Tuesday, December 24, 2024

"Moscow Christmas Streets and Markets 2024, A Magical Evening Walk"

Full screen recommended.
Different Russia, 12/24/24
"Moscow Christmas Streets and Markets 2024,
 A Magical Evening Walk"
"In this episode I invite you to a magical Christmas walk with me along the central streets of Moscow, Russia . We will walk along Rozhdestvenka St. and Kuznetsky Most St. You will see the famous TSUM and Central Children's Stores. Immerse yourself in the magical atmosphere that reigns in Moscow during the Christmas holidays."
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Merry Christmas!

 
Merry Christmas folks!
May your days be full of love, peace and happiness...
And, as always, thanks for stopping by!

"Best Christmas Songs of All Time"

Full screen recommended.
"Best Christmas Songs of All Time"

"White Christmas"

Full screen recommended.
"White Christmas"

"O Holy Night"

Full screen recommended.
David Lanz and Kristin Amarie, 
"O Holy Night"

"It's A Wonderful Life - The Ending"

Full screen recommended.
"It's A Wonderful Life - The Ending"

Il Divo, "O Holy Night"

Full screen recommended.
Il Divo, "O Holy Night"

"Traditional Christmas Classics🎄 Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Bing Crosby"

Full screen recommended.
"Traditional Christmas Classics🎄 
Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Bing Crosby"

Peder B. Helland, "O Holy Night"

Full screen recommended.
Peder B. Helland, "O Holy Night"

Josh Groban, "Noel"

Full screen recommended.
Josh Groban, "Noel"


1 Silent Night 
2 Little Drummer Boy (Ft. Andy McKee) 
3 I'll Be Home For Christmas 
4 Ave Maria
5 Angels We Have Heard on High (Ft. Brian McKnight) 
6 Thankful 
7 The Christmas Song 
8 What Child Is This? 
9 The First Noël (Ft. Faith Hill) 
10 Petit Papa Noël 
11 It Came Upon a Midnight Clear 
12 Panis Angelicus 
13 O Come All Ye Faithful (Ft. The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square)

"A Charlie Brown Christmas - True Meaning"

Full screen recommended.
"A Charlie Brown Christmas - True Meaning"
o
Full screen recommended.
"Charlie Brown Christmas Dance"

"Christmas With Placido Domingo"

 

Placido Domingo, "La Virgen Lava Pañales"
Plácido Domingo, Wiener Sängerknaben, 
"Ave Maria" (Franz Schubert)

“The Christmas Truce of 1914 - 'Joyeux Noel'”

Full screen recommended.
“The Christmas Truce of 1914 - 'Joyeux Noel'
by Simon Rees
The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting each other - 
instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.”
- Edward Abbey

“You are standing up to your knees in the slime of a waterlogged trench. It is the evening of 24 December 1914 and you are on the dreaded Western Front. Stooped over, you wade across to the firing step and take over the watch. Having exchanged pleasantries, your bleary-eyed and mud-spattered colleague shuffles off towards his dug out. Despite the horrors and the hardships, your morale is high and you believe that in the New Year the nation’s army march towards a glorious victory.
But for now you stamp your feet in a vain attempt to keep warm. All is quiet when jovial voices call out from both friendly and enemy trenches. Then the men from both sides start singing carols and songs. Next come requests not to fire, and soon the unthinkable happens: you start to see the shadowy shapes of soldiers gathering together in no-man’s land laughing, joking and sharing gifts. Many have exchanged cigarettes, the lit ends of which burn brightly in the inky darkness. Plucking up your courage, you haul yourself up and out of the trench and walk towards the foe…
The meeting of enemies as friends in no-man’s land was experienced by hundreds, if not thousands, of men on the Western Front during Christmas 1914. Today, 109 years after it occurred, the event is seen as a shining episode of sanity from among the bloody chapters of World War One – a spontaneous effort by the lower ranks to create a peace that could have blossomed were it not for the interference of generals and politicians.
The reality of the Christmas Truce, however, is a slightly less romantic and a more down to earth story. It was an organic affair that in some spots hardly registered a mention and in others left a profound impact upon those who took part. Many accounts were rushed, confused or contradictory. Others, written long after the event, are weighed down by hindsight. These difficulties aside, the true story is still striking precisely because of its rag-tagged nature: it is more ‘human’ and therefore all the more potent.

Months beforehand, millions of servicemen, reservists and volunteers from all over the continent had rushed enthusiastically to the banners of war: the atmosphere was one of holiday rather than conflict. But it was not long before the jovial façade was torn away. Armies equipped with repeating rifles, machine guns and a vast array of artillery tore chunks out of each other, and thousands upon thousands of men perished. To protect against the threat of this vast firepower, the soldiers were ordered to dig in and prepare for next year’s offensives, which most men believed would break the deadlock and deliver victory. The early trenches were often hasty creations and poorly constructed; if the trench was badly sighted it could become a sniping hot spot. In bad weather (the winter of 1914 was a dire one) the positions could flood and fall in. The soldiers – unequipped to face the rigors of the cold and rain – found themselves wallowing in a freezing mire of mud and the decaying bodies of the fallen.

The man at the Front could not help but have a degree of sympathy for his opponents who were having just as miserable a time as they were. Another factor that broke down the animosity between the opposing armies were the surroundings. In 1914 the men at the front could still see the vestiges of civilization. Villages, although badly smashed up, were still standing. Fields, although pitted with shell-holes, had not been turned into muddy lunarscapes. Thus the other world – the civilian world – and the social mores and manners that went with it was still present at the front. Also lacking was the pain, misery and hatred that years of bloody war build up. Then there was the desire, on all sides, to see the enemy up close – was he really as bad as the politicians, papers and priests were saying? It was a combination of these factors, and many more minor ones, that made the Christmas Truce of 1914 possible.

On the eve of the Truce, the British Army (still a relatively small presence on the Western Front) was manning a stretch of the line running south from the infamous Ypres salient for 27 miles to the La Bassee Canal. Along the front the enemy was sometimes no more than 70, 50 or even 30 yards away. Both Tommy and Fritz could quite easily hurl greetings and insults to one another, and, importantly, come to tacit agreements not to fire. Incidents of temporary truces and outright fraternization were more common at this stage in the war than many people today realize – even units that had just taken part in a series of futile and costly assaults, were still willing to talk and come to arrangements with their opponents.

As Christmas approached the festive mood and the desire for a lull in the fighting increased as parcels packed with goodies from home started to arrive. On top of this came gifts care of the state. Tommy received plum puddings and ‘Princess Mary boxes’; a metal case engraved with an outline of George V’s daughter and filled with chocolates and butterscotch, cigarettes and tobacco, a picture card of Princess Mary and a facsimile of George V’s greeting to the troops. ‘May God protect you and bring you safe home,’ it said. Not to be outdone, Fritz received a present from the Kaiser, the Kaiserliche, a large meerschaum pipe for the troops and a box of cigars for NCOs and officers. Towns, villages and cities, and numerous support associations on both sides also flooded the front with gifts of food, warm clothes and letters of thanks.

The Belgians and French also received goods, although not in such an organized fashion as the British or Germans. For these nations the Christmas of 1914 was tinged with sadness – their countries were occupied. It is no wonder that the Truce, although it sprung up in some spots on French and Belgian lines, never really caught hold as it did in the British sector.
With their morale boosted by messages of thanks and their bellies fuller than normal, and with still so much Christmas booty to hand, the season of goodwill entered the trenches. A British Daily Telegraph correspondent wrote that on one part of the line the Germans had managed to slip a chocolate cake into British trenches. Even more amazingly, it was accompanied with a message asking for a ceasefire later that evening so they could celebrate the festive season and their Captain’s birthday. They proposed a concert at 7.30pm when candles, the British were told, would be placed on the parapets of their trenches. The British accepted the invitation and offered some tobacco as a return present. That evening, at the stated time, German heads suddenly popped up and started to sing. Each number ended with a round of applause from both sides. The Germans then asked the British to join in. At this point, one very mean-spirited Tommy shouted: ‘We’d rather die than sing German.’ To which a German joked aloud: ‘It would kill us if you did’.

December 24 was a good day weather-wise: the rain had given way to clear skies. On many stretches of the Front the crack of rifles and the dull thud of shells ploughing into the ground continued, but at a far lighter level than normal. In other sectors there was an unnerving silence that was broken by the singing and shouting drifting over, in the main, from the German trenches. Along many parts of the line the Truce was spurred on with the arrival in the German trenches of miniature Christmas trees – Tannenbaum. The sight these small pines, decorated with candles and strung along the German parapets, captured the Tommies’ imagination, as well as the men of the Indian corps who were reminded of the sacred Hindu festival of light. It was the perfect excuse for the opponents to start shouting to one another, to start singing and, in some areas, to pluck up the courage to meet one another in no-man’s land.

By now, the British high command – comfortably ‘entrenched’ in a luxurious châteaux 27 miles behind the front – was beginning to hear of the fraternization. Stern orders were issued by the commander of the BEF, Sir John French against such behavior. Other ‘brass-hats’ (as the Tommies nick-named their high-ranking officers and generals), also made grave pronouncements on the dangers and consequences of parleying with the Germans. However, there were many high-ranking officers who took a surprisingly relaxed view of the situation. If anything, they believed it would at least offer their men an opportunity to strengthen their trenches. This mixed stance meant that very few officers and men involved in the Christmas Truce were disciplined. Interestingly, the German High Command’s ambivalent attitude towards the Truce mirrored that of the British.
Christmas day began quietly but once the sun was up the fraternization began. Again songs were sung and rations thrown to one another. It was not long before troops and officers started to take matters into their own hands and ventured forth. No-man’s land became something of a playground. Men exchanged gifts and buttons. In one or two places soldiers who had been barbers in civilian times gave free haircuts. One German, a juggler and a showman, gave an impromptu, and given the circumstances, somewhat surreal performance of his routine in the centre of no-man’s land.

Captain Sir Edward Hulse of the Scots Guards, in his famous account, remembered the approach of four unarmed Germans at 08.30. He went out to meet them with one of his ensigns. ‘Their spokesmen,’ Hulse wrote, ‘started off by saying that he thought it only right to come over and wish us a happy Christmas, and trusted us implicitly to keep the truce. He came from Suffolk where he had left his best girl and a 3 h.p. motor-bike!’ Having raced off to file a report at headquarters, Hulse returned at 10.00 to find crowds of British soldiers and Germans out together chatting and larking about in no-man’s land, in direct contradiction to his orders. Not that Hulse seemed to care about the fraternization in itself – the need to be seen to follow orders was his concern. Thus he sought out a German officer and arranged for both sides to return to their lines.

While this was going on he still managed to keep his ears and eyes open to the fantastic events that were unfolding. ‘Scots and Huns were fraternizing in the most genuine possible manner. Every sort of souvenir was exchanged addresses given and received, photos of families shown, etc. One of our fellows offered a German a cigarette; the German said, “Virginian?” Our fellow said, “Aye, straight-cut”, the German said “No thanks, I only smoke Turkish!” It gave us all a good laugh.’ Hulse’s account was in part a letter to his mother, who in turn sent it on to the newspapers for publication, as was the custom at the time. Tragically, Hulse was killed in March 1915.

On many parts of the line the Christmas Day truce was initiated through sadder means. Both sides saw the lull as a chance to get into no-man’s land and seek out the bodies of their compatriots and give them a decent burial. Once this was done the opponents would inevitably begin talking to one another. The 6th Gordon Highlanders, for example, organized a burial truce with the enemy. After the gruesome task of laying friends and comrades to rest was complete, the fraternization began.

With the Truce in full swing up and down the line there were a number of recorded games of soccer, although these were really just ‘kick-abouts’ rather than a structured match. On January 1, 1915, the London Times published a letter from a major in the Medical Corps reporting that in his sector the British played a game against the Germans opposite and were beaten 3-2. Kurt Zehmisch of the 134th Saxons recorded in his diary: ‘The English brought a soccer ball from the trenches, and pretty soon a lively game ensued. How marvelously wonderful, yet how strange it was. The English officers felt the same way about it. Thus Christmas, the celebration of Love, managed to bring mortal enemies together as friends for a time.’
The Truce lasted all day; in places it ended that night, but on other sections of the line it held over Boxing Day and in some areas, a few days more. In fact, there were parts on the front where the absence of aggressive behavior was conspicuous well into 1915.

Captain J C Dunn, the Medical Officer in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, whose unit had fraternized and received two barrels of beer from the Saxon troops opposite, recorded how hostilities re-started on his section of the front. Dunn wrote: ‘At 8.30 I fired three shots in the air and put up a flag with “Merry Christmas” on it, and I climbed on the parapet. He [the Germans] put up a sheet with “Thank you” on it, and the German Captain appeared on the parapet. We both bowed and saluted and got down into our respective trenches, and he fired two shots in the air, and the War was on again.’ The war was indeed on again, for the Truce had no hope of being maintained. Despite being wildly reported in Britain and to a lesser extent in Germany, the troops and the populations of both countries were still keen to prosecute the conflict.

Today, pragmatists read the Truce as nothing more than a ‘blip’ – a temporary lull induced by the season of goodwill, but willingly exploited by both sides to better their defenses and eye out one another’s positions. Romantics assert that the Truce was an effort by normal men to bring about an end to the slaughter. In the public’s mind the facts have become irrevocably mythologized, and perhaps this is the most important legacy of the Christmas Truce today. In our age of uncertainty, it comforting to believe, regardless of the real reasoning and motives, that soldiers and officers told to hate, loathe and kill, could still lower their guns and extend the hand of goodwill, peace, love and Christmas cheer. The Irish poet, Thomas Kettle, who was killed in the War in September 1916, captured that spirit in a poem he wrote to his little daughter, Betty, shortly before he died:
“So, here while the mad guns curse overhead,
And tired men sigh with mud for couch and floor,
Know that we fools, now with the foolish dead,
Died not for flag, nor King, nor Emperor –
But for a dream, born in a herdsman’s shed,
And for the secret scripture of the poor.”

"Russia's Largest Shopping Mall 3 Days Before Christmas"

Full screen recommended.
Travelling with Russell, 12/24/24
"Russia's Largest Shopping Mall 3 Days Before Christmas"
"What is it like to shop at Russia's largest shopping mall during Christmas? Avia Park Shopping Mall is the largest shopping center in Russia. Are people in Russia shopping at Christmas? Join me 3 days before Christmas to find out."
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Absolutely incredible...

Monday, December 23, 2024

"Alert! U.S. Nuclear Bomb Scare, Major Event Imminent? What Are They Hiding?"

Canadian Prepper, 12/23/24
"Alert! U.S. Nuclear Bomb Scare, Major Event Imminent? 
What Are They Hiding?"
Comments here:

"Get Your Cash Out Of The Bank, If The Internet Goes Down You're Done"

Jeremiah Babe, 12/23/24
"Get Your Cash Out Of The Bank, 
If The Internet Goes Down You're Done"
Comments here:

"A Look to the Heavens, With Chet Raymo"

“Reaching For The Stars”
by Chet Raymo
“Here is a spectacular detail of the Eagle Nebula, a gassy star-forming region of the Milky Way Galaxy, about 7,000 light-years away. This particular spire of gas and dust was recently featured on APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day). The Eagle lies in the equatorial constellation Serpens. If you went out tonight and looked at this part of the sky - more or less midway between Arcturus and Antares - you might see nothing at all. The brightest star in Serpens is of the third magnitude, perhaps invisible in an urban environment. No part of the Eagle Nebula is available to unaided human vision. How big is the nebula in the sky? Hold a pinhead at arm's length and it would just about cover the spire. I like to think about things not mentioned in the APOD descriptions.

If the Sun were at the bottom of the spire, Alpha centauri, our nearest stellar neighbor, would be about halfway up the column. Sirius, the brightest star in Earth's sky, would be near the top. Let's say you sent out a spacecraft from the bottom of the spire that travelled at the speed of the two Voyager craft that are now traversing the outer reaches of the Solar System. It would take more than 200,000 years to reach the top of the spire.

The Hubble Space Telescope cost a lot of money to build, deploy, and operate. It has done a lot of good science. But perhaps the biggest return on the investment is to turn on ordinary folks like you and me to the scale and complexity of the universe. The human brain evolved, biologically and culturally, in a universe conceived on the human scale. We resided at its center. The stars were just up there on the dome of night. The Sun and Moon attended our desires. "All the world's a stage," wrote Shakespeare, and he meant it literally; the cosmos was designed by a benevolent creator as a stage for the human drama. All of that has gone by the board. Now we can travel in our imagination for 200,000 years along a spire of glowing, star-birthing gas that is only the tiniest fragment of a nebula that is only the tiniest fragment of a galaxy that is but one of hundreds of billions of galaxies we can potentially see with our telescopes.

Most of us still live psychologically in the universe of Dante and Shakespeare. The biggest intellectual challenge of our times is how to bring our brains up to speed. How to shake our imaginations out of the slumber of centuries. How to learn to live purposefully in a universe that is apparently indifferent to the human drama. How to stretch the human story to match the light-years.”

The Poet: Arthur O’Shaughnessy, "Music and Moonlight"

"Music and Moonlight"

"We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone seabreakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world forever, it seems…
We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Ninevah with our sighing,
And Babel itself in our mirth;
And o’erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world’s worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth."

- Arthur O’Shaughnessy
Full screen recommended.
Harry Bidgood and His Broadcasters, 
"Music and Moonlight" (1928)
o
"The Dreamers Of Dreams..."
"The division of one day from the next must be one of the most profound peculiarities of life on this planet. We are not condemned to sustained flights of being, but are constantly refreshed by little holidays from ourselves. We are intermittent creatures, always falling to little ends and rising to new beginnings. Our soon-tired consciousness is meted out in chapters, and that the world will look quite different tomorrow is, both for our comfort and our discomfort, usually true. How marvelously too night matches sleep, sweet image of it, so nearly apportioned to our need. Angels must wonder at these beings who fall so regularly out of awareness into a fantasm-infested dark. How our frail identities survive these chasms no philosopher has ever been able to explain."
- Iris Murdoch

"Maybe..."

"Maybe we're not supposed to be happy. Maybe gratitude has nothing to do with joy. Maybe being grateful means recognizing what you have for what it is. Appreciating small victories. Admiring the struggle it takes to simply be a human. Maybe, we're thankful for the familiar things we know. And maybe, we're thankful for the things we'll never know. At the end of the day, the fact that we have the courage to still be standing is reason enough to celebrate."
- "Grey's Anatomy"

"10 Gross Facts That Confirm the Middle Ages Were Beyond Filthy"

"10 Gross Facts That Confirm
the Middle Ages Were Beyond Filthy"
by Selme Angulo

"The Middle Ages weren’t the cleanest and most hygienic time to be alive. People didn’t live nearly as long as they do today, and a big part of that was because the medical care, basic hygiene practices, and quality of food were all horrific compared to what we are used to now. It’s difficult to state just how bad those things really were, though. After all, we’re talking about an era of time that is now multiple centuries in the past. It’s difficult to conceive of just how gross daily life must have been like back then!

Well, that’s why we’re here today. In this list, we’re going to take a look at the actual situation on the ground for medieval peasants. Their lives were brutal, their work was difficult, and their happiness was limited to very fleeting moments of joy. And they were filthy all around! This is the real story of how disgusting life was back in the Middle Ages…

Bathing? Nah! Upper-class people during the Middle Ages most often had access to tubs in which they could bathe with water. However, even many of the middle-class folk - or what was roughly considered to be middle class by our modern-day designations - didn’t. And if you were poor? Well, forget about it.

Peasants had to make do with very infrequent access to public baths if they were lucky, but most of them were plain unlucky. So they were forced to haul huge buckets of dirty and grimy river water or illegally gained well water to their homes by hand. Then, with the unheated and dirty water, they had to bathe by hand. Better not waste any water, though! The buckets weren’t huge and there was no faucet or pipe to easily pump in more if they were liberal in applying it to their bodies. For those who were lucky enough to live near rivers or lakes, they simply jumped in every day when it was time for a bath. That was easy, but it also brought its own dangers. Obviously, the river water was completely untreated. In many cases, it carried its own germs and parasites.

Peasants mostly didn’t have access to soaps (and certainly not to shampoos!) at that time. So all they were really doing was washing off the dirt and grime that had accumulated on their bodies after a long, hard day of manual labor. They’d go to sleep, get up, do it all over again, and repeat the cycle endlessly. Peasants who were less fortunate or not situated near bodies of water bathed a lot less often. And some didn’t bathe at all. We know it must have smelled crazy in there.

When Ya Gotta Go…Well-to-do people living in castles and on estates had benches with holes in them to use as primitive toilets during the medieval era. But normal people mostly didn’t have access to even simple and rudimentary things like that. Instead, they were forced to use outhouses at best - and share them with large community groups all at once.

At worst, they were given chamberpots or waste buckets. When the urge came to use the bathroom, they had to go in the little pot and then somehow manage not to ruin their tiny hovels with the stench. When the chamberpots started to become filled up, they had to drag them out, careful not to spill any waste on their stuff, and get rid of the mess.

Disgusting, right? Well, it gets worse. There were no pipes to run sewage and human waste along like we have nowadays. So, there were only two places for peasants to toss their excrement when their chamberpots filled up. The first was at the local river. Yes, that would be the very same river from which peasants were pulling out water to bathe or jumping in to get cleaned off. Gross!

The second spot was the street. Peasants would simply take their chamberpots out to the street, turn them over, and dump their wet contents all over the cobblestones. And that was that. See, back then, people believed that the smell of waste was what caused disease, and not the germs in it. So, they were keen on getting rid of the smell as quickly as possible. If only they knew…

Clothing Conundrums: Many people who had means in medieval times dressed in several layers of clothing. Among other reasons, that was so they could avoid having to wash their outer garments too often. But peasants didn’t own several layers of clothing. They pretty much just wore one thing day after day after day.

Now, impressively, etiquette books from the time actually counseled people to wash their clothing regularly. They even advised that one should change their underwear every day! Peasants mostly couldn’t read and didn’t have access to those books, but culturally, the practices nevertheless made it down to them. Seems less disgusting than you would have expected, right? Well, it wasn’t all sunshine and roses like that.

As we’ve already learned, the average peasant really only had access to regular water if it was in a nearby river or lake. So they would go down to the river once a week or so and try to scrub their dirty clothes in the water. If they were lucky, they had access to some lye soap to clean their clothes as best they could. If they were unlucky - and most were unlucky - they could only use the dirty river water alone. And as we’ve seen so far in this list, that water was filled with all kinds of nasty bacteria.

In addition to nature’s regular onslaught, rivers were horribly polluted, with people upstream thoughtlessly dumping their waste into it. Downstream, then, peasants were forced to wash their clothes in that same water. How’d you like to put those garments back on your body afterward?

Look Out for Lice: When it came to living in medieval times, head lice and fleas were simple facts of life. Parasites like that were ubiquitous because nobody had any idea what shampoo was. And soap, as we’ve learned, was really a hit-or-miss affair. Plus, horribly dirty water from rivers and lakes was the best people could do to “bathe,” if you can even call it that.

So comb makers had to get creative with how they produced their products to make up for all that. And create, they did: During the Middle Ages, comb makers started putting more and more fine-toothed fingers on their combs. The hair of the average medieval peasant was so thick with lice that the combs with tight, tiny fingers could actually yank them out. Of course, sleeping in squalor meant the lice just went right back in the next day. But at least they were trying, right?

That’s not all, either. Peasants eventually got around to figuring out ways to delouse themselves and each other. And the delousing groups were so important to overall health and so fun to take part in that they actually became a social activity! Sure, we might think of a social outing as a trip to a bar, going to see a baseball game, visiting the zoo, or something like that.

However, in the Middle Ages, people routinely took their social time by helping to delouse one another and get as clean as they could. Women who were skilled at delousing even made a bit of a side hustle out of it, successfully charging militaries and other groups to come along and do the delousing of a large group of people for a fee. Anything for a buck, right?

Hangin’ at the Cesspit: In the modern era, we flush our toilets, rinse our hands in the sinks, and go on about our day. Way back when, peasants would all, uh, hang out at the cesspit. Sadly, we’re not totally kidding about that. See, whenever a chamberpot became too full with excrement, peasants had to haul it off to the local cesspit. In many cities, towns, and villages back then, this was a communal cesspit in which everybody would dump their waste together.

Many people also dumped old food, rotten fruits and vegetables, and other forms of garbage into the pit. Can you even imagine how bad it must have smelled? And it’s even worse to think about how those cesspits would inevitably leak into the ground, contaminate the groundwater, and make the surrounding soil for quite a considerable area absolutely disgusting.

However, that wasn’t even the worst part! The worst part is that much of the contamination likely traveled very quickly to areas where water had descended, including rivers and lakes. Water always finds the lowest point, of course. And so, too, does the waste that tracks along with it. Just imagine a big area right on the outskirts of a city in which everybody is tossing out their human waste with nary a care in the world. They’d lug and dump horse and livestock waste, too, with nowhere else to leave it. Gross, right?

In bigger cities, the cesspits were even worse. That’s because, in those cities, many people would dump their chamberpots from second and third-story balconies where they lived right onto the street below! Inevitably, the mess would attract mice, rats, and other vermin. And that’s not to mention the smell - and the splatter zone that would inevitably be created around the mess…

Horrible Sleeping Habits: The average medieval peasant slept on a bed made of straw - and some slept on hay and other bedding. But while that might seem better than, say, sleeping on the floor, it came with its own major problems. Sure, peasants were comfortable and relatively insulated from the cold by sleeping on straw. But they were also sleeping with rats, mice, and tons of things they couldn’t see, including bedbugs, fleas, and lice!

People in the Middle Ages didn’t exactly understand how germs worked, and they didn’t have a pressing drive to get rid of them. They did do one thing, though: They used scented flowers and herbs to try to make things seem cleaner. You know how you tend to spray Febreze to liven up a place? It was sort of like that. But it didn’t kill any of the bugs!

There were other issues when it came to medieval bed and sleeping rituals, too. Namely, peasants often slept in tandem or group bedding situations. Entire families would sleep together in bed either to keep warm together or because they lacked the money for multiple beds. Some even lacked the place to put down multiple beds in their tiny hovels.

This meant that if one person was even slightly sick, they would immediately and undoubtedly spread those germs to everyone else around them. Can you imagine the issues with flu season when it came to people sharing beds like that? We need to take some Vitamin C just thinking about it!

Women’s Woes: If you think all peasants had it equally bad in the Middle Ages when it came to hygiene, we have news for you: Women had it much, much worse. (Certainly, any woman reading this list right now is probably nodding along, knowing the whole time that this was coming, right?) Women have so often had it worse throughout history, and the medieval era was no exception. And specifically for the purposes of this list, it’s their menstruation that is drawing attention.

Unfortunately, tampons and other period products were very much not a thing way back then. In their places, many women resorted to absolutely insane methods to collect and soak up blood during their monthly cycles. Most notably, some women used dirty and soiled pieces of rags to do the job. Others wrapped strips of cloth around tiny twigs to use as a de facto tampon. Still, others resorted to using absorbent moss as an impromptu pad. Yes, really -sticks, twigs, and moss as period products.

Even worse than that, religious authorities at the time regarded menstruation as being shameful and disgusting. So, many women of the Middle Ages felt significant pressure to hide their monthly movements from the men in their lives. Lots of women carried around scented herbs and flowers in a bid to mask the smell so men wouldn’t be able to tell.

Also, you have to remember that women’s lives were so brutally hard and their overall health so poor during the Middle Ages that it is likely that they may have routinely missed periods. That would at least get them off the hook when it came to soaking up the blood and masking the smells, but it certainly wasn’t easy on their bodies. Truly, women suffered worse than men during that period in so many ways - monthly menstrual cycles chief among them.

Primitive Dental Care: There were no such things as toothbrushes around during the Middle Ages. So, without them on hand to clean teeth, peasants resorted to using twigs to brush out any excess food particles. Well, the ones they could find and root out, at least. Plaque and gingivitis and all that were completely unknown, of course. Some peasants would even go so far as to place a piece of wool over their teeth and then rinse their mouths out with water.

Those who were slightly better off and had access to salt would create a mixture of that and sage to form a very primitive paste that could freshen their breath. It would even whiten their teeth - you know, ‘whiten’ being a relative term considering how terrible dental care was way back then.

Now, as disgusting as all this sounds, things weren’t so bad for peasants. That’s in large part because sugar was virtually entirely absent from their diets. They had no money to pay for sugar being imported from faraway lands (in the rare cases that it even was imported at all). So, without it, their teeth held up better than you’d expect.

Still, if they had to remove a problem tooth, the work was absolutely barbaric. There was no such thing as anesthesia. And dentists at the time weren’t doctors as much as they were butchers. Peasants would often get extremely drunk before having their teeth pulled just to try to dull the pain as much as possible. It rarely worked.

Wine for Wounds: Alcohol wasn’t only used to dull peasants’ senses when it came time for primitive dental work. Wine was also used as a medical option to help cure ailments - and help anesthetize patients in early ways. As you might expect, most peasants believed that prayer was the answer to all their health issues.

They had minimal schooling if any at all, and with the church functioning as such an important part of their lives, that’s where they turned for help. Slowly, however, knowledge of science and medicine began to spread across Europe. And when it did, it manifested itself in some strange (but actually understandable) ways.

Take the use of wine to clean wounds as an example. At the most primitive hospitals and surgery centers of the medieval era, doctors had figured out that alcohol could be used to successfully clean wounds. They also learned that any lacerations they made could be cauterized to get closed back up nice and tight. So, if you went in for an operation of any kind in the Middle Ages, you were going to be doused with wine and then burned back until your skin closed at the end of it. As you might expect, a great many people died from infections in this context since nobody knew the first thing about hygiene. But at least you could maybe get drunk and bathe in wine while perishing. Yay?

But They DID Wash Their Hands! Here is possibly the most crazy fact of them all: many medieval peasants washed their hands. Like, very often! Keeping one’s hands clean was seen as an important custom of the Middle Ages. It went back to showing that one took pride in one’s appearance. It was also considered common etiquette to keep one’s hands clean and free from dirt and grime. People in the Middle Ages knew nothing of unseen germs and bacteria, but they nevertheless wanted to keep their hands routinely washed just to showcase their civility to others. And so they did!

There were a few things people did when it came to hand-washing etiquette. First, they always washed their hands and face in whatever water they had available after they woke up. Then, they continued to wash their hands at various points throughout the day. After work and before dinner, they very often washed their hands to ensure that they were clean enough for the meal.

That was particularly important, too, since silverware wasn’t really a thing. Virtually all people in the Middle Ages - and certainly all peasants - ate with their hands and typically grabbed food with their grubby fingers from out of a communal bowl or dish. Better hope everybody else washed their hands, too, in that scenario!"

The Daily "Near You?"

Elizabeth City, North Carolina, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Don't Wonder..."

"Don't wonder why people go crazy. Wonder why they don't.
In the face of what we can lose in a day, in an instant,
wonder what the hell it is that makes us hold it together."
- "Grey's Anatomy"

"John Deere Fires 2,000 Workers as 3 Factories Shut Down"

Full screen recommended,
Market Gains, 12/23/24
"John Deere Fires 2,000 Workers
 as 3 Factories Shut Down"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Orlando Miner, 12/23/24
"Party City Shuts Down: 
16,500 Laid Off and 850 Stores Closed!"
Comments here:

"How Will You Cope With A Lower Standard Of Living?"

"How Will You Cope With A Lower Standard Of Living?"
by Milan Adams

"The forces are mounting that will eventually overwhelm most Americans and send their standard of living to unknown depths. Americans that have only known the post WWII prosperity are ill equipped and educated to deal with depression level living. Easy credit and instant gratification have created a nation of whining, self absorbed, entitlement minded people with no moral or mental toughness.

Doug Casey believes we are headed for what he calls a super depression created by the ending of a debt super cycle. The bigger the debt cycle the bigger the depression that follows. That’s how reality works and most people are not prepared for reality.

When this depression, which has already started, gets momentum, it will overwhelm the plans of a society that is expecting to get things like social security, pensions and payouts from retirement plans they have paid into for many years. All of those things will disappear almost overnight and leave society gasping and stupefied over what to do. Their reactions will be to yell and scream and try to identify who to blame but the only person they should blame is the one in the mirror.

Many very smart people have raised the alarm and done their best to warn the sleeping public, but those slumbering masses have ignored the warnings and hit the snooze button one more time. The masses do not understand economics, do not want to understand economics and they will pay dearly for that ignorance in the coming days.

When the real unemployment rate becomes common knowledge as it increases substantially, people will be left to survive on what resources they have saved up outside the banking system that cannot be stolen by the politicians and bankers. That is a key point here. The assets you have outside the system that cannot be stolen from you with a few key strokes on some computer.

Those hoping for some miraculous event that will send the U.S. back to the days of manufacturing might and jobs for all will never see it happen. Those days are gone. The west line theory tells us our economy will slow down and become more modest as the shipping center of the world moves west to the next powerhouse region which is Asia. This is what history teaches us.

When people suddenly wake up one morning and they have no job, their retirement is gone and they need to care for their family, what will they do? When government services have collapsed and they suddenly realize they are now living in a third world country with few government services, what will they do? When the banks are closed and only a select few connected people have any type of money or access to goods, what will they do?

This is the reality that many people will face in the future and they have no idea how bad it can get. They refuse to contemplate the harsh reality they will be living in and take steps to mitigate the effects. To do so would be to acknowledge it could happen and they are taking personal responsibility. Personal responsibility is a dirty phrase in today’s entitlement society. To see some of the effects one only has to look at the collapse of society in Venezuela today to see what awaits.

When it happens it will all fall back to you to take responsibility for your family and take care of them for the duration. To do that you need to plan now for that eventuality and build up the resources you will need to provide food, shelter, clothing and security when the system fails to do it for you. You need to be Noah on his ark not the people watching as he floated away.

Having resources stored up is a must but it may not get you all the way through if the situation lasts for many years. That is why you need some type of plan to replace those resources as time goes by and have some way to generate some type of income or at least items to trade. Usable goods are for the short term and things like gold ,silver and production equipment are for the long term to help you get through the crisis with the least amount of pain.

Even with proper planning the days ahead will not be easy as the standard of living of society will fall substantially to levels only seen in failed third world countries or old pictures. The assets actually owned by people today is very small compared to how they live. They will default on their home loan, their car loan, and their credit card debt leaving them with very few real possessions and few ways to move what they have left even if they have some place to go. Ultimately these people will become the new serfs to the wealthy class that will take possession of anything of value. Feudalism will once again rule.

The lack of planning by society will make this a reality if it is allowed. What will you do when everything you have worked a lifetime for is suddenly taken away? Do you have a plan to keep what you have? Do you have a plan to make money when you cannot find a job? Do you have a way to take care of your family until things stabilize? Do you have a home you will not lose if the whole system breaks down? What will you do if electricity or fuel is too expensive to buy or not available to the general population? These are the questions you should be asking yourself now and you better have a good answer because your family will be asking them when the greater depression sets in."

"How It Really Is"

"The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under
the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."
– Thomas Jefferson, “Letter to John Taylor,” May 28, 1816
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"Debt to the Penny"
"Total debt of the U.S. government reported daily. Contains information on intragovernmental holdings and debt held by the public. The Debt to the Penny dataset provides information about the total outstanding public debt and is reported each day. Debt to the Penny is made up of intragovernmental holdings and debt held by the public, including securities issued by the U.S. Treasury. Total public debt outstanding is composed of Treasury Bills, Notes, Bonds, Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS), Floating Rate Notes (FRNs), and Federal Financing Bank (FFB) securities, as well as Domestic Series, Foreign Series, State and Local Government Series (SLGS), U.S. Savings Securities, and Government Account Series (GAS) securities. Debt to the Penny is updated at 3:00 PM EST each business day with data from the previous business day."
An official website of the U.S. government.
Related:

"11 Signs That The Slow-Motion Collapse Of The U.S. Economy Is Far More Advanced Than Most People Think"

"11 Signs That The Slow-Motion Collapse Of The 
U.S. Economy Is Far More Advanced Than Most People Think"
by Michael Snyder

"The fact that economic conditions are getting worse is certainly not good news, but it is better to know in advance what is coming. After four years under Joe Biden, the U.S. economy is a giant mess. We have been witnessing a slow-motion collapse right in front of our eyes, and those at the bottom levels of the economic food chain have been experiencing more pain than anyone else. Of course this is one of the biggest reasons why Donald Trump won the election. Large numbers of poor and working class Americans are desperate for change. Unfortunately, economic conditions have continued to deteriorate since early November. The following are 11 signs that the slow-motion collapse of the U.S. economy is far more advanced than most people think…

#1 When the economy is in good shape, holiday spending increases each year. In 2024, only 16 percent of Americans say that they are going to spend more than last year and 35 percent of Americans say that they are going to spend less… Americans this holiday season say they are seeing a ghost of Christmas past: inflation.

The CNBC All-America Economic Survey finds inflation is still haunting the buying public, leading to what’s shaping up to be just an average season for retailers. Just 16% of respondents say they will spend more, down two points compared to last year. Forty-eight percent said that they’ll lay out the same amount for holiday gifts, up five points. At the same time, 35% say they’ll spend less, down two points as well.

#2 The number of job openings in the U.S. is now the lowest it has been since January 2021, but unlike January 2021 we don’t have a pandemic to blame our poor performance on… US job openings tumbled last month to their lowest level since January 2021, a sign that the labor market is losing some momentum. Still, posted vacancies remain well above pre-pandemic levels. The Labor Department reported Tuesday that the number of job openings dropped to 7.4 million in September from 7.9 million in August. Economists had expected the level of openings to be virtually unchanged. Job openings fell in particular at healthcare companies and at government agencies at the federal, state and local levels.

#3 The manufacturing numbers that we are getting are extremely dismal. For example, the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Manufacturing Index just experienced an extremely sharp decline…The Philadelphia Federal Reserve Manufacturing Index, a critical gauge of the general business conditions in Philadelphia, has reported a significant drop. The actual figure stands at -16.4, a sharp decline that suggests worsening conditions for manufacturers in the region.

This figure starkly contrasts with the forecasted number of 2.9, highlighting a more severe downturn than initially predicted. Analysts had anticipated a positive shift, indicating improving conditions, but the actual data presents a different, more concerning situation. Moreover, when compared to the previous index value of -5.5, the current reading of -16.4 further emphasizes the severity of the decline. This continuous drop indicates a concerning trend for manufacturers within the Philadelphia Federal Reserve district.

#4 Thanks to rapidly rising mortgage rates, the average U.S. homebuyer just lost $33,250 in purchasing power in just six weeks…Mortgage rates hit 7% on October 28, the highest level since the start of summer and up nearly one percentage point from the 18-month low they dropped to in mid-September. A homebuyer on a $3,000 monthly budget can afford a $442,500 home with a 7% mortgage rate, the daily average 30-year fixed rate on October 28. That buyer has lost $33,250 in purchasing power over the last six weeks; they could have purchased a $475,750 home with the 6.11% average rate on September 17. That was the lowest level since February 2023.

#5 Our cost of living crisis is officially out of control. According to Bank of America, almost a third of all households “spend more than 95% of their disposable income on necessities such as housing costs, groceries and utility bills”…Many Americans are still in a tough spot: Nearly 30% of all US households this year said they spend more than 95% of their disposable income on necessities such as housing costs, groceries and utility bills, according to a Bank of America Institute report, up from 2019 levels.

#6 A recent Lending Tree survey discovered that nearly a quarter of all households couldn’t pay their entire power bill at some point within the past year…LendingTree’s findings about electricity bill costs comes as it reported 23.4% of Americans experienced an inability to cover their entire energy bill or portions of it in the last year, based on Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey data.

#7 The same Lending Tree survey found that about a third of all households had to reduce spending “on necessary things” within the past year in order to pay utility costs…Needing to cover utility bills prompted 34.3% of Americans to curb their spending on necessary things – or eliminate some altogether – in at least one instance in the prior year, LendingTree said.

#8 As I discussed last week, demand is at record levels at food banks all over the nation…Why is demand at food banks all over the country higher than it has ever been before? The media keeps insisting that economic conditions are just fine, but it has become quite obvious to everyone that this is not true. In particular, the rising cost of living has been absolutely crushing households from coast to coast. In the old days, most of the people that would show up at food banks were unemployed. But now food banks are serving large numbers of people that actually do have jobs but that don’t make enough to pay for all of the basics. The ranks of the “working poor” are growing very rapidly, and this is creating an unprecedented crisis all over America.

#9 During normal times, troubled retailers would at least wait until after the holiday season to throw in the towel. But we haven’t even reached Christmas and Party City has already announced that it will be closing all stores…Party City is closing down all of its stores, ending nearly 40 years in business, CNN has learned. CEO Barry Litwin told corporate employees Friday in a meeting viewed by CNN that Party City is “winding down” operations immediately and that today will be their last day of employment. Staff were told they will not receive severance pay, and they were told their benefits would end as the company goes out of business.

#10 Not to be outdone, Big Lots has announced that all 936 of their remaining stores will be shutting down on a permanent basis…Big Lots is beginning ‘going out of business’ sales at all its stores across the US, as it prepares to close its remaining locations. The discount retail chain filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in September, and has already shut hundreds of stores nationwide. In a press release Thursday, the company said it would begin the sales at its 963 remaining locations, after a sale to a private equity firm fell through.

#11 As of the end of November, more than 7,000 store closings had been announced in the United States. That is a 69 percent increase from last year… According to a report from CoreSight Research, U.S. retailers had announced more than 7,100 store closures through the end of November 2024, which represents a 69% increase compared to the same time in 2023. These closures are spread across numerous different sectors of retail from auto parts to restaurants to pharmacies, leaving many consumers wondering which companies will survive. This brings us to GameStop, the beloved retail gaming store, which has not only been closing hundreds of retail store locations since 2020, but also appears to be on track to close hundreds more of its locations in the very near future.

This is what a failing economy looks like. Last week, a prominent mall in downtown San Francisco was empty of shoppers in the middle of the afternoon…Look at all of these beautiful Christmas decorations at the Crocker Galleria mall in San Francisco. It’s 4:47 PM and everybody should be shopping and buying Christmas presents for their family, but nobody is in this mall. There are only three stores left that are open here. The escalators hum on inside this beautiful but empty decorated mall. Outside on Market Street the fentanyl addicts lay folded over while a street performer sings Last Christmas to an empty Street.

Of course the lack of shoppers at that particular mall is just the tip of the iceberg. Unfortunately, the truth is that downtown areas all over California “are crumbling under the weight of homelessness and drug addiction”…California’s biggest downtown areas are crumbling under the weight of homelessness and drug addiction, causing a vital part of its economy to dry out. Cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco have made countless headlines since the pandemic about their drug-infested streets where businesses are quickly pulling out due to high crime rates and low consumer passage.

The number of drug addicts in America is at the highest level ever. The number of homeless people in America is at the highest level ever. They are victims of our slow-motion economic collapse, and the holidays will not be very happy for them. So if you still have food on the table and a warm home to sleep in, you should consider yourself to be incredibly blessed. Sadly, more Americans are being forced out into the streets with each passing day as the slow-motion collapse of our economy accelerates."