Re. Witches: I find Terry Pratchett’s (GNU) idea of witches to be the most satisfying - sensible women in a world where magic just causes trouble, using the suggestive power of a big black hat and poor dental work to get people to see sense (“headology”).
Just wanted to say 'great newsletter' today but please note my stock plea to all theatre reviewers - if you like the set *Pleease* tag the designer in. Those lovely pastel vibes on The Witches aren't the director's creation - they are - in this case the designer Lizzie Clachan's. The feminist in you will agree that if we subscribe to classic 'auteur' theory (director responsible for everything) we eliminate lots of amazing creatives who have been crucial in making what we see.... often women
Why did he have to delete the tweet, I guess I know why but the whiners are wrong
I mean, Jesus taking one for the team is not just the story of Easter, it’s basically Christianity boiled down to one sentence, that’s the whole religion right there
The same thought occurred to me, I thought it was a brilliant summing up. If it had come from the lips of say Dorothy Parker then it would be celebrated and quoted ad nauseum but as it only comes from the lips of a mere footballer...
Despite being agnostic I’ve become fascinated with early Christianity lately (how did about 20 illustrate peasants from the backblocks of the empire turn being upset at what they saw as the unfair killing of their friends into a movement that changed the world!!!) so in the process have leaned more about the actual religion and Christ taking one for the team is basically the whole religion!
Have you read The Immortality Key by Muraresku? If not, you might want to take a look at it - some interesting research and theories about the early church.
It is amazing how Christianitry spread the more so considering it was mostly by word of mouth although conquest also played a large part too. The same can be said for the spread of Islam as well. Not that any religion has any appeal for me,I gave up on Christianity aged about seven when I prayed for it to stop raining one Saturday morning. It continued raining for the whole weekend.
Once it was a state religion I’m not that interested in its growth, but how it went from the dozen apostles and a few women (about half named Mary) to a million is incredible
I haven't looked into it but I suppose that in the beginning Christianity was an extension of Judaism and as such those Jews that came to believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the prophesied Messiah would have been converted by the original followers. They would also have believed that they were following the old religion not founding a new one.
There is no real way of knowing how many followers Jesus had at the time of his death although the parable of the feeding of the five thousand and other stories in the Gospels suggest that his following had become quite large so there would have been a sizeable pool of believers already who would have been spreading the word. Of course the caveat there is that you have to take the word of the Gospels.
Then it caught on with the Roman occupiers and the rest,as they say, is history. It is interesting that although Christianity established itself in the rest of the world it fell completely out of favour with the Jews who are still waiting for the true Messiah.
When you said ‘word of mouth’ I’d assumed you had read about it because that is correct
The stories in the Bible about mass conversion events are almost certainly legendary/myth, same with the 5,000
Bart Ehrman is a terrific resource on this, grew up in a normal Christian family but then had a born again experience and became full fledged conservative evangelical, then he learned how to read Ancient Greek and went to study Bible manuscripts etc, got his PhD then couldn’t reconcile his evangelical belief in the Bible being the word of good and without error against the fact he now knew as a fact that early scribes made errors when transcribing the Bible so we don’t know exactly what the gospel writers or Paul actually wrote, thus became a liberal Christian and now an atheist but still a world renowned Bible scholar
His books Misquoting Jesus and How Jesus Became God are both fascinating but there are plenty of his lectures on YouTube are great if you want a taste (the one where he eviscerates Dan Brown and the Da Vinci code are fun
Sorry for long message and apologies Helen for filling your replies with this
Prague is a brilliant, walkable (if you don’t mind hills!) city. Hope you got a chance to pop into the torture museum by Charles Bridge - there’s an eye opener! (I think they have something to do that...😯)
Look if people are going to do wilful and wanton things like live in Australia, I don’t see how I can be held responsible for that. (Hope you’re enjoying summer 😭😭)
I actually came into a recent windfall and am trying to choose where to take a trip
You recommended Prague even with the long flight (over a short flight to a Pacific Island??, I’m worried I’ll get bored after a few days on the island, I already have a beach near my apartment)
From the old town, walk up to the castle, even if you don’t go in, and get the view back. Then walk back across Charles Bridge and eat a chimney cake (the comments here say they’re inauthentic but they are also delicious!). The old Jewish quarter is worth looking around — one ticket gets you entry to the graveyard and museum and a couple of historic synagogues. The National Museum is nice if you have kids (lots of rocks and fossils). And definitely eat out if you can — the restaurants were brilliant. We tried Meat Eater and Marie B.
The Kelce and Swift thing is too too clearly a match made in a talent agent's zoom room and culminating in a PR agent's wet dream. Kelce changed agencies recently and, I suppose, if one stays in his twitter lane and doesn't venture over to watching NFL (the thing that Kelce is actually famous for and really good at) one will be gob smacked with how many adverts the guy is doing. It is truly overkill. When Swift is at his game, she is selling NFL to female fans and to new NFL swag shoppers (his jersey sold out in an instant as did another NFL player's whose last name is also Swift). When Kelce shares that goofy grin and tells viewers to get jabbed and even double jabbed, I'd be my bottom dollar there's money over and above what Kelce makes for stumping pharma that is passed on to the Swift team (one hand Purells the other and all that). People in Hollywood don't get out of bed to sell a product they aren't getting paid to sell, and the only products they sell for no money are their own IG pix and tweets. Ask a hack actor who hasn't worked in a decade or a screenwriter whose too creaky to get out of bed, they will tell you the chances that these two famous people are actually dating is slim to none (Ozempic not included).
I am not a follower of the lives of Kelce and Swift, kind of off our radar down here in NZ, but I do love some of the little gems you uncover in your research each week and share with your audience. They have universal appeal. : "it’s every girl’s biggest dream to be able to text their dog. and that’s sort of the vibe travis kelce is bringing to the table.”
I got married in Prague. Both Kiwis, we just wanted to do something different. It was the best. So beautiful.
Ms Lewis, a word to the wise. The next time you go to Prague leave those ''chimney cakes'' alone. There is nothing authentic or tradtional about them, they are just one of the things dreamed up since the ''Velvet Revolution'' to fleece tourists of their cash. Now the beer,well,that is another story...
ah well, most “traditional” food is nothing of the sort, and they *were* delicious, so I don’t mind! (Sadly I’m not much of a beer drinker so I’ll take your word for it)
If you go again to Prague you could try svickova which is authentic Czech food. It is a slice of sirloin in a rich sauce served with dumplings (knedliky). Tastes good. You can wash that down with Czech wine, something like Frankovka which is a burgundy type red.
I was gonna say, I lived in Prague for a year (same postal district as you, by the look of it!) and I have no idea what a "chimney cake" is. Authentic Czech street food is huge suspicious sausages with mustard and a sliver of stale brown bread, fried breaded cheese, and potato cakes cooked in grease that smells like it's never been changed. Dammit, now I want all three.
*googles*
Oh, those? Yeah, that's a Hungarian thing. Tasty, though.
I've only just noticed your user name, it's much more imaginative than mine.
Ah yes, the food, all very tasty but horribly unhealthy. Those sausages are called klobasa and like most sausages it is better not to know the ingredients. You are right about the ''grease'',sadlo in Czech,dripping to us, it is rarely changed. Did you try the goulashes? They are also rather tasty .
For anyone wondering about the usernames: the psychogeography of Prague is based around the ten postal/administrative districts, so if you ask a Praguer where they live they're likely to answer "Prague 3" or "Prague 5" or whatever (which would be "Praha 3" or "Praha 5" in Czech). So calling yourself "Praha 7" is a bit like calling yourself "W1A" or "East 17". Actually, I'm not sure what the closest London equivalent would be - Prague 7 is a leafy area in the north of the city with some lovely parks, a modern art museum, the Prague Zoo, the Sparta Praha football ground, and the Výstaviště exhibition area. NW1, maybe?
"Pozor vlak" is the Czech for "Beware, train!" I've been using it on the internet for exactly eighteen years, having registered it as a LiveJournal on December 1st, 2005. I'm not particularly a railfan, I just like the sound. Since then it's followed me to GitHub, Twitter, AO3, Mastodon, etc, no doubt much to the annoyance of the Australian surf-thrash band and the Czech-language railfan show who both use the same name. I was *very* confused on my last visit to .cz when I was waiting to catch a train to Vienna: "Wait, why is the tannoy talking to me directly? And how do they know my username? Ooooooohhhhhhhh..."
The Prague districts are like the arrondissements in Paris. They are much more than just postal districts. Each 'borough'(Obec) has its own elected councillors and mayor although there is also a central Prague council. The borough council deals with most of the needs of the residents such as ID cards,passports,birth and death certificates and so on.
The nearest equivalent in London would be something like Westminster W1 or Haringey N17.
I stand corrected, thanks! Though I think this underlines my point about psychogeography: London boroughs don't (AIUI) have anything like the same mindshare. A Londoner would never say "I live in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea", they'd say "I live in Chelsea", or "I live in Notting Hill". The psychogeographic districts of London don't line up particularly well with either postal or administrative boundaries (which are different, because Britain), whereas in Prague they do.
If I may mount my hobby-horse for a minute: in Edinburgh, the psychogeographic districts are about three streets wide and don't have any postal or administrative significance that I can see. It's really annoying. "Where do you stay?" "Trinity." "Where the heck is that, it's not listed on any map." Edinburgh does not have a real "West End", though people like to pretend it does. London has a West End. Glasgow has a West End. Edinburgh has a West End of Princes Street. It's a special case of our general problem with London Envy. As Mark Renton might have said, we can't even find a decent city to be envious of.
The problem with London,I am a Londoner, is the continual redrawing of the administrative boundaries. For example i grew up in what was then the Borough of Wembley but that was later combined with the Borough of Willesden to make the new Borough of Brent. Of course before this these outer London boroughs were composed of what had been small towns and villages that were outside London altogether. The result is that people living in these larger boroughs will tend to say,if asked that they live in Kingsbury or Willesden or Harlesden rather than Brent. It is the same elsewhere in London too.
In Prague the districts also have names as well as numbers. Praha 7, as I am sure you know, is called Holesovice although those who live in the leafier part will say that they live in Letna. That is something of an exception, though ,and most people when asked what part of Prague they live in will name their district e.g Smichov,Karlin etc.
Here's a curious little story that combines Prague and Edinburgh. Once when I was in Prague I had occasion to go to the French embassy there, don't ask. At the time I was deep in the Rebus books by Ian Rankin so I knew quite a lot about Edinburgh,Fife and places beyond. On arriving at the embassy I rang the bell and was let in by the guard and chatted to her in Czech while going through the security procedure. She ,recognising my English accent, strarted to talk in English but with a very recognisable Scottish axccent It turned out that she had lived in Fife for deveral years and knew Edinburgh pretty well too. Small world as they say.
I remember my jaw once abruptly stopping half-way as I bit down on a klobasa, and finding a cubic centimetre of bone in between my teeth :-) Good times. And yes, I'm a big fan of Czech goulash, especially with knedliky.
Ref Prague and cross-stitch: if you like Prague you may also like Vienna. I’ve just got back and absolutely loved it. Think you would also if you haven’t already been.
And if you like cross stitch have you come across the patterns from Satsuma Street or Awesome Pattern Studio? Both have representations of world cities - I have enjoyed stitching ones I have visited
- although judging by the kits on your wish list the colour palettes might be a bit bright for your taste. Awesome Pattern Studio is run by Ukrainians who managed to keep going once the war started.
Ref LinkedIn: I have an absolute howler of any over sharing former colleague on my timeline. Huge amount of hypocritical virtue signalling held up by those who should know better as an examplar of LinkedIn users. It just makes me guffaw every time I read his posts.
Re. Witches: I find Terry Pratchett’s (GNU) idea of witches to be the most satisfying - sensible women in a world where magic just causes trouble, using the suggestive power of a big black hat and poor dental work to get people to see sense (“headology”).
... and in one memorable case, getting a powerful magic-user to bewitch themself through the power of suggestion.
Just wanted to say 'great newsletter' today but please note my stock plea to all theatre reviewers - if you like the set *Pleease* tag the designer in. Those lovely pastel vibes on The Witches aren't the director's creation - they are - in this case the designer Lizzie Clachan's. The feminist in you will agree that if we subscribe to classic 'auteur' theory (director responsible for everything) we eliminate lots of amazing creatives who have been crucial in making what we see.... often women
Why did he have to delete the tweet, I guess I know why but the whiners are wrong
I mean, Jesus taking one for the team is not just the story of Easter, it’s basically Christianity boiled down to one sentence, that’s the whole religion right there
The same thought occurred to me, I thought it was a brilliant summing up. If it had come from the lips of say Dorothy Parker then it would be celebrated and quoted ad nauseum but as it only comes from the lips of a mere footballer...
Despite being agnostic I’ve become fascinated with early Christianity lately (how did about 20 illustrate peasants from the backblocks of the empire turn being upset at what they saw as the unfair killing of their friends into a movement that changed the world!!!) so in the process have leaned more about the actual religion and Christ taking one for the team is basically the whole religion!
Have you read The Immortality Key by Muraresku? If not, you might want to take a look at it - some interesting research and theories about the early church.
It is amazing how Christianitry spread the more so considering it was mostly by word of mouth although conquest also played a large part too. The same can be said for the spread of Islam as well. Not that any religion has any appeal for me,I gave up on Christianity aged about seven when I prayed for it to stop raining one Saturday morning. It continued raining for the whole weekend.
It’s the first million that amazes me
Once it was a state religion I’m not that interested in its growth, but how it went from the dozen apostles and a few women (about half named Mary) to a million is incredible
I haven't looked into it but I suppose that in the beginning Christianity was an extension of Judaism and as such those Jews that came to believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the prophesied Messiah would have been converted by the original followers. They would also have believed that they were following the old religion not founding a new one.
There is no real way of knowing how many followers Jesus had at the time of his death although the parable of the feeding of the five thousand and other stories in the Gospels suggest that his following had become quite large so there would have been a sizeable pool of believers already who would have been spreading the word. Of course the caveat there is that you have to take the word of the Gospels.
Then it caught on with the Roman occupiers and the rest,as they say, is history. It is interesting that although Christianity established itself in the rest of the world it fell completely out of favour with the Jews who are still waiting for the true Messiah.
When you said ‘word of mouth’ I’d assumed you had read about it because that is correct
The stories in the Bible about mass conversion events are almost certainly legendary/myth, same with the 5,000
Bart Ehrman is a terrific resource on this, grew up in a normal Christian family but then had a born again experience and became full fledged conservative evangelical, then he learned how to read Ancient Greek and went to study Bible manuscripts etc, got his PhD then couldn’t reconcile his evangelical belief in the Bible being the word of good and without error against the fact he now knew as a fact that early scribes made errors when transcribing the Bible so we don’t know exactly what the gospel writers or Paul actually wrote, thus became a liberal Christian and now an atheist but still a world renowned Bible scholar
His books Misquoting Jesus and How Jesus Became God are both fascinating but there are plenty of his lectures on YouTube are great if you want a taste (the one where he eviscerates Dan Brown and the Da Vinci code are fun
Sorry for long message and apologies Helen for filling your replies with this
Prague is a brilliant, walkable (if you don’t mind hills!) city. Hope you got a chance to pop into the torture museum by Charles Bridge - there’s an eye opener! (I think they have something to do that...😯)
Excited to hear that Prague is a short flight (from Sydney!!! )
You let the fact you’re an international superstar slip your mind again Helen 😊
Look if people are going to do wilful and wanton things like live in Australia, I don’t see how I can be held responsible for that. (Hope you’re enjoying summer 😭😭)
I actually came into a recent windfall and am trying to choose where to take a trip
You recommended Prague even with the long flight (over a short flight to a Pacific Island??, I’m worried I’ll get bored after a few days on the island, I already have a beach near my apartment)
I definitely recommend Prague - and if you somehow get bored of it, Vienna and Budapest are only a short train ride away.
I can’t vouch for Budapest but I loved Vienna — the palace complex in the city centre and Schonnbrun were both excellent.
Zagreb is also lovely, though that's a little further away.
Edit: And Krakow! How could I forget Krakow?
I’ve been to Vienna (though only for a few hours on a Lauda Air flight stop off and found it delightful
Ok I just booked 3 days in Prague - what’s the best stuff to do?
From the old town, walk up to the castle, even if you don’t go in, and get the view back. Then walk back across Charles Bridge and eat a chimney cake (the comments here say they’re inauthentic but they are also delicious!). The old Jewish quarter is worth looking around — one ticket gets you entry to the graveyard and museum and a couple of historic synagogues. The National Museum is nice if you have kids (lots of rocks and fossils). And definitely eat out if you can — the restaurants were brilliant. We tried Meat Eater and Marie B.
Great food and beer. At Potrefena Husa near Charles Bridge
Convent of St Agnes - girl boss.
The Kelce and Swift thing is too too clearly a match made in a talent agent's zoom room and culminating in a PR agent's wet dream. Kelce changed agencies recently and, I suppose, if one stays in his twitter lane and doesn't venture over to watching NFL (the thing that Kelce is actually famous for and really good at) one will be gob smacked with how many adverts the guy is doing. It is truly overkill. When Swift is at his game, she is selling NFL to female fans and to new NFL swag shoppers (his jersey sold out in an instant as did another NFL player's whose last name is also Swift). When Kelce shares that goofy grin and tells viewers to get jabbed and even double jabbed, I'd be my bottom dollar there's money over and above what Kelce makes for stumping pharma that is passed on to the Swift team (one hand Purells the other and all that). People in Hollywood don't get out of bed to sell a product they aren't getting paid to sell, and the only products they sell for no money are their own IG pix and tweets. Ask a hack actor who hasn't worked in a decade or a screenwriter whose too creaky to get out of bed, they will tell you the chances that these two famous people are actually dating is slim to none (Ozempic not included).
I am not a follower of the lives of Kelce and Swift, kind of off our radar down here in NZ, but I do love some of the little gems you uncover in your research each week and share with your audience. They have universal appeal. : "it’s every girl’s biggest dream to be able to text their dog. and that’s sort of the vibe travis kelce is bringing to the table.”
I got married in Prague. Both Kiwis, we just wanted to do something different. It was the best. So beautiful.
Thanks for what you do here. Jo ☺️
I do love the aggression towards sexist advertising in that blogpost. Reminds me so of the classic car one: https://www.creativebloq.com/news/billboard-graffiti
Excuse me Helen but I have to post my Prague walk about video after seeing those Insta pics. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6EXNW145Y0Y
Ms Lewis, a word to the wise. The next time you go to Prague leave those ''chimney cakes'' alone. There is nothing authentic or tradtional about them, they are just one of the things dreamed up since the ''Velvet Revolution'' to fleece tourists of their cash. Now the beer,well,that is another story...
ah well, most “traditional” food is nothing of the sort, and they *were* delicious, so I don’t mind! (Sadly I’m not much of a beer drinker so I’ll take your word for it)
If you go again to Prague you could try svickova which is authentic Czech food. It is a slice of sirloin in a rich sauce served with dumplings (knedliky). Tastes good. You can wash that down with Czech wine, something like Frankovka which is a burgundy type red.
Can confirm, praha7 is right about the beer.
I was gonna say, I lived in Prague for a year (same postal district as you, by the look of it!) and I have no idea what a "chimney cake" is. Authentic Czech street food is huge suspicious sausages with mustard and a sliver of stale brown bread, fried breaded cheese, and potato cakes cooked in grease that smells like it's never been changed. Dammit, now I want all three.
*googles*
Oh, those? Yeah, that's a Hungarian thing. Tasty, though.
I lived on smazemy syr on my visits in the 90s
It is SO GOOD.
I've only just noticed your user name, it's much more imaginative than mine.
Ah yes, the food, all very tasty but horribly unhealthy. Those sausages are called klobasa and like most sausages it is better not to know the ingredients. You are right about the ''grease'',sadlo in Czech,dripping to us, it is rarely changed. Did you try the goulashes? They are also rather tasty .
For anyone wondering about the usernames: the psychogeography of Prague is based around the ten postal/administrative districts, so if you ask a Praguer where they live they're likely to answer "Prague 3" or "Prague 5" or whatever (which would be "Praha 3" or "Praha 5" in Czech). So calling yourself "Praha 7" is a bit like calling yourself "W1A" or "East 17". Actually, I'm not sure what the closest London equivalent would be - Prague 7 is a leafy area in the north of the city with some lovely parks, a modern art museum, the Prague Zoo, the Sparta Praha football ground, and the Výstaviště exhibition area. NW1, maybe?
"Pozor vlak" is the Czech for "Beware, train!" I've been using it on the internet for exactly eighteen years, having registered it as a LiveJournal on December 1st, 2005. I'm not particularly a railfan, I just like the sound. Since then it's followed me to GitHub, Twitter, AO3, Mastodon, etc, no doubt much to the annoyance of the Australian surf-thrash band and the Czech-language railfan show who both use the same name. I was *very* confused on my last visit to .cz when I was waiting to catch a train to Vienna: "Wait, why is the tannoy talking to me directly? And how do they know my username? Ooooooohhhhhhhh..."
The Prague districts are like the arrondissements in Paris. They are much more than just postal districts. Each 'borough'(Obec) has its own elected councillors and mayor although there is also a central Prague council. The borough council deals with most of the needs of the residents such as ID cards,passports,birth and death certificates and so on.
The nearest equivalent in London would be something like Westminster W1 or Haringey N17.
I stand corrected, thanks! Though I think this underlines my point about psychogeography: London boroughs don't (AIUI) have anything like the same mindshare. A Londoner would never say "I live in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea", they'd say "I live in Chelsea", or "I live in Notting Hill". The psychogeographic districts of London don't line up particularly well with either postal or administrative boundaries (which are different, because Britain), whereas in Prague they do.
If I may mount my hobby-horse for a minute: in Edinburgh, the psychogeographic districts are about three streets wide and don't have any postal or administrative significance that I can see. It's really annoying. "Where do you stay?" "Trinity." "Where the heck is that, it's not listed on any map." Edinburgh does not have a real "West End", though people like to pretend it does. London has a West End. Glasgow has a West End. Edinburgh has a West End of Princes Street. It's a special case of our general problem with London Envy. As Mark Renton might have said, we can't even find a decent city to be envious of.
The problem with London,I am a Londoner, is the continual redrawing of the administrative boundaries. For example i grew up in what was then the Borough of Wembley but that was later combined with the Borough of Willesden to make the new Borough of Brent. Of course before this these outer London boroughs were composed of what had been small towns and villages that were outside London altogether. The result is that people living in these larger boroughs will tend to say,if asked that they live in Kingsbury or Willesden or Harlesden rather than Brent. It is the same elsewhere in London too.
In Prague the districts also have names as well as numbers. Praha 7, as I am sure you know, is called Holesovice although those who live in the leafier part will say that they live in Letna. That is something of an exception, though ,and most people when asked what part of Prague they live in will name their district e.g Smichov,Karlin etc.
Here's a curious little story that combines Prague and Edinburgh. Once when I was in Prague I had occasion to go to the French embassy there, don't ask. At the time I was deep in the Rebus books by Ian Rankin so I knew quite a lot about Edinburgh,Fife and places beyond. On arriving at the embassy I rang the bell and was let in by the guard and chatted to her in Czech while going through the security procedure. She ,recognising my English accent, strarted to talk in English but with a very recognisable Scottish axccent It turned out that she had lived in Fife for deveral years and knew Edinburgh pretty well too. Small world as they say.
Thank you!
I remember my jaw once abruptly stopping half-way as I bit down on a klobasa, and finding a cubic centimetre of bone in between my teeth :-) Good times. And yes, I'm a big fan of Czech goulash, especially with knedliky.
Ref Prague and cross-stitch: if you like Prague you may also like Vienna. I’ve just got back and absolutely loved it. Think you would also if you haven’t already been.
And if you like cross stitch have you come across the patterns from Satsuma Street or Awesome Pattern Studio? Both have representations of world cities - I have enjoyed stitching ones I have visited
- although judging by the kits on your wish list the colour palettes might be a bit bright for your taste. Awesome Pattern Studio is run by Ukrainians who managed to keep going once the war started.
Ref LinkedIn: I have an absolute howler of any over sharing former colleague on my timeline. Huge amount of hypocritical virtue signalling held up by those who should know better as an examplar of LinkedIn users. It just makes me guffaw every time I read his posts.
That’s a lovely tip, thank you.
Full of gems as always - thanks Helen. Actually shared the LinkedIn piece on LinkedIn, with a credit for Bluestocking obvs.
Another excellent post Helen - loved the article on the smear test advertising.
Five Instagrammy words: Caesar Flickerman in Hunger Games.