An Interesting Whatsit

[backfrommars.livejournal.com]

Sorry, not an update, but a little snippet I just had to share.  I bought Bill Bryson's "At Home" the other day (a history of "the ordinary things of life as found in a comfortable home").  I haven't started reading it yet, but when I was skimming through it, I found a very interesting paragraph about servants:

"It was unquestionably a strange world.  Servants constituted a class of humans whose existences were fundamentally devoted to making certain that another class of humans would find everything they desired within arm's reach more or less the moment it occurred to them to desire it.  The recipients of this attention became spoiled almost beyond imagining.  Visiting his daughter in the 1920s, in a house too small to keep his servants with him, the tenth Duke of Marlborough emerged from the bathroom in a state of helpless bewilderment because his toothbrush wasn't foaming properly.  It turned out that his valet had always put the toothpaste on the brush for him, and the Duke was unaware that toothbrushes didn't recharge automatically."

So, as helpless as Bertie may seem on occasion, when compared to some others in his class, he might be a genius.

Some historical goodies

[triedunture.livejournal.com]

I thought y'all might enjoy these bits! First, a clip from a documentary about 133rd St in Harlem, also known as Swing Street, where jazz clubs and speakeasies ran underground in the '20s and '30s. These clubs were desegregated, and also one of the only places to get a drink in the city when all the downtown clubs closed. A GLBT performer is mentioned; I imagine places like this were where Bertie or Jeeves could have partied swimmingly while in New York.

Watch on Vimeo

The City Concealed: The Original Swing Street from Thirteen.org on Vimeo.

And also, a great new Tumblr blog, Fuck Yeah, Gay Vintage! Just LOOK at these adorable old timey gay couple photos.