Valentines Day stuff! Also, BRAND NEW EXPERIMENTAL HISTORY MEME!

[beboots]

 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 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! :) 

Comments

[anyjen.livejournal.com]

There were, though, rather hurried efforts to create our own literary works at that time, which varying degrees of succes. Even our own president at the time, Sarmiento, took a stab at the pen, and produced works that could make you scream in anger at their blatant racism and mysogyny. See, our dear ol' president (and quite a few intellectual people with him) was convinced that the Argentinian (or "criollo") people were defective and inferior because of the mix of blood between the "lazy" Europeans (Italians, Spaniards and the sort) and the brute and eneducated "indians". So, to fix this, he decided to open up our frontiers to foreigners and grant them land, and encourage them to marry Argentinian women and improve the race that way. He was aiming at the Europeans he considered the best (basically: Caucassians and Arian), and he did moderately succeed in attracting some, but mostly what he achieved was attract a greater deal of Italians and Spaniards. Scandinavian people preferred to make their way to North America for the greater part. Our culture nowadays is more or less based upon the culture of both Italy and Spain due to that, quite the opposite of what he wanted.

He also succeded in making us ideal territory for all kinds of refugees fleeing from both World Wars, on all the warring factions... We basically asked no questions and let them all in. We ended up unwittingly protecting several Nazi baddies due to our strictly neutral policies.

There was a definitely black chapter in our recent history which, if you ever get here, you would be wise to avoid in conversation, and that is the period of time in which we were under the oppresion of the Military Junta. Like redrikki mentioned below, it was a time where thousands of people were "disappeared", which was code for "taken from their beds on the dead of night, tortured and interrogated and then executed in such a manner that their bodies wouldn't be found". The reaons for this varied, and went from being a guerilla fighter to wondering a bit too loudly why you weren't allowed to read certain literary works or leave home at certain hours. University students, pregnant women and children were among the "insurrectos" (something like "rebels") and, when they bothered to make up an excuse for their death, were publicly portrayed as belonging to a guerrilla, sometimes displaying pictures of their corses holding weapons that were nearly bigger than them and obviously planted after death.

It was also a time where our country got into huge debt with the Powers that Be, who financed the oppresion and the eventual Falklands War, a war that lasted only long enough for the British troups to get here and hand our asses to us.

[beboots.livejournal.com]

Canada has a secret history of racism. We have this lovely squeaky-clean reputation, but... yeah. :P Immigration policies actually discouraged African Americans from immigrating Northward "for their own good" because it was believed that they were inherently unsuited for the environment and that they'd die of pneumonia, etc.,etc.... which is patently ridiculous because what about all of the French and even Italians and other mediterranean peoples (also, other people of African descent) who'd been living in the country just fine until then? :P Racism makes no sense.

"Disappeared" is such an evocative and scary word. D:

[anyjen.livejournal.com]

"Disappeared" is such an evocative and scary word. D:

Yes it is. It brings back so many bad memories for us, that you rarely hear Argentinians using it normally in casual conversation. You don't say somebody or something has disappeared (desaparecido), you say it's "missing", "lost" or... er, the closest translation I can think of the other word is "misfiled" ("extraviado", "perdido" and "traspapelado", respectively). You don't use "desaparecido" unless you're talking about the people who were persecuted and killed by the Military Junta.

A funny (funny weird, most definitely not funny ha-ha) thing about these disappearences that were anything but (because everybody knew what was going on, but couldn't speak up lest they be disappeared as well) is that you can see plenty of old cars around (we tend to use them until they can't run anymore, so it's normal to see cars from the sixties and seventies around), but you won't ever find a green Ford Falcon anywhere. Why? Well, because it was the car that the "milicos" (soldiers under orders from the Military Junta) used to transport people from their homes to the places where they would be tortured, interrogated and then killed. They were supposed to be undercover and dressed like "guerrilleros" so that any people watching thought it was a rival guerrilla come to pick them up. Nobody was fooled, though (kinda hard to; the supposedly villanous people were being taken in their pajamas or underwear, hands handcuffed behind their backs and with cloth bags over their heads, if they were being taken alive at all), and instead the green Ford Falcon was forever associated in the colective mind with the oppression of the time. I don't think there's even one green Ford Falcon left in the country. Most were set on fire once the Military Junta fell.

When they were done extracting every bit of information they wanted from them (useful or not; most people under torture has trouble remembering their own names let alone anything suspicious that they might have done), they got rid of people by stuffing them into planes and throwing them from great altitude, still alive, over the sea or the Río de La Plata, so that they would die on impact and their bodies never found... they called them the Flights of Death (Vuelos de la Muerte). It made Nazi Germany's gas chambers look humane in comparison. >_<

The "lucky" ones that avoided these gruesome flights were executed at the torture sites and buried in mass graves or thrown to the river with concrete shoes on.

[beboots.livejournal.com]

"You don't say somebody or something has disappeared (desaparecido), you say it's "missing", "lost" or... er, the closest translation I can think of the other word is "misfiled" ("extraviado", "perdido" and "traspapelado", respectively). You don't use "desaparecido" unless you're talking about the people who were persecuted and killed by the Military Junta." Wow. That is a very interesting bit of cultural linguistic history!

"but you won't ever find a green Ford Falcon anywhere. Why? Well, because it was the car that the "milicos" (soldiers under orders from the Military Junta) used to transport people from their homes to the places where they would be tortured, interrogated and then killed." !!! Woah. Crazy. Seriously, this stuff is fascinating. (Now when someone else puts me on the spot about what I know about Argentinian history & culture, I can have some relevant things to say!)

Your description of the "Flights of Death (Vuelos de la Muerte)". My reaction: D: No words.

[anyjen.livejournal.com]

Woah. Crazy.

Yeah... when I was little (eight or nine, I think) I made an unintentional faux pas. I like the colour green, and back then I also liked Ford Falcons (my dad had a light blue one). Being completely ignorant of all this, I once made the mistake of saying that when I grew up, I wanted to drive a green Ford Falcon... my dad immediately started yelling at me that that was not a car he would ever allow me to drive. I couldn't understand why my dad got so angry at me for saying this until my mum took me aside and explained it to me. Turns out, my dad, who played clarinet, was in the military band at the time (once of the few options that would feed my family at the time, considering he had to leave University or risk being disappeared himself; University students were frecquent targets), and he actually saw the people being dragged off the green Ford Falcons at the military bases and taken to planes. >_<

And it's all very recent, so you don't usually talk about this stuff unless you want the people in your parents' generation to get seriously upset. People under thirty can speak about this things without much emotion, but just child me, you have to be careful around people in their forties or fifties, because you risk re-opening very ugly wounds.

[beboots.livejournal.com]

"I like the colour green, and back then I also liked Ford Falcons (my dad had a light blue one). Being completely ignorant of all this, I once made the mistake of saying that when I grew up, I wanted to drive a green Ford Falcon... my dad immediately started yelling at me that that was not a car he would ever allow me to drive." Daaaamn... ;_;

I can definitely see how this would be traumatizing to the very psyche of a nation, though. D: