One of the most powerful moments I experienced as an ancient history student was when I was teaching cuneiform to visitors at a fair. A father and his two little children came up to the table where I was working. I recognised them from an interfaith ceremony I’d attended several months before: the father had said a prayer for his homeland, Syria, and for his hometown, Aleppo.
All three of them were soft-spoken, kind and curious. I taught the little girl how to press wedges into the clay, and I taught the little boy that his name meant “sun” and that there was an ancient Mesopotamian God with the same name. I told them they were about the same age as scribes were when they started their training. As they worked, their father said to them gently: “See, this is how your ancestors used to write.”
And I thought of how the Ancient City of Aleppo is almost entirely destroyed now, and how the Citadel was shelled and used as a military base, and how Palmyran temples were blown up and such a wealth of culture and history has been lost forever. And there I was with these children, two small pieces of the future of a broken country, and I was teaching them cuneiform. They were smiling and chatting to each other about Mesopotamia and “can you imagine, our great-great-great-grandparents used to write like this four thousand years ago!” For them and their father, it was more than a fun weekend activity. It was a way of connecting, despite everything and thousands of kilometres away from home, with their own history.
This moment showed me, in a concrete way, why ancient studies matter. They may not seem important now, not to many people at least. But history represents so much of our cultural identity: it teaches us where we come from, explains who we are, and guides us as we go forward. Lose it, and we lose a part of ourselves. As historians, our role is to preserve this knowledge as best we can and pass it on to future generations who will need it. I helped pass it on to two little Syrian children that day. They learnt that their country isn’t just blood and bombs, it’s also scribes and powerful kings and Sun-Gods and stories about immortality and tablets that make your hands sticky. And that matters.
- Thomas Jefferson having a mockingbird named Dick
- Andrew Jackson’s parrot being kicked out of his funeral because it wouldn’t stop saying ‘fuck’
- Andrew Jackson beating the shit out of his would-be assassin with a cane
- Andrew Jackson throwing a huge public party in the White House for his inauguration and having to sneak out because it got out of hand. He could only sneak back in when someone got the idea to move all the alcohol outside.
- John Laurens getting out of bed at Valley Forge and hitting his head on the ceiling
- Ben Franklin wanting the national bird to be the turkey
- Caleb Brewster’s reason for joining the continental army basically being that he just wanted to kick some ass and have some fun
- Caleb Brewster signing his name in big letters on spy reports for the Culper Ring
- George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton going on a fishing trip together, for Washington’s health
- gay brothels being called “Molly Houses”
- Benedict Arnold ploughing through 337 pages of William Blackstone’s “Commentaries” just to find the word militia for a secret code
- baby farmers (this is some crazy shit look it up)
- Thomas Jefferson having a ram that he called “An abominable animal”. It killed a young boy on the White House lawn.
- Aaron Burr having to ban snacks from the senate floor
- George Washington refusing to respond to a British letter because they didn’t address him correctly
- Aaron Burr being attacked by bedbugs and then proceeding to sleep on the floor for five hours
- Thomas Jefferson being a frat boy in college
- Alexander Hamilton being reported dead after going to burn barns and then showing up hours later soaking wet because he fell into a river
- Martha Washington outliving four children and two husbands and still saying that the worst day of her life was when Thomas Jefferson came to visit
Kimono Early Showa period (1926-1940) A chirimen silk kimono featuring two types of sometimes overlapping yabane (arrow feather) motifs, one done in stenciling and the other in shibori (tie-dye).
Imagine if someone had rocked up to the Met Ball in a pinpoint accurate copy of this, except with worm-on-a-string fringe and the rest of the color palette changed to match.
this month, 30 years ago - a postcard advertising ACT UP’s same-sex kiss-in event to challenge homophobia during the AIDS crisis, created by gran fury, may 1988
anyways. drag kings have been around for decades & are equally as important as drag queens. drag masculinity faces serious erasure & that’s a problem. support your local drag kings
whenever I see people reblog this or my other post about this with some variation of “oh i didn’t even know drag kings existed!!” it makes me so sad. I’m glad u know it now but like, the fact that people don’t even know drag kings exist? how many people do you thing would get into drag if they knew drag kings and drag masculinity was a Thing? how many more people would get to explore their masculinity via drag?
Some kings to get you going.
Landon Cider, Buck Wylde, Miles Long, Koco Caine, Murray Hill, and Spikey Van Dykey.
I should also recommend Beau Jangles and Mudd the Two Spirit, my two personal favorite kings!
Beau is very much inspired by Cab Calloway, so you know. I, Heidi Ho myself, just have to be obsessed.
Mudd is an indigenous king and honestly? His looks are FUCKING INSANE I love him.
Drag kings haven’t just been around for decades, they’ve been around for over a hundred years.
As an aspiring professional queen myself, the erasure of drag masculinity is quite literally offensive to the artform as a whole. Kings have contributed so much and they deserve better.
They have been around for over a hundred years!
In the 1800s, drag kings were called “male impersonators” (and likewise, drag queens called “female impersonators”), and they would work the music halls (like, variety acts, comedy and theatre) - mostly singing silly or risqué songs like “Burlington Bertie from Bow”, “Following in Father’s Footsteps” or “Jolly Good Luck to the Girl that Loves a Soldier” - and many of them also did panto, acting as the Prince Charming, or Peter Pan (as is traditional), things like that
One of the early ones was Bessie Bonehill in the 1890s
Here she is, from an image search -
Later on, there was Ella Shields
And Hetty King, who worked until the 1930s, 30 years on the halls
