LilacSunday
LightNews LightNews
banner
lilacsunday.bsky.social
LilacSunday
@lilacsunday.bsky.social
740 followers 1.2K following 560 posts
History, art, science, genealogy, California, and wildlife. Breast cancer survivor. Profile 📷: Self Portrait of Sarah Goodridge, 1830.
Posts Replies Media Videos
lilacsunday.bsky.social
We've lost sight of the overpass
The daylight won't remember that
When speckled fronds raise round your bones
Who took the time to fold your clothes
And shook the Valley of the Shadow

Deep Red Bells by Neko Case, because a song about a serial killer feels very Halloween.
youtu.be/okQfD9B_17Y?...
Neko Case - "Deep Red Bells" [Live from Austin, TX]
YouTube video by Live From Austin TX
youtu.be
November 1, 2025 at 1:59 AM
lilacsunday.bsky.social
Happy Halloween from William and Joan Judde, seen below in their wedding portrait reminding us that Death is a guest at every wedding.
Above the skull you can make out the inscription WE BEHOWLDE OWER ENDE. More inscriptions in caption. England, c. 1560, Dulwich Picture Gallery, item no. DPG 354
The newlyweds, both dressed in black and looking rather somber, stand at either side of a small table. There's a human skull on the table, and the man and woman each rest a hand on the skull. In front of the happy couple, a human corpse rests on a low table. Inscriptions include THVS CONSVMYTHE OVR TYME, THE WORDE OF GOD HATHE KNIT VS TWAIN AND DEATH SHALL VS DIVIDE AGAYNE, LYVE TO DYE AND DYE TO LYVE ETERNALLY. The original frame is inscribed WHEN WE ARE DEADE AND IN OWR GRAVES, AND ALL OWRE BONES ARE ROTTUN, BY THIS SHALL WE REMEMBERD BE, WHEN WE SHULD BE FORGOTTYN.
November 1, 2025 at 12:57 AM
lilacsunday.bsky.social
Got a long line of heartache, I carry it well
The list of lives I've broken reach from here to hell
Bad luck wind been blowin' at my back
I pray you don't look at me
I pray I don't look back...

Thirteen, by Johnny Cash #Halloween
youtu.be/W2apXO0RXYo?...
Johnny Cash - Thirteen
YouTube video by NevermoreStranger
youtu.be
November 1, 2025 at 12:47 AM
lilacsunday.bsky.social
Happy #Halloween.
Self-Portrait with Death Playing the Fiddle, by Arnold Böcklin, 1871.
At Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin.
We see the artist from the chest up, brown-haired and bearded, looking hale and hearty as he holds his paint brush near his palette. His head is cocked and turned to the side as if he hears something that he can't quite make out. Right behind him stands skeletal Death, its bony hand brushing the artist's shoulder as it draws the bow across a violin with only one string, the lowest string, tuned to G.
October 31, 2025 at 6:50 PM
lilacsunday.bsky.social
On a cobweb afternoon
In a room full of emptiness
By a freeway I confess
I was lost in the pages
Of a book full of death...

Like a Stone, by Audioslave #Halloween
youtu.be/7QU1nvuxaMA?...
Audioslave - Like a Stone (Official Video)
YouTube video by AudioslaveVEVO
youtu.be
October 31, 2025 at 6:35 PM
lilacsunday.bsky.social
Greetings from California. 🐻

"Overall, he was a very polite visitor. He stayed on the boardwalk path, kept two feet on the ground and didn't try to climb over the railings," the zoo said on Facebook.
www.sfgate.com/news/article...
Wild bear breaks into California zoo, is found communing with the captive bears
A wild, very "polite" and possibly lonely black bear recently paid a visit to its neighbors at a Northern California zoo.
www.sfgate.com
October 21, 2025 at 6:02 PM
lilacsunday.bsky.social
Video from today's #NoKings protest in Walnut Creek, California.
Biggest crowd yet, thousands of peacefully determined suburbanites filled the plaza and the surrounding streets.
October 19, 2025 at 12:44 AM
Reposted by LilacSunday
emersonwbaker.bsky.social
#otd September 22 1692, eight people hang at Proctor's Ledge on Gallows Hill in what will be the last of the Salem witch trial executions. In memory of:
Martha Corey
Mary Easty
Mary Parker
Alice Parker
Ann Pudeator
Wilmot Redd
Margaret Scott
Samuel Wardwell
September 22, 2025 at 1:12 PM
Reposted by LilacSunday
katiemcenaney.bsky.social
I love absolutely everything about this whole thread. So many tiny details! 🏺

#archaeology4kids
theduncanmackay.bsky.social Duncan Mackay @theduncanmackay.bsky.social · Sep 19
#OTD 19 September 1991, walkers in the high Ötztal alps on the Italian border, found a body melting out of the ice. It turned out to be the remains of a c.5200 year old man preserved with all his kit.
Of course, it was essential to replicate him in Playmobil.
1🧵
#PlaymobilÖtzi
#PlaymobilInfestation
Playmobil figure kitted out as prehistoric iceman Ötzi.
September 19, 2025 at 9:58 PM
lilacsunday.bsky.social
This has been the perfect week to watch Pakula's Paranoia Trilogy, which says a lot about what kind of week this has been.
criterionchannl.bsky.social Criterion Channel @criterionchannl.bsky.social · Aug 19
ALAN J. PAKULA'S PARANOIA TRILOGY 📽️
Coming to criterion channel in September!
Alan J. Pakula's Paranoia Trilogy Steeped in the pervasive sense of distrust that rippled through American society in the 1970s, Alan J. Pakula's Paranoia Trilogy-Klute, The Parallax View, and All the President's Men- stands as a masterclass in cinematic unease. Featuring career-defining performances from Jane Fonda, Warren Beatty, Robert Redford, and Dustin Hoffman, these chilling visions of conspiracy and steadily mounting dread translate paranoia into unforgettable visual language through the shadow-etched cinematography of Gordon Willis, whose moody chiaroscuro compositions draw viewers into a world of ever-deepening mystery and fear. FEATURING: Klute (1971), The Parallax View (1974), All the President's Men (1976)
September 18, 2025 at 1:18 AM
lilacsunday.bsky.social
Robert Redford was a Red Sox fan! www.bostonglobe.com/2025/09/16/m...
Robert Redford rooted for the Red Sox, naturally - The Boston Globe
Redford grew up in Santa Monica, where there were no MLB teams nearby. But he became a proud member of Red Sox Nation thanks to Ted Williams.
www.bostonglobe.com
September 17, 2025 at 1:31 AM
lilacsunday.bsky.social
We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart.

Hamlet 1,2 #ShakespeareSunday
Closeup of Lieutenant Worf in a scene from the "Transfigurations" episode of Star Trek TNG, saying "Less talk, more synthehol" as his colleagues engaged in non-stop work chit-chat in 10 Forward.
August 31, 2025 at 4:47 PM
lilacsunday.bsky.social
Give me your hand. Art thou learned?

As You Like It 5,1 #ShakespeareSunday #DoctorWho
August 31, 2025 at 4:32 PM
lilacsunday.bsky.social
She's seen it all. She can do math in her head, she has a 250-degree field of peripheral vision, she can spot your clipped coins when they're still in your pocket, and she can tell from the way you're walking that you have a knife in your sleeve so remember she has one too.
peterpaulrubens.bsky.social Dr. Peter Paul Rubens @peterpaulrubens.bsky.social · Aug 30
La Maraichere: strong market-woman, equally strongly portrayed in 1789 by Jacques-Louis David. It's his day.
August 30, 2025 at 9:53 PM
Reposted by LilacSunday
susanabernethy2.bsky.social
Article: Bosworth - One Day, Two Kings

nathenamin.substack.com/p/bosworth-o...
Bosworth - One Day, Two Kings
On a rural Leicestershire field on 22 August 1485, one king was unmade, and another made.
nathenamin.substack.com
August 22, 2025 at 6:12 PM
lilacsunday.bsky.social
Maybe Robot Fight Club isn't the best way to teach humanoid robots to live among humans. (The clip with a flailing robot was unnerving.)
How about Robot Jane Austen Book Club?
Robot Bird Watching? Let the AI learn to identify birds by their song. www.corememory.com/p/inside-san...
Exclusive: Inside San Francisco's Robot Fight Club
A new combat sport has entered the arena
www.corememory.com
August 14, 2025 at 9:08 PM
lilacsunday.bsky.social
August 2, 1100: King William II of England is killed in a hunting "accident". His younger brother Henry (my 28th GGF) left the King's body where it lay and rode to Winchester, where he seized the treasury and had himself crowned King Henry I a few days later.
Detail from a medieval manuscript, not illuminated during the King's life. The King is robed and seated, wearing a crown, and holding a model of a church he built and a small staff topped with a fleur-de-lis. The drape of the King's robes is exquisite, Matthew Paris really excelled at drawing textiles. The background is red, possibly from William's nickname, William Rufus. Image from Historia Anglorum by Matthew Paris, c. 1255, British Library MS Cotton Claudius D.
August 2, 2025 at 11:45 PM
Reposted by LilacSunday
carinr.bsky.social
Update on the great discovery of archived BL manuscript metadata: I started putting together a page at my website to host PDFs of the archived pages I retrieve.

ruffnotes.org/british-libr...

#medievalsky
British Library Manuscripts Metadata
Since the cyberattack of October 2023, the British Library has restored only a fraction of the manuscripts it digitized over the past decade-plus. Even for those MSS now back online, we have only t…
ruffnotes.org
August 1, 2025 at 8:09 PM
lilacsunday.bsky.social
The Brooklyn Public Library should apologize to Finland.

www.helsinkitimes.fi/culture/2756...
Moomin character pulled from New York exhibit over racism concern
A Moomin character was removed from a Brooklyn library exhibition after a donor deemed it racist. This is the first time in 80 years the character has faced such an accusation, prompting confusion in ...
www.helsinkitimes.fi
August 1, 2025 at 4:13 PM
Reposted by LilacSunday
davidho.bsky.social
Motherfucking wind farms…
July 30, 2025 at 5:02 PM
lilacsunday.bsky.social
July 19, 1692: Sarah Good, Elizabeth Howe, Rebecca Nurse, Susannah Martin, and Sarah Wildes, having been found guilty of witchcraft during the Salem Witch Trials, are hanged at Proctor's Ledge. #OTD
📷 The back of the death warrant, as signed by Sheriff George Corwin.
Photo of the top of a yellowed handwritten document, the writing still dark and legible. It reads: "Salem July 19th 1692 I caused the within named persons to be Executed according to the Tenour of the within Warrant. George Corwin, Sherif" Document in the collection of the Boston Public Library, digitized and available online courtesy of the Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project at the University of Virginia.
July 19, 2025 at 8:06 PM
lilacsunday.bsky.social
July 18, 1692: 75 year old Ann Foster, in her third day of "examination" during the Salem Witch Trials and having already confessed to witchcraft, stated that "...there was three hundred & five [witches] in the whole Country & that they would ruin that place, the Vilige..."
Record of the multi-day examination of Ann Foster beginning July 15, 1692. Courtesy of The Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive at the University of Virginia. The entry for July 18 begins about halfway down the page: "18 July 1692. Ann Foster Examined confesed that the devill in shape of a #[black] man apeared to her w'th Goody carier about six yeare since when they made her awitch & that she promised to serve the divill two yeares: upon w'ch the Divill promised her prosperity & many things but never performed it, that she & martha Carier did both ride on a stick or pole when they went to the witch meeting at Salem Village & that the stick broak: as they ware caried in the aire above the tops of the trees & they fell but she did hang fast about the neck of Goody Carier & ware presently at the vilage, that she was then much hurt of her Leg, she further saith that she hard some of the witches say that their was three hundred & five in the whole Country, & that they would ruin that place the Vilige, also saith ther was present at that metting two men besides mr Buroughs the minister & one of them had gray haire, she saith that she formerly frequented the publique metting to worship god. but the divill had such power over her that she could not profit there & that was her undoeing: she saith that above three or foure yeares agoe Martha Carier told her she would bewitch James Hobbs child to death & the child dyed in twenty four howers..."
July 18, 2025 at 10:43 PM
lilacsunday.bsky.social
Remember your homeland's heritage!

In June 1692, Reverend Cotton Mather drafted a letter from himself and his fellow Puritan ministers urging Salem's Court of Oyer and Terminer to continue prosecuting, if cautiously, witchcraft and "Molestations from the Invisible World." Cite in ALT.
Front of a long letter drafted by Cotton Mather. The handwriting is neat and legible, and the content is chilling. It begins: "The afflicted State of our poor Neighbors, that are now suffering by Molestations from the Invisible World, we apprehend so deplorable, that we think their Condition calls for the utmost help of all Persons in their several capacities." Some paragraphs later and on the other side, it concludes: "Nevertheless, We cannot but humbly-recommend unto the Government, the speedy and vigorous Prosecution of such as have rendred themselves obnoxious, according to the Direction given in the Laws of God, and the wholesome Statutes of the English Nation, for the Detection of Witchcrafts." Mather and the other ministers caution against relying too heavily on spectral evidence, which could be the work of the Devil. The "Return of Several Ministers," June 15, 1692. Boston College Collection of Cotton Mather letters, MS-1990-023. Image from Wikimedia Commons by Lewismr, 11-17-2017, Creative Commons Attribution - Share Alike 4.0 International.
July 15, 2025 at 4:40 PM
lilacsunday.bsky.social
"According to the New York Times, Boston had one up on New York because they actually catch their Snowy Owls at Logan Airport..." #OwlSky 🦉
youtu.be/H3xKx0DAxQw?...
The Snowy Owls of Logan Airport
YouTube video by Anna Miller Multimedia
youtu.be
July 14, 2025 at 10:44 PM
Reposted by LilacSunday
sanandreasfault.bsky.social
I could do a major earthquake today and nobody would notice
June 6, 2025 at 2:19 AM