Good lord. Also, I love his voice in this. You do such good character voices. (Trenck's "protesting too much" was brilliant!)
mostly at Küstrin - yes, that one - because it's a mighty fortress
Yep. Mighty fortresses are useful for when you want to keep anyone from hurting your kid, and also for when you want to keep them from rescuing your kid while you hurt him.
tiny terror FW? Couldn't keep him down
LOLOLOL You have a way with words.
So, Dad was a bit embarassed of me he was just somewhat embarassing to look at
*grimace*
Mildred's "everyone had PtSD at each other since the 30 Years War at least" theory.
I'm just applying an actualfax historian's theory; I wish I had come up with it. The moment I stopped to think about it in those terms, I was like, well, yeah, at what point in history have people regularly *not* been surrounded by war, poverty, and disease? We only got epidemics under control, in parts of the world, in the last century. Poverty is a bigger producer of PTSD than child abuse. Shakespeare does a pretty good depiction of PTSD in a warrior returning home. And exactly when does having PTSD make good parenting easier? Individual good parents with PTSD, absolutely. Widespread PTSD weighting the scales in favor of good parenting on a species level? Hell no.
That view of history caused me to read this passage from Diana Gabaldon (an interesting but not always accurate writer of time-travel historical fiction--if you haven't read her books, you may know her work from the TV show Outlander) in a completely new light. The viewpoint character was born in 1917, during WWI and the year before the Spanish flu. The man she's talking to was born in the 1700s.
“Brianna was born seven years after penicillin came into common use. She was born in America—not this one”—I nodded toward the window again—“but that one, that will be. There, it isn’t usual for lots of people to die of contagious illness.”
“Do you remember the first person you knew of who had died?”
His face went blank with surprise, then sharpened, thinking. After a moment, he shook his head.
“My brother was the first who was important, but I kent others before him, surely.”
“I can’t remember, either.” My parents, of course; their deaths had been personal—but born in England, I had lived in the shadow of cenotaphs and memorials, and people just beyond the bounds of my own family died regularly; I had a sudden vivid memory, of my father putting on a homburg and dark coat to go to the baker’s wife’s funeral.
Mrs. Briggs, her name had been. But she hadn’t been the first; I knew already about death and funerals. How old had I been then—four, perhaps?
“I think Frank’s was the first death Brianna ever experienced personally [her father when she was about eighteen]. Maybe there were others; I can’t be sure. But the point is—”
Re: Our Insane Family: The Prequel Years
mostly at Küstrin - yes, that one - because it's a mighty fortress
Yep. Mighty fortresses are useful for when you want to keep anyone from hurting your kid, and also for when you want to keep them from rescuing your kid while you hurt him.
tiny terror FW? Couldn't keep him down
LOLOLOL You have a way with words.
So, Dad was a bit embarassed of me
he was just somewhat embarassing to look at
*grimace*
Mildred's "everyone had PtSD at each other since the 30 Years War at least" theory.
I'm just applying an actualfax historian's theory; I wish I had come up with it. The moment I stopped to think about it in those terms, I was like, well, yeah, at what point in history have people regularly *not* been surrounded by war, poverty, and disease? We only got epidemics under control, in parts of the world, in the last century. Poverty is a bigger producer of PTSD than child abuse. Shakespeare does a pretty good depiction of PTSD in a warrior returning home. And exactly when does having PTSD make good parenting easier? Individual good parents with PTSD, absolutely. Widespread PTSD weighting the scales in favor of good parenting on a species level? Hell no.
That view of history caused me to read this passage from Diana Gabaldon (an interesting but not always accurate writer of time-travel historical fiction--if you haven't read her books, you may know her work from the TV show Outlander) in a completely new light. The viewpoint character was born in 1917, during WWI and the year before the Spanish flu. The man she's talking to was born in the 1700s.
“Brianna was born seven years after penicillin came into common use. She was born in America—not this one”—I nodded toward the window again—“but that one, that will be. There, it isn’t usual for lots of people to die of contagious illness.”
“Do you remember the first person you knew of who had died?”
His face went blank with surprise, then sharpened, thinking. After a moment, he shook his head.
“My brother was the first who was important, but I kent others before him, surely.”
“I can’t remember, either.” My parents, of course; their deaths had been personal—but born in England, I had lived in the shadow of cenotaphs and memorials, and people just beyond the bounds of my own family died regularly; I had a sudden vivid memory, of my father putting on a homburg and dark coat to go to the baker’s wife’s funeral.
Mrs. Briggs, her name had been. But she hadn’t been the first; I knew already about death and funerals. How old had I been then—four, perhaps?
“I think Frank’s was the first death Brianna ever experienced personally [her father when she was about eighteen]. Maybe there were others; I can’t be sure. But the point is—”
“I see the point.”