Woops I still have a blog

So.

Um.

Hello again! I've been a little...ahem...lax...about blogging lately, and I do so apologize for that. Finally, though, I have come back to you all! I can tell you are excited.

I am about to begin my second semester of Sophomore year at Indiana University with a brand new major - history.  I was previously a math major, until I realized I can't actually DO math, which is somewhat of a prerequisite if one is to major in it.  But dates, facts, names, THOSE I can remember.  I think this switch will be for the best, quite frankly.

For the first time in my college career, I have joined a club as well!  I have discovered the wonders and secrets of the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism), which allows me to love history all the time. It's a good thing.

I have been learning calligraphy (I am perhaps a little behind on practicing), playing flute in a recorder band, which actually makes perfect sense if you think about it, and learning some fancy dances that may or may not actually be period. 

'Cause I am a cool guy.

Oh! To make things slightly less nerdy I've joined another club as well.  A Harry Potter club. We discuss HP in a deep, emotional way.  The discussions are actually quite compelling, all told.

Are these things that cool people do?  I think it is.

So! Once again, I hope to blog on some kind of semi-regular basis about things that happen, and hopefully I will not bore anyone too overly much.

I think I am going to murder myself via my music choices.

I have been taking piano lessons since I was about twelve, so it's been, what? Eight years on the piano?  I really like to play, too, I wasn't one of those kids whose parents forced them to participate in activities.  I chose to keep up with my lessons in college, believing that if I didn't have someone behind me the whole time telling me to practice I would probably only practice about once a month (which is sadly true).  As much as I enjoy playing it, I just can't seem to practice often enough.

Over the past year and a bit, I decided to play songs by composers that I have admired since I started the piano, the major one being Chopin, but this year we have moved to Grieg.  I am supposed to learn three pieces a semester, and this time around all of them are by our dear Edvard.

I got a book of his Lyric Pieces and I was glancing through it to see which pieces I wanted to learn.  I hadn't heard of many of them, so I was playing little bits of them on the keyboard, just messing around really, when I landed on the Elfin Dance.

I really like it, I do, and I decided I wanted to play it. I am not very good at playing fast songs, but I decided, just this once, to try and improve myself.

Then I saw his Scherzo.  It has a lovely triplet-over-straight eighths rhythm which I am particularly fond of, and when I sounded it out I decided it was going to be my second piece.  Then, I looked it up on YouTube.

And it says, very blatantly at the top, that it is supposed to be played hella fast. Which I somehow missed on my first read-through. But the middle is nice and sweet, and I decided not to back down from the challenge.

Just this Thursday I got my third piece, which my instructor picked out for me, his Arietta, a nice, slow song.

So, yeah. It will be a challenging semester, if nothing else.

Today is my last day at IU.

Freshman year has gone by fast.  In a haze of classes, dorm food, and almost unashamed boredom I have spent two full semesters here.  I am still shocked every day to see that the beauty that initially made Bloomington my first choice for school has not faded away. The coming summer months make the place greener, fresher, lovelier.

But I am ready to go home. I have lived too long with a room mate (not that she's a bad person, I am just a private one) and I have had enough of classes for now.  I miss my family, my friends, my dogs, my familiar bed - 

But that is where I stop.  This bed has become familiar to me.  When I go back for weekends or holidays this is the bed I want to sleep in. The people in my classes, the teachers, have become welcome sights. I might not have my own pets, but I do have squirrels and chipmunks that will almost stand still long enough for you to pet them.

And - I'm not going to lie - living away from my parents has been fun.  Part of that might be because I haven't had to do chores, but I think it's also shown that I have responsibility. I'm not dead. I'm not addicted to drugs. I haven't gone to jail. I enjoy living away from all of that, from the same town I've been a part of since I was six.

And I've made so many friends here, from so many different places.  They are not my friends from home for sure, but they're just as good, and now I have to leave them for four months.  I am being stripped of the people that I have spent nearly every day of an entire year with.  They are some of my best friends now, some of my favorite people to talk to and gossip with and drink coffee on a cold day with.

I'm not sure how I'll be able to cope.

A view on social and gender differences during the plague or, I Just Really Like the Plague, Okay?

I want you to know, before I begin, that I am not fact-checking this as I type it. I am recalling things I have been reading about and learning about since the fifth grade.  A lot of the information I am about to speculate about I learned last semester, in a Black Plague course at school. It's a very interesting thing to me, and I am basically writing this as a research paper for fun because I am a nerd.  And I Do Not Care.
*Forewarning - this might not be interesting for you, but it will be immensely interesting to me.*
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Part One: Social Change (but not really)

The Plague (capital-P Plague, the first big plague) killed many thousands of people.  First-hand accounts of Plague times say it was hundreds of thousands, millions, perhaps, of people that died.  The thing about first-hand accounts, though, is that they like to exaggerate. Hundreds of thousands is probably a closer-to-accurate answer.  Thing is, a lot of those people were peasants and the like. The people that the Lords depended on to take care of their fields and lands.

As more and more workers died, the living peasants could demand higher wages, something that no one of their station in the world had been able to do before.  The workers could also leave their life of indentured servitude to find new, higher-paying jobs.  This led to a slight power shift in favor of the workers and peasants, much to the dismay of the higher castes, but there was little they could do about it.  The only options of the land-owners was to pay what their servants wanted or let them abandon the property, letting it go to waste and becoming poorer themselves.

At this point, a lot (perhaps the majority) of peacekeepers were struck down by the plague, meaning there was nothing the Lords could do legally anyway, even if the rest of the 'law enforcement' wasn't trying to cope with the humongous amount of deaths occurring all across the continent.

Moral of the story: it was better to be a healthy peasant during the Plague...but no, not really. The Plague was horrible.
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Part Two: The Rights of Women During the Plague

I'm just going to jump right into this one - there weren't many before the plague, and there were less afterward.

Women, historically (and, to some point, still today) were meant to be seen and not heard.  Because of Eve, in the Garden of Eden, women were viewed as basic sinners and unworthy of any power.  They held no jobs, got very little education, and were meant to have no opinions.

After the plague, however, these things became worse.  No one at the time (no one until around 1900) knew what caused the plague.  Religious officials and other authority figures, desperate to place blame on someone, pretty much simultaneously blamed foreigners and women.  The original sins that the women were harboring with them was seen as the wellspring of the Plague.  Women were regulated even more harshly than before, the officials going so far as to enforce a kind of dress code for females, making them wear longer and less revealing clothing.  They were seen as progenitors of the plague by the rest of the Medieval community, making The Moral of the Story this: It was never really a good thing to be female and from the middle ages.
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If any of this is wrong, tell me please, and I'll try my best to fix it!

My Walking Around Campus Playlist or, I Swear I Am A Normal Teenager.

Start with Edvard Grieg's In the Hall of the Mountain King:

Begins quietly, then rushes, rushes to its conclusion.

Then follow with Richard Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries:

It's exciting from the outset, a good follow-up to the Grieg.

Then some Brahms, with Hungarian Dance No. 5:

A little more stately, a little calmer, but still so awesome.

And then straight to Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2:

Slower, more dangerous, very emotional, and then almost campy.


Followed by Chopin's Grand Valse Brillante!:

Just to calm it down a little (and he's, like, my favorite person ever.)


AND THEN MORE CHOPIN! Prelude in D Flat Major:

Totally NOT because Chopin is awesome and I'm playing this song right now on the piano but because it's a lovely song. There is NO ulterior motive here.


And finally, we have Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture (finale):

In which cannons are used as musical instruments, officially making classical music cooler than anything else on the radio.


And that is my Walking Around Campus Playlist. I hope you all enjoy.