*urgently* Lads, the leechometre is at 12 bong, I repeat, 12 bong!
“tempest prognosticator” absolutely sounds like some kind of arcane device a wizard would have lying around in his workshop
It would also probably have leeches in it.
every time I walk through my yard and the enormous swarms of grasshoppers flee, plonking off of everything (including me, my fence, and pretty much everything), my brain helpfully supplies, “Twelve bong!”
The reason leeches do this is because they are hoping to latch onto the talons of low-flying storm-birds and cloud-fish. They need to get high up enough to reach. Hope this helps
“The entire British museum is an active crime scene” - John Oliver
[image description: two pictures, one above the other. The first image shows a statue originally from the Acropolis in Athens, now in the British Museum. The statue is a column shaped like a woman. It is labelled London. The bottom image is from the Acropolis Museum in Athens, showing the other five matching column/statues, with a space for the missing statue pointedly left open. This picture is shot from above and is labelled Athens.
image in savvysergeant’s reblog: screencap of tags from two people. Feeblekazoo’s tags read: the degree to which the Acropolis museum is designed to shame the British Museum is spectactular. butherlipsarenotmoving’s tags read: the acropolis museum is the most passive aggressive museum i’ve ever been to and i love it
/end id]
For those of you who don’t know museum drama, one of the largest and most famous parts of the British Museum’s collection is the so-called Elgin Marbles, which were looted from the Acropolis by Lord Elgin in the 18th Century. (The Acropolis is the hill in Athens, Greece which has some of the most amazing Greek ruins anywhere, the most famous of which is the Parthenon.) Elgin had (or at least claims to have had) permission from the Ottoman Empire to take stuff home with him, but a) this is one empire asking another empire if they can loot stuff from the other empire’s subjugated people, so, not exactly any moral high ground there Elgin, and b) he took a lot more stuff than the Ottomans said he could have.
Greece has been asking for those statues and sculptures to be returned since they won independence in 1832. That’s right, 1832, 190 years ago. The British Museum has had a number of excuses over the years, one of the biggies of the late 20th Century being “we couldn’t possibly give them back because Athens doesn’t have a nice enough museum to display them” and ignoring Greece’s response of “we will BUILD a museum just for them if you will just give us our damn stuff back!“
Finally, Greece said “fuck you” and built a museum at the bottom of the Acropolis called the Acropolis museum. It is huge, it is gorgeous, the collection of objects is amazing and the educational bits (“this is what it is and why it matters”) are really well done. It’s probably one of the best archaeological museums in the world; it definitely is the best collection of ancient Greek artifacts in the world, both for the size of the collection and the way it’s displayed.
Oh. And it is amazingly passive-aggressive. Every single piece of the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum has an empty spot on display waiting for the piece to be returned to Greece. For example, there are a lot of pieces where Elgin took, say, the nicest (or easiest to remove) one of a set. The column/statue in the OP’s image is one of these. Friezes from the roof of the Parthenon are another example. The Acropolis Museum displays each one of these sets with space for the stolen pieces, along with a picture of what the stolen piece looks like and where it is. It is a giant middle finger at the British Museum, disguised as helpful information.
There’s no chance that the British Museum will return any of this in the next generation. It’s not up to the curators at the British Museum; they don’t get any say in this. The board of governors of the British Museum is made up of old posh English people who genuinely believe that the Empire was awesome and England has a perfect right to everything in the British Museum. They have set policies about what can and can’t be removed from the collection, and according to those policies nothing of any historical or monetary value can be given away or sold. And they actively promote the idea that their predecessors had a perfect right to loot the cultural heritage of the world, and that the museum has a perfect right to keep it forever. The only way to get anything out of the British Museum and back to its rightful place would be to completely replace the entire board of the museum with new people who think completely differently. And that’s not happening any time soon, alas.
By the way, the British argument that Greeks wouldn’t know how to care for the antiquities……. Greece has 206 archaeological museums. It’s not only incredibly demeaning as an argument, it’s also straight out false and misleading.
One thing (and with the massive caveat of I don’t disagree with the above in the slightest): the Board of Trustees isn’t like that. They’re not all white, they’re not all rich, and they’re not all English. By and large they’re academics. I was speaking to them the other week with regards to repatriation when I visited and they’re actually very much all for it (bar one or two exceptions…looking at you George) and are working on things. A group of 5 of them I can confirm actively loathe Elgin and the marbles room. The problem lies with the British Museum Act of 1968 (hereafter referred to as BMA68) which was a law created by the government to prevent anything within the BM, which the government owns but wants very little do to with unless you’re trying to repatriate fyi, being removed in the “national interest”. Repatriation is, annoyingly, illegal in the case of the contents of the BM. So the Board have been trying to change this by putting pressure in various areas to get the laws changed, and the government screws them by enforcing term limits for serving on the board and then trying to stack the board in their favour to prevent further action. It’s a game of politics and the government do not want to give up BMA68 at all.
I know we like to categorise everyone we’re up against in the fight for repatriation as “old, white, rich guys” but it’s not helpful when it is decidedly not the case. We need to be mad at the right people and focusing on efforts to change this ridiculous law. At this time, supporting projects like the International Training Partnership, which is the BM’s way of building a network of curators and training them so organisations like the British Government can’t say “hurr durr they can’t look after their artefacts” because actually they can, we trained them ourselves. The network of curators also allows them to build mounting international pressure. It’s not going to happen overnight, but the pressure is building now, I promise you.
fuck it, i never ever do those “reblog for X, this one really works!” posts, but this one doesn’t have any of that BS, this is just straight up wishing us good things; and then the comment doesn’t even say any of that either. Zero claims on this post, all positive vibes
May you end this week feeling ever more certain of a future you’ll love
May you end this week feeling ever more certain of a future you’ll love
wore my thigh high boots on a walk today and we had to take a path through some long grass and while everyone else was rolling their pants into their socks and putting on jackets to protect themselves from ticks i was standing there smug as hell in my thigh high leather boots.
kids remind me, often, of the things i’ve taught myself out of.
i have a big dog. he looks like a deer. he is taller than most young children. while we were on a trail the other day, a boy coming our direction saw us and froze. he took a step back and said: “i’m feeling nervous. your - your dog is kind of big.”
goblin and i both stopped walking immediately. “he is kind of a big dog,” i admitted. “he’s called a greyhound. they are gentle but they are pretty tall, which is kind of scary, you’re right. their legs are so long because they are made for running fast. i am sorry we scared you. would you like us to stand still while you move past us, or would you feel more safe in your body if we move and you stay still?’
"oh. i didn’t know that about - greyhounds. i think i … i want to stay still,” he said. at this point, his adult had caught up to us. “i’m nervous about the dog,” he told her, “so i’m - i’m gonna stay still.” she didn’t argue. she didn’t make fun of him. she just smiled at him and at me and held his hand while goblin and i, with as wide of a berth as we could make, crept our way through.
behind us, i heard him exhale a deep breath and kind of laugh - “he was really big, huh? she said it’s because greyhounds have to go fast.”
“he was big,” she said. “i understand why that could have made you a little scared.”
“yeah. next time i - next time do you think i could maybe ask to touch him? when - i mean, next time, maybe, if i’m not nervous.”
later, going to a work event, in the big city, i stood outside, trembling. my social anxiety as a caught bird in my chest. i took a deep breath and turned to my coworker. she’s not even really my friend yet. i told her: “i feel nervous about this. i am not used to meeting new people, ever since covid.”
she laughed, but not in a mean way. she said she was nervous too. she reached her hand out and held mine, and we both took another deep breath and walked in like that, interlinked. a few people asked us - together? - and i told the truth: i feel nervous, and she’s helping. over and over i watched people relax too, admitting i feel really kind of shy lately actually, thank you for saying that.
the next time i go to an event, and i feel a little scared, i ask right away: wanna hold hands? this feels a little dangerous. i hesitate less. i don’t hide it as much. i watch for other people who are also nervous and say - it’s kinda hard, huh?
i know, logically, i’m not good at asking for help. but i am also not good at noticing when i need help. i’ve trained myself out of asking completely, but i’ve also trained myself to never accept my own fears or excuses. i have trained myself to tamp down every anxiety and just-push-through. i don’t know what i’m protecting myself from - just that i never think to admit it to anyone.
but every person on earth occasionally needs comfort. every person on earth occasionally needs connection. many of us were taught independence is the same thing as never needing anything.
each of us should have had an adult who heard - i feel nervous and held our hand and asked us how we could be helped to feel safe. no judgement, and no chiding. many of us did not. many of us were punished for the ways that we seemed “weak”.
but here is something: i am an adult now. and i get nervous a lot, actually. and if you are an adult and you are feeling a little nervous - come talk to me. we can hold hands and figure out what will help us feel safe in our bodies. and maybe, next time, if we’re brave, we can pet the dog that’s passing.
