Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 44

[cahn]

Not only are these posts still going, there is now (more) original research going on in them deciphering and translating letters in archives that apparently no one has bothered to look at before?? (Which has now conclusively exonerated Fritz's valet/chamberlain Fredersdorf from the charge that he was dismissed because of financial irregularities and died shortly thereafter "ashamed of his lost honor," as Wikipedia would have it. I'M JUST SAYING.)

Comments

[cahn]

Doooooo iiiiiiit!! When are you going to dooooo iiiiit so I can reeeeead it! Do it for Fredersdorf! *pom-poms*

I'm happy to keep asking. Haha, I keep forgetting that you're not NT. And also not D and E, who are both somewhat allergic to being asked multiple times if/when they're going to do the thing!

[mildred_of_midgard]

Yaaay society pom-poms!! <3

I'm happy to keep asking.

Oh, good, I was wondering why you weren't with Peter Keith! I mean, no one other than me is responsible for my projects, but it is also true that the three bursts of activity on this project were when liriaen wanted to know more about the Keiths, the one time Royal Patron obligingly said he hoped to hear about more progress on the essay the next time we talked, and when you agreed to beta-read it in January*.

So if I could get asked about this more than once per year, that would definitely help! Ideal cadence would be every 2-4 weeks, but if that's too much, just more than once a year would be super helpful.

* The reason I haven't asked your or Selena to read it yet but have been offering it to other people is that I'm going to want detailed feedback from the two of you before submitting it for publication, so I want it in a nearly final state before I ask you to look at it. And since the discovery of the Knyphausen papers, it's not in a nearly final state any more!

Of course, if either of you want to read it for your own purposes of learning more about Peter, it's available at any time, but I'm not asking you to read it yet.

Haha, I keep forgetting that you're not NT.

But that's my most salient trait! (Lol, I know what you mean, but I couldn't help it. :P)

And also not D and E, who are both somewhat allergic to being asked multiple times if/when they're going to do the thing!

Ah, yeah, I was *violently* allergic when I was a kid and it was my mother. Completely different dynamic!

So anyway, thanks to you prodding me, I have just now created a file to hold the letters and have started copy-pasting my decipherments and Selena's translation into them, so I have them to refer to as I work on the essay. I have also started compiling a to-do list, since the *other* reason the Peter Keith essay got done was that I finally figured out that I'm super motivated to cross out items on a list (like E!) and that making a list would help tremendously. So hopefully the Fredersdorf essay is less of a struggle than the Peter Keith essay!

[cahn]

I actually wasn't asking about Peter Keith at this point because while I do love Peter Keith and want you to finish it and have a paper (and have salon have a paper!) I am much more emotionally involved with your clearing my boy Fredersdorf's name so I would rather you work on that :) Buuuuut if you tell me that working on the Fredersdorf essay is contingent on working on the Peter Keith essay, then I will definitely prod you more often! :D

D is very allergic to being asked multiple times about something that he was already going to do -- I mean, he's a reasonable adult and he deals with it, but it's kind of interesting to me that for best results I do have to preface asking him with an explicit disclaimer that I'm asking him not because I'm trying to pressure him to do the thing, but because I need to make other plans around if/when he's doing the thing (or whatever). It's definitely a personal thing and not related to how he was brought up, either -- his parents also learned really early not to ask/pressure him about doing things. (E is actually more amenable to prodding than he is, if she can be convinced (by tone, word choice, etc.) there's no censure or disapproval attached.)

[mildred_of_midgard]

If it's tedious, a huge amount of effort, and can't be done at once, i.e. has to happen in many, many focus sessions spread out over a long amount of time, I react really well to regular reminders that someone other than me is waiting for this to be done. Otherwise, the cost-benefit ratio is prone to coming out to "Well, whatever, this is too much work." You know that big work presentation on communication that I still haven't finished after a year? I recently got a coworker to agree that he and I will act as each other's "accountabilibuddy" with weekly checkins on each other's presentation-prepping progress!

Buuuuut if you tell me that working on the Fredersdorf essay is contingent on working on the Peter Keith essay, then I will definitely prod you more often! :D

It is, yes. One major reason I didn't get the Leining letters, and various other things like the Krannich book, until recently is because I was waiting until I had the Peter Keith essay in a good place and had the mental bandwidth to work on something else large and often tedious. And with a thousand pages of new research material coming in soon, you may have to start prodding me about Peter in order to advance the paper to a state where I can switch back to Fredersdorf!

Peter is definitely my priority between the two, both because I'm more emotionally attached, and because the research and writing are in a more advanced state, so I have more confidence the effort is going to pay off, which adds up to more motivation to put in more effort to push the essay closer to the finish line.

So prod away, with my deepest thanks. :D

[mildred_of_midgard]

D is very allergic to being asked multiple times about something that he was already going to do

I think the key here is that I'm not "already" going to do this; there's a better than 50% chance that I won't, and that's precisely why I'm asking for help improving the odds. I haven't finished and published an essay since 2014!

[selenak]

You must change this, for this is really original reasearch without which Peter and Fredersdorf will forever remain obscure and unfairly maligned, respectively, and no one will ever know about the Leinings and Gentzes and Andersons pov, ever. Mildred, imagine me singing (badly)

....History has its eyes on youuuuuuu...."

[mildred_of_midgard]

ROFL! Thank you, this is very encouraging (and helpful). I think having social support from salon will give my Frederician papers better odds than the post-academia, pre-salon papers worked on in total isolation.

*still laughing* :DD

P.S. Peter will still be obscure after this, I'm not expecting anything I write to be a bestseller, but at least the (correct) information will be out there for anyone who wants it, instead of languishing in archives and in random isolated sentences in random books.

And Fredersdorf's Wikipedia page will have to be updated! (That's very motivating.)