#The oldest library in France

[newmic]

[girlactionfigure]

Ona Simaite was a Lithuanian librarian who saved Jews including many children during the German occupation, and preserved literary works from the Vilna ghetto before being arrested by the Gestapo.

Born in Akmene, Lithuania in 1894, Ona was educated in Moscow and began working at the library at Vilnius university in 1940. A book lover and intellectual, Ona was excited to be working at the oldest university in northern Europe, in a city teeming with culture. However everything changed in 1941, when the Nazis invaded Lithuania. Immediately they created a squalid ghetto and imprisoned the city’s large Jewish population. Ona was shocked and horrified when her Jewish students and colleagues suddenly disappeared. 

Without a moment of doubt, she began visiting the ghetto frequently, under the pretext of collecting library books. She was shocked at what she saw there. It was hell on earth. Residents were barely alive, many of them starving to death, while others were shot in the streets, or beaten brutally and then sent to concentration camps. Ona spent the rest of the war helping Lithuanian Jews in multiple ways. In her visits to the ghetto, she smuggled food, medicine, supplies, and small firearms. After each visit, she left with documents: letters from ghetto residents to their loved ones, literary journals describing life in the ghetto, and various other important papers.

Ona helped Jews who managed to escape or avoid the ghetto by sheltering them in her own humble apartment, and when she ran out of room she found other hiding places for them. She procured fake documents enabling them to hide their Jewish identity. Saving Jews from the Nazis became the focus of her entire life. With superhuman strength and courage, she smuggled small children out of the ghetto in her big book sack, and found homes for them with people who would keep them hidden and safe. It is unknown exactly how many this mild-mannered librarian saved, because she spoke to no one about her heroic acts. 

In 1944, Ona was arrested by officers of the Gestapo, the notorious German secret police. She was brutally tortured by the sadistic Nazis, and sentenced to death. Miraculously, right before her scheduled execution, the president of Vinius University found out about it and paid a large ransom for her life. The Nazis agreed not to kill her, but they refused to free her, and instead sent to the Dachau concentration camp, and later an internment camp in France. Ona was finally freed when the Allies liberated France in 1945. 

After the war, Ona remained in Paris, living a quiet life as a librarian, in a home full of books. She was honored as Righteous Among the Nations by Israeli Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem in 1966, and a tree was planted in her honor. Ona died in 1970, leaving behind a trove of her own writing: letters, journals, articles, and diaries. Many of them were published in the book “Epistophilia: Writing the Life of Ona Simaite.” In 2015, Simaite Street in Vilna was named after her.

For saving an unknown number of Jews, in a multitude of ways, over four years, we honor Ona Simaite as this week’s Thursday Hero. 

[adamnablelittledevil]

Reacting to The Vampire Lestat - Part VI (with maybe big spoilers and quotes?)

Part 1

First chapter without Armand since his first introduction. I'm in my grieving era, leave me alone.

"And as we said our farewells, I believed that Nicolas and the little coven had every chance for survival and that Armand and I were friends." Why does this sound like a 'five minutes before disaster' situation? (If you say "that's because it is", I'm blocking you... shhhh)

It's like Anne didn't even bother to be subtle about it lmao.

"Nowhere did I meet a vampire who was in any way a magnetic creature, a being of great wisdom or special accomplishment, an unusual being in whom the Dark Gift had worked any perceivable alchemy that was of interest to me. Armand was a dark god compared to these beings. And so was Gabrielle and so was I." Armand mention! I'm gonna collect these like Pokemon while I wait for princess to come back (let's hope nothing bad happens when he returns :) <3 /hj).

"In the main it is Our Oldest Friend [Armand, obviously] who is relied upon to restrain him. And that he does with the most caustic threats." What I'm getting is that book!Armand and show!Lestat went to the school of Latin American mothers. Btw, the "Armand, obviously" made me laugh because it was so informal, it's like I was getting notes from Lestat himself and not reading an official book? Not to mention it was so unnecessary because it's clear that's Armand lol. But thank you, Lestat, for clarifying that I guess.

"I cannot say that we do not love him. For your sake we would care for him even if we did not. But we do love him. And Our Oldest Friend, in particular, bears him great affection." The show and even fandom gave me a totally different idea about Armand and Nicki? I didn't imagine Armand would ever care about Nicki in the slightest.

"As for Our Oldest Friend, I wonder if you would know him now. He has built a great manse at the foot of your tower, and there he lives among books and pictures very like a scholarly gentleman with little care for the real world. Each night, however, he arrives at the door of the theater in his black carriage. And he watches from his own curtained box." There you go my little neurodivergent princess with low social battery. We are the same.

I can't believe Eleni pulled a "Lestat, come back home, the children miss you!" lmao.

"And when I wasn't out roaming, I was traveling the realm of the books that had belonged to Gabrielle so exclusively all through those dreary mortal years at home." I'm so happy he can read and drown himself in books now. <3 Not being able to do it before left such a big impact in his life and it's great that he loves books as much as he thought he would. I think music, theater and literature are his biggest interests. I don't know if he has a favorite, but those are definitely his passions.

There's such a contrast between Lestat and Gabrielle because he was the one that got to go out there, hunt, kill wolves and have 'adventures', while she was at home reading. But he'd rather read those books and even as chaotic and adventurous as Lestat is, he's more disciplined and laid-back than her? And once Gabrielle is a vampire she's like "I'M DONE WITH BOOKS I'M GOING TO THE WILD I'M GONNA CLIMB MOUNTAINS AND SLEEP ON THE GROUND AND JUMP FROM HILLS AND LIVE AMONG ANIMALS AND EXPLORE THE WORLD" lmao. But I guess I'm with Lestat there, I'm way more inclined to arts than nature and adventure.

"Before we even got to Italy, I knew enough Latin to be studying the classics, and I made a library in the old Venetian palazzo I haunted, often reading the whole night long." Yeah you go baby learn how to read by accident and expand that knowledge to new languages now <3

"The truth was, I didn't want to forget them. I never stopped writing to Roger for news of my family. I wrote to him more often than I wrote to Eleni at the theater. I'd sent for portraits of my nieces and nephews. I sent presents back to France from every place in which I stopped." No matter what Lestat says, he is still a child that cares about his relatives even after everything, that deep down wanted a simple happy family life, that wants to keep his humanity, still has a conscience and cares about God. Many of his conflicts stem from that tbh. Just some Catholic village boy really.

"I do not know why I go on. I do not search for truth. I do not believe in it. I hope for no ancient secrets from you, whatever they may be. But I believe in something. Maybe simply in the beauty of the world through which I wander or in the will to live itself. This gift was given to me too early. It was given for no good reason. And already at the age of thirty mortal years, I have some understanding as to why so many of our kind have wasted it, given it up. Yet I continue. And I search for you." Not him mayhaps getting borderline suicidal that soon...

FFS, FORGET MARIUS! He cannot help you, stop putting your hopes on him, you don't know the guy! Babygirl, what you need is THERAPY!

I don't want to read the name Marius anymore btw. Maybe that will change when he shows up, but like this? No, thank you very much, but NOPE!

"For all my complaints about loneliness, I was used to it all. And there were new cities as there were new victims, new languages, and new music to hear. No matter what my pain, I fixed my mind on a new destination." Sometimes being right is not fun at all.

"It seemed no matter where I was that Armand and Nicki were both with me." I can partially relate.

I'm confused, did Nicki's hands grow back like Gabrielle's hair?

"'Oh, I'm monster enough to understand it,' I said. 'Do you remember what you told me years ago, before we ever left home? You said it the very day that he came up the mountain with the merchants to give me the red cloak. You said that his father was so angry with him for his violin playing that he was threatening to break his hands. Do you think we find our destiny somehow, no matter what happens? I mean, do you think that even as immortals we follow some path that was already marked for us when we were alive?'" One of my favorite pieces of the writing. Just deep and gorgeous. Also, Lestat still a Catholic boy after all this time with this reasoning.

However, I was expecting his death to be WAY MORE DRAMATIC and not this "told in a letter" thing? I was imagining the whole plot to be devastating, actually... And it wasn't? Maybe because Nicki was so mad since the beginning and didn't get enough book time, but I could never grow to care about him that much... I hope the show does a better job with it.

"Maybe people had to be dead six thousand years for her to love them." Ouch.

Second time that I think I'm having a completely different take compared to many people or even the whole fandom lmao. Noice.

Part 2

"'I can't and you know it,' I said. 'I can't do it any more than you can stay with me.' All the way back to Cairo, I thought on it, what had come to me in those painful moments. What I had known but not said as we stood before the Colossi of Memnon in the sand. She was already lost to me! She had been for years. I had known it when I came down the stairs from the room in which I grieved for Nicki and I had seen her waiting for me. It had all been said in one form or another in the crypt beneath the tower years ago. She could not give me what I wanted of her. There was nothing I could do to make her what she would not be. And the truly terrible part was this: she really didn't want anything of me! She was asking me to come because she felt the obligation to do so. Pity, sadness-maybe those were also reasons. But what she really wanted was to be free." This is sad, but I also think this is very human, relatable, realistic, well-written and a great conflict to explore on the show.

I do think Gabrielle genuinely wanted to stay with him, that wasn't pity or obligation, but they just want different things. She loves him, but they love different kinds of life and that's the problem.

The plot twist that is not that much of a plot twist because it's predictable (but still good) with Lestat's family...

If somebody was meant to be spared couldn't they just make one of his brothers decent and keep him and the children alive?

Btw, we don't even know much about his family. I know he had parents, three bothers that lived into adulthood and nieces and nephews. But the book only acknowledged Gabrielle, his father and Augustin. Maybe one of the brothers wasn't really that bad and was forced to do that stuff. Idk.

Anyways, it doesn't matter now...

His dream omg???

Kind of weird, kind of messed-up, kind of sad.

The fact that he's still going back to his father, omg...

I feel bad for him. I also feel bad for him because that probably won't solve anything and just hurt him more. I don't see his father changing.

Lestat and Gabrielle's goodbye was so well-written. One of the best moments of the book.

If I'm to give my full opinion on the incest, it would have to be on a separate post just about that. But in short, at first I thought it had some logic that worked in a book like this, but it wasn't necessary and the show could go fine without it... Now I believe it might be necessary to explore Lestat and even Gabrielle as individuals.

Like, the relationship isn't cute, sexy or fun like some people make it seem. At least not for me. But I do think it is a sign of their inner struggles and that it might be a necessary discomfort for us to fully understand them?

I don't know. I don't have a conclusion yet. Still thinking about it. But I trust Rolin to adapt the book properly and not just be controversial for the sake of it and trivializing this look some fans do.

I do hope that the times Lestat and Gabrielle hug it will be JUST HUGS. Those moments were so great and the kisses left me like... WHY RUIN IT LIKE THAT? I can and would rather live without it, tbh.

Okay, so Marius is here.

Marius is a blonde? Wasn't expecting that. I don't know who to fancast as him.

Not really found of blondes except for a feeeeeeew exceptions. Anyway, I'll wait for the revelation to come to me, I guess.

If anybody wants to share their fancast, I'm willing to listen. Maybe it will help me picture him too lol.

Last chapter, here we go.

[stinky-winky28]

hey guys I'm back at it with another rambling post

So after my last post when my second hand embarrassment went away (I deleted it a few minutes ago) I sat perched upon a bar stool drinking the finest tap water from my freddy fazbear themed knockoff Stanley and munching on cinnamon Eggo toaster waffles when I was hit with an idea.

I've made all these headcanons about the NPCs, developing their personalities like a mother nurturing her children, so why don't I create a backstory for them as well?

My dearest friends, allow me to introduce my next post, the origin stories for all of the NPCs!

______________________________________________

Barry

I feel like Barry would've been born to a single mother, who has lots of children (most of them with different fathers). He would have 1 sibling that was fully related to him (Lucy from that dream I had), who would be younger than him. He would be the second youngest of all his siblings combined. I also think he would be the only boy.

His mom worked hard to feed all of the children (I'm thinking about 7 in total including Barry), and desperately tried to find a husband that could help her support all the children. Barry's mother always told him that he was the man of the house, and how handsome he was all the time. He developed a big ego and lots of confidence from this. He only got a very basic education, basic math and how to read and write made up most of it. As a result, he's obviously not very intelligent.

Once he was of age, he joined the military to try and help support his family.

Barry compared to the other NPCs is the second youngest

______________________________________________

Jean

Jean was born to a poor family yet again, but since it was in France before the French Revolution, it was much worse. His parents skipped most of their meals to make sure that Jean made it by. He would've had an older brother, but he passed away during infancy. After King Louis was executed, their lives began to improve. Slowly, but better.

Jean met his wife, Angelique, while attending a Sunday mass. They instantly fell in love, and got married after about 6 months of meeting each other. They really hit it off fr. A few years after that, their son Pierre came into the world.

Jean was drafted into the French Army, which he was NOT happy about. He couldn't stand to leave his wife and child behind, but he knew that he had no choice in the matter.

Jean is the oldest of all the NPCs. All of them look up to him (probably because most of them don't have any strong father figures to do so) and he couldn't be more happy to be that.

______________________________________________

Jacob

Jacob was an orphan from a very young age. He doesn't have a single memory of either of his parents, and has no clue if there are any siblings in the mix either. He was placed in an orphanage as a baby, and stayed there until he became of age to be drafted.

He wasn't the most popular in the orphanage, he'd be the punching bag most of the time. When he got his alone time, he'd find a secluded corner to hide in, and crack open a book. He was very quiet, but he loved to read. He taught himself, actually. The nun that worked in the orphanage's library would sneak him books from time to time that he could read I'm his room where no one could see him.

He quickly grew up, and the children who used to pester him quickly stopped. Once he became of age, he was drafted. To be honest, he couldn't have been more happy to get drafted because he was sick of living in the home.

Jacob is right in the middle of the NPCs in terms of age.

______________________________________________

Karl/Klaus/Unnamed Prussian Officer

Karl compared to the other NPCs, had a lavish upbringing. His parents were a very rich Prussian aristocratic family, and he was an only child. He was raised to be very no nonsense, and as a result that's how he acts as an adult. No toys, no fun, no nothing. Also as a result, he has a mix of a sort of rich kid and superiority complex.

As an only child, the pressure was solely put on him to be successful. He was put in the finest schools, given tutors, etc. He didn't really need them, though. He could pick things up easily enough. But anything that he didn't do well on, well... yeah. His parents didn't like that.

Even with all his achievements, his parents deemed it not good enough, and Karl, a failure. They had honestly hoped he would've been amazing at everything, and they regretted not having more kids (which they said to his face). After that, the only thing Karl could contribute to the Littman house (my headcanon last name) was heirs to continue the bloodline. However, Karl refused to be wed to a random woman his parents had picked for him and instead demanded he should be able to join the Prussian Army. They agreed after loads of convincing. He quickly climbed his way up to his rank of officer.

Karl is the youngest of the NPCs.

______________________________________________

American Ferryman (Christopher)

Christopher Bailey was born to a lower middle class family in the state of New York. His parents were massive con artists, and made their 3 children help them with their crimes. Christopher has 3 younger siblings, 1 girl and 2 boys.

The Bailey family traveled all across the east coast, doing different jobs and schemes. Often times, they would even change their names every few times. Christopher couldn't have been more sick of it.

As soon as he was old enough, Christopher finally decided to break away from his family. He joined the army, and never looked back. Well, that's what he likes to say. He's tormented on the inside because he had to leave his siblings to run around and risk their lives just to live.

Christopher is the second oldest of the NPCs.

______________________________________________

If you couldn't tell my original idea was for Karl specifically and I could've written more but I wanted to spare you the time

Also I'm sorry my Ameriferryfans I lost effort and I'm tired but I tried my best 😔

My fingies hurt

[trainsinanime]

tell me about french train headlights

They're all the same! Or at least they were, from the mid-1950s to about the early 1990s. They all look like this:

Okay, some context for why I find this interesting. Suppose you see a picture of a train, especially one made in the second half of the 20th century, and you want to know where the train is from. The key trick to telling this at a glance is having a bit of autism, but more specifically, the headlights.

In Europe, all major and many minor countries used to have their own government-owned railroad and their own train-building industry, which would build trains to the specifications of their railroad company. There has always been some exporting going on, but for the most part, the trains you'd find in Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria and so on would be all completely different. This has changed drastically over the past 20ish years.

One thing about this old model is that railroad companies would standardise certain parts within their fleets, especially small parts that need servicing and replacing every now and then. It saves on how many different types of spare parts you need to have.

Headlights are the most notable among these by far: Every train needs to have some of them. All trains have basically the same requirements for their headlights, no matter how fast or slow or whatever they are. Before LEDs, you needed to service the headlights regularly to replace the light bulbs. Also they are glass parts at the front of a fast moving vehicle, they can get damaged, so spare parts logistics are an issue. And most importantly, we as railfans can easily see them. So you get something like this:

As a result, basically all railroad companies in post-war Europe standardised their head- and taillights for all or most of their trains. And all of them had completely different ideas. Fundamentally, all of them agreed that you need white headlights and red taillights, and since modern trains are easily reversible, you put both of them next to each other.

But do you make the white and red lights the same size (West Germany, Netherlands) or different sizes (Austria, East Germany)? Are they separate things, or do you combine them into one assembly (UK, Switzerland)? Do you make them anything approaching normal sized or gigantic (Poland)? Maybe I'll do an overview post over these later, but I don't have enough pictures in my library right now and I'd have to scour Wikipedia for them later.

The French headlight design shown here is in many ways just one of many, but also interesting in its own right: The actual lenses for red and white are the same size, but the white headlight gets this huge lens assembly that makes it look much more prominent. You can clearly see that different French designers had very different ideas about whether you align the center-lines (most of them), or the bottom of the lens assembly. Why is the headlight lens so big, and what are the metal tabs around the bottom half of the circle? I have no clue. My guess is to put some coloured glass panes in, but I have no idea why you'd need that. Also, note that the red taillight classically has a fresnel lens, that's unique as far as I can tell.

I've taken all these pictures in the Cité du Train, the big central French railroad museum in Mulhouse. (That's why I was posting about traveling to Basel early this weekend. Mulhouse is actually really close to Basel, and going via Switzerland is the most practical—and most scenic—route for me) The oldest locomotive I could find with these headlights was CC-7107:

During high speed trails in the early 1950s, this locomotive reached a speed of 326 km/h (203 mph). That made it only second best behind the other locomotive at the trials, BB-9004:

This one reached 331 km/h (206 mph), a world record that would not be beaten for a long time. The difference was nothing to do with technical performance. Instead, both locomotives melted their pantograph, the part on top that touches the overhead line to get power, at around 320 km/h (200 mph). BB-9004 had a second one that it could lift up to continue accelerating, while CC-7107 only had the one. For a long time, SNCF pretended that both locomotives had reached 331 km/h, to protect the reputation of both manufacturers.

What's notable for our purposes is that BB-9004 has different headlights. As far as I can tell, these seem to be an earlier standard design, also found e.g. on the CC-65001 diesel locomotive:

And even on steam locomotives, like this class 141 R:

So CC-7107 lost on the high speed world record, but it was the way of the future when it came to headlights. These headlights then started cropping up everywhere. From the detail pictures I've shown you above, we have e.g. Le Petit Gris (the small grey one, an EMU for suburban services in Paris):

A CC-6500, dressed up with a nameplate for the express train it was hauling. Fun fact: One locomotive of this type (not this one) was used in the US for a while, as Amtrak was trying out new electric locomotives to use. They weren't happy with it and bought a Swedish one instead, mostly because this locomotive's suspension did not work well with the American track quality.

A Z 2200, a diesel railcar for rural lines designed to be cheap first, second and third.

A BB-26000, which feels altogether way to new to be in this museum.

It's from the 1980s, so I guess the first are reaching retirement age. But at the same time: The train I took from Basel to Mulhouse was still pulled by one of these BB-26000.

Other favourites include the BB-25600 with its rare diagonal light arrangement:

Or the really terribly lit gas turbine train RTG, which puts the headlight on stalks:

Fun fact: Amtrak did end up buying a few these. They didn't use the same white headlights (although they did use the same stalks), but they did use the same fresnel lens red taillights.

And the headlights went all the way up to the top. To the TGV. Only these headlights aren't very aerodynamic, so for their high-speed train, SNCF decided to cover them up.

As far as I can tell, SNCF used these headlights in the TGVs up to the Réseau series, including the Eurostar. That meant that they're also found, though behind faded glass, on the TGV Atlantique 325 in the outdoor area. Number 325 is notable because it was involved in another high speed trial, and reached 515.3 km/h (320.3 mph) on May 18th, 1990.

That was a world record, of course; in fact only the French ever exceeded 500 km/h on conventional railroads. So these headlights did get their world record after all. They didn't get to keep it for long, though. In 2007, a newer TGV reached 574.8 km/h (357.2 mph). That one is still in service, though, and it was equipped with newer LED headlights. I think it's highly unlikely that this record will be broken anytime soon, but if anyone does, I wouldn't be surprised if it were the French again, they like that sort of stuff.

Some final odds an ends with the headlights, though: Here's CC-40101, which isn't actually relevant, I just like the way it looks.

Designed for service in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, with four different voltages and four different train control systems, and that with mid-1960s technology. It wasn't quite as successful as hoped, and in service it only ever reached Belgium, but still, look at that design. The front is supposed to evoke an athlete, a sprinter about to start, but this type of design has instead become known as "Nez cassé", broken nose.

BB-9291 shows a rare early version without red tail lights at all. Someone thought they were saving money.

This small work train has a free-standing version of the headlight, which shows us how deep it really is. Apparently, the French headlight is actually not that deep, and isn't that a nice summary for this post?

And a personal favourite of mine, I even bought a T-Shirt with it on it, the Z 600:

The design, in particular the side windows (recessed instead of flush, no outside visible gasket) says Swiss, the headlight and SNCF logo says French, it's narrow gauge and it has a third rail to provide power. Just all around a weird little train, for the weird little line known as the Mont-Blanc Express from France via Switzerland to the bottom of the Mont-Blanc mountain. The train was built in Switzerland, experts of building small trains for mountains, but for the French part of that rail line, so it got French headlights.

Headlights with exporting is a fun topic in its own right. Do you keep the headlights from the country of origin, or demand your own? You will find both approaches. Both Portugal and the Netherlands bought very similar electric locomotives from France. Portugal has French headlights, the Netherlands insisted on (less interesting) dutch ones.

These days, of course, you will still find these headlights, but they're getting rarer. They stopped being used in new trains around the mid-1990s. What's more, the ones you do find, like on this MI-84 in Paris, probably don't have the fresnel lens taillight anymore. Instead, those were replaced with LEDs.

LED lights for railroads make a lot of sense. They last forever and require less power. And since most railroads have standardised their head- and taillights, you just need to design one replacement light for most of France, and then keep building that one until SNCF stops giving you money.

(Since we're showing a picture from Paris, a quick note: These headlights were never used on passenger-carrying trains for the Paris metro. However, some work trains do have them.)

These days, standard headlights are completely gone. LEDs don't need a lot of replacing, and they give you much more freedom to do things like shapes and patterns and designs. Also, we don't have the "one country, one railroad, one rail industry" pattern anymore. Instead now we have multi-national rail conglomerates. Alstom is technically French, but arguably just as much German, ever since they bought Bombardier's rail division, nominally Canadian. Stadler is Swiss, except for the stuff they build in Germany or Poland or Belarus or Hungary or…, and some of their most interesting products right now are built and designed in Spain.

The end result of that is this:

That's a company I saw at a trade fair (Innotrans, Berlin, 2022) that makes LED train headlights, and specifically they make… all of them? Okay, I'm exaggerating, but this is a great picture to drive a European rail fan insane as they try to assign the different headlights to different trains. You get Stuttgart trams, German (and Turkish) high speed trains, lots and lots of Swiss stuff. Nothing specifically French that I could tell, but at least the German high speed train regularly travels to Paris.

The standard headlights, or their LED variants, were still in use for work trains until fairly recently. There are not that many companies that make rail grinders or ballast tampers, and those tend to just use whatever headlight their customer tells them to. But these days they go for shaped LED headlights as well, because they're just better, and because thanks to European standardisation, a headlight approved in one country can (generally) be used in all European countries.

(All pictures © me, feel free to use them under CC-BY-SA 3.0 DE if you want)

[alleannaharris]

Today's Black History Month illustration is of James Baldwin, one of the 20th century’s greatest writers. Baldwin broke new literary ground by exploring racial, social, sexual, and class distinctions in his works, and he was known for his essays on the Black experience in America.

James Baldwin was born in Harlem in 1924. He was the oldest of nine children. His mother, Emma Jones, married a Baptist minister, David Baldwin, when he was three years old.

Despite their strained relationship, Baldwin followed in his stepfather’s footsteps and became a youth minister in a small Harlem Pentecostal church from ages 14-16. Also during his early teens, Baldwin was spending a lot of his time in libraries and found a passion for writing.

At 18, he worked with the NJ railroad, and then moved to Greenwich Village where he worked for a few years as a freelance writer writing mostly book reviews. Baldwin caught the attention of the well-known writer Richard Wright who helped him secure a grant so he could support himself as a writer.

In 1948, at the age of 24, Baldwin left the US to live in Paris because he couldn’t tolerate the discrimination he experienced. He often was a target of beatings by local youth and the police due to homophobia and racism. Baldwin hoped to find enough distance from the society he grew up in to write about it. Here's a clip of Baldwin and Maya Angelou in conversation:

In 1953, Baldwin wrote his first novel “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” an autobiographical work about growing up in Harlem. This is often seen as his finest work because of the way he described the struggles of Black Americans.

Over the next ten years, Baldwin moved between Paris, New York and Istanbul. He wrote two books of essays, “Notes of a Native Son” and “Nobody Knows My Name,” and two novels “Giovanni’s Room” and “Another Country.” The essays explored racial tension and the novels dealt with then taboo themes (homosexuality and interracial relationships). Nobody Knows My Name and Another Country were immediately bestsellers.

Baldwin’s travels also brought him closer to social concerns of his home, US. In the early 60s, he returned to the US to participate in the Civil Rights Movement. He attended the March on Washington in 1963 and the Selma to Montgomery March in 1965. His essays “Notes of a Native Son”, “Nobody Knows My Name” and “The Fire Next Time” became essential works during this time because of their call for human equality.

After the assassination of his three friends: Medgar Evers (1963), Malcolm X (1965), and MLK (1968), he returned to France and worked on a book about the disillusionment of the times, “If Beale Street Could Talk” (1974).

During the last few years of his life, he continued to produce important works of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. He also started teaching. Baldwin passed away in 1987 after a short battle with stomach cancer.

This is my last BHM illustration for this series, but I’ll be back tomorrow with a wrap up!

[archinform]

Rosehill Mausoleum, Chicago

The mausoleum features a rotunda with relief panels of the four seasons by Leon Hermant, sculptor

Rosehill Masoleum. Source: Rosehill Cemetery, Dignity Memorial

Background:

Rosehill Cemetery, in northwest Chicago, is the city's largest and oldest cemetery, dating back to 1859, and contains at least 200,000 grave sites in a 350-acre garden setting.

Dedicated in 1914, the cemetery's Rosehill Mausoleum was designed by architect Sidney Lovell, who is interred within. The interior is almost entirely of marble, with the floors composed of Italian Carrara marble. Several later additions would be made to the building; there were six additions made after 1913, and a final one in 1975.

Leon Hermant (1866–1936) was an American sculptor best known for his architectural sculpture. Hermant was born in France, educated in Europe and came to America in 1904 to work on the French Pavilion at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri.

For most of his career he was based in Chicago, working mostly in the American midwest, and frequently with a partner Carl Beil.

From 1904, when they met in St. Louis, until 1927, Hermant and Beil were partners at their Sculpture Studio at 21 East Pearson Street in Chicago.  Leon was the Artist, Carl, the "Executioner."  Hermant continued his art after Beil's death in 1927, receiving a major commission for the Indiana State Library in 1934. Hermant exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago in the 1920s, and would complete many sculptures throughout the U.S. [Chicago Sculpture in the Loop]

In 1928 Hermant was awarded the Légion d'honneur by the French government for his Louis Pasteur Monument in Grant Park, Chicago.

Pasteur Monument, Grant Park, Chicago

In the 1929 Fourth Addition to Rosehill Mausoleum, a marble rotunda features relief panels of the four seasons executed by Hermant, placed between engaged marble columns. Each panel contains a brief quote below, appropriate to the season. Leon Hermant's signature appears on the bottom right of only one panel, Winter.

The yellowish lighting within the rotunda is so dim that photography is difficult, and one strains to appreciate the quality of the sculptures. I'd admired these panels before, but it was thanks to some thorough research by Jim Craig of Under Every Tombstone that I was alerted to their sculptor's identity.

Leon Hermant, 1866-1936 Source: Under Every Tombstone

Construction News, February 22, 1913, pp. 6-7. Click to view larger

See detail of ad below:

Photos from my recent visit to Rosehill Mausoleum, July 19, 2024:

Rosehill Mausoleum, corridor leading to the rotunda

Rotunda east side, Winter (left), Spring (right)

Rotunda west side, Summer (left), Autumn (right)

The south of the rotunda is occupied by the elegant Rawson family crypt. The north opens to a corridor leading to other areas of the mausoleum.

The Four Seasons

Spring

Summer

Autumn

Winter

Inscriptions at the base of the four panels:

SPRING

Hail bounteous May, that dost inspire

Mirth, and youth and warm desire

Hill and dale dost boast thy blessing

This we salute thee with our early song

and welcome and wishe thee long.

                                          Milton.

SUMMER

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

…So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

                                             Shakespeare

AUTUMN

There is no death! The stars go down

To rise upon some other shore.

And bright in heaven's jeweled crown

They shine for evermore.

…For all the universe is life…

There are no dead."

                                       Maeterlink

WINTER

When once our heavenly souls shall climb

Then all earthly grossness quit.

Attired with stars we shall forever sit

Triumphing over death and change and thee

O time!

                                       -Milton-

Detail of Autumn

Signature of Leon Hermant Sc. [sculptor] on the Winter panel

A sculpture inside a family crypt [not attributed to Hermant, but I liked it]

Plan of main level of Rosehill Mausoleum; yellow circle indicates location of the four seasons rotunda.

Beil and Hermant created the relief sculptures above the mausoleum's main entrance (see below).

The mansions of the silent, by Booth, A.L. Published in: Fine arts journal, 1916.

Leon Hermant's other works in Chicago include:

Former Illinois Athletic Club, now SAIC MacLean Center; 12th floor frieze (1908); Zeus presiding over athletic contests.

William Shakespeare, (1915) Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois

Louis Pasteur Monument, (1928) Grant Park, Chicago

City Hall and Cook County Building, (1911), Chicago

Radisson Chicago Hotel [Medinah Athletic Club] Reliefs, (1929), Chicago; According to an article in the Chicago Tribune from Sept 16, 1928 entitled “Building art inspires panels,” “The friezes were designed by George Unger, in collaboration with Walter Ahlschlager, and carved by Leon Hermant."

One North Lasalle Street (1930), Vitzthum and Burns architects, Chicago

via Prabook site

SOURCES/ LINKS:

Léon Hermant, Wikipedia

Sidney Lovell, Wikipedia

"The Mansions of the Silent," by Anne Lisle Booth, Fine Arts Journal, Vol. 34, No. 6 (Jun. - Jul., 1916), pp. 265-274

"Rosehill Cemetery Mausoleum," Construction News, February 22, 1913, pp. 6-7.

[mask131]

The cosmogony of French fantasy

The title is not by me - this is actually the title of an article I want to kind-of-translate kind-of-recap here. "Cosmogonie de la fantasy française - Genèse et émancipation", "Cosmogony of French fantasy - Genesis and emancipation", by Marie-Louise Bougon. It was an article part of the "Worldbuilding" issue of the French National Library review (La revue de la BNF), back in 2019, and it brings a lot of interesting element for those who are curious about what fantasy literature looks like currently in France (since all the fantasy we talk about is mostly American or British).

Here is the rough translation/summary:

Fantasy only appeared quite late in France - and if the first translations of English-speaking fantasy only come from the 1970s, we will have to wait for the new editorial dynamic of the 1990s for a true "French fantasy" to appear and specialize itself - many talk of a "French touch" that makes these books clearly different from their English companions.

I) The first translations: a fragmented territory

The first translations in French of fantasy books started in the 70s. The decisions of publishing houses at the time made it quite hard for a reader to identify "fantasy" as its own genre. Indeed, most fantasy authors (especially British ones) were published by houses specializing in "general literature" - The Hobbit was translated as "Bilbo le Hobbit" in 1969 by Stock, before it took care of the Cycle de Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake, while in 1972 Christian Bourgeois releases the first French translation of the Lord of the Rings. Another part of fantasy books - more American, these ones, the inheritors of the pulp aesthetic, the sword and sorcery books - was rather translated in collections dedicated to either science-fiction, or fantastique. [N.o.T.: The French term "fantastique" designates a specific literary genre in which supernatural elements suddenly happen in an otherwise normal, regular and mundane setting identical to our own - as opposed to "merveilleux" which is about describing worlds where the magical and fabulous is mundane. Dracula would be "fantastique" while fairytales are "merveilleux".] There was the collection "Aventures fantastiques" by the editions Opta, or the science-fiction collection of Lattès.

Fantasy was perceived originally as merely a sub-genre of science-fiction - an idea that was kept alive by collections such as "Pocket science-fiction" or "J'ai lu - SF" that published a mix of science-fiction and fantasy works throughout the 80s. Outside of the short-lived collection "Heroic Fantasy" by Stan Barets at the Temps futurs publishing house (it only lasted from 1981 to 1983), we would have to wait for quite some time before publishers started to understand that fantasy was its own genre. In 1988, the Atalante creates the "Bibliothèque de l'évasion" (Library of evasion) collection. Fleuve noir creates in 1998 a fantasy collection called "Dentelle du cygne" (Swan's lace), that in 2002 was replaced by "Rendez-vous ailleurs", "Meetings at other places". These were for large formats - pocket formats also started their own specific collections. J'ai lu Fantasy in 1998, for example, and in 1988 the Pocket SF collection started to add sub-titles such as "Fantasy", "Dark Fantasy" or "Science-fantasy" to differentiate the works. However, despite all these efforts, the original decades-old confusion between fantasy, SF and general literature hindered the growth of the genre in France, since it never got a true visibility...

II) Cartography of the "great old ones"

If people only start to realize and understand the genre itself at the end of the 80s, it doesn't mean that there never was any French fantasy works until this date. In fact, the Callidor editions, specializing in "fantasy archeology", have made an effort to dig up and bring back to light the works that shaped the French fantasy - and for them, the oldest French work of fantasy would be the epic Les Centaures, in 1904, written by André Lichtenberger. In 2005, the author Laurent Kloetzer went even further than this - he claimed that Flaubert's Salammbô (an 1862 sensual, violent and Orientalist historical novel) was one of the earliest examples of French fantasy. Kloetzer notably pointed out the similarity between Salammbô's baroque style, and the one of Michael Moorcock's Gloriana, and how the way Robert Howard described bloody battles was quite close to Flaubert's own war descriptions. By retrospectively considering these works as fantasy, this would make the French fantasy a continuation of the merveilleux genre (see my mentions above).

So, French precursors did exist - but they remained lonely and rare experimentations, that never got any true success upon their release. Nathalie Henneberg, an author of science-fiction (who often published under the name of her husband, Charles Henneberg) did made a few fantasy pauses in her SF career during the 1960s - Le Sang des astres (The blood of celestial bodies) and Les Dieux verts (The Green gods), republished by Callidor in 2018. However the most notorious example of this "primitive French fantasy" would be Jacques Abeille's Cycle des contrées, published in 1982 at Flammarion, then re-edited in 2012 by the Attila editions, and finally released in pocket format by Folio SF in 2018. This cycle, that describes the exploration of another world full of wonders and magics, took more than thirty years to be recognized as a fantasy works - and that despite Abeille having sent his manuscript to Julien Gracq, one of the greatest French fans of Tolkien at the time. If people did notice a similarty between fantasy books and Abeille's works, editors made nothing of it - one would have to wait for the more modern reedition for the "fantasy" aspect to be advertised. In 2011, in an interview, Jacques Abeille recalled a sentence one of his readers said to him: "As a kid, I watched Star Wars. As a teen, I read Tolkien. As an adult, I read you."

Abeille's new success in modern fantasy is however an exception, since other "precursors" of fantasy never regained such a late recognition: for example, Isabelle Hausser's Célubée, published in 1986 by Julliard, is still not sold as a fantasy work, and that despite being re-edited by Fallois in 2000 (with a Marc Fumaroli preface). Among other French early attempts, we can find Sous l'araignée du Sud (Under the South spider), a 1978 novel by Dominique Roche and Charles Nightingale, published by Robert Laffont. Unlike the previous works, this novel actually had a consciousness that it belonged to a new and "infant" genre. The back of the book doesn't use the "fantasy" word yet, but it does describe it as "a marvelous and terrifying fairy tale, in the line of Tolkien's work, in the heroico-fantastical tradition of the Anglo-Saxons, but this time written in French, in a rich and visual language, sparkling with humor."

In the 1980s, we see an hesitaton, an ambiguity between publishing/editing decisions that made the birth of this first fantasy completely invisible to the public, and a slow, creeping recognition by authors and publishers of a new genre. In 1983, Francis Berthelot's Khanaor duology was published in the Heroic Fantasy collection of Temps futurs - and in the preface the author clearly states its "fantasy" status. "No need to lie to ourselves, the same way general literature disdains SF, the SF disdains heroic fantasy. It makes it a sub-sub-genre, a doubly-poor parent of the Letters with a big L." This preface highlights the bad reputation of the genre at the time - for French people of the 80s, fantasy was just a sub-science-fiction, less thoughtful, less prone to reflexion, more turned towards adventure and entertainment. Despite all this criticism, fantasy will still manage to grow away from science-fiction, and find its place in the "genre literatures".

III) An expanding universe

It was around 1995 that a true turn of event happened, around the same time the first French publishing house entirely dedicated to fantasy were created (Mnémos and Nestiveqnen). Mnémos, originally conceived by Stéphane Marsan and Frédéric Weil to publish role-playing game novelizations, still edited during its first years French authors such as Mathieu Gaborit, Fabrice Colin, Laurent Kloetzer, Pierre Grimbert and Sabrina Calvo. Nicknamed "the Mnémos generation", these authors created a true boom and multiplication of the French fantasy works in the 2000s. Les Chroniques des Crépusculaires (The Chronicles of the Dusk-people), of Mathieu Gaborit (1995-96) and Le Secret de Ji, by Pierre Grimbert (prix Julia Verlanger in 1997) form the two first commercial successes of French fantasy.

This new fashion was certified by the creation in 2000 of the Bragelonne editions: this very prolific publishing house released translations of English works, but also promoted the writers of the "Mnémos generation", while discovering new authors. For example, Henri Loevenbruck with his Celtic saga La Moïra (2001-2002), or the Ange duo (already famous for their work on comic books and roleplaying games) with their cycle Trois Lunes de Tanjor (Three Moons of Tanjor, 2001-2003, re-edited in 2005 under the title Ayesha). Les Editions de l'Oxymore (The Oxymoron Editions), created in 1999, also allowed numerous French authors to start in the genre, via periodical anthologies - these anthologies contained short stories from authors now quite well-known, such as Justine Niogret, Mélanie Fazi or Charlotte Bousquet. The editorial expansion follows all the way throughout the 2000s, with new publishing houses opening regularly. Le Bélial', which created the Bifrost journal, published fantasy novels since 1998 (their collection "Fantasy", renamed "Kvasar" in 2011). The webzine ActuSF becomes an editing house in 2003, and dedicates its collection "Trois souhaits" (Three wishes) to French authors. Les Moutons électriques (The electrical sheeps) were born in 2004, and made famous Jean-Philippe Jaworski, while La Volte, around the same time, started the very noticeable Horde du Contrevent (Horde of the Counterwind) by Alain Damasio. The years 2010s also saw a few house apparitions - such as the Critic, Callidor and Scrineo editions - and there was also a very dynamic microedition market.

Of course, French youth publications also stayed very rich and prolific - finding a true audience after the Harry Potter phenomenon. Two famous French series played on the idea of "the adventures of a young wizard" - the Tara Duncan series by Sophia Audouin-Mamikonian, started in 2003 and a mass commercial success, and also started in 2003 the saga of the "world of Gwendalavir" by Pierre Bottero. While these works all evoke the Potter-phenomenon (teenage characters promised to a great destiny and magical powers in a fantastical parallel world), they do keep an original voice, find their own themes and specificities, and thus gain a faithful audience. In the Fantasy forum of the university of Artois, Pierre Bottero was the most frequently mentionned French author when participants were asked "Who is your favorite author?", making him a good rival of English-speaking fantasy authors.

If French fantasy managed to build itself, and to singularize itself - and if the genre became even more visible thanks to the recent mediatic success of the Game of Thrones TV series, Jérôme Vincent (director of ActuSF) made a quite disappointing observation in a 2017 interview. He noted that the "wave" expected did not happen. "The big cinema blockbusters all belong to either science-fiction or fantasy, the great TV series are all tied one way or another to fantasy, that's the same thing in comic books and video games, and that's without talking of role-playing games... [...] But it seems that is no effect, no repercusion of this onto fantasy literature." In order to ameliorate the visibility and the sales of fantasy books, since 2017 publishers created the "Mois de l'imagination" (Month of the imagination), a way to rival the "literary new year". While it is too early to establish if this worked or not, it is quite a hopeful sign to see that in "fantasy reading recommandations", French names start to pop up alongside the great English ones. As Estelle Faye wrote, "French fantasy seems to still suffer from an inferiority complex" - but we can only hope authors and readers will manage to fight it off.

IV) A world of its own ?

Is there a "French touch", a specificity to French fantasy? This question, frequently debated by fan forums, became the subject of a podcast produced by the website Elbakin.net, in which was noted the lack in France of huge cycles carried over several volumes (a very prominent feature of English-written fantasy). French fantasy authors prefers one-shots, short series (rarely more than a trilogy), or series of distnct novels merely sharing a same world (for example, the works of Lionel Davoust that take place in the Evanégyre world). This formal difference would however be due to the "fear" of editors, who do not dare putting in the world too-ambitous projects. Due to this format specificity, it seems that there is a lesser importance of the worldbuilding in French fantasy - which might be why its authors had a hard time building an audience in the beginnings. As David Peyron wrote it in Culture geek, fantasy fans tend to prefer the quality of the worldbuilding over the quality of the style. "If the quality of the world becomes essential, in return some traits such as the literary style, which gives its value to a cultural object in a classical system, are pushed aside." French fantasy, which is less of a worldbuilder and much more literary than its English counterpart, is as a result swimming against the stream. However, nowadays this particularly is accepted by the fans. Indeed, in recent reviews and articles, several French authors such as Jean-Philippe Jaworski or Alain Damasio are praise for their mastery of style - the first one because of how he writes like Alexandre Dumas, the second because of how versatile he can be with tones and genres. These literary qualities are obviously tied to the inspirations of the French authors, who do not have the "pulp inheritage" and rather take from French classics or swashbuckling novels. Of course, we also cannot ignore the theory that French readers are more sensible to the style when it comes to writing in their own language.

If we go towards themes, we can see several recurring motifs and traditions shared by both English-speaking and French-speaking fantasy. For example, Arthurian fantasy has sparked a certain interest in France - La Trilogie des Elfes (The Elf trilogy) of Jean-Louis Fetjaine (1998-2000), or Justine Niogret's Mordred (2013). However, French authors truly seem to express a taste for historical but non-medieval fantasy. Jean-Philippe Jaworski's Gagner la guerre (Win the war, 2009) takes place during a reinvented Renaissance, Johan Heliot's takes an interest in the rule of Louis XIV in his Grand Siècle (Great century) saga (2017-2018), Pierre Pevel choses the 17th century for the setting of his Les Lames du cardinal (The Cardinal's blades, 2007-2010), and finally Fabrice Anfosso takes inspiration from World War I in his Le Chemin des fées (The road of fairies, 2005). Urban fantasy also has a big success in France - especially one focusing on a reinvented Paris. There are numerous works reimagining the French capital as either filled with surpernatural beasts, either invaded by a scientific-marvelous touching to both the steampunk and gaslamp fantasies. For examples you have the Paris des merveilles cycle, by Pierre Pevel (Paris of marvels, 2003-2015), Un éclat de givre by Estelle Faye (A fragment of frost, 2014), Les Extraordinaires et Fantastiques Enquêtes de Sylvo Sylvain by Raphaël Albert (The Extraordinary and Fantastical Investigations of Sylvo Sylvain, 2010-2017), or Les Confessions d'un automate mangeur d'opium by Mathieu Gaborit and Fabrice Colin (Confessions of an opium-eating automaton, 1999).

Jacques Baudou described with enthusiasm the originality of French fantasy, whose main specificity is - according to him - a tendency to go to the margins. "The best works of French fantasy [...] operates a subversion of the codes, they practice the art of mixing, and as thus come off as greatly original literary objects". It seems indeed that, due to its late apparition, French fantasy benefited from a certain look-back on its own genre, making it easier for French authors to play with or subvert its codes. Anne Besson, however, nuances this opinion: she points out that the small number of French fantasy authors (compared to the mass of English-speaking authors) makes the differences in tones, themes and motifs much more obvious - which creates what is merely a feeling of a greater diversity.

Another element of French fantasy that seems to be born of its "lateness" is its reflexive dimension: French authors have a strong tendency towards the commentary and the erudition. For example, the fantasy anthologies of the Editions de l'Oxymore include between its short stories things such as critical files or textstaken out of classics of French culture. These practices seem to be an attempt at legitimizing a genre that still has a hard time being recognized as "true literature" - even though modern days receive fantasy works with much more benevolence than before.

V) To the conquest of the world ?

If French fantasy grew enormously since the first experiments of the 70s, and if it now benefits from a much better visibility, its market stays quite weak. A proof of that: the numerous funding campaigns launched these last years by different actors of the genre. French fantasy also has a hard time crossing the frontier. Le Livre et l'épée by Antoine Rouaud (The Book and the sword, first volume released in 2013) was translated in English, German, Dutch and Spanish. Le Secret de Ji of Pierre Grimbert (Ji's Secret) was also published in English via Amazon Crossing in 2013. But these are exceptions to the rule. But there is hope for future French publications - for example the Bragelonne publishing house established a partnership with the British Gollancz, a science-fiction specialist.

[nordleuchten]

did georges have any friends in america, i know he was trying to stay undercover but since he stayed with the hamiltons a bit he had philip who was in close age, and other kids in the hamilton house that georges could’ve talked to. i’m very interested in georges but I can’t seem to really find anything about his stay in america besides the letters with washington and hamilton♥️

Dear Anon,

thank you for the question. I really like to see all the interest that Georges received lately on this blog!

While it is true that Georges (born December 24, 1779) was quite close in age to Philip Hamilton (born January 22, 1782) I do not believe that were that close. I have never seen any source, letters for example, that suggested that the two were close. Georges stayed only a short time with the Hamilton’s and his and Philip’s friendship therefor would have to develop quickly. I am not an expert on the Hamilton’s, so somebody correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that Philip was during this time quite busy with his studies and he and his younger brother Alexander Hamilton jr. only spend the weekends with their family. If I am correct, Georges would have little interaction with the two oldest boys. He himself was busy continuing his studies and was overall in a dark state of mind. Georges, still almost a child, had gone through a series of life-changing events and did not seem to be in the mood to socialize or to find new friends. Even if he forged meaningful connections with the Hamilton children, they did not make him feel better. Hamilton wrote on December 24, 1795 to George Washington:

Young La Fayette appears melancholy and has grown thin. A letter lately received from his mother which speaks of something which she wishes him to mention to you (as I learn from his preceptor) has quickened his sensibility and increased his regret. If I am satisfied that the present state of things is likely to occasion a durable gloom, endangering the health & in some sort the mind of the young man (…).

“From Alexander Hamilton to George Washington, 24 December 1795,” Founders Online, National Archives, [Original source: The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, vol. 19, July 1795 – December 1795, ed. Harold C. Syrett. New York: Columbia University Press, 1973, pp. 514–515.] (06/28/2023)

When Georges came to live with his godfather George Washington, he seemed to have formed a close bond with Elizabeth “Eliza” Parke Custis Law and Eleanor “Nelly” Parke Custis Lewis. The two sisters were the children of John Parke Custis, Martha Washingtons only surviving son and George Washingtons adopted son. The relationship with Nelly appears to have been especially close.

Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis wrote on January 26, 1825, to her friend Elizabeth Bordley Gibson:

Georges has had a beautiful engraving of his father, a proof copy of the fine painting, framed for me. I shall bring it home soon – only two were sent from France, the Genl had presented one to Commodore [illegible], & this, George was resolved no one but me should have, & that no one but himself should present it. You may judge how precious it will be to me [paper torn] I know of his family, [paper torn] more attached I feel to them all. [paper torn] [illegible] love George dearly, indeed no one could see him, & listen to him, as we do here, & not love, esteem & respect him. The world are unacquainted with half his excellence & estimable qualities of heart & head – Did I tell you that I had received charming letters from his wife & sisters (…)

Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis, Woodlawn, to Elizabeth Bordley Gibson, Philadelphia, 1825 January 26, A-569.110, Box: 4, Folder: 1825.1.26. Elizabeth Bordley Gibson collection, A-569. Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon. Accessed June 28, 2023.

Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis wrote on December 25, 1838, to Elizabeth Bordley Gibson:

I am sorry, I have not received the memoirs of Lafayette. I have nor heard for a long time from my dear Brother George.

Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis, Woodlawn, to Elizabeth Bordley Gibson, Spruce Street Philadelphia, 1838 December 25, A-569.161, Box: 5, Folder: 1838.12.25. Elizabeth Bordley Gibson collection, A-569. Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon. Accessed June 28, 2023.

Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis, wrote on August 4, 1851 to Elizabeth Bordley Gibson:

I regret your disappointment in regard to your letter from Miss Below [?] but I have sustained a greater loss – Oscar Lafayette wrote to me immediately after the death of his father, my faithful friend & brother, giving me all the particulay of that event.

Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis to Elizabeth Bordley Gibson, 1824 October, A-569.104, Box: 3, Folder: 1824.10.00. Elizabeth Bordley Gibson collection, A-569. Special Collections at The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon. Accessed June 28, 2023.

There are several letters from Nelly, Eliza and Georges in the special collections at the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon. Most of them are from the time of La Fayette’s American Tour of 1824/25 or from later years. But there are also two farewell letters from the time that Georges and his mentor Felix Frestel left the Washingtons. While Eleanor’s letters in particular are mostly digitalized, Georges letters are only published with short summaries or keywords. I therefor mainly focused on Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis’ descriptions of her and Georges’ relationship but all that we have suggests that Georges felt the same.

While he was not a friend Georges made in America, we should not forget Felix Frestel, the man who accompanied Georges to America. Employed as Georges’ tutor prior to the French Revolution, the young man soon surpassed himself in the fulfillment of his duties. What he did for Georges, and indeed the whole family, carried a great personal risk. Once in America, he was Georges’ father, and mother, teacher, mentor, advocate, protector and friend. Georges and his family never forgot what Frestel had done, and the two families remained very close. Georges would later refer to Frestels younger son in a letter to Monsieur Guittére dated April 12, 1832:

(…) a young friend of mine, whom I love as I would love a younger brother.

Archives départementales de Sein-et-Marne - La Fayette, une figure politique et agricole (05/16/2022).

Washington commented in a letter to La Fayette from October 8, 1797:

Mr Frestal has been a true Mentor to George. No Parent could have been more attentive to a favourite Son; and he richly merits all that can be said of his virtues—of his good sense—and of his prudence. Both your son and him carry with them the vows, and regrets of this family, and of all who know them.

“From George Washington to Lafayette, 8 October 1797,” Founders Online, National Archives, [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Retirement Series, vol. 1, 4 March 1797 – 30 December 1797, ed. W. W. Abbot. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998, pp. 390–391.] (06/28/2023)

I hope that helped and I hope you have/had a lovely day!

P.S.: You mentioned that you find it hard to come across information about Georges’ stay in America. A week or so ago I had an ask about some general resources concerning Georges – maybe that was you or maybe you have seen it. If not, you might find this post useful. :-)

[mariacallous]

(JTA) — In synagogues, schools and ordinary streets across Europe, Jews are voicing a similar refrain: They live in a different world from the one they knew before Oct. 7.

That’s not only because Hamas’ attacks in southern Israel killed the most Jewish civilians in one day since the Holocaust. Across Europe, the rate of antisemitic incidents has fueled an atmosphere of fear and motivated some to conceal their Jewish identity.

European governments have made it a point to protect their countries’ Jews from antisemitism in recent decades. The fruits of those efforts are seen in the increased security at Jewish institutions across the continent and the continued public statements by Western leaders meant to call out and condemn hatred against Jews.

But there is a new wrinkle to that arc: a clear, tortured confusion in European governments and police departments about how to distinguish between anger against Israel and antisemitism, between the right to assemble at pro-Palestinian rallies and the crime of hate speech. The debate was punctuated on Monday by the firing of British Home Secretary Suella Braverman, who made a series of divisive remarks about pro-Palestinian demonstrators last week.

A new era?

Over a month into the bloody aftermath of Hamas’ attack on Israeli towns and Israel’s bombardment and siege of the Gaza Strip, antisemitism is soaring far from the scene of the conflict.

France has registered over 1,000 antisemitic acts since Oct. 7, exceeding in weeks the number recorded over the past year, according to Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin. The Community Security Trust, a group that tracks antisemitism in Britain, has reported 1,205 incidents in that time frame — the highest total in a 35-day period since it began recording offenses in 1984. And in Germany, the federal agency RIAS verified 202 antisemitic incidents between Oct. 7-15, up 240% from the same week last year.

The incidents run the gamut: Assaults, threats to Jews and Jewish businesses, damage to Jewish property, hate mail and online abuse.

On Nov. 4, a Jewish woman in Lyon was stabbed in the stomach at her home, while a swastika was found graffitied on her door. French prosecutors have also opened a probe into a viral video that showed a group of youths chanting on the Paris metro: “Fuck the Jews and fuck your mother, long live Palestine, we are Nazis and proud of it.”

Meanwhile, Berlin police are investigating two Molotov cocktails thrown at the Kahal Adass Jisroel synagogue, along with multiple Stars of David marked on apartment buildings. The Oct. 27 cover of the German magazine Der Spiegel, one of the most widely circulated news magazines in Europe, read “Wir Haben Angst” (“We are scared”). One of the four German Jews pictured on the cover is 90-year-old Holocaust survivor Ivar Buterfas-Frankenthal.

Marina Chernivsky is the founder and director of OFEK, a Berlin counseling center that specializes in antisemitic violence and discrimination. The group has struggled to manage a 12-fold increase in requests for psychological counseling since Oct. 7, she told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. In just three weeks, OFEK received 390 requests; its previous record was 370 in an entire year.

“It’s unbelievable,” said Chernivsky. “It’s just one indicator of the situation now, because it’s a very high barrier to decide to call an institution and tell the story and also ask for support. It’s not easy and many people do not do it.”

London police received reports of 657 antisemitic and 230 Islamophobic incidents between Oct.1 and Nov. 1, a significant jump in both categories. On Nov. 2, staff at London’s Wiener Holocaust Library — the world’s oldest Holocaust library and research center — found graffiti that read “Gaza” across their building’s sign.

In Italy’s capital, four Holocaust memorial plaques were found blackened with a torch and spray paint last week. The bronze blocks, called “pietre d’inciampo” or “stumbling stones” in Rome, are embedded on the sidewalk in front of apartment buildings where Jews were rounded up from the Nazi-occupied city and sent to Auschwitz in 1944. They show the names of the Jews who lived there and the dates when they were born, deported and murdered.

Milan officials are also investigating dozens of antisemitic incidents, including death threats graffitied in a hospital, a bakery and a nightclub. At a recent Milan rally, some protestors chanted, “Open the borders so we can kill the Zionists.”

Spain and Portugal have seen their share of synagogue graffiti, too. In Melilla, a Spanish enclave on the North African coast, a group of protestors gathered in front of a synagogue and burned an Israeli flag.

In the Netherlands, the number of antisemitic incidents reported to a leading Dutch-Jewish watchdog is up 818% from the monthly average of the past three years. This figure only includes interpersonal incidents, such as threats, verbal and physical abuse and direct messages, not general antisemitic statements on social media.

“We see lots of incidents at schools, where Jewish or Israeli kids are being attacked because of what’s going on in Israel and Gaza,” CIDI director Naomi Mestrum told JTA. “One kid was threatened with a knife and hit with a bottle, while the other kids were swearing, ‘kankerjood’ — in Dutch, that means ‘cancer Jew.’”

The Dutch Jewish Weekly changed its delivery packaging from transparent plastic to an anonymous white envelope after Oct. 7, according to editor-in-chief Esther Voet, because subscribers were anxious about their neighbors finding out they were Jewish. Their requests follow a pattern of fear among Jews taking measures to hide their identity in Europe, from removing or camouflaging their mezuzahs to taking off their kippahs in public and avoiding speaking Hebrew on the street. One Syrian Jewish refugee in the Netherlands told JTA he no longer sleeps in his own apartment after his window was defaced with a swastika.

Although antisemitism typically flares in Europe when there is fighting in Israel and the Palestinian territories, tracking groups in France, Britain, Germany and the Netherlands all report that European Jews are living in a new landscape.

“We’ve never seen this before, both this increase in numbers and the threatening types of incidents,” CIDI researcher and policy advisor Hans Wallage told JTA. “I also hear from the Jewish community that they’ve never experienced this before, and they’re very afraid and anxious for the future.”

The free speech debate

In the face of this crescendo, European governments have been conflicted over how to crack down on antisemitism without inhibiting free speech.

In France, Darmanin attempted to impose a blanket ban on pro-Palestinian demonstrations, declaring them “likely to generate disturbances to public order.” Vincent Brengarth, a lawyer for the Palestine Action Committee, called this order a “serious attack on freedom of expression.” The ban has since been overturned by France’s top administrative court, although local authorities can still block protests on a case-by-case basis.

London’s Metropolitan police have been open about their difficulty in determining which protest chants are lawful and which could incite violence. In a bulletin on Oct. 20, they discussed the popular chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which has various interpretations. Some activists say it means that Palestinians should be free of Israeli occupation, with rights and dignity equal to Israelis. Critics, including Israeli leaders and Jewish groups such as the Anti-Defamation League, say the chant calls for a Palestinian entity that has eliminated Jews and Israelis between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

“While we can envisage scenarios where chanting these words could be unlawful, such as outside a synagogue or Jewish school, or directly at a Jewish person or group intended to intimidate, it is likely that its use in a wider protest setting… would not be an offense and would not result in arrests,” said the Metropolitan police.

Meanwhile, the British government is divided. Ahead of a massive pro-Palestinian rally in London on Saturday, Suella Braverman wrote an op-ed calling the protestors “hate marchers” and accusing the police of being overly lenient with them. In a letter to senior police officers last month, the former home secretary argued that waving a Palestinian flag and chanting “From the river to the sea” should both be considered as possible criminal offenses.

Britain’s Labour party, just a few years removed from a longstanding antisemitism scandal, is similarly divided. Party leader Keir Starmer has shown a zero-tolerance policy for anything he sees as approaching hate speech against Jews. Labour parliament member Andy McDonald was suspended, pending an investigation, after the party alleged that he made “deeply offensive” comments at a rally on Oct. 29. He said in the speech: “We will not rest until we have justice. Until all people, Israelis and Palestinians, between the river and the sea, can live in peaceful liberty.”

Although Germany’s constitution protects freedom of expression, opinion and assembly, various local authorities have imposed bans on pro-Palestinian protests — including Hamburg, the second-largest city. In some places, resistance to these orders has led to clashes between protestors and riot police. Berlin’s education senator Katharina Guenther-Wuensch has allowed schools to ban the keffiyeh, a symbol of Palestinian solidarity, along with the phrase “Free Palestine.”

Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, has said he believes that protest bans are “definitely justified” to prevent “anti-Israel, aggressive and antisemitic” actions.

But some vocal opponents of the protest bans are Jews. In an open letter published in the German newspaper Die Tageszeitung and the New York-based magazine N+1, over 100 Jewish artists, writers and scholars in Germany said the suppression of pro-Palestinian rallies did not make them feel safer.

The group noted the surge in violent intimidation against German Jews and expressed fear that “the atmosphere in Germany has become more dangerous — for Jews and Muslims alike — than at any time in the nation’s recent history.” However, they denounced bans on nonviolent protest, saying these restrictions often come with brutality to immigrants and minorities and can escalate instead of preventing violence.

“As Jews, we reject this pretext for racist violence and express full solidarity with our Arab, Muslim, and particularly our Palestinian neighbors,” said the letter. “What frightens us is the prevailing atmosphere of racism and xenophobia in Germany, hand in hand with a constraining and paternalistic philo-Semitism. We reject in particular the conflation of anti-Semitism and any criticism of the state of Israel.”

[terebelli]

Mazarine Library, Paris. Oldest public library in France. Established 1643.

📸 @antoine_never

[elfboyeros]

Gloves

Alright, I’m here because this motherfucker decided to do a little TikTok video with the sound “A boy would be the son of France, but you Marie-Therese shall be mine” with Finnegan and Aurora with the context being that it is Amethea is saying it to Aurora because they have similar conditions, so guess what sluts, I am writing a little thing after Their Northern Lights after Aurora is out of her coma and in recovery because I think about this whole family way to much! Read about these nerds ➡️🎒Bridgehid Masterlist💀

The sound of Waltz No.2 on the violin rang throughout the large cottage strings being played in Indigo’s library near one of the windows, played by the eldest of Indigo’s children, named after the northern lights and the dawn, with her hair of candy apple red and caramel skin. Sweet Aurora Marguerite Bookstone-Corals, now playing her violin with purple hands.

“Shostakovich.” Amethea remarked softly from the entrance of the library, making her granddaughter turn around after she finished playing, “Hi, mon cœur.”

“Granny?!” Aurora retorted, setting her violin down in the window seat.

“You sound surprised,” she chuckled, walking towards her.

“If you came to see how I am doing, I am doing just fine, I’m just staying inside like I was advised to do.”

Amethea frowned, “It’s fine I've never been a big fan of being outside anyway.” Aurora said with a shrug.

“Yet, you like the beach,” Amethea replied, “and gardening, flowers, and herbs.”

Aurora shrugged again, “But that’s not why I am here.” Amethea remarked, “I came to give you these,” She pulled a pair of cute gloves out of her dress pocket, “Your father told me you’ve been staring at these hands a little too long, so I wanted to give you these.”

“Granny, I—”

“You don’t have to wear them,” Amethea added placing the gloves in her hands, “It not difficult to have hands like this, but it make you feel out of place, even if you don’t wear the gloves, you have them if you ever what them.”

“Thank you,” Aurora muttered tears building up in her eyes.

“Mon cœur?”

“I’m a horrible person!”

“Aurora!”

“I knew about everything! I knew what Alex and Finn were doing, and didn’t tell mère or père, I didn’t stop them either! I made mère and père fight—”

“Sweet girl, they weren’t fighting—”

“Alex said they didn’t talk to each other for almost 2 months! They always have something to talk about! mère and père rarely ever fight, let alone stop talking to each other and I caused that! Finn’s been training like crazy, and not just so he can be the best mage like he always says, he’s training because he feels like he has to protect me and Alex! I’m the oldest! I’m supposed to be the one to protect him! I’m also supposed to be the good one! The one that follows every rule, that listens to my parents, that tells on my siblings when they are doing something wrong! I am—”

“You more like your mother than you realize, you know that?” Amethea remarked with a hum picking Aurora's violin before sitting in the window seat, “Come here,” she remarked, patting the place next to her, ordering her granddaughter to sit.

Aurora rested her head on Amethea's shoulder, “You choose to suppress the hard and heavy emotions, and then when it becomes too much it feels like you explode,” Amethea explained her hands grazing the violin now in her lap, “That’s one of the many reasons your parents an excellent match. Your father loves to listen and observe, especially to your mother, I’ve never seen anyone, let alone a man, be so love-sick over one person,” the older woman chuckled to herself, “and that will never change. Just as he loves her, he loves you and your siblings just as much if not more! When it comes to 3 being harmed, for better or for worse your father forgets reason and stops listening, and your mother continues to suppress. So, when you were in your coma and Calvin decided to continue to work to keep an eye on you, your mother took that as a sign that he was angry with her because she did nothing upon seeing you hurt.”

“Père has never been angry with mère,” Aurora muttered.

Amethea chuckled, “They worry about you and this most recent event has only made it worse.” the older woman remarked, “Which is not your fault, you did what is right.”

“I still feel horrible,” Aurora sighed, “I’m the oldest—”

“You being the oldest has no bearing on how you should choose to live your life.” Amethea remarked, “Your brother is becoming more and more like your mother everyone every day, I swear. Are you the one who made him the protector?”

“No, but—”

“Then him choosing to be the protector over the three has nothing to do with you!”

Aurora sighed, “Everything just feels weird.”

“Being in a coma for 5 months will do that, mon cœur.” Amethea hummed.

“Thank you, granny.” Aurora hummed.

“You’re welcome, mon cœur.” She replied.

[minecraft-llama]

Chess Blog Day #37 - The History of Chess Sets

My main source for today.

Chess pieces, or at least pieces for the old games that are the ancestors of chess, have been around for a long time.

This piece is the oldest one found, dated at 465 AD. It might not actually be a chess piece though, since there are no written records of chess at this time in history.

The earliest known pieces confirmed to be for a chess predecessor are this chaturanga (more on this tomorrow) set from ~760 AD.

Yeah, they were quite simplified back in the day.

One of the earliest European chess sets (and this is a chess set) is the Isle of Lewis set we saw all the way back in day #1.

Here are all of the chess men from that set.

On this half of the set the rooks (far left) are holding their shields normally instead of biting them like a lunatic.

They are now to be found in the British Museum and the National Museum of Scotland.

Another old European set was the Charlemagne chess set. According to legend they were a gift to Emperor Charlemagne, but historians discovered that this is a load of rubbish since they were made about 200 years after.

They are thought to have been made in Italy in the 1000's. They are almost certainly European, at least, since at that time Muslims found it against their religion to make statues of people and animals.

It's now kept in the National Library of France.

During the 1700s and early 1800s, chess sets were starting to be made of wood. There were three main competing styles then, along with plenty others.

The English Barleycorn set:

The English St. George set:

And the French Regency Set:

All of these had the same problems. They were tall and easy to knock over, and the pieces were hard to tell apart.

So, in 1849, the Staunton Chess set was released to fix these problems.

It's remained the standard ever since.

Tomorrow: Chess and its family.

[jackredfieldwasmyjacob]

Mapping Madrid: Week 10

As in the day I'm writing this, tomorrow I'm leaving for Italy for 2/3 months, so I thought it would be nice to say goodbye to the city with a Mapping Madrid, this time in Bilbao :). Named after the Basque city, it is actually one of the oldest metro stations in Madrid, being opened in 1919 (you can see the number above the metro sign). It has been very renovated, but they kept original parts in the station which is pretty cool (as you can see in pic 4 for example). It has both line 1 and line 4 connections, and I actually got to use both today lol, cause I had to go to the library in Pacífico (line 1), and then in order to get home I had to change trains in Argüelles (line 4). Once I got to Bilbao the only real objective I had was going to the bank, as my grandma had given me some money for the trip I wanted to have in the bank and not in cash. This was particularly funny to me cause my bank is BBVA, which not only is a Basque bank that originated in Bilbao, but older people like my grandma still call it the 'Bilbao bank', so it was a funny coincidence. Regardless, for some reason it wouldn't let me add money, only withdraw, so I couldn't do it. After that, I had to call my other grandma to tell her about the trip (she told me she'll be praying for me everyday) and by then I was hungry so I dropped by the nearest café I found, this fancy place called El Horno in Luchana Street, one of the main ones around Bilbao, where I had a croissant and an orange juice <3. After that I just wandered around while listening to this very cool podcast episode about queer folklore artist Rodrigo Cuevas. The thing about Bilbao station, it is it's very interesting location. It sits right in the border between the districts of Centro (Centre, the literal center of the city) and Chamberí. I mostly walked around Chamberí, which is considered a fancy district of Madrid, but not in the same way as Salamanca, which is the wealthiest area of the country. I'd say Chamberí is fancy / elegant, whereas Salamanca is just posh and wealthy. Chamberí doesn't feel like a hostile place, while Salamanca definitely does. Anyways. The funny thing about Bilbao. It is located right at the end of Fuencarral Street, and directly north of the famous barrio of Malasaña. Fuencarral St is one of the most popular shopping streets in the city, with tons of gentrified quirky / modern shops, as well as second-hand clothing stores and antique places, you get the vibe. And of course, Malasaña is the artsy / hipstery / young quartier of the city: everyone who wants to be someone wants to live in Malasaña, and everything happens here. It is a pretty cool place honestly, tho getting exceedingly gentrified. Again, I mostly wandered around Chamberí, mostly around nearby Olavide Square, center of the Trafalgar barrio, which I normally love but that was full of construction work :(. However, I also walked a bit through Fuencarral St (pic 3) and even ended up in the Dos de Mayo Square, the centrer of Malasaña named after the revolts that started the Spanish Independence War against France, before turning back.

[scotianostra]

John Barbour, the early Scottish poet, died on March 13th 1395.

Barbour was a Poet, churchman and scholar, probably born in Aberdeen, where he spent most his life and held the position of Archdeacon. He was granted passage to study at Oxford and Paris. Several poems have been attributed to Barbour, one of which, The Stewartis Originall, relates the fictitious pedigree of the Stewarts back to Banquo and his son Fleance, yes they were real characters and not just made up by Shakespeare!

  His long patriotic poem The Brus, awarded a prize of 10 pounds by the King Robert II, is his most famous work. It supplies some facts of Robert the Bruce, many of which are told in anecdotal style and emphasises Bruce’s exploits in freeing Scotland from English rule. This poem is also where we can find the quotation “A! Fredome is a noble thing!”

  Barbour’s The Brus (The Bruce) is considered to stand right at the beginning of Scots literature and history, since it is the oldest Scots manuscript still in existence. It is an epic poem which tells the bloody tale of King Robert the Bruce, Sir James of Douglas and Edward Bruce and their fight for Scottish independence from a ruthless Edward I of England who wanted Scotland (along with Wales and France) to become part of his kingdom. The poem includes a graphic depiction of the Battle of Bannockburn, and also relates the skulduggery and intrigue that surrounded Robert the Bruce in his accession to the Scottish throne. The language is essentially that of 14th century Scotland – which by my clock makes it over 600 years old. A lot can happen to a language in 600 years. Reading it now it’s difficult to get past the weird spellings, obscure words, twisted sentence structure, etc. But if you read it aloud (not recommended in libraries), or read it into yourself and try to hear the words as they are written, then you have won half the battle.

  Here is an excerpt, and translation from The Brus

  …and led thar lyff in gret travaill

and oft in hard stour off batail

lwan gret price off chevalry

and war voydyt off cowardy

as wes king robert off scotland

that hardy wes off hart and hand

and gud schir james off douglas

that in his tyme sa worthy was

that off hys price and hys bounte

in ser landis renownyt wes he

off thaim I thynk this buk to ma

now god gyff grace that I may swa

tret it and bryng till endyng

that I say nocht bot suthfast thing

translates roughly to Who led their life through great troubles,

Often in the hard struggles of battle,

And won the great prize of chivalry

And never knew what it was to be cowardly.

Such was King Robert of Scotland

Who was strong of heart and hand,

And good Sir James Douglas,

A worthy man in his time,

Who for his esteem and his generosity

Was famous in far off lands.

I make this book with them in mind.

Now God give me the grace that I may

Write it well and bring it to the end

Telling you nothing but the truth.

Imagine the world back then, to technology at all, the church was your main, if only, source of news, in the years after The Brus, the country was flushed with victory and to hear the stories of the struggles of their grandfathers, this poem sang the glories of freedom, and pictured the civic and knightly virtues of Bruce and Douglas. It’s largely thanks to this work that we know s much about King Robert and The Good Sir James.

  Barbour called it a romance, it is regarded as being in essential points a faithful history, and was so received by generations of readers.  Walter Scott  used it for the basis of several of his books and every book that has been written about this period of Scottish history since, has used The Brus as a basis of their research. Barbour spent much of his later life as a courtier to Robert II, who commisioned The Brus and The Stewartis  Originall,  although the latter is highly embellished to put the Stewarts in a much better light, Robert II being the first of their line would have been the source for Barbour to write the story. As well as the ten pound he received for writing The Brus, the King also granted Barbour a pension of a pound a year for the rest of his life. He went on to write a number of other poems, though most have been lost and the authorship of others is debated. The 33,000 line poem Legends of the Saints was probably written by him, as was as The Scots Buik of the most noble and vailyzeand Conqueror Alexander the Great.

  Many view him as the father of Scots language poetry. As well as being in Robert II court, Barbour continued to fulfil his duties at St Machars’ Cathedral until the early 1390s, and he died in Aberdeen in 1395, a plaque in the city remembers him.

  The pictures include one of the two earliest surviving manuscripts of The Brus, it shows a description of the initial phases of the battle of Bannockburn. This is a copy made by  John Ramsay, Prior of the Carthusian monks at Perth, made this copy of the poem in 1489 and is held at The National Library of Scotland. The link takes you to the NLS page with and interesting timeline and links to important documents held in their archives

The second pic is on the walls of The National Portrait gallery, a magnificent frieze of Scottish history, the aforementioned plaque, that can be found at Castle Street, Aberdeen, and finally the slap at the top of the mound fittingly marking the steps up to Makar’s  Court in Edinburgh’s Old Town, the full stanza reads

  A! Fredome is a noble thing! Fredome mays man to haiff liking. Fredome all solace to man giffis, He levys at es that frely levys!

It translates to

Freedom is a noble thing! Great happiness does freedom bring. All solace to a man it gives; He lives at ease that freely lives.

Pics are a memorial to John Barbour at St Machars, Aberdeen, an 18th century copy of his work in The National Museum of Scotland and the above mentioned inscription at The Mound, Edinburgh.

[crazy-meringue]

Finally I received my New Year's gift! Real happiness. I was really looking forward to this scent because of its composition.

This is HIS scent. His young one. When, having collected all the laurels of the Seven Years' War and having given a few more years to the service of France, 23-year-old Donatien Alphonse Francois returns home. The beauty that blooms like a fragrant orange flower merges with a craving for secrets and mystical freedom, brought up in the basement of the uncle-abbot's castle, where there was always the smell of incense. He puts on a baby blue suit with silver embroidery and takes out the oldest book in the family library. The smell of these pages embraces him and touches him tenderly, like a girl. And from the depths of his soul and body, passion finally bursts freely and fully.

This is such a scent. Youth, lust and mystery. All that my creation associates with my dear friend

//I'm also waiting for two volumes of "Juliette" and a complete edition of "Justine", but they will most likely be delivered next week