Also, I went to a museum of medieval and early modern art. I've gone ahead and admitted to myself, a lifetime of cultural conditioning notwithstanding, that I don't really enjoy art museums. This one was different, though-- medieval art is really fun, maybe because "art" as we know it did not really exist. There were lots of dragons, people being martyred in gruesome ways, etc. I can see why so many people's fantasy lives (role-playing games, D&D, etc.) revolve around tropes from medieval art, and not abstract expressionism. The coolest thing is pictured below, and was appropriately called "Death Riding a Lion". The most amazing thing about it: in the 16th century, when it was made, it also functioned as a clock. Every hour, death would smash that bone onto the lion's head, which contains a bell.
I can't imagine where this would be an appropriate piece of furniture, except for Skeletor's castle.I had a weird experience going through newspapers the other day. I was looking at a left-wing Catholic newspaper from 1930 until it was shut down in 1934. This period covers lots of events with which we are familiar from history books: Reichstag fire, etc. It was really creepy, though, to watch it happen sequentially in a newspaper. Like, I watched the lead-up to the 1932 election, in which the Nazis won huge gains and it became kind of clear that they could take over the government. They were heartbreakingly optimistic: in the weeks before, they thought all these Catholics would win, and then on election day there was a sticker saying "Vote Zentrum [Catholic Party]", and then the next day this huge horrible headline about how Hitler had won so many millions of votes out of nowhere, and then it was downhill from there. It was like watching a movie that you've seen before, but you hope that somehow it will turn out differently.
This is probably an experience that real historians have very early on. For fake historians like myself whose research mostly involves J-Stor, it was a revelation.
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