Milman Parry was a Harvard professor. In the 1930s he traveled through Yugoslavia, collecting ballads and folk songs. As a result of his research into these particular forms of oral history, he developed the idea that Homer’s poems have a formulaic structure that shows they were originally oral compositions. This is one of the stories he collected. "[There are] two lovers kept apart by...
My maternal grandmother, Vivian Luce attended Miss Wolcott’s School for Girls, a finishing school in Denver. She studied things like piano, French, water colors, needlework, elocution, etiquette, and other things appropriate to Edwardian ladies. I estimate she was there about 1914 to 1916. Wikipedia defines finishing schools: “A finishing school is a school for young women...
We watched Sita Sings the Blues the other day. Haven’t seen it? Picture this. A cartoon that tells the story of the Hindu goddess Sita set to 1920s Blues music. Cool stuff. And it turns out to be a famous instance of copyright problems. Everyone knows copyright can be a pain in the butt but is it also bad for the creator? Nina Paley thinks so. Bad for the creator? I wouldn’t have...
I’ve mentioned several times lately that the Swanstroms have a yDNA connection to a German Kruse family. And I’ve thrown out a few thoughts, but no real details. Today, just a quick note about what I’m really thinking. The soldier Petter Jönsson Cavat, born about 1732, lived in Gärdserum parish, He’s the earliest provable Swanstrom ancestor. In nearby Vist parish there was...
The Ancient World had city states. Sometimes they became empires. And then when the empires collapsed they sometimes became nations. (Although–the modern ethnic nation state is more or less a late European invention.) When I was a kid, I used to imagine, particularly on car trips, that the cities around me were like ancient city states. I would spend time looking for geographic features...