homosexuality in ancient greece is a rich and complicated topic- were ancient greeks super sex positive and evolved? were they child molesters? were they misogynists ? i’m not going to get into that because i don’t know enough about the topic, but jeanne and i were talking about it last night and she alerted me to a blurb about the sacred band of thebes, a military unit comprised of “age-structured” male couples.
greek pederasty, as opposed to the modern use of “pederasty” as a synonym of sexual abuse of children, refers to social coupling of older men with teenage boys, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear- obviously these relationships weren’t all sexual, but are generally considered to have been sexual, emotional, social, and/or educational- at the same age when young women were being married off to older spouses, young greek men were picking their partners and forming strong, lifelong bonds (that could also include sex forever and ever even after the younger dude got married cause men win, women lose, so goes history).
anyway, the theory behind the sacred band of thebes is that military performance would improve if there were strong social and emotional bonds between the men in the unit. the rationale can be summed up in this quote from plato’s symposium:
And if there were only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be made up of lovers and their beloved, they would be the very best governors of their own city, abstaining from all dishonour, and emulating one another in honour; and when fighting at each other’s side, although a mere handful, they would overcome the world. For what lover would not choose rather to be seen by all mankind than by his beloved, either when abandoning his post or throwing away his arms? He would be ready to die a thousand deaths rather than endure this. Or who would desert his beloved or fail him in the hour of danger?this was not the only unit in ancient greece structured this way, and the rationale behind it is interesting compared to some of the conservative talking points in support of don’t ask, don’t tell. i do not mean this to draw a parallel between homosexual/queer relationships and greek pederasty, but the idea of structuring military units based on close emotional and/or physical relationships vs. calling even the potential for such relationships ‘distracting’ and ‘disruptive’.
Alison is a graduate of the University of Cincinnati with a double major in Dietetics and Greg Dulli-American studies. She currently resides in San Francisco with a bunch of animals all over her all the time. Her historic interests include the American Civil War, Cincinnati, and ancient Roman sex. Her other interests include cats, Degrassi, those hardcore guys with the big plugs who should have gone extinct in the 90s, and erotic tweeting.
If you know me, you know that I complain a lot about the shithole I grew up in. It’s a terrible place full of terrible ignorant racist classist fucked up religious assholes. HOWEVER, it has a super interesting history- Springfield Missouri is: The Birthplace of the Wild West, Birthplace of Route 66, a stop on the Trail of Tears, and the Birthplace of Cashew Chicken. It was also an important area in the Civil War, in fact, the campus of Drury University (where Bob Barker went!!!!) still has the trenches that were dug for the Battle of Springfield!
I’m here to talk about the Battle of Wilson’s Creek (pronounced Wilson’s Crick). Located southwest of Springfield, Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield is a place we had to go on school fieldtrips, and my grandpa really liked going so when he visited once a year my family would go too. The museum center is pretty dope, there’s a really cool model of the land and it lights up and explains the battle in a way that normal people can understand.
So, some basic things about The Battle of Wilson’s Creek: it was fought on August 10, 1861, it was the first major Civil War battle west of the Mississippi, and because of… something, Missouri remained a Union State even though the Confederates won. There were about 2300 deaths, which the tour guides at Wilson’s Creek always made sound kind of major, but I guess there were 51,000 deaths at Gettysburg so what do I know.
But what’s cool is that part of the battle took place on Bloody Hill and it is hella haunted. The hill was stained RED with BLOOD for a long time after the battle, and there’s soldier ghosts, sounds of guns and cannons and soldiers walking in the woods, and unexplained COLD SPOTS. Actually, the cold spots thing weirds me out because I experienced many cold spots as a child in Missouri but I always reckoned that’s just how the weather is there. Huh. Anyway, I have spent some time climbing around on Bloody Hill (which is still red but the soil is full of clay which may or may not explain that) and did not see any ghosts or find any Civil War relics like other kids did. I did get my period on it in 8th grade! So poetic.
(here’s a picture of a haunted cannon)
The Ray House was just a house on a farm but became a makeshift hospital during the battle. Union General Nathaniel Lyon’s corpse hung out there for a while after he was killed in battle but unfortunately his ghost does not haunt it. It is haunted by the ghost of one of the Ray daughters, she goes back and forth between the spring house and the main house. The Ray family lived in the house until fairly recently and always reported seeing shit. I don’t know if I believe them because Ozarkians are full of crap but I WANT TO BELIEVE.
Nathaniel “Sexy Nose” Lyon
http://www.chrisanddavid.com/wilsonscreek/ [www.chrisanddavid.com] » here is the best website about Wilson’s Creek ever. I really don’t understand what is going on here at all and I highly recommend you check it out.
It’s baseball season once again! At the moment, I’ve been too busy praying that the Baltimore Orioles aren’t blowing their proverbial load to write a full blog entry. However, in keeping with the start of the season, I’ve got something that I wanted to share with all of you.
William Howard Taft was the first president to throw a ceremonial first pitch at an Opening Day game, which he did in 1910 at the Washington Senators’ stadium. From that season forward, the sitting president has generally continued the tradition, with notable exceptions taking place during World War I and following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. After the Senators left Washington, and prior to the Nationals’ arrival in the city, nearby Baltimore often provided a venue for the presidental first pitch, though several other cities have hosted the event as well. In 1990, the first (and so far, only) ceremonial pitch thrown by a president outside of the United States took place when George H.W. Bush threw the first pitch out in Toronto.
Enjoy the pictures, and appreciate that when FDR threw the first pitch out in 1940, he hit a Washington Post camera with the ball. That seems like reason enough to give the guy more than two terms in office, right?
- Christine
William Howard Taft
Woodrow Wilson
Herbert Hoover
Franklin Roosevelt
John F. Kennedy
Richard Nixon
early to bed, eager to rise- heh heh heh heh
ah, the age old question- was benjamin franklin merely a notorious flirt, or was he a major bonedog boning every madame in france and every um, english lady in england, leaving poor deborah read at home in america to tend to his love child and rue the day she saw him hauling ass past her house with a mouth full of bread? i’d always fallen on the side of ‘flirt’, assuming that women weren’t exactly falling all over themselves to hop into bed with a pudgy four-eyes who goes to bed at 7pm and probably had a witty quip to accompany every orgasm (author’s note: i love ben franklin, but i’m not IN love with him). there’s apparently no evidence (like the aforementioned royal wet spot of edward VIII) proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had sexual intercourse with women outside of his marriage, but a friend showed me this quote yesterday, from the franklin papers, that is pretty damning. wait, did i say pretty damning? i meant pretty damn gross ! booyah !
background: while in france, franklin had a neighbor, madame brillon, who he was close friends with. in his letters, he indicates that madame brillon has grown jealous of his flirtation with other women, which he finds unfair, as she “exclude(s) arbitrarily every thing corporal from our Amour, except such a merely civil Embrace now and then as you would permit to a country Cousin.” guys, this isn’t the gross part. he goes on to say:
“Indeed it is I that have the most Reason to complain. My poor little Boy, whom you ought methinks to have cherish’d, instead of being fat and Jolly like those in your elegant Drawings, is meagre and starv’d almost to death for want of the Substantial Nourishment which you his Mother inhumanly deny him, and yet would now clip his little Wings to prevent his seeking it elsewhere!”
AHHHHHHHHHHH dude NO WAY. GROSS. LITTLE BOY? GROSS ! ahhhhhh !!!!!!
lest i come off as less than sex-positive, or immature, i want to point out that even at my most mature and progressive, a male partner referring to his wang as a “little boy” and me as its “mother” would chill me to the bone.
so, there you have it- i’ve switched sides. benjamin franklin, historical bonedog.
Emma B. is a transfer student at St. Edwards University in Austin, where she studies Literature. Indoctrinated into history recently by a enthusiastic nerdy professor, she has realized that knowledge of history facilitates a more complete understanding of the present. Her historical areas of interest include geography/cartography, post-1865 American history, and the decline of small towns. Her non-historical interests include drumming, school, visiting her professor’s office hours (Ed. note: this is adorable), swimming, thinking about her future, avocados in her breakfast tacos, and pestering her cats., thinking about my future, avocados in my breakfast tacos, and pestering my cats. 
As a young woman, early 20th century author Katherine Anne Porter was a little like that girl everyone knew in middle school who told everyone that she has two ponies and her aunt is a princess super model who takes her shopping in Beverly Hills every month. Porter told a lot of lies about her life and family, mostly to hide the sad truth that she grew up in relative poverty and did not enjoy the privileged background of other writers of the time. In fact, Katherine Anne wasn’t even her real name: she changed it from Callie Russel Porter because she wanted a name with more distinction. She also made claims of receiving an education from Catholic convents, but in reality she attended a local finishing school. And unlike the girl from middle school who owned a dozen pink poodles, Porter claimed that her family owned slaves. Though she grew up in a small log cabin, she fabricated a story about a well-appointed plantation, complete with a grip of slaves. Sweet brag, right? Personally, I am hesitant to fault her for manipulating most of the details of her background, but the slave thing stands out as Totally Fucked Up. As a female writer, she struggled with the inherent prejudices of the time, and she did what she could to find an audience and shape their perceptions. I think it is significant to look at how she encountered her own experiences of oppression and then… bravely refused to grapple with those themes in her own works and within her own life, going as far as bragging about fake slaves.
Though she wrote about the experiences of women, especially poor woman in Mexico, she did little to dismantle the fucked up frameworks in which people explored those same topics. In her story “Maria Concepcion,” she describes her pregnant protagonist as walking with the “free, natural, guarded ease of the primitive woman carrying an unborn child.” Obviously “primitive” is a linguistic wincer found in lots of texts from ye olde (and some texts from ye new), but Porter viewed Mexico as her adopted country. Referring to the people there as “primitive” demonstrates a lack of true understanding. But, Porter did understand how to write. Her writing skills were prodigious, and she knew it. Her prose is clear-eyed and sharp, full of ruthless portrayals of both men and women.
In writing this (admittedly totally biased and skewed) bio of Porter, I’ve had to contend with my own issues in critiquing female writers. Obviously, she faced tremendous obstacles in getting her works published and read, and their anthology presence is a testament to her abilities. Similarly, I feel conflicted about being disappointed in her for not being an overtly anti-sexist author. I know it is not necessarily fair to expect any member of an oppressed class to only create art that deals with oppression and struggle. But at the same time, I do not think it is unfair to hold authors to certain moral standards, and recognizing privilege and place within a fucked up system is definitely of moral importance. Therefore, it is disappointing when any author fails to check her/his privilege, but even more so when she/he is acutely and personally aware of how shitty and deleterious oppression can be.
note: my use of “skanky” is tongue-in-cheek, in reference to the content of the documentary i watched, which featured a lot of weird sexist slut-shaming. i do not use words like that or think things like that about women.
in all of history, i’d be hard pressed to find anything that interests me less than british royalty after 1900, but i recently watched a national geographic channel documentary called, britain’s nazi king? (a reference to edward VIII). i was riveted by the question mark- it’s rare that documentaries on the history channel/military channel/nat geo admit outright that they are talking out of their asses (the one glaring example was the history channel’s hitler and the occult, whose very first line was, “there is no evidence that hitler showed any interest in the occult”), so it was refreshing to see the question mark added to the title- national geographic says, “we don’t fucking know, or care.” so i settled in to watch this documentary, hoping to find out something i didn’t know about nazis, and instead was treated to a documentary about what a slut edward VIII’s mistress was.
some background: edward VIII was a bit of a player, with his dashing british “human who looks like wax dripped onto a rat skeleton” good looks, and a bit of an asshole, and not really king material. in 1931, he hooked up with the opportunistic american, wallis simpson, and actually fell in love. wallis was married (but not for long !) and a bit of a social climber, who was charming and funny and engaging and prone to affairs of her own (YGG, WS), but she too fell in love with edward, and he actually ended up abdicating the throne (much to the delight of his family) to be with the woman he loved. now, i love rich people telling their families to go to hell so they can marry the person they love (this is why i’m such a nut for blondie and dagwood. that’s a thing i am, right?), and telling your country that you don’t want to be their KING because you’re so in love is pretty bad ass. they got married, became the duke and duchess of windsor, and left royal wet spots all over the palace (that is not just me being crass- edward was caught having an affair with wallis, and the staff told his father they had seen “evidence of a physical sexual act”)
the ‘nazi king?’ part comes from the fact that edward and wallis were into facism and met with/rubbed elbows with hitler, which was a huge problem for britain. they were sent on several “romantic vacations” to try to curb their associations with the nazis, and… that’s about it. sure, they met hitler, did some nazi salutes, and were racist, but the evidence presented wasn’t exactly compelling (what the documentary didn’t mention was that some of the evidence of wallis simpson’s nazi sympathizing may have been fabricated, since the royal family hated her and america hated her and basically everyone hated her).
so… that is all i learned about their nazi associations from the documentary. it was seriously focused on all of the affairs she had, how opportunistic she was, how she didn’t love edward as much as he loved her (she tried to break it off because the family junk was too stressful, but they got back together- she wrote him the fucking awesome line, “you and i can only create disaster together”- been there, girlfriend), and, unbelievably, about HOW SHE WASN’T AS HOT AS SOME OF THE OTHER TRIM EDWARD PULLED and got by on charm alone- GOD FORBID. what the hell, national geographic? your magazine is the only representation of normal female bodies and images from outside of common american culture that i remember from my childhood, and now you are basically gossip girling royalty in disingenuously titled documentaries.
oh, and if anyone knows of any good sources about the link between the duke and duchess and the nazis, let me know. i’d love to actually learn something aside from the fact that women who are interested in consensual sex as adults are total sluts, and that our appearances matter more than our personalities.
Christina Kara is majoring in Fine Arts that the University of Pennsylvania, and minoring in Seeing Roxy in Just a Towel at the Apartment they Share Together. Her interests include the Alien quadrilogy, the Die Hard quadrilogy, the Terminator quadrilogy, quadrilogies, feminist thought, rubbing butter in chest hair, and sucking the marrow out of life. She is also a seasoned scholar of the 1990s.
When someone says Brontë, you probably think Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights. You might also think “zzzZZZzzz.” Personally? I think about the fussy, dour feminism of oft-neglected Anne.
Anne was the youngest of the Brontë family, born in 1820. All of the Brontë children—the ones who didn’t die of consumption during childhood, at least—were educated in music, art, and literature. They all read voraciously from their father’s library. I mean, what else was there to do in the English Moors in 1820s? I grew up in a town of 1,300 in rural Central New York, so I can relate. All this reading and the internet not having been invented yet led to the Brontë children creating the complex fantasy worlds Angria and Gondal that would have made detail-oriented Tolkien cream his nerd pants.
At fifteen, Anne went to Miss Wooler’s school at Roe Head, her tuition paid for by Charlotte’s teaching there. She was an excellent student, but returned home after two years because of gastritis b/w a religious crisis.
After leaving Roe Head, Anne worked as a governess at Blake Hall for some shitty kids who she was not allowed to discipline in any way, which she later used as the source material for Agnes Grey. (It’s what I imagine The Nanny Diaries is like, except good.) She went on to another governess position at Thorp Green with similarly bratty children, but was able to win the respect of her charges, not unlike when Kristy wins the respect of Shannon Kilbourne and the Delaney Kids in the Baby-Sitters Club book Kristy and the Snobs.
Anne got her brother, Branwell, a job at Thorp Green as a tutor when the eldest son became too old for her to look after (because they would probably fuck, I guess?). In 1845, she discovered that her brother began a secret affair with the mistress of Thorp Green, Mrs. Robinson. (It’s rumored that Branwell was the inspiration for the character Benjamin Braddow in the novel The Graduate).
Returning home to her father’s house in Haworth, the Brontë sisters were back together and secretly put together a volume of three books of poems that they paid to have published under pseudonyms. The volume was a failure, probably because poetry is boring. After their poetry flop, the sisters began working on their individual novels and Agnes Grey was published in 1847 under the pseudonym Acton Bell. The next year The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was published and was a huge success, selling out in a few weeks.
I had to read Tenant in my second semester of college for a required English class. When I looked at the syllabus I’m pretty sure I muttered “bummer” out loud, but that sensible Victorian won me over with her ahead-of-her-time-feminism and straightforward writing style. Essentially Tenant is a tale of a woman, Mrs. Graham, who escapes her alcoholic and abusive husband to protect her son and prevent him from becoming like his father by going into hiding, pretending to be a widow. “Who cares?” you say!?! This was a fucking revolution for England circa 1850, challenging social mores, Victorian morals and the legal system. At this point in history, married women weren’t individuals; they were property of their husbands. The story of a woman peacing out from an abusive marriage with her child and living in secret is a standard Lifetime movie plot now, but it was a radical act both socially and legally during the life of Anne.
Charlotte and Emily are considered the more talented writers of the Brontë sisters, but Anne’s desire to show life realistically appeals to me more than the dramatics of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. Anne’s writing of both Agnes Grey and Tenant were a reflection of her direct experiences and responses to the lives of those around her and the work of her sisters. Anne witnessed the effect of adultery and alcoholism first hand when Branwell became an alcoholic and drug addict after being dismissed from Thorp Green. She criticized Jane Eyre because, unlike Anne, Charlotte had never been a governess and she found the story completely improbable and Wuthering Heights for romanticizing cruelty and violence.
A year after Tenant was published, Anne died of consumption when she was 29.
God, that seems like a lot of information just for a set up, but what I want to get to is: I really fucking hate Charlotte Brontë.
Charlotte was one of Anne’s harshest critics. She wrote to their publisher that they shouldn’t reprint Tenant, saying it “hardly seems to me desirable to preserve… the choice of subject in that work is a mistake.” It was Charlotte’s desire to be a classic Romantic writer and just fit in with the boys like a good, token woman, selling her literal and figurative sister out to further her own career. When Anne died in Scarborough, Charlotte had her buried there instead of with the rest of her family (who, by this time, were all pretty much dead except for Charlotte and their father) in Haworth. There was only one other mourner at Anne’s funeral besides Charlotte, the former schoolmistress of Roe Head.
There are no journals or letters of Anne’s left behind because Charlotte, can you fucking believe this, destroyed them all after her death. I have said it before and I will say it again, FUCK YOU CHARLOTTE BRONTË!
a list of the founding fathers of the united states reads a little bit like a list of names you’d use while making a prank call (this is also how i feel about ‘ornette coleman’), or perhaps a list of people who recently died and left you a million billion dollars- william whipple, caesar rodney (who wore a green veil over his horribly disfigured face, like a true phantom), robert treat paine (who was not a doctor), gunning bedford, gouvernour morris (who was… a senator), daniel of st. thomas jenifer (okay), charles carroll of carrollton, and the simply but stupidly named “william williams” stand out to me, but all pale in comparison to the fact that one of our founding fathers was a human being whose first name was “button”.
my lazy research on the topic has given no insight into why he was named “button,” or if “button” was a family name or if “button” was ever a common name. it also is a notable name because you can’t even make a nickname for it- gouvernour morris, for example, often went by the slightly cooler “gouv,” but the logical nickname for button is one of the only names that is worse than button.
oh, um, some history. button gwinnett was a whig who represented georgia at the continental congress, and he died in a duel when the bullet wound in his leg became gangrenous. he had a pretty notable rivalry with lachlan mcintosh (who killed him in the aforementioned duel), and sadly died one of few people in history who is slightly more obscure than lachlan mcintosh.
we here at this dorky blog have been on hiatus dealing with the ends of semesters and the holidays and all of our creepy secrets and projects, so please forgive the absence.
here’s a little bit of a preview of what’s coming from me !
- nazis
- nazis
- nazis trampling on art (and some thoughts on cultural genocide)
- nazis
- russian babes red baroning some nazis
- genocide
stay tuned!
Introduction from Christine:
Nora is my friend and coworker, and is one of the coolest thinkers I know. While she is normally found baking things that I cannot even spell, putting up with her bad cat Caroline or enlightening me on Sea Monkeys, today she takes a break from all of that to bring us the first part of a special Christmas edition of CTOTPS. If you enjoy cat photos (and I mean, other stuff too), her own tumblr can be found at yesra.tumblr.com. Enjoy!
Yes, Virginia, there is a Grinch!
Dr. Seuss was a pretty original guy, but he wasn’t that original. I’m not claiming anything definite, but perhaps Theodor Geisel got the idea from one lovely and enigmatic Oliver Cromwell, parliamentarian extraordinaire and total ineffable self-righteous humbug with garlic in his soul.
Oliver Cromwell in his true, green form
In 1647, after England’s Civil War and during the awesomely lame puritanical revival, Cromwell and his party went ahead and stole Christmas. He took away their ribbons. He took away their tags. He took away their packages, boxes and bags! Parliament declared that Christmas was canceled, and even outlawed mince pies and roast beast.
And then all of England, the tall and the small, got really pissed off and rioted. I mean, wouldn’t you? They were nowhere near as gullible as Cindy Lou and spent years both overtly and covertly flouting the ban, culminating in violence and the taking-over of things in the later 1640s.
And what did they prove? Dahoo Dorus, that you can take away the official government holiday, but you can’t take away the Christmas. Cromwell’s heart stayed two sizes too small until his death in 1658, and Christmas was reinstated in 1660 along with King Charles II.
i think i posted a little bit about the argentine concentration camps during the dirty war, and i assume that most of you are familiar with nazi concentration camps, but DID YOU KNOW that the concentration camps of WWII weren’t the first german concentration camps? around the turn of the century when germans were attempting to colonize namibia, the herero people rose up to attempt to resist, and… it did not go well for them. at the helm was a dude with the most sinister sounding name ever, LOTHAR VON TROTHA, who proclaimed that any herero person, armed or unarmed, man, woman, or child, would be executed. aside from outright slaughter and other shitty stuff like cutting off food supplies, poisoning water sources, etc., the germans rounded up hereros and placed them in konzentrationslagern, which were eerily similar to the concentration camps later implemented during WWII. tens of thousands of herero died there from malnutrition, disease, exhaustion, beating, and murder. many were subjected to torturous medical experiments by eugen fischer, to develop a theory of the genetic inferiority of their race (you may not know his name, but you have probably heard of one of his star pupils, josef mengele !)
the thread between these atrocities and the holocaust is unmistakable- the policy of “cleansing”, the theory of the genetic inferority and impurity of other races, the use of concentration camps, etc. it’s unfortunate that the holocaust sort of eclipsed this event in history.
Brooke’s musings on just how wild Peter the Great (Peter the Greatest?) was have had me thinking about just how wild some of the other rulers of Russia were.
Yes, Ivan the Terrible* killed his heir-to-the-throne son in a fit of rage. 
Yeah you blew that one, Vanya.
Yes, Paul I was so self-conscious about his looks that he outlawed the term “snub-nose” under penalty of flogging.
A picture is worth a thousand banned phrases.
But let’s get just a little wilder.
Empress Anna held the Russian throne between the reigns of Peter II and Elizabeth (1730-1740) and was a lady who didn’t mess around. Counting gambling, hunting and mock sword fights among her hobbies, Anna wasn’t someone you wanted to displease. Unfortunately for Prince Mikhail Alexeyevich Galitzine, he married an Italian Catholic woman—-something that didn’t go over too well with the Russian Orthodox empress of a Russian Orthodox state. Seizing the opportunity to humiliate a nobleman and stage a grand affair at the same time, Anna came up with an elaborate punishment.
Despite the fact that the offending Italian wife had died soon after Galitzine married her, Anna ordered the prince to become a court jester. Then, incorporating her love of weddings, she forced him to marry another jester at the court, a Kalmyk woman. The newlyweds were then made to lead a parade of cripples and dwarves in a procession to an ice palace built for the occasion. There, with Anna amusedly watching, the unhappy couple was bedded down under heavy guard and left to spend the night.
Try and guess which one is Anna!
*obligatory acknowledgment that grozny doesn’t actually mean “terrible” in the usual sense, and that it is better translated as “fearsome” or “awe-striking” or whatever. This is the amateur/lazy Russian historian equivalent of knowing that George Washington actually didn’t chop down the cherry tree.
- christine
Another of my favorite accomplishments of Peter the Great is his creation of the blasphemous salon known as the Vsesviateishii Pianyi Sabor - roughly translated, the All-Joking, All-Drunken Synod of Fools and Jesters. The council, comprised of Peter’s best drinking buds (prominent government figures, mostly), held meetings purely to get real fucked up, celebrate, eat a bunch of food, and make fun of the church by performing “all conceivable and inconceivable blasphemies.” All of the members had obscene clergy-related nicknames that were, according to grumpy historian Vasilii Kliuchevskii, “too disgusting to print.” These meetings weren’t just sloppy parties, though. Peter created an actual charter for the group (rules included getting drunk every day and NEVER going to bed sober), and there was an official liturgy and everything. They performed mock rituals in which vodka was substituted for Holy Water. Come Christmas, the council would get all liquored up and parade down the streets of Moscow in sleighs, pausing at the houses of stuffy old boyars to serenade them with dirty carols- which you have to admit is seriously fucking hilarious. Members who could not maintain an acceptable level of drunkenness were excommunicated and banned from the taverns and inns of the Empire.
(I was going to write more about the popular attitude toward religion and the clergy in Russia during this time, and how Peter’s distaste for Orthodoxy fit into his vision of a Westernized Russia, but I’ll be honest- it took me like ten minutes to put a lampshade on Peter’s head in MS Paint, and I’m kinda spent now.)
- Brooke
our first fan art!
drew likes our blog so much that he made us this awesome picture, and of course we needed to share it with all of you! i think it’s pretty great! judging by the big sunglasses, i think i’m the one in the middle.
fun fact: the ladies in the original 1905 photo are (l-r) princess victoria, queen alexandra and empress maria feodorovna (the latter two were sisters).
- christine
it may blow your mind, but my full-time job is actually not having cool thoughts on the present situation. i know, i know. but hear me out.
that said, and without elaborating, my job has brought me to a cool old house in harpers ferry, west virginia. that’s right, home of the abolitionist john brown’s infamous and unsuccessful 1859 raid on the federal armory (for which he was hanged in december of that year).
so because i am technically at work right now, i’ll keep this brief and share with you what i came here to share with you: a picture of just how crazy-looking john brown really was.
you’re welcome.
- christine
