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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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Granby does feel better when "SIR" makes Laurence a tiny bit more like himself, since even Tem and Jane can barely manage that much.
"IT IS NOW ON MY MENTAL SUMMER READING LIST. I've been meaning to reread all of Tamora Pierce's books for a while... A new awesome series is as good an excuse as any!" 'Will of the Empress' rocks too, if you read her Circle of Magic series. It's abruptly for older readers and awesome, and I /swear/ there are hints of Briar and Tris and it's freaking adorable. She's all conscientious about what he really likes and he's sleeping with half the city's population of pretty women.
"It's my headcanon for situations in which I want him to be in a relationship with another man, and others have used this justification in fanfic before. :) It's practically fanon! ;)" It's practically history. On a ship at twelve, still on a ship at 15, no female creatures allowed... they had to do something.
"I've read about things like that! The history of homosexuality, and the lengths that people had to go to... fascinating stuff. Have you heard of Boston marriages? Popular in the early 1900s? They're two single women living together, purportedly for practical reasons like paying the rent, but it's believed that a significant amount of them were at least party sexual in nature." A couple of my great-aunts had that, we think-- one related, one her "roommate" of decades. They were tiny little Irish schoolteachers that lived in a very nasty part of Detroit. Nobody messed with them, they were cute and harmless.
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"It's practically history. On a ship at twelve, still on a ship at 15, no female creatures allowed... they had to do something." History canon! Speaking of which, I really need to post some entries from this awesome diary I'm reading from the American Civil War, of a white surgeon who served in a black regiment... and he's actually surprisingly not racist. He is absolutely adorable in his day to day activities. I need to post bits of it.
Your great-aunts sound awesome. :3 I don't know much about my family history back more than a few generations. I had a great-uncle who lost a leg in the first world war: a grenade was thrown into his trench and it was a split-second decision to stamp down on the thing and absorb the blast or do nothing and everybody dies. We also think that my father's grandfather, who immigrated with his wife from what is now Poland right before the First World War may have been murdered. He disappeared suddenly a few weeks after my father's father was born. The man wouldn't have just run off because he was terrified of committing all of a sudden, because hey, they moved halfway across the world together...
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"History canon! Speaking of which, I really need to post some entries from this awesome diary I'm reading from the American Civil War, of a white surgeon who served in a black regiment... and he's actually surprisingly not racist. He is absolutely adorable in his day to day activities. I need to post bits of it." Awww, yes please!!! Non-racism in history was awesome. I used to genuinely worry that I would have been horrible if I'd lived in that time, but I've gone on enough fruitless crusades with no benefit to think that I still would have been okay at life.
My grandfather's knee was squished in WWII, but he told 12 different stories and no one knows what's right. I think he was in his Jeep driving back from the front lines near Bastogne when a German shell flew too far and took out their vehicle. He was a brilliant engineer, but they made him be a cook because he'd taken home ec.
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