Crossing Cultures
A wonderful article by a medievalist I’ve been following for years now, explaining the delights of a medieval Christmas. Some traditions might look familiar (evergreens, gifts, mistletoe), others not so much (frumenty, Twelfth Night, liturgical dramas). Most fascinating to me is how the various Viking, Druid, and Celt pagan traditions are combined with the Christian to become our modern holiday.
Digital Medievalism
I strongly believe that history is not only the story of one-off big events, larger-than-life characters, and impossible-to-memorize dates. It is the story of everyday people and their daily hopes, dreams, struggles, and passions – set against the backdrop of different times, places, and beliefs than our own. Unfortunately the study of history does not often present opportunities to experience their stories, until the rare occasion they suddenly appear in front of us.
In 1545 the flagship of Henry VIII’s navy, the Mary Rose, sank with almost all hands. A tragedy for the volatile monarch and for the souls lost. But in 1982, her discovery and raising provided a complete snapshot of the life of a Tudor sailor. Certainly there are weapons to delight the military historian, but also thousands of more personal items (shoes, bags, tankards) that provide us a glimpse into the daily life of a Tudor sailor. A not always pleasant life, to be sure, as evidenced by the tools to inject warm mercury into sailor urethras – treatment against the syphilis rampant among sailors at the time.
With luck, the new Mary Rose Museum will open in 2012, and I for one hope to be among the visitors.
Compact Mirrors and Tudor Man-Bags: Mary Rose Gives Up Her Treasures
Forgotten History
I thought I knew the history of the American space program. But I was shocked to learn that NASA had a program for women astronauts long before the first women actually made it into space. In honor of those women whose performance was equal to (in some cases better than!) their male counterparts, but because of contemporary social norms and prejudices did not participate in the glory that became “The Right Stuff”, I encourage everyone to read this article.
“They were all extraordinary women and outstanding pilots and great candidates for what was proposed,” said Donald Kilgore, a doctor who evaluated both male and female space flight candidates at the Lovelace Clinic, a mid-century center of aeromedical research. “They came out better than the men in many categories.”
…
Women are lighter than men, requiring less fuel to transport them into space. They’re also less prone to heart attacks, and Lovelace considered them better-suited for the claustrophobic isolation of space.
Right Stuff, Wrong Sex: NASA’s Lost Female Astronauts: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/10/mercury-13/ (via Neatorama)
Digital Medievalism
This link has everything I could want, all in one place: technology, history, and language. Tired of struggling to find the characters you need while you’re typing your Old English/Old Norse texts? Help is at hand:
http://megse.unm.edu/research/internal/keyboards.html
Or maybe I’m just jealous that there are people out there whose jobs require them to write large amounts of Old English 🙂