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Valentines Day stuff! Also, BRAND NEW EXPERIMENTAL HISTORY MEME!
Good evening, everyone! Happy Valentines day, for those of you who celebrate it!
First, a brief link recommendation. If you've never heard of Postsecrets, you should definitely check them out: essentially, people send in anonymous postcards with their secrets on them. Some are sad, some are quirky, some are touching, and all are absolutely awesome. This week they have a Valentine-themed series of postcard secrets for you to look at. This one was my favourite:
Furthermore, the Edmonton Journal (which, along with the National Post, I read almost every day to keep up with news about the world) apparently held a contest for the best Edmonton-themed Valentines cards, most of them poking fun at the city. This particular one was my absolute favourite, mostly because I had to cross that bridge five days a week to get to Fort Edmonton this past summer. It was murder during rush hour when it was down to one lane. >_<; It's been under construction for at least two and half years.
For more, see here!
As a side note, I did celebrate this Valentine's Day as a single person. Here's hoping that I shall find my true love in the coming year! :) I should mention that I mostly enjoy Valentine's Day because it also doubles as my dearest mother's birthday! We have flowers and chocolate about the house, then, regardless of the state of our personal lives. :) Happy birthday, mother mine! Now, tomorrow is the holiday I look forward to even more than the events of St. Valentine... Cheap Chocolate Day! Celebrated: wherever chocolate is sold!
On a final note... I actually began writing this post in response to the lovely surprise left for me at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
atla_valentine. I hadn't realized that people would leave me messages! :) They made me smile. Therefore, my original plan had been, in response to people writing lovely flattering things about the history dorkery that goes on in this journal, to write a post about some of the crazy little tidbits I've been learning about in my History of Translation class... which just so happens to be what I'm studying for at the moment (even as I procrastinate reviewing for the midterm to write this post). I'll get around to that very soon! It will still happen!
I did, however, just have a thought. Maybe I could do something completely and utterly crazy and unprecedented. I could... do a history meme. I want to share the love with you guys. I love telling historical anecdotes; I like to think I got quite good at it while working at Fort Edmonton. Maybe no-one will want to play with me. I will still tell crazy history stories to the world! Just give me a direction, guys. :) What do you want to hear?
It shall be a shameless effort at trying to emulate the cool kids (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE), only instead of fanfic, it will be random history tidbits, in the style of the posts that have appeared in this journal before.
THEREFORE, what I resolve to do is ask you, the readers, for history prompts! Ask me a historical question: anything you like. For instance: "who is your favourite member of European royalty and what was the most interesting thing they ever did?" "What do you think is the silliest reason a war ever started?" "What is the most unusual historical artifact you have ever seen in person?" "What can you tell me about Canada's participation in such-and-such a war?" It can even be something like "tell me the craziest thing you know about the 17th century/the bubonic plague/aboriginal history/etc., etc., ad nauseam." I shall even search for an appropriate image to accompany the historical blather!
If I don't know the answer to your question, I resolve to use my research skills and access to university databases to find the answer! You may get more coherent history squee if I've heard of the topic before, though. I have studied European history across the ages, some East Asian history, and lots of Canadian and American history, but still, don't let that limit your selection! I suspect that if you ask me something about the history of medicine or the French or English languages you will get extra-long anecdotes. Indulge your curiosity, and I will try to be interesting in return! :)
First, a brief link recommendation. If you've never heard of Postsecrets, you should definitely check them out: essentially, people send in anonymous postcards with their secrets on them. Some are sad, some are quirky, some are touching, and all are absolutely awesome. This week they have a Valentine-themed series of postcard secrets for you to look at. This one was my favourite:
Furthermore, the Edmonton Journal (which, along with the National Post, I read almost every day to keep up with news about the world) apparently held a contest for the best Edmonton-themed Valentines cards, most of them poking fun at the city. This particular one was my absolute favourite, mostly because I had to cross that bridge five days a week to get to Fort Edmonton this past summer. It was murder during rush hour when it was down to one lane. >_<; It's been under construction for at least two and half years.
For more, see here!
As a side note, I did celebrate this Valentine's Day as a single person. Here's hoping that I shall find my true love in the coming year! :) I should mention that I mostly enjoy Valentine's Day because it also doubles as my dearest mother's birthday! We have flowers and chocolate about the house, then, regardless of the state of our personal lives. :) Happy birthday, mother mine! Now, tomorrow is the holiday I look forward to even more than the events of St. Valentine... Cheap Chocolate Day! Celebrated: wherever chocolate is sold!
On a final note... I actually began writing this post in response to the lovely surprise left for me at
atla_valentine. I hadn't realized that people would leave me messages! :) They made me smile. Therefore, my original plan had been, in response to people writing lovely flattering things about the history dorkery that goes on in this journal, to write a post about some of the crazy little tidbits I've been learning about in my History of Translation class... which just so happens to be what I'm studying for at the moment (even as I procrastinate reviewing for the midterm to write this post). I'll get around to that very soon! It will still happen!I did, however, just have a thought. Maybe I could do something completely and utterly crazy and unprecedented. I could... do a history meme. I want to share the love with you guys. I love telling historical anecdotes; I like to think I got quite good at it while working at Fort Edmonton. Maybe no-one will want to play with me. I will still tell crazy history stories to the world! Just give me a direction, guys. :) What do you want to hear?
It shall be a shameless effort at trying to emulate the cool kids (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE), only instead of fanfic, it will be random history tidbits, in the style of the posts that have appeared in this journal before.
THEREFORE, what I resolve to do is ask you, the readers, for history prompts! Ask me a historical question: anything you like. For instance: "who is your favourite member of European royalty and what was the most interesting thing they ever did?" "What do you think is the silliest reason a war ever started?" "What is the most unusual historical artifact you have ever seen in person?" "What can you tell me about Canada's participation in such-and-such a war?" It can even be something like "tell me the craziest thing you know about the 17th century/the bubonic plague/aboriginal history/etc., etc., ad nauseam." I shall even search for an appropriate image to accompany the historical blather!
If I don't know the answer to your question, I resolve to use my research skills and access to university databases to find the answer! You may get more coherent history squee if I've heard of the topic before, though. I have studied European history across the ages, some East Asian history, and lots of Canadian and American history, but still, don't let that limit your selection! I suspect that if you ask me something about the history of medicine or the French or English languages you will get extra-long anecdotes. Indulge your curiosity, and I will try to be interesting in return! :)
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I'm always a huge fan of the miasma theory of disease. (See here: http://beboots.livejournal.com/69275.html ) I think it just makes so much sense! Especially since I myself have never seen a germ with my own eyes. Essentially, obnoxious smells cause disease. It makes intuitive sense: there's a giant dung heap, which stinks. Everyone living around the dung heap is getting sick. Clearly, the smell causes the sickness. This belief is really what first started spurring sanitarians in the 19th century to clean up cities. I mean, you don't want the residential areas being built right next to cemeteries where obnoxious fumes from putrefication can make everyone sick, right? Right. Of course, it was this exact same theory that encouraged the building of the sewer system in London in the mid-1800s, which on the face of it sounds great, but in reality what it meant was that all of the individual cesspools in which festered individual illnesses were now all dumped, raw, into the Thames, which was also the source of a huge amount of drinking water for the city... So after the sewer system came in illnesses became less localized and more widespread: everyone downriver would get it. But anyway...
Miasma was a part of Western medical thinking for centuries, possibly even almost a millenium. It shaped everything we used to know about disease. I just learned the other day about the origin of the word "malaria": although it's today believed to be spread by mosquitoes, the components of the word actually come from the Italian "mal aria", or "bad air".
...Then again, you can't really beat 19th century ideas about women and hysteria. Can't stop those uteri from wandering about our inner cavities... I read this fascinating book a while back on the subject. It was by Michelle Stacey, and it was entitled "The Fasting Girl." The summary/title on the title page went: "In 1865, MOLLIE FANCHER of Brooklyn, New York, began suffering unexplained symptoms, including blindness, paralysis, and trances. Thirteen years later, she became an international sensation: fought over by scientists and philosophers: called a "psychological miracle" and a fraud. Igniting her fame was one remarkable question: HOW HAD MOLLIE LIVED FOR SIX MONTHS ON A FEW TEASPOONS OF MILK AND A SMALL BANANA - AND FOR THE NEXT TWELVE YEARS, ON NOTHING AT ALL?" The history of hysteria is absolutely fascinating and absolutely CRAZY.
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Back in college I took an awesome class on this history of society and disease, but we didn't read that book. I shall have to check it out.
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Ooh... I only WISH that my university offered a class like that! I am taking a super neat-o seminar class with my honour's supervisor called the "Health Consequences of War", though.