Finished WEB Griffin's "The Corps" series. Its trashy fiction, but its exactly the right kind of material for an audiobook since you can follow it with minimal focus, so that is the kind of stuff I like to listen to when I'm driving or doing chores around the house. Anyways though, it was both enjoyable and supremely frustrating. At the core, there is a decent (if improbable) narrative thread, but man... he just keeps adding characters, who are all the exact same person and it gets so damn hard to keep track of them. He has a big thing for mustang officers, all of whom have the improbable ability to make women fall madly in love with them within minutes. I could only roll my eyes so hard about that shit. He also has this annoying habit of reintroducing information in every book, like he is expecting people to read them as standalone novels I guess? OK, I GET IT! PICK PICKERING IS THE ONLY SON OF PATRICIA PICKERING WHO IS THE ONLY DAUGHTER OF ANDREW FOSTER WHO IS A SUPER RICH HOTEL MAGNATE BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH! I remember that from book 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. You can chill out with that... It would be a lot more useful if you wasted that reintroducing which one of these cookie-cutter background mustang officers that I can't keep straight is, instead of reminding me who the main fucking characters are.

Still though, if you're looking for an audiobook that you can zone out of for five minutes and not feel like you missed a thing, this is the series for you!

Side note, he keeps using the phrase "eat his ass out / get his ass eaten out" when he clearly means "chew his ass out". Griffin definitely doesn't appreciate the difference there, and that phrase happened at least a dozen times...

H. P. Lovecraft died 81 years ago this week. 15 Mar 1937. Cancer of the stomach and/or colon, complicated by kidney disease. Some biographers believe this was caused by Lovecraft's poor diet, which was spare, heavy in canned (and sometimes spoiled) food, with no fresh fruit or vegetables, a consequence of life-long frugality that bordered on poverty. During his final, fatal illness, he kept a diary—sometimes called his 'death diary', though it proceeds only from January 1st to March 11th. The document itself is not known to survive, but his literary executor copied the first few entries in full, and then abridged the others, and copied the final three in full. Sparse as they are, they are not the kind of reading one enjoys. For example, the entry for March 7th, condensed, reads only: "hideous pain."

This is a bit darker than I like to post on the Friday Free-For-Alls, but if there's one thing about human life that I learn from history, is that it ends. No matter how vibrant and exciting it may be to tuck into a new book of correspondence, to feel the men and women through the pages, their cares and concerns, their politics and philosophies, what they loved and hated, favorite foods and bitterest regrets...they all have the same ending. Sometimes quick, sometimes slow; sometimes with much suffering, and sometimes without. Sometimes death defines people, and sometimes it is just the turning of the last page on a life that had played out long before the final chapter.

I was bored and trying to look into the history of piggy banks. I just want to share what I found because I can’t seem to get much further and don’t really feel like looking anymore. Hopefully, someone will show up in that thread to answer the question.

Most articles on the first and second page of Google returns point to the use of “pygg jars.” Pygg, according to these articles, is a medieval word for a type of clay used for pottery. If you can find a reference to this clay independent of a piggy bank origin story, let me know, because I can’t. /u/Lewed_Losel seemed to have had no luck in the Middle English Dictionary either. The Wikipedia entry on piggy banks also points to these articles, which seem to reference each other. The original of these appears to be a Financial Brand article from 2012. Along with the pygg claim, I can’t confirm something else the article states: “In Great Britain, a 650-year old Majapahit terracotta piggy bank was offered for sale at £6,000.”

The Wikipedia entry also cites another website that calls bullshit on just about everything. The most useful piece of information was this:

We see the modern name evolving in American publications at the very end of the nineteenth century. The first form was pig bank: “The latest novelty — The Pig Bank. You have to kill the pig to get the money — 25c each.” The Oregonian (Portland, Oregon), 10 Nov. 1900. Thanks to Barry Popik for finding this.

The above is an ad by Lipman Wolfe & Co., a Portland department store which was early to move on elevators, actually putting prices on things, making change down to a penny, and, I guess, piggy banks. I did a quick search to see if I could find Lipman’s piggy bank suppliers in 1900, but didn’t have any luck.

What I did find though, are a bunch of patent applications for improvements to mechanical money-boxes for children in the mid-1870s. I’m not sure if the concentration on the 1870s is indicitive of the popularity of these items or just what Google has in its database. Whatever the case, these are helpful in establishing there was an industry of money-boxes aimed at teaching children the importance of saving before the 20th century. One in particular tells us that it was understood that many of these would be crafted of some type of pottery into amusing/artistic shapes with the intention of being smashed in order to make a withdrawal. Here are a few:

1875 – “My invention consists [of a] money-box within which is located a gong or sounding apparatus, which will be struck by the coin after being deposited in the box, thus directing attention to the deposits and affording an amusement to the child, the body of the box being preferably ofthe form of a bell, so as to harmonize with the intended action of the device.”

https://patents.google.com/patent/US166978A/en

1876- “The object of my invention is to furnish a money-box or savings-bank suit-able for children, which may not only be cheaply and easily made, but which also shall be transparent or translucent, so as to indicate approximately the quantity or value of the money contained in it Without tempting to the breaking or destruction of the box by the children who usually keep their small savings in this way.” Further down: “Ordinarily, and in fact almost universally, small money-boxes for children are made of metal or of cheap pottery-ware, and are consequently opaque, besides being clumsy and unattractive; and they need, after being worked to shape after the manner of the potters art, to be glazed and baked.”

https://patents.google.com/patent/US182826A/en

1877- For “new and useful improvements in toy money boxes, of which the following is a speciimage or figure to roll its eyes (sic), open its mouth, [b]ow its head, or go through other motions calculated to please children.. These motions have heretofore been produced by positive force applied to the image, as by pulling a string or pushing a lever, and not by the weight of a coin.”

https://patents.google.com/patent/US189907A/en

1878- “In the top of the head there is a slit […] through which the coin is introduced. Within the body is a vertical springspindle […] on the top of which is the [f]igure […] shaped so as to rest within the bill of the bird when closed, as seen in Fig. 2, and so far forward as not to interrupt the passage of the coin through the head to the body below.”

https://patents.google.com/patent/US209038A/en

And more: https://patents.google.com/patent/US200402A/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US174410A/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US196966A/en https://patents.google.com/patent/USD9231S/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US183000A/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US172016A/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US164083A/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US144106A/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US174569A/en

As for the pig shape itself, I found nothing pre-dating the 1900 advertisement. My gut reaction when reading the original question was that the pig shape was a post-Depression stylistic choice to associate banking with greed/gluttony. That’s an obvious association, and one that Brooklyn’s Roosevelt Savings Bank tried to cast aside in 1951.

From The New Yorker, July 7th, 1951:

The Roosevelt Savings Bank, in Brooklyn, has sent us a coin bank in the shape of a plastic Teddy bear, along with a note part of which reads: "Ever since anyone can remember the piggy bank has been a symbol of thrift. The Roosevelt Savings Bank has decided that the pig cannot be both good and bad. It cannot be a greedy, dirty, selfish animal...and still serve as an emnlem of prudence and thrift..." They have decided to substitute the Teddy-Bank. We doubt that it will supplant the piggy bank. Children like greed, dirt, selfishness and mud as much as prudence, thrift and cleanliness. Many a greedy, selfish man has died knee-deep in coins in an odor of prudence and thrift. As for dirt that's where you find platinum, gold, copper, diamonds, oil and uranium. What are, or were, the Dalys, the Guggenheims, theBarnatos, and the Rockefellers but prudent and thrifty wallowers?

Anecdotally, at least, Berkin and Hellman aren’t wrong. Raise your hand if you had a Teddy-Bank as a kid.

Google’s Ngram Viewer seems to support the fact that the Pig Bank was “the latest novelty” in 1900. There is also a spike in the term “pig bank” after 1929, but I didn’t find too much to point to a relationship with the Great Depression. I also didn’t look that hard.

The results on Google Books for “piggy bank” 1800-1953, make it clear that the term was well-established by the 1940s. I wish I could take a closer look at a few of these, especially One Hundred Plays for Children: An Anthology of Non-Royalty One-Act Plays and How to be Poor.

Anyway, if anyone could shed some light on this porky bastard and the “Tudor-style piggy bank” next to him or traditions outside the US/Anglosphere, like maneki-neko, that would be awesome.

My copy of Timothy J. Gilfoyle's City Of Eros came in for me at the library... just as my copy of Timothy J. Gilfoyle's City Of Eros is slated to arrive from the used bookstore. Curses! At least I'm finding it useful enough that I won't regret spending $4 on it when I'm done. If I'm lucky. I have zero formal academic background with the topic of sexuality in 19th century New York/America, besides a class we mostly spent talking about what a good boyfriend Queequeg is, but I've been trying to fill in some of the gaps. I've also been reading a little about gender in 19th century American history of sexuality, especially the different ways the sexual assault of male vs. female children were understood and the different ways young men and young women presented being picked up or being "treated" in exchange for sex, but the former is depressing the hell out of me

I was rewatching my advisor's talk at the Gilcrease Museum on West Mexico. I must have missed it last time, but he suggested perhaps the Old Fire God was disseminated from West Mexico to Central Mexico. I recall talking to him about Old Fire God iconography, but he didn't bring that idea up last I spoke with him. It'll be fun to talk to him about it when I see him next.

Also, an Aztec gold labret of a serpent with a movable bifurcated tongue

An update from last week. If you remember, I had applied for an internship at a really great museum in my area for the summer, and had my interview last week.

Well, I just got offered the internship! I have to get back to the museum on Monday with a definite answer, but there's no way I'm turning this offer down.

Something I'm super interested in is the communication of history to non-academics, and this museum is in a perfect spot to help me hone in on that with this internship. I'm super excited. I get to work on a project all summer that will go towards helping the museum's exhibits in some fashion (members of each department basically are going to submit proposals), as well as be an interpreter for two days a week. Plus field-trips to other museums, weekly guest lectures from museum staff, and a weekly seminar to discuss the readings we'll get and how the whole thing is going.

Super stoked.

Should I feel bad for enjoying the heck out of the History Channel miniseries "The Men Who Built America: Frontiersmen"? Because I am in fact enjoying it. And I certainly enjoyed the original "Men Who Built America" before it. Episode 1 of Frontiersmen on Daniel Boone alone made my upcoming trip to the Cumberland Gap region/area much more interesting.

The book list is must have been a lot of work to organise as it is, so any suggestion about rearranging might not be feasible. But in the European history section, it could be useful to have a section in the front page index between Ancient Rome and the Middle Ages for Late Antiquity/Dark Ages/Early Medieval. At the moment some of these books are dotted about alphabetically under Rome, and then others are in another small list after the general medieval texts. Maybe it's a good way to encourage thorough research within the list, but some people may not notice the stuff they were looking for.

It's a periodisation many people still think in. It also often gets missed out in other places (e.g. school history, popular history) with a jump from the Romans to the Norman Conquest, so it's easy to think at first glance "oh, there isn't anything here either".

Hey, I’m looking for good books to read about either Robert Walpole or Roman von Ungern-Sternberg. I would like the books to not require too much background on the events they took part in, if possible. I had a problem when trying to read a biography on Napoleon with it expecting me to know far more about the French Revolution that I actually do, so I would like to avoid that again. Thanks for the help.

Did St. Patrick lead a genocide against an ancient population of Black Irish?

Just today I've started seeing memes saying that the "snakes" driven out by St. Patrick actually refers to 200,000 non-Christian people of the Twa tribe. I found this article which lists one source that indicates that it may be true. I did a quick search on this sub and didn't see the question asked previously.