exploring lists in all their possibilities
by Leslie Myrick and Martha Rust
As this post goes live on December 24th, Santa is beginning his annual trip delivering gifts to children around the globe, which the young at heart of all ages may follow thanks to NORAD’s Santa tracker.1 Somehow Santa knows what children want for Christmas, but how?
Continue reading “What Children Want: Wish Lists and Beyond in Letters to Santa”
by Leslie Myrick
In a previous post, I examined outfitting and provisioning lists compiled by travelers in preparation for their trek along the northern route to California in 1849, the opening season of the rush for Californian gold. Those going by ox- or mule-drawn wagon (as opposed to by pack mule) were particularly prone to overpacking, and thus overburdening their stock. Guidebooks and previous travelers to the west recommended a load limit of 2500 pounds per wagon, but the exigencies of travel over muddy or sandy roads and unbridged rivers made the lightening of loads necessary, sometimes as early as the first day out of camp. Continue reading ““Piles of most beautiful bacon”: Lists of Jettisoned Goods on the 1849 Oregon Trail”
by Martha Rust
Happy November 1st! it’s All Saints’ Day in the Catholic calendar, and thanks to the wondrous, theoretically endless list that gave rise to it, the day might count as a red-letter day in the calendar of lovers of lists as well.[1] Continue reading “All Saints’ Day: Listing in the Service of Infinities”
Carly Cappielli’s award-winning novella Listurbia, a story told in lists, opens with a list of “common cognitive biases” along with their definitions: Pareidolia, The von Restorff effect, The Semmelwies reflex, The Peltzman effect, Parkinson’s law of triviality, Travis Syndrome, and The Zeigarnik effect.[1] Cappielli takes some license with the definition of this final effect, making list writing one of its symptoms:
Continue reading “List Disturbance: An Interview with Carly Cappielli, Author of Listurbia”
by Leslie Myrick
The electrifying news of the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in the winter of 1848 compelled an estimated 80,000 adventurers to pack their bags for California in the following months. How they prepared for the journey—aided by the compilation of lists of provisions and outfitting equipment—depended on their intentions: whether to join the vast majority of travelers who went as itinerant gold hunters, leaving their families at home, or as settlers, picking up and moving with their families, in order to ply their own trade in the land of bonanza, e.g. as doctors or merchants. Continue reading “Outfit for California: Two and a Half Tons of Essentials for the Overland Trail”
Oxford, Bodleian Library Tanner MS 407, f. 41
(© Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford)
by Martha Rust
Glints of military power, papal ambition, international politics, vast wealth, and far-flung lands flash from a list entitled “This is the Copy of þe Presentacyon of þe Lordys of Venysse Send to þe Pope anno Christi 1464.” Continue reading “A Venetian Wish List of 1464”
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, Montgomery Alabama
photo by Soniakapedia
by Amanda Gerber
George Floyd, Regis Korchinski-Paquet, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Dion Johnson, James Scurlock, Manuel Ellis, Ahmaud Arbery. These names are only an abbreviated list of Black lives brutally stolen by police or vigilantes during the past few weeks, a list that only includes names that rose to public attention and omits those routinely oppressed and over-policed. Continue reading “Enlisting Allies”
A jaculus in Oxford, Bodleian Library Bodley MS 764, f. 98v
© Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford
by Amanda Gerber
John Metham’s Amoryus and Cleopes is a fifteenth-century romance loosely based on Ovid’s “Pyramus and Thisbe,” a tale perhaps better known as the inspiration for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The romance bears few resemblances to its Ovidian source or Shakespearean counterpart, not least of all because Metham adds to the love story a battle with a dragon as well as a postmortem resurrection and Christian conversion. Continue reading “Catalogue of Serpents in Metham’s Amoryus and Cleopes”
In his book Narrative Paths: African Travel in Modern Fiction and Nonfiction (Ohio State University Press, 2015), Professor Kai Mikkonen devotes a whole chapter to a list.[1] Continue reading “An Interview with Kai Mikkonen, Author of Narrative Paths: African Travel in Modern Fiction and Nonfiction”
