Tag: history

Hidden Treasures…

gordsellar0 Comments

Having just finished Jim Baker’s The Cunning Man’s Handbook (which I discussed earlier here, and mentioned in passing here: it’s a big book, so I’d been reading it for a while now) I can say that big chunks of history suddenly make a lot more sense to me. For one thing, the constant fascination with hidden treasure. Basically, a lot of people seemed to think of the world as if it were some kind of Monty Haul D&D campaign: at least in the English speaking world, the idea that there were hidden caches of treasure everywhere was bizarrely common, to the point where treasure hunting was a significant part of …

Continue Reading

The Georgian Postal System(s), and Cross-Writing

gordsellar4 Comments

As I’ve been harping for a while now, modernity didn’t just spring out of nowhere… it got built out of chaos, and it got built, primarily, in the form of systems, since people realized that systematization was an effective way of converting chaos into order. Modernity thrives on order, for better or worse, but as is clear to anyone living in a big city where modernity is a recent import (and not yet completely metabolized), you cannot have a modern metropolis without highly functional, highly integrated systems. As I’ve mentioned lately, it seems to me that it was in the Georgian era that a lot of …

Continue Reading

And Called It… Macaroni?

gordsellar2 Comments

Yes, even in Canada we know the Yankee Doodle song. But like everyone else, as kids we giggle and find that last line in the first verse: Yankee Doodle went to town Riding on a pony; He stuck a feather in his hat, And called it macaroni… Who the hell sticks a feather in his hat and then calls it “macaroni”? What in the hell is that about? Maybe everyone else knows, but I sure didn’t. Not till the other day, anyway. The answer, as for so much around here lately, lies in Georgian England.

Continue Reading

Two Interesting Cases of Female Cross-Dressing in History

gordsellar5 Comments

Most of the time, one hears about male cross-dressers; one runs across female cross-dressers primarily in Shakespeare plays. But lately, I’ve run across two interesting cases of women dressing up as men, that seem worth sharing: First is Mary Hamilton, who was the subject of a pamphlet by Henry Fielding titled The Female Husband in 1746. (Okay, it was really titled The Surprising Adventures of a FEMALE HUSBAND containing the whimsical Amours, curious Incidents, and Diabolical Tricks. Okay, actually, it was… well, the “title” wasn’t really a title but an attention-grabbing page of text, so it seems to vary depending …

Continue Reading

Three Questions About Western Historiography and Korea

gordsellar2 Comments

Another excerpt from Donald Clark’s Living Dangerously in Korea, and two three questions: Given the speed of change in modern Korea, it takes some mental effort to recall the conditions of diet, health, housing, education, and living standards that prevailed in Korea at the time of liberation. In the 1930s, for example, life expectancy was thirty-six years for men and thirty-eight years for women. Women were treated like chattel by their own relatives. They had little autonomy or even identity of their own. They were known as so-and-so’s mother or daughter or wife and their given names were so seldom …

Continue Reading