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nugicus · 4 years

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Proactive Instead of Reactive: The Flawed Concept of the First Crusade as a Defensive War

It goes without saying but its undeniable how the Crusades have firmly implanted themselves into modern culture, despite the numerous other conflicts that have occurred in the nearly one thousand year-long Middle Ages. Our persistent fascination with them can be seen whenever they are constantly represented in popular media in the past few decades, whether it be Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, History Channel’s Knightfall, DC Comic’s Batman, and video games, such as Ubisolft’s Assassins Creed and Paradox Interactive’s Crusader Kings II. The concept has become so ingrained in our collective understanding that the very terminology of the word “crusade” has evolved to the point that it had begun to lose it’s religious origins and is now included to mean striving for a cause that is commonly considered as just even when such a cause isn’t religious in nature.

There is a completely apprehensible reason for such a profound resonance among today’s collective imagination: the very idea of the Crusades have become extremely fascinating due to the incredible amount of devotion exhibited by the Frankish knights who answered the call. This extreme level of enthusiasm that imbued itself in these holy wars led to thousands of Latin Christians in taking up arms and undertaking a horrendously perilous journey across thousands of miles when traveling just fifty was considered a highly rare occurrence at the time. The existence of a astoundingly high level of religious fervor that characterized the First Crusade allowed its participants to accomplish unimaginable feats of bravery, fortitude, and resilience, including traversing though hundreds of miles of exceedingly arid terrain and brutally carving through the territory of at least three hostile Muslim states in order to reach their much-anticipated goals. Those goals being, of course, the retaking of Jerusalem, which had been conquered by Muslim forces centuries earlier, and the complete salvation of their very souls.

- Frankish knights and men-at-arms. - Osprey Publishing

However, significant historical events that have occurred centuries in the past and have such a momentous effect in the current zeitgeist have the tendency to become subjected to frequent instances of oversimplification, misrepresentation, misappropriation, and even manipulation by individuals through either intentional or ignorant means. The Crusades are no different. In this case, the reason for such a shrewd reshaping of the memory of the holy wars is usually for the purpose of fueling certain ideologically driven agendas that are commonly spread by the repetition of numerous misconceptions about the campaigns for the holy land during the 11th and 12th centuries. One of the most prevailing misconceptions that has a habit of popping up in discourse, especially on the internet, is the claim that the First Crusade (1096-1099) was primarily a defensive war, in which Latin Christianity initiated the conflict by leading armies of rigidly honor-bound, chivalric knights as a response against wanton Muslim aggression that took the form of a “jihad” or a recent catastrophic lose of Christian territory. The claim is used time and again on far right blogs and YouTube videos that display disingenuous maps and poorly researched lectures, like those of Bill Warner, that fail to consider important political and religious divisions between Muslim powers during the medieval period. It is an extremely gross oversimplification of a conflict whose origins, which were highly determined by political, theological, cultural, and historical developments that were occurring internally in both Christian Europe, as well as in the Muslim world, largely dispels the culturally idealistic narrative that the First Crusade was a justifiable reaction to the provocation of Muslim jihad.

In the late 11th century, the political sphere in western medieval Europe existed as a highly fragmented state of affairs. Land was severely divided among a landed, warrior elite descended from the same Germanic “barbarians” who had conquered sections of the former Western Roman Empire centuries prior and who constantly came into conflict with one another over territory due to a myriad of petty feuds, dynastic rivalries, and succession disputes. In order to accomplish their aims, these feudal lords relied on a class of mounted, professional soldiers known as “knights,” who, unlike their modern depictions as a noble class of warriors with a rigid code of honor based on protecting the weak from persecution, constantly pillaged and burned nearby peasant communities in the countryside, especially those that were under the lordship of rival warlords. Further facilitating these incessantly high levels of warfare at the time was the lack of central authority monarchies had over their vassals who were only bound to their kings due to fragile oaths of fealty and could pursue their own territorial ambitions with impunity. This lack of any central control over the power of the warrior nobility coupled with the nearly unending warfare between the feudal lords caused violence and lawlessness to become endemic to the continent. The last time western Europe saw a significant degree of territorial unity was in 800 CE when the king of the Franks, Charlemagne, was crowned Emperor after successfully capturing large swaths of terrain of what is now France, Germany, the Low Countries, and Northern Italy. However, by the late 11th century, Charlemagne’s reign was seen by the European populace as nothing more than a fading memory of a bygone age of momentous political security.

- Medieval Europe at the time the First Crusade was announced. - Crusader Kings II from Paradox Interactive

Similar to the near-powerless feudal monarchs of Europe, the head of the Latin Christian church, the Pope, was having difficulty exerting papal authority over the ecclesiastical hierarchy of Europe. The Pope at this time was nothing more than a religious figurehead who could exert little-to-no authority over the rest of the church hierarchy, including the bishops who, at this time, had stronger ties with local secular rulers, such as the Holy Roman Emperor and the king of France, than they did with the papacy. A number of these monarchs had the ability to appoint high church officials to oversee cities and monasteries and sold church offices to members of the royal nobility, in a practice known as “simony,” who sought highly privileged careers in the church. This is despite the fact that, theoretically speaking, the appointment of ecclesiastical offices was the church’s undertaking. Many members of the church also held a seething contempt for the majority of knights who regarded them as overly vain, violence-prone rogues due to their savage treatment of the peasant population which became so entrenched in European life that religious clerics, such as Bernard de Clairvaux, went so far as to accuse them of “fighting for the devil.”

By the reign of Pope Gregory VII (1073-85), however, the papacy, who saw themselves as having the God-given role to protect Christendom from the corrupting influences of the secular world, had started to attempt reforming the church and knighthood by reasserting their supreme authority over religious affairs through the use of excommunication and by advocating the need of sacral military sponsorships, known as “holy wars.” By calling on Christian rulers to help defend the church, popes that had focused on reform had hoped to redirect the violence caused by the martial enthusiasm of the feudal warlords to be used towards combating the papacy’s and Christendom’s supposed enemies, mainly the Holy Roman Emperor and Muslim forces in the Eastern Mediterranean. These initial proactive measures of forming an military wing of the church under Pope Gregory fell flat on account of his confrontational methods, but one of his reformist-minded successors, Pope Urban II (1088-99), succeeded is calling for a crusade for the Holy Land at the Council of Clermont (1095) after Byzantine emperor Alexius I Comnenos requested military aid against the Seljuk Turks. This was achieved mainly due to the religious atmosphere of Latin Europe, the gradual acceptance of religiously ordained violence, and the strategy the papacy used to market the crusade.

- Pope Gregory VII was the first leader of the papacy to experiment in the implementation of an armed wing of the church. - Wikipedia

Unlike the fragmentation that characterized the political sphere of western Europe in the late 11th century, the same region was undergoing a period of an unprecedented level of spiritual unity. By 1095, the pagan peoples who once raided, pillaged, and settled all across the interior and coastline of the continent, such as the Tengri Magyars and Norse Vikings, had become largely Christianized, which led to Christianity becoming the most widely established religion in the West and to European society in becoming highly centered around the notion regarding the importance of religious devotion:

“This was a setting in which Christian doctrine impinged upon virtually every facet of human life–from birth and death, to sleeping and eating, marriage and health–and the signs of God’s omnipotence were clear for all to see, made manifest through acts of ‘miraculous’ healing, divine revelation and earthly and celestial portents.” - Thomas Asbridge - The Crusades: The Authoritative History for the War of the Holy Land (2011)

While this religious doctrine stressed the importance of love, charity, and tradition, it also led to the formation of a perilous anxiety, especially in the mindsets of the warrior nobility, which was brought on by the constantly reminded belief that one was destined to either eternal salvation or eternal damnation in accordance of an individuals acts in life:

“The Latin Church of the eleventh century taught that every human would face a moment of judgement–the so-called ‘weighing of souls’. Purity would bring the everlasting reward of heavenly salvation, but sin would result in damnation and an eternity of hellish torment. For the faithful of the day, the visceral reality of the dangers involved was driven home by graphic images in religious art and sculpture of the punishments to be suffered by those deemed impure: wretched sinners strangled by demons; the damned herded into the fires of the underworld by hideous devils.” - Thomas Asbridge - The Crusades: The Authoritative History for the War of the Holy Land (2011)

It is not surprising, then, that the feudal nobility became intensely obsessed with the idea of repentance of ones sins and purity of ones soul, as the inherent contradiction of having both blood on ones hands and being a committed Christian was not lost on them. For feudal lords and their knights who believed they were destined for hellfire due to their rapacious brutality, there were multiple gestures they could make in their path to atone for their sins. These acts included devoting ones life to a impoverished existence in the form of monasticism, giving alms to the poor and donating to religious houses, and taking part in a pilgrimage to one of the many holy sites of Christendom, namely Jerusalem or Rome. The last being especially compelling due to the journey to sacred locations normally being fraught with danger.

- Medieval depictions of hell, like those found in Giotto's The Last Judgment from 1307, filled the hearts and minds of the faithful with the fear of losing their souls to eternal torment. - Web Gallery of Art

In the 11th century, there was also a growing theological development that was accepted by a greater following as time went on: religiously sanctioned warfare. Christianity may seem like a pacifistic faith, at first, due to one of the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament clearly stating “Thou shall not kill,” but many Germanic European Christians had understood the notion that some acts of violence were justifiable, specifically on defensive grounds, and an inescapable part of life if still sinful. There were also many who believed that the papacy may even sanction violence, since in the past bishops of the church would commonly bless weapons and armor and, at least during the time of Charlemagne, direct military campaigns with the express purpose of converting pagans. The concept of papal sponsorship of warfare was found potentially attractive to secular lords and knights who were suffering from “damnation anxiety” for being too well-accustomed to violence on account of Pope Gregory VII, who heavily promoted the idea, claiming that those participating in a holy struggle to defend Christendom would receive the same spiritual rewards as those who participating in a religious pilgrimage.

Despite such a powerful religious atmosphere in Europe at the time, Pope Gregory was mainly unsuccessful in sponsoring an armed pilgrimage to the East, since the idea of the Pope leading an army in person was considered too radical for its time. It did, however, establish an important precedent that would relied upon in a more indirect and refined manner by later popes, namely Pope Urban II, who waited for an opportunity to present itself to make the notion of an armed pilgrimage to the east, now called a “crusade,” into a reality and to spread the papacy’s sphere of influence. As already mentioned, Pope Urban II was offered a chance to expand Rome’s authority outside the confines of central Italy and to redirect the widespread violence spawned from the many petty feuds between noble houses against a common foreign foe by calling for a holy war when, while presiding over an ecclesiastical council in the Italian city of Piacenza during the spring of 1095, ambassadors representing the Greek Christian Byzantine Emperor arrived requesting military aid against Muslim forces. By 1095, the Byzantine Empire lost roughly half of its size, including almost all of Anatolia, when it suffered a catastrophic loss at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 against the Muslim Seljuk Turks and was seeking to regain its lost territory. Using the defense of eastern Christendom as a pretext, Pope Urban called for a crusade by autumn during a special sermon at the Council of Clermont in southern France in a room full of hundreds of spectators, including archbishops, bishops, and abbots. According to accounts, Pope Urban not only sent a call to aid the Greek Christians from the impending threat of Islam. He had also included a secondary aim: sending a military expedition to the holy city of Jerusalem. A site considered the most sanctified in all Christendom, its inclusion as one of the grand objectives for the First Crusade, as well as the admittance of the guarantee of heavenly salvation for those who participated, resonated deeply among the hearts and minds of God-fearing knights all across western Europe.

However, the inclusion of these two spiritually profound goals still presented a serious problem to Pope Urban II. There was no recent horrible atrocity or urgent threat of Muslim invasion towards Latin Christendom in which to draw upon in order to produce a greater sense of legitimate justification and raging hunger for vengeance to encourage knights to cross thousands of miles to retake the holy city of Jerusalem:

“Recent history offered no obvious event that might serve to focus and inspire a vengeful tide of enthusiasm. Yes, Jerusalem was ruled by Muslims, but this had been the case since the seventh century. And, while Byzantium may have been facing a deepening threat of Turkish aggression, western Christendom was not on the brink of invasion or annihilation at the hands of Near Eastern Islam.” - Thomas Asbridge - The Crusades: The Authoritative History for the War of the Holy Land (2011)

It’s also important to note that the hostility between Greek Orthodox Byzantine Empire and the Muslim Seljuk Turks wasn’t religious in nature and the former was also involved in frequent clashes with its Christian Slavic neighbors:

“The reality is that, when Pope Urban II proclaimed the First Crusade at Clermont, Islam and Christianity had largely coexisted for centuries in relative equanimity. There may have been little love lost between Christian and Muslim neighbors, but there was, in truth, little to distinguish this enmity from the endemic political and military struggles of the age.” - Thomas Asbridge - The Firt Crusade: A New History (2005)

So how did Pope Urban II rectify the problem with the lack of a recent nearby tragedy to exploit in order to boost enthusiasm for his militarized religious pilgrimage? He did this by demonizing Muslims in the Near East to absolutely morbid degrees and exaggerating any sort of negative treatment of Christians may have endured under the rule of Islam:

“Muslims therefore were portrayed as subhuman savages, bent upon the barbaric abuse of Christendom. Urban described how Turks ‘were slaughtering and capturing many [Greeks], destroying churches and laying waste to the kingdom of God’. He also asserted that Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land were being abused and exploited by Muslims, with the rich being stripped of their wealth by illegal taxes, and the poor subjected to torture.” - Thomas Asbridge - The Crusades: The Authoritative History for the War of the Holy Land (2011)

He further dehumanized Muslims by describing them as bloodthirsty abominations who took sadistic glee in enslaving and violating Christian women and disemboweling Christian pilgrims who headed for the holy land. It is unsure whether or not Pope Urban II truly believed in his own propaganda, but his incendiary rhetoric and his promise of the remission of sins for those who took part in the holy venture certainly captivated his audience and succeeded in persuading many atonement-seeking knights that fighting Islam was preferable to fighting fellow Christians. He was so successful in his proclamation of a crusade that when news spread of it throughout Europe by word of preachers he managed to recruit both a sanctioned and unsanctioned army in the tens of thousands strong. By 1099, the former led by Bishop Adhemar de la Puy and Count Raymond of Toulouse and numbering around 50,000 footmen and knights miraculously managed to retake Jerusalem after months of fighting, the dwindling of resources, and threats of desertion.

- The Council of Clermont started a deadly dehumanization campaign against Muslims in the Near East. - Wikipedia

Interestingly, this vast, primarily Frankish army wasn’t even what Emperor Alexius had hoped for when he had asked the papacy for military aid against the Turks. He was expecting, at most, a few thousand freelance knights he could comfortably incorporate into his own forces to safeguard his remaining territory and retake parts of Anatolia. When the massive crusader force finally make it to Constantinople, Emperor Alexius tried to demand its leaders, with varying degrees of success, to swear an oath of vassalage to him and return to the Byzantine Empire any territory they took from the Turks.

Evidently, nothing about this dehumanizing speech about Muslims viciously terrorizing Christians inhabiting the Near East could be farther from the truth. First of all, while Islamic society may have far from an ideal progressive paradise by modern standards, one of the reasons it was so successful in it’s growth after the caliphs (the successors of the religion’s founder, the Prophet Muhammed, and leaders of all of Islam’s religious and political affairs) began conquering large swathes of territory outside the Arabian peninsula during the 630s was the relatively tolerant approach it took to treating non-Muslims that resided in territory it had subjugated. Rather than leading mass conversions of the people the caliphs had surmounted, non-Muslims, specifically those with common monotheistic religious roots to Islam, such as Jews and Christians, were labeled as “Peoples of the Book” and where allowed to practice their faiths in exchange for the payment of a poll tax. In all honestly, it was an era of unmatched religious tolerance for its time:

“Most significantly, throughout this period indigenous Christians actually living under Islamic law, whether it be in Iberia or the Holy Land, were generally treated with remarkable clemency. The Muslim faith acknowledged and respected Judaism and Christianity creeds in which it enjoyed a common devotional tradition and a mutual reliance upon authoritative scripture. Christian subjects may not have been able to share power with their Muslim masters, but thy ere given freedom to worship. All around the Mediterranean basin, Christian faith survived and even thrived under the watchful but tolerant eye of Islam. Eastern Christendom may have been subject to Islamic rule, but it was not on the brink of annihilation, nor prey to any form of systemic abuse.” - Thomas Asbridge - The Firt Crusade: A New History (2005)

It’s also far from accurate to suggest that Islam in the late 11th century existed as a singular religious-political, monolithic realm that constantly waged its own holy war on non-Muslim neighbors in the form of a “jihad.” Not unlike western Europe, by the late 11th century the Near East was a fragmented assortment of political and religious holdings and the tensions between them had increased in intensity ever since the fall of the expansive Umayyad caliphate during a bloody coup in 750. After the Abbasid dynasty took over and moved the capital from Damascus to Baghdad, the caliphs authority gradually began to devolve over time to the point they became nothing much more than nominal figureheads who held power only in theory. When the First Crusade was announced in 1095, the Near East was politically and religiously divided between two rivaled forces: the Sunni Seljuk Turks and the Shia Fatimid caliphate. Descended from nomadic tribesmen known for their armies of mounted archers, the Seljuks conquered much of what is now Persia, Mesopotamia, and Anatolia, declared themselves sultan and effectively became the overlords of Sunni Islam and the defenders of the Abbasid Caliphate. However, during the time the crusaders reached the Near East, the Seljuk’s territory was itself in disarray over the succession of the title sultan which led their empire to fracture. Their primary adversaries, the Shia Fatamids, were a rival dynasty who claimed descent from the Prophet Muhammed’s daughter, Fatima, who had conquered large portions of territory that used to be part of the domain of the Abbasids including North Africa, the Levant, Syria, and Egypt.

- The Seljuk Empire and the Fatamids were the mst powerful Muslim states in the Near East during the late 11th century. - istanbulclues.com

The schism that resulted in the Sunni-Shia split is traced back to a dispute regarding the legitimacy of Muhammed’s successors. Adherents of the Sunni sect subscribe to the belief that Muhammed’s legitimate successor was his father-in-law, Abu Bakr, and that all rightful caliphs are those elected by members of the Muslim elite. Shia Islam, on the other hand, contends that only descendants of Muhammed’s cousin and son-in-law, Ali, and his daughter, Fatima, can be proclaimed caliph. Both sects regarded the other as believers in a dangerous heresy and constantly squabbled for territory in the Levant, which fostered a high degree of religious and political disunity in the Near East that aided the crusaders in their taking of Jerusalem.

As time moved ever farther from the era of rapid Muslim conquest and expansion that characterized the 7th and 8th centuries, enthusiasm for Islam’s own version for a holy war, a jihad, gradually began to wane to the point that by the near end of the 11th century it entered a period of relative inactivity. In the classical sense, a jihad, which literally means “struggle” or “striving,” was interpreted by Sunni Muslim jurists during the early period of Islam’s history as an endless holy war to be waged on non-Muslims and endorsed by the caliphs until all accepted the rule of Islam. Similar to the Christian crusades, it was considered a holy obligation that all Muslims should take part and those who contributed to a jihad rewarded with entry into heavenly Paradise. However, as Muslim Arabs began to trade with Christian communities and largely abandoned their nomadic roots, calls of jihad against Christendom started to lose substantial momentum and instead were turned against rival Muslim sects that Sunnis considered heretical:

“As the centuries passed, the driving impulse towards expansion encoded in this classical theory of jihad was gradually eroded. Arab tribesmen began to settle into more sedentary lifestyles and to trade with non-Muslims, such as the Byzantines. Holy wars against the likes of Christians continued, but they became far more sporadic and often were promoted and prosecuted by Muslim emirs, without caliphal endorsement. By the eleventh century, the rulers of Sunni Baghdad were far more interested in using jihad to promote Islamic orthodoxy by battling ‘heretic’ Shi‘ites than they were in launching holy wars against Christendom. The suggestion that Islam should engage in an unending struggle to enlarge its borders and subjugate non-Muslims held little currency; so too did the idea of unifying in defence of the Islamic faith and its territories. When the Christian crusades began, the ideological impulse of devotional warfare thus lay dormant within the body of Islam, but the essential framework remained in place.” - Thomas Asbridge - The Crusades: The Authoritative History for the War of the Holy Land (2011)

In review, the belief that the First Crusade was a purely righteous backlash against a supposed existential threat posed by Islam is shown to be largely insufficient in evidence after explaining the politically divided state of both western Europe and the Muslim of the 11th century, the unbalanced power dynamic between the Latin Church and secular monarchies, the proactive efforts the papacy attempted in directing holy war, and the generally tolerant treatment towards Christians living under Muslim rule. The purpose of revealing the multiple religious and political complexities that expedite momentous instances of historical conflict is to expose the faultiness of oversimplifying the origins of the crusades which only leads to the manufacturing and reinforcing of historical misconceptions that have the tendency to glorify or mythologize historical events. This construction of an imaginative view of the crusades can be quite dangerous since those that perpetuate it have the penchant of selecting certain elements that fits more comfortably with a groups ideological agenda while glossing over some of the worst cases of religious violence, some of which would be considered examples of genocide by today's international human rights laws. These include the bloody Rhineland massacres, when member’s of the unsanctioned People’s Crusade slaughtered Jewish communities along the Rhine, and the massacre of Jews and Muslims that occurred when the crusaders had taken the city of Jerusalem.

This semi-mythological and overglorified view of the Crusades, however, was not always thus. After the Reformation and during the European Enlightenment, the Crusades became largely re-appraised by scholars and theologians, which led the holy wars to lose their fanciful descriptions and become considered as a significantly dark and exceedingly violent period in European history. It was seen by Enlightenment scholars as a prime example of the vile barbarity and terrible oppressiveness unrestrained religious devotion can ultimately produce if left unchecked. By the 1800s, this hostile attitude towards the Crusades had begun to change during the rise of European imperialism and nationalism. Scholars during the 19th century, such as French historian Joseph Francois Michaud, started a trend that became exceedingly difficult to dislodge from European perspectives. They romanticized the crusaders as daring adventurers who were given the noble task of “civilizing” Asia and interpreted the crusades as admirable cases of “proto-colonization.” This misrepresentation that overlionizes the Crusades was the beginning of the subject falling sway to the phenomena known as “historical parallelism.”

Historical parallelism is “the desire to see the modern world reflected in the past.” (Asbrigde 2011) Today the concept is being used in a manner to draw a false comparison between the medieval and modern worlds through the utilization of historical inaccuracies surrounding the separate time periods and the misappropriation of crusader imagery as a tool for propaganda purposes. These efforts have increased strikingly in the past few years due to the growing influence of ultra-nationalism in the West that has been increasing since the terrorist attacks on 9/11. Neofascist protestors in Charlottesville, for example, wore shields that were unsubtly emblazoned with the Templar Cross while others have been chanting the infamous medieval crusader phrase “Deus Vult!,” which means “God wills it!” in Latin. Interestingly, the process of appropriating the crusader period isn’t just monopolized by the hard right in the West. Radical Islamic organizations and leaders for decades, such as Sayyid Qutb and Osama bin Laden, have frequently referenced the Crusades as a means of condemning the West and portraying Western military forces, especially those that have intervened in the Levant, as modern-day crusaders that are hell bent on invading Islamic territory and that the only response to such a Christian invasion is violent “jihad.”

While the crude and shameless “borrowing” of crusader symbolism is far from a recent development among alt-right groups and Islamic propagandists, its urgent now more than ever to confront such mistruths that these organizations have the habit of spreading, especially on video sharing sites such as YouTube. In the case of the Crusades, the proliferation of historical falsehoods results in the formation of a false, fatalistic “us vs them” narrative between European and Muslim civilization that characterizes both cultures as if they are locked in never-ending antagonism with each other since medieval times. This agenda-driven endeavor to revise the Crusades as a war fought along ethnic lines is a barely disguised attempt to justify prejudice against Muslim immigrants, including recent Muslim refugees who are desperate to escape from the civil wars that have been plaguing parts of the Middle East. Thankfully scholars, such as historian Christopher Tyerman with his new book The World of the Crusades, have been diligently fighting back against this tide of virulent misinformation with imperative efforts to clarify and correct our understanding of the Crusades through the use of Twitter threads, Op-Eds, blog posts, and books. Their push to reverse this negative transformative effect the internet has had on historiography is undoubtedly an uphill battle but their struggle will hopefully prove how important history as field of study is in this post-9/11 world.

Sources:

Asbridge, Thomas. The Crusades: The Authoritative History for the War of the Holy Land. 2011.

Asbridge, Thomas. The First Crusade: A New History. 2005.

Phillips, Jonathan. Holy Warriors: A Modern History of the Crusades. 2010.

#crusades #crusaders #crusader kings ii #islam #christianity #catholic #pope #terrorism #racism #history #holy

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famous-aces · 5 years

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Joan of Arc

Who: Jehanne Darc (often modernized as Jeanne d'Arc) (Joan of Arc is the Anglicization of her name)

What: Soldier and Saint

Where: French, active in France

When: c. 1412 - May 30, 1431

(Image Description: an engraving of Joan of Arc from 1903 by Peruvian artist Albert Lynch. It was featured in Figaro Illustre. It looks more like a painting than an engraving. It shows Joan in the center. In the background is Notre Dame. In the mid and foreground is a field of white flowers. Joan is front and center from the thighs up. She is in full plate mail but without the helmet or gloves. The armor has gold accents. She has pale skin and a round face. Her hair is black and cut into a bob with high bangs. One hand holds a flag and one hand rests on the hilt of a huge sword. She looks stoically and proudly out at the viewer. End ID.)

Joan of Arc is more legend than woman at this point, but she was very real. She is in part responsible for turning the tide of the Hundred Years War in France's favor. Now she is both French cultural heroine and canonized Catholic saint. Joan is an icon and inspiration and to millions be they French, Christian, woman, queer, or all of the above.

Joan's story is fairly well known. She was an illiterate peasant girl who, when she was 13, was visited by the visions of several saints. From that point forward she claimed to have been following God's instructions. At the time, France and England were still locked in the heat of the Hundred Years War (1337-1453) and the English occupied swaths of France. Eventually God told Joan to topple the English occupation and save France. She convinced the Dauphin to give her command over troops and dressed in men's armor Joan lead French victory after victory.

Although there were understandably doubts about what this untrained teenager could actually do she was able to convince naysayers quickly. She won first success at the Siege of Orléans. After the city was sieged for more than six months, Joan was able to turn away the English in only nine days. She was involved in more than a half dozen battles, many victories, between 1429 and 1431. These included the French success at the Battle of Patay and the March to Reims. During the latter she helped siege and reclaim several French cities and ensured the coronation of King Charles VII, at which she was in attendance.

She continued her campaign despite being injured in the Siege of Paris and was ultimately captured during the Siege of Compiègne. Her troops were outnumbered and her attempted surprise attack was rebuffed by English reinforcements, at which point she was overwhelmed and pulled from her horse.

She was captured, tried for witchcraft (although crossdressing was listed among her crimes/charges), and ultimately, horrifically, burned at the stake. Because she was so well loved the English made sure her body was very publicly destroyed both to avoid rumors of her escape and to make sure no relics could be made from her remains (as was very common for holy people at the time). Although English propaganda and court proceedings claimed Joan was a witch who spoke not to God and saints but to the Devil, her executioner still "greatly feared to be damned.". She was only 19 at the time of her death.

Joan has become a larger-than-life figure. Her story has been told and retold countless times over the centuries. Movies, books, plays, operas, songs, pieces of visual art. Nearly every medium that exists has depicted Joan of Arc in some capacity. For example, the first celluloid movie camera was invented in 1895, the first filmed depiction of Joan of Arc was made in only 1898. Mark Twain was very proud of his oft forgotten novel Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc. Voltaire wrote the poem "La Pucelle d’Orléans" (link goes to English translation) and there was a dramatic rebuttal by Die Jungfrau von Orleans (German) by Friedrich Schiller. Tchaikovsky wrote an opera The Maid of Orléans. George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan is perhaps his magnum opus. Robert Southey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote the epic "Joan of Arc". She is included in Shakespeare's Henry VI Part 1. The likes of Peter Paul Rubins, Paul Gauguin, John Everett Millais, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, among others have rendered Joan. She has been used for awards and propaganda.

Joan of Arc even impacted real life fashion, the Bob hairstyle's inventor based the now iconic look off Joan's haircut. It makes sense since the Bob was originally associated with the rebellious women of the 1920s. In 1920 she was canonized and is now the patron saint of France, soldiers, women in the WAVES and WAC, prisoners, among many others.

There is now speculation that Joan of Arc may have been mentally ill or had epilepsy.

(Image Description: a drawing of Joan of Arc by Clément de Fauquembergue found in the margins of a parliamentary document from 1429. That makes this the earliest drawing of Joan we have. It is a brown ink drawing, slightly crude, very simple, of a woman drawn in profile. It ends just below her midsection. She wears a dress and carries as sword in one hand and a banner in the other. She is scowling. Oddly she does not have the short haircut that would become her trademark look, then again I have no idea how true/untrue to life this is. End ID)

Probable Orientation: Aroace (and obviously GNC. Crossdressing was one of the many crimes for which the English tried her.)

This is already a very long entry because of Joan of Arc's extensive legacy but it is going to get even longer, because I mentioned in Mary Eliza Mahoney's entry that there was another figure I was struggling with in my speculation, here she is. My biggest issue here was more moral than anything else.

Joan was only 19 when she died, that is hardly a full life to determine what her sexual orientation was. I do not object to a teenager self-identifying as any gender/sexual orientation, but it is quite another matter to impose one on them, especially when they died before being able to live a full life.

I thought a lot about the discourse presently surrounding Anne Frank. On my personal blog I have made my opinion abundantly clear (she is not your Bicon, she is a victim of a horrific genocide). So why is Joan different to me? I did some deep soul searching on this. So before going into my evidence as to why Joan of Arc may have been aroace.

The circumstances of their deaths are different. Anne was killed because of her ethnoreligious background in a campaign to wipe out the Jewish people. Joan was brutally killed for her gender and wearing men's clothing as much as she was for being an enemy general. Indeed, she would not have been burned alive had she been a young man doing exactly what Joan did and not a young woman. But her death is not representative of a larger narrative. There were no other Joans of Arc.

Yes, she is now a Catholic Saint, but unlike Anne Frank Joan was not killed for being Catholic and was killed by other Catholics. Also I should add Judaism is much larger than just a religion. It is an ethnicity as well. Joan was the same ethnicity (if not the same nationality) as her captors.

Anne was also a 20th century girl and 15 when she met her horrible demise. Joan's era and age are something I will expand on.

And importantly I am not the first person to ascribe queerness to Joan's story. She has been a queer figure for the better part of a century by now. Some scholars argue she was a lesbian*. Others say she was nonbinary**. Joan has long been important to the queer community, but that wouldn't necessarily make me right for adding to the debate.

But for Joan of Arc queerness is baked right in to the narrative. She wore men's clothing and broke gender norms, actions so taboo they were part of what cost her her life. Whether or not this crossdressing had anything to do with her gender or sexual orientation or just done for ease in battle is a subject of debate and boy howdy there is a lot of it. Plus, the actual act of going to war as a woman was an act of gender nonconformity.

Anyway now I am going to tell you why I believe Joan of Arc was an aroace, because it is another piece of the queerness of her narrative that she touted.

Here is one of the most important pieces of evidence to me, her name. Joan's birth name was Jehanne Darc (or a similar spelling), that was her father's surname and it was technically hers. In life she didn't use it. She called herself Jehanne la Pucelle (Joan the Maid) as in Joan the Virgin. That was the name she rallied her troops under. That was how her (dictated) letters were often signed. I have seen the argument made that she was asserting her purity, but it also would remind her troops of her age. Just like today "virgin" held a connotation of childishness. You were not married and inexperienced. Why would a military general want to point out how young she was? She had another name, she could have just been Jehanne Darc. It also told everyone she was a woman, including the enemy, who might use that against her. If she wanted to go with a nickname based on piousness it did not have to be "la Pucelle". There are many that did not imply either gender or age.

Her age is also important. Much like Wang Zhenyi she opted to break convention and do something else when it came time to get married. She was at war at the time when she should have been getting married, French women were generally married between 18 and 25. Her chasteness was noted in that she was only interested in carrying out God's Will. Nothing kept her on the battlefield except her dedication to her cause. She could have retired at any point. Indeed in September of 1429 she was badly injured by a crossbow bolt to the thigh, she had to be dragged from the battlefield and it was only by the king's orders that she did not return to it. She had a mission and marriage did not seem to factor into it. And that, being of marriageable age and not seeking it, would be odd even given her religiousness.

(Image Description: a 1504 painting of Joan on horseback. It is a bright painting on parchment. She is wearing shining armor with a yellow feather in her helmet. She carries a red banner. The horse is white with red and gold accoutrements and is prancing. There are fields and a castle behind her. Joan looks calm. End ID)

The argument could be made that it is impossible to untangle Joan's chastity from her religiousness. But I would argue that there is a way to tell and a way that hers is unique from that of other saints.

Within Catholicism chastity is about sacrifice and self-denial, by being sexless you are giving something up. That is why you will often see saints who are hermits, giving up sex along with everything else. Even saints who die as virgin martyrs (i.e. dying defending their virginity) are generally fending off rape or a marriage that would come between them and God. Unless they are willingly giving themselves up to God Himself chasteness is not supposed to last. Indeed, you are supposed to go forth and multiply and all that.

Officially in Catholic doctrine asexuality does not exist because sexual attraction (to the "opposite sex") is one of God's Gifts. It is impossible to not feel sexual attraction and be human in their eyes. As per an FAQ on religious life "Question: What do you call a person who is asexual? Answer: Not a person. Asexual people do not exist. Sexuality is a gift from God and thus a fundamental part of our human identity.". Or even more sinisterly as put by former Priest*** and Ugandan Ethics Minister Simon Lokodo when he said he approved of heterosexual child rape more than consentual gay sex "it is men raping girls. Which is natural" the implication being that hetero sex is the only "natural" thing, because even denial is unacceptable. Yes, Lokodo is an extreme example, but it reflects a mindset about heterosexual sex.

Chastity is only venerated in Christianity insofar as you are giving something up for God. The Christian faith has engineered the acceptable circumstances for sex and you are expected to have it and want it within those circumstances. Joan's maidenhood is traditionally viewed much the same way a nun's is, that she was driven by her love of God and her desire to fulfill His instructions and thus neglected her own desires. It is unthinkable that maybe she just didn't care, that she would rather be a warrior than a wife. She would be far less beloved if that was the widely agreed on conclusion, I assure you.

(Image description: Jeanne D'Arc (1874) a gilded bronze statue by Emmanuel Frémiet now at the Place des Pyramides, Paris. Commissioned by Napoleon III and standing 13 feet tall. It shows a triumphant Joan of Arc on horseback with her banner held high. Both she and her horse wear armor. End ID)

*The argument for this is actually pretty weak. The one thing I have seen used as evidence of her being definitively a lesbian is that she shared her bed with women. But this was the 15th century, bedsharing was extremely common, there weren't many beds to go around, whole peasant families might share a bed. Yes, it could mean something, but Occam's Razor, in an era when nonsexual bedsharing was common this is not proof this is was for sexual reasons, there is no reason Joan would be an exception. Without any other evidence she was a lesbian this is not enough to prove she was attracted to women. I am not saying it isn't possible, I am just saying that is not enough to go on.

**In her being GNC. Again, a possibility, but not definitive. Of course this stuff rarely is.

***He was removed from the priesthood when he entered politics as it is against Vatican law to hold both positions, it had nothing to do with his horrific stance on Queer Rights.

(Image Description: Jeanne d'Arc écoutant ses voix by Léon François Bénouville [done before 1859]. It is a painting that shows Joan when she first was visited by Saints/Angels. It shows Joan in layered but undecorated clothing. She is clutching what appears to be part of a loom or other wool working equipment in one hand. The other holds her wrist. She is white and pale and barefoot. Her hair is dark and partially pinned back, starting to come free. She has a round face and looks shocked, her doll like mouth agape in a gasp and her light eyes wide. She is seated on a rock with a field behind her, dotted with sheep and a horse. Far beyond her in the distance is a burning city. In the air around her in an immense sky are the flying and translucent forms of angels. They have their mouths open, calling to her. One offers her a sword another carries a flag/banner. End ID.)

Quotes:

"Jehanne la Pucelle"

-How Joan signed her dictated letters and referred to herself, "Joan the Maid".

"Alas! that my body, clean and whole, never been corrupted, today must be consumed and burnt to ashes!"

-Joan of Arc after being condemned to death, quoted by Jean Toutmouille

(Image Description: a still from La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (The Passion of Joan of Arc) a silent film from 1928. It is widely regarded as a masterpiece and a landmark of early cinema. Renée Jeanne Falconetti (Joan) is still hailed for her performance. In this image we see Joan kneeling in front of the stake. She is wearing a wool robe and clutching a cross. The anguish on her face is indescribable. Behind her is an armed guard. End ID)

#lgbtq #queer #asexual #ace #history #aromantic #aro #soldiers #Europe #French #15th century #Joan of Arc #France #bio

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antoine-roquentin · 5 years

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some fun quotes i got while researching one of the essays i was doing instead of blogging, from lloyd gardner, three kings

Oilman James Moffett, a personal friend of Roosevelt and board chair of SoCal, had a proposal to offer. Why not see the king through the war with a direct subsidy? The U.S. government could purchase up to $6 million a year in petroleum products from the king and everyone would be happy. Unless Ibn Saud received such financial assistance, warned Moffett, "there is grave danger that this independent Arab Kingdom cannot survive the present emergency." FDR liked the idea, but navy secretary Frank Knox could not imagine what to do with the oil. What was being produced in Saudi Arabia was not yet suitable for use in airplanes or even ordinary purposes.21

Mr. Fix It, Harry Hopkins, had another idea. What about LendLease? Passed originally by Congress in the spring of 1941, LendLease was the administration's answer to the problem of sending economic and material aid to Great Britain without creating a new "war debts" issue, which had plagued American relations with Europe in the interwar era. The plan was then extended to the Soviet Union in the fall of 1941, and later to other nations at war. But Saudi Arabia was not at war with the Axis powers, and, as Hopkins ruefully confessed, "just how we could call that outfit a `democracy' I don't know."" A year and a half later, in February 1943, the president suddenly found "the defense of Saudi Arabia ... vital to the defense of the United States." Lend-Lease aid started to flow into Saudi Arabia. What brought about this landmark change? Saudi Arabia was still not at war, still not a democracy, and a possible Axis threat had receded after the North African campaign. So whence came the threat?

Washington officials now suspected the British-despite their financial plight-of trying to "edge their way into" Saudi Arabia at the expense of the American oil companies. Saudi Arabia was "probably the greatest and richest oil field in all the world," declared Harold Ickes, petroleum administrator for war, and the British "never overlooked any opportunity to get in where there was oil."23 But British ambassador Lord Halifax was so upset over presumed threats to postwar British interests throughout the Middle East that he asked for an audience with Roosevelt to clear the air. When he arrived at the White House, FDR produced a rough map he had drawn of the Middle East: "Persian oil, he told him, is yours. We share the oil of Iraq and Kuwait. As for Saudi Arabian oil, it's ours."...

With the Truman Doctrine in 1947 the Americans repeated the assurances that the Athenian representative Euphemus gave to Sicilians at Camarina in 415 B.c.: "We are forced to intervene in many directions simply because we have to be on our guard in many directions; now, as previously, we have come as allies to those of you here who are being oppressed; our help was asked for, and we have not arrived uninvited." Euphemus added, however, that "it is not for you to constitute yourselves judges of our behaviour or to act like schoolmasters and try to make us change our ways. That is not an easy thing to do now."`...

Mossadeq twitted Sir Richard about his religion. Was he a Catholic, asked the prime minister? Yes, said Stokes. Well, he was probably unsuited for his mission, then, because Catholics did not believe in divorce, and Iran was in the process of divorcing AIOC. Sir Richard was not amused. ...

Acheson reported that the British-with Churchill back in power-were adamant all down the line, through the ranks of the civil service. Allowing Iran to "despoil" the British company would surely destroy confidence in British power and the pound sterling, they told the secretary of state, and within months all British property abroad would disappear, and soon after all Western investments. "In my judgment," summarized Acheson, "the cardinal purpose of British policy is not to prevent Iran from going Commie; the cardinal point is to pre serve what they believe to be the last remaining bulwark of Brit solvency; that is their overseas investment and property position.""...

Mossadeq had stopped off in Philadelphia on his way to Washington, where he visited Independence Hall and linked his nationalization policies with the "ideals that inspired the United States to wrest freedom and liberty from Britain in 1776." ...

Defense secretary Charles Wilson lamented bygone days when other right-wing dictators replaced deteriorating right-wing dictatorships: "Nowadays, however, when a dictatorship of the right was replaced by a dictatorship of the left, a state would presently slide into Communism and was irrevocably lost to us."

stephen kinzer, all the shah’s men:

Iranian agents who came in and out of Roosevelt’s villa knew him only by his pseudonym, James Lockridge. As time passed, they naturally developed a sense of comradeship, and some of the Irani- ans, much to Roosevelt’s amusement, began calling him “Jim.” The only times he came close to blowing his cover were during tennis games that he played regularly at the Turkish embassy and on the campus of the French Institute. When he missed a shot, he would curse himself,shouting,“Oh,Roosevelt! ”Several times he was asked why someone named Lockridge would have developed such a habit. He replied that he was a passionate Republican and considered Franklin D. Roosevelt to have been so evil that he used Roosevelt’s name as a curse....

In those early years,Mossadegh developed more than a political perspective. He also began showing extraordinary emotional quali- ties. His boundless self-assurance led him to fight fiercely for his principles, but when he found others unreceptive, he would storm off for long periods of brooding silence. He did this for the first time in 1909, when Mohammad Ali Shah launched his bloody assault on the Majlis.Rather than stay and fight alongside his fellow democrats,he concluded that Iran was not ready for enlightenment and left the country....

In one cable to Washington, he described Mossadegh as “lacking in stability,”“clearly dominated by emotions and prejudices,” and “not quite sane.” In another, he asserted that the National Front was composed of“the street rabble, the extreme left ...extreme Iranian nationalists,some but not all of the more fanatical religious leaders, [and] intellectual leftists, including many who had been educated abroad and did not realize that Iran was not ready for democracy.”

At a meeting of the National Security Council on March 4, Eisenhower wondered aloud why it wasn’t possible “to get some of the people in these down-trodden coun- tries to like us instead of hating us.”

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weemsbotts · 3 years

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Planting the Seeds of Consciousness: When The Interfaith Pilgrimage Arrived in Dumfries

By: Lisa Timmerman, Executive Director

On July 18, 1998 “an interesting bunch of people happened into the Weems Botts Museum across the street from the church.” This “interesting bunch of people” were pilgrims of The Interfaith Pilgrimage of the Middle Passage, people devoted to “Retracing the Journey of Slavery” by traveling through the United States, Caribbean, Brazil, West Africa, and South Africa. As the pilgrims walked through Dumfries, they may have heard the 18th-19th century echoes of cruelty and courage.

Ms. Jeanne Hochmuth along with other representatives from Dumfries, including then Mayor Christopher Brown, met with the estimated 60 pilgrims as they traveled southward from Massachusetts to Louisiana, arriving in Dumfries on 07/18/1998. Sister Clare Carter and Ingrid Askew co-founded this movement as they “walked out on faith”, eventually organizing an impressive collection of supporters. The Board of Advisors included artists, professors and scholars, leaders, and ministers, including the Honorary Chairman, The Most Reverend Desmond M. Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus and Chairperson of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Endorsing organizations and individuals included the W.E.B. Dubois Foundation, Inc., Gandhi-Hamer-King Center for the Study of Religion and Democratic Renewal, Jewish Peace Fellowship, Museum of the National Center of African American Artists, Muslim Peace Fellowship, among many others.

(The Interfaith Pilgrimage of the Middle Passage: Retracing The Journey of Slavery Brochure, Art by Tom Feelings)

According to the organizers, “The Pilgrimage will be a living prayer of the heart, mind, and body for the sons and daughters of the African Diaspora. By acknowledging and embracing the terrible history of slavery and racial oppression, it is hoped the journey will be a step in a healing of the wounds inflicted event until today, and a purification of the heart of all those connected, intimately or distantly, with this history.” While the pilgrims visited sites of extreme abuse and cruelties, such as locations of known enslaved auctions and lynching, the group also visited places of incredible strength and courage, such as stations of the Underground Railroad. They hoped their year long quest would “nourish seeds of genuine consciousness”, and to do this, they outlined five purposes: (summarized)

Offer prayers for the spirits of people of African descent to both recognize them and their descendants

Provide an opportunity to people of European descent to take responsibility and to express repentance on behalf of the peoples and civilizations of the West, noting it as the only way the United States could break the pattern of defensiveness, denial and fear from a society still gripped by slavery

Reverse historical patterns by moving eastward to Africa, “giving back” and honoring the diverse people and regions in Africa

Offer multifaceted educational opportunities on the institution of slavery emphasizing an honest history

Transform the thinking that spawned racism and fight against the materially-based thinking the organization noted as still present in domestic and international policies

Initiated by the Buddhist order Nipponzan Myohoji of Sister Clare Carter, the pilgrimage invited everyone to participate asking them to make the following commitments: join in morning and evening interfaith prayer services, abide strictly by the policy of no drinking, weapons or drugs, and follow the guidelines of local and regional organizers. There was no fee to participate, but participants were responsible for their own travel along with any associated personal expenses. From 05/30/1998 to 06/12/1999, the pilgrims walked and visited 215 towns and cities, taking a boat through the Caribbean and ending their journey in Cape Town, South Africa.

(The Interfaith Pilgrimage of the Middle Passage: Retracing The Journey of Slavery Brochure)

The organizers expressed concern over the public’s potential reception as they traveled southward. However, thanks to Ms. Hochmuth and the Dumfries United Methodist Church, the pilgrims found lodging, food (including a breakfast of French toast) and historical significance in their one-night stop. The pilgrims passed the former site of the Courthouse where enslaved persons were sold and walked in the town streets, perhaps close to James Curry’s courageous escape from slavery (blog link here). From their frank discussions to the companionship and celebration, the pilgrims planted their seeds of “genuine consciousness” in our small landlocked town.

Note: Please join us this Saturday (02/13) @ 1pm to listen to and learn about African Folktales in our virtual Children’s Day at the Museum Sponsored by Walmart! This program features classic and modern folk tales along with the meanings and messages these tales shared with the community. Free tickets available here.

(Sources: HDVI Archival Files: The Interfaith Pilgrimage of the Middle Passage; PBS: This Far by Faith: 1967-Today, from Crisis to a Search for Meaning: The Interfaith Pilgrimage of the Middle Passage)

#blackhistorymonth #blackhistory #localhistory #worldhistory #middlepassage #virginiahistory #historyathome #museumfromhome #interfaith #modernpilgrims #slavery #community #fellowship

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thesoftkitty42 · 6 years

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I’m posting original content???

Hey there friends. So, I never actually post anything on my blog, but I wrote this for my Creative Writing class and I thought that people might like it, so I’m gonna share it with y’alls. Basically we had to write a How-To article, so I wrote one about How to be Emo. It’s really long and really stupid but it’s still kind of entertaining. Here it is lol

How to Become a MySpace Ready Emo God/Goddess Overnight in 5 Easy Steps: Welcoming yourself to the Black Parade

By Grace Burns Feb. 7, 2018

You know that feeling when you log on to the oh-so-popular website, MySpace.com and you see a super cool, badass, edgy emo queen on your feed, and then you look at your sad, boring, “normal” profile and it just looks lame in comparison? And then you start to think of how cool you would look if you attempted to take sick pictures at that same awesome angle, but when you try you just look like dumbass? Well, I’m here to teach you exactly what steps you can take to become the saddest, baddest, raddest emo of your nightmares.

1 Wardrobe is Everything

Alright, first things first. You can’t have that MySpace fame unless you look the part. You need to start off this journey with a trip to every emo’s favorite place on Earth (other than Warped Tour) Hot Topic. Hot Topic is a safe haven for our kind, housing all the band merch and aesthetically pleasing accessories that you could only dream up in your head. As you walk into the shop, notice the music they’re blasting through the speakers? If you recognize the song, dance along to the music in the store. This is an easy way to make a friend if you both happen to be rocking out to the same artist. Your first stop should be the jeans section. They’re all black skinny jeans, so you better get used to having all your leg fat squeezed into your body. But, you do have the option of whether or not you want jeans with or without rips in them. This will all depend on the aesthetic you are trying to achieve. For someone who is just transitioning to the emo lifestyle, I would suggest starting slow and steady and picking out some plain black skinny jeans without any rips in them. After you grab your bottoms, it’s time to consider the tops. Hot Topic has a cornucopia of band shirts at their disposal, so you have a lot to choose from. Again, I’d suggest starting off easy by picking a shirt from a more popular emo band, preferably something from the holy emo trinity, My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, and Panic! At the Disco, and then as you continue your transition you can start branching off into other bands. The last essential part of your wardrobe is the accessories. Chokers, studded belts, and lots of piercings are all good choices. And you can always get fake piercings to try things out before you commit to piercing lots of holes in your body. The last part of your clothing look is shoes. There are a few different options here. You could go with Vans or Converse, but many debate over which shoe encompasses the emo look more effectively, so to be safe I would go with a classic pair of combat boots. You can never go wrong with combat boots.

2 Hair and Makeup

The next step in becoming the emo nightmare you’ve been dreaming up is the hair and makeup. This goes hand in hand with your clothing and helps complete the whole look. The first thing to change is your hair. If you have soft, wavy, shiny hair, that is the first to go. Your hair needs to look like it’s been beat to shit, much like you have been beaten by your emotions over the years. Do you have bangs? No? Get bangs, they help block out the haters. Is your hair black? If not, you should probably dye it. And of course you need to buy a hair straightener so you can destroy your hair even further. If you aren’t experiencing long-term hair damage, you aren’t doing it right. Now, onto the makeup. Firstly, foundation. You need to make your skin look as dead inside as you feel. Buy a foundation a shade or so lighter than you normally would, and apply to the face and set with a powder. While your pale complexion is essential, your most important tool is and always will be your eyeliner. Eyeliner is what blinds you from the world’s sorrows. It is what gets you into character. Eyeliner is the single most important part of your emo look. Here’s how to apply it:

Grab a pencil or gel eyeliner from your local makeup store (you could even grab eyeliner from Hot Topic)

Apply along upper and lower lash line, making the lines fairly thick.

Smudge eyeliner to perfection

If you need extra tips or inspiration, look at pictures of pre-hiatus Pete Wentz, as he is the unofficial king of emo.

You could just leave your eye makeup as is, or you could take it one step further by adding eyeshadow. You could go for a dark black that matches your soul, or you could do a classic emo eyeshadow color, red. Emo God Frank Iero was famous for his red eyeshadow during My Chem’s “Revenge Era”. This era should be the inspiration for a great deal of your aesthetic. To apply the eyeshadow, all you need to do is take a fluffy eye brush, dip it in the shadow, and sweep/swirl the makeup all over your lid, almost touching the brow bone, and don’t forget to put some of the eyeshadow along your lower lash line as well. After your eye makeup is complete, add mascara to the lashes to finish it off. Lastly is deciding if you want to wear lipstick or not. Many emos choose not to wear lipstick and tend to leave the lips plain, but times are changing, and of you feel like adorning a color on your lips would complete your look, go for it! A big part of the emo mentality is expressing yourself and being who you are free of judgement. You could easily sport a sexy red or black lipstick, or if you dye your hair a fun teal color, you could pick up a matching lipstick from your local Hot Topic.

3 Music

The single most important part of becoming an emo is listening to the right music. The bands that you choose to listen to will be like a safety net. They will comfort you in times of need. The most important bands to listen to are, of course, the three bands that make up the holy emo trinity of music. Chances are you have probably heard the chart topping music created by My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, and Panic! At the Disco on the radio over the years. Fans of these bands, myself included, have claimed that these artists have saved their lives with their music and their words. You must listen to all of their music like it is your religion, and slowly it will become your religion. You must obsess over these bands and their members. Gerard Way is your inspiration and reason that you are not afraid to keep on living, Patrick Stump is the small adorable man with the kindest words that make you feel better on a bad day, Brendon Urie is a talented man with lots of advice on how to deal with your problems. But, the most important thing to remember as you slowly slip into the bandom culture is that every band member is just as important as the others. Fall Out Boy is much more than Pete and Patrick, Joe Trohman and Andy Hurley are just as amazing as their fellow members. The same goes for My Chem, while Gerard and Frank are fantastic people, don’t discredit the utter beauty of Mikey and Ray because they are just as worthy of your praise. When it comes to Panic! At the Disco, even though Brendon rapidly lost all of his members and can’t seem to make anyone stay in the band anymore, don’t forget about those who have fallen from Panic!. Ryan Ross is still an inspiration, and without him we would never have gotten the sheer beauty that is Pretty. Odd. which is debatably the best album Panic! has ever produced. You will listen to this music to the point that you know every last lyric, guitar riff, and drum beat. You will constantly thank God for Esteban and reference every single song on a daily basis. The majority of the things you say are emo references that no one else understands. You will be sad when you stumble upon a phenomenal emo meme on the internet and have no one to share it with. But that’s okay, because you can always cheer yourself up by watching old band interviews and by re-watching the same music videos that you’ve seen countless times before. You will count down the release of new albums, and you will cry when bands decide to call it quits. It will be a rollercoaster of emotions that will slowly consume your life.

4 Attitude

Your attitude is important. If you’re going to try and live that emo lifestyle you crave, you need to have the right attitude. Long gone are your days of cheerful comments and a sunny-disposition. The way you present yourself is a major part of living that dark, gloomy emo life. If you go about talking about pop music, or things that the general public find enjoyable, you will never be able to pull off being emo. You need to walk about as if you are dying inside, and present yourself as a self deprecating, pessimistic, depressing person that brings the mood down in social situations. If you are the token emo in your friend group, you have to try and convert your friends into the lifestyle. Start by getting them into newer Panic! At the Disco and Fall Out Boy songs which are more pop punk than they are traditional emo, especially compared with their earlier works. Once you butter them up with the more modern and radio playable songs, slowly start introducing them to older songs and see if they like it. If they do, you’ve got em. It’s only a short time before they too are emo with you. Along with converting your friends, you just need to talk about emo things nonstop to the point where your friends either need to convert, or they are constantly annoyed by your antics. If you go a whole day without mentioning the new Fall Out Boy album, are you really a fan? If you don’t own merch from every era of My Chemical Romance, can you even call yourself emo? You need to make sure that you have the right mentality, or you will never be able to be a true emo. Another important thing is making sure you have the right tools to protect yourself from harm. Haters are everywhere, and you can fend them off by just blowing them off, or you could spit a bunch of facts about why the emo culture is very important to you and many others.

5 Actually Becoming Emo

Last but not least, an essential step is actually becoming emo. While you might start off doing this ironically, or just to try something new, you will become trapped in the culture. By researching the bands and listening them to fit in, you will actually begin to become obsessed with them and you will really believe that they are the most wonderful people that God has ever created. The emos will trap you, there is no escaping once you start. Eventually you might buy some clothes will color in them, or some jeans that are a little baggier, and you might lighten up on the eyeliner, but anytime you hear that ear-piercing g note that opens up the song Welcome to the Black Parade, you won’t be able to control yourself and you will probably start getting emotional remembering the good old days. You might open up your closet and see that Hot Topic sweater with the safety pins in the sleeves hidden away behind your favorite top, and all you’ll be able to do is laugh at your old style, but you’ll still secretly love it. And years down the road you’ll drop your kids off at school and turn on the classic rock station. You recognize the song that’s playing, but you can’t quite place what it is, and then you hear the lyrics “Am I more than you bargained for yet?” and you will be taken back to your emo days and you’ll drive home and pull out you old albums and put them on, remembering how this music and lifestyle made you feel. You will always be just a little emo on the inside.

#emo #fall out boy #my chemical romance #panic! at the disco #pete wentz #patrick stump #andy hurley #joe trohman #gerard way #frank iero #mikey way #ray toro #brendon urie #ryan ross

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frankkster · 3 months

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GOD, BONE CANCER AND BEAUTY

As you read the meme above, are you nodding your head in agreement? It wouldn’t surprise me in the least. We all know that this world is awash in beauty and pain, love and grief, anger and joy. The question that occurs to me is: why does British actor/writer/narrator/director/atheist Stephen Fry somehow conclude that this world’s enormous contrasts deny the existence of a creator? And does it…

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prologusblog · 5 years

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Élete

Leigh Bardugo #1 New York Times bestseller szerző, aki a Grisaverzum létrehozásáról lett ismert. A legtöbb könyvét ebben az univerzumban írta. A szerző eredetileg Jeruzsálemből származik, 1975 április 6-án született, Izraelben, de Dél-Kaliforniában nőtt fel, szülei egyetlen gyermekeként. A Yale Egyetemen diplomázott angolból 1997 tavaszán. Az írás főként tinédzser korában kezdett fontossá válni számára, ez ugyanis egy nehéz időszak volt az életében. Édesanyja újraházasodott, elköltöztek egy teljesen új környékre, új iskolába kezdett járni. Ekkoriban fedezte fel a sci-fi és fantasy irodalmat, az olvasás és írás pedig segített neki a nehéz időket túlélni.

Napjainkban Leigh Los Angelesben él, és teljes állású íróként munkálkodik. A legtöbb íróval együtt azonban ő sem így kezdte: mielőtt kiadta első könyvét, dolgozott sminkesként, újságíróként és reklámszövegíróként is. A Grisaverzum ötlete még 2009-ben merült fel benne, elkezdett az első köteten szorgosan dolgozni, miközben teljes munkaidős munkája volt, sőt, még egy bandában is énekelt. Végül megérte, hiszen a Grisa trilógia mindhárom könyve bestseller lett, több, mint 2 millió példányban kelt el, és 22 nyelvre lefordították. Az írónő könyveit több, mint 50 országban lehet kapni.

Munkássága

Grishaverzum

Grisha trilógia

Bardugo első, kiadott könyve az Árnyék és Csont, amely 2012-ben jelent meg, és számos díjra jelölték, mint például a Romantic Times Book Award, South Carolina Children’s Book Award, megemlítette az Indie Next List Book és írt róla a The New York Times is. Az Ostrom és Vihar 2013-ban, a Ruin and Rising (amit egyelőre magyarra még nem fordítottak le) 2014-ben jelent meg. Az első kötet 2014-ben került kiadásra hazánkban, a Könyvmolyképző Kiadó gondozásában. Az írónő összes, magyarul megjelent kötetét a Kiadó adja ki.

Shadow and Bone – Árnyék és csont

Alina Starkova sosem várt túl sokat az élettől. A határháborúk során elveszítette a szüleit. Árvaként csupán egyvalakire számíthatott. Egy másik kis földönfutóra, Malra, a legjobb barátjára. Ám mostanra már rá sem számíthatott. Mindkettőjüket besorozták hazájuk, Ravka anyácska hadseregébe. A két fiatalnak életveszélyes küldetésre kell indulnia az Árnyzónába. Ezen az iszonyatos helyen a földöntúli sötétség az úr, ahol valósággal hemzsegnek az emberevő szörnyetegek. Amikor támadás éri a katonai konvojukat, mindannyiuk élete veszélybe kerül. Ám Alina ekkor olyan titokzatos erőnek adja tanújelét, amiről mindaddig még ő sem tudott. A csodálatos megmenekülés kiszakítja a hétköznapok világából.. . Meg sem áll a fővárosig, az uralkodó udvaráig, ahol az árva lány is a Grisa testvériség tagja lesz. Vezetőjük, a titokzatos Kom úr úgy véli, Alina az, akire oly régóta vár Ravka sokat szenvedett népe. A legfőbb varázsló szerint az Alinában rejtőző erő képes lesz elpusztítani az Árnyzónát. A cári udvar fényűző forgatagában sokan Kom úr új kegyeltjének tartják a lányt, aki csak nehezen tud beilleszkedni Mal nélkül. Miközben hazája egyre nagyobb veszélybe kerül, feltárul előtte egy hajmeresztő összeesküvés. Dönteni kell. Szembeszáll a birodalom leghatalmasabb nagyuraival? Egyedül a múltja mentheti meg… hogy Alina megmenthesse a jövőt.

Siege and Storm – Ostrom és vihar

A sötétség nem hal meg soha. Az Igaz-tengeren át menekülő Alina, akit a Zónában meggyilkoltak szellemei kísértenek, új életet kezd Mallal egy ismeretlen földön, miközben igyekszik titokban tartani napidéző voltát. Ám sokáig nem hagyhatja maga mögött sem a múltját, sem a sorsát. Az Éjúr rettenetes új hatalom birtokában hagyta el az Árnyzónát, és veszedelmes tervet sző, ami a végsőkig próbára teszi a természeti világ határait. Alina egy hírhedt kalóz segítségével visszatér a szeretett országba, elszántan, hogy elszántan szembeszálljon a Ravkára törő erőkkel. De ahogy a hatalma növekszik, Alina úgy süllyed egyre mélyebbre a tiltott mágiába és az Éjúr játszmájába, és távolodik el egyre jobban Maltól. Választania kell hazája, a hatalom és a szerelem között, amiről mindig úgy hitte, az vezérli – különben azt kockáztatja, hogy mindent elveszít a közelgő viharban. „Amikor az Éhezők viadala, a Harry Potter, a Twilight, a Gyűrűk ura és a Trónok harcatalálkozik! Varázslatos epikus fantasy, nem gyerekeknek.” – Sylist Magazine „Az Ostrom és vihar igazi gyöngyszem. Leigh Bardugo Grisa-trilógiájának második darabja telis-teli van kalanddal és varázslattal – szerintem talán még jobb is, mint azÁrnyék és csont.” – Wendy Darling

Ruin and Rising

A trilógia befejező kötete magyarul tehát még nem olvasható. A történet ott veszi fel a fonalat, ahol az előzőnek vége lett: Alina és néhány társa sikeresen kimenekül az Apparátus segítségével a palotából, hogy egy föld alatti rendszerbe vonuljanak, ahol a Sankta Alina hívei várják őket. A harmadik kötet innen indul, és egy megtört, erejétől megfosztott Alina képe tárul elénk. A felszínen eközben az Éjúr uralkodik árnyéktrónján. Alina és megmaradt grisa társai a tűzmadár keresésére indulnak, hiszen az egyetlen remény a győzelemre az erősítő megtalálása. Ám az erősítő megszerzése közben veszélybe kerül az a jövő, amiért Alina és csapata harcol.

Hat varjú duológia

A Hat varjú duológia első kötete, az azonos címet viselő Six of Crows 2015-ben látott napvilágot. A könyv olyan nívós helyeken került megemlítésre, mint a New York Times Notable Book és a ALA-YALSA Top Ten Pick of 2016. A duológia második része, a Crooked Kingdom 2016-ban jelent meg, magyarul egyelőre nem olvasható. A történet hat, veszélyes fiatalról szól, akik Ketterdam városában tengetik mindennapjaikat. A duológia kötetei szintén a Grisaverzumban játszódnak.

Six of Crows – Hat varjú

Ketterdam: nyüzsgő nemzetközi kereskedelmi csomópont, ahol jó pénzért minden megkapható, és ezt senki nem tudja jobban, mint Kaz Brekker, a kivételes tehetségű bűnöző. Kaz veszélyes küldetésre kap megbízást, és cserébe olyan gazdagságot kínálnak neki, ami legvadabb álmait is felülmúlja. Egyedül viszont képtelen sikerre vinni a vállalkozást… Egy bosszúszomjas elítélt. Egy szerencsejáték-függő mesterlövész. Egy különleges múltú szökevény. Egy Kísértet néven ismert kém. Egy varázserejét a nyomornegyedben kamatoztató szívtörő. Egy tolvaj, aki a leglehetetlenebb helyzetekből is kiszabadul. Hat veszélyes törvényenkívüli és egy lehetetlen vállalkozás. Kaz csapata az egyetlen, ami megmentheti a világot a pusztulástól – ha előbb ki nem nyírják egymást.

Egyéb, magyarul még nem olvasható kötetei

Az írónő a fentieken kívül tartogat még számunkra meglepetéseket a Grisaverzumból, a The Language of Thorns című novelláskötete 6 történetet mesél el a grisák világából. Találkozhatunk ismét kedvenc szereplőinkkel, a kötet ráadásul igazi mesekönyvhöz hűen még igen részletes illusztrációkat is tartalmaz.

A King of Scars Leigh legújabb megjelent kötete, Nikolai Lantsov történetét meséli el. A Ruin and Rising eseményei után játszódó könyv egyébként egy duológia első része. Elég sötétnek ígérkezik a fülszöveg alapján, Nikolainak ugyanis külső, az országot fenyegető ellenségek mellett saját sötét énjével is meg kell küzdenie.

Az írónő a Grishaverzumon kívül is tett már kalandozásokat, 2017-ben jelent meg a Wonder Woman: Warbringer (DC Icons #1) az ő tollából. Ennek a sorozatnak a további részeit írta egyébként Sarah J. Maas és Marie Lu. Leigh kiadott továbbá egy varázslatos naplót is, tele idézetekkel a könyveiből. Idén megjelenő könyve pedig még újabb vizekre evez, hiszen a Ninth House az írónő első, felnőtteknek íródott kötete. A műfaj nem változott, egy vérbeli fantasy kerül kiadásra 2019 októberében.

Érdekességek az írónőről

Leigh csontritkulásban (osteonecrosis) szenved, ami miatt néha csak bottal képes járni.

Ő az énekes egy Captain Automatic nevű bandában, ami saját bevallása szerint geek rock zenét játszik.

Élete egyik legrosszabb munkája volt, amikor az amerikai Nagy Ő készítésén dolgozott. A feladata végtelen hosszú videók megnézése volt, aminek tartalmát ki kellett jegyzetelnie, hogy a sorozat készítői valamiféle történetet tudjanak kreálni belőle. Visszagondolva Leigh úgy nyilatkozott a munkáról, hogy olyan volt, mintha szemen döfték volna.

Az íróvá válása előtti legjobb munkája a filmbemutatók írása volt.

Első könyvét 37 évesen adta ki. Nyilatkozataiban mindenkit biztat arra, sose adja fel az álmait, hiszen neki sem elsőre sikerült elérnie azt.

Az írónő szereti a hokit, kedvenc csapata az L.A. Kings.

Kedvenc könyvei közé tartozik Frank Herbert: A Dűne, és William Goldman: A herceg menyasszonya című könyve, illetve minden, amit Stephen King, Diana Whynne Jones és Neil Gaiman írt.

2019 januárjában a Netflix berendelt egy 8 epizódos sorozatot, amely a Grisa-trilógia és a Hat varjú duológia történetein fog alapulni.

Íródott: 2019.08.04.

Források:

https://locusmag.com/2019/03/leigh-bardugo-radical-balance/

https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/4575289.Leigh_Bardugo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leigh_Bardugo/

https://www.leighbardugo.com/

https://moly.hu/alkotok/leigh-bardugo

https://www.instagram.com/Lbardugo/

https://hu.pinterest.com/pin/767300855245621591/

https://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/there-are-no-rules/interviews/the-wd-interview-ya-fantasy-author-leigh-bardugo

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-authors/article/68206-q-a-with-leigh-bardugo.html

https://www.deseretnews.com/article/865637780/Young-adult-author-talks-religion-teens-and-the-message-of-her-popular-fiction.html

Leigh Bardugo írói profilja Élete Leigh Bardugo #1 New York Times bestseller szerző, aki a Grisaverzum létrehozásáról lett ismert. A legtöbb könyvét ebben az univerzumban írta.

#about #Érdekességek #író #írói profil #Extra tartalom #fantasy #fun facts #Grishaverse #Leigh Bardugo #Six of Crows #tematikus hét #writer #young adult

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transgirljasongrace · 7 years

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hey uh. i dunno if this is something triggering to the mod, but if it's not can i ask for some religious trans positivity?

im very sorry it took me so long to get to this, and i don’t know what religion specifically, but i’m going to tell you this as a polytheist -- bigotry is not divine. bigotry is not godly.

im a hellenic polytheist. most people see that as pretty fuckin weird, and if im honest, i cant blame them... its not exactly taught in schools and shown on tv that there are people out there that still worship the greek gods... but what brought me to hellenic polytheism was the use of religion as a tool for bigotry.

im from south texas. its a lot better here than people assume sometimes, but its also definitely worse in places, too. being transgender in smalltown texas is... something, especially when you were like me, and wanted to be christian. i say wanted to be because, well, i was so surely under the impression that god hated me. and yknow what? only now that i am not attempting to be christian do i realize that its not the abrahamic -- or any -- god that hates queers; it’s the people in charge of these holy books and it’s the people at the front end of the church telling all the children and all the adults and all the elderly folks exactly what god wants.

listen, anon. i dont know which religion you are. i dont know what religion you wanna be. but you were created the way you are.

im a hellenic polytheist. i dont know jack shit about most religions, i dont even know a lot about my own, and if i tried to teach anyone anything it’d probably come out jackass backwards and i’d make myself a real fool.... but i’m gonna tell you something anyways. there’s a story among greek mythology of creation, of humans being shaped from clay, and it’s something that strikes something in me very strongly. when you think of your body, when you think of whatever holy power or divine force you hold dear, imagine yourself in their hands, your form sculpted tenderly and carefully by godly hands.

divinity and humanity are... very different. most religions will tell you that. in greek mythology, the gods are like us, and that helps me feel closer to them than i ever could as a christian or even during my short time as a wiccan. you were created transgender. regardless of your relationship with your body, that body was lovingly crafted and your soul patiently guided to reside within it. what you do with that soul and that body is entirely your will now. but sometimes the soul makes decisions for us. you are transgender, and whatever holy force in this world there is created you that way.

and, im going to be frank here, honey, if the motherfuckers are right and the things that the gods have made us truly get us sent to hell... i’ll save you a seat. if the god-fearing phobes are right, we are gonna be in some good company.

if you ever have anything more about something like this, you hit me up. i may not be very bright, but when it comes to godliness and trans-liness, i am the king. *wink* ive been through this with myself more than enough times, so you can dm me or send more asks or whatever else your heart needs. i am here for you. always. you can always ask me for my religious blog, if you wanna talk there! id prefer to give it through dm’s, however (and i wont bite if you contact me privately, i promise) - mj

#mod jerry #transgender #queer and religious #religion #hellenic polytheism #christianity #etc etc etc #anon #hmu if you need to #Anonymous

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violetsystems · 5 years

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#personal

I had a vivid dream in New York while sleeping by myself in a hotel room overlooking the World Trade Center. There’s a large period of my life where I didn’t dream at all. Purchasing a Chinese branded bed frame from everyone’s favorite bad guy helped for the record. Everybody has their feelings about this, that and the other thing these days. In all that I empathize but have never really felt much love back. It’s very one-sided like I’m just sitting here in the stands. Often I live my life on the sidelines of something I can’t quite connect with. Like witnessing a trio of white people on bikes harassing an Asian cab driver for what looked like a centimeter infraction into the bike lane. Or by witnessing a motorcycle crash on my way to cross the Brooklyn Bridge and casually instructing people not to try and move the injured. None of these are dreams mind you. Including the man urinating himself at five in the morning at the Woodside bus stop off the seven. If this seems like some dream to you then welcome to my nightmare. This is America unfiltered. That’s the name of my coffee blog. I travel the world in search of the finest, most expensive coffee and drink it by myself. I don’t own a coffee blog. But I do have dreams about you. This one was strange in that you were projected from someone else’s phone. Your face on the screen speaking to me with someone else holding it. A mediator between the screen that I understood could be trusted. But there was a wall between us but more for our protection. One that somebody else crossed for me as if to beam you to me like a satellite. A woman’s arm and voice helping you to speak on a crowded bus. A cry out through a series of codes and hidden messages perhaps. Possibly from a satellite high about powered by Verizon or something. Unlimited LTE is some real shit. 5G in America not so much. Security in America is top priority. That’s quite apparent as you sit on a roof by yourself looking over the damage of years of shitty foreign policy. I never got to see the towers in person. I never had that kind of relationship with New York until now. I would sit both mornings at Blue Bottle over coffee trying to write you something. And sitting in a literal ghost yard I couldn’t help to think the same mantras we’d been taught. Never forget. We shall overcome. I have a dream. I didn’t have what Martin had. Martin Luther King has always been a hero. Malcolm too. But they were part of a fight that never seems to end. A fight for human dignity. A chance for us to live in peace together. At what cost I ask myself often in the checkout line. A dark spectre of consumer capital looming over me and a watchful eye from the shadows. Maybe that’s why I go to bed at a decent hour on a Saturday night and dream about you. However complicated these things might be.

I remember you talking about dream jobs. I head back to work on Monday. I wore my school’s sweatshirt on the flight home. When you talk about school spirit, it’s easy enough to talk about it or write an album as a dropout. That’s neither here nor there. I never quit. The truth is I’ve been employed for a really long time. I’ve seen myself grow in and out of things like an untrimmed invasive plant. Sort of like Dhalsim from Street Fighter. I only have had the time to practice a few basic poses but yoga and dance for me are interlinked. So is running. I got to run Central Park Saturday morning. I walked around twenty more miles that day. I navigate a city like a cat. Dodging and weaving through crowds sometimes undetected. Sometimes with dirty looks. Often times completely invisible to the naked eye. Overlooked for sure as we have all come to know and love this about my aesthetic. I’ve worn a certain Japanese brand for years. People’s interpretations of that have evolved into a mutation of sorts. A nightmarish hallucination of public transparency. I’m famous but not at the same time. People acknowledge I exist but prefer not to talk about it. These days some of my biggest “fans” in the real world could be adversaries if you looked at them the wrong way. I’m tough but nobody knows the reason. They have their theories. But nobody has put up with my writing enough to have empathy for the winding journey I’ve set myself up for. I did end up getting my pin for 30k in March. Everybody was nice at the Nike store in Soho in my sweaty, stinky Gyakusou shirt. There was an amazing display for the 720 which introduced me to Frank Rudy, an aeronautics engineer who is responsible for the air sole technology. I walk a lot. The only car I ever own was taken from me in a failed relationship. I figured that was a sign to move forward. Shoes helped me do that over the years. So did clothes and obscure aesthetics that boosted my visibility for better or for worse. Up in the mix of things in the streets isn’t something I’m new to. But people underestimate me still after all these years. Just another white guy I suppose. As far as my dream job this honky returns Monday morning like nothing ever happened. Just like I used to disappear to Korea for a month at a time. Except it’s not safe for me to leave the country these days by myself. Queens at five in the morning I’m in my element. Urine aside. For all the shit anybody talks in this world there are people out there living it. One drop at a time.

And from what I’ve seen with my own two eyes there are things I’ve never wanted to be a part of. I also didn’t want to be a showoff or throw it in anybody’s face prematurely. The court of public opinion has burned me more often than not. And I feel whatever bridges I’ve burnt have burnt themselves at this point. I’m more interested in the ones I’ve been building just by being myself. Walking the urine stained streets like it’s some runway in gear nobody gives a shit about. I walked the Brookyln bridge by myself eating Burger King. BK to the fullest. Someone from Instagram randomly commented that it was a vibe. I felt that was a real observation. Sometimes that vibe causes trouble simply by breathing. If there’s any great secret there are a ton of people that just don’t like me. They’re jealous, envious, awkward and judgemental at the same time. And there’s a ton of people on the street that do. It’s not something I can’t even recreate at this point. It follows me around. The book I’ve been reading has talked a lot about the effects of globalization. How the innocence of private space can often be encroached on if spaces overlap. Chaos, noise and culture ensure. How do you find privacy let alone intimacy in all these overlapping systems of public space? How they are accessed, controlled, and moderated is subject to power. Whoever holds the power dictates the rules. In a relationship focused on respecting feminism and independence, one might revoke control to their romantic partner. I would do that for the record. I don’t think many could do what I do. People build intimate partnerships on compromise and understanding. And then people build malls on grave sites with very little understanding of the underlying issues that toppled these structures to the ground. People have often told other people they understand me. They know people like me. So and so is into this too. You should meet so and so. There’s another Tim out there just for you. A better one that plays nice with the power structures that circumvent respect for people of color, genders, and religions. One that doesn’t resist the obvious. That the dead are restless. The memories offer no closure and no understanding for the pain suffered. That I am haunted and in pain in a very similar way. More of a philosophical way than a Poltergeist sort of way. Although I did mysteriously break my chemex making coffee at 3 in the morning before this trip. Maybe I’m just white and clumsy. Maybe I’m just lucky and in love. <3 Tim

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imthepotatoking · 7 years

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yoooo, thanks mate! tagged by @silversatori

rules: tag 20 blogs you wanna get to know better (I will not tag this many. I’m not sure if I know this many people.)

nickname: potato?

zodiac sign: Pisces

height: 5′4″

last thing i googled: tell tale

favorite music artist: oh gosh!! lol this is always like my favorite question. I have multiple, but: Mother Mother, Frank Turner, Nightwish, The Takeover UK

song stuck in my head: Spacin Out by the Mowgli’s and Be Who You Are - The Kooks

last movie i watched: Land of the Dead for my zombies class

what i’m wearing right now: sweatshirt and jeans. nothing too exciting

why did you choose your url: Well... i wanted to change mine because it felt lame haha, and i was thinking how i really liked potatoes (and it was also kind of had to deal with a joke i had with a friend I had at the time) and so i decided i wanted something with potatoes. So then I decided king because thats like the highest power, so yeah :3

do you have other blogs: yeah, but basically abandoned. nothing too exciting

what did your last relationship teach you: never was in one.

religious or spiritual: .... i guess more spiritual. I just never was familiar with too much information about religion. but i do believe in god? im not very active in any way though...

favorite color: pastel pink!!!

average hours of sleep: uh.... 6-9? can vary depending on the day..

lucky number: ... i dont think i have one???

favourite characters: .....omg... Gordon Freeman, Chell, Pharah, Red, Alice -AMA, Carol -twd, feel like i could go on for hours...

how many blankets do you sleep with: One is a minimum, when it’s cold also two. But no less than one and if I get a heat stroke

dream job: something to do with video games. either like design or programming.

lol i tag whoever, just because i did a similar one yesterday

#mythoughts #lol realized all i had to do was post this basically #i started this a week ago #sorry gal pal

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theofficialbibliodotcom · 4 years

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14 Books About Race to Read Right Now

“The only way to undo racism is to consistently identify and describe it — and then dismantle it.”

Ibram X. Kendi, Founding Director, Antiracist Research and Policy Center, American University, and author of How to Be an Anti-Racist.

There are a plethora of resources available to the modern reader that will inspire a better world. One major theme resounding through all works is to listen, get educated, and think about your own responses. It is important work to do because, to paraphrase Maya Angelou, when you know better, you do better.

While many recently published books, including How to Be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi, and White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo have been selling out on Biblio, there are plenty of other books you can read to explore and educate yourself about the history of race in America.

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America

By Ibram X. Kendi

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, published in 2016, won the National Book Award for Non-Fiction. This book is by Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Anti-Racist. Using the life stories of five major American intellectuals: Puritan minister Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, W.E.B. Du Bois, and legendary activist Angela Davis, Kendi shows that racist ideas did not arise from ignorance or hatred but were orchestrated to justify and rationalize deeply entrenched discriminatory policies and the nation’s racial inequities. By shedding light on this history, Stamped from the Beginning offers the tools needed to expose racist thinking.

Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America

By Michael Eric Dyson

The New York Times Book Review calls Michael Eric Dyson’s Tears We Cannot Stop “One of the most frank and searing discussions on race…a deeply serious, urgent book, which should take its place in the tradition of Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time and King’s Why We Can’t Wait.”

Published by St. Martin’s Press in 2017, it is a provocative and deeply personal call for change, arguing that for real racial progress means that we must face difficult truths, including being honest about how black grievance has been ignored, dismissed, or discounted.

Why We Can’t Wait

By Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

First published in 1964, Why We Can’t Wait includes King’s complete Letter from Birmingham Jail and his personal assessment of the future of the Civil Rights Movement.

This first edition of King’s Why We Can’t Wait is listed by Raptis Rare Books

Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together In The Cafeteria?: And Other Conversations About Race

By Beverly Daniel Tatum

Beverly Daniel Tatum, a renowned authority on the psychology of racism, argues that straight talk about our racial identities is essential if we are serious about enabling communication across racial and ethnic divides.

Me And White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change The World, And Become A Good Ancestor

By Layla Saad

Author Layla Saad first began an Instagram challenge called #meandwhitesupremacy by encouraging people to own up and share their racist behaviors, big and small. Thousands of people participated in the challenge, and nearly 100,000 people downloaded the “Me and White Supremacy Workbook“. Me and White Supremacy, published January 29th, 2020 with a foreword written by Robin DiAngelo, is updated and expanded from the original workbook, adding more historical and cultural contexts, sharing moving stories and anecdotes, and including expanded definitions, examples, and further resources.

I’m Still Here: Black Dignity In A World Made For Whiteness

By Austin Channing Brown

Dealing with racial justice primarily in the Christian community, this book looks at how white, middle-class, Evangelicals have participated in rising racial hostility, and how they can work to change that.

Between the World and Me

by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Published in 2015, Between the World and Me is a non-fiction book written as a letter from the author to his 15-year-old son, based on the style of James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time. Between the World and Me won the National Book Award in 2015.

This first edition is listed by Brian Cassidy Bookseller at Type Punch Matrix

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption

By Bryan Stevenson

Acclaimed lawyer and social justice advocate Bryan Stevenson offers a glimpse into the lives of the wrongfully imprisoned and his efforts to fight for their freedom. Originally published in by Spiegel & Grau on October 21st, 2014, this book has an adaptation for young people, and it has recently been adapted into a major motion picture starring Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx.

So You Want to Talk About Race

by Ijeoma Oluo

Published in 2018, So You Want to Talk About Race is a comprehensive conversation guide for readers of all races to have open and honest conversations about race and racism.

The Fire Next Time

By James Baldwin

The Fire Next Time is a collection of James Baldwin’s essays on race relations in the United States. First published in 1963 by Dial Press, it contains two essays: “My Dungeon Shook – Letter to my Nephew on the One-Hundredth Anniversary of Emancipation”, and “Down At The Cross – Letter from a Region of My Mind”. The first of these is written as a letter to Baldwin’s 14-year-old nephew, discussing the central role of race in American history. The second essay deals with the relations between race and religion, focusing in particular on Baldwin’s experiences with the Christian church as a youth, as well as the Islamic ideas of others in Harlem. Both essays had been previously published in The Progressive and The New Yorker before being published in book form.

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration

By Isabel Wilkerson

The Warmth of Other Suns follows the mass migrations of almost 6 million African-Americans from the South to Northern urban areas from 1915 – 1970. Wilkerson highlights the racial tensions and terrorism that caused so many people to give up everything they knew and move North to save their own lives and provide something better for their families. The diverse histories and masterfully written stories are engaging and show a breadth of experiences previously untold.

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

by Michelle Alexander

Considered one of the most important and influential books of the 21st century, The New Jim Crow discusses how systemic racism did not end with Civil Rights but was rather reinvented through the criminal justice system, resulting in a disproportionate amount of African-American men losing their rights either behind bars or with records. Michelle Alexander is a highly acclaimed civil rights lawyer, advocate, legal scholar, and author.

Unexampled Courage

by Richard Gergel

Decorated veteran Sergeant Isaac Woodard was returning from serving in WWII and still in uniform when he challenged a white bus driver’s treatment of him. He was removed from the Greyhound bus and put into police custody and beaten so severely that he was blinded. When President Harry Truman learned of the incident he was outraged. This is one of many incidents that contributed to an awakening to the racial disparity and led to the landmark Civil Rights trials in the 1960s.

Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory

by David Blight

Historian David Blight examines how the memory of the Civil War was constructed in the aftermath and how that memory has had tragic costs to race relations in the United States. Racial divisions served to unite a fractured country and the South’s rewriting of the causes of the war and the romanticism of the lost cause has proved dangerous for black people throughout the generations following.

The post 14 Books About Race to Read Right Now appeared first on Bibliology.

source https://www.biblio.com/blog/2020/06/14-books-about-race-to-read-right-now/

#bibliology #biblio blog #bookish

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actutrends · 4 years

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‘Snow Crash’ inspired the metaverse, and now it’s becoming an HBO show

A HBO series based on Snow Crash, the 1992 science fiction novel which coined the term “metaverse,” is in production.

Snow Crash‘s author is Neal Stephenson. The book (one of the best tech books of all time, GamesBeat’s Dean Takahashi wrote) has a deeply complex plot touching on archaeolinguistics, religion, simulation theory, philosophy, computer science, and memetics. It was nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the most prestigious science fiction award.

The series will reportedly be directed by Joe Cornish, who recently directed The Kid Who Would Be King. The writer is apparently Michael Bacall, who also wrote 21 Jump Street and Project X.

Stephenson will be a producer of the series, alongside Cornish, Bacall, Angela Robinson, Frank Marshall, and Robert Zotnowski.

Last we heard, Stephenson works at AR startup Magic Leap. His official title is “chief futurist.” He manages a team called the Self-Contained Existence Unit (SCEU). SCEU focuses on content R&D, pushing the boundaries on what can be developed in AR, figuring out best practices, and providing examples to developers.

Despite being released before even Wolfenstein 3D and three years before the Virtual Boy, much of Snow Crash takes place in a massively multiplayer VR world called the Metaverse — a term Stephenson coined. Essentially, the metaverse is the spatial version of the internet. The term is popular in VR today. “Meta” means after or beyond, and “verse” is taken from universe. Thus a ‘metaverse’ is a new universe beyond and after the real one.

When the book was written almost 30 years ago, VR headsets were rare. The few which existed cost in excess of $50,000 and had resolutions of just a few hundred pixels on each axis.

The book also popularized the term “avatar” — the virtual character which represents a user in a virtual world. The descriptions of avatars in Snow Crash still apply to proto-metaverses like VRChat today.

Michael Abrash’s inspiration

Michael Abrash is the chief scientist at Facebook Reality Labs. That’s the division of Facebook which researches future VR and AR tech. He also reportedly co-leads Facebook’s new AR glasses team.

In 1994, Abrash was working at Microsoft. He had helped develop the core graphics architecture of Windows. After reading Snow Crash, he quit Microsoft and joined John Carmack at Id. Together they developed Quake — one of the first widely popular online multiplayer FPS games. He then worked at companies like Microsoft (again) and Intel until 2011 when he joined Valve to work on AR and VR.

After joining Valve, Abrash wrote a blog post explaining his history. The first sentence: “It all started with Snow Crash.”

The post ‘Snow Crash’ inspired the metaverse, and now it’s becoming an HBO show appeared first on Actu Trends.

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stretchearsnotvaginas · 5 years

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There are 329 records in my collection as of January 9, 2019. This list includes Alternative Rock, Christmas, Classical, Comedy, Country, Dance, Folk, German, Hip Hop, Jazz, Kids, Metal, Outlaw Country, Pop, Rock, Rockabilly, and Soundtrack.

To organize and keep track of all of these, I use an app on my iPad called MusicBuddy and it catalogs and organizes all of my records for me. So when I get more records, I’m going to continue to add to this blog. This collection is a conglomeration of records given to me by my mom, grandparents, friends, and records I’ve found at local thrift stores.

They’re organized first by genre, then by artist. If you see any that are in the wrong category, feel free to message me so I can fix it. Like I said, my app placed them into the genre Discogs placed them into.

KEY: Artist – Album Name 1, Album Name 2, Album Name 3, etc..

All records that are underlined are the ones that are photographed.

Alternative Rock: 7 records

Dance Gavin Dance – Artificial Selection, Instant Gratification (signed), Mothership, Summertime Gladness/Pussy Vultures (7″)

David Lee Roth – Just Like Paradise

Jefferson Airplane – The Worst of Jefferson Airplane

Pink Floyd – A Momentary Lapse of Reason

Christmas: 15 records

Andy Williams – Merry Christmas

Charles M. Shulz – A Charlie Brown Christmas

Elvis Presley – Elvis Sings the Wonderful World of Christmas, Christmas Album

Floyd Robinson – Charlie the Hamster Plays Christmas Songs With Floyd…

Jim Nabors – Jim Nabors’ Christmas Album

John Denver – A Christmas Together, Rocky Mountain Christmas

Johnny Cash – The Christmas Spirit

Luciano Pavarotti – O Holy Night

Richard P. Condie – Christmas Carols Around the World

Tennessee Ernie Ford – O Come All Ye Faithful, Sing We Now of Christmas

Classical/Easy Listening: 17 records

101 Strings – Henry Mancini, John Denver

2Cellos – Score

Arthur Fiedler – Arthur Fiedler Superstar

Boston Symphonic Orchestra – Appalachian Spring/The Tender Land – Suite

Clarinet Kings – The Best Polka

Copperas Cove Bands – The Proud New Generation Band ’74

Engelbert Humperdinck – King of Hearts

Ferrante & Teicher – Moonlight Melodies

Heintje – “Mama”

Hollyridge Strings – The Beatles Songbook

Jean-Pierre Rampal – Fascinatin’ Rampal

Mannheim Steamroller – Saving the Wildlife

Richard Clayderman – Love Songs of the World

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra – Hooked on Classics

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Die Zauberflaute, The Magic Flute (box set)

Comedy: 8 records

All in the Family Cast – All in the Family

Bill Cosby – 200 mph, Bill Cosby, Bill Cosby ‘Live’ Madison Square Garden, For Adults Only, When I Was a Kid, Wonderfulness

Various – The Watergate Comedy Hour

Country: 40 records

Alabama – Just Us, Mountain Music

Barbara Fairchild – Kid Stuff

Barbara Mandrell – He Set My Life to Music, Love is Fair, Meant for Each Other

Buck Owens and His Buckaroos – The Kansas City Song

Charley Pride – The Best of Charley Pride, The Best of Charley Pride Vol. III, From Me to You, Pride of Country Music

Conway Twitty – By Heart, I Love You More Today

Don Francisco – Forgiven, Got to Tell Somebody, Holiness, Traveler

Don Williams – Cafe Carolina, Greatest Hits

Freddie Hart and The Heartbeats – The Pleasure’s Been All Mine

Glen Campbell – Galveston, Glen Campbell’s Greatest Hits

Jean Shepard – A Real Good Woman

Kendalls – The Best of the Kendalls

Kenny Rogers – The Gambler

Loretta Lynn – Coal Miner’s Daughter, Entertainer of the Year – Loretta, Here I Am Again.., Just a Woman, You’re Lookin’ At Country

Moe Bandy – Rodeo Romeo

Skeeter Davis – A Place in the Country

Sonny James – The Sensational Sonny James

Statler Brother – Bed of Roses

T.G. Sheppard – Perfect Stranger

Tammy Wynette – The First Lady, Just Tammy, Tammy’s Greatest Hits

Various – America’s Greatest Country Stars Live and In Person, Country Girls

Dance/Electronic: 4 records

Crystal Fighters – Cave Rave

Devo – Oh, No! It’s Devo, Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!

M|A|R|R|S – Pump Up the Volume (7″)

Folk: 29 records

Albert Hammond – The Free Electric Band

Andy Williams – Andy Williams’ Greatest Hits, Moon River and Other Great Movie Themes

Cat Stevens – Foreigner, The Very Best of Cat Stevens

Dale Evans – Heart of the Country

Jim Nabors – Everything is Beautiful

John Denver – John Denver’s Greatest Hits Vol. 2, Poems Prayers & Promises

Johnny Cash – America: A 200 Year Salute in Story and Song, Any Old Wind That Blows, At Folsom Prison, Believe in Him, The Gospel Road: A Story of Jesus, Heroes, I Walk the Line, Johnny Cash at San Quentin, Johnny Cash’s Greatest Hits Vol. 1, Look At Them Beans, Ragged Old Flag, Starportrait

Johnny Cash & June Carter Cash – Carryin’ On With, Johnny Cash and His Woman

Johnny Horton – Johnny Horton’s Greatest Hits

Marty Robbins – Greatest Hits Vol. IV

Peter, Paul & Mary – Album 1700, The Best Of…

Simon & Garfunkel – Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme

Various – Zenith Presents Hootenanny Special

German: 20 records

Extrablatt – Vico Ganz Neu!

Flotte Franz Und Seine Bierbrummer – Ja Das Haben Di Madchen So Gerne

Gaudeamus Igitur – Romantic Old Heidelberg

Hoffbrau Singers – Ein Prosit! A Toast!

Ivan Rebroff – Kosaken Mussen Reiten

Johannes Heesters – Da, Geh’ich Ins Maxim

Lucie Baierl – Wine, Women and Schrammeln

Paul Horbiger – Servuswein

Peter Alexander – The Golden Album of Peter Alexander, Peter Alexander Prasentiert Walt Disney’s Welt

Robert Stolz – Ein Shoner Herbst

Serge Jaroff – The Best of Serge Jaroff and His Don Cossacks

Various – A Echte Gaudi, Ein Heurigenabend Bei Toni Karas, Music of the Austrian Alps, Musical Memories of Germany Vol. 2 “Auf Zum Oktoberfest”, Schenkt Man Sich Rosen In Tirol

Wiener Schrammelguartett – Erinnerung An Wein

Winer Terzett – Tanze Aus Dem Alten Wein

Hip Hop: 6 records

Boogie Boys – City Life

LL Cool J – Radio

New Kids On The Block – Hangin’ Tough, Hangin’ Tough (Calendar Pack 7″)

Snap! – The Power

Various – Electric Breakdance

Jazz: 12 records

Dean Martin – Dean Martin Hits Again, Gentle On My Mind, This is Dean Martin!

Frank Sinatra – I’m Glad There Is You/You Can Take My Word for It Baby (7″), Strangers in the Night, Ultimate Sinatra

Jack La Forge – Unchain My Heart

John Tropea – Short Trip to Space

Paul Winter – Common Ground

Various – Happiness Is (Box Set), Kings of Swing

Winter Consort – Road

Kids: 20 records

Al Smith – Happytime Songs for Children

Candle – The Music Machine

Carole and Jimmy Owens – Ants’hillvania

Children’s Television Workshop – Songs From Sesame Street 2

Disney Choir – It’s A Small World

Disney – Walt Disney Presents Mickey Mouse and His Friends

Ethel Barrett – Children’s Stories: The Mysterious White Envelope

Marcy Tigner – Sings Nursery Rhymes, Wear a Smile

Nancy F.A. Woolnough – The Adventures of Raindrop #3

Peter Pan – Popeye the Sailor Man 4 Exciting Stories

Richard Wolfe Children’s Songs – A Raggedy Ann Songbook

Sesame Street – Sesame Street Gold! The Best of Sesame Street, Sleepytime Bird, The Year of Roosevelt Franklin: Gordon’s Friend

Sharron Lucky – Follow the Clouds

Singspiration Trio – Songs for Children No. 2

Strawberry Shortcake – Strawberry Shortcake and Her Friends (photo disc)

Susie and Johnny – Sings Stories by Susie and Johnny and Their Singing Pals

Thomas Moore – Sleepy Time

Metal: 10 records

Bloodrock – Live

Jethro Tull – A Passion Play

Metallica – The Good The Bad & The Live: The 6 1/2 Year Anniversary Collection, Harvester of Sorrow, Jump in the Fire, Kill ‘Em All

Motley Crue – Girls, Girls, Girls

Slayer – Hell Awaits

Twisted Sister – Love is for Suckers, Under the Blade

Outlaw Country

Johnny Rodriguez – Foolin’ With Fire

Kris Kristofferson – Border Lord, Me and Bobby McGee, The Silver-Tongued Devil and I

Kris Kristofferson & Rita Coolidge – Full Moon

Merle Haggard – Amber Waves of Grain, The Best Of The Best Of Merle Haggard, It’s All in the Movies, Same Train Different Time

Tanya Tucker – What’s Your Mama’s Name

Waylon Jennings – Wanted! The Outlaws

Willie Nelson – Willie Nelson’s Greatest Hits

Willie Nelson & Family – Honeysuckle Rose

Pop: 38 records

Connie Francis – The Very Best of Connie Francis

Cyndi Lauper – True Colors

Debby Boone – Surrender

Eurythmics – Greatest Hits

Gene Pitney – The Many Sides of Gene Pitney

Go-Go’s – Beauty and The Beat

Halsey – Badlands

Helen Reddy – Long Hard Climb

Johnny Mathis – Close to You, More Johnny’s Greatest Hits

Maureen McGovern – The Morning After

Michael Jackson – Thriller

Neighborhood – I Love You.

Neil Diamond – Classics The Early Years, Gold, Hot August Night, Tap Root Manuscript

Oh Wonder – Ultralife

Olivia Newton-John – Olivia’s Greatest Hits Vol. 2, Physical

Panic! At The Disco – Death of a Bachelor, Pray for the Wicked

Paul Anka – 21 Greatest Hits

R.B. Greaves – R.B. Greaves

Ready for the World – Oh Sheila

Rick Springfield – Working Class Dog

Righteous Brothers – Back to Back

Sonny & Cher – All I Ever Need Is You

Sylvan Esso – Sylvan Esso

Toni Basil – Word of Mouth

Various – 24 Groovy Greats, From Broadway to Hollywood, Love is Blue (box set), Super Stars – Super Hits, They Come to America, Zenith Presents The Hit Makers

Wayne Newton – Summer Wind

Wham! – Make it Big

Rock: 54 records

4 Skins – A Few 4 Skins More Vol 2

AC/DC – Fly On the Wall

Adolescents – Brats in Batallion

Alice Cooper – Alice Cooper’s Greatest Hits

Animals – The Best of the Animals

Bad Religion – Against the Grain

Bauhaus – Mask

Beastie Boys – Licensed to Ill

Beatles – 1962-1966, Introducing… the Beatles

Billy Joel – An Innocent Man

Blood, Sweat, and Tears – Blood, Sweat, and Tears

Boatz – Boatz

Bob Seger – The Distance

Bobby Darin – It’s You Or No One

Camel – Breathless

Chuck Berry – Chuck Berry’s Greatest Hits

Circle Jerks – Group Sex

Cliff Richard – Two a Penny

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – Deja Vu

Cure – Boys Don’t Cry, Japanese Whispers

Dad Punchers – These Times Weren’t Made for You

Everly Brothers – Everly Brothers’ Original Greatest Hits, The Golden Hits of the Everly Brothers, Very Best of the Everly Brothers

Fleetwood Mac – Fleetwood Mac, Greatest Hits, Rumours, Tango In The Night, Tusk

Free Beer – Highway Robbery

Grateful Dead – Touch of Grey (7″)

Green Day – Dookie

Hard-Ons – Dickcheese, The Worst Of…

J Geils Band – Freeze-Frame

Jerry Lee Lewis – By Request: More of the Greatest Live Show On Earth

Jesse Colin Young – Love On The Wing

Journey – Escape

Kenny Loggins – Nightwatch

Kenny Loggins & Messina – The Best of Friends, Native Sons

Lee Michaels – 5th

Mike & The Mechanics – Mike + The Mechanics

Pat Benatar – Crimes of Passion, Get Nervous, Heartbreaker, Live From Earth

Stevie Nicks – Bella Donna, Rock a Little

Tom Jones – Live in Las Vegas, This Is Tom Jones, The Tom Jones Fever Zone, Tom Jones Live! At The Talk Of The Town

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Rockabilly: 12 records

Elvis Presley – Almost in Love, Aloha from Hawaii via Satellite, Elvis Now, Elvis’ Golden Records, G.I. Blues, How Great Thou Art, Let’s Be Friends, Pure Gold, Rock ‘N’ Roll, Welcome to My World, Worldwide Gold Award Hits

Ricky Nelson – Legendary Masters Series

Soundtrack: 24 records

Burt Bacharach – Lost Horizon

Dory Previn – Valley of the Dolls

Isaac Hayes – Shaft

Jack L. Warner – 1776

Leonard Bernstein – West Side Story

Mary Martin – Mary Martin Sings The Sound of Music

Mr. Pickwick – Mr. Pickwick Sings Songs from Mary Poppins

Neil Diamond – Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky – Suite from “The Nutcracker”

Ray Parker Jr. – Ghostbusters

Rossini – The Barber of Seville (box set)

Simon & Garfunkel – The Graduate

Unknown – HearSeeDo: Hanna-Barbera Record of Safety, Superman

Various – 2001 A Space Odyssey, 50 Happy Years of Disney Favorites (1923-1973), Fantasia, The Fox and the Hound, Grease, Song of Norway, That’s Entertainment: Musical Highlights from Camelot! Sounds of Music! etc., Top Gun, Urban Cowboy

Vince Guaraldi – Selections from the Soundtrack ” A Boy Named Charlie Brown”

Record Collection There are 329 records in my collection as of January 9, 2019. This list includes Alternative Rock, Christmas, Classical, Comedy, Country, Dance, Folk, German, Hip Hop, Jazz, Kids, Metal, Outlaw Country, Pop, Rock, Rockabilly, and Soundtrack.

#author #babe #blog #catalog #Collections #collector #hobbies #keep up with me #keeping up with a skillings #metal #new blogger #records #vintage #vinyls #writer

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