
“Wear a mask or go to Jail”-The use of masks during the Spanish flu pandemic, 1918 [988x1123]
Source: https://reddit.com/r/HistoryPorn/comments/i6lah6/wear_a_mask_or_go_to_jailthe_use_of_masks_during/
Mask up, Canada!
“Wear a mask or go to Jail”-The use of masks during the Spanish flu pandemic, 1918 [988x1123]
Source: https://reddit.com/r/HistoryPorn/comments/i6lah6/wear_a_mask_or_go_to_jailthe_use_of_masks_during/
Mask up, Canada!
Sidewalk Mural
on the sidewalk in front of the Elmira Library’s Butterfly Garden
Shiny
A couple of times a year I suddenly start having trouble with hangnails. My hands will be fine one day, but within a week every finger will develop hangnails. Some time later they’ll all be fine again. I’ve asked doctors and friends about it, so I’ve been trying out various vitamin combos and eating biotin like candy. (To be fair, it *is* gummy biotin.)
Right now I have a particularly fragile middle fingernail that shattered where the nail plate meets the distal edge of the nail. It has been in and out of bandaids for weeks and I keep hoping it will grow out. But I keep reinjuring it. So I started using some clear nail polish to strengthen and protect it.
I had stopped using nail polish years ago because one of the chemical sensitivities I developed was to nail polish remover.
When my nail diva sister-in-law discovered my problem, she sent me a nail art care package… complete with vegan nail polish remover that doesn’t make me sick. Yay!
My first foray into nails with distinction worked a treat. I hand painted a sunflower with gold acrylic paint on holographic black polish, making my shattered nail feel strong, and looked distinctively awesome to boot.
So I got cocky. My next go round I applied stickers, including a Mrs Incredible sticker off a banana. Unfortunately relying on the sticker adhesive was not adequate. Even with atop coat of extreme nail polish, they peeled off.
I’ll do better next time. (Just now I’m taking a break, and sticking with plain polish as I’ve many things I’ll need active hands for over the next few days.
Cautley Holme Beck and the Rawthey Valley, Howgill Fells near Sedbergh, Yorkshire Dales National Park, Cumbria, UK by Ministry
This gives me “we’ve almost reached Salamandastron” feels.
It was the start of the Summer of the Late Rose. Mossflower country shimmered gently in a peaceful haze. Peaceful is a word which here means calm, tranquil, and highly unlikely to disturbed by violent events that would culminate in the dropping of a large bell from a very high place onto someone who would rather not have a large bell dropped upon them.
Every single person who makes a comment on my lovespoon post about how it would be WAY COOLER if people did it with knives instead is getting blocked immediately and also owes my cat £3.
Real talk, though. I think that Welsh / quote-unquote ‘Celtic’ culture (which I put in inverted commas because there isn’t one universal Celtic culture; it’s lots of different ones) forms the basis of so many fantasy narratives, like Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Prydain etc, that people in general (I’m gonna say it: mostly Americans) have sort of absorbed this bastardised, high fantasy version of Welsh culture, where everyone frolics around the woods with enchanted swords and has affairs with saucy elves and performs magic inside stone circles with daggers and moss, and so when they see information about actual Welsh / quote-unquote ‘Celtic’ culture, they’re like “excuse me, where the fuck are the elves? Where are the knives?’ because to them it’s like a fantasy downgrade from what they’re used to, rather than, y’know, an actual culture, and it’s missing the elements that they’re used to, and therefore feel entitled to.
They’re so accustomed to only consuming Welsh culture through the lens of artificial pseudo-Medieval fantasy that the real source material seems like it’s missing something to them, and as far as they’re concerned, it’s something that merits complaining about or mocking, because clearly it has less intrinsic value or interest if it doesn’t involve enchanted blades and prophecies.
And I’m absolutely not saying here that no-one should use elements of Welsh or Celtic culture for fantasy worldbuilding; just please, for the love of all that is holy and delicious, remember that the Welsh stuff came first, and that Welsh people do in fact still exist, and so treating Welsh culture like the boring magic-free little cousin of Dungeons and Dragons lore is not only offensive, but also ignorant. Don’t act like real Welsh stuff is somehow less interesting than your DnD campaign because people don’t, like, propose to one another with daggers and then fuck an elf.
It’s going to be OK