Profile avatar
stori3dpast.bsky.social
Harold Johnson. Maine (from away!). Bookseller. Coin seller. Pilgrim. Word Guy. Skeptic. History & Archaeology. Tolkien. Trek. Old English. Used to make YouTubes, now I make typos. 19th C antiquarian — Sideburns included! 🏺📖🧙🏻‍♂️
9,028 posts 2,110 followers 234 following
Regular Contributor
Active Commenter
Posts 20 Comments 30

Peter Jackson began working on the LOTR films in 1998. That's 27 years ago. We today are farther away from the start of the LOTR movies than PJ was in 1998 from Tolkien's death in 1973.

submitted 1 hour ago • 1 comment

Does anyone have a photograph of a road/street name sign named after discoveries made through developer-led archaeological work? Niche query, I know. Maybe @urbanprehistorian.bsky.social?

submitted 3 hours ago • 16 comments

"No, but I swear, *this* season it'll work!"

submitted 3 hours ago • 0 comments

That episode of every season of "Alone" where the one handy contestant has spent 2 weeks building a kayak to find fishing grounds -- only to discover that fishing from a jury-rigged kayak is hopeless and they've burned thousands of calories they'll never get back.

submitted 3 hours ago • 1 comment

Hiding in plain sight: #WednesdayWindows of 13th C Blackfriars Gloucester, one of few Dominican Friaries still ~intact. Scriptorium for creating manuscripts was behind #WindowsOnWednesday in yellow wall across cloister. Arches of lavatorium below + refectory in range to rt. Later housing + industry.

submitted 4 hours ago • 1 comment

'The Interior of Henry VII's Chapel in Westminster Abbey' (1750s) by Canaletto (Private collection)

submitted 5 hours ago • 9 comments

Friends far and near, it's TEN DAYS until Holy Moot (my conference on Tolkien & Theology) is upon us. Register now! Tickets are $50 in-person, $15 online only holymoot.org for more and to register!

submitted 17 hours ago • 0 comments

Who was Tibullus? What was his first name? Where did he live? How did he die? No one knows. He was probably a contemporary of Horace (late Republic/early Empire); maybe lost an inherited fortune in the chaos of the age; probably had a man named Messalla as patron, and was given an elegy by Ovid.

submitted 18 hours ago • 0 comments

Finished Catullus & on to Tibullus. He is Sam Gamgee-coded & I love it. "I ask not for the riches of my sires or the gains which garnered harvests brought to my ancestors of yore. A small field's produce is enough--enough if I may sleep upon my bed and the mattress ease my limbs as heretofore."

submitted 18 hours ago • 0 comments

Latest I-really-shouldn't purchase: Complete 1766 5-volume set of the Arabian Nights, in French. $75. I won't make a lot of money on these, but I won't lose any. The Arabian Nights are valuable even in the early 1800s. A 1700s set is pretty hard to find.

submitted 20 hours ago • 1 comment

So Edith Parteger (penname Ellis Peters) published this, her first Cadfael Mystery, in 1977 when she was 63. The same age Tolkien was when LOTR was published. However, *unlike* Tolkien, she then went on to complete & publish 20 more Cadfael mysteries right up until her death in 1995 at age 82!

submitted 22 hours ago • 4 comments

All burnt small bone fragments, from animals. Burnt to varying temperatures from charring to full decalcification resulting in chalky bones when subjected to high temperatures for prolonged duration. Burnt bone tells its story by colour & texture. Species ID can still be possible. #zooarchaeology 🏺

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

Catullus reads like part obsessive stalker, part man with a death-wish given the people in power he antagonizes, and part old soul capable of the most beautiful eloquence.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Reached the part of Catullus where he realizes the married woman he & several others were fooling around with maybe didn't love him. I wanna feel bad for the guy, but like, read your room, man.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Wow! I was rewatching "Hidden Italy" S1E1 just now & they made the same point! "When we read the works of other travellers, we see that each one of them has noticed something different. The place then becomes a prism with thousands of different visions." That's history!

submitted 1 day ago • 2 comments

In "Pentiment," there are murders to solve. Each townsperson has their own deeply held beliefs about them -- their personal truths. The vast majority of those truths are incorrect. In fact, it's always possible that *all* of the truths you have uncovered & incorporated -- are incorrect.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

The game "Pentiment" does the best job I've yet seen in explaining how history works. We start with incomplete knowledge sourced from competing narratives, memories, agendas, and dumb luck. We process that using our own perspective, and produce as history a story that is always partly fictional.

submitted 1 day ago • 2 comments

Still working on Catullus. I'm on 64, the mini-epic about the wedding of Peleus & Thetis. This line about a maiden buried under a rounded barrow struck me. I saw my first Bronze Age barrow, burial place for some long-forgotten king, 26 years ago. On a nondescript country lane in southern England.

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

Since the beginning of the year I have read 21 books. This is very unlike me.

submitted 1 day ago • 2 comments

So I still have plenty of Loeb Classicals & Robert Asprin's "Myth" series to get through. But my first ever Cadfael book has arrived. So that may mix things up for a while!

submitted 1 day ago • 2 comments