This is a plague doctor, or more specifically Doktor Schnabel von Rom, from 1656. Imagine your village had an outbreak of the plague and these people started walking around attempting to treat you? Apparently the beak-like masks were rammed with nice spelling herbs in order to get rid of the stench. So really, this doctor would be more wary of you than you were of them.
José James – Trouble (1 Mic 1 Take)
What a voice.
Comment Reconstruction
Actors Grahame Edwards and Eryl Lloyd Parry recreate a YouTube comment fight in a rather Beckettian manner. This follows up on a previous video. I have to say, I absolutely love this. LOL, and so on. It actually chimes with recent thoughts on Internet culture, how most comments threads and forums just seem so ridiculous when you think about them. YouTube is probably the worst culprit for ridiculous things people say.
Witches in the Air
By Goya, 1798.
Beauvale Priory
A brief visit to the Beauvale Priory tea room today. A fascinating hidden gem, this. According to Arthur Mee’s Nottinghamshire, this place was one of the last monasteries to be built, and the first to fall foul of Henry VIII. It’s now a very nice tea room, that serves excellent cake, which is my kind of monastery.
ORBIS
ORBIS, the Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World, is pretty damn amazing:
For the first time, ORBIS allows us to express Roman communication costs in terms of both time and expense. By simulating movement along the principal routes of the Roman road network, the main navigable rivers, and hundreds of sea routes in the Mediterranean, Black Sea and coastal Atlantic, this interactive model reconstructs the duration and financial cost of travel in antiquity.
That means you can plan your epic adventures as per the ancient world. What the hell are you waiting for? For me to get to Alexandria from the nearest Roman settlement Lindum (Lincoln) it would have taken about 56.5 days. Pirates might well have made that more – or just killed me outright.
(Via Medieval POC on Tumblr.)
Theatrical Rehearsal in the House of an Ancient Rome Poet
By Gustave Boulanger, 1855.