Tumblr of the Month! Collected Letters of the Widow Flannigan

This delightful Tumblr describes itself thusly: An elegant tapestry woven of the shreds of human dignity. Like many of my favorite Tumblrs, it has a randomizer. See below for some images you may find if you subscribe to her always interesting feed:






~ Manners, Culture and Dress of the Best American Society, Including Social, Commercial and Legal Forms, Letter Writing, Invitations, &c., also valuable suggestions on Self Culture and Home Training., by Richard A. Wells, 1891
via Internet Archive

Polaire. French-Algerian actress and music hall artist, c.1900. She was the first to play Collette's Claudine upon the stage!

And much, much more contained within.

Tumblr of the Month! Black & WTF

To my great and (hopefully) unending delight, Fuzzy Bastard recently posted a link to the Black & WTF tumblr, which is now one of my favorites. It's premise is simple. The owner posts (nicely sourced) B&W photographs that are in some way utterly inexplicable or just plain odd. The cumulative charm is immense. The following are a few examples:

(via firsttimeuser)

(via shopkins-fossik)

(via mlkshk)

What I like so much about all the images, is how they spark my imagination. The photograph is such a magical invention that never stops amazing me. Even in this age of space travel and cellphones and those LED signs that tell us when the next subway will be arriving, the permanent fixing of a moment in time using light and chemicals or megabytes never seems any less than a pure wonder. It's one of the things we take most for granted, but in some ways it is up there with written language in the roster of the greatest human inventions, on of the few marvelous things that justifies the existence of humanity.

Photographs, whether they be carefully framed images taken by gifted professionals or snapshots taken by a toddler all stop time cold in its tracks. Because of them we are nearly all immortal. What wonders does this world hold! Look! Zebras! Pulling a carriage!