ghackler

Umberto Eco, who owned 50,000 books, had this to say about home libraries: "It is foolish to think that you have to read all the books you buy, as it is foolish to criticize those who buy more books than they will ever be able to read. It would be like saying that you should use all the cutlery or glasses or screwdrivers or drill bits you bought before buying new ones. There are things in life that we need to always have plenty of supplies, even if we will only use a small portion. If, for example, we consider books as medicine, we understand that it is good to have many at home rather than a few: when you want to feel better, then you go to the 'medicine closet' and choose a book. Not a random one, but the right book for that moment. That's why you should always have a nutrition choice! Those who buy only one book, read only that one and then get rid of it. They simply apply the consumer mentality to books, that is, they consider them a consumer product, a good. Those who love books know that a book is anything but a commodity." @Pergament_F @normaegraham1 @fugitiveink @AliceB01973554 @robert_lyman @prof_warfield @GilesMacDonogh @GilesMilton1 @guywalters @ABRGLL @April_1970s @LL_running_girl

421 years ago today, the Gunpowder Plot was foiled in the cellars beneath the House of Lords. More than four centuries later, the event is still marked at the State Opening of Parliament, when the Yeomen of the Guard ceremonially search the cellars before the King arrives.

'Pray to remember The fifth of November...' Some old variants on #BonfireNight rhymes from different parts of England, which children would sing when going around collecting fuel for their bonfires archive.org/details/englishf…

There are three intertwined anniversaries today that all share some common themes - brotherhood in combat, reckless courage, fights against impossible odds, and a poetic remembrance the transcends the brutal realities of the events themselves.

The Rings of Power Season 3 FULL TRAILER Nov 11 on @PrimeVideo

On this day in 1321 on the 14th of September, the legendary Italian poet and writer Dante Alighieri, died. He was exiled from Florence under penalty of death and died of malaria in Ravenna just after completing Paradiso. He was 56 years old.

I live next to Sandwich, and no one ever believes me there’s a village next door called Ham. The most stolen road sign in the UK

About 5000 years ago, a family sat beside a stone hearth in Orkney and arranged their belongings on a stone dresser. The dresser is still there. The hearth is still there. The stones they shaped with their hands are still fitted together, dry-laid without mortar, without cracking, after fifty centuries of Orkney winters. Skara Brae is the oldest surviving domestic settlement in northern Europe, and almost nothing about it has decayed. It is not ruins. It is a home. The village was buried in a sandstorm around 2500 BCE and stayed buried until a violent storm in 1850 stripped the dunes back and revealed it to an astonished farmer. What the excavations uncovered over the following decades was almost impossible to credit: eight interconnected stone houses, linked by covered passages, each with its own hearth, storage alcoves, box beds defined by stone slabs, and a shelved dresser facing the entrance. Whoever lived here arranged their space with taste and care. They had privacy. They had community. They had, in the stone dresser placed where a modern family might put a television, something they wanted to see the moment they walked in the door. No one knows exactly who built Skara Brae, what language they spoke, or where they went. We know they built their homes together, shared resources through the connecting passages, and lived here continuously for about 600 years. Older than the Egyptian pyramids. Older than Stonehenge. Built by people whose names we will never know on an island at the edge of the world. The oldest thing about Scotland is not a castle or a clan. It is a hearth, and it is waiting in Orkney. #drthehistories

Splish splash Tupi’s takin’ a bath 🛁 Our male giant anteater was *loving* his recent bubble bath 😂 🎥: Keeper Sam

Slater Bridge, Little Langdale, Lake District, England. Where stone, water, and time meet. A beautiful 17th-century packhorse bridge, once used by men and horses carrying slate through the valley. Built from local stone and resting partly upon a great natural boulder, it has stood here for centuries. A little piece of old England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

This is a metaphor for life. There's always a rabbit around the corner.