So I thought, it’s the beginning of the year, and it’s the beginning of a decade, and it’s time to mix things up a bit. I’ve stuck to the format of my posts for five years, time has come to make things look different.

Also, so far, I’ve avoided using Gutenberg, the new WordPress editor, and hey, you guess it, I’ve decided to change that too.
I tried to use it at the beginning, but I couldn’t get into it. I fount it unintuitive and I ended up spending too much time trying to figure it out. I thought it wasn’t very handy and I dropped it.
But I now wondered whether my problem was that I wanted to do what I had been doing and wasn’t as open as I thought I was to this new thing. This week I tried it again, and I found it really comfortable. Many features are better than the classic editor, I liked it a lot more. Can’t say whether something has been changed, or if my attitude has changed, but there you have it. I think I’ll use this from now on.

It won’t be a shocking change on your side, but some things will be different, so I’d like to hear what you think about it.
Do you like the new look of the Roundup?

How sexual revolution exploded (and imploded) across 1920s Russia

Great article about the short decade in Russian history (the 1920s) where freedom of expression and advancement in sexual freedom were on the cutting edge, even in comparison with other Western countries. It didn’t last long. By the 1930s, Russia had become a repressive society. But much like Germany, in the 1920s, Russia lived a time of freedom for women and queer people that were to be considered extremely liberal for many decades afterwards.

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Russian Movement Culture of the 1920s and 1930s: An IInternational Symposium

A quick but informative look at the rise of the Russian Ballet. At the beginning of the 1900s, this was a new form of art where the male dancer took central stage as opposed to the ballerina, who had been the centre of French and Italian ballet.
Born in Russia in the 1920s, this form of ballet ’emigrated’ to the US and Europe when the Russian cultural scene started to become repressive.

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Japanese Women Fashion in the Westernized Era – Pretty Mogas in the 1920s

Modern girls, also shortened to moga, were Japanese women who followed Westernized fashions and lifestyles in the 1920s. These moga were Japan’s equivalent of America’s flappers, Germany’s neue Frauen, France’s garçonnes, or China’s modeng xiaojie.

Don’t you find fascinating how the idea of the New Woman seems to have spread all over the world in the 1920s, crossing into different cultures?
We tend to think of our world as a global one, but ideas became global in the past too. The New Woman is proof of this.

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Dieselpunk Artwork

In many respects, Dieselpunk is today more a visual genre than a literay one. While Dieselpunk stories are still rare enough, artist are becoming fashinated with the genre.

Here are two very interestign artists who creat Diesepunk art.

Alejandro Burdisio

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John Malcolm

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1913-1915 Views of Tokyo, Japan

Old footage is fascinating. I consider it a window on another world, not just at another time. Through these, we can see how people lived their real life in the same city that are so familiar to us today.

Imagine then when old footage shows us a place that is unfamiliar to us even today.

I really enjoyed watching Japan at the beginning of the 1900s. It’s both how I expected it and also so very different. I loved seeing the curiosity of the people being filmed. It’s a bit like watching them watching us. They looked directly to the camera. I’ve never noticed this happening in the videos of the Western cities.
It’s a strangely personal meeting of gazes, from them to me.
Loved it.

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This is a bird’s-eye view of the 1920s with a lot of stuff I’ve already seen and quite a few I never saw before. Bt what I liked the most about this video and what makes it different from many others that I’ve seen is that – while most focus on life during the American Prohibition or in some big European city, this one strives to be international. Not only it tries to touch life in the 1920s in many different cities, but also to touch different continents.
I really enjoyed it.

Sarah Plugs Her Own Stuff

Before I go on with my true stuff, I’d like to spend a couple words to remember Christopher Tolkien, who passed away yesterday night.
Although not unexpected (Christopher was 95 years old), the new really saddened me and touched me more than I expected. I spent the last couple of years reading the books that Christopher complied of his father’s writing, and I came to admire his dedication and his tirelessness in trying to present his father’s writing through his – JRR’s – words and not his own.
He did a huge job of reading, transcribing, ordering and tidying up the huge amount of papers his father left, and he did this with great intellectual honesty.
As a Tolkien fan, I know I have a huge debt with him.
Thanks, Christopher Tolkien. May the winds of Valinor sail you peacefully on the Stright Road to the Land of the West.
You’ll be sorely missed.