Behave like that for 7 years ago after I got hurt by former school for Grade 1 - 3, started of Grade 6, I always bring my old phone in school into Grade 10 before COVID-19… 2 years later during COVID-19, I’m slowly changed my life was getting better as seeing the place for something new and better, I’m always being my hope about life as I’ll never being fight to my childhood friends in Grade 1 - 3 as be concord about my reform life… As get possibility, when I was realized about similar actions like Grade 1 - 3 during I was in Grade 5 which it got hurt in physical and emotional to my feeling as my ego was broken, I started redemption myself for learned about that but gaining my self-esteem in junior high school and self-reformation in no school… I always nice to everyone…
So, since Y’all liked the last bit of family holiday insanity, I think you’ll enjoy a story from dad’s side of the family. Also, it’s vaguely timely in that this is the time of year people start to do dumb shit with Christmas trees in order to avoid dump fees.
The year is still 1956, because Grandpa is a stickler for taking the tree down before New Year’s Eve, mostly because Grandpa is also the Monterey County Commissioner, and responsible for holding the New Year’s Office Party at his place. You know, a responsible adult who has to make nuanced, careful policy decisions, the kind of guy that turns his taxes in before February.
The kind of guy who decides he can burn his Christmas tree in the fireplace instead of taking it to the dump.
There is no good reason for grandpa to NOT take the tree there- Monterey is on the California Coast and has an average temperature of 50 degrees in December. It will snow in hell before it snows in Monterey. And this was the 50′s! Dump fees didn’t exist yet! It’s easy, free, and very unlikely to set your house on fire!
But no, Grandpa, an other wise sober and sensible man, decided instead to take this highly desiccated and moderately explosive tree and actually shove it up the chimney, before setting it alight.
Dad distinctly recalls his ears popping as the barometric pressure in the room dropped, as the conflagration drew air up into the chimney with enough force to take one of the curtains with it. Grandpa is standing there in front of the fireplace like an idiot, presumably slightly deafened by the jet-engine-like ROAR coming from the fireplace.
Dad, having at least two working survival instincts, ran outside to see if spark were landing on the roof and if he needed to call 911. There were not sparks landing on the roof, becuase whatever flaming bits of tree were left were being blown into the stratosphere by the jet of flame erupting out of the chimney like the worlds biggest butane torch. The ground shook, from the force of the tree combusting in such a confined fashion. The earth was probably moved slightly out of orbit.
Fortunately, once the tree died down, it did not take the house with it, and they were all left with shattered nerves and a structurally unsound chimney.
“Well that was a hell of a thing.” Said grandpa, still standing in front of the fireplace. He turned, slowly, looking moderately shell-shocked towards his sobbing daughters and Dad, who was too awed for any reasonable sense of panic.
“Don’t tell your mother, and we can all have ice cream.”
Quick reboggle for tagging purposes, also y’all will enjoy this one
Okay the WEIRDEST THING is going going down right now
So some guy in Michigan in the US has just found a letter in his grandmother’s house; it seems to be a pen pal letter from 1973ish, and it’s from a young Welsh girl. In it, she lists:
Her name, and the names of her brother (Gwynedd) and sister (Catrin)
Their ages
Where she lives in Wales (Denbigh)
Her hobbies, including horse riding and reading pony books.
So this American dude decides to take a photo, whack it on Twitter and ask the only Welsh person he knows if there’s any way to track this Welsh girl down, because you know, ALL WELSH PEOPLE KNOW EACH OTHER, OBVIOUSLY
Except
I am furious to report that it has worked
Welsh person he tags doesn’t know, but takes up the challenge. Someone reckons the Catrin might be a woman who translated a hymn book once, and checks the foreword to see that the dates and ages do seem to be about right. Someone else suddenly has a brainwave - wait, isn’t she the mother of Steff, the comedian?
My husband gets tagged, takes one look at this letter, and is like “That is 1000% my aunt.”
So now it’s 20 to midnight, Steff’s aunt has obviously not yet seen the excited message to put Twitter out of their misery, and my mother-in-law is currently on the phone gleefully telling us that when that letter was written her sister had never sat on a horse in her life before, and she’d lied to an American pen pal for clout before the internet even existed.
The chronicle of the monk Herbert of Reichenau for the year 1021 ends “My brother Werner was born on November 1.“
1021 was not an uneventful year. The emperor began a campaign into Italy. Illustrious abbots died. There was an earthquake. But Herbert took the time to note, at the end of the year, that his brother was born.
Of such acts of tenderness is history made.
This post broke through the shell of crustiness on my medievalist heart and made me go ‘aww’.
There was a medieval parenting manual that recommended parents smack pieces of furniture their toddlers bumped into and scold the furniture for being so naughty as to get in the way, so that the kids would laugh and forget about their bumps and bruises
I read that and my heart melted
(source:Medieval Women by Deirdre Jackson. She cited the primary source but I cannot for the life of me find the book to check what it was called)
We should hold a thousandth birthday party for Werner in a couple of years.
In 11th century Constantinople, the historian, philosopher, monk, and general insufferable know-it-all Michael Psellos once wrote a letter to his infant grandson. He begins like this:
“Perhaps I will not live to see you, dearest newborn and offspring of my soul, when you reach adolescence, if God so wishes it, or when you mature; for the days of my life are failing and the time approaches when its thread will be cut short. I have therefore decided to address this speech to you in advance of that day and reciprocate your innate charm with the graces of speech. I should be ungrateful and entirely thoughtless if at a time when your perceptions and thoughts are undeveloped (though as far as I alone am concerned you are perfect in these respects, insofar as you hear my voice and feel my affection, cling to my neck, slip into my embrace, and put up with my annoying kisses), I should be ungrateful, I say, if I myself failed to render to you a fitting return.”
He then goes on to praise his grandson, who is the most HANDSOME and INTELLIGENT and RATIONAL child ever born. (No seriously, he calls a four-month-old baby “rational” – rationality and moderation were considered important virtues so OBVIOUSLY his grandson was full of them.)
He observes every little thing the baby does – breastfeeding, taking baths, fussing, babytalking – with unrestrained marvel and delight, complete with flowery descriptions:
“[Your eyes] moved cheerfully, whenever a smile was about to come upon you. It sufficed for me to take note of this only once—I needed no Delphic tripod or bacchic ecstasy—to prophesy without hesitation from the kindly look in your eyes that you were about to laugh. And, true enough, you moved your lip slightly, blushed, and, behold! you laughed.”
He takes special pride that the baby likes him, and puts himself in the picture too:
“And when I would see you becoming perplexed, I immediately snatched you away from your toys, took you up in my hands, and lifted you up in the air until you were full of joy.”
He wishes him to lead a happy life. He calls him “my living pearl, the ornament of my soul”. And he ends the letter like this:
“May you obtain all that you love, but especially education and good sense, which alone can elevate the soul to its proper beauty and which constitute understanding of the more profound things. I wrote all this for you while holding you in my arms and kissing you insatiably.”
Isn’t it incredible? Translation by Anthony Kaldellis, from Mothers and Sons, Fathers and Daughters: The Byzantine Family of Michael Psellos (University of Notre Dame Press, 2006).
The Gimli Glider! So many things came together to make this safe landing:
The co-pilot was a local and knew all the local airstrips
…including the decommissioned 10,000 foot military runway they ultimately chose as their destination
…but because it had been decommissioned, was now utilized by a local go-kart club for racing
…which, on that day, was indeed having a great time racing go-karts on the old runway
…and because there was no way to alert the people on the ground and the plane’s approach was utterly silent (NO ENGINES) with kids in go-karts were whizzing around on the runway, the final approach was, shall we say, alarming
…until a parent looked up and noticed a giant fucking airplane getting bigger and bigger
OH GOD HE’S LANDINGHERE
Thus within seconds the whole area was cleared by frantic parents
Plane lands perfectly, but without power they had to drop the gear via gravity and the nose wheel failed to lock into place
Front gear collapses
Plane screeches to a halt, and because they landed at a go-kart event pretty much every dad has a fire extinguisher, so they manage to extinguish the small fire caused by friction
The only minor injuries were due to passengers jumping from the emergency exit slides, which dangled off the ground due to elevated tail height
I read an article about this back around 1990 and my favorite part was that, after landing and stopping, the pilots were reflexively going through the “crash landing” checklist, shutting down all the fuel pumps and lines to prevent a fire from spreading, until it dawned on them halfway through that they didn’t need to do those steps because the tanks were quite empty.
