The Long Way Round

It’s a really strange mistake to make because as far as I can tell there’s no ambiguity in the text: it says, in Roman numerals, “.xvii.” So this isn’t a case of somebody miscounting, or having a wild interpretation as to what ‘counts’ under a certain classification, or even making an inappropriately definitive statement about something unprovable. It’s just… the wrong number. And he says it more than once, and then directly quotes lines from the text, in the edition I’m looking at right now, so it’s not that he’s looking at a different version?

“a secht mbliana dec” (seventeen years) – LU Táin, 61a

“xvii mbliana” (17 years) – Book of Leinster Táin, 63a

“secht mbliana déc” (seventeen years) – Book of Leinster Táin, 68a

The only ambiguity I’ve come across is that the second instance of his age in LU is given as sé blíadna, but YBL says secht for this line and it seems that sé is intended as an abbreviation, albeit a confusing one, rather than suggesting that he’s sixteen. None of these possibly say fifteen.

He replies saying that I’m right, he had a momentary blip and put the wrong age. (ideal, gratifying)

He replies saying that actually it is ambiguous, and introduces me to a whole new issue I didn’t know existed, so that I can go down even more of a Cú Chulainn rabbithole. (still fun)

He doesn’t reply because he is a Professor and too busy to deal with random MA students who show up in his inbox. (less good, no closure)

And yes I do realise I have reached a whole new level of nerdery if I am correcting actual academics about small Cú Chulainn details. But. You know. This is where we’re at.

"It's actually bad."

*I watch the movie*

Something like Breaking Bad, for example, has low squiggability (that’s what I’m calling this quality). It’s tightly written, the characters are consistent, there’s little left to interpolate or extrapolate. Obviously, people DO write fanfic of Breaking Bad, but it still has a low squiggability score. Whereas something like Supernatural has a high squiggability score. Fantasy and science fiction often have high squiggability scores. This suggests squiggability could also be related to worldbuilding and potential for people to borrow a premise or setting.

And one message in those chats has stuck with me. Some guy said: «We’ve all seen what Russians did to Mariupol, Bakhmut, Huliaipole. Move as far as you can and forget this place like a nightmare».

Forget this place? I couldn’t get this message out of my mind and thought about it while looking at everything as if for the first time, trying on this perspective.

Flowers waiting for spring in front of every apartment building, residents plant them and tend the gardens on their own, just to have a pretty communal yard (explosion). My usual route to school and another one we used to take when we got bored of the main one. My best friend and I have never ran out of topics to discuss while going to the school and back. We stood near her house for so long when going home because we couldn’t stop talking (drone buzzing). This is where my friends and I tried to smoke cigarettes for the first time when we were teenagers and thought that adults are crazy for doing this by choice (drone going down). This is where I almost won an e-book in a quiz many years ago and I still remember the right answers I didn’t give because I was scared to make a mistake (explosion). Books my parents bought me when I was a kid and jokingly asked me not to read them so fast this time (bombs in the air). My childhood plushie I’ve had almost my entire life, can’t imagine it in a different bedroom, he’s a homebody and a proud local (explosion). Pizza place where my friends and I celebrated end of the school year. My dad burned his hand here with a hot plate on my birthday once. The food was good (artillery somewhere far away). Listening to music in the backseat and looking at my favorite view in the entire world. One turn and we’re home (all clear).

Person who focused on it in undergrad: yea I’m a bit of an expert on that field; it was my major

Person who has done at least some graduate level work on the topic: yeah I specialize in [subsubfield]

I am a Holocaust historian, I am Jewish, and I’m part of the 3G survivor community. Judaism is fascinating in terms of memory construction, because our history is deeply intertwined with our liturgy and observance. This leads to many Jewish individuals considering themselves experts on Jewish history, when actually they’re conversant in a very specific, highly curated version of Jewish memory.

As a Holocaust historian, this becomes more acute because people with survivor grandparents assume that having those bonds and receiving their relations’ memories makes them well-versed in those histories. No, it makes them well versed in receiving their grandparent’s memories.

And that’s fine. That’s important. But memories aren’t the same as history. And when we receive our descendants’ personal histories, we are receiving their MEMORIES, shaped inevitably by lack of context, time, and trauma. Or to put it differently, we are receiving their primary source documents.

And that’s important. We need primary sources; without primary sources we would be literally unable to practice history. BUT, the practice of history requires that we interrogate primary sources within all aspects of their context, not accept them at face value.

This can became really messy when you study the history of your own minority identity group. In those circumstances, the experiences of y/our ancestors become a mythology that a large portion of y/our group accepts as fact. But then, when put under the scrutiny of critical historical interrogation, a lot of those agreed upon truths can be exposed as myth, and not fact. And that’s when y/our identity group turns on you.

A notorious example of this are the multiple versions of Tosia Altman’s death. The parts everyone can agree on:

-the attic of the celluloid factory where Tosia may or may not have been hiding in caught fire, potentially because someone didn’t dispose of a cigarette correctly, or because Tosia was heating ointment to treat the wounds she’d received in the fall of Mila 18 and the fire got out of control

-she jumped from the attic

-the Gestapo showed up and cleared the scene

-she was dead

That’s where the similarities end. Some say she was already dying from smoke inhalation when she jumped. Others say she was gravely injured and close to death on account of burns, wounds sustained in the fighting, and injuries from the jump. Some say she died immediately after the jump. Some say that she was alive after the jump, and then arrested by the Gestapo, and taken to the hospital where she was either: interrogated and denied medical care until she succumbed to her wounds, or tortured to death.

Here's what my response would sound like: "I was in my seventh grade French class. We were learning how to count, when the phone rang. It was the front office saying that my mom was there to pick me up. I was excited because we hadn't talked about an early pickup. As I gathered my things, Steven B. said 'a lot of people are being picked up early today.' When I got to the front office my mom looked upset, and the office staff looked like they were trying not to look upset. In the car, she told me that two airplanes crashed into the WTC towers. I pictured two small, single-engine planes, and didn't quite get it. At home, I went up to my room and played with my dollhouse. It was all anyone really talked about for the next few months, but it took me years before I was able to fully grasp the events. In college I interned with the 9/11 Museum in Manhattan, and that experience overrode a lot of my ability to recall what I thought and felt in the months following 9/11/01."

That "testimony" is quasi-useless if you don't take into account such issues as age, maturity, parenting, and the impact of time/memory on recall. Now when I try to remember the actual day of, or week of, or month of, all I remember is what I wrote above, and a discussion in English class about how it looked like that scene from Independence Day, all interspersed with imagery of "jumpers," which I only encountered when I was 19; nearly a decade AFTER the events took place.

not only did our families live through the horror that was the ussr but now we gotta be reminded of that shit constantly in the community that we're supposed to share as queer people

not to mention that the ussr wasnt even communist it was just fascist. why are u communists using the symbols of fascists. it just looks like ur idolizing a fascist state.