Winedarkfag - Average Enkidu Enjoyer

Domari people (middle eastern romani) of Palestine

(1) A domari tent in Jerusalem near the Damascus Gate, 1920s

(2) A domari street circus in Jerusalem, 1905

(3) Domari dancer and musician in Mandatory Palestine, 1930s

(4) Domari settlement at the north of the Damascus Gate, 1914

(5) Domari musician and dancers in Galilee, 1920s

(6) Domari women and children in a domari settlement in Mandatory Palestine, 1920s

7) Domari woman with seashells in the hand to tell fortune, near the sea of Galilee in Palestine, 1930s

Iliad mini-comics, part 2 of 3! here’s part 1. sorry for the long delay–i’ll try to get the last batch done as soon as i can :’)

(featuring the subjectively gayest parts of the iliad, hektor having an extremely bad time, and a guest appearance by hadesgame hypnos!)

more iliad stuff

more ancient studies comics

Gold and platinum Art Nouveau plaque-de-cou necklace from 1903 with an emerald and diamonds by Henri Dubret (1872-1947), Paris, France.

📸 Macklowe gallery

Li Shangyin, from When Will I be Home? (tr. by Kenneth Rexroth)

gothic garden entomology vintage book covers

Rabies is an incredibly lethal virus that kills more than 50,000 people globally each year. About 99% of those people who die from rabies were infected by the bite of a dog. This doesn’t mean that dogs are evil, or that they are disgusting, or that they should be eradicated from the planet to prevent the risk of disease transmission to humans. It does mean that we should do everything in our power to promote vaccination efforts, study disease transmission on a local and global scale, and find ways to prevent infected dogs from encountering and biting humans.

Okay, now are you ready to hear my biggest personal biology hot take?

This is pretty much how I feel about ticks carrying Borrelia burgdorferi (the bacteria that causes Lyme disease) and other arthropod disease vectors. Yes, these animals cause unbelievable suffering to humans by inadvertently transmitting disease, but that doesn’t mean they should be portrayed as evil or exterminated entirely from the environment. Ecologists have been speaking for years on how critical these species are within their established trophic webs, and how their removal could have devastating effects to many other organisms including humans. You can still be scared of or grossed out by these animals (very normal response to a potentially dangerous disease vector), but it’s important to understand that the best way for scientists to minimize the risk of these animals is NOT just eliminating them from the environment. No animal is evil or immoral for the ecological niche it fills, and encouraging a more nuanced understanding of these animals can arm us with better ways to minimize their negative impact to humans.

endearments in letters to véra

Staff Pick of the Week

A few weeks ago I read the Epic of Gilgamesh for the first time, and despite the fact that the origins of the story are probably from the mid-3rd millennium BCE, and the earliest cuneiform tablets we know the story from date from the late 2nd millennium BCE, the narrative’s emotional frame, and the frank depictions of sex, violence, fear, longing, and friendship, all felt remarkably contemporary to me. Just last week, Gilgamesh came up again in a discussion during a session of my course on the History of Books and Printing. Since Gilgamesh has had a recurring presence in my life this past month, I’ve decided to highlight some images and text from our copy of the Limited Editions Club production of Gilgamesh, translated by William Ellery Leonard and printed in 1974 at The Stinehour Press in Lunenberg, Vermont, in an edition of 2,000 copies.

The book includes nine bold three-color woodcuts and seven black-and-white woodcuts and linocuts by the American visual artist Irving Amen (1918-2011), who also signed the entire edition. The text is printed in the Club’s proprietary eighteen-point Janson type, with thirty-six-point Trump Gravure wedge-serif capitals for the titles. The woodcuts beautifully capture every significant scene in the epic. Click on the images to view the captions.

View more posts on the Limited Editions Club.

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View more of our Staff Picks.

– MAX, Head, Special Collections