Category Archives: Personal

Day 1/2 in France


I’m already making good on my promise to upload daily despite the fact that I’ve really done nothing worth mentioning aside from whine insessantly about my 24+ hours awake sleep-deprived bones. 

Today was a travel day.

We arrived in Paris at 8:35am after a restless 8-hour flight where neither of us had been able to sleep but not for lack of trying–I tried putting myself to sleep with an in-flight movie of X-Men Apocalypse (I lasted only 15 minutes and I don’t mean wakefulness). When we landed, we were immediately ushered into a customs check line that lasted a good 2 hours which is unsurprising given the recent unfortunate events in France. By the time we obtained our rental car–an Italian car stuck on Russian for the GPS because why not–it was around 12:30pm and we were DYING.

We spent the next few hours marveling at the plentiful graffiti EVERYWHERE, realizing it was apparently the norm for male drivers to just randomly pull over and urinate visibly on the road, and get horribly lost in a picturesque yet run down commune in France. Also, French drivers are worse than Chicago ones.

While I didn’t do much on a day where all I’ve wanted to do is nap it away, I’ll leave you with ducks. FRENCH speaking ducks:

Histastrophe in…Europe?!

paris

I’ve made a lot of empty promises on this blog. Any where from UNESCO World Site features, to Myths and Folklores, or to updating regularly (Hah….*cries*). But here is one I can absolutely, with no misplaced delusion the level of Commodus, assure you is actually for real happening.

I am going to Europe.

France, Spain, and Italy to be exact. For 3 weeks starting TODAY.

While there, I will be updating my long dormant History blog daily (as the international wifi allows for) with my adventures. Knowing me and my profound nerddom, you can count on some historical site coverage such as Versailles, Pompeii, and if I manage to win a few tussles, the Sfroza fortress among other things. Naturally, there will probably be Instragram photos of food because I’m one of those shamelessly awful people who delights in filtered pictures of mashed potatoes and I’d also love to chronicle my journey in uncovering my family’s history and meeting, for the first time, our local Italian relatives.

So if you were already here for my History musings, there will be plenty of that to come SERIOUSLY this time. And if you’re a dear friend curious to read about my travels, please follow along! I can’t wait to share my experiences with you.

Arrivedercri and I’ll see you all in a different timezone!

 

Myths, Tales, Folkore, and Fairies

Greetings, my beloved, estranged, and neglected blog!

A lot of things have been happening in my life these past few months which I will blame entirely on my absence and not my extreme lack of self-control and questionable work ethic.

In April, I left my long-time barista job for better prospects: …a less than enthusiastic venture into waitressing. The money was fantastic (but hard earned) and the people charmingly miserable about their jobs yet astoundingly pleasant to be around. But as the weekends disappeared all together and the doubleshifts mounted, I was suddenly without free time and hopelessly short on motivation–nursing that couch and Netflix queue like a cure-all. I arrived at the conclusion quite rapidly that I needed to be free so I quickly went out and got myself a big girl job and life has been pretty grand since!

I managed to kick out a video game article in the mean time, but now I’m ready to get back into research and history! Which brings me to my new project idea…during one of my many recent Netflix binges, I stumbled across Once Upon a Time. And while it’s not exactly Sopranos level of television delicacy, I enjoy it quite a bit as well as the new found spark I have for the stories that inspired it. I can’t help but feel like I’m extremely out of touch with our cultural milestones of yester-year, and it’s certainly been ages since I popcorn-read Heracules in front of 12-year-old peers, internally admonishing them all for mispronouncing half of the names. In fact, I must admit, even as much strength my relationship with History has, I have been rather neglectful of it for quite some time…having not actually READ some of the most famous texts including Beowulf, Tales of Genji, and the Epic of Gilgamesh for starters.

Well, of course, this will be my new mission going forward. Roughly attempting to start from the beginning in a lenient chronological order, I will be going back to the basics, so to speak. Looking over and finally reading the stories that have spanned across time and this world since we’ve collectively decided that writing things down goes beyond economic list-keeping usefulness.

So, if you’re still with me and plan on being with me (hopefully less tentatively this time), I plan on covering the big stories from big civilizations in history and, maybe, if I find some good sources, the not so big ones. And like all decent History blogs should, I’ll make sure to keep everyone well briefed on the subjects at hand as I move through my work!

Next up, I’ll be dabbling in Ancient Sumeria…

UPDATE!

So, I’m a little preemptive in saying that I’ve had this blog for about a year now.  But, let’s be honest, what work was I really going to do from now to April?

My main goal in starting this blog was the hope that I would learn something about History that I couldn’t ordinarily do on my own. I was hoping to update frequently and cultivate an audience that would be able to teach me something new about whatever topic I was covering. I secretly wished someone would correct me and not just treat me like a Wookiee. I was hoping I wouldn’t win all the time and that whatever bias I was harboring would stand corrected.

But that didn’t really happen. At all actually.

I wasn’t really all that into updating either. I learned A LOT of crazy cool history stuff in preparations of many unpublished entries. I just never felt like sharing it with the rest of you and that’s a real shame. A real dick move. A real Commodus move. I even went as far one point in contacting my old professor and discussing the merits of the Lead poisoning in Rome theories and how it related to wine consumption, which basically ended up being a total annihilation of this one scholar’s ideas and we left it at that and I never published a word but learned a lot. I even got caught in a mistake like I always wanted. I was using Pliny the Elder as a source without the forethought in realizing the time difference between his lifetime and another sources. I was like, “Duh! Pompeii and Pliny would have been far gone and scorched by then making this source entirely irrelevant to the argument!” The main thing is, I didn’t bother sharing any of the amazing things I dug up and that defeats the entire purpose of keeping this blog.

One of the coolest things I looked into was the accuracy of Prima Nocta and I would say that I get a couple hits on that one daily. And that’s just from people being curious and searching for themselves on whether or not it was a real thing and stumbling across my page for answers. I want to see more of that stuff. I want to be that go to informant for the casual historian. And there was even one incident where one of my posts circulated around Reddit’s TodayIlearned which left me feeling frightened at the sudden and enormous site traffic that happened over night and really quite honored.

So instead of being a lazy asshole, which has become my new life statement as some of you who follow other deeds of mine know by now, I’m going to attempt to follow a more strict updating schedule on this blog. Once a week I want to squeeze in a full-fledged research project, one historical figure profile, and the rest different forms of interesting things in history. I’ve got my days planned but I’ll leave them a surprise for now.

My new goal now is just to finish what I say that I’m going to do. Which for now is update Monday-Friday. So if I don’t, call me out because dang I can’t keep getting away with this anymore.

See you tomorrow.

Introduction

I’ve always had a love affair with history. Since I could remember, I had always been really interested in Ancient Egypt, from Ra to mummification, to the Pyramids and what I imagined to be Ramesses II’s dazzling pectorals. I crushed on King Tut and desperately wanted to chisel a sand castle out in the Sahara. Oh, and make loads of papyri with scribbled Hieroglyphs for the word “poop”. (Speaking of, anyone know the ancient Egyptian word for it?)

As I’ve only slightly matured into a 22 year old who still dreams of historical studs and laughs at dirty jokes and phrases, I have a more widespread passion for all things, people, places, and time. When asked the question, “What is your favorite period in history?” I used to confidently state, “Any and everything from the dawn of civilization up until the 1950’s.” And than Mad Men happened. Now I appreciate things up until the 70’s.

I’m no expert and while I’ve taken a handful of college courses, I still find myself stuttering out a barely audible, “Uh, urg, well it’s there.” when confronted after an anti-Edison snark filled tirade. In fact, one of my goals in creating this blog aside from nerdgasming all over my spare time is to MAKE myself an expert rather than a regurgitating info machine. That’s what teachers and calculators are for, kids!

Speaking of, one of the people in my life I look up to and respect the most was my history professor for four years (I stalked her course list like a Mongol at a cabinet convention). And while she knew heaps of information, my favorite part about lecture was when someone asked a question and they were met with a thoughtful answer that always put the timeframe and mindset of a life of people in perspective. She knew what she was talking about and she understood it. Even better was when some smart-mouthed punk would have the gall to argue and she would verbally bitch-slap that shit down with years and years of resource accumulation and fine, yes, I had a girl crush, okay?!

So basically, if you’re reading this, you’ve stumbled upon an ambitious endeavor from a casual fan of history with the explicit goal of becoming an expert on a wide array of subjects and themes pertaining to the discipline. Since I have completed my standard Liberal Arts degree and am currently in between schools slinging coffee at a bookstore in my spare time, stretching and exercising my brain is a must otherwise all that familiarity with research and learning will dry up faster than the Temperance movement. I will be researching and studying completely random ideas and topics in History, reading chapter books, and otherwise blogging on anything that piques my interest and philomathic yearning.

So if you’d like to join me on this little adventure and nerd out with me, please come in. My friends grow tired of my history chattering and do not find my jokes amusing. If you’re here to factcheck, correct, or otherwise berate my drudgery, flame on. All I ask is that you provide sources because this is, after all, a learning process and I am a fellow douche so try harder.

And now let us begin, as Julius Caesar once said, ” I came, I saw, and I totally got stabbed 33 times by some brute.”

Cheers!