saintartemis

[saintartemis]

Okay, buckle up buckaroos, because today I met an honest-to-goodness cryptid.

I was out running errands and I made a stop at Intimate Books (…for a friend), and on my way out I realized that the bookshop next door was open.

This bookshop has existed for more than a hundred years, and in all my life it has NEVER BEEN OPEN. I mean, I assume it has to be open sometimes, but never at any normal, reasonable hour. Everyone says it’s a front for the mob or something.

So what do you do when the weird mafia bookshop is open? You go the fuck inside.

The first thing I noticed was the smell. You know that smell when you accidentally leave your towel on the bathroom floor all day and you come back to that mildew funk? The shop smelled like that times a thousand. I expected to see stuff growing on the walls, but the books were pristine. We’re talking first editions, rare editions, weird Bibles and books inscribed to really famous dead people. Librarians would weep for the chance to accession this place. In the first two minutes I found a signed copy of The Crucible and what I think was a first edition of Blake’s Book of Thel.

Then a clerk showed up out of nowhere—honestly nowhere. He looked EXACTLY like a bookseller should look, kind of fluffy and bewildered and really, really gay.

“Are you lost?” was the first thing he said to me.

“Nope. Just browsing, thanks.”

“Browsing, I see. Erm. How do you feel about snakes?” he asked. And without waiting for me to answer, he just walked away and vanished around a shelf.

I figured it was a metaphor, or a code phrase for the mafia. Until I turned a corner like ten minutes later and found a little reading nook. It was really pretty, although I feel like that particular window should have been on an interior wall? Anyway, curled up in an armchair in a patch of sunlight was the biggest fuck-off black snake I have ever seen.

Like, I don’t mind snakes in general. But in their normal context, right? Outside. On the ground. Not six feet long and sitting on a threadbare velvet armchair like it owns the place.

I was about to turn around and leave, but I saw a gorgeous first-edition copy of Leaves of Grass on a shelf, a little too close to the snake for comfort. But I had never needed anything so badly in my life.

So I went back to the counter to buy it, but the clerk was nowhere to be found.

While I was waiting, I noticed a collection of pictures hanging on the wall behind the counter, dating back to the very dawn of photography. A couple were of this rock-star looking guy from the 70s that I should probably have recognized, but there were authors and landscapes and stuff, too. There was even an old tintype portrait of Oscar freaking Wilde, sitting in this very shop with a guy that I would ACTUALLY SWEAR was the clerk from before. Like, I know my family all has the same nose, but this guy had the same everything.

After approximately one year of waiting, the clerk came back out to the desk. By now I’ve realized that he’s too bad at his job to be anything but the owner of the shop.

“I saw your snake,” I told him.

“Did you? Was he behaving himself?”

“He was sleeping.”

“Yes, he enjoys that.”

“Does he just stay out in the open like that? What if he gets out?”

He shrugged and smiled. “He always comes home again, the dear boy.”

Right, a homing snake. That’s totally normal.

Then he cleared his throat and asked, in a weirdly reluctant voice, if I was going to buy the Whitman.

“Yes, please,” I told him. “I saw it on a shelf by the snake, and it was just too tempting.”

He sighed. “Oh, yes, I expect it was.”

When I started to hand him my card, he went all fluttery and said that they didn’t take cards.

All right, fine. I had some cash on me, but I told him that he’d sell a lot more books if he got a Square or something.

He got this scandalized look on his face and went, “Why would I want to do that?”

Oookay. I handed over the cash and he popped open the ancient till and started making change.

In shillings. Shillings! I swear to god I saw Queen Anne’s face on one of them. The silver value of the coins was probably as much as I paid for the book.

But I had to have proof that this happened—at that point, all I had was a book in a plain brown wrapper, not appreciably different from what I bought next door. So I asked him for a receipt.

He looked delighted and wrote one up for me.

By hand.

With a fountain pen.

And that’s the story of how I met a bookseller cryptid and his pet snake.

#long post #good omens

[saintartemis]

hey, museum folks. on April 16, the ceiling in the library at Boscobel House collapsed unexpectedly

Before the collapse.

This New York mansion from 1806 was saved AFTER demolition in the 1950s, when the architectural elements were recovered and reassembled in another location near its original site. It's of great artistic and historical significance, not the least because the staff has been working on a project to document the lives of the family's Black servants- the ones who were free when hired, and the ones who had been enslaved by said family and freed before the house was finished -since 2020

if anyone can donate even a little bit to help with the recovery efforts, here is the link

#museums #donations #fundraiser #boscobel house #historic preservation #slavery mention #signal boooooost

[saintartemis]

#that is the nicest dirt road i've ever seen wtf #nicer than any of the dirt tracks on the ranch

[saintartemis]

Gérard de Lairesse Apollo and Aurora 1671 Oil on canvas, 205 x 193 cm Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

[saintartemis]

Princess Mononoke (1997)

#princess mononoke #mononoke hime #hayao miyazaki #studio ghibli

[saintartemis]

Fontainebleau State Park, Louisiana by Lana Gramlich

[saintartemis]

[saintartemis]

[saintartemis]

I really like how many of the world’s most iconic structures and places are just right next to some of the most mundane stuff imaginable, for example

Stonehenge

Is right next to a busy road

The Pyramids of Giza

Are at the outskirts of Cairo

Niagara Falls

Are part of the town of the same name

And Agrippa’s Pantheon

Is crammed inside downtown Rome

It just so interesting to notice.

#okay but that first pic of the pyramids is photoshopped #the sphinx isn’t even facing the right way if we’re looking at the queen’s pyramids #also technically they’re outside of the city of Giza #which is practically cairo but still #the pantheon is amazing #with how close all the buildings are in the court in front of it #it just feels bigger somehow? #idk it feels wild

[saintartemis]

say what you will about the historical figure of Cardinal Richelieu but the ‘black breastplate over cardinal’s robes’ look is some warhammer shit

[saintartemis]

Ohhh my God, the current VA for Foghorn Leghorn actually dubbed it.

[saintartemis]

One thing that helps me calm down about intra-left-wing sniping and the reality that the big center-left coalition inevitably includes a lot of ridiculous nonsense, is to remember how ubiquitous seances were to progressive politics in the 19th century.  Like, e.g., Frederick Douglas had to go to so many seances. Many, many political strategy sessions around the country had to include feedback from the ghost of Moses who spoke to us via morse code.  

#on the left everyone has most of the same things on their list they’re just in different orders #and no one can agree which one we should work on first before tackling the rest of the list

[saintartemis]

funerary mosaic of Dion, from Upenna/ Chgarnia, who lived in Roman Tunisia around IVth/Vth century. exposed currently in Enfidha museum.

this pious Dion, lived in peace for 80 years and has planted 4000 tree.

the trees are most probably olive trees

#mosaics

[saintartemis]

A satirical papyrus showing a lady mouse being served wine by a cat while another cat dresses her hair, a third cares for her baby, and a fourth fans her. The mice have hilarious huge, round ears.

Where: Egyptian Museum Cairo

When: New Kingdom

[saintartemis]

the importance of proper flag storage!

pictured above are two flag boxes - - the former, and the updated storage for a flag!

The (I am unsure of the exact dimensions but a bit bigger than 3x5 ft) flag was creased, crumpled, folded, and shoved into the tiny box a number of years ago. As we have been slowly working through out textiles collection, we came across it and immediately recognized its need for better storage.

when working to update and improve the storage for a flag, it is important to fold the flag in new places (with padding!!), to not further the harm that a crease will create over time

so happy that this flag has a new home !!

#museum life #museum curator #history #museums #conservation #preservation #archival storage #flags #museum work #museum professional

[saintartemis]

Evening dress, c. 1910-1915

#historical fashion #clothing and textiles

[saintartemis]

russell crowe practising the fight choreography for master and commander: the far side of the world

#this gives me gender envy i can't explain #tagging this as #aubreyad #master and commander: the far side of the world