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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! 🏺📖🧙🏻‍♂️
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Are you kidding me?! A deer with both vampire teeth and teddy bear ears?!

submitted 44 minutes ago • 1 comment

What do you get if you like old books, Pompeii, and learning Italian? A 1954 guidebook to Pompeii written by the renowned Amadeo Maiuri! 168 pages and just crammed with a priceless snapshot of Pompeii as it was seen & understood 70 years ago.

submitted 43 minutes ago • 0 comments

Hi all! Another day, another one of Francesca’s incredible illustrations. This time it’s for another hero of the event in the cadets of the USS Nantucket! We still have 19 days left in our campaign for Molassacre. I can’t wait to see how far we go! #molassesflood #boston #history #socialstudies

submitted 14 hours ago • 0 comments

In the US alone, today, there are at least 112 uncontrolled underground coal-mine fires raging. Maybe 200. Centralia is just arguably the most famous.

submitted 22 hours ago • 2 comments

Sometimes I check to see if the coal mine fire under Centralia PA, which started in 1962, is still burning. It is.

submitted 22 hours ago • 1 comment

them: COPE HARDER, LIB Me:

submitted 23 hours ago • 2 comments

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 1 day ago • 1 comment

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

submitted 1 day 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 1 day 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 1 day 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 1 day 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 2 days 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 3 days 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 3 days 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 3 days ago • 0 comments

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

submitted 3 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 3 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 3 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 3 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 3 days ago • 0 comments

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

submitted 4 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 5 days ago • 652 comments

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

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments