Ladies and gents and etcetera, let me tell you about JAMES FUCKING BARRY, aka Mr Awesome.
He was a surgeon from the UK and lived mostly in the first half of the 19th century. He was a damn Inspector General in Military Hospitals. He worked in South Africa and India and Jamaica and Canada and Saint Helena and damn a lot of other places.
He fought for better food, sanitation and medical care for prisoners and soldiers and their families and basically MEDICAL CARE FOR EVERY1
He was the first Brit to perform a succesful Ceaseran section (in Africa) and the child was named after him okay
He had a dog named Psyche
Wherever they sent him he was soon kicked out or moved because well he was quite bitchy. He got into trouble with local politicians and soldiers and stuff like A LOT. It got him arrested once.
He did what he wanted.
He got into fights a lot.
Duels forever. He killed a guy in one of them.
He hated on Florence Nightingale once. Like, hated really hard. She remembered it till he died.
He got accused of homosexuality bc of his close relationship with the governor of Cape Colony Lord Charles Somerset (who was also quite a cutie himself, go check him out)
Oh did I mention he was born as a “she” and managed to pass as a guy for over 50 damn years and was therefore the first Brit born female to be a fucking qualified surgeon isn’t that shit fucking COOL.
He was forgotten for long because people didn’t want any scandal about his/her/whatever gender.
Ze is called a “he” out of habit by people because let’s face it we’ll never know whether ze was trans or genderqueer or just REALLY damn wanted to be a doctor.
Either way James Barry is fucking awesome.
He is my crush forever.
Hillbillies still exist. Found that out today. I remember reading about how in the 50’s they would give guided tours through Appalachia for city people so they could see hillbillies in their natural habitat. Should totally bring that back.
Not actually…
This type of stuff makes me sick. Literally attempting to treat us like animals because we have an accent, our culture is different, and poverty runs rampant throughout the area. It’d be really nice if one day people from different areas wouldn’t act so shocked to hear that a girl in a graduate program actually is from WV.
I’ve never used an outhouse, yet I have been asked if that is my facility. I have been asked if I ride a horse to school. I have been asked if I own shoes. I have been asked if I live in a shack.
You know I love WV, it’s my home state, and although while I want to leave here it will still be home with the rolling mountains. But really comments like this irritate me. We have a rich cultural heritage, one that is being actually considered a minority. That heritage is full of interesting history of people you call “hillbillies.” People who moved here because they were starving and they brought with them their culture. People who wake up every day to crawl into a dark mine and not know for sure if they’re going to come home to their loved ones.
My mom’s side of the family lives in a holler. My great grandfather would your typical idea of a “hillbilly” but you know he has worked every day of his life. He has outlived two wives and some of his children. Even retired he still works on his little farm everyday, picking strawberries and other fresh produce. He tends his chickens and gets fresh eggs every day. My great-grandmother taught me, as a young child, to cook a meal for a large group of people with fresh foods and to do it homemade. Fresh cornbread. Fresh whipped cream.
Have you ever sat around with a group of people, eating a home cooked meal, and listen to the stories they tell?
Have you ever eaten fresh gooseberries because those things are fucking delicious.
We’re not a side show. We’re not a group of freaks. We’re a community and while I don’t always agree with everything the community believes in (like organized religion) mountain blood runs in my veins.
In honor of the birthday of Edward II, let me please you with this drawing of a cat that summarizes his reign pretty accurately.
Baa baa black sheep,
Have you any wool?
Yes sir, yes sir,
Three bags full.
One for the Master,
One for the Dame,
And one for the little boy
Who lives down the lane.The song is definitely not about black sheep, or even little boys – it’s about taxes! Back in the 13th century, King Edward I realized that he could make some decent cash by taxing the sheep farmers. As a result of the new taxes, one third of the price of a sack of wool went to the king, one third to the church and the last third to the farmer. Nothing was left for the shepherd boy, crying down the lane. As it happens, black sheep are also bad luck: the fleece can’t be dyed, and so it’s worth less to the sheep farmer.
The Postman Always Barks Twice
At the end of the last century, the US Mail traveled by trains crisscrossing the nation. Riding with the mail was Owney, a once-stray terrier that found a home with the Albany Post Office in New York, and became the most well-traveled dog of his day.
The post office in Albany gave him a collar and tags to identify his official status as mail dog, and soon other post offices he visited added new tags to his collar. It is said that he traveled to all 48 contiguous states, and that he accumulated some 1,017 tags in his life. Today, the Smithsonian has 372 tags in their collection.
In 1895, he left the United States on a four month long around-the-world trip, accompanying international mail deliveries. His international exploits were covered in newspapers in several countries.
During his life he was photographed and honored many times by the Postal Service and in the popular press. Following his death in 1897, mail clerks raised the money for his remains to be preserved as the mascot of the US Postal Service and was first displayed at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. He was later donated to the Smithsonian National Postal Museum, where remains a popular display along with many of his tags and other artifacts.
Curious History: The Origins and History of All Hallow’s Eve (Halloween)
Halloween’s origins date back more than 2,000 years. On what we consider November 1, Europe’s Celtic peoples celebrated their New Year’s Day, called Samhain (SAH-win). According to Irish mythology, Samhain was a time when the ‘door’ to the Otherworld opened enough for fairies and the dead to communicate with us; Samhain was essentially a festival for the dead.
On Samhain eve—what we know as Halloween—spirits were thought to walk the Earth as they traveled to the afterlife. Fairies, demons, and other creatures were also said to be abroad. It is still the custom in some areas to set a place at the Samhain feast for the souls of dead kinfolk and to tell tales of one’s forebears. However, the souls of thankful kin could return to bestow blessings just as easily as that of a murdered person could return to wreak revenge. Fairies were also thought to steal humans on Samhain and fairy mounds were to be avoided.
People stayed near to home or, if forced to walk in the darkness, turned their clothing inside-out or carried iron or salt to keep the fairies at bay. The Gaelic custom of wearing costumes and masks was a bid to befuddle the harmful spirits or ward them off. In Scotland, young men would dress in white with masked, veiled or blackened faces. They were known as ‘guisers’ and the practice was common in the 16th century in the Scottish countryside. Candle lanterns, carved from turnips, were part of the traditional festival. Large turnips were hollowed out, carved with faces and set on windowsills to ward off evil spirits.
Samhain was later transformed as Christian leaders co-opted pagan holidays. In the seventh century Pope Boniface IV decreed November 1 All Saints’ Day, or All Hallows’ Day. The night before Samhain continued to be observed with bonfires, costumes, and parades, though under a new name: All Hallows’ Eve—later “Halloween.”
Children going door to door ‘guising’ or ‘galoshin’ in costumes and masks, carrying turnip lanterns, offering entertainment of in return for food or coins, was traditional in the 19th century and continued well into the 20th century. At the time of mass transatlantic Irish and Scottish immigration, the custom of Halloween in North America began.
The 1980 Moscow Olympics were boycotted by countries such as the US, Japan, China, Argentina, and Canada. This left room in the competition for teams who would not otherwise be invited to compete.
One such team was the Zimbabwe’s all white field hockey team who went on to win gold. The BBC interviewed team member Liz Chase about this experience.
Not making fun of this but when I first scanned my screen I read “Zombie Hockey Team wins Gold” I was like WAIT WHAT…OH. I’M DUMB.
Valentine’s Day was first introduced to Japan in 1936 and has become widely popular. However, because of a translation error made by a chocolate company, only women buy Valentine chocolates for their spouses, boyfriends, or friends. In fact, it is the only day of the year many single women will reveal their crush on a man by giving him chocolate. The men don’t return the favor until White Day, a type of “answer day” to Valentine’s Day, which is on March 14.
July 17, 1955: Disneyland Theme Park Opens in California
On this day in 1955, the Disneyland Park opened its gates to 28,000 people – half were actual invitees while the other half entered using counterfeit tickets. With the traffic causing poor timing of celebrity arrivals, high temperatures, no drinking fountains and a gas leak, Walt Disney and his executives referred to this day as “Black Sunday” for over a decade, declaring the official opening day to be on July 18 when a more satisfactory debut was made.
The Disneyland Park in Anaheim, California was the only theme park to be designed and built under direct supervision of Walt Disney. Learn about the early beginnings of the Midwestern cartoonist whose massive media empire grew from a talking mouse named Mortimer (Mickey’s original name!).
In 1971, the Navy dispatched a team of dolphins “armed” with large carbon-dioxide-filled hypodermic needles strapped to their beaks to guard a U.S. Navy base in Vietnam. The dolphins had been taught to hunt humans swimming in the water and prod them with their beak, delivering a fatal injection in the humans’ lungs or stomachs.
This is my family.
I’m directly related to the Vance family through my mother’s side.
I remember my great grandmother telling me stories as a little girl about her Dad/Grandpa (I don’t remember which and she’s no longer here to tell me) Jim Vance who was also apart of this famous family feud.
Through both my parents I’m related to both the Hatfields and the McCoy’s families.
It amazes me when I meet people who think The Hatfield’s and McCoy’s weren’t real people and just stories.
This is my family.
This is my heritage.
