It has been kind of strange that we had such a dry, warm September, and there have been some warm days in October too. But I think you can’t deny that fall has finally arrived in Greater Boston.
Tag: history
So… Scotland… I hear you might be single soon…
Wow. Just, wow.
I am amazed, truly amazed, that this movement for Scotland to gain independence may actually succeed after all. The referendum is set to take place this Thursday.
And it is an extremely complicated issue, one that I would imagine the overwhelming majority of Americans (including myself) understand very little, outside of having seen the superb (but historically inaccurate) movie Braveheart.
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Another maritime mystery closer to being solved
The Canadian government announced yesterday that it had discovered one of the lost ships from Franklin’s Expedition, the British Arctic exploration voyage led by Captain Sir John Franklin that disappeared in the 1840s. While it is still unknown whether the shipwreck is that of HMS Erebus or HMS Terror, it is pretty clear that one of the two vessels has been found by an remotely operated underwater vehicle using side-scan sonar.
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Largely forgotten, the burning of Washington 200 years ago
Wow. It occurred to me that today is the 200th anniversary of the burning of Washington, D.C. by a British invasion force. I am struck by how such a historic event has largely been forgotten.
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Today’s Craigslist Horror
Regular readers will know that I use the Free section on Craigslist to amuse myself. As today is a sort of vacation day for me, I popped over there just now to see if there was anything funny worth tweeting. I found something absolutely totally and completely NOT worth tweeting. It was so awful, especially in light of all of the horrible racist atrocities happening in Ferguson, MO and elsewhere right now, that it merited its own blog post.
What could possibly be that bad you might ask? I’ll show you. Be prepared.
Language, words, power, and Game of Thrones
I’ve been thinking a lot ever since I first cracked the books in the series A Song of Ice and Fire and watched the HBO show Game of Thrones about the language in the world GRRM has created. Aside from the fact that most all of the actors speak British English (bravo, Peter Dinklage), there are a lot of interesting accents (bravo, Pedro Pascal), dialects, languages, and such to contend with on screen.
Off screen, in the written word, there’s a lot going on as well. There’s a great essay here taking apart what’s happening, what GRRM has done and hasn’t done, and things like the necessity of having professional linguists create Dothraki and Valyrian, etc. Click through, it is absolutely worth a read.
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The best GRRM interview I have ever read
Admittedly, I have not read every single interview he has ever given, nor have I watched all of the ones he has given on video, but this interview I read recently on io9 is my hands-down favorite. No, it isn’t new, but I had not read it until this week.
But it’s fantastic, especially for someone who is interested in writing and wants to see how a famous writer’s mind works. And I find it just fascinating.
Well-preserved wreck in Baltic Sea to be explored
The 16th century Swedish shipwreck Mars the Magnificent will now be explored thanks to a grant by the National Geographic Society. Like similar wrecks (the Vasa comes to mind immediately) the wreck of the Mars is expected to yield all sorts of artifacts and give historians and archaeologists a detailed view of what is a fairly famous ship in the history of Sweden.
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Quick trip to New Bedford today
Kelly and I decided to take a quick road trip down to the South Coast to New Bedford so we could catch the Charles W. Morgan before she left. It also gave us the chance to stop in at New Bedford Antiques at the Cove, one of our favorite antique malls anywhere and definitely one of our favorite places on the South Coast.
Two historic ships on this stormy day
Two gorgeous old historic ships are in the news this week. Both of them were built here in Massachusetts (although more than 40 years apart), both of them are among the last surviving examples of classic American wooden shipbuilding, and both of them are ships I have visited more than once over the years. One is the oldest vessel in the United States Navy, and the other is the last surviving wooden whaling ship in the world.
