Hello!

I haven’t posted here for a while so I figured to give an update. My sophomore year as a history major is going great. I also changed my career path. I previously desired to become a history professor, but over the summer, I decided attending law school is the better choice for me. I am still a history major, just different plans after my undergraduate years.

I also have a question that leaks too much into current politics to be a regular question:

Is social-democracy socialism?

Originally, I was under the impression that social democracy is not socialism because that’s what Kyle Kulinski argues. Then last week, my Soviet Union history professor off topically stated Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a socialist. A student then interrupted, “She isn’t a socialist. She is a social democrat, which is the Scandinavian Model.” My professor responded arguing Ocasio-Cortex says she is a socialist and that the international socialist committee (or something) recognizes Scandinavia as socialist. Since my professor’s claim differed from what I previously thought, I went into his office hours and asked him to elaborate his opinion because I was under the impression that social democracy wasn’t socialism. In summary of the discussion, his larger argument was that

1. Socialism and Marxism are not clearly defined terms, and it is hard to tell exactly how socialist someone is. Similarly, there are many forms of Christianity and some Christians consider some denominations “not Christians.” That doesn’t mean those denominations are not true Christians, so it is similar about Socialism. Someone cannot not be socialist just because someone says they are not.
2. Ocasio-Cortez’s ideas of regulating Wall Street and healthcare are socialist.
3. She says she is a socialist.

We talked a bit and I asked him for some recommended reading on this topic, to which he said he doesn’t have any as he doesn’t study American politics. So what is your view on my professor’s idea that social democracy is socialism? I am just interested for a third view and some additional reading.

I have a confession. Despite history encompassing my entire professional life and a sizeable portion of my entertainment, I absolutely loathe going to history museums. Within twenty minutes I'm practically sprinting through the exhibits, I never read the placards that describe what I'm looking at, and overall I find the vast majority of museums so incredibly dull. Google says the average person spends up to 4 hours at the National D-Day Museum. I was out of there in 45 minutes. I've spent weeks doing research at the Reagan Library's archives yet I've never even set foot in the adjacent museum. Napoleon's Tomb? Pretty cool. The adjoining museum of the French army? You all can go look around--I'll check out the gift shop.

I've never mentioned this to any of my historian friends in person because it seems like such a heresy. They love going to museums, and for a long time I thought that maybe I just didn't love history as much as these people. Recently, though, two things happened that have allowed me to articulate why I find museums so boring.

First, I traveled to New York City where I went to a few history museums and encountered the familiar feelings of boredom. However, later in the day, I visited the corner of Wall Street and Broad Street, the location of the 1920 Wall Street bombing, and looked at the bombing scars left on the building that was at the time the headquarters of JP Morgan. The online pictures of these scars don't give it full justice: there were pockmarks in the building thirty feet up, and many were probably 5 inches deep. While I was looking at these building scars I thought about how nearly a hundred years ago on the very place I stood a cart exploded that killed 30 people, stoked a Red Scare, and came to symbolize an era of political radicalization that wouldn't be seen in the US for another 50 years. It was a history that felt very much alive to me. The only other time I experienced that feeling--that I was standing somewhere of significant historical import--was when I stood under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and thought about the Germans marching where I stood in 1940, followed by the French in 1944. This was a feeling I have never experienced cloistered in a museum.

The second thing that happened was a bit more mundane. I watched a movie called Summer Hours (dir. Olivier Assayas). Briefly stated, the plot of the movie centers around a mother and her three children. The mother lives in an old house passed down through the family for generations. The house is populated by various pieces of art created by her uncle, a famous artist who had long since died. The mother passes away, and it is left to the siblings to determine whether to keep the paintings--and all the personal sentimentalism that they and their mother attached to them--or to sell them so that they can use the money for more practical purposes. In the end, they decide to sell the pieces of art to various museums.

In the final scene, two of the siblings visit a museum where they see a piece of art from their mother's estate--a desk-- behind a cordon so that passers-by won't touch it. One of them says that the piece seems like it's in jail, and that it appears sterile and lifeless. In other words, once the piece was moved from the place where it was treasured--in their family's home--it became something significantly more mundane. I think that can be said about the objects in history museums as well. Many of the objects are enclosed in massive protective cases, and are completely divorced from the context in which they gained so much historical value. A case in point: the George H.W. Bush Presidential museum has a massive 20 ft. tall slab of the Berlin Wall standing in the center of an exhibit room with little contextual information other than a small placard. Thirty feet away you can also take a gander at Barbara Bush's wedding dress. In my mind, it seems like so many objects in history museums lack historical authenticity because, like the character mentions in Summer Hours, they are so sterilized within a museum and so divorced from the location that gave them meaning. In contrast, places like the corner of Wall Street and Broad, or the Arc de Triomphe provide much more prominent feelings of looking at or being in a place of historical importance.

This post has gotten pretty long, so I'll end it by saying I would love to hear others' thoughts about museums and your feelings (or lack of) when you visit them. Does my experience ring true with anyone else, or am I as much of a pariah as I think I am?

About Atlantis — I believe something of the sort existed, though I do not especially hold any theory about a high type of civilization existing there — in fact, I doubt that. But some continent was submerged away back, or some large body of land, for practically all peoples have legends about a flood. And the Cro Magnons appeared suddenly in Europe, developed to a high stage of primitive culture; there is no trace to show that they came up the ladder of utter barbarism in Europe. Suddenly their remains are found supplanting the Neanderthal Men, to whom they have no ties of kinship whatever. Where did they originate? Nowhere in the known world, evidently. They must have originated and developed through the different basic stages of evolution in some land which is not now known to us. The occultists say that we are the fifth — I believe — great sub-race. Two unknown and unnamed races came, then the Lemurians, then the Atlanteans, then we. They say the Atlanteans were highly developed. I doubt it. I think they were simply the ancestors of the Cro Magnon men, who by some chance, escaped the fate which overtook the rest of the tribes. All my views on the matter I included in a long letter to the editor to whom I sold a tale entitled “The Shadow Kingdom,” which I expect will be published as a foreword to that story — if ever. This tale I wove about a mythical antediluvian empire, a contemporary of Atlantis.

— Robert E. Howard to Harold Preece, 20 Oct 1928, Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard 1.237

It is very doubtful whether an inhabited Atlantis ever existed, although vast areas in the Atlantic have undoubtedly sunk at one time or another. It seems likely that the classic Atlantis of Plato was in North Africa, on the shores of a lagoon now dried up. The fabled Poseidonis was in all probability somewhere near the later Tunis. But a sunken land is a great theme for fiction, & I always liked to read Atlantean tales.

— H. P. Lovecraft to Elizabeth Toldridge, 25 Oct 1929, SL3.39, Letters to Elizabeth Toldridge & Anne Tillery Renshaw 113

The theory of Atlantis and other lost continents was very much prevalent during the heyday of pulp fiction, and found its ways into a good many Weird Tales - including the Mythos tales of Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith, and the Kull and Conan stories of Robert E. Howard. A good bit of the basic idea of Atlantis was borrowed less from Classical sources directly than from Theosophy, where Atlantis and Lemuria played a part in their sweeping backstory of root races and previous civilizations, which also directly inspired much of the background of the Hellboy comics by Mike Mignola.

Today was the start of the academic year for the laboratory of my university. They organised several conventions all day long focusing on two topics: sources to study news approaches of assemblies and parliaments in medieval and early modern Europe; state and propaganda in early modern and modern Europe. The guest of honour was Jean-Philippe Genet, a specialist of English history whom medieval specialists may know for his "revolution" in the studies of political life in the 14th and 16th-centuries and his comparative studies of assemblies in Western Europe. The conventions were very interesting as they were opportunities to learn about current research being made by our professors and invited doctoral candidates.

A convention focused on a Russian (hopefully soon to get her Ph.D.)'s research on 18th-century correspondance between prosecutors in the French Provence province. The main focus of her research to better understand provincial administration is to use drafts instead of the actual letters (for example) since these sources are too often "forgotten" by historians.

An other ongoing research should make a very interesting read if her thesis is successfully defended as it deals with Benjamin Franklin's stay in France and its consequences. The title was Image and French public space: aspects of Benjamin Franklin's iconographic propaganda (1776-1790).

The final convention to really pick my interest was about propaganda in sports during the interwar (Word Wars), mostly football (soccer) as the professor is a specialist of the history of football, in particular in fascist Italy.

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I'm just curious about the Czech Republic.

I really like the legend of the Prague Golem as told by the Myths and Legends podcast, and I was kind of curious about the Jewish Quarter in the 1500s, 1600s. I know they kept having to defend against blood libel and all, but not many details. I can't find the podcast's original source.

1840s-60s time period, National Revival was going on, but I can't find a ton about what Prague looked like at the time or many specifics since many sources are in Czech.

So I've been looking through some books of military fireworks and thought I might share a 1573 description of "wilde fyre".

https://i.imgur.com/XZaqpvq.gif

. . . and giving fire to the said balls, and throwing them among the enemies, they will do mavelous and wonderful hurt. For that the said balls will burn within the water, so that falling upon the armor of soldiers, water cannot quench them nor anything else, except abundance of mire or dirt.

Many people are quick to jump to the similarities between the fictional wild fire in Game of Thrones and the historic use of "Greek fire", but it's easy to miss the fact that during the 16th and 17th centuries there were a number of substances in use described with similar properties and were actually called, in english, "wild fire".

What became of the national guard soldiers that opened fire on protesters during the Vietnam war? I did some poking around but never found anything about them.

TN Constitution

https://felonvoting.procon.org/sourcefiles/1834_Tenn_Constitution.pdf

Article I

Sec 5, 6, 7, 13, and 14

We are studying the state constitution and I asked the question, "Why do the writers of the state constitutions have to reinstate the laws of the federal Constitution if federal law already rules over state law?"

He said that was a great question, but didn't answer it.

How would I go about finding answers to that from reliable sources on my own?

If anybody knows why they did, though, I'd love an answer.

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Thank you

I thought of a random question tonight.

Back in medieval times with sword battles and armor and all that, when people fought and struck swords together or struck metal armor, would it create sparks? Were those battles a crazy flurry of sparks everywhere or does that require more force than one or two people with swords can create?