#The History of a Letter

[werewolfetone]

Shout out to this tiny yet crucial error on an otherwise actually very informative post about myths about tax returns and the IRS

[stardustemotions]

I used to think communication was the key until I realized, comprehension is. You can communicate all you want with someone but if they don't understand you, it's silent chaos.

[eirene]

The love letter

Eugen von Blaas

[cockroachesunite]

James Fitzjames in his letter to John Barrow Jr. 10th July 1845

(transcript from May We Be Spared To Meet On Earth)

[fictionadventurer]

I love libraries.

I'm browsing the WWI shelves (as you do) and notice a very old book about the war. I glance at the first pages that talk about how one day the war will be over and we'll look at this place and not see any signs of the battlefield.

Then it hits me. And I check the publishing date.

This book was printed before the war's end. Not written. Printed. The physical object was created in 1918, while the war in question was raging and the end was as yet uncertain.

Now I'm standing on the other side of the apocalypse, with this physical link to that era in my hands. I'm living proof that the war did end and life did go on and we can all look at the end of the world as a long-ago memory.

Reading old books is cool enough, connecting our minds and hearts through the ideas of people who lived long ago, but there's something extra profound about holding a copy of the book that comes from the time that it was written. It's a physical link between the past and the present connecting me to those long-ago people. A piece of the past come into the future that gives me the chance to almost take the hand of some long-ago reader, to hold something they could have held, connecting not just mentally but physically to their era, a moment of connection across more than a century.

Excuse me while I go weep.

[qqueenofhades]

hi I hope you don't mind but I would love to hear your long tired historian rant you mentioned in your tags on that one post, if you feel in the mood to share? (no pressure!)

(also thank you for existing, you do wonderful work and the world is a better place for you being in it)

Aha. Well. For context, the mention of said rant was in relation to this post:

Basically, this post struck a nerve because of how it exactly encapsulates the anti-intellectual, anti-academia, anti-historical, anti-reality thinking that is absolutely rampant in social media spaces, even and especially spaces that identify as leftist, liberal, or otherwise "superior" to the right wing when it comes to identifying fake news or misinformation. (Example A: anything ever written by a self-proclaimed leftist on Twitter.) We all know that there are huge problems with the American public school system (and the people writing this are almost always American) and the American practice of education in general, and that yes, there are many things that happened in the past (or y'know, the present!) that are not taught very well, or at all. But because the American public school system is so decentralized and largely autonomous, incredibly dependent on the temperament of local superintendents and/or school boards, taxation and funding, availability of teachers, requirement of useless standardized tests, etc., it is very difficult (if not outright impossible) to claim that this is the result of a Unified Grand Conspiracy To Not Teach Real History To The Youth In Order To Make Them Mindlessly Support Capitalism. That is the exact sort of deranged conspiratorial thinking that the right wing does and fits everything into a sinister narrative about how "They" are planning to keep you ignorant and therefore nothing harmful that you ever think or do is really your fault. It's not good.

(Whoosh. That was very calm and reasonable of me. For the rest of this post, please just picture Captain Holt "apparently that's a trigger for me" dot gif.)

Also: even in public school, and despite the Republicans' best efforts, there are plenty of opportunities to study complex or "controversial" subjects. For example, I spend a week every June grading AP Euro History exams with a lot of other educators in a giant windowless steel box (woo-hoo, fun times!) Every year, there are questions on the exam about women's rights, imperialism and exploitation, slavery/race relations, the development of capitalism and the current economic model, religion and science, the history of labor, and other topics that would be considered "controversial" if you're an idiot. This is an exam taken by high school students in all grades from across the country, and there are also AP World History and APUSH (US history) exams every year which are doubtless making an effort to address similar themes. This is an advanced program, yes, but it's widely available to many schools and is not a result of a sinister plot to keep the youth from discovering the truth. Also: you live in an era of absolutely unprecedented access to information. Put down the ChatGPT bullshit generator and visit a goddamn public library. Or even open Wikipedia. The tools are there for you to start educating yourself and they are so easy to find!!!!!

The "Historians Are Hiding The Truth!!!" narrative becomes even more ridiculous in university-level or professional academic historical-study spaces, especially when historical educators and associations (such as the American Historical Association) have been at the forefront of pushing back against right-wing efforts to censor history, punish teachers, and remove culture-war subjects from classrooms. Also as someone who has advanced degrees in history, has taught/worked in several universities in different countries, writes and publishes historical research, and otherwise participates professionally in the field: trust me, we aren't "hiding" shit. There are vigorous debates and disagreements on various bogglingly obscure subjects and points of clarification and so forth, but that doesn't mean we're not talking about them (trust me, we're often talking about them too much). If you're issuing confident blanket statements about how "historians are conspiring to hide x," you're an idiot.

This also has dangerous repercussions in the field of, say, politics and civics, where a lot of absolutely braindead Online Leftists have spent the last four years posting deranged nonsense on social media and then, whenever they're called out on it for that not actually being how anything works at all, whining that "I was never taught this!!!" (And yet, it somehow never actually changes their perspective or their theories....) They whine about how "they didn't know this" and it was someone else's fault, they make up total fantasy about what the Biden administration did or should have done and now are still happy about Trump coming back because "It will teach the Democrats a lesson!!!" and otherwise accelerating us oh-so-quickly down that slippery slippery fascism slope. Their weaponized ignorance and their magical fantasies about what "should" have happened often come back to this same learned helplessness, where it's everyone else's fault (especially Capitalism's) that they're total wankers. Look: I'm not a goddamn fan of capitalism either. But we all grew up in this same system, and some of us aren't raving idiots, so at some point, you have to take the tiniest modicum of personal responsibility for the information you seek out, the content you consume, the opinions you propagate, and the people you surround yourself with. Shocking.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Online Leftists are actively and unrepentantly enabling American fascism and should be treated in the same way as we treat MAGA when it comes to deciding what is good or worthwhile information. This is because their entire political philosophy (insofar as their beliefs can be dignified with the term) is based on the "make shit up and remove it from any basic empirical references, grounding in reality, or 'should I run the most basic Google search and see if I'm completely talking out of my ass in a distorted social media echo chamber? Nah I'm good' " technique. This is, as the original tweet above references, trying to retcon sheer malicious laziness and stupidity into grand ideological theories about how it's actually "better" that they don't know a damn thing and won't shut up. It's your evil history teacher's fault, or "academics are all rich and elitist" (ask any academic-precariat person like me and we will laugh hollowly and then throw monkey poop at you), or "They" wouldn't let you learn this, or on and on. Even in our terrible, awful, no-good very-bad timeline, there are still ample tools to educate yourself, to learn how to filter out bad information and junk news, and otherwise gird yourself even a little for the even-more-massive assault on empirical reality that we are about to experience in the next four years (ugh). I suggest you take advantage of them.

[a-bloom-to-remember]

Thinking about how in sophomore year Ayda and Fig were each wondering if the other loved them for themselves and all the while there were fossils at Mordred Manor and a scroll kept by an order of knights for 1500 years just for Ayda to tell Fig HOW MUCH she loved her.

[demaparbat-hp]

Letters to Home

Read on AO3

"Live," she pleads. "I don't want you to sacrifice yourself for this war—for me. I just need you to come back. Please...please come back to me." . Zuko writes the letters whenever he can. During a break from a council meeting, late at night in his chambers, after another training session with Azula—all he does is write to her. Because he needs to let her know that he's alright and their plan is working. She needs to know that he'll come back.

[gnossienne]

Unopened 18th-century love letters to French sailors read for first time (x)

[betryl]

One of the things that most stuck with me is Bunny's nails having dirt under them when they find his body. Not only because the image of him desperately trying to claw at anything he could find not to fall down is very raw – but also because it means it really wasn't as immediate as I thought at first. It was fast but he absolutely did have enough time to think 'he's pushed me down I'm falling I'm going to die'. He didn't die painlessly on the spot but rolled all the way down the ravine bumping into rocks, bushes and everything else fully aware of what was happening and doing everything he could to stop it, and then eventually hit the ground.

[tolkien-povs]

Reading The Hobbit has a warm, cozy feeling to it, like sitting by a fireplace and downing a warm mug of hot chocolate. There are times when you want to cry, times when you want to laugh, times when you want to fight alongside Thorin’s Company. But at the end of the story, you realise that you will never experience that, because The Hobbit is fictional in reality, but so real in the heart and mind.

Reading The Lord of The Rings has a cool feeling, neither warm nor cold, but a comfortable one; it’s as if you’re sitting by a window, staring into the rain, and wishing you could go outside and relish in the rain but you can’t because it’s cold. There are times when you want to laugh, cry, dine with the Fellowship, fight with the Fellowship. But you can’t, because The Lord of The Rings is only a figment lodged in your heart, tucked away in a cozy spot.

Reading The Silmarillion has the feel of sitting in an enormous library almost abandoned, and fishing out an old, dusty book from a nook long forgotten, written about the history of the world. There are cases when you want to delve into that world and explore it, revel in it, fight it, love it, yell at the people in it. But you can never do that, because it is a history long past, existing only in the minds of very few.

Reading the old stories narrating the entire history of Arda has the feel of travelling back in time to the Library of Alexandria, reading and studying all the library can give. There are times when you want to cry, mourn, grieve, celebrate, laugh, revel in the world. But you can never, as that world, those people, are all part of your heart and mind, tucked away into the most precious part of you.

Reading the legendarium doesn’t make you want to be a part of that world because you love it. It makes you want to be a part of that world because the characters are normal people, like you, who got roped into an unlikely adventure, forever narrated in song, poems, ballads and laments.

They are simple stories, of simple people, in a simple world, where if you existed, you could have been one of those souls both fortunate and unfortunate.

Reading the legendarium makes you want to be part of it, because it makes you think you can survive it.

And certainly, if you have read this amazing mythological masterpiece, you absolutely can survive it.

[alasforher]

Euripides, from "Orestes”, An Oresteia (trans. Anne Carson)

Red, White and Royal Blue (2023) dir. Matthew López

[stardustemotions]

[dontforgetukraine]

80-year-old stencils of OUN and UPA uncovered in Volyn. They contain slogans such as “Long live the independent Ukrainian state,” “For the independent states of all oppressed nations,”  and “Death to Hitler and Stalin!”

Source: chytomo_eng

[cockroachesunite]

Sir John Franklin to Lady Jane Franklin:

James Fitzjames to John Barrow Jr. (x) :

LOVE the juxtaposition between these letters, these men are having very different experiences

[gilgamushroom]

VICTORIANS WHEN BLORBO FROM THEIR COMMUTER'S MAGAZINE COMES BACK FROM THE DEATH AFTER A DECADE LONG HIATUS THEY THOUGHT WOULD BE PERMANENT