This is my brother, and the best writer I know. Smart and funny and wise. He inspires me to be a better person.
Love you, Big Brother.
Save of the day. This was my grandparents house in Florida. I used to love gong there so much. Glad it is in my collection now. (Taken with instagram)
Can’t believe my brother got this picture. Glad it stays in the family. So many amazing memories of that house, even if I was so young, almost too young to remember.
Bradley Whitford, Rob Lowe and Nick Offerman in the 1999 episode of The West Wing, The Crackpots and These Women, and in tonight’s Parks and Recreation episode, Live Ammo.
(via ouisconnie)
I LOVE THIS SONG
- hagrid: hey I just met you
- hagrid: and this is crazy
- hagrid: but happy birthday
- hagrid: you're a wizard harry
George: Do you not like me anymore?
Rube: Well, not right this minute. You’re a constipator, Peanut. You disturb my shit and that’s annoying.
(Source: shiksa-feminista, via brypad)
Congressional Historical Anachronism as told by John Stewart
“Ahhh, so on the Blunt Amendment founding father Thomas Jefferson votes “yay” from beyond the grave.”
-John Stewart.
PROFESSOR BUTTERSCOTCH!
(Source: catsheldagainsttheirwill)
Gordon S. Wood and John Sharpless, A Contrast in Style
After having read about a third of Gordon S. Wood’s book The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History, I’ve come to have a new appreciation and understanding of what my thesis advisor told me time and again about Aaron Burr. Prof. Sharpless would say, “There’s no use trying to defend Burr against his critics, because, dammit, he’s been dead for a long time, and it doesn’t matter any more.” Gordon Wood spends a lot of time explaining the same idea, albeit a little less brusquely. Wood believes that the past is remote because by virtue of it being the past, it is a different time with different values and different truths. So that essentially the job of the historian is not to use the past for any present purpose, but rather to reconstruct the past as well as he can and as honestly and truthfully as he can.
Essentially Wood and Sharpless are saying the same things: reconstruct Burr as he was and don’t worry about anything else. But in some ways, reconstructing Burr as he was is defending him; Burr is so misunderstood that a proper reconstruction, like Nancy Isenberg’s biography, Fallen Founder, serves as rehabilitation. However, what seem like conflicting ideals are actually not, because rehabilitating Burr specifically encompasses the idea that the historian is coming in with presuppositions that Burr is good and will use Burr’s life to prove that point, whereas reconstructing Burr encompasses the idea that the historian comes to Burr without prior judgement and simply recreates a historical Burr.
So while reconstructing Burr may produce the same result as rehabilitating Burr, reconstruction is obviously more purely historical and more virtuous in its honesty. Like most things, however, it is impossible to reconstruct the past because it is impossible to come to history without presuppositions. As such, it is a delicate balance to write history, attempting at every turn to put down your presuppositions.
The real point of this post, supposing you’ve made it thus far, is basically to say that everyone should read Gordon Wood, because he is simply brilliant.
