These are two great images from an early 18th c. travel account: "extraordinary turnips" near Arkhangelsk and rhubarb and eggplant seen on the way to Persia via the Caspian. Per the author, eggplant "is admirable in soup, fried in butter and in several other manners."

Hmmm.

This just really doesn't have a consistent message. What does Henry VIII have to do with a country doctor??

I have no explanation for this one.

This is part of my absolute favorite nineteenth-century diplomatic ado, which is that Nicholas I was outraged by Louis Napoleon Bonaparte naming himself Napoleon III. He had problems with the III and with his fellow sovereigns calling him "my brother" instead of "my friend."

I'm avoiding marking by cleaning out my screenshots folder. So many odd things I can't remember why I saved. Very very busy (and oddly humanoid?) beavers of Canada.

I am marking something and it is making me SO HAPPY with my wonderful students. I have them turn in index cards with questions about readings each week, and this year I gave them all their cards back, asked them to read through them, and then to write a reflection on their own reading practice.

I love so many things about this page, including the fact that the 80s lasted a very long time, apparently. I also want to know what was going on in 2017. eu.daleofnorway.com/explore-dale...

I am writing a short piece about dacha-going and it taking so much will not to make a reference to Russians coming to the cottage.

This is WILD. So many things! Folk tales! 19th century literature! An explanation of Tarkovsky's films! Why trees have leaves!!

Would really really really love to see the 2026 version of Miliukov standing up in the Duma and giving the “is this stupidity or is this treason” speech.

Emotional support chickens, ready for exam-weeks duty.

“The lead this Court takes in all the great transactions of Europe; the successes which attend every part of its public conduct, and at the same time the supineness and insufficiency of its administration, are facts so seemingly incompatible that, in a future day, they must appear incredible.”

One of Catherine the Great’s grandsons, when aged about nine, asked this about someone: “Is he a real genuine Briton? Does he appear frightened when he enters a room where there is any company? Is he at a loss where to put his hat, when he is so polite as to take it off?” (Reported by Swinton.)

Great postdoc opportunity at University of Toronto! (It's super competitive but possible!) www.artsci.utoronto.ca/faculty-staf...

Now available (open access!): the article I might not have written had I not been department chair, on eighteenth century Russian rulers trying to stop people asking them for things. (Also on how autocracy works, should that be of current interest SIGH.) www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

My music group commissioned a piece by Beverley McKiver; she was inspired by the lost rivers of Toronto and wrote us a truly lovely piece: youtu.be/FcAnjaFS9Us?...

Excellent description of Cyrillic from a 19th century American traveler: "the letters are all drunk and run the wrong way, like lopsided crabs."

Whew, Belinsky when he realizes he can't actually find rationality in the world around him is too relatable: "I am weary, cold, and empty. I have no hope of any personal happiness. Woe! Woe! Life is exposed."

There is still an awful lot of awful out there, but gosh I have enjoyed Chicago Pope day.

Amazing.

Once again, I am reminded of the archive security guard who, in fall 2016, asked me who I was going to vote for. Before I could answer, he said “you’re probably going to say Clinton, but Trump would be better for Russia.”

I'm reading through 19th century mortality reports and holy shit we are so lucky to live in a world of modern public health. Why the hell would anyone want to go back to that? It is infuriating.

Boris Nemtsov was assassinated 10 years ago today. The street outside the Russian embassy in Washington D.C. was renamed in his memory - a move instigated by a senator determined to hold the Kremlin accountable for its crimes. I wonder how he thinks that's going. www.voanews.com/a/us-bill-wo...

I knew Arcimboldo painted fruit/vegetable portraits but a BOOK portrait?? Amazing. I could not love this more. Source: samlingar.shm.se/object/465F6...

Today I stumbled on this stunning piece of... embroidery? I think that's the best word for this kind of needle art? ... made by Maria Christina Frosterus in Uleåborg/Oulu Finland, 1820, in the collections of The National Museum of Finland. I love it.

The British ambassador to St. Petersburg in 1859 on his French counterpart: "...a kind hearted and conciliatory man, but troubled occassionally with that susceptibility which not uncommonly renders a Frenchman more intent upon trifles than upon matters of serious import.."

A powder commonly in use among Russians to prevent cholera, taken “with such good results” by the British ambassador that he is sending the information on to the foreign office! NA FO 65/424/252

It is also fascinating and troubling to read the dispatches by the British ambassador in early 1853, passing on reports of increased Russian military presence in the south, and then following them up with what amounts to "but Nicholas can't possibly intend there to be war, Russia can't afford it."

Furthermore, Nicholas I and the Russian government did not "recognize the validity of the numeral III as adopted by the Emperor of the French."

TIL that in the run-up to the Crimean War, one issue was that Nicholas I did not want to call Louis Napoleon, recently declared emperor in France, "mon frère" and was OUTRAGED that the Austrian and Prussian emperors were willing to do so.

RÚV, the Icelandic National Broadcasting Agency, shows this dance EVERY New Years Day, and has done so as long as there has been television. Please click play and enjoy this magnificent spectacle, without which it could never feel like a new year is truly coming.

Suddenly I understand why my 8th grade social studies teacher (in Oak Park, just west of Chicago, in 1984-5) told us we were lucky because we’d be immediately dead if there were a nuclear war.

I have been waiting for this day. Wordle 1,290 1/6* 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

I had a massive baking fail last week so the fact that this appears to have come out well is a relief!

Сельдь под шубой may be the single most difficult to explain Russian dish even without fish heads.

I cannot interpret this bookplate. The mix of Cyrillic and Latin letters, the ... math??

This self-portrait by the prolific illustrator (and caricaturist) Vasilii (George) Timm from 1845ish is amazing. He looks like Freddy Mercury dressed up like a moth. And he's holding a pen like a sword!

TIL that the Leninka has candy wrappers in its online catalog. A LOT of candy wrappers.

A bit of festivity: a whole bunch of clarinet players (including me!) playing Sleigh Ride! youtu.be/Fo9MZmbR8H4?...

TIL that in 1852 you could see giraffes ("the first in St. Petersburg") and an ostrich in on the Moika canal.

This is my other favorite shop sign (for a hair salon in St. Petersburg), and this one I can’t even begin to understand.

One of my two all-time favorite shop names. An eyebrow (and tanning) salon named … well.

1856 ad for a washing machine, an invention that won prizes in New York and Paris! This looks frankly enormously unwieldy.

Donations to help the wounded from the siege of Sevastopol include money, lint, bandages, tea, sugar, underclothes, and, from a priest, 100 copies of his own book, "A Remembrance of a Father and True Friend" (!!!)

This is amazing. A list of letters put in postboxes in St. Petersburg in January 1855 that can't be delivered. It lists the number of the postbox, the date, the recipient, and why it couldn't be sent (letters that weigh more than the stamp allows, no indication of the city).

Saturday achievement.

I had not yet realized that it now requires me to include a "contribution percentage" for single-authored pieces of writing. Even worse, "100%" isn't an option. "91-100%" is, but I find that somehow ... insulting? To every single discipline that is mostly single-authored, i.e., the humanities??

Grappling today with the Canadian Common CV and wondering, yet again, why it is so bad.