Thursday Things: Constitution Day Edition
17 September 2020. Vol 2 No 38 By Dan McGirt. #58
Welcome to Thursday Things! This week we celebrate the Constitution, look for ghosts, practice insults, stroll in the forest, and visit a skin museum. Let’s go!
"Washington as Statesman at the Constitutional Convention" Painting: Junius Brutus Stearns
On this day in 1787, thirty-nine delegates gathered at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, George Washington presiding, signed the final draft of the U.S. Constitution, which was then forwarded to the states for consideration and ratification. It was a pivotal and world-changing moment in history. Today we in the US commemorate the anniversary as Constitution Day. If you don’t know the story of the Constitutional Convention and the work they did that fateful summer, I recommend the book Miracle At Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention May - September 1787 by Catherine Drinker Bowen as a gripping and informative account. Many other books have been written on the topic, of course, but this was the first I read — checked out of my middle school library! — and still my favorite.
For the true history nerd, a drier, but much more authoritative account of the Convention’s proceedings can be found in James Madison’s notes on the Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 provides the day by day minutes of the arguments made and the votes taken. I found a Kindle edition for 99 cents. I’m sure free ebook versions abound. I have it in paperback.
And for Happy Subscribers outside the US, I’m sorry you don’t have a Constitution as awesome as ours, which is the awesomest ever. You still might enjoy the story!
I once, when I was very young, named a cat Constitution. In retrospect, not the best choice. Pet names should be no more than two syllables. Three at most.
Let’s pivot to some more recent history — Who remembers Winamp? It was the 90s, the age of Napster, when almost all music downloads were illegal. Which probably made it more exciting. I was not a song downloader, because why bother when there’s free FM radio? But those who were, there is The Winamp Skin Museum. (Far less creepy than the name sounds.) From the Verge:
It’s an endlessly scrolling collection of 65,000 Winamp skins, searchable and fully interactive. There’s a default playlist (which includes the “Llama Whippin’ Intro”), and you can even load audio files into it from your computer, if you happen to have any lying around.
The skins were previously collected on the Internet Archive but assembled into this new accessible format by Facebook engineer Jordan Eldredge. On Twitter, Eldredge notes he’s still taking collections for the project if you have any skins you want to donate, and he describes the collection as capturing “an iconic moment in internet art history.”
He’s not wrong. The taste on display in the Winamp Skin Museum is, in a word, stunning. It has all of the artistic value of a national art gallery, but it focuses in on late-’90s / early-’00s aesthetics with enough raw energy to bring back nü metal.
Worth a look, even if you weren’t into all that.
If you need a getaway to the peaceful forest right now, but are still stuck in lockdown, Open Culture links to a Sounds of the Forest free audio archive just for you.
We are collecting the sounds of woodlands and forests from all around the world, creating a growing soundmap bringing together aural tones and textures from the world’s woodlands.
The sounds form an open source library, to be used by anyone to listen to and create from.
And here is the Sounds of the Forest site. Enjoy!
On the other hand, maybe the peaceful forest didn’t help and you feel the need to curse someone out. Do it colorfully and properly with these 25 Great Insults From 18th Century British Slang. And many more where those came from.
For history buffs with a personal score to settle, "You jerk" just doesn't have the same ring as "You unlicked cub," an insult from Georgian England. And there's more where that came from if you browse through English lexicographer Francis Grose's A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, first published in 1785 and recently spotted by the Public Domain Review.
Have at it, you gundiguts shabbaroons.
Gettysburg Ghosts? It’s a little early for Halloween, but the NY Post shares video of two possible ghosts at the Gettysburg battlefield. Have a look and decide for yourself. Ghosts? Lens flare? Hoax? Don’t let the chilling ghostly music the Post video editor helpfully provided sway you.
Gettysburg 'ghosts’ run across road in this bone-chilling video
Two “ghosts” at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, were spotted — 157 years after the infamous Civil War battle. See the spooky sight for yourself, filmed by New Jersey resident Greg Yuelling, as he drove through the historical battleground with his family on Sept. 2, 2020.
Thank you for reading Thursday Things! See you next Thursday.