Michelle Brumley

“So, as long as you can get enough to eat, and can avoid all the various lethal infections, the dangers of childbirth, lead poisoning, and the extreme violence, you should live a long time.
All you have to worry about are the doctors.”
― Ian Mortimer, The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century

“Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield

"Why do we got names like we do?" I said.
"They come from old Indian names. We had our own way of naming before white people came over and spread all those dad names around in order to keep the power with the dads."
I didn't understand this explanation about dads. And I didn't know if Bear Shield meant shields that bears used to protect themselves, or shields people used to protect themselves against bears, or were the shields themselves made out of bears?”
― Tommy Orange, There There

“I want to live and work alone. If we get married, do I have to live with you? No, he said. Will you marry me? Do I have to act like a wife? I don’t really want to be a wife. No, you don’t need to be a wife, he said. Will you marry me? If we get married, will we be able to sleep with other people? Yep, he said. Will you marry me? Can I maintain total control of my life? I need total control of my life. Yes, darling. I’m not trying to control you. At all. Will you marry me? I probably don’t want kids. That’s fine. I already have three. They’re great. Will you marry me? If I marry you and it doesn’t work, can we just get divorced? Sure, he said brightly.”
― Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“In case you have any doubt about the level of danger, let it be stated unequivocally. Jousting is dangerous. A late-fourteenth-century knight will be wearing armor weighing eighty to one hundred pounds. He himself weighs perhaps two hundred pounds. He will be seated on a high saddle, charging toward you with a closing speed of about forty miles per hour on a destrier weighing more than a thousand pounds, and carrying a lance in which all the force is concentrated on a steel tip. Even if the tip is capped or blunt, the point of impact will be no more than a few square inches. The force exerted through that small area is enormous. If your opponent makes contact with your helmet, the blow may be likened to being knocked about the head with a hammer weighing half a ton, weilded at a speed of forty miles an hour. If you could not fall off your horse under such circumstances, you would not survive. Of course, falling off still means crashing to the ground from a galloping horse, in heavy armor, which is sometimes fatal in itself.”
― Ian Mortimer, The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century