Just Minded My Own Business Reading About Asparagus On Wikipedia When I Suddenly Encounter This

12. why the 1880s?

something about this decade really sings to me. I find in particular, nearing the end of the nineteenth century, so much was happening on around the world in terms of arts, politics, technology, colonization. world events and global news don’t personally reach the day-to-day lives of the everyday folk, but they are an important part in gauging what life, thought, and society was about—what things were important then and now?

basically for myself, reminding me of notable things that occured during the 1880s—some thematic, some of relevance to context and characters, and the rest just ?? interesting and/or wild?

cocaine is a hot new cure for everything and anything. perscribed, sold in foods and more. heroine introduced as a lesser-addictive substitute for morphine…

lots of developments in fields of psychology; many experiments and happenings; Freud starts his work 1886.

1880-1914 had +twenty million immigrants to the United States: Germany, Ireland, England, China had the most arrivals.

William Dorsey Swann, the first self-proclaimed drag queen, organizes a series of drag balls in Washington, D.C. 1880-1890s.

Jack the Ripper claims his “first” victim in 1888 White Chapel, London. big scare.

Sherlock Holmes first appears in Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study In Scarlet as part of the British magazine’s Beeton’s Christmas Annual in 1887.

Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson is published in 1886. Gothic fiction, drawing from emerging fields of science and psychology. & Treasure Island was published earlier in 1883 by him too!

Mark Twain drops The Prince and the Pauper (1881), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889).

Bel-Ami, Guy de Maupassant’s second novel is published in 1885. about a man who seduces and manipulates high society French women in the French colonies for power and wealth. MOVIE WAS ADAPTED IN 2012 STARTING ROBERT PATTINSON LOL

western European art movements very romantic and swirly and pretty: Monet, Debussy xoxo.

meanwhile, African American ragtime music becomes the “pop” music across the pond here.

North Dakota (1889), South Dakota (1889), Montana (1889), Washington (1889) become states.

train segregation laws flag beginning of Jim Crow; Civil Rights Movement of 1875 voided, making discrimination in private is not illegal, and prohibiting state intervention to personal or commercial segregation. l*nching continues throughout the south. slavery may be over on paper, but indentured labour is legal.

1882 infamous O.K Corral gunfight.

Gold Rush continues, all over the world—South Africa, to British Columbia, to California, to Argentina, to Russia-China borders.

centuries of American “Indian” wars continue.

American Dawes Act of 1887 granted American government authorization to regulate indigenous lands, including creating and assigning and enforcing reservations.

Sitting Bull’s 1883 speech of the atrocities experienced at the hands of white American settler colonists.

Canadian Pacific Railway 1881-1885. foreign labourers were hired to do a lot of heavy, dangerous, unwanted work. in America, more than 100,000km of tracks were laid by majority Chinese, Irish, Scandinavian workers.

America’s Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and Canada’s Chinese Immigration Act of 1885 was officiated, enforcing law of a Head Tax to be paid for every Chinese person entering North America. over the course of the next couple of decades, the fee of $1,500 was doubled to $5,000 was increased 500% to $25,000 in today’s currency—per person. this had devastating and lasting impacts on generations and societies of Chinese living both overseas and already in North America. propaganda at this time created many racist myths that persist today: there are too many Asians, they are taking our jobs, (the men) are gross and effeminate and a threat to (white) women, they shady and scheming people. these were the first and only major federal legislation to explicitly suspend immigration for a specific nationality in American and Canadian history. (I study Asian Canadian history, I can go on about this all day)

Tong Wars (1883-1913) had Chinatown gangs and factions in violent street wars across America, San Fransisco to New York.

large, targeted, and repeated anti-Jewish rioting (pogorm) and antisemitism rampant throughout Imperial Russia, 1881-1882 had more than two hundred anti-Jewish events alone. Jews continue to be racialized and othered.

fuck ton of colonization happening in Africa and the Middle East, Southeast Asia. Berlin conference 1884-1885 literally chopped up Africa to distribute to European powers.

Irish nationalist efforts to push forth Home Rule bill of sovereignty is defeated in British Parliament. Irish are not “white”, they are “othered” in Europe and in Americas.

use of photographic film pioneered by George Eastman, who started manufacturing film. his first camera (Kodak) was ready for sale in 1888.

Thomas Edison gets lit in New York 1883 with first electrical power station. next several year sees major cities being lit up with street lamps and public lighting with the science and works of a Nikolas Tesla (1886-1893).

hell of a lot more inventions in the works and patents being claimed. Hertz and radiowaves, Bell for telephone services.

“Between the years of 1850–1900, women were placed in mental institutions for behaving in ways the male society did not agree with”

way too much history to cram, obviously. here are some keywords for further research oki

prison industry / spiritualism / opium epidemic / irregular and uneven “modernizations” in rural vs. urban areas / class and poverty gaps / morality scares, checks, comparisons, gaps / new businesses and gadgets, products, tech to help with anything / fascination of the (colonial) Other; side shows, “freak shows” and other human zoos

“I love you. You’re deliciously uncotemporary; you belong to a mystical past and also to a very remote future. For you, time isn’t money, it’s a precious essence, delicate, full of mystery. Just to breathe with someone like you does me good.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis, tr. by Richard Howard, from “The Rock Garden,”

young and beautiful by lana del rey plays and I'm immediately seized by the desire to dress in a glorious suit and stare out the window longingly at my unrequited love who lives across the bay. who will never be with me.

The Forest by Nikita Gill

Masterlist: Vocab lists

Octobre

Yoga

Cheveux

Mer

Le marché de noel

Le bricolage

La mort

Le tribunal

La voiture

Ecriture inclusive

Space

La guerre

Vocabulaire du jour 1

Vocabulaire du jour 2

Vocabulaire du jour 3 

Vocabulaire du jour 4

Vocabulaire du jour 5

Vocabulaire du jour 6 

Vocabulaire du jour 7

Vocabulaire du jour 8

Vocabulaire du jour 9

Vocabulaire du jour 10

La Mante S1 E1

La Mante S1 E2

La Mante S1 E3

La Mante S1 E4 and 5

La Mante S1 E6

Workout

Recap Vocab verbes

Recap Vocab adverbes

Recap Vocab adjectifs

Recap Vocab nouns

Study Vocab

Hockey

La casa de papel/ Money Heist

La casa de papel/ Money Heist season 5 episode 1

Random Vocab

Random Vocab 2

Télévision et film

Faire du camping

La cuisine

L’île mystérieuse part 1

L’île mystérieuse part 2

L’île mystérieuse part 3

Le tour du monde en 80 jours part 1

Le tour du monde en 80 jours part 2

Voyage au centre de la terre part 1

Voyage au centre de la terre part 2

Vingt mile lieues sous les mers

Le Horla

Science et recherche

Bel Ami chapitre 1 

Bel Ami chapitre 2 

Bel Ami chapitre 3 

Bel Ami chapitre 4

Bel Ami chapitre 5

Bel Ami chapitre 6 

Bel Ami chapitre 7

Bel Ami chapitre 8

Bel Ami 2.1

Bel Ami 2.2.

Bel Ami 2.3

Bel Ami 2.4

Bel Ami 2.5 + 2.6

Bel Ami 2.7

Bel Ami 2.8+2.9+2.10

Flaubert: Un coeur simple

Flaubert: La légende de Saint Julien

Flaubert: Hérodias 

Nautical vocab in French

Au travail

L’environnement

La parure - Maupassant

Words I didn’t know in le Musée d’Orsay

Halloween

Les instruments

Les vêtements

Song translation masterlist/ Expressions masterlist / Grammar masterlist

November aesthetics: 'Eros' by Ludovico Einaudi, black coffee, chaotic notes from the previous night, constant headaches and fatigue, screams at midnight, dripping candle wax, cold bed, insomnia, reading William Blake's biography.

— James Elkins, Pictures and Tears: A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings

mbti types as oddly specific books i was forced to read

infj: animal farm, the alchemist

infp: frakenstein, metamorphosis, catcher in the rye

intj: crime and punishment, dune

intp: 1984, slaughter-house 5

entj: macbeth

entp: don quixote, catch-22

enfj: les misérables

enfp: alice in wonderland

isfj: anne of green gables

istj: sherlock holmes

isfp: the night circus, where the red fern grows, the hobbit

estj: the art of war, the fountainhead

estp: great gatsby

esfj: pride and prejudice, little women

esfp: the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy

istp: the girl with the dragon tattoo, fight club

Things, I'm madly in love with:

books (classic and modern, poetry and novels, old and new)

penmanship

art (looking for art, creating art, being art)

vintage porcelain (especially with golden lines)

combine my clothes for that special look that I need today

Oscar Wilde

religious studies

tattoos

flea markets, second hands, vintage and antique stores, where I can find pieces with their own history

music halls with tall ceilings and great shiny chandeliers

Greece, Italy, United Kingdom

collecting different strange things – from animal bones and dry flowers to glass bottles and old greeting cards

natural history

botanic

creating my own beautiful world