Today:
You know the drill: this is the thread for all your history-related outpourings that are not necessarily questions. Minor questions that you feel don't need or merit their own threads are welcome too. Discovered a great new book, documentary, article or blog? Has your Ph.D. application been successful? Have you made an archaeological discovery in your back yard? Did you find an anecdote about the Doge of Venice telling a joke to Michel Foucault? Tell us all about it.
As usual, moderation in this thread will be relatively non-existent -- jokes, anecdotes and light-hearted banter are welcome.
I have completed my revised book manuscript titled 'The Folklore of Cornwall: The Oral Tradition of a Celtic Nation'. I had reviewer's comments on the intro, first two chapters, and conclusion, which sharpened the focus during editing and revision. I expect more comments now that the entire mss has been submitted, but this is an important benchmark for me and I have very positive signs from the university press for publication (name TBA).
In the book, I argue that the indigenous storytellers, known as 'droll tellers', were iconoclastic to a certain extent, being far more willing to change stories than elsewhere, where preservation of content was the highest professed goal. In Cornwall, the willingness to change stories resulted in local subtypes adapted to the Cornish environment. As the student of the student of Swedish folklorist Carl Wilhelm von Sydow (1878-1952), I was pleased to see this as the formation of a unique Cornish 'oicotype' as he would have called it: a group of legends and folktales that together exhibit an adaptation to a place, taking forms that echo one another and are collectively different from what appears in neighboring places.
Coincidentally on Saturday, I was inducted into the Gorsedh Kernow, the Bardic Council of Cornwall for my research and publications on Cornish immigration and folklore.
Im currently working on a software system from the 80s. Can I mention that as working with historic documents on my CV?
Daniel Parada, the artist and writer for the alt-history comic Zotz, uploaded this sketch (NSFW?) yesterday based off of a museum piece at the de Young Museum from the region I study in Mexico. I fucking love this sketch. From the large noses depicted in the figures to the hairstyles to the scarification bumps on the shoulders. Ugh! I love it! West Mexico doesn't get a lot of love when it comes to artistic portrayals of Mesoamerica. So I wanted to share and I hope you guys like it.
I just made my research blog public—and it's been doing really well! Come check out Viking Age things. The most recent post: The Frankenstein Bead of Bornholm. Hope you like it!
Also, some of you more scholarly types might be interested in how to take photos in museums. Thoughts and critiques are welcome.
I'm making a medieval dungeon crawler with historically accurate weapons and stances over at /r/repentance!
I finally started Fenn's Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People. The book is quite engaging thus far, and I think newbies would find it an approachable introduction to Native American life on the Northern Plains. Fenn manages to walk the tightrope of providing sufficient background, citations, and discussion for hard-core history readers without scaring away more casual history fans.
Finishing another audiobook, this time White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg.
So far... I'm somewhere between unimpressed and cautious. Maybe the book will get a lot better in the 5 hours or so I have left. In any case, I'll post a quick summary of my thoughts on it on next Friday's post.
I'd be really interested in getting my hands on a physical copy to go over sources as well as speaking to other historians who specialize in the book's topic to confirm a few of my (negative) suspicions about the book.
A new letter from Robert E. Howard surfaced; the name of the intended recipient is scratched out, so all we really have to go on is the context in which it was discovered and the contents of the letter itself. According to the poster, the letter was sold by August Derleth along with several Conan the Cimmerian typescripts - that would suggest it might have come from R. H. Barlow, who was a correspondent of Robert E. Howard and had requested and received several of Howard's transcripts. The letter is unlikely to be to Barlow, however - aside from the fact that the scratched-out name is too long, we know that Howard had sent a letter to Barlow (with an enclosure to H. P. Lovecraft, who was visiting Barlow) the very next day.
However, I think that the letter may have been to one of Barlow's friends. In several letters in late 1933 which H. P. Lovecraft wrote to Barlow, he mentions a "report" that an unnamed friend of Barlow's had written regarding voodoo among the Gullah (or Geechee) people. A number of Georgians were brought down to Florida to work the turpentine camps, so there's a possible connection there.
Well, well—& so a friend of yours, like William B. Seabrook, has come into first-hand contact with the horrors of Damballa & his serpents. Who knows what waddling nigger washerwoman may not be a potent & dangerous mamaloi with power to evoke nameless horrors & send hideous zombis stalking through the land!
Thanks tremendously for the voodoo report, which I've read with extreme interest. your friend seems to have been quite an amateur Wm. B. Seabrook—& the experience must have been powerfully moving in its way. Later on, if you ever make a copy, I certainly wouldn't mind a spare carbon. Those "geachi" blacks must be rather an interesting study.
That voodoo encounter surely was picturesque—I'd hardly care to get into such close quarters with a crowd of excited blacks, but anthropological zeal will carry one far. So the "geechis" owe their superiority to insular isolation! I believe that, in general, all the Carolina island negroes are called "gullahs", & that their dialect differs from that of the mainland blacks. No doubt the geechis are a variety of these.
William Seabrook was the author of The Magic Island (1929), an influential work on Haitian that helped popularize voodoo and zombies in the United States, particularly pulp fiction. Lovecraft read the book while visiting Henry S. Whitehead in Dunedin, Florida in 1931; Whitehead himself was a pulpster who had written about native practices in his own fiction set in the Virgin Islands. I did a brief write-up about Whitehead earlier this year.
I've diversified a bit, and gone from my normal 'tanks' into "Big Grey Floaty Things"... Or in this case, the San Francisco coastal artillery batteries. We're extremely pleased with how the CG augmentation worked out, and the Coastal Defense Discussion Group have apparently gone wild. Didn't know that was a thing, but I guess it makes sense. Video here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--weWY58mR8
In addition, we've moved on a bit by using VR360 a bit more in our historical videos. If you can find a Google Cardboard or Vizor, use the full 3D/split screen feature here for "Virtually inside the first tanks" https://littlstar.com/videos/73226f8d . Otherwise, just move your 'phone around on Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDfsGX5pCHk
