“All Blood Runs Red”
—the motto on Eugene Bullard’s plane. Bullard was the first African-American pilot to fly in combat, and the only African-American pilot in World War I. Bullard flew for France, but never for the United States; he tried to sign with the US Army Air Service, but they were only selecting white pilots. ※ Watch the 3-part documentary ► All Blood Runs Red: The Incredible True Story of Eugene Jacques Bullard.
titivil · /TIT-i-vil/ · /ˈtɪtɪvɪl/. noun. A demon said to record peoples’ sins to be used against them on Judgment Day, specifically collecting a sack of syllables dropped, skipped or mumbled during divine services and the idle gossip and chatter of churchgoers during services. Later, more generally, a gossip, a scoundrel, or a tattletale. AKA Tutivillus, Titivillus. Origin unknown. See also: knave, rogue, swindler, scallywag, busybody.
“I am infinitely indebted to my publishers and friends MM. Calmann, Lévy and to their excellent collaborators for the care and experience they have employed in lightening the burden, which Titivillus will place on my back on the Day of Judgment.” (Anatole France)
“I cannot help thinking that Titivil or Tutivillus, that literary devil, must have found himself working overtime when they published the New English Bible, with all its modern cliches.” (Country Life)
“Titivil is a word of doubtful etymology but it was current in fifteenth and sixteenth century English in the sense ‘scoundrel,’ with particular application to a mischiefmaking tell-tale, and Tom Titivil is to be taken as such a character.” (Kelsie Harder)
Controversial? Maybe. Essential? Absolutely → Nikole Hannah Jones on What is Owed
More reading for this moment. And hopefully many moments until it becomes happily irrelevant → You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument ※ The First Year Out ※ Reconstruction In America: Racial Violence after the Civil War, 1865-1876
Boompilled! → Boompilled: Fireworks Conspiracy Theories Are Bursting Across The Internet ※ The Boom in Fireworks Conspiracy Theories ※ But it doesn’t all have to be serious: I’m the Guy Setting Off Fireworks Every Night In Your Neighborhood and I Have You Right Where I Want You
Last week I offered you a chance to buy Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s childhood home for me, allowing me to retire in style. No one did, so this week I offer you a new opportunity → An Entire Old West Town Is for Sale. But It’s in New Zealand.
Coronavirus + Summer? → Walking Is Making a Major Comeback ※ In Praise of the Flâneur (apropos of nothing: flâneur is one of my favorite sounding words)
I had no idea the bake sale had an activist history → The Power of the Bake Sale ※ Speaking of food, some of these recipes look really good, and not just because I’m hungry right now: cook a classical feast: nine recipes from ancient Greece and Rome
Download and print this book designed by Big Jump Press in June 2020 in response to the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor → Read This Out Loud ※ While I have your…ear? Eyes? More bookish links: A clever overview of a variety of book critters, including literal Bookworms Thanks, Reader M.! ※ Page Through This Incredibly Detailed Sino-Tibetan Book Printed in 1410 ※ Rare Book School Lectures archive
John Peel’s iconic radio show ran on BBC radio from 1967-2004. This epic, growing list is at 968 sessions and counting → John Peel Sessions
This week’s miscellany → U.K. Museum Reimagines Classic Art With Face Masks // Pick a year and play those hits with Nostalgia Machine // Identifying Generational Gaps in Music // I Am Liesl von Trapp and I Owe the Resistance an Apology // In Taiwan, Pizza Hut Created Ramen Pizza // Plants fill seats at Barcelona opera house concert // Book fountain page by page
Today in 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, are assassinated in Sarajevo, the causus belli of World War I. On this same day in 1919, the Treaty of Versailles is signed, ending the bloody war between Germany and the Allied Powers. In between, more than 9 million soldiers were killed and more than 21 million wounded…along with nearly 10 million civilian casualties. Sadly, this wasn’t the most deaths in the wars of human history, but it was almost inarguably as brutal as any if you consider the proportion of the fighting that involved trench warfare, chemical weapons, and direct hand-to-hand fighting in battles with death tolls nearly equalling those of the most deadly in history. It is absolutely inarguable that World War I is too often overlooked, overshadowed by World War II and the natural desensitization of time. ※ View the Treaty of Versailles as submitted to the U. S. Congress.
“Combining archival footage with testimony from activists and scholars, director Ava DuVernay’s examination of the U.S. prison system looks at how the country’s history of racial inequality drives the high rate of incarceration in America.” → ► 13th
A promotional ad for social distancing that has more than two million views? Only in the age of Coronavirus. I watched it three times. → ► A Cart Apart
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