years old. He says in his story that his motivation for crossing the Atlantic was so that he could "get rich" in the New World. Fair enough! The standard reason! He makes it across the Atlantic, disembarks and goes through processing early on the morning of his arrival, heads into town to grab some breakfast, and gets a standard bacon-and-eggs sort of breakfast someplace near the pier. Talking with the locals, it dawns on him that eggs with breakfast is routine for people here and describes this epiphany that becoming rich took way less time than he thought it would.
Had to take a break for a bit after that one. The collection at the museum covers a bazillion bases, but every now and then one small thing or another sneaks up and just whacks you in the head with the Crowbar of Perspective.
The History Blog has a great writeup on the find, going into more detail than most of the mainstream coverage has and with their usual fantastic high-res images.
Random fact on that one: classical sources talk about huge sums of money (and sometimes other things) in terms of talents rather than the currency itself, a talent being roooooughly "what a typical person can comfortably carry for awhile." Each of the amphorae carries about one talent of coins.
0
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
I found this pretty fascinating - it's a well designed enough thing to watch, but I recommend also opening up the article and checking out some of their additional graphs
It is, for the record, only legal immigration data, as that's what we have the best records on, and does not include "forced immigration" (slavery)
+10
Indie Winterdie KräheRudi Hurzlmeier (German, b. 1952)Registered Userregular
Bombers in World War I were typically manned by two crew members, a pilot and an observer. The pilot operated the forward machine gun and the observer the rear one, so they depended on one another for their survival. In addition, the two men would share the same hut or tent, eat their meals together, and often spend all their free time together. This closeness produced “some remarkable and amusing results,” writes Hubert Griffith in R.A.F. Occasions (1941):
There were pilots who took the precaution of teaching their observers to fly, with the primitive dual-control fitted to the R.E.8 of those days — and at least one couple who used to take over the controls almost indiscriminately from one another: there was the story that went round the mess, of Creaghan (the pilot) arriving down out of the air one day and accusing his observer of having made a bad landing, and of Vigers, the observer, in turn accusing Creaghan of having made a bad landing. It turned out on investigation that each of them had thought the other to be in control of the aircraft; that because of this neither of them, in fact, had been in control at all; and that, in the absence of any guiding authority, the machine had made a quite fairly creditable landing on her own.
Griffith writes, “It was, I suppose, the most personal relationship that ever existed.”
I found this pretty fascinating - it's a well designed enough thing to watch, but I recommend also opening up the article and checking out some of their additional graphs
It is, for the record, only legal immigration data, as that's what we have the best records on, and does not include "forced immigration" (slavery)
right at the very end (1:07-1:08) is actually what it looks like in 2017 when Donald Trump is president
I found this pretty fascinating - it's a well designed enough thing to watch, but I recommend also opening up the article and checking out some of their additional graphs
It is, for the record, only legal immigration data, as that's what we have the best records on, and does not include "forced immigration" (slavery)
right at the very end (1:07-1:08) is actually what it looks like in 2017 when Donald Trump is president
It's kinda cool you can see the Depression happen
+1
Metzger MeisterIt Gets Worsebefore it gets any better.Registered Userregular
Bombers in World War I were typically manned by two crew members, a pilot and an observer. The pilot operated the forward machine gun and the observer the rear one, so they depended on one another for their survival. In addition, the two men would share the same hut or tent, eat their meals together, and often spend all their free time together. This closeness produced “some remarkable and amusing results,” writes Hubert Griffith in R.A.F. Occasions (1941):
There were pilots who took the precaution of teaching their observers to fly, with the primitive dual-control fitted to the R.E.8 of those days — and at least one couple who used to take over the controls almost indiscriminately from one another: there was the story that went round the mess, of Creaghan (the pilot) arriving down out of the air one day and accusing his observer of having made a bad landing, and of Vigers, the observer, in turn accusing Creaghan of having made a bad landing. It turned out on investigation that each of them had thought the other to be in control of the aircraft; that because of this neither of them, in fact, had been in control at all; and that, in the absence of any guiding authority, the machine had made a quite fairly creditable landing on her own.
Griffith writes, “It was, I suppose, the most personal relationship that ever existed.”
*frantically scribbles "yaoi pilots of the great war" on note pad*
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
A letter written from the wife of a Plantation Owner to a runaway ex-slave
Maury Co., State of Tennessee,
February 20th, 1860.
To JARM:—
I now take my pen to write you a few lines, to let you know how well we all are. I am a cripple, but I am still able to get about. The rest of the family are all well. Cherry is as well as Common. I write you these lines to let you the situation we are in—partly in consequence of your running away and stealing Old Rock, our fine mare. Though we got the mare back, she was never worth much after you took her; and as I now stand in need of some funds, I have determined to sell you; and I have had an offer for you, but did not see fit to take it. If you will send me one thousand dollars and pay for the old mare, I will give up all claim I have to you. Write to me as soon as you get these lines, and let me know if you will accept my proposition. In consequence of your running away, we had to sell Abe and Ann and twelve acres of land; and I want you to send me the money that I may be able to redeem the land that you was the cause of our selling, and on receipt of the above named sum of money, I will send you your bill of sale. If you do not comply with my request, I will sell you to some one else, and you may rest assured that the time is not far distant when things will be changed with you. Write to me as soon as you get these lines. Direct your letter to Bigbyville, Maury County, Tennessee. You had better comply with my request.
I understand that you are a preacher. As the Southern people are so bad, you had better come and preach to your old acquaintances. I would like to know if you read your Bible? If so can you tell what will become of the thief if he does not repent? and, if the the blind lead the blind, what will the consequence be? I deem it unnecessary to say much more at present. A word to the wise is sufficient. You know where the liar has his part. You know that we reared you as we reared our own children; that you was never abused, and that shortly before you ran away, when your master asked if you would like to be sold, you said you would not leave him to go with anybody.
Sarah Logue.
His reply
Syracuse, N.Y., March 28, 1860.
MRS. SARAH LOGUE:—
Yours of the 20th of February is duly received, and I thank you for it. It is a long time since I heard from my poor old mother, and I am glad to know she is yet alive, and, as you say, "as well as common." What that means I don't know. I wish you had said more about her.
You are a woman; but had you a woman's heart you could never have insulted a brother by telling him you sold his only remaining brother and sister, because he put himself beyond your power to convert him into money.
You sold my brother and sister, ABE and ANN, and 12 acres of land, you say, because I ran away. Now you have the unutterable meanness to ask me to return and be your miserable chattel, or in lieu thereof send you $1000 to enable you to redeem the land, but not to redeem my poor brother and sister! If I were to send you money it would be to get my brother and sister, and not that you should get land. You say you are a cripple, and doubtless you say it to stir my pity, for you know I was susceptible in that direction. I do pity you from the bottom of my heart. Nevertheless I am indignant beyond the power of words to express, that you should be so sunken and cruel as to tear the hearts I love so much all in pieces; that you should be willing to impale and crucify us out of all compassion for your poor foot or leg. Wretched woman! Be it known to you that I value my freedom, to say nothing of my mother, brothers and sisters, more than your whole body; more, indeed, than my own life; more than all the lives of all the slaveholders and tyrants under Heaven.
You say you have offers to buy me, and that you shall sell me if I do not send you $1000, and in the same breath and almost in the same sentence, you say, "you know we raised you as we did our own children." Woman, did you raise your own children for the market? Did you raise them for the whipping-post? Did you raise them to be driven off in a coffle in chains? Where are my poor bleeding brothers and sisters? Can you tell? Who was it that sent them off into sugar and cotton fields, to be kicked, and cuffed, and whipped, and to groan and die; and where no kin can hear their groans, or attend and sympathize at their dying bed, or follow in their funeral? Wretched woman! Do you say you did not do it? Then I reply, your husband did, and you approved the deed—and the very letter you sent me shows that your heart approves it all. Shame on you.
But, by the way, where is your husband? You don't speak of him. I infer, therefore, that he is dead; that he has gone to his great account, with all his sins against my poor family upon his head. Poor man! gone to meet the spirits of my poor, outraged and murdered people, in a world where Liberty and Justice are MASTERS.
But you say I am a thief, because I took the old mare along with me. Have you got to learn that I had a better right to the old mare, as you call her, than MANNASSETH LOGUE had to me? Is it a greater sin for me to steal his horse, than it was for him to rob my mother's cradle and steal me? If he and you infer that I forfeit all my rights to you, shall not I infer that you forfeit all your rights to me? Have you got to learn that human rights are mutual and reciprocal, and if you take my liberty and life, you forfeit your own liberty and life? Before God and High Heaven, is there a law for one man which is not a law for every other man?
If you or any other speculator on my body and rights, wish to know how I regard my rights, they need but come here and lay their hands on me to enslave me. Did you think to terrify me by presenting the alternative to give my money to you, or give my body to Slavery? Then let me say to you, that I meet the proposition with unutterable scorn and contempt. The proposition is an outrage and an insult. I will not budge one hair's breadth. I will not breathe a shorter breath, even to save me from your persecutions. I stand among a free people, who, I thank God, sympathize with my rights, and the rights of mankind; and if your emissaries and venders come here to re-enslave me, and escape the unshrinking vigor of my own right arm, I trust my strong and brave friends, in this City and State, will be my rescuers and avengers.
Takami Jun was born in 1907 in a Tokyo slum. He lived only with his unmarried mother, who supported the two of them through a combination of sewing and a small allowance sent by his father, the former governor of Fukui Prefecture. His father had refused to see his illegitimate son, and he was mocked and bullied by his classmates. But he grew up, attended college, and became a successful and respected writer and poet towards the end of Taisho democracy in Japan. He also became a Marxist - not very unusual for college students his age - and in 1932 he was arrested under the wide-ranging Peace Preservation Laws. He was held in prison for 6 months, during which he was tortured and forced to publicly recant his previous political positions. After his release he carefully avoided writing anything politically risky, but he did begin keeping a diary. He worked through the war as a journalist, and eventually he was offered the position of Director of the Investigation Bureau of the Japanese Literature Patriotic Association*. As Orwellian as it sounds they didn't actually do very much, but it paid him a small stipend to help him survive through the war and was a public demonstration of his political conformity.
On August 17th, 1945, 2 days after the public broadcast by Hirohito announcing the Japanese government's intention to surrender, Takami asked another reporter if the papers should write a public apology to the Japanese people.
"I fully understand that the newspapers could print nothing but lies. The people understand it too. But, all the same, for the newspapers not to feel any compunctions - it's not only the newspapers. It's a question that affects every commentator and intellectual. We writers must equally apologize."
The next day the leading article in the Yomiuri Shinbun, a leading Japanese newspaper, had an optimistic article predicting the removal of restrictions of literature. Takami wrote in his diary:
[...] I was furious. How could they have the effrontery to say such things? That's what made me furious. I don't think the point of the article is mistaken. It's quite correct. I agree. But it makes my blood boil to hear them say things that are undoubtedly true, but without sadness, without self-examination, without expression, without consistency. They always glibly come out with whatever suits the particular occasion. I can't stand their mechanical, inhuman nature. A bare month ago, they were bellowing that art and science existed for the sake of the war, that the war was the sole guiding principle - and now, the same newspapers wipe their mouths and, as if nothing has happened, have the impudence to exalt the great importance of the arts and sciences. Their shameless pose as "leaders" makes me sick. I would like to tell them to stop treating us as half-wits. [...] Enough is enough.
Two days later, he went to the last board meeting of the Japanese Literature Patriotic Association, shortened as the Bunpo. Most members were in favor of immediately dissolving the association, although one nationalist announced that he intended to commit seppuku. Takami said nothing, but privately he hoped he would. Ozaki Shiro, an ultra-nationalist, arrived late for the meeting, as they were already in the process of voting whether to absolve the association.
I had supposed that either the defeat would make him fiercely fanatical or else heartbreaking emotions would rend him utterly desolate. In face, he was extremely cheerful. [...] I felt he was putting up a shrewd front. He himself feels not the slightest responsibility for the present situation, but blames other people - the military or whoever - for having done wrong. It was enough to make me tremble with rage.
He speaks of the "present realities" but does he suppose he bears no responsibility for creating them? It's not so much that he adroitly jumped onto the bandwagon and cooperated in the brutal suppression of freedom of speech; did he not actively play a leading role? Was he not a convinced practitioner of the strategy of keeping the masses culturally ignorant? Now he comes out with the charge that the military were mistaken, but at the time, was it not he who, protected by the military, used the borrowed authority of the tiger to perform the tricks of the fox?
If I may use myself as an example [...] I went so far as to write a piece on the powerlessness of literature, saying that literature has its own role and that it was misguided to attempt to make it play the same role as bullets. I wrote in a very conciliatory manner. And what did he reply? [...]
He called me a traitor. He denounced me. Now this "traitor" weeps for the misfortune of his country. I weep because I, too, bear responsibility. And the Nippon Shugi advocate Ozaki Shiro, who labeled me a traitor, today calmly urges that we look directly at present realities and confront them. He who formerly cursed "enemy liberalists" now talks like one.
On September 29th, with American forces now occupying Japan, the Japanese press published the famous picture of Macarthur and Hirohito. Publishing a picture of the emperor would have once been unthinkable.
The Japanese authorities responded by banning any papers who had published the picture. The next day MacArthur's headquarters publicly reversed the ban, and ordered protection of the press and of free speech.
Now one can write anything at all, freely! We can publish anything at all, freely! This is the first freedom I have known since I was born. When I think back to the fact that freedom, which naturally should have been given by the people's own government, could not be given, and instead has been bestowed for the first time by the military forces of a foreign country occupying their own, I cannon escape feelings of shame. I am ashamed as someone who loves Japan, ashamed for Japan's sake. It would be understandable if an occupation army, coming in after a war in which we were defeated, had restricted our freedom, but the opposite has occurred - freedom has been guaranteed. What a shaming thing! Our own country's government robbed the people of almost every freedom, and we did nothing to remedy this loss until a notification arrived from the Army of Occupation.
Shortly afterwards, Takami visited a fellow writer, Shimaki Kensaku. Like Takami, Shimaki had also been imprisoned and threatened by the military police for leftist thought. During the war Takami, as a fellow suspected leftist probably couldn't have visited him at all. But now Shimaki was on his deathbed, although he told his wife that he wanted to make a fresh start now that he could write again. "Shimaki died without being able to make his fresh start. At the thought, I feel worse than if I had been split in two."
After the war Takami wrote poetry, and short stories set in the pre-war Asakusa district of Tokyo, where he had spent much of his youth. The Asakusa district was almost entirely destroyed in the firebombing of Tokyo. Takami died in 1965. Today the Takami Jun Prize is awarded annually to the writer of an outstanding collection of poetry.
*The investigation part of his title refers to the field of journalism, not like, investigating other writers, he wasn't secret police
Kana on
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Sanctity must not be violated.
We Japanese, surrounding that one Man,
Will form a wall of people manifold in depth.
If anyone tries to lay a finger on that Sanctity,
We Japanese, without exception, will lay down side by side
And defend Him to our last extremity.
Takamura Kotaro, 1947
To save myself from the fear of death,
I became desperate about the "desperate times" and wrote.
My countrymen at the front lines read these poems.
Men read them and went to their deaths.
The submarine captain who wrote his family
That he reread my poems each day soon afterward
went down
with his ship.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
+3
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Hey guys, you know the flail?
It's that spiked ball on the end of a chain and you swing it at people, you've probably seen it in fantasy games a lot, and maybe a bit more rarely in museums. Classic medieval weapon of warfare.
I mean, maybe didn't exist. It's pretty much impossible to prove a negative, but there's not a lot of evidence for this being something that was actually used as a weapon of war. It may have been used as a horse whip (although probably significantly less metal and spikey), or a torture implement, or even as an agricultural tool (grain flails are a very real, and very different, thing), but as a weapon of war? Not so much.
It's a wildly impractical weapon anyways. I mean, sure, the chain can add a bit of swinging force, but in a time period when at least some of the enemy combatants would be armored, that force can just as easily backfire - or in this case, back bounce. And forget about trying to fight in formation when the dude on your left is holding a flail. You'll be out of the fight before first contact with the enemy.
But it sure does look cool, right? That's actually probably part of the reason it has survived. Many of the authentic flails that we have are clearly more ornamental than functional, and there are a number of depictions of it in medieval art. That art tends to be on the more fantastical side of things, however, so it's not really valid evidence for the flail having definitively existed - it's just evidence that the artist thought it would look cool.
There was real flails used by the Hussites, but they didn't look like those. Theirs were long two handed flails made from farming equipment. The Hussites were one of the pre-reformation groups to turn against the Catholic Church and soon found themselves facing a Crusade against them. But they were pretty brutal when it came to fighting, despite their armies being mostly farmers. The main thing that made them unbeatable was their use of medieval tanks and a lack of chivalry. They used specially designed wagons to roll up next to an enemy army and make a defensive position, the wagons had wheels that were designed to lock together with the wagon next to them, creating a barricade from which the Hussites would shoot their man portable cannons and crossbows at the enemy army. The enemy army, who might not even be ready for battle at this point since the Hussites didn't care about formality, would then have the difficult job of trying to attack the Hussite army through the narrow gaps between the wagons, which made attacking soldiers vulnerable to being taken down by the defenders. This is where the flail came in, because its weaknesses didn't matter as much when the Hussites could make sure that they had the advantage. After the enemy's attack failed the Hussites would then counter attack the enemy army, taking no prisoners, because again, they were an unchivalrous bunch. Using these tactics they drove off four crusades and started attacking any of their neighbours who had supported the crusades.
You often see depictions of peasants armed with scythes, flails and other agricultural instruments - of course the question is whether those images reflect reality or just stereotypes, but equipping a spontaneously assembled army would've been really difficult in an age where most soldiers still brought their own equipment to war
Regarding the ball-and-chain flail, you have to find some reason why it shows up in art to begin with - perhaps you could trace some sort of art history of the ball-and-chain flail and find out where the image originated
Also what many people don't realize, expertly crafted Medieval and late Renaissance armor was quite bulletproof.
The staff of American Rifleman then tested it both against period firearms and modern weaponry. Source: The Gun Book for Boys
Summarising the results - .44 Magnum managed to pierce it in one go; everything beneath produced varying sizes of dents.
Admittedly, this is cheating a little - the breastplate in question was from the 17th Century. However, firearms were already coming into action just as plate armour did, and in point of fact, the very height of armour was the 16th Century. Plate armour is largely a Late Medieval and Renaissance implement, and coexisted with firearms for a bloody long time, enough that the first 'muskets' - not to be confused with 'musket' as a term for muzzle-loading blackpowder firearm; that usage came after - were heavy, four-foot-long weapons specifically intended to defeat armour, being as armour had gotten heavier and more resistant specifically because the lesser suits were getting penetrated by firearms. (In point of fact, the term 'bullet-proof' derives from this stage of history. To 'prove' his armour's quality, an armourer would quite literally shoot the breastplate he'd just made with a pistol.)
The actual reason for plate armour falling out of use is largely economic. Good plate armour was hideously expensive and time-consuming to make. Munition-quality plate was cheaper, but also less protective. With armies increasing in size thanks to the greater efficiency of firearms (the relevant term here is 'pike and shot'), rich gentlemen grew to make up a smaller and smaller contingent of European armies. After which, the cavalry decided to stop bothering with full plate, dropping more and more pieces and thickening the ones that did remain (crossref 'demi-lancers' and 'reiters'). Armour in fact remained in use on cavalrymen as late as the Napoleonic Wars (crossref 'cuirassiers'), though by then the art of making armour hadn't been kept up as much as the gun-making; the cuirasses of that time could ward off swords and lances (still in use by cavalry), bayonets, and flintlock pistols at range. Muskets wouldn't notice it, though.
Part of this explains medieval aristocracy's attitude towards warfare, as there was largely little risk. Ransoming frequently allowed one to purchase one's freedom if captured, and with full heavy armor, it was highly unlikely that one's life would be in danger. These are generalities, but they were largely true.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
How do they have copyright on something published in 1896?
I think the person who found the article just put that there for the sake of proper attribution
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
I graduate with a history degree in two days. Yesterday I received one of the awards for best senior honors thesis in history.
If anyone is interested in reading my paper (58 pages) PM me and I'll send a link. It's...interesting I guess.
+23
Indie Winterdie KräheRudi Hurzlmeier (German, b. 1952)Registered Userregular
En la mar hay una torre (“There is a Tower at the Sea”) is inspired in a Sephardic Jewish song of the same name from medieval Spain, originally documented during the first half of the twentieth century by pioneer musicologists Alberto Hemsi and Isaac Levy in locales of the Sephardic Diaspora such as Rhodes, Salonika, Alexandria, and Istanbul.
Also what many people don't realize, expertly crafted Medieval and late Renaissance armor was quite bulletproof.
The staff of American Rifleman then tested it both against period firearms and modern weaponry. Source: The Gun Book for Boys
Summarising the results - .44 Magnum managed to pierce it in one go; everything beneath produced varying sizes of dents.
Admittedly, this is cheating a little - the breastplate in question was from the 17th Century. However, firearms were already coming into action just as plate armour did, and in point of fact, the very height of armour was the 16th Century. Plate armour is largely a Late Medieval and Renaissance implement, and coexisted with firearms for a bloody long time, enough that the first 'muskets' - not to be confused with 'musket' as a term for muzzle-loading blackpowder firearm; that usage came after - were heavy, four-foot-long weapons specifically intended to defeat armour, being as armour had gotten heavier and more resistant specifically because the lesser suits were getting penetrated by firearms. (In point of fact, the term 'bullet-proof' derives from this stage of history. To 'prove' his armour's quality, an armourer would quite literally shoot the breastplate he'd just made with a pistol.)
The actual reason for plate armour falling out of use is largely economic. Good plate armour was hideously expensive and time-consuming to make. Munition-quality plate was cheaper, but also less protective. With armies increasing in size thanks to the greater efficiency of firearms (the relevant term here is 'pike and shot'), rich gentlemen grew to make up a smaller and smaller contingent of European armies. After which, the cavalry decided to stop bothering with full plate, dropping more and more pieces and thickening the ones that did remain (crossref 'demi-lancers' and 'reiters'). Armour in fact remained in use on cavalrymen as late as the Napoleonic Wars (crossref 'cuirassiers'), though by then the art of making armour hadn't been kept up as much as the gun-making; the cuirasses of that time could ward off swords and lances (still in use by cavalry), bayonets, and flintlock pistols at range. Muskets wouldn't notice it, though.
Part of this explains medieval aristocracy's attitude towards warfare, as there was largely little risk. Ransoming frequently allowed one to purchase one's freedom if captured, and with full heavy armor, it was highly unlikely that one's life would be in danger. These are generalities, but they were largely true.
Probably also explains why english archers were so hated, because they'd cheerfully shoot out the horses, and had no problem with killing wounded or helpless noblemen if it didn't look like they'd get much money from them.
Posts
C.W. and Anna Pruitt were baptist missionaries who moved to a small village in China in the latter half of the 19th century. They believed in social flexibility, and typically dressed in Chinese fashion, learned the language and culture, and really seem to have spent most of their time educating rather than preaching. Their eldest daughter Ida was born in 1888 and raised in China before returning to the US for an education (she gets sent away in 1900, so I'm assuming she was sent away because of the outbreak of the boxer rebellion), but eventually returns to China where she'll spend most of her life as a social worker. She was bilingual and bicultural, and from her writings you rather get the impression that if anything she's a bit more Chinese than American. During the Japanese occupation of Beijing her (chinese-style) home compound was a safe house for Chinese resistance members.
She was also one of the few Americans to still be allowed into China after the communist revolution, and after the state department revoked her passport for travelling to a banned country she sued the government with the ACLU to get it back. She died in 1985.
Her writings include an autobiography and two books about Chinese female friends of hers and Chinese female life - Old Madam Yin, about an upper class matriarch, and Daughter of Han, about a lower class peasant woman.
From Old Madam Yin, Pruitt is getting a first-time tour of Yin Lao's family compound, sometime around 1926.
From Sarah Vowell's "Unfamiliar Fishes":
On March 7, 1900, Henry Cabot Lodge delivered a speech in the Senate in which he took up the crucial question of whether or not the imperialist developments of 1898 were a betrayal of the ideals of 1776. “Our opponents put forward as their chief objection that we have robbed these people of their liberty . . . in defiance of the doctrine of the The Declaration of Independence in regard to the consent of the governed.”
The evil genius of Lodge’s argument is that he bypasses the question of whether the United States has received the consent of the islanders now governed by smacking down the notion that consent of the governed is even possible. He exposes the twofaced irony of the Declaration, pointing out that a healthy percentage of English colonists circa 1776 were loyal to the British crown. “Did we ask their consent?” he said of the decision to sever ties with England. “Not at all.”
Then, after mentioning the founders’ obvious disenfranchisement of white women and inhabitants of African descent, Lodge calls Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration’s author, “the greatest expansionist in our history” for negotiating the Louisiana Purchase. Lodge wonders, “Did he ask the consent of the thirty thousand white men at the mouth of the Mississippi, or of the Indians roaming over the wide expanse of the Louisiana Purchase? Such an idea never occurred to him for one moment. He took Louisiana without the consent of the governed, and he ruled it without the consent of the governed.”
Lodge goes on to mention that after the Civil War, “we forced the Southern States back into the Union” without their say-so; that the U.S. bought Alaska from the Russians without asking the permission of anyone living there; and that in his home state of Massachusetts, women and children are disenfranchised, thus restricting registered voters to one fifth of the state’s population—and only half of those registered voted in the last election.
In short, Lodge asserts, American government derived from the consent of the governed “has never existed.”
I’m not sure what is more disturbing—that the annexation of the Philippines, along with Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Guam in 1898 is a betrayal of the principle of self-government established in 1776 or Lodge’s allegation that the principle of self-government was, is, and always will be a delusion. (excerpt)
Numismatists world-wide have a collective orgasm.
That's fascinating in lots of ways! Thanks for sharing it!
I highly recommend it if you're interested in the past/present/future of Hawai'i
Also like any good cathedral, in order to protect the masonry from erosion and other water damage, grotesques and gargoyles (which are specialized grotesques with a water spout built in, often so it looks like the water is spewing from their mouths when it rains) were carved and placed all over. You know the usual type, the fanciful but often kinda freaky-looking carved animal/monster creatures, but it could be pretty much anything so long as it deflects water in some fashion or another. And since the cathedral was still being constructed as of very recently...
Yes indeed, that's Darth Vader glaring down eternally from the national cathedral. National Geographic ran a contest in the 1980s for children to design grotesques for the cathedral. One of the winners was a boy from Nebraska and presumed big Star Wars fan with his detailed drawing that is now immortalized in limestone.
Obviously this involves actually reading said stories, so as far as database drudgery goes I'm rather okay with this.
Anyway, today I was mostly reading stories by people who came to Canada in the immediate postwar years - like VE day through 1950 or so. (They pretty much all came from Europe since the country still had its effective whites-only immigration policy at the time.) A lot of stories in that era are, well, very much talking about a Europe that's a tiny bit different from the one we've got now.
One example involved a story from a guy from Germany who came here a year or two after the war, possibly as part of the displaced-person wave but possibly on his own. Single guy, about twenty years old. He says in his story that his motivation for crossing the Atlantic was so that he could "get rich" in the New World. Fair enough! The standard reason! He makes it across the Atlantic, disembarks and goes through processing early on the morning of his arrival, heads into town to grab some breakfast, and gets a standard bacon-and-eggs sort of breakfast someplace near the pier. Talking with the locals, it dawns on him that eggs with breakfast is routine for people here and describes this epiphany that becoming rich took way less time than he thought it would.
Had to take a break for a bit after that one. The collection at the museum covers a bazillion bases, but every now and then one small thing or another sneaks up and just whacks you in the head with the Crowbar of Perspective.
I certainly did
I've found some old coins and even some rare coins, but nothing like that
Then I read the link and realized there were 18 more of them.
Random fact on that one: classical sources talk about huge sums of money (and sometimes other things) in terms of talents rather than the currency itself, a talent being roooooughly "what a typical person can comfortably carry for awhile." Each of the amphorae carries about one talent of coins.
I found this pretty fascinating - it's a well designed enough thing to watch, but I recommend also opening up the article and checking out some of their additional graphs
It is, for the record, only legal immigration data, as that's what we have the best records on, and does not include "forced immigration" (slavery)
Bombers in World War I were typically manned by two crew members, a pilot and an observer. The pilot operated the forward machine gun and the observer the rear one, so they depended on one another for their survival. In addition, the two men would share the same hut or tent, eat their meals together, and often spend all their free time together. This closeness produced “some remarkable and amusing results,” writes Hubert Griffith in R.A.F. Occasions (1941):
Griffith writes, “It was, I suppose, the most personal relationship that ever existed.”
right at the very end (1:07-1:08) is actually what it looks like in 2017 when Donald Trump is president
Sound's like my mom's family except hers was in Oklahoma.
What part of Kansas?
It's kinda cool you can see the Depression happen
*frantically scribbles "yaoi pilots of the great war" on note pad*
There are examples of English or rather Anglo-Saxon from the 7th century, there would be no need to jump to Proto-Indo-European
Introductions to Indo-European linguistics generally also deal with Proto-Indo-European
His reply
On August 17th, 1945, 2 days after the public broadcast by Hirohito announcing the Japanese government's intention to surrender, Takami asked another reporter if the papers should write a public apology to the Japanese people.
The next day the leading article in the Yomiuri Shinbun, a leading Japanese newspaper, had an optimistic article predicting the removal of restrictions of literature. Takami wrote in his diary:
Two days later, he went to the last board meeting of the Japanese Literature Patriotic Association, shortened as the Bunpo. Most members were in favor of immediately dissolving the association, although one nationalist announced that he intended to commit seppuku. Takami said nothing, but privately he hoped he would. Ozaki Shiro, an ultra-nationalist, arrived late for the meeting, as they were already in the process of voting whether to absolve the association.
On September 29th, with American forces now occupying Japan, the Japanese press published the famous picture of Macarthur and Hirohito. Publishing a picture of the emperor would have once been unthinkable.
The Japanese authorities responded by banning any papers who had published the picture. The next day MacArthur's headquarters publicly reversed the ban, and ordered protection of the press and of free speech.
Shortly afterwards, Takami visited a fellow writer, Shimaki Kensaku. Like Takami, Shimaki had also been imprisoned and threatened by the military police for leftist thought. During the war Takami, as a fellow suspected leftist probably couldn't have visited him at all. But now Shimaki was on his deathbed, although he told his wife that he wanted to make a fresh start now that he could write again. "Shimaki died without being able to make his fresh start. At the thought, I feel worse than if I had been split in two."
After the war Takami wrote poetry, and short stories set in the pre-war Asakusa district of Tokyo, where he had spent much of his youth. The Asakusa district was almost entirely destroyed in the firebombing of Tokyo. Takami died in 1965. Today the Takami Jun Prize is awarded annually to the writer of an outstanding collection of poetry.
*The investigation part of his title refers to the field of journalism, not like, investigating other writers, he wasn't secret police
Sanctity must not be violated.
We Japanese, surrounding that one Man,
Will form a wall of people manifold in depth.
If anyone tries to lay a finger on that Sanctity,
We Japanese, without exception, will lay down side by side
And defend Him to our last extremity.
Takamura Kotaro, 1947
To save myself from the fear of death,
I became desperate about the "desperate times" and wrote.
My countrymen at the front lines read these poems.
Men read them and went to their deaths.
The submarine captain who wrote his family
That he reread my poems each day soon afterward
went down
with his ship.
It's that spiked ball on the end of a chain and you swing it at people, you've probably seen it in fantasy games a lot, and maybe a bit more rarely in museums. Classic medieval weapon of warfare.
This thing:
So uh, it turns out it didn't exist.
I mean, maybe didn't exist. It's pretty much impossible to prove a negative, but there's not a lot of evidence for this being something that was actually used as a weapon of war. It may have been used as a horse whip (although probably significantly less metal and spikey), or a torture implement, or even as an agricultural tool (grain flails are a very real, and very different, thing), but as a weapon of war? Not so much.
It's a wildly impractical weapon anyways. I mean, sure, the chain can add a bit of swinging force, but in a time period when at least some of the enemy combatants would be armored, that force can just as easily backfire - or in this case, back bounce. And forget about trying to fight in formation when the dude on your left is holding a flail. You'll be out of the fight before first contact with the enemy.
But it sure does look cool, right? That's actually probably part of the reason it has survived. Many of the authentic flails that we have are clearly more ornamental than functional, and there are a number of depictions of it in medieval art. That art tends to be on the more fantastical side of things, however, so it's not really valid evidence for the flail having definitively existed - it's just evidence that the artist thought it would look cool.
Regarding the ball-and-chain flail, you have to find some reason why it shows up in art to begin with - perhaps you could trace some sort of art history of the ball-and-chain flail and find out where the image originated
https://www.quora.com/What-modern-firearms-would-the-finest-and-heaviest-16th-century-steel-cuirass-be-able-to-deflect
Part of this explains medieval aristocracy's attitude towards warfare, as there was largely little risk. Ransoming frequently allowed one to purchase one's freedom if captured, and with full heavy armor, it was highly unlikely that one's life would be in danger. These are generalities, but they were largely true.
That's some grade-A trolling mister
I think the person who found the article just put that there for the sake of proper attribution
If anyone is interested in reading my paper (58 pages) PM me and I'll send a link. It's...interesting I guess.
En la mar ay una torre,
en la torre una ventana,
en la ventana una hija
qu'a los marineros llama.
In the sea there is a tower
In the tower there’s a window
In the window there’s a maiden
That calls out the sailors.
Si la mar era de leche
yo m'haria un pexcador
pexcaria las mis dolores
con palavricas d'amor.
If the sea were made of milk
I would become a fisherman
I’d fish for my sorrows
With words of love.
Dame tu mano palomba
para suvir a tu nido
maldicha que durmes sola
vengo a durmir contigo.
Give me your hand, dove,
So that I climb to your nest;
You’re unlucky to sleep alone:
I’ll come to sleep with you.
Topic?
Probably also explains why english archers were so hated, because they'd cheerfully shoot out the horses, and had no problem with killing wounded or helpless noblemen if it didn't look like they'd get much money from them.
I wanted to do a senior thesis out of principle, but my mental state was garbage and no way no how
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