No, said Aziraphale, it's ineffable.

bryanwashere

Fred Rogers ladies and gentleman!

Here are some interesting facts about him:
He basically saved public television. In 1969 the government wanted to cut public television funds. Mister Rogers then went to Washington where he gave an amazing merely six minute speech. By the end of the speech not only did he charm the hostile Senators, he got them to double the budget they would have initially cut down. The whole thing can be found on youtube, a video called “Mister Rogers defending PBS to the US Senate.”
“Certain fundamentalist preachers hated him because, apparently not getting the “kindest man who ever lived” memo, they would ask him to denounce homosexuals. Mr. Rogers’s response? He’d pat the target on the shoulder and say, “God loves you just as you are.” Rogers even belonged to a “More Light” congregation in Pittsburgh, a part of the Presbyterian Church dedicated to welcoming LGBT persons to full participation in the church.”
According to a TV Guide piece on him, Fred Rogers drove a plain old Impala for years. One day, however, the car was stolen from the street near the TV station. When Rogers filed a police report, the story was picked up by every newspaper, radio and media outlet around town. Amazingly, within 48 hours the car was left in the exact spot where it was taken from, with an apology on the dashboard. It read, “If we’d known it was yours, we never would have taken it.”
Once, on a fancy trip up to a PBS exec’s house, he heard the limo driver was going to wait outside for 2 hours, so he insisted the driver come in and join them (which flustered the host). On the way back, Rogers sat up front, and when he learned that they were passing the driver’s home on the way, he asked if they could stop in to meet his family. According to the driver, it was one of the best nights of his life—the house supposedly lit up when Rogers arrived, and he played jazz piano and bantered with them late into the night. Further, like with the reporters, Rogers sent him notes and kept in touch with the driver for the rest of his life.

threesmorefun

Always reblog MR

trvpmami

Hero

socialistexan

He also sued the KKK in 1990 when they tried to use his likeness to try to promote racism to kids

Mr. Rogers was the best.

rainnecassidy

Mr Rogers has been and will always remain a beacon of light in this dark fucking world

iceandsteelbooks

My 2018 reading goal is to read more nonfiction. Does anyone have any recs? I love learning about history and religion. :3

anassarhenisch

Ooh, I can do history!

Zealot by Reza Aslan - This is both a life and times of Jesus of Nazareth and a history of how the early Christian faith changed after his death.

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond - As big-picture as you can get for history. This examines cultures and cultural contact not through “better” or “worse” but through their environment and the technology levels they derived from it.

For more big-picture history, Vanished Kingdoms by Norman Davies is a history of about 30 European countries that have been lost to time; The Great Sea by David Abulafia is a history of the Mediterranean Sea and deals a lot with trade routes and cultural contact points; and The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan is a global history that contextualizes everything from the Romans up with an Asian, mostly Middle Eastern and Central Asian, focus.

There’s also John Romer, who’s written A History of Ancient Egypt Volumes I and II. His goal is to strip all the Western cultural baggage out of Egyptology and focus on the bare facts, and while he doesn’t always succeed, it’s still very illuminating.

Eric Larsson writes really interesting, rich narrative histories of terrible people and times and I think he’s probably the best narrative historian going. I’ve read The Devil in the White City, about H.H. Holmes and the Chicago World’s Fair, and In the Garden of Beasts, about the American ambassador to Berlin during the rise of Hitler. Next for me is Dead Wake, about the sinking of the Lusitania.

At Home by Bill Bryson is an eclectic history of Western domestic things, like light bulbs, windows, furniture, household pests, and gardens. You get a little bit of a lot of things and are guaranteed to learn something.

I’d also like to recommend A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor, though it’s better classed as memoir or travel writing. When he was a late teen in the ‘30s, he walked the length of Europe relying on the kindness of strangers, and as a wiser adult, wrote about the experience. He draws on all kinds of historical and cultural references to give more context, is exceptional at describing people and places, and basically provides a time capsule back to a Europe not broken by WWII.

Enjoy!

manuscripts-dontburn

May I add? :) These are just some of my favourite books on history:

haiku-robot

may i add :) these are
just some of my favourite
books on history:

光明节快乐！

光明节 - Guāngmíng jié - Hanukkah
哈努卡（节）- Hā nǔ kǎ (jié) - Hanukkah
灯台 - Dēngtái - Menorah
蜡烛 - Làzhú - Candle
光明节陀螺 - Guāngmíng jié tuóluó - Dreidel
哈拉面包 - Hā lā miànbāo - Challah
甜甜圈 - Tián tián quān - Donuts (Sufganiyah)
马铃薯饼 - Mǎlíngshǔ bǐng - Potato Cakes (Latke)
可颂饼干 - Kě sòng bǐnggān - Rugelach

Judaism may not be a main religion in China, but it has a pretty interesting history there, especially in Shanghai, where much of the city’s distinctive 1920s/30s architecture was built by the prominent Jewish Sassoon family. Before that, Shanghai took in Jewish refugees fleeing pogroms in neighbouring Russia in the 19th Century, and later again in the 1930s and 1940s as more families fled Europe in order to escape the persecution of rising fascist regimes. This was in large part because Shanghai was a fairly unique city, in that it didn’t require a visa for immigrants to move in and live and work there. There is a fantastic tour about the Jewish history of Shanghai, which I would highly recommend to anyone visiting the city!

Also, here’s a short video someone made explaining the origins of Hanukkah in Chinese! 光明节快乐/ חַג שָׂמֵחַ!

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

光明节快乐！