This video essay traces the history of Kowloon Walled City from its origins as a small 17th-century military outpost to today, where it lives on in the popular imagination through films, video games and an ongoing fascination with this unlikely makeshift society.
The idea of Kowloon fascinates me. Course, by the time I heard of Kowloon it was being torn down. But once you’re aware of it you see it everywhere, used as handy sci-fi metaphor.
Crosscut editor-at-large Knute Berger shared evidence that the infamous
Seattle Freeze — our reputation for keeping everyone at arm’s length — has
been with us for a while.
…while researching the pandemic of 1918-1920, Ben Helle, the ever-sharp-eyed
archivist at the Washington State Archives, came across a Seattle Times
clipping that suggested conversation about Seattle’s frigid nature as far back
as the spring of 1920.
Whoa. The Wikipedia entry mentions that it was called “Kalevala style” in Finland. Which – looking elsewhere
– might be a little off. I mostly see references to National Romanticism, which is a bit of a mixed bag
historically speaking. For Finland it was an urge to assert itself as a nation and not just some dirt swapped
back and forth between Russia and Sweden. Writing down the Kalevala was a part of that same movement.