furygirrl10-blog

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she just turned 71! remember that the civil rights movement is not ancient history.

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Today’s highlights in my ongoing project to read through and transcribe the letters of Rachel (a wealthy Victorian girl at boarding school on the East Coast in the 1890s) include…

Rachel’s cousin Will and his Yale roommate Allen both have the measles. Rachel shows limited sympathy (”Poor boy!”), before immediately mocking them and calling them “childish” for getting a disease only little kids get.

Rachel and her roommate “B” (It stands for Bertha!) attempted to steal a sign (what sort idk) from a fair they went to but found they “were carefully guarded”. She wishes Will could have been there to help.

Will has a crush on a girl named Jenny, who Rachel knows, and is constantly asking Rachel if Jenny has mentioned him.

“B” often sits next to Rachel as she writes and suggests things to add to the letter or just generally distracts her.

Will and Jack, who are brothers, don’t write to each other. They write to Rachel and tell her to write to the other and pass on a message for them. Rachel keeps asking why they do this, but goes along with it anyways.

Rachel always explains why there are ink blots or areas of sloppy writing in her letters. Explanations so far include such classics as: the dinner bell just rang, it’s after lights-out and I’m writing this in the dark, “B” is shaking my arm, “B” is kissing me, this pen is broken, the postman is almost here, and there was a bee.

For her 18th birthday Rachel received: a new Kodak camera, eighteen white rosebuds, silver manicure scissors, a pair of shell side combs, a silver pencil, and a vase of pink roses. However her favorite present was from her father who wrote to say she could just buy her own present and he would pay for it.

Rachel is always mentioning the pictures she takes with her Kodak. I wish I knew what happened to them. 

In addition to Calvé, Marlowe and Sothern, Rachel has now also gone to see performances by Ellen Terry, Henry Irving, John Philip Sousa, Ignacy Jan Paderewski (playing the piano, not governing Poland), and freaking Sarah Bernhardt! 

Rachel likes to put question marks in the middle of sentences to denote sarcasm; i.e. “I am very ? sorry for you.” and “Men were not excluded and we had the pleasure ? of meeting several.”

Your 1890s slang word of the day: “squelch” (verb) - to be lectured or punished for something. Example: “I expect to be squelched unmercifully by mama and papa.”  Can also be used as a noun as in: “This term we have had nothing but squelches.”

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Cheers to 10 years of making videos 🥂

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The same artist made these two 35 years apart:

1750s Henry Robert Morland (British artist, 1716-1797) A Girl Ironing Shirt Sleeves

1785 Henry Robert Morland (British artist, 1716-1797) Laundry Maid Ironing

WHICH IS SO COOL and also shows the change of fashion.

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Least surprising thing I've ever learned from a Wikipedia article

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Some embroidery I did on a linen project.

I am really proud of it, now you have to look at it 👍

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In 2017, American film researchers recovered “Something Good – Negro Kiss,” a short film depicting a playful kiss between a Black couple which had not seen the light of day for more than a century. A long-forgotten artifact from the earliest years of American film, the sweet, humanizing vignette, produced by the Selig Polyscope Company, makes a startling contrast to the overwhelmingly racist and blackface-ridden contempory portrayals of African Americans. Four years later in 2021, archivists in Norway, halfway across the world, identified a sister short in their collections—an extended alternate cut which reveals more of Chicago stage performers Gertie Brown and Saint Suttle’s vaudeville-like routine, a theatrical, hot-and-cold romantic dynamic between two lovers which parodies the popular and controversial short “The Kiss” (1896). Both films, which had previously been lost, were known from entries in old motion picture catalogs but had been assumed to be era-typical, anti-Black “race films” until their rediscovery in the 21st century. Together with its more famous sibling, which has since been inducted into the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry, this alternate version of “Something Good” represents the first-known instance of Black intimacy ever captured on-screen.

SOMETHING GOOD [Alternate Version] (1898) Directed by William Selig

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I do definitely disagree with the "Steven should have shattered White Diamond" argument, but I also disagree with "Oh the diamonds are Just A Metaphor, you're not supposed to take them as literal dictators". Like yes they are a metaphor for a conservative family, but you should very much also read them as dictators, because they are. It's not an accident that Steven spared the life of a dictator. The show is taking a principled stance against punitive justice.

It's presenting you with the worst person imaginable, one who has done harm on scales personal to galactic, and saying "killing this person is still something we should not want to do." If we can remove White from power while sparing her life, if we can put her to use undoing what she has done, that would be preferable to killing her, no matter her crimes.

And a lot of people just didn't want to hear that.

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scientists in the 1990s, putting a Get More Purple gene attached to a harmless plant virus into an already purple petunia: please get more purple

the petunia, sensing an apparent honest to god Get More Purple Disease, using the previously undiscovered RNAi antiviral ability to shut down all other purple genes along with it just in case: you put VIRUS in petunia? you infect her with the More Purple?? oh! oh! her children shall bloom white! jail for mother, jail for mother for One Thousand Years!!!!

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Sometimes I wonder if the people designing those waist-slimming “illusion” dresses are aware that they’re employing the exact same technique as Mirid ant bugs. I see someone wearing this and just think that’s not going to fool me I know you’re not an ant.

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Ruins of Mitla, Oaxaca, Mexico

Mexican vintage postcard

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I think Australia actually had the best answer to the question "what do we do with phone booths?"

In Australia anybody can make free calls from any phone booth, also most phone booths also provide wi-fi.

So many people benefit, in so many situations.

The free phone booths have been so popular and important that new(fancy) phone booths are being installed.

Making phone booths a free public utility 👍

Ripping them out in the assumption that everyone has access to a phone or internet 👎