Phantom of the Archives (~*Christine*~)

When the dam breaks on these guys - and it will, because they can't control themselves and don't even see why they should - it's going to get really ugly, really fast.

Personally, the best parts of bsky for me are the lack of algorithmic intrusion (chronological following feed if you choose that) and ample blocking options.

Samhain, the Celtic New Year, and Halloween Orono, Maine (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – The Celts, who lived about 3,000 years ago in an area which is now Gaul (France), Ireland, Wales, Scotland, England & Brittany, celebrated their new year during the Lunar calendar, around the 1st week of November, but it is now generally known as the eve of November […]

Samhain, the Celtic New Year, and Halloween

Oval intaglio engraved with a skeletal human figure resting on an amphora and holding a jug, carved in translucent amber-colored stone.

Happy #Halloween
This intaglio depicts a skeleton resting on an amphora and holding a jug. Such representations were intended to remind to enjoy life to the fullest since pleasure ends irrevocably with death.

Photo: Museum August Kestner/Christian Tepper

#RomanArchaeology

Brightly colored, stylized scene of four figures dressed in costumes

Jacob Lawrence, Halloween, 1963 www.famsf.org/artworks/hal...

Unpaywalled:

archive.ph/SoYdm

ClassicsBluesky 🏺🧵

#LatinForTheDay for #Halloween – 31 October #Lucan

“illi namque nefas urbis summittere tecto
aut laribus ferale caput, desertaque busta
incolit et tumulos expulsis obtinet umbris
grata deis Erebi. coetus audire silentum,
nosse domos Stygias arcanaque Ditis operti...

@thepaulconnolly.bsky.social
Would love for you to read more poems like these!

Lucan, Pharsalia VI. 510-522
(4 pt thread, English trans.)

meme depicting depictions of celtic peoples in the ancient world. on the right, "how the Romans saw the Celts," featuring the dying Gaul in a classical style. on the left, "how the Celts saw themselves," a figural depiction of a mustachioed Celtic man on the body of someone wearing a business suit

a student has shared this with me and I am simply passing it along for your enjoyment

A photo from Diane Arbus's "Untitled" series, taken in a home for adults with cognitive disabilities in the early 1970s. This black-and-white photo shows four residents of the home dressed for Halloween in homemade fairy costumes, with dresses, wand, and masks.

A photo from Diane Arbus's "Untitled" series, taken in a home for adults with cognitive disabilities in the early 1970s. This black-and-white photo shows two residents of the home dressed for Halloween. They are standing close to each other on a wide lawn. One is wearing a clown costume, and the other appears to be wearing pajamas under a winter coat. Both are wearing domino masks.

A photo from Diane Arbus's "Untitled" series, taken in a home for adults with cognitive disabilities in the early 1970s. This black-and-white photo shows an elderly woman in a wheelchair, outside. She is wearing street clothes, and her legs are wrapped in a white blanket. She is holding a plastic dime-store witch mask up to her face with one hand, and is facing the camera.

Here's to Diane Arbus's halloween photos—spooky, warm, intimate, tender.

Happy #Halloween!
This Roman miniature skeleton with flexible joints, jumps and dances when shaken.
The Romans called these skeletons larva convivalis, meaning banquet ghost, and were handed out to guests at dinner parties to remind them to have fun while they were alive.

An Anticolonial Lawyer in a Colonial Court Of language, shady translations & distorted justice

Once again a class discussion has made me remember this post where I reflect on my personal experiences of colonial language, content, structure and processes in studying and practising law. The absurd, the comedic and the tragic.
folukeafrica.com/an-anticolon...

The greatest song of all time.

Getting φρίκη (phrikē) Some spoooooky Late Antique & Byzantine finds

Happy Byzantoween!!! I posted about some spoooooky & *phrike* Late Antique & Byzantine stuff over on Substack… check it out — if you dare!

empressofbyzantium.substack.com/p/getting-ph...

B&W photo of two girls in 1970s-era Halloween costumes, one of them in a stroller

Currently luxuriating in photographer Larry Racioppo's pictures of Halloween in Brooklyn in the 1970s, which are absolutely lovely and giving me a total flashback to my childhood (thread) #Halloween

YouTube video by Florence + the Machine - Topic Witch Dance

The new Florence and the Machine album is f'in fantastic. Especially into Witch Dance and The Old Religion.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuIl...

For the day that's in it...

'All Hallows' by Louise Gluck - has a deep sense of loneliness and loss, that shifting between the seasons, and the final lines where the veil between this world and the next becomes thin

#poetry
#poemoftheday
#Halloween

I am dying laughing as one kid, who took a little longer to pick bc he didn’t want candy (braces), saw the Declaration of Independence and then had to run to catch up w/ his friends, unsuccessfully yelling over their howls and hoots “Guys - guys, guys - GUYS! I GOT A DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE!!!”

Our Halloween offerings this year.

@classicstober.bsky.social Day 31 of #ClassicsTober25: Elysian Fields. In the picture Aeneas meeting with his father in the Elysium. Sebastian Vrancx (1573–1647). Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon. #ClassicsTober

“some people abuse SNAP” your soul is rotten

Watch out for Ea Nasir this Halloween!

Happy Halloween!

A person I interviewed for this story told me her 8th grader recently read Night by Elie Wiesel in school and observed “it’s sort of like what’s happening here right now” in case you’re wondering how things are going for Chicago’s kids.

Ghosts by Dawn Mclachlan The dead return on stealthy feet and in the quiet ways Not in the shrieks of myth Or the clanked chains of literature Not in spectral bloodied cloth And creaks of floor They require neither season nor reason Instead they appear in the watch unwound The drawer jammed by a rusted penknife They rise from a homeless key And a half- remembered phone number They tumble from yellowed photo albums slipping from unused tools in spider-webbed racks They linger in restless moments passing through childhood towns They surprise us in the expression of a child Or the saying of a friend They return not in the fearful dread But in the sorrowful silence Or in a distant song that snatches breath And brings an unexpected smile

Time for another #Fridaypoem
#poemsabout #poetry #poemsonbluesky #poetrycommunity #poetrysociety #poemsaboutlife #funeralpoetry #poemsaboutgrief #PoemAltText #AltText

Anointed with jewels
And delicate silk
The vamp hides fangs
With honey in milk

Her skin pale as bones
Hair dark as the night
Her red lips softly quiver
for tender neck, she’ll bite

Enthralled, you lean in for a kiss
Surely a kiss would be sweet
But like daggers she sinks in
Blood dripping! Defeat

#Haiku4U Lycanthrope

Feel bad mood rising
Howl, gnash teeth! Chase the moon
Release, sun up soon!

#Spooktober

Silent film starlet
Theda Bara, Gloomy vamp.
Sultry haunted, camp.

She made them all swoon
Raked in box office gold
Till forgotten, old.

Greatest works were lost
Sexy and spooky thriller
Siren eyed stellar

Fame sank its fangs
Drained her blood till bone white
She cried “No more!”

#HorrorHaiku

So so stupid and corrupt

Statue of the Farnese Atlas - Napoli (2nd c. AD)

@classicstober.bsky.social Day 26 of #ClassicsTober25: Punishment. The Titan Atlas was transformed into stone after he refused Perseus hospitality. Copyright: © ph. Luciano Romano 2009. #ClassicsTober