Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 6h

Post a film with an excellent soundtrack! 🎶

Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 7h

The local bookstore had her among the "Classics" section with Jane Austen, James Baldwin, Dickens, etc. So I figured what the heck. First 10 pages in, seems like a winner!

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Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 7h

"I had never before looked up at the sky when there was not a familiar mountain ridge against it. But this was the complete dome of heaven, all there was of it... I did not say my prayers that night: here, I felt, what would be would be."

- Will Cather
'My Antonia'

A few pages in I already like it

Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 8h

Next read: "My Antonia" by Willa Cather. I know absolutely nothing about Cather except that she wrote in the early 1900s about immigrant experience in the Midwest. Which sounds kinda interesting. So here we go.

Penguin Classics paperback cover. A young woman in turn of the century dress sits on a stone wall among endless prairie or fields

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Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 7h

Her name sits on the edge of my memory - like it was an option to read her back in school & I never did it. I'm only a few pages in now but already hooked.

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Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 8h

Next read: "My Antonia" by Willa Cather. I know absolutely nothing about Cather except that she wrote in the early 1900s about immigrant experience in the Midwest. Which sounds kinda interesting. So here we go.

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Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 12h

That is next-level romantic. I'm taking notes.

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Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 12h

If those corrosive, percolating pools could speak!

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Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 13h

Acadia National Park has a book called "Death in Acadia" that recounts all the vivid ways visitors have met 100% avoidable bad ends.

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Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 13h

American coin collector books are all the same. 50 or 60 slots that you can reasonably hope to fill in over time.

And then one that laughs emptily at you forever, knowing you will never sell the kidney required to fill it.

Close-up of a cardboard Whitman coin book with Indian Head cent slots for 1876, 1877, 1881, and 1882. 1877 is empty.

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Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 13h

What's great is that this coin is still legal tender. If you were an insane person, you could buy a penny-candy with this coin and the retailer would be obligated to accept it. (Of course they'd also be insane not to.)

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Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 13h

Seems I'm back on my old coin kick. Sorry in advance.

But this'd be a fun one to own. The 1877 Indian Head is the rarest US small cent ever. Only 852,000 minted. The lingering depression from the Panic of 1873 meant there was no need to mint new money.

A nice uncirculated one like this? So rare!

Shiny 1877 Indian Head cent in Mint-State 64 (uncirculated gradesbrun from 60 to a theoretical perfect 70), listed on eBay for $16,585.00

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Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 14h

That's such a smart use of space! I hope it's a great time.

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Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 14h

I kind of love this. There's a large nature preserve in Tuscany that contains, among other things, wild wolves! That's either an incredible educational experience, a lawsuit waiting to happen, or both.

IG screenshot of Parco di San Rossore with a wolf snuffling the ground by a paved track through woodland

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Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 15h

That sounds like a cool event! There's actually a new(ish) place in Portland here that shows classic movies & makes a social event of it. A great idea!

I'm not the same name on IG. I never actually post there. I just troll it for archaeology, Italian stuff, and cat videos. As one does!

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Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 16h

I only keep FB because my mom messages me through it with links she wants me to see. If not for that I'd have cancelled it ages ago. I'm actually getting a lot out of IG right now, though I don't love that Meta tracks literally everything like the worst kind of stalker.

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Reposted by Stori3d Past

Kayleigh | Developmental Editor ✍🏻📚 @editsinthemargins.com · 19h

Dear Writer,

Stop trying to sound like someone else—you're you, and that's lovely.

Love, Kayleigh

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Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 20h

When I was doing a reconstruction of the House of Sallust years ago I noticed the same thing - to the right of the tablinum, a proper door leading to the back garden, but to the left, a false door that had been turned into a lararium. I guess symmetry in atriums was a big deal.

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Reposted by Stori3d Past

Becky Wallower @bwallower.bsky.social · 21h

#AdoorableThursday
In fact a false door, painted to left of tablinium, in house of local #Pompeii official C. Iulius Polybius w early style facade.
Like in recent discoveries in the city, owner was in process of upgrading 2C BC property, hence amphorae + heap of lime piled in the corner.
#Roman 🏺

A painted door, included in the layout of the tablinium for symmetry. It's actually plaster, showing four panels within a red and white doorframe.
The four panels have the appearance of being on two doors, white with red borders bounded by darker outlines, and three circles on the section dividing upper and lower panels on each one.
A heap of building material and some broken amphorae are shown to the left of the false door.

A view showing the layout of the tablinium and the painted false door. The room has white painted walls with a red border at the top, a large entrance through the facing wall leading to other parts of the site. The painted false door is to the left of this, and an empty doorway is on the right - clearly intended to hold a 'real' door.
Remains of an upper level are also evident, with five window openings in the wall over the doors/entrance.

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Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 1d

"The first step in appreciation of antiquity was to bring it out of a magical misty past and realize that it had been a firm historical actuality. The shift from credulous awe to sober scrutiny is what typifies the Renaissance."

- Michael Levey
'Early Renaissance'

Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 2d

"[The Renaissance involved] the desire for information and a wish to know the truth of things. Man himself became a less passive creature, less the subject of revelation and more himself the one who revealed."

- Michael Levey
'Early Renaissance'

Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 2d

I enjoyed the Penguin "Mannerism" book so much that I've picked up "Early Renaissance." Great, fast read. The key point is that the Renaissance was a rediscovering of art for art's sake -- not in service to Church or even State.

This painting of musicians by Lorenzo Costa, c1488, encapsulates this.

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Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 1d

So close! Gotta say, it's been lovely not stumbling across cast-off contact lenses ever since the kid went off to college.

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Reposted by Stori3d Past

Jörg Hillebrand @gaghyogi49.bsky.social · 1d

Angus MacGyver at the Strategic Research Development Administration facility in the #MacGyver episode "The Human Factor"⬆️ and the Bajoran refugee camp on Valo II (#StarTrekTNG's "Ensign Ro"⬇️), both filmed at Bronson Canyon but 5 years apart.

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Reposted by Stori3d Past

L E Jenks-Brown @lejenksbrown.bsky.social · 1d

Can someone please, please tell me how wide (at widest point) and how tall the Pantheon in Rome is? The diameter of the ball that could fit inside is 43m, but that’s all I can find. Wiki has 53m for both height and width. At some point I wrote down it was 43.2m wide and 52m tall but I lost source!

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Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 1d

Vindolanda is alone among the visited forts of Hadrian's Wall for not being under the control of the National Trust or English Heritage. It's owned, managed, and run by the Vindolanda Trust. It does things its own way (of course still obeying national guidelines & laws).

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Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 1d

Vindolanda's the kind of fort where for about 10 years in the early 200s, all the old fort complex was wiped away and in its place were built hundreds of stone-based Celtic-style roundhouses. NO ONE KNOWS WHY. Then after that, back to a regular fort again for the next 200 years.

Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 1d

Chesters Roman Fort, Vindolanda Roman Fort, Housesteads Roman Fort

*3 of my followers will get this, but they'll really get it!*

Photo of a Kansas City Chiefs press conference with Andy Reid, Travis Kelce, and Patrick Mahomes. Reid is wearing a gray suit and red tie with a lapel pin. Kelce is wearing a camp-style short-sleeved shirt with a bird print, along with a suede cap, and Mahomes is wearing a white collared shirt, a pink checkered double-breasted vest, and a pale pink tie.

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Stori3d Past @stori3dpast.bsky.social · 1d

*spoilers below, guaranteed to siphon away all the fun of the joke*

Chesters - Straightlaced, button-down fort

Vindolanda - Diva & wildcard. Finds include Roman writing tablets, a wooden toilet seat, leather boxing gloves!

Housesteads - Postcard perfect fort straddling a scenic hilltop. Dapper.

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