Profile avatar
stori3dpast.bsky.social
Harold Johnson. Maine (from away!). Bookseller. Pilgrim. Word Guy. Skeptic. History & Archaeology. Tolkien. Trek. Italy. Old English. Used to make YouTubes, now I make typos. 19th C antiquarian — Sideburns included! 🏺📖🧙🏻‍♂️
10,736 posts 2,255 followers 226 following
Regular Contributor
Active Commenter
Posts 20 Comments 30

Finished Terence. Didn't love it. His plays are as ridiculous as his older contemporary Plautus's. But Plautus knew how to do slapstick & pratfalls. He makes even his terrible characters funny. Terence doesn't. He's matter-of-fact. When his characters do awful things they just feel... awful.

submitted 11 hours ago • 1 comment

Did not expect S1:E4 of "Scrubs" to be a Very Special Episode already!

submitted 17 hours ago • 0 comments

"Against My Will I Take My Leave" is a perfect title & theme swirling in the head of someone then writing "Beren & Luthien."

submitted 18 hours ago • 0 comments

This is part of JRRT's translation of a medieval poem titled "Against My Will I Take My Leave." He retitled it "Gawain's Leave-Taking." Just after it, he wrote the opening lines of "The Tale of Beren and Luthien." Gawain was swirling in Tolkien's mind just as he was working his own legendarium.

submitted 18 hours ago • 0 comments

"Of the author [of Sir Gawain] nothing is now known. But he was a major poet of his day; and it is a solemn thought that his name is now forgotten, a reminder of the great gaps of ignorance over which we now weave the thin webs of our literary history." -- JRR Tolkien

submitted 18 hours ago • 0 comments

Two others I wish I had kept: -- the 1857 report from the US Secretary of War on buying war camels. -- a complete 1957 set of LOTR, with original dustjackets! 😭

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

I still love bookselling, but man there are a lot of ones that have come across my desk that I wish I had kept. The book with the Bishop-Fish is in my top 5.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Broke: 16th C fisherman hauls up mutilated giant squid. Woke: It kind of looks like a creepy sea-person. Bespoke: The bishop-fish was caught & taken to the King of Poland, who wished to keep it. It appealed to be released. This was granted, it made the sign of the cross & disappeared into the sea.

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

Italian Duolingo gives me "Someone remembers seeing a motorcycle just before the execution" right before "There are some things I don't like here but no country is perfect." Excellent marketing there Duilingo!

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

I've made a decision. I'm going to stream all 9 seasons of "Scrubs" again.

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

Mistra sits on a hill that overlooks the vale of Laconia & the heart of what had once been Sparta. A 13th C Frankish castle converted into a Byazantine fortress & town overlooks Sparta. Mind blown.

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

The very last emperor of the Byzantines -- in effect the last Roman emperor -- Constantine XI was christened in a church in the Greek Morea/Peloponnese that still exists. In the town of Mistra. A plaque marks the spot How cool is that?

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

So #TIL in AD522 the Byzantines stole the secret of silk & silkworms from Chinese traders & started producing silk on their own. Their production center was the Peloponnese in Greece - known as "Morea" by then because of its huge supply of mulberry trees, the one thing silkworms would thrive on.

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

Finished "Buried City" and this holds. It's *not* a typical Pompeii book. By the end I learn more hard facts about Zuchtriegel than about the city. But that's his point. "The Buried City" is about us -- what we carry with us, how we interact with everything around us, including the past. Thumbs up.

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

16th C book: "I have clasps." 19th C book: "Yeah, well I have wheels!"

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

Beloit, WI revitalized its waterfront and chose this way to celebrate it: by bringing to life Georges Seurat's "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte."

submitted 3 days ago • 647 comments

The moral of the story is, call your patron's bluff!

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

The Doni Tondo by Michelangelo c1506 for Florence merchant Agnolo Doni. Doni originally rejected & refused to pay full price. Michelangelo grabbed it & stormed off in a huff, promising Doni that he'd want it eventually. Michelangelo was right. Doni did eventually pay up -- twice the original price!

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

101° a mile from the beach sounds like a lot. Is that a lot?

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

"[In archaeology], our interpretations are attempts to get close to a complex reality that has long since passed. To fixate dogmatically on one specific reading is the biggest mistake you can make." -- Gabriel Zuchtriegel "The Buried City"

submitted 5 days ago • 1 comment