The Normal Times

Blog

annienormal.com/

Profile

annienormal.com/author/annieno

Homepage

annienormal.wordpress.com

  • Anomie

    Anomie is a social condition characterized by the disintegration of moral values, standards, and guidance for individuals. It often arises from conflicting belief systems, leading to a breakdown of social bonds between individuals and their communities, affecting both economic relationships and primary social interactions. For instance, alienation can escalate into a profound inability to engage…

  • Urbanization in the Industrial Revolution

    By the mid-19th century, only Great Britain and Belgium had a majority of their populations residing in urban areas. The Census of 1851 revealed that agriculture remained the largest employer in British industries, closely followed by domestic service. The concentration of economic wealth and rapid urbanization were evident in the remarkable expansion of British towns.…

  • Chapter Two: The Anti-Prophet

    House Dion After my last visit with the Directory recorders, the House Dion incident was shelved. The Directory sent their secretaries for files and closed the whole thing. Apparently, I’m the only one they bothered to tell because Inspector Rory sent me over a surveillance report he had for Paul Dion. I very much intend…

  • The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor

    “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.” There are two sub-genres of fiction that aren’t full seek-em-out Favorites, but that I’ll always have a soft spot for. These are Southern Gothic and the hippie novel. The best thing about Southern Gothic is I can’t even explain it. Judging by what…

  • The Iowa Writers’ Workshop

    The biggest big-deal graduate level creative writing program in these United States. Meeting every year at the Dey House of the University of Iowa’s extensive campus, it admits 2.7% to 3.7% of applicants per year. The philosophy of the workshop is that writing should be a technical and rigorous pursuit. The Workshop is an intense…

  • Flannery O’Connor

    “A pigeon-toed child with a receding chin and you-leave-me-alone-or-I’ll-bite-you complex.” The spiritual and likely virginal duchess of Deep South Georgia, USA. O’Connor’s name burns on by right of her grimly cynical Southern Gothic prose. More approachable than Truman Capote, more coherent than William Faulkner, she wrote about one and a half anthologies worth of short…

  • Chapter One: In the Margin of Moments

    House Dion

  • Antonia Fraser

    Born in 1932, the year Ghandi was arrested, to the seventh Earl of Longford and his countess wife, customarily making her Lady Antonia. She had the typical childhood for a titled girl, attending a series of prestigious boarding schools with cutesy names before playing debutante in the London Social Season.  The only job she ever…

  • Our Technetronic Era: The Ambivalent Disseminator

    AN ANNOTATED READING OF BETWEEN TWO AGES, BY ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI, 1970, PAGES 15-18 Previous Entries: Chapter Two, Chapter One, Introduction “The United States is the principal global disseminator of the technetronic revolution. It is American society that is currently having the greatest impact on all other societies, prompting a far­-reaching cumulative transformation  in their outlook and mores.” Throughout time different nations have…

  • The Second World War

    “The Second World War has usually been agreed to have been under way before the launch of Barbarossa; among favored dates for its beginning are 1937 (in China) or 1936 (in Spain). What can truly be said was that it was an assemblage of wars, and that some were going on before 1939.” J.M. Roberts,…

  • Nationalism

    “Nationalism has now behind it at least two centuries as the most successful revolutionary force in modern politics.” J.M. Roberts, A History of Europe, page 396 In developing societies where old social ties and loyalties were breaking down in great cities and large, anonymous markets, there was a social vacuum to be filled. Personal and…

  • The French Revolution

    1789 to 1799 “Nearly all the great legal reforms had been legislated, at least in principle, in 1789. The formal abolition of feudalism, legal privilege and theocratic absolutism and the organization of society on individualist and secular foundations…” J.M. Roberts, A History of Europe, page 312 Other Europeans were either shocked or amazed as a…

  • Victor Hugo

    “Ocean man, take me by the hand Lead me to the land that you understand” Victor Marie Hugo, also known as the Ocean Man apparently, was born in February of 1802, the same year that Napoleon ate Italy alive. His father was a general in Bonaparte’s army, and his mother was a woman with a…

  • The Secret Destiny of America

    Manly P. Hall, 1944 “Experiences are the chemicals of life with which the philosopher experiments” I have read a lot of conspiracy theories and books about them. I read these the way I read a good pulp novel, but with a twist of remorse. The people who pour their hearts out crafting over formatted presentations…

  • The Golden Horde

    Seed: “From the 12th century she [Russia] had been given a more distinctive cultural and institutional shape by her origins and the historical forces playing on her. One was her exposure to the Mongols…With Byzantium in decline and the Germans and Swedes on their backs, Muscovy was for centuries to pay tribute to them and…

  • Character Sketch: Mortimer Cymbelline

    Mortimer Cymbelline’s was a death for the headlines.  One could say Mortimer first became famous in his childhood, when newspapers experienced record-breaking sales from the headline CYMBELLINE HEIR SHOT DOWN IN STREET. Of course, it wasn’t in any street, but on the tracks of one of the family’s privately owned tram services. One article in…