I'm Living History

Colonial Ball and New Gown

2012-01-29T10:58:00.000-05:00

For the past several years we’ve attended only one 18th century event, The Sudbury Minute Militia’s 12th Night Ball. The first time we went, in 2010, we heard about it a few weeks earlier from friends who had been invited by some folks they knew (and we didn’t) but we so wanted to go that we asked for an invitation, and barged our way in. Stephen and I both had 18th C costume bits as we both had “done” Colonial reenacting in our past lives and had flirted with the possibility of picking it back up. Last year we went again, invited a few friends of our own, and each of us made yet a few more additions to our colonial wardrobes: I made a quilted petticoat and stays so my under layers would be a bit more appropriate.

Shortly after last year’s colonial ball I attended a Hive workshop, an incredibly informative workshop offered by local reenactors for those who might not know as much they do, or for those who want to get together and share during the colder months. All the workshops plus some other research I was doing at the time convinced me that I needed an actual colonial gown, not just the purchased jacket and some petticoats. Since I had the appropriate undergarments I was ready to take the plunge and signed up for a Burnley and Trowbridge gown making course. I never made it there. But I still had my lovely fabric, plus all the research I’d done, and by the time this winter came around I was actually able to look at the fabric again and think about this addition to my colonial wardrobe.

Since it is not my period, and my sewing skills were picked up catch as catch can I asked a professional costumer friend for help. She was so awesome she agreed to spend an overnight at my house, draft a pattern for me based on the books we both had, and help me get started putting the whole thing together. We picked the weekend before Christmas. I got a horrible cold at the beginning of December, but I was not about to put this gown off again. So my personal gown goddess came for her visit, and did more than just draft me a pattern, she helped me put a lot of the bodice together and set me well on my way.

I spent 2 and a half weeks hand sewing the seams flat, plus all the hemming that needed to be done, and finished the dress the night before this year’s Colonial Ball. I think it turned out rather well if I do say so myself!

The evening is always a fun one. Everyone is in a good mood, and I love dancing and don’t get to do it enough. I’m starting to recognize folks who dance every year. It is cold and biting in January, but the Inn is warm and full of colonial character.

New Year, 100th Post

2012-01-04T12:00:00.001-05:00

Welcome to 2012!

Quite a lot happened in 2011, some good some not-so-good, but on the whole I am enjoying life and looking forward to the future. I am also welcoming 2012 with my 100th blog post! I'm pretty proud of myself for keeping this up since beginning in 2008. I was hoping to have a lot more entries this past year, a lot more podcasts, a lot more book reviews. Still, I'm pleased with what I was able to put out there, and think that the coming year has the potential to be even better!

Catching Up

2011-12-28T17:52:00.000-05:00

I’ve been quiet here for a while, mostly due to employment stuff. But that does not mean I have not been engaging with history.

Shortly after recovering from the Connecticut Renaissance Faire a few of us were lucky enough to be invited to a time line event at Higgins Armory Museum where we represented the 16th Century. Since we were in an armory museum most of our fellow reenactors had armor and weapons to show as well as some daily life props. We brought out the medical tools and charts, as well as cards, dice and other gambling games. The games and medical stuff proved incredibly popular, and made for a fun day.

Since I did not get to make a colonial gown this summer, a friend who is also a costumer came up for a day and helped me fit a colonial gown from books and images of extant gowns. I hope to have it done by January 12th, but there is a lot going on between now and then, so we’ll see how much I actually get accomplished.

We are progressing on our plans to reenact the 12th century. We’ve had a few meetings, done some research, and I’m making up the persona of an herb-wife. I get to use my herb knowledge in a reenacting setting! Now I’ve got to make some clothes, collect some kit, and do a lot more research!

I’m in the middle of a couple of Living History books and papers, and have a few more to add to the bibliography. Hopefully I’ll have time to do that soon, when I am not in the sewing room, doing some piecework for a merchant friend.

The most unexpected and exciting thing on the history front is a chance for the family to go to Israel next month. I’m hugely excited. There is soooo much history in that part of the world, I can not wait to experience a place with more human history than I have been able to experience thus far in my life. I promise to blog all about it when I get back.

The Reischach Bed

2011-10-25T12:00:00.002-04:00

Stephen puts our bed to its intended use. Photo by Marc Andryuk

The first year of the Guild of Saint Morritz Stephen embarked on a very ambitious carptentry project, making us a rope bed. He did a lot of research and watched a lot of YouTube videos on rope-bed tightening, and finished up the bed just before our first event as Landsknecht at CTRF in the fall of 2009. In the three years since then we’ve gotten a lot of compliments on our bed as well as comments of amazement that we sleep on something so primitive. The bed is popular with folks in camp, and many a guild member has been known to take a nap in the middle of the day, cause napping is totally period! But it has always been just another piece of furniture along with the tents, tables, and everything else in camp.

This year at the fall show of the Connecticut Renaissance Faire the bed was on center stage, sometimes literally. It all started when friends of ours were getting married at the faire, and the Fahnlein were asked to escort the bride to the wedding. On opening weekend we were moving the bed from our old tent (that we sold to a friend) where we had set it up the weekend before into our new tent which was up the road in our camp. While marching up the road with the bed (not so different from marching around with pikes) one of us (I remember it as being me but some folks have different memories) mentioned that it might be fun to put the bride on our bed when marching her from our camp to the wedding site. The bride thought it would be fun, so we kept the plan a secret from her husband-to-be, and planed on arrival by bed.

When the time came it was a little tricky getting the bride into position on the bed, but once she was kneeling in the center of all her skirts the bed was hoisted by the men of the fahnlein while the women marched with pikes in front. The two folks carrying the back of the bed were so tall, the the two people in the front had to hold the front legs at shoulder height, so the bride did not just get marched in, she floated above the heads of the guests into the wedding. The groom loved it! The bed was a big hit with everyone involved, and folks talked about it for the rest of the weekend.

The woman hired to sing at the wedding got a big kick out of it, and approached Stephen the last weekend of faire about the bed possibly making another appearance. At the Reanissance Faire there was a variety act/finale show and when the cast of the faire came up on stage, the actor playing Merlin would decline to sit, no matter what the MC brought him to sit upon. So on the very last day when Merlin refused to sit she called for the landsknecht who marched our bed up on to the stage to quite a bit of applause. Afterwards, we got a few comments from departing cast on the great impression our bed made, but it being the last day of faire, everyone was spending what little energy they had left in packing up. Still, enough people stopped by to remark on the coolness of our bed.

In both cases the bed's appearance was really more for the insiders than it was for the visitor to the faire. In the first case it made a friend's special day even more special, and in the second it helped remove a little of the separation between us in the historical section of the faire, and the performers and cast of the faire. It gave us a chance to be good (if a bit silly) neighbors. I never would have guessed it of the bed.

Me and the dog enjoy a rare moment of quiet. Photo by Marc Andryuk

Am I a Living Historian?

2011-10-21T12:00:00.001-04:00

Once, when I was 28 and unemployed I was confronted by my landlord in an awkward driveway encounter. It was the middle of the afternoon, when most adults are at work and on seeing me arrive at home to enter my apartment my landlord asked me what I did for a living. I told him I was a historian doing freelance work, mostly working for theater companies as a dramaturge. In reality I had just finished a stint as Production Manager of a Renaissance faire and was applying for any job I could find. I was doing a lot of history writing, but it was mostly for small stipends, and most real historians would look for the nearest vat of hot tar if they’d heard me say it. But my landlord’s reaction was mostly surprise, and definitely a higher level of respect. I look younger than I am, and I suppose one does rather expect historians to have grey beards and sit in armchairs while smoking pipes. So putting myself in the category of a learned academic meant that I was not going to be questioned about if I could pay my rent, or why I was returning home in the middle of the day.

I have been thinking about this recently because of all the stories about the unemployed who spent 20 years in the same industry but since they have been laid off have lost part of their identity. Can you call yourself a stockbroker if you don’t actually get paid to broker stocks? At the time what little money I had coming in was made by working in the field of history. But not everyone who works in the field of surgery is a surgeon.
In Stacy Roth’s book “Past into Present” at the beginning of her chapter on the Visitor she purposefully evokes the professional when talking about visitor relations.

“From a business angle, interpreters [which Roth defines as one who: translates material culture and human or natural phenomena to the public] provide a service and visitors are the customer. While such a statement sounds crassly commercial and clinical, it is a notion that cannot be ignored by anyone who earns a livelihood from historical interpretation. It separates the professional from the dabbler. Admittedly, many interpreters forget or ignore this responsibility. But the concerned professional interpreter, salaried or independent, and the serious hobbyist or volunteer care about the visitor experience.” - Stacy Roth, Past into Present

So while at first it might seem like Roth defines the professional as those earning their livelihood from LH she then does leave room for those not employed at museums (the independent) and those who don’t make money at it (the serious hobbyist and volunteer.) I’m encouraged that there might be room for me in Roth’s definition of the professional.

If I again find myself in the situation where I need a professional moniker but don’t have a full time job would I consider telling folks I’m a historian? Probably, though I do like the sound of Living Historian almost as much.

Coming Out

2011-10-19T14:38:00.000-04:00

I’m reading Mark Shanks’ dissertation called: Very Civil Wars: Reenactors, Academics, and the Performance of the Past. In the beginning of chapter two Dr. Shanks remarks on the ubiquity of Civil War reenacting and how all he has to do is mention Civil War reenacting and he gets an understanding response from most people. This brought to mind for me all the times I’ve had conversations where I have explained that I spend my weekends dressing up and living as if in another timeperiod. In most cases, I’m still waiting for the understanding.

This could be because I reenact some fairly obscure times. I do not do Civil War, or even Revolutionary War so most Americans are less familiar with the history of the times I reenact. Also there are fewer of us reenacting non-American history in the United states, and those of us who do are spread out in times ranging from the iron age to the present. Those times when I get a glimmer of recognition it is often because the person I am talking to has a relative that goes to Renaissance Faires, or once saw a RevWar group participating in a town parade. I’m not sure I have actually encountered on the street a random person who also does this sort of thing. Sure, I meet tons of them at LH events and online in LH spaces, but the closest I’ve gotten in real life was a few emails exchanged with the fencing coach at the college where I work who used to be in the SCA.

At least now all the folks I work with know that when they ask me if I have weekend plans they probably involve making a 16th century meal or attending an 18th century dance. They are no longer surprised, even if they still do not understand. The times I find much more awkward are when I need to explain to folks who I do not see on a regular basis. I recently had my yearly checkup and I know I explained my hobbies to my doctor last year, but she only sees my once a year so I had to sit there in the cold paper gown and again go over the costuming, the demonstrations, the locations where events are held, and the frequency with which I do this sort of thing. Times like that it almost feels like coming out, but instead of just being gay I’m coming out as only interested in an obscure gender that most people have never heard of.

Hi my name is Alena and I participate in an esoteric hobby commonly called reenacting, but I don’t do any of the things you think I do.

In fact, I don’t even consider myself just a hobbyist. But that is a tale for another time.

Remotivated

2011-10-07T14:35:00.001-04:00

While I always love LH there are some times when I spend more time thinking about it, and others when I spend more time thinking about laundry. Last weekend was reunion weekend at the college where I work, and I did a pretty dismal job (in my own opinion) of organizing the weekend. But I’ve got to put it behind me, finish cleaning up the messes and get back to the everyday tasks, and back to dreaming about a day when I can spend most of my time and energy on LH.

A couple things have brought LH to the forefront of my mind. One is Stephen quitting his steady full-time job to become a consultant, so he can pick the engaging projects that best use his expertise. I am behind him 100% and a bit jealous, though I think I might find it a bit more nerve wracking than I could handle. We’re helping Alysa with her college planning and having conversations about how one finds one’s passion and how one gets motivated to do things like get up every morning and go to work. I’m getting the itch to finally do something definitive about getting a master’s degree in some sort of history field.

I’ve started down that path twice but never gotten beyond a few classes. I took some classes in Public History at UMass just after college, and I’ve taken some classes in Museum Studies at Tufts a few years ago (which was the prompting for this blog.) My dad has been encouraging me to think more seriously about a masters and I’m inclined towards that end myself. I’ve been making spreadsheets of the public history programs out there, tracking the teaching locations of prominent authors in the field (okay, anyone in academia who has written on LH) and dreaming up dissertation topics but I have not yet found the perfect program. Especially not one within driving distance that will accommodate a full-time work schedule. But since it is unlikely I’m going to win the lottery, I can’t quit my job just to go back to school. So the search is still on.

Meanwhile we’re halfway through the run of the Connecticut Renaissance Faire’s fall show, and our last LH event of the season. We’ve got two weekends left, this one is a three day weekend (the faire is open Columbus Day) and I’m in charge of cooking for the weekend. A couple of good friends are also getting married at the faire on Sunday, so that should be fun. I’ve got a half-finished project that I’m going to try and make real progress on for these final weekends, before we get to pack all of it up until April. But before then we’ve got a series of meetings and workshops on our newest venture: we’re heading into the 12th century!

And this morning on my blog feed was a series of portraits of the Yeoman Gaoler at the Tower of London that included this brilliant photo.

Alan Kingshott, Yeoman Gaoler at the Tower of London, Photo by Martin Usborne

Someday, I’m going to have an office in an old tower and a uniform that was popular many centuries before this one.

Book Review: Seize the Day

2011-10-05T15:01:00.000-04:00

I found Seize The Day! How to wring more satisfaction from your Civil War reenacting events by Wm. J. Watson while adding a different book to my Amazon wish list. That darn website knows so much about my reading habits, when this book was suggested I added it to my wish list as well. I was given a copy as a gift not long after. It is such a small book that I sat down right away to read it, then carried it around for a few weeks (it fit in my purse!) and finally dug it out to write the review.

How-to books for the beginning reenactor are actually quite common, but vary in quality and concentration. I promise I'll review some of those soon. This book is not for the beginner. It is for the folks who already have a basic kit, are already attending Civil War events, who feel like they've got the basics under control and want to take the next step.

The style of Seize is based loosely on the works of a 19th century author who was writing how-to manuals for 19th century soldiers, but the author is speaking directly to the 21st century reenactor to the purpose of increasing the reader's authenticity, enjoyment, and immersion. Watson sets his chapters out by military rank and manages to cover a lot of ground very quickly. He does not tell you how to drill or cook or guard, he talks about the importance of all the different military tasks, about the expectations of each rank, and about how to be the best in any rank. This could come off as ridiculous or preachy, but I found the advice in this book was well thought out and delivered in a friendly and not at all condescending way. At the end of each chapter I found myself wanting to be a great civil war corporal (or whatever chapter I happened to be reading) even though I have absolutely no desire to reenact the life of a civil war solider. Some chapters are meatier than others. The Clerk chapter includes role-playing scenarios and character types. In chapter 13 the author addresses reenacting recruitment and what is missing from current big events.

There was a lot of useful advice for any era military reenactment: those in charge need to keep an eye out for those folks who may be struggling etc. and it is your job to make sure tasks get done, not necessarily to do them all yourself. There is limited but good advice for those attending reenactment events that are not necessarily military in nature about sharing tasks and keeping camp tidy. The author goes quite in depth on work details and how important they are since setting up and tearing down is something the reenactor must do as well. He is very clear that there are people in charge of making sure this stuff gets done, people who are responsible, people who do their share of work, and consequences in the chain of command for slackers. What a boon for the reenactors as well as being period correct. This removes some of the modern ego from the work detail. The book seems to say: if you are not willing to work, find another hobby with quotes like "we are trying to take everything good that has been done by a lot of hard-working, thoughtful people and take it a step further... It operates like a regiment, not like a reenacting club."

The most exciting part for me came at the very end when Watson recommends that the reader document those methods that work for their group because, "documenting the methods used to achieve success is what this little book is all about, by the way."

Book Review: Intrepid Women

2011-09-12T16:50:00.000-04:00

Intrepid Women: Cantinières and Vivandières of the French Army, by Thomas Cardoza, 2010

There are a few books out there on women’s roles in the armies of the past, but not so many that a new book on the scene does not make me happy. Last year when I came across Intrepid Women: Cantinières and Vivandières of the French Army, by Thomas Cardoza I read what I could of the preview on Amazon, then I put it on my wishlist. After a year of waiting for it, I bought it as a birthday gift for myself. I’m so glad that I did! Cardoza has scoured the primary sources for women of the French army. He has not depended on old secondary sources, nor has he given full credence to the accounts written by the detractors of the Cantinieres and Vivandieres. The stories he tells, and the lives he portrays are rich and real. Even if France is not your area, even if the timeperiod covered in Intrepid Women is not your focus, I highly recommend this book.

Intrepid Women follows the official female participants in army life (but touches on the unofficial too) from the 17th century, through the French Revolution, Napoleon, all the way to World War I. Women played an important role in most early armies especially when it came to provisioning the new professional armies of Europe. Women acted in official capacities in the French army as laundresses, keeping the army clothed, and as sutlers keeping the army fed far from their home turf. Wives of soldiers were given leave to gather supplies in the countryside whether by purchase or pillage, then to follow the army with pack animals or wagons from which they would dispense hot meals and alcohol to soldiers who were often not provided with rations and were not allowed to leave the confines of camp. These women not only provided food; their wagons often held army baggage, they provided shelter when the men were not given tents, they provided companionship, children to work in the army, and even fighters when threatened. Though often a source of tension, drama, and discomfort to army officials, the women of a unit were often a cohesive force, something for the troops to rally around when threatened, and relax around when hard pressed by their environment.

In Intrepid Women Cardoza tells some great stories like this delightful one of “the Cossack who tried to rob the cantinere of the Neuchatel Battalion when she fell behind the column after the Battle of Leipzig. Sensing easy prey, the Cossack approached, whereupon the cantinere ‘produced her pistol and shot him out of the saddle. She rejoined the battalion mounted on the Cossack’s horse, to the applause of all the column.’” What a telling account! Not only did the cantinieres travel at the back of their units, they were also often heavily burdened and not as fast moving as the soldiers. But the thing about being surrounded by soldiers all day is that you often learn how to use weapons, almost by default. And when selling to those soldiers I imagine that coin is sometimes scarce, but weapons can be found in abundance. With all the men armed, I am not surprised that the women of the army were armed too.

Cardoza also takes the time to tackle questions about sex and prostitution: “Like the extent of their marital devotion, cantiniere’s sexual habits during this period are difficult if not impossible to accurately assess from surviving sources.” I like that Cardoza is being so honest, and not depending on sources he can not verify. He does go on: “Clearly they were not celibate. They were all married, legitimately or otherwise, and the large number of children they bore attest to their sexual activity. Less easily answered are questions about the extent of their sexual relations outside marriage. Captain Elzear Blaze hinted that pretty cantinieres slept with virtually everyone in their unit, but offered no evidence….There may indeed have been cantinieres who moved from man to man, as well as cantinieres who ran prostitution rings, but no verifiable records remain of either their existence or suppression.”

Even with the lack of records, Cardoza tells a compelling story across hundreds of years about a type of woman very far outside of the norm.

Another Post About Storage

2011-08-28T12:34:00.000-04:00

The thing about acquiring historic stuff, is you then need historic methods of storage. I had started to gather historic storage methods before the Guild, I bought a wooden chest as a prop for faire one year, and my mother bought me a beautiful pack basket, and has been supplying me with various other baskets for years. The first year of Das Geld Fahnlein I used the wooden prop box and bought an unfinished simple toy chest as my period storage, everything else got hidden in the corner of our tent.

2010
At the beginning of last year storage was even more on my mind as we tried to become even more historical and get rid of as many modern intrusions as we could. I made big canvas duffels for Stephen and I to hide our hiking backpacks. Now the packs go under the bed in their sacks and even the kids who crawl into our tent will not catch a glimpse of the modern stuff. During the first season my lovely prop box slid out of the back of our truck at an intersection and got pretty smashed up. It is not repairable since it is plasterboard and was not too durable to begin with. But Stephen had been inspired by the folks at Das TeufelsAlpdrücken Fähnlein who sat down for dinner on chests and bundles (much more historical than chairs.) Stephen made me a beautiful wooden box where I store all my accessories: modern toiletries, historical sewing projects, playing cards, gloves etc. He also held a guild workshop to help people make their own boxes. Three more people in the guild got theirs completed, a few are still in progress, including the two Stephen started for himself! Fellow guild member Magda also got into the historical packing thing. She had already owned two wooden boxes, but she made canvas sacks for her bedding, plus sacks for other members of the guild who would arrive each morning with their things in plastic bags or backpacks. She also bought an unfinished toy chest like mine, and she bought a large beautiful pack basket to add to her impression.

I painted my toy chest in Reischach colors so we could tell mine apart from Magda’s, and filled it with tent accouterments like the rope bed tightener, our religious paintings, and our game boards. I dug out three big baskets that were also left over from my days as RenFaire Props Master to hold our clothing and some of our bedding plus all the random stuff that got thrown in at the last minute. We were given a chest as part of a wedding gift so Stephen used it for his accessories and personal items.

2011
At the end of last year I started to seriously think about storage for our bedding. I get cold very easily, so we not only pack sheets and pillows for our bed, but we packed at least three wool blankets, a couple of fleece blankets, some linen blankets, an electric blanket, and a historical sort of coverlet to throw over the whole thing. Yes, this is probably excessive, but I hate being cold. In the spring I bought waterproof canvas to cut and sew into bundles and I bought cotton webbing to wrap around the bundles and make them into backpacks. Then I tried to figure out how to sew them together to make them look like historical bundles. I even got Stephen to help and we both decided that not only were the bundles probably not sewn together at all, but they were most likely made of tent canvas or bedding material with everything else bundled up inside it. Why carry more things than you absolutely need? But I was determined to have dry bedding that could be transported in the back of the truck, so Stephen and I wrapped our bedding up like burritos in a tortilla then wrapped the webbing around like ribbons on a gift package, and did manage to get it on people’s backs! This spring we had an in-period set-up day and marched in to the Connecticut Renaissance Faire with bundles on our backs.

The packs were not perfect, if you needed one thing from inside you had to take the whole thing apart. Also the webbing slipped around on the waterproof canvas. After the May show I stitched three of them into big "u" shapes with one end open, my next step is to sew two horizontal lines of webbing on to the sacks, leaving open spots through which to thread the vertical webbing. That will secure the sack and make it into a pack. I have not done this yet, but it is on my list before the end of September.

Meanwhile I am totally jealous of fellow guild member Magda, who proved at our last two events that she can unpack and pack up all her gear in a completely period way. Her boxes, baskets and bundles just sit on top of her little rug (that goes on the floor inside her tent) in a pile until the cars are allowed on site. Magda is the person that has the next largest amount of stuff next to Stephen and I, and keeps her tent open for the public during the day just like we do. She and I go back and forth in some very low-scale competition to up our historical game, though really we stay pretty well even, and the more historical we are, the entire guild benefits. In this case, Magda has reached the goal before me, but I hope I’m not too far behind. As of the spring my last major things in modern containers were the kitchen stuff and the tents.

Since our niece recently came to live with us, we had to clear out our spare bedroom, which was really the place for all of our LH supplies. A lot of them went into our bedroom and the sewing room, but I knew the 4 plastic bins of kitchen gear would never make it into either room. So one bin of barely used stuff went into the attic, some of the nicer looking stuff that I did not want to bring to every show went on shelves in the den. For the stuff that goes to every event where we are cooking, I bought another toy chest, but stained it this time. And put all of the cooking utensils in it. If I want to cook with it, it has to fit in the one box (or be a big cast iron pot, which does not belong in a box in the first place.) All of our historical eating gear has gone into a basket, so when the high table needs to be set for dinner, anyone can do it, and when the dishes are done, the stuff for Stephen, Alysa and myself can go right back in the basket. I even sewed little pouches for the plates and bowls out of scrap wool so they have padding in the box and basket. Which leaves only one kitchen item left, and that is the food itself. This fall I want to be much better about removing plastic bags before getting to camp if possible, and using plain canvas tote bags or baskets to carry groceries in. My newest purchase is a really cool cooler basket in which to hide our perishables. It holds 5 gallons, the basket supports 300 lbs if someone sits on it, and the cooler liner is removable when it needs to be washed. I can't wait to use it!

Brown box for cooking stuff, basket for eating gear, the basket is really a cooler.

We’ve still got to come up with historical methods for hauling around tents, ropes and stakes, but I’m feeling that finishing up the bedding bundles, plus urging Stephen to finish his two wooden chests are good steps to move us into the fall.

Hanne's Bibliography

2011-08-26T12:00:00.000-04:00

As an American reenacting with a group doing 16th Century Central European history, we do not have a lot of good written resources, and what we do have has taken me quite a while to track down. So others do not have to search as hard as I have, and so I do not have to repeat myself quite as often I am adding a new bibliography here. I hope to put up book reviews too. Those of you who read my blog but reenact other time periods, I hope you’ll bear with me through these posts, I promise to keep writing on as many different time periods as I reenact, and on Living History in general.

Hanne von Reischach, a Bibliography
I'm including books and articles that I have read in my quest to make the character I portray as part of Das Geld Fahnlein, Hanne von Reischach, as full a person as possible. I hope the list will be helpful for other folks who want to know more about life in 16th Century Germany, the Landsknecht, camp followers, the Reformation, and the Renaissance mindset.

Double Life, Professional Life

2011-08-24T16:21:00.000-04:00

I recently decided to join LinkedIn for professional networking reasons. But as soon as I did I was up against one of the realities of my life. I have two different professions, two different networks, with two different job histories. I spend a lot of my effort on Living History ventures and I do make a little of my money that way, but most of the past 10 years I have also held down other jobs that pay the bills and spark my interests in different ways. They seem incredibly separate sometimes, but I am really a whole person, I have a lot of skills that I use in all aspects of my life, a lot of my interests in history overlap with my interests in working in the non-profit field. Right now my interests seem to be as close to overlapping as they have been in quite a while since I currently work at an educational institution (in fundraising) and a big driver of my involvement in Living History is education. So I've come up with a vague sort of statement that talks about education in the broadest sense, and hopefully covers as many of my bases as possible.

LinkedIn is also a place to put up your resume, so I've been updating that document (which always seems to me like a chore similar to doing one's taxes.) I don't want my resume to look too cluttered, but I've done a lot of very different things in the past ten years, especially if you count all the different LH things I've been paid for (or at least held responsibility for.) Lucky for me a lot of them were work done under the umbrella of Autumn Tree Productions and I always include that on a resume, I guess the other stuff will have to get lumped in under general LH pursuits.

The other big part of LinkedIn (like all social media) is connecting to to other people. I've been trying to locate past co-workers, former bosses, and professional connections, but it seems like most of my connections are with people in the RenFaire and LH world. Another mixing of my two sides. At first I was worried about mixing the two, but from the different types of people that have accepted my "connection request" I guess the practice is not all that uncommon.

Are many of you on LinkedIn? Do you include your LH stuff? How separate is the LH stuff from the rest of your life?

Recruitment

2011-08-17T12:00:00.001-04:00

I have heard through the grapevine that many Civil War reenactment groups are having trouble recruiting new members. I have rather written off thier complaints as aging groups having trouble attracting a younger croud, but Das Geld Fahnlein is not growing like it needs to. And now I'm getting worried.

Our initial recruitment was a group of five friends getting together and talking about the fact that we still wanted to participte in the Renaissance Faire, but we were much more interested in the history than the entertainment, and wouldn't it be fun to start our own group? Once the planning was underway we notified all our friends, and asked the faire to put the word out along thier communication channels. Our first year group was just fantastic. Everyone was enthousiastic, fun, more than a little quirky and our first year was a rousing success. Last year most of the recruitment that happened were friends of friends. A current member would convice a friend to come to a workshop and they'd be hooked.

This year, we have not had as much luck with friends of friends, and although we have had some interested folks we've met at events or who have found our web page, none of them have stuck around for more than a single workshop. Now I'm wondering if we're too intimidating? Everyone says we look so good that they will have to wait to join us until they are up to our standards. But really, we're a relatively new group, and would rather loan people the gear they need, and steer them towards the best research materials, and have them join in as soon as possible and not three years from now.

Is it the economy? This is definitely not a cheap hobby. A few of my friends have asked how much it costs to make an outfit in order to join and the answer is around $300 if you shop around and do a lot of it yourself, but not much cheaper unless you are an incredible bargain hunter.

Do we need to do market research? Should we poll all the folks we know to see why they are not rushing to join the guild? Stephen and I ask all the LH folks we know about recruitment and we're getting the picture that maybe it is just a slow sort of thing. Maybe there are not more reenactors because it really is a very small proportion of the population that is interested in taking part.

We have so much fun though, I am hoping we can get more people to join so I have more cool friends to hang out with.

Family Changes

2011-08-12T14:13:00.001-04:00

I'm getting a family! Yes, I've still got my childhood family that supports me in my Living History schemes, and Stephen and I have been partnering on LH stuff for years before we got married. But we're gaining a family member. Stephen's (and mine through marriage) niece is moving in with us and making our family of two into a fun new family of three.

This will change every aspect of our lives. Our home life, work schedules, our diet, our interactions with friends and neighbors. The good thing about adopting someone who is older, and not bringing a baby into our family is that we can warn her about what she is getting into. But how much can you get across with conversations, or event event visits? I think that there is very little that can prepare someone for the exhaustion of a full day at an event. Or the amount of knowledge one needs to know in order to do this LH thing. She is a teenager, and like a lot of teenagers is sure she knows more than she does. Her grandmother has taught her a lot about sewing, but that does not mean she's ready to create historical outfits.

I think I'm ready for the learning curve, I am looking forward to learning and growing. I'm also extremely nervous about the changes to her life and our lives, but I'm hopeful that change will be good. Wish us luck with introducing a new person to our crazy world!

Getting the Itch

2011-08-11T14:13:00.000-04:00

I'm feeling like it has been too long since I last dressed up. It was July 9th in fact, more than a month ago. I have done LH work, I've done a lot of research, gardening, some construction. We've attended LH events as members of the public. All of that is good, but it is not the same as dressing up and doing it. Luckily we'll be attending an event in a little over a week. Actually, we could go in regular clothes, we're not required to dress up and take part, but since there are members of our group dressing up and taking part, I have a hard time imagining that I could go and not want to jump in. It is time to shake out the wrinkles from my dress and sew back together all the stuff that has come apart since the spring.

Is the Magic "period" moment really all that important?

2011-08-03T15:21:00.000-04:00

Since we just did a podcast on making evaluations I've been evaluating my own involvement in Living History. There are so many things that I hope to get out of any LH venture I undertake. Here are the 4 main ones I’ve come up with:
1. I want to learn,
2. I want to teach others,
3. I want to have meaningful social interactions (have fun with my friends),
4. I want to experience something real.
I am finding that though many folks may have similar entries on their lists, most do not list them in the order I have, nor do most people include all of those entries.

I’m reading a little book called “Seize the Day” and its purpose is to help Civil War reenactors achieve more moments when the reenactment “feels real.” Some people call these magic moments, or even a period-gasm. This is one of the main reasons why people get involved in Living History. It is the topic of an entire book (even if it is a little book.) The most interesting thing about reading this book at the time as I am making my own evaluations, and just after visiting a couple LH events as a member of the public (podcasted here) is that teaching others and expiring something “real” are often in direct conflict.

Let’s face it, having folks dresses in jeans and t-shirts, taking our pictures with digital cameras (or their phones) and asking us what year it is (or more intelligent questions) does ruin the period atmosphere. As close as we get in our surroundings and ourselves, as long as sneakered individuals expecting interaction are in the picture the picture is never going to be all that accurate. But I love the chance to interact with and educate the public! I know this make me very different from most reenactors, or at least most reenactors on Living History Worldwide click here for a summary. But I really do value the times I interact with others who might have some level of interest in history, and to widen a few world views. And no, I have no desire to teach the federally decided curriculum to a very small age demographic; I want to reach anyone who wants to learn, not just in the usual prescribed ways.

What if the public are just spectators?
I’ve seen this done in battle scenarios, where the public stays on the outside and the historical folks on the other. Some groups prefer to put up a rope line to keep members of the public a bit separate. But they’re still there. They are not hiding behind an invisible barrier, and to ignore them completely seems fairly rude to me if you are not doing a theatrical performance.

So how important is achieving those period moments?
Since it seems like on my list numbers 2 and 4 are fairly incompatible, does that mean I have to drop one or the other? I think not. Not every day, activity or event is going to fulfill all my wants (or even my needs) but going forward I’m going to try to evaluate my LH endeavors based on the 4 criteria and make sure I have a balance. Some events are geared mostly towards educating others, but I might learn something, or at least have some fun social interactions. And I might just be more inclined to put some events in my schedule that are not about educating the public, and are more about those magic “period” or “real” moments, as opposed to the magic teaching moments, the magic learning moments or the magic bonding moments shared with friends.

Since we’re talking about LH endeavors, there is one more kind I need to point out when talking about evaluations, and those are the endeavors we undertake for other people. Being kind, sharing, helping our friends and family are all very important. If I attend an event for the benefit of someone else and don’t actually achieve any of my goals for LH endeavors, it does not mean it was an unsuccessful event, just as long as someone got something out if it, then I’m ok with that too.

Old Houses

2011-07-30T01:00:00.001-04:00

I have a complex relationship with old houses. And by old houses I mean those that were built 300 to 100 years ago that are commonly found here in New England. I grew up in old houses and have many time said I would never want to live in one again. They are dusty, which means that I have trouble breathing in old houses. They are often very drafty which means I’m constantly cold (or pay a lot to heat them) and they are constantly in need of repair, which I generally don’t feel like doing. But I LOVE old houses! I love looking at them as we drive past and guessing how old they are, and when the additions or changes were made, I love staying in hotels that were old houses.

I especially love working in them. My current office is in the upstairs room of a big farmhouse built right around 1800. The walls are plaster and wood paneling, the windows let in a ton of light, even if they rattle in a strong wind. All the placement of rooms and halls make sense to me. It feels comforting and happy in a way that the cinderblock office buildings I’ve worked in never could.

When at the herb workshops at Plimoth Plantation a couple weeks ago I got to spend quite a bit of time in Plomoth's Horticulture Building, which is where I used to work. It was originally built a hundred years ago as a carriage house. It had a big room for the carriages, and a smaller room for stalls, there were more stalls in the basement as well as a second floor that was half hayloft half caretaker’s lodgings. I love the feel of the building, working and relaxing in it; washing in the soapstone sink, potting plants in the glass-and-wood greenhouse that was attached to the carriage house. Yes, they are dusty and drafty, but somehow I don’t mind as much during the work day.

I hope in my future there are many more workplaces in lovely old structures. They make me happy.

My Horrible Friday

2011-07-27T13:48:00.000-04:00

I did not have a history-filled weekend.
Early this spring I found out about a workshop being offered through Burnley and Trowbridge, on making an 18th century fitted-back gown the proper 18th century way. Stephen and I have been doing more 18th century events but it is not my main area of research and here was a chance to learn from an expert and get a cool dress out of it! Stephen got me the plane ticket and hotel room for my birthday and I eagerly signed up, bought fabric and waited for the workshop date to arrive. The workshop took place this past weekend, from 2-5 on Friday 9-5 on Saturday and 9:30 – 3:30 on Sunday. I was not there. Here is my saga.

I took Thursday off from work to mow the lawn and pack, try to do some last minute sewing before the class. On Friday I left my house at 4:30 am for the airport and I arrived at 5 am for my 6:10 flight out of Manchester, NH on Sout West Airlines. When checking my bag I discovered that my driver’s license was not in my wallet. That was the thing that set the whole horrible chain of events going. I hauled my suitcase back out to the long-term parking lot, drove home roused Stephen, and tore the place apart looking for my license. Found it in a rarely-used coat pocket, raced back to the airport.

I arrived back at the airport at 6:05. Since I could not get my bag on my original flight, and it was unlikely that I would make it, they agreed to try to get me out on the next flight. But that flight was at 6:30 and had a long layover in Tampa, whereas the 10:30 did not have a long layover and would get me to the Norfolk, VA airport a half an hour before the class started. With drive time etc included I would probably be an hour late, but I would have to live with that. I had a nice breakfast at the airport and finished the sewing I had not finished the day before.

When the 10:30 flight lined up I found out it was a full flight, I was on stand-by and there was another person on stand-by too. All the ticketed passengers showed up. There was no room for me. The guy at the counter who had been so friendly before the plane boarded was sullen after it was full and instead of being helpful just told me I’d have to wait for the 1:45. I’d gone online when it looked like the plane was full and I’d seen a 3:30 to Norfolk but not a 1:45. He grudgingly agreed to tell me that the 1:45 went to Baltimore, not Norfolk but that almost all Southwest flights into Norfolk went through Baltimore and I was bound to find something then. So I was stuck with an unknown arrival time or a well past the end of the Friday class time. I called Stephen and he told me to go look for another airline with flights that could get me in sooner. None of the other airlines had flights that would get me in before class was over, so I waited for the 1:45.

I had an unsatisfactory lunch, listened to some audiobook, played some Plants versus Zombies, read some blog feeds. I was not far from the gate where the 1:45 flight was, and not too long after noon I noticed a lot of commotion. A flight to Orlando had just been delayed from 1pm to 7 pm. Folks were pissed. They were trying to re-route as many of them on to the 1:45 to Baltimore as possible! In a panic I went up to the counter and it was actually the woman who in the morning had been at the counter to witness me not finding my license, then to tell me I’d make it on the 10:30 even though it was a full flight. I explained that I had not made it out yet, she recognized me and I asked if there was really a chance of me getting on the 1:45. She said there was very little chance but that the 3:30 was a direct to Norfolk, the plane would stop in Baltimore but I would not need to leave the plane. She took me off standby status for the 1:45 and gave me a definite seat on the 3:30.

I went back to my spot, tried to nap, tried to concentrate on anything and just got more uncomfortable and desperate. The 1:45 was not full, but by the time I found that out they were making urgent leaving noises and since that flight only went as far as Baltimore with no guaranteed second flight, I did not change my ticket. At 2:30 they announced that the 3:30 was delayed. Twenty minutes later they called all passengers going on to Norfolk over to the counter and gave us new boarding passes because apparently the flight was no longer direct, but would go only to Baltimore, then we would transfer to a different plane going to Norfolk. I was positively sick to my stomach. At 4:30 they announced that the 3:30 plane was delayed again and that there were no more flights to Norfolk out of Baltimore that we would be able to make. They were recommending that we all spend the night in New Hampshire and then they would put us all on the first plane out, which would get us into Norfolk at 9:30 am. The workshop started at 9 on Saturday and I did not want to miss all of the Friday class and 2.5 hours of the Saturday class with travel time. I cried. I blubbered at the unsympathetic woman at the counter who said there was no alternative so I asked her to cancel my ticket. Because I had three different boarding passes she could not do it but told me to write a letter (write a letter!!) to the address she handed me and they would refund my ticket. I went home sobbing the whole way.

Stephen had been updated on my status every step of the way by text and phone so was waiting with sympathetic arms when I got home. He let me cry for a while and then asked me how badly I wanted to go to Virginia, I told him I wanted to very badly but was not going to drive at that late a time and could not see another option. He said there were two more flights out of Manchester that evening both going to Norfolk, from airlines other than South West. We called Norfolk to make sure my bag had arrived (it had) I still had hotel reservations, and United Airlines sold us a decently priced ticket for a 7:30 flight thru Washington, DC to Norfolk, Virginia. Stephen drove me back to the airport.

Back in line, this time at the United counter, they were talking about long delays in Chicago, and how there were a lot of planes that had not yet arrived in Manchester, so I was fairly prepared when I got up to the counter. Yes, the flight we had just booked had been delayed, no I could not get into Norfolk before 10 am the next morning. The United woman was much more sympathetic though and she said there was an 8:30 offered by American Airlines that was only slightly delayed what was going through Philadelphia and if I ran I could make a connection in Philly. I agreed so she printed me a voucher and sent me to the American Airlines counter. The craziest thing of the whole evening happened then. As I turned away from the United counter and paid attention to the endless announcements for the first time since returning to the airport I heard my name. Southwest was calling me to hurry and board or they were going to close the doors. I looked at my watch, it was 7pm. I guess the 3:30 was finally getting off the ground and no one had been able to completely cancel my ticket. I did not run to the gate, that plane could not get me to my destination, though it was the strangest thing, my name being broadcast over the entire airport letting me know that I was going to miss my flight.

At the American Airlines counter there were two nice women. One was not so sure I could make it, but the other one was confident since I did not have any bags and I was energetic that I’d make the connection, no problem. They printed me a ticket for the 8:30 American flight (now scheduled to leave at 9pm) and I went through security for the 3rd time that day. The airport had mostly cleared out by that point, there were no lines at security, half the restaurants were closed and only a few gates had upcoming flights listed. I went to one of the few remaining open bars and actually ordered myself an alcoholic beverage. I also got a sandwich (cold, the kitchen was closed) and ate half of the sandwich and a 3rd of the drink before heading to my gate. 2 more flights had departed and there was almost no one left. There were 8 people sitting at the gate. As I sat down there was an announcement that the flight was now delayed until 9:30 but the gentleman at the counter assured us we’d be off the ground by 9:10. Twenty minutes later I got an automated call saying the plane was now delayed until 10:10 pm. I asked the man at the counter if that was true, he said yes, our plane had not yet left Philadelphia to come to Manchester. I asked him to cancel my ticket. He did, I called Stephen and he picked me up at 9 pm.

I did not go back to the airport until Monday afternoon, and then only to pick up my suitcase, which had been in Virginia all weekend without me.

Not a successful historical vacation.

Plants as Common Knowledge

2011-07-23T10:00:00.001-04:00

During the workshops at Plimoth I got the feeling that one of the many things we’re missing as part of our portrayal of the Renaissance mentality (music and formality highest among them) is a general knowledge of plants.

There are a lot of machines that are a part of our general knowledge today, the different makes of cars, types of cell phones, operating systems on computers, ways to get around the internet. These are things that generally you can expect the average American to know. There are definitely people out there who can name and identify more different types of cars, and there are folks with more in depth knowledge of cell phones, but if you asked a group of Americans to pick a flip-type cell phone out of a line-up of phones, they could generally have no problems with that task.

This weekend I heard stories of a new pilgrim being sent out into the garden to find carrots, and she could not find them because she had no idea carrots grew underground, or one who was given a tray of cabbages to plant in her garden and she planted the leaves in the ground, and the roots sticking up. These are extreme examples, but serve to illustrate my point. People in the past would have known a lot more about plants. They would have been able to identify a good number of plants, or at least plant types, they would have known what plants are harvested at what time of year if only by the regularity that such things showed up on the dinner table. Just like today we all know which over-the-counter meds cure headaches, and how to put on a Band-Aid everyone would have known which plants are best for small cuts, and which are good for stomach troubles.

I re-learned a lot about plants and herbs this weekend, and will be happy to share what I know. Would anyone be interested in a list of common historical herb remedies or a common vegetable harvest/availability chart?

Translating Workshops into Living History

2011-07-19T16:41:00.000-04:00

I went to a fabulous workshop this past weekend at Plimoth Plantation. They brought in an herb expert, Christina Stapley from England, and held 5 days of workshops in the gardens making historic herbal concoctions. I have done a little work with herbs in the past, I took an “herbal apprenticeship” program one summer about 12 years ago which was much more modern in focus. Since then I've read up on medieval uses of herbs, as much as is possible with some of the wildly translated books available out there, and I've learned a whole lot more about garden and village lay-out, and about food and medicine in the Middle Ages. So even though the classes focused on the 17th and 18th centuries, there is a ton I’m going to take into my current Living History portrayals.

For research and verification purposes I’m basically using the information gathered in the workshop as a secondary source, so I can take anything Tina told us as a starting off point, but it would be good to verify, especially in my specific context. Of the new things that I learned, I am most interested in the concept of the noble woman as country pharmacist. Tina talked a lot about the fact that in the late 16th and all of the 17th century noble women were expected to keep large physic gardens from which they would make medicines, not only to administer to their families, but also to all of the people working in their households and their tenants, and surrounding villagers. I had definitely heard this concept before, Jane Austin’s noble heroines often go to visit the sick and destitute, I’ve read two novels set in medieval times that the noble women concocted and doled out medicine, but now I’m determined to find at least another secondary source that can verify the practice in England in the 15th century if not on the continent.

I want to try out almost every type of herbal concoction we made this weekend: Gillyflower water, mixes for fresh bedding, honeys, salves, teas, poultices, baths… But there are two that I want to make to use in our LH encampment this fall and going forward. We made a couple of salves this past weekend now I really want to make a salve for soothing sunburns. We’re out in the sun all day, and even though we wear big hats and reapply sunscreen, inevitably we will miss some spots, or some person. I’ve got some small green glazed jars that would be perfect for pulling out at the end of the day. Tina nicely shared a sunburn soothing recipe with me so I can make it at home, since she is a modern herbalist as well as a historian I have fair confidence for its soothing properties. First I’ll verify that they’re using salves in my particular time and place, then I’ll verify that they’re growing/using the plants, though if they would usually use the plants for a different ailment I’m not going to worry about it. I also want to make a mix for sweet smelling bedding. I’d like the folks who enter our tent to add smell to their range of experiences, and our bedding could use some herbs, I’m sure. Plus if it allows Stephen and I to sleep better on the must old bed, I’ll be delighted. Since I know herbs were strewn in the house, and packed in trunks, and scattered around I don’t need to worry about their application. I will make sure that the herbs I pick are appropriate both for our wellbeing and for historical accuracy.

How cool would it be to head from the kitchen fire with all its smells to the tent and get a whole new set of smells? Smells that would make someone from the Renaissance feel right at home. Then if those go well I might try to convince our captain that at the end of a long day an herbal foot bath (for him) might be in order…

Book Review: Confederates in the Attic

2011-07-12T12:56:00.000-04:00

When looking for books on reenacting Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horowitz, 1998 inevitably comes up. But Confederates is not a book about reenacting, it is a journalist’s look at the South and its relationship with history, specifically the Civil War. Horowitz talks about race, about the psychology of defeat, about economics and memory. I found the book a fairly uncomfortable read, but Horowitz’s subject is a fairly uncomfortable one for most Americans. I found fascinating the parts of the book that focused on different interpretations of the same history: the different experiences of black and white students, of authors and archaeologists, of rich and poor folks. Living historians experience this dichotomy all the time since we are so often caught in the middle between academic historians and the public perception of history. I also paid much closer attention to the parts of the book that focused on reenacting.

In the Introduction Horowitz writes that his boyhood interest in the Civil War was re-sparked when he met a group of “hardcore” reenactors who were acting as extras on a movie being shot just outside his home. He developed the idea for the book after joining the same group of reenactors for a weekend drilling in a cold and damp field.

He comes back to reenacting in Chapter 6, where he participates in a reenactment event of a more typical variety. At the reenactment he participates in a battle, peels vegetables with civilians and gets a pretty good picture of Civil War reenacting. A lot of the views he expresses are fairly stereotypical; but they are well articulated which makes the chapter to me a good starting off place for those of us who are looking for language to describe reenacting. He talks about hardcores, farbs and all the rest of the people in between, about the battle part of the reenactment and the civilian part around the edges, about the multiple Abraham Lincolns one might run into, about women’s roles on the outskirts of the reenactment. He encounters a lot of people who tell him they love reenacting because “life was simpler back then.” Throughout the chapter he explores the friction created by folks “playing” with a deadly serious topic, and basically ignoring the racial strife of the civil war. He captured some of his observations in the form of participant quotes:

"We're here to preserve the experience on the common soldier, North and South," said Ray Gill a gray-clad Connecticut Accountant. "I hate to call it a hobby, because it's so much more than that. We're here to find the real answers, to read between the lines in the history books, and then share our experience with spectators."

He ends up summarizing Civil War reenacting as: “a grand spectacle that glorified battlefield valor and the stoicism of civilians.” I agree that there is definitely a high quotient of spectacle in reenactment.

Reenacting shows up in several other chapters. Horowitz participates in a whirl-wind tour of Virginia sites with Civil War significance with a reenactor who insists the tour be done in garb. While Horowitz might not be terribly comfortable in the clothes himself, he is even more uncomfortable with the reactions of the public to their appearance at historic sites. As folks in costume, they get comments and stares, they also get questions and become experts just because they are dressed up. While it makes the author uncomfortable to be placed in the role of expert, his companion appears used to it, and has a routine all worked out. I think that we in the reenacting community need to come up with a proverb or an adage that warns folks who put on the clothes about what they will be expected to know.

In his chapter on Georgia (specifically Atlanta) Horowitz discovers the reenactment of fictional events when he looks at locals’ relationship with “Gone with the Wind”. He meets a professional “Scarlet” who mostly does her act for groups of Japanese tourists, and he meets the owner of “the real Tara” though there actually never was a real Tara. Anyone who has attended a Jane Austin tea or a Charles Dickens Christmas party can understand the allure of a literary history that, while based in fact, may be much more poetic than real life, and colorful, and evocative. Again, Horowitz is not a reenactor and his audience is not mainly reenactors, so he does not necessarily dwell on the connections, but they are there for those of us who see the world through a LH lens.

Horowitz also comes back to reenactment in his conclusion. He again joins in a reenactment and asks of himself and the people around him: what is the allure of the Civil War? Why this obsession? That is the question that LH folks often end up asking themselves. Horowitz does not have an answer. I don’t either, but I’m glad he asked the question.

2 Great Moments from this Spring

2011-07-06T15:42:00.000-04:00

I won an award for Best Camp Follower

This past spring I have been involved in a number of really fun Living History events. We had an all-historical set-up day, we had a cool sword master come to teach some workshops, we went back to my favorite middle school, and we attended a LH timeline event we’d never attended before. All the events were full of good friends, laughs and tons of education but two moments were very personally rewarding.

At the school we have a grand finale where we set up all our Landsknecht stuff in different stations, and the kids come around and visit, then they all sit on the hillside for an armored combat tournament, which is often their favorite part. I’ve been helping with Autumn Tree Armored Combat Company since 2002, and some of my first speaking roles at Renfaires were taking part in the armored combat demos. But it has been years since ATACC was really active, and for the most part I’ve always played assistant type roles. This year on the drive south to the school Stephen turned to me and asked if I thought I could do all of the speaking part, no prep time at all. He had to be an armored combatant, and we had not sent the script on to our usual squires, I was probably the person who knew the script almost as well as he did. So after spending all morning at my station I stood in the middle of the ring, stared up at the 600 middle schoolers and used all my projection skills to ask if they could all hear me. The answer was yes, so I launched into talking about knights, armor, swords and all the rest. I talked, the squires dressed the knights, the knights demonstrated techniques, then bashed each other about to the delight of the crowd. At the end all the kids were cheering and the knights were smiling so I gave myself a little pat on the back. It had been a long time since I had done that script, I don’t think I had ever done it in its entirety, and I managed to keep up the timing of the show, as well as be heard by the entire outdoor audience. Definitely a “go me” moment!

Stephen accepting the Best Overall Impression Award

A week and a half later we set up at the Living History Associations’s 25th annual Timeline event. We’d never been there before and had not heard a lot about the event beforehand other than that it existed. We spent the weekend doing our thing, talking to the few visitors and all the other participants. We cooked and drilled, and some of us napped, we were our usual busy selves. On Sunday we found out that there was a bit of a competition and that awards would be handed out at the end of the event. Though it had been a fun event before, now it seemed positively thrilling! What if we actually won something? Well I won’t keep you waiting, not only did our group win Best Overall Impression, I won Best Camp Follower! Afterwards, the judges told our group that all the females did such a good job it was tough to decide between us, and it is true, our Frauen are great. We all work really hard, and we work together. I think all our camp followers do a fantastic job and it was so cool to be picked as one of the best.

Now I’m all motivated to make our camp even better, our events even more educational, and to make sure that we’re all having as much fun as possible as we get ready for the fall.

When Myth, Fact and the Average Citizen Collide

2011-06-20T10:51:00.000-04:00

When I heard the news about Sarah Palin getting her facts wrong about Paul Revere I heard it first from a history blog. Since I don’t watch TV, I missed most of the major hype, and read about the scandal at a much more sedate pace. It struck me even in that first reading, that while the whole story she was telling was not accurate, there were bits of fact, and bits of myth mixed up together in a way that fit into her own narrative, and it struck me that she is not all that different from the normal tourists who get the tour, and that maybe it was partially the fault of the tour guide.

The person who gave the tour, Vicar Stephen T. Ayres, has since responded here and I was right about the Palin entourage being very similar to the average tourist, “They didn't strike me as very different from the 500,000 other visitors we see each year” and even the vicar himself wonders, “Perhaps it was too much information in too short a period of time to digest properly.”

The average citizen/tourist gets their history from a variety of sources: schooling when they are young, stories they heard growing up, media portrayals (books, news, event cartoons) and, if we are lucky, visits to historic sites where they hear from trained tour guides or enthusiastic volunteers. But the average person can only absorb so much information at a time. Add to that the fact that while that information is being absorbed, it is being processed into what the person already knows, it is being fit into a larger narrative constructed over a lifetime. When talking to the public in Living History settings I often worry about how much of what I am saying will be heard the way I mean it to be heard.

What can we do about this? Those of us who want to educate the public, and hope to better people’s understanding of life in different times and places? We can keep our narratives simple, we can mention the myths and the well known facts, and most importantly (in my opinion) we can ask questions. While most folks might be embarrassed to be asked to give a history lesson before we start our own, we can ask specific questions, ask what the visitors are interested in, ask for their own list of facts, then we can fit our talk in around those points, and into their current narrative, into the vocab words they have absorbed at various points in their lives. Hopefully in the process we will improve the accuracy and deepen the understanding of everyone we talk to.

Second -Class Citizen

2011-06-13T13:26:00.000-04:00

I feel really lucky that as a female interested in Living History, all of my first experiences with Living History were very egalitarian. My first experience was in the classroom where everyone was included, no matter what, my second was at a museum where a wide variety of stories were told, and women filled a variety of roles, including leadership ones. At the renaissance faire I did not feel like a second class citizen: wenches have power, female sword slingers are sexy, and often everyone is ruled over by a queen. It has only been recently that I’ve attended the more usual type of reenactment dominated by battles, soldiers and a much more gender segregated feeling. I must say, I don’t like it one bit.

I don’t mind cooking, I like making our camp cozy and tidy, I have no interest in shooting guns or swinging swords, but I don’t like to be left on the sidelines. I don’t like knowing that in order to start up a revolutionary war unit we have to have seven male members, female members do not count. I’d like to get more involved in local 18th Century Living History. Does anybody out there know of any less gender biased 18th C events (preferably late summer) in the New Hampshire or Northern Massachusetts region?

Breaking News: People are Human

2011-06-07T15:00:00.000-04:00

A few days ago on the way home from work I was (as usual) listening to NPR. They were playing an interview with an Egyptian protester who is visiting the US and right at the end the host, Michelle Norris asked if he had learned anything during his time in New York that he will take back to Egypt. And this is how he answered:
"Well, I - and this was a very short time. I'm leaving on Wednesday, so I haven't had much time to get any insight. But I was in New York last month, actually when Osama bin Laden was assassinated. And I got a very deep insight because if I was in Egypt while this was happening and I opened the news, and I saw, you know, Americans dancing, celebrating this death and like this feeling the news all the time, so I would have been really annoyed.
But I was here in New York, and I realized there are these other people who were, you know, hit by the terrorist attack that this guy caused, and they weren't actually celebrating the death. Media was overblowing it completely.
People were going about their lives. And there many that didn't feel it was that significant. They feel that, you know, there's a lost sense of justice, people I talked to in the streets and so on. And so I don't know how to say that the insight was that the Americans are, you know, more human than the image we have of them, or New Yorkers at least."

Whole transcript here.

That last bit at the end struck me. The insight he came away with was that New Yorkers are human too. They have their daily lives, their worries, their mixed feelings, the same as people in Egypt.

When we set up our encampment at public venues, when we dress up go into schools, when we strike up conversations with ordinary folks, one of the things we are trying to do is show modern folks that the people back then, though living different lives, were human too. As Hanne I occasionally complain about life on the road with my husband the soldier, about the weather or the cookfire etc. because I am not only teaching facts about Hanne’s life, I am trying to get across that she is human and far from perfect, but possibly a bit easier to connect with (‘cause who doesn’t complain about the weather?)

Book Review: The Building of The Green Valley

2011-06-05T20:24:00.000-04:00

Is there a living history enthusiast out there who has not wished they could have their own historical manor house, castle, farm, village, etc.? Stuart Peachey has a 17th century farm, and wrote a book about the experience. The Building of The Green Valley: A Reconstruction of an Early 17th Century Rural Landscape (By Stuart Peachey, 2006, Heritage Publications) is not a really polished book, but it is a pleasant read, and for all of us history junkies it like reading our fantasies come to fruition. Stuart Peachey has been reenacting since the late 1970s and not too long into his reenacting career came into a bit of a windfall and with a group of friends bought some land in Wales on which there was the ruins of a17th century farm.

They bought it in order to have a place to do living history and reenactments and to that end they set about restoring the land, buildings, gardens, and fields to how it looked in the 17th century. The book is mostly a chronicle of the work that went into restoring the farm (or farms, really) and a chronicle of those people who invested a large part of their lives into the farm. The later chapters are guides to the research, animals, plants and infrastructure that went into the project (should one wish to attempt something like this one's self.)

One of the things that I noticed about the book is that someone (possibly Peachy himself) kept very good track of every person that contributed labor to the project. The main section of the book chronicles from 1987 until 2003 when the farm was complete enough to be used as the site for a reality TV show. All the work that was done on the site was done by volunteers. Hundreds of volunteers over more than a decade, and sometimes it seems like Peachey names them all by name. This can get a little tedious, but it also illustrates the fact that "the valley" project was very much a community project. The is politics, and personalities, there is real life. But still the project moved forward.

And throughout the project not a single person profited monetarily from the restoration. Everyone was content with the fact that they were building up a really cool historical setting. All the events held on the site were done with the intention to educate and possibly further invest in the site. The whole thing was done with very little money but a ton of labor. And a ton of historical research.

There is not very much info in the book on life in the 17th century, that is not the point of the book. But the amount of work that went into researching the buildings, their uses, the types of plants and animals re-introduced to the valley, and the people who lived and worked there all comes through in the stories and pictures. The book left me wanting fairly badly to visit the valley, especially during a living history event, but even more (and more dangerously) it gave me faith that a project like theirs is achievable. With enough goodwill and sweat equity, it is possible to have your own living history farm.

It's Not a Costume

2011-05-13T13:34:00.000-04:00

Over the past season I’ve noticed that I have a growing sensitivity to the use of the word “costume” to describe the historical clothing that I am re-creating. True, it is not the clothing that I wear on a regular basis, and only wear on special occasions; but the folks who originally designed, made, and wore the styles did not consider them special. They considered it clothing. I am not re-creating the special occasion clothing, I am trying to get as close as possible to the every-day wear.

There are certainly tons of folks dressing up in historical styles that I do consider to be wearing costumes. Folks who are clearly dressing up in something they are not used to can be considered to be “in costume”. Clothing that is made of the incorrect materials: polyester is the worst, but I consider even modern cottons to be more of a costume, and not really clothing.

I understand that the folks who say: “what a cool costume!” are trying to compliment me, I promise to take it as a compliment as long as I can say in response: “Thanks but it is not a costume. It is clothing.”

On Medievalists

2011-04-28T15:05:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago I attended the Medieval and Renaissance Forum at Plymouth State University, It was an incredibly interesting experience. The Forum is an academic conference, most of the presenters were English professors who specialize in Chaucer, Middle English, some fairly obscure old texts. I was there as a volunteer, I assisted the organizer and her assistant by running errands, staffing the registration desk, and by looking pretty in my kick a$$ landsknecht clothing during the Medieval Feast on Saturday evening. I also got to meet a ton of cool medievalists, attend some fascinating sessions, and hear a totally titillating talk on sex in Milton’s Paradise Lost.

But, I have a confession to make: I have never studied Medieval or Renaissance European history in a classroom setting. Well, not since about the 4th grade. I have never read Canterbury Tales, or Beowulf, I’m scared to death of Dante, Dunn, and Milton. I have quite a bit of academic learning in American History, but I came to the Middle Ages once I was out of college, so I’m practically completely self-taught when it comes to my current area of expertise. I’ve done a lot of studying, I know how to do my own research and can slog my way through most academic papers. So while I was not lost in any of the sessions that I attended, I did feel bad when any of the attendees would ask me where I taught or if I was a student.

Despite feeling like an interloper I had a great time! So many of the people giving talks at the conference were energetic young professors. They were all a bit on the nerdy side; they made Chaucer jokes, and laughed at Chaucer jokes. Some of them did not have the highest level of social skills, which made me feel right at home. I had great conversations about reenacting and Living History, about clothing and textiles, about sources and resources. I got some good book recommendations, and I am a lot less scared of Milton. It made me really want to take some college courses in Chaucer and the like, because I’d get so much more out of a class than I would trying to read it on my own. Maybe I’ll have to try to arrange something for a summer course or the fall semester.

One thing that I’ve taken away from my attendance at the forum is that just because I do not know about a medieval text on some subject or another, does not mean that it does not exist. The disconnect between academic scholarship and what information is available to me as a non-scholar is an even wider chasm that I had suspected. I have done quite a few database searches at college libraries for articles and research on Medieval and Renaissance Germany, and I have not come up with a whole lot. But I met two scholars studying Germany at this tiny conference in Northern NH. They both have published themselves, and have extensive bibliographes, of books and articles I have never heard of! When I got back I went into the library of the college where I work intending to talk to a reference librarian about finding some of these sources that had eluded me thus far and hopefully picking up some tips for future searches I may run. But it is finals time, and I am not the highest priority. I’ll try back in the summer when they’re bored.

I was also amazed that no one asked me if I was a member of the SCA. When I told people that I did Living History, that I was a reenactor and dressed up to perform daily tasks and learn about the timeperiod by doing, most people were politely interested and asked about the sorts of venues in which I did these things, about the other folks who did it with me, about the types of research I was doing. I got very little of the stereotypical responses to reenacting. It was refreshing, though it did perpetuate some of the stereotypes I have of sheltered academics.
After all the presentation sessions and hands-on workshops (most of which were lead by Plymouth State professors or the Medieval and Renaissance Society (PSU’s undergraduate club))there was a “Medieval Feast” on Saturday night were “costumes were encouraged.” Other than the undergrad club (who were all dressed up in various levels of in-authenticity) there were only about 8 attendees total who were dressed up in anything resembling a costume. Two of the female attendees had polyester satin and velvet costumes, they were very much costumes, but fairly well done. One woman had an outfit that looked like it had come from the costume closet of a theater and one male attendee was in a velvet Cote, but unfortunately he was wearing women’s pantyhose. There was a pair of reenactors, a father and daughter I think who had found out about the feast online and wore renfaire standard garb, then I had dressed the organizer in my blue linen “Medieval” dress which is not totally period in the lacing, but with a fairly standard basic shape. I wore my Kampfrau get-up which I have been improving in the three years since I made it with a lot of additional accessories, hats and undergarments. I turned quite a few heads.

The most surprising development for me was at the end when the conference organizer, who I had been helping all weekend proclaimed to the table where we were sitting at the feast that I was now her go-to person for historical information. I knew more about daily life in the Middle Ages and Renaisasance than she did, since she was an English professor so she mostly knew about Chaucer, Shakespeare and other literary sources. I’m not sure that was an entirely true statement, but it was flattering and made me feel good about the studying and learning I’ve done on my own even if it also spurred me to do a ton more research.

Inspiration - Colby Junior College Yearbooks

2011-04-25T12:00:00.000-04:00

I work in the Alumni Office of a small college in New Hampshire. My job does not normally have a lot to do with my obsession with history, but sometimes it does, and those times can be really magic. Last fall I got to pick up a visiting alum at the airport, she had gone to school just after World War II and told great stories the whole drive north.

Colby Jr. students during WWII

I occasionally get to work with the school’s archives, tracking down photos, or looking up facts about the college from way back. The archivist is really friendly and loves to talk about the history of the school, and the newest photos they are digitizing, or the latest bunch of letters that have come in. Last year I was tasked with making a valentine card for all the alumni who are married to other alumni, so I asked the archivist if there was anything valentine related in the archives. She found a charming 19th Century card that was a lovely patterned orange and red with a poem in the middle. It was a bit cheesy, but Valentines Day is a bit cheesy and I got to explain inside the card that it came from the archives, which was a nice college connection.

There is a long-standing college tradition, one day in the fall the president rings the college bell and cancels class so that everyone can go climb the local mountain. Mountain Day goes back fairly far and I love the photos from the 1890s and early 1900s of the sporting types exploring the great outdoors. Then there are the photos of May Day, where the ladies of Colby Junior College dress in white and dance barefoot in the fields.

May Day 1949

Occasionally the Alumni Office gets an inquiry that can only be answered by going back to the old yearbooks. In January I got a call from a gentleman who was trying to locate his wife’s college roommate. His wife had just passed away and he wanted to contact her roommate, who had been the maid of honor at their wedding, and had been close for many years after college. He could not remember the roomate’s name, only her college nickname! Though we have a lot of alumni information in a database, it is not an easily searchable database, and not all the nickname information is in there, so the easiest way to find her was to go to the yearbooks. I found his wife’s record in our database, which gave me the class year: 1949, then I went to the yearbooks. I am totally a braids and knee socks kind of gal, and I admit by the time I was through turning every page of that yearbook, I was wondering how hard it would be to make a Colby Junior College blazer.

Remembering Diana Wynne Jones

2011-03-29T10:21:00.001-04:00

A few days ago a friend let me know that my favorite author, Diana Wynne Jones had passed away. I’m actually pretty devastated by this. No, this has nothing to do with Living History, but I felt I could not let this moment go by without telling everyone about this amazing author.

I came across my first novel by Diana Wynne Jones on the bargain table at a bookstore near my grandmother’s house. That day I purchased Jones’ Charmed Life, Still life with Wings, by Susan Kohn Green and Ashar of Quarious by Clare Cooper. I read them all voraciously, and have re-read them since. The one I re-read the most times was Charmed Life. Then a few years later I was browsing the little shelf of paperbacks that the 10th grade English teacher kept in his classroom. I picked up a Tale of Time City without realizing it was by the same author as Charmed Life. I devoured the book, I loved the characters, the story, the intense sense of danger mixed with amazing amounts of fun. I read it again. I read it again and kind of forgot to return it. I’m sorry Mr. Brandt.

A few years later I was working at a bookstore and playing around in the Books-In-Print database and decided to type in Tale of Time City to see what else I could find. This was in a time before wide internet availability, before Amazon, before Google. I was amazed to learn that the person who wrote Time City had also written Charmed Life, and many other books too! In fact, the store I was working in had copies of all of the books in the Dalemark Quartet. I think I hid them on the shelves until I could purchase them all. These books were a little different, a little more melancholy with a sense of the historic about them, but as a high school senior that suited me fine.

Over the next bunch of years I collected as many Diana Wynne Jones books as I could find. When Amazon.co.uk came along I even splurged on shipping and got some of the ones I could not find in the US. Many years later while living on Cape Cod and working at a different bookstore I found Deep Secret. It is to this day my favorite book. When my brother came to visit me, I asked if I could read aloud to him. I knew it was a strange request, he was a teenager, and we only had a few days before he went home, but he agreed and I started in on Deep Secret. Once we started, we did almost nothing else for days. He’d read sometimes, but most of the time he let me read, and I so enjoyed every minute. We actually did not finish the book until we were in the parking lot where were met up with Mom so she could pick him up and bring him home, but it was so worth it. I hear he has since read it aloud to a few female friends, lucky girls.

Not too long after, the Miyazaki movie version of Howl’s Moving Castle came out. There was only one theater on Cape Cod that played it, I think there were only three people in the theater the night I saw it. The main parts of the plot were there, but the characters were Miyazaki characters. They were not flawed yet lovable, they were not funny. The magic was so predictable, and not breathtakingly original like the book. But I guess for a book adaptation it was not bad, it meant that the bookstore I was working at stocked more of her books, and I was able to pick up a few more of the tough to find titles.

When I met Stephen, one of the first gifts I gave him was a copy of Dogsbody. At the time he might not have realized that I was sharing with him a deep love in my life, but since then he’s figured it out. On the nights that we are laying in bed reading and I start hooting uncontrollably, or if he has to rush into the living room where I’ve been quietly reading for hours because he’s worried I’m hyperventilating, he inevitably discovers me reading a Diana Wynne Jones book. LOL has become a horrible cliché, but her books truly do make me gasp and roll about, even on the 2nd reading. Even on the 10th. I LOVE her sense of humor, it jumps right off the page at me.

I took Conrad’s Fate and Merlin Conspiracy with me to Ireland on vacation. When Stephen bought us both kindles, I got most of the Chrestomanci series in electronic format so I could always carry them around with me. During my first Christmas with nieces and nephews, I got the oldest girl copies of the first 4 Chrestomanci books, and let her know there were plenty more if she wanted them. In times of great stress I will almost inevitably curl up with a Diana Wynne Jones book, one that I have read 6 or 7 times, and am planning to read at least 100 more.

I know I will always have her books, that they will still comfort me and delight me, but it still makes me so very sad to think that she is gone from this world.

Neil Gaiman's Tribute
Emma Bull's Tribute
The School Library Journal

I also recommend typing "remembering Diana Wynne Jones" into Google. She may not have been incredibly well known, but by those who know her works she is extremely loved.

The History of Living History

2011-03-04T07:00:00.000-05:00

I’m not sure how much crossover there is between the readers of this blog and listeners to the Living History Podcast. Well, if you’re a listener you already know about this obsession, if you’re not. I’ve got a new/old obsession.

I love history and knowing how things came about. Just after college I took a couple of graduate level courses in history, and discovered historiography (i.e. the history of the study of history) and though I did horribly in the classes, I totally latched on to the concept. When studying Medieval Europe it is essential to look at the history of thought about the Middle Ages. Those pesky Victorians did a lot to bring the Medieval back into fashion, but they did a lot of damage as far as mythmaking and historical theories as well. When I start in on a research project I enjoy not just learning facts from a certain era, but learning about how the ways we think about that era has changed over time. Which brings me to (one of) my current research topics: The history of Living History.

I want to know when people started dressing up in old clothes at organized events in order to portray times past. I want to know how the hobby that I engage in today got to be as popular as it is. I want to fit reenacting into a historical context all of its own. I am at the very early stages of my research, mostly just gathering resources right now. That is one of the reasons for the LH Bibliography page I’ve got here.

I’m also interested in proto-reenacting. Examples of people dressing up and performing history before reenacting got its start. There are tons of pageants with historical themes, and I am intrigued by pageants. But that seems like a whole other topic…

Update to the LH Bibliography

2011-03-02T15:26:00.000-05:00

I love to read. I read all the time. But it seems like there is always more to read and never enough time in which to read! I've added several more books to my LH Bibliography (top of the menu at right) and a movie! I'll jot down the new stuff here

At Reenactorfest a few weekends ago I picked up:

Living History, Brassey's Master Class by Philipp J.C. Elliot-Wright, 2000
which appears to be a book to help new reenactors pick a timeperiod, and portray it accurately. It is out of England and reminded me so much of:

Living The Past by Val Horsler, 2003
which is also out of England. I bought it for Stephen many years ago, and love pulling it back off the shelf but for some reason I had not put it on the list of books about Living History. It is definitely about Living History, even if it is more a tourist book than an academic one.

I also found this DVD at reenactorfest:

On His Majesty's Service, produced & directed by Maurice Depas, 2010
Stephen and I have watched it, but I think I want to watch it a second time before I review it.

Just recently a LHP listener and friend alerted me to a new article in Colonial Williamsburg's Magazine: Reflections on Reenacting: Seeking an Authentic Past in a Specious Present by D.A. Saguto, CW Journal, Winter 2011
Notes: Chock full of historical information and present information (like the number of current Civil War reenactors? I MUST find out where the author got that statistic.) Worth the read, I wish it was twice as long.

Included in the further reading section was a book I had not heard of:
War Games: Inside the World of Twentieth-Century War Reenactors by Jenny Thompson, 2004

And all this updating reminded me that my parents got me an LH book off my Amazon Wishlist:

Telling History: a manual for performers and presenters of first-person narratives by Joyce M. Thierer, 2009

I think those are all the updates for now. I'm sure I'll come up with more soon!

Swing Dress Sew-Along

2011-02-26T17:52:00.000-05:00

Is there something out there that people assume you like, but you don’t and just because you like something similar you have to explain over and over that you don’t like that second thing? Until very recently I felt this way when I would talk about reenacting and history, and people would go from there to vintage. I’m not into vintage. It is not that old. I am not glam, I don’t wear modern lipstick or nylons. I have often despaired when folks that I admired in the Living History world jumped on the vintage bus. That is, until this winter.

Stephen and I have, in the past, admired the waltzing and swing dancing couples at Reenactorfest. I love dancing in any form, so when Stephen suggested we find ourselves a studio that might teach some of the more historical dances I jumped at the chance, and in December we found ourselves at a ballroom studio taking classes in Waltz and Swing. The waltz, and a few sampler classes we’ve taken have been really interesting, but the swing class has been plain fun. We’ve been taking the classes for 2 and a half months and I almost feel like I could hold my own for the length of a dance.

Then, about a month ago one of my 18th century blogs that I follow mentioned that she was thinking of participating in a swing dress sew-along. I had never heard of a sew-along! I had to find out what it was, and what exactly this swing dress was. The link took me over to Casey’s Elegant Musings which is a lovely blog. Casey is lovely and sews beautiful outfits. She writes well, and was just starting to host a sew-along. This is where a blog author picks a pattern, and followers all over the blogosphere follow along and make the dress too. Casey had lovely pictures of a couple versions of the dress that she had already made: really classic looking, but fun at the same time. The idea of a sew-along tickled me, and I thought it would be tons of fun to have a dress for swing dance class; but I was in the middle of an intense sewing project that I was determined to finish, then I had the next few projects all lined up after that. I did not need a new sewing project.

Over the next few weeks I kept going back to Elegant Musings. I told myself that I did not have time, that I really didn’t even like vintage, that I had so many other projects and they were all more important. But I kept going back. The pattern was one designed and sold by Sense & Sensibility Patterns and they had a $10 e-pattern version that you could download and print yourself. I ordered it, but I told myself that I was just ordering the pattern for some later time, possibly years down the road. I would not take part in the sew-along, and I most certainly would not try to make a dress before this February’s Reenactorfest!

Winter is a hard time of year for me. This winter we have gotten tons of snow, and every time I contemplated winter projects, and preparing for spring, the swing dress would pop into my head. I added Elegant Musings to my RSS feed, and even tried out one of Casey’s hairstyle tutorials (I got it right on the first try.) When the post about fabric choices came up I saw that lightweight wool was an acceptable fabric, and right then I knew I had lost the inner battle. If I could find a good fabric I would make the dress. This proved harder than I had anticipated. All my local fabric stores had a small selection of light-weight wool, but the colors were not what I was looking for. I was looking for a combination of weight and drape that did not seem to be in the stores. I finally drove down to Boston, and after despairing about all the drab and horrible suit-weight wools (half of which were polyester and not wool at all) I pulled a poly-cotton bolt out of the bottom of a pile and found a lovely wine colored fabric with pretty pink flowers. I bought enough for the swing dress plus a little extra, just in case.

As you know from my previous post, I was making up my 18th century stays for a mid-January ball, and once I had gotten them at least far enough along that I had worn them once successfully I started thinking more seriously about the swing dress. Have I mentioned how snowy this winter has been? We have had a number of days where it has been too snowy for my to drive in to work. On the snow days I would treat myself by giving over lunch breaks and commute times to the swing dress. I also stole some evening hours on weekdays. The sewing room is in the back of our house, and fairly cold since we keep it closed up in winter, but I braved the chill since I was now obsessed.

e-pattern printouts

Miss Mini "helps" me lay out the pattern. By sitting on top of the printouts.

First I needed to print out the e-pattern. This was not as easy as it seemed since the sizes only come out right if the scale is perfect. The e-pattern comes with a test page that you print first. It has a ruler on it, and you match that up with a real ruler to determine your scale. I had to bump up the pattern to print at 102% in order to get the ruler to print right. Then once I printed all the pieces I laid them out on the floor, and taped them all together. It was a rather messy process, but since I always trace out patterns on to tracing paper, I was not as careful about trimming margins as I might have been. Once I had the paper pattern pieces taped together I cleaned off the cutting table in the sewing room and started tracing.

Everyone comes to sewing differently. Some people are taught by their mothers and sew all throughout their childhood. Some people come into it as teenagers, or possibly even adults. I got into sewing in college when I wanted more historical outfits and could not figure out where to buy them. This means that although I can use a pattern, I’m much more comfortable sewing something from the 16th century than the 20th. Zippers? What the heck is a zipper? There were a lot of things about this pattern that were completely new to me. One of which was the suggestion to sew the dress together first in a cheap fabric to get the fit right before even attempting to sew it for real. The whole dress. I’m used to making up the lining of a dress first to adjust for fit, but a complete muslin! The sew-along was going to do one, and there was no sense making the dress badly. So I dug out some green cotton broadcloth purchased a long time ago and cut out my “muslin” pieces.

The sew-along was really incredibly helpful. There was a tutorial for making bust adjustments, how to sew the shoulder yokes, even how to add pockets! One of the things I had to get over was the fact that the dress was designed to be sewn on the machine. My backwards way of learning to sew involved mostly making outfits that went out of style long before the sewing machine was even dreamed of. But here was a style of dress designed for the sewing machine. What a strange concept. This dress actually has visible stitching, on the outside of the dress! My green muslin looked pretty ridiculous, the top was too tall, the hips too wide, and the skirt not nearly full enough for actually dancing in. But that is what a muslin is for, right? I struggled though the muslin process stealing precious minutes from my stays project, and anything else that I could steal a few minutes from until I was satisfied enough to cut out the fabric, and think about actually putting the dress together. I was1 week away from Reenactorfest, with an entire Sunday free and only two rows of eyelets to go before the stays were finished.

On the Sunday morning before Reenactorfest I managed to wheedle Stephen into fixing my serger so I could finish all the seams as I sewed them. Once he was done with that, I set to work on the swing dress. Before the day was out I had most of the dress pieces put together: the bodice, the front and back skirt pieces, even half the side seams! But I had also broken a needle on the serger, so it was out of commission again. I used the evening to finish the stays (yay!) and went to bed contemplating the schedule for the week ahead:
Monday – Dance classes (so much fun, but no time for sewing)
Tuesday – record a podcast (takes all evening, no time for sewing)
Wednesday – Finish off my colonial skirt (more urgently needed for reenactorfest than the swing dress.)
Thursday – pack for Reenactorfest, (will I have time to finish the dress?)
Friday morning – Fly to Chicago.

Yup. I was actually attempting to finish the dress ahead of the sew-along, to have it done for Reenactorfest. I told myself no, but do I ever listen to me?

I was rationalizing my hurry by telling myself that it would be good to wear the dress on Sunday. Since we check out of the hotel and fly home on Sunday, it makes changing from historical clothes into airport clothes a pain, but there was no reason I could not wear a simple dress through the airport, I could be at least somewhat historical, and face the TSA. I would not get to dance in my swing dress; the dancing happens Saturday night and Stephen and I had already agreed to wear our Colonial America outfits, but I would get to wear it.

On Tuesday we recorded a really fun podcast, we talked about our obsessions of the moment. It was easy to talk about the things we’d been spending so much time on and I got to talk about The Swing Dress (It had acquired capital letters somewhere along the way.) When I mentioned that I WAS NOT planning on finishing the thing before Reenactorfest, which was then only 2 days away, Stephen leaned into his microphone, looked at me with a twinkle in his eye and declared to our listening audience that he would not be surprised if I left the ball on Saturday night after the historical dancing was done, only to come down a bit later in my brand new Swing Dress. The pressure was on.

Wednesday I finished all my other Reenactorfest-related sewing obligations, and got everything else packed. All the other outfits, normal clothes, electronics, I was even ambitious enough to set out a pile of undergarments that would be needed to go under the swing dress, if I could finish it. Thursday evening Stephen fixed the serger for a second time and I set to work. Add the sleeves to the dress? Piece of cake. Hem the skirt and the cuffs? Smooth sailing. Add a Zipper? Well, this part was not as easy, but I managed to fudge my way through, and by 10 pm I had a completed Swing Dress! I packed it along with the under-things, my dance shoes, and a nice scarf and cardigan to complete the look. I fell into bed so we could fly to Chicago a few short hours later.

All weekend I watched the lovely ladies in their WWII suits, uniforms, caps and stockings. I knew my one dress in only semi-appropriate fabric could not compete, but still, I was looking forward to it anyway. Sunday morning we packed up early, I put on my lovely Swing Dress, then my hair refused to cooperate! So I shoved it in a quick French twist, and ran to the vendor’s room. There was a lady with lovely 19th century hats that had some vintage ones tucked in among the ribbons and frills. There was a little black one that I’d been eyeing since Friday. The vendor was so nice and told me the right way to wear it (cocked over my right eye), and how to use the hat pin to secure it (hold it by the tip, push it through the hat first, then run it around the inside of the hat, before pushing it back out). She was nice enough to say I looked like Hercule Piorot’s secretary, I assume she meant in the TV series or movies, since the books are not terribly flattering. I had not really thought about character to match my new outfit, but the idea of a French (or Belgian) secretary is certainly appealing! Once I’d completed my outfit with the hat Julie took some photos, then we did two more interviews (coming soon to a podcast near you) and one panel discussion before getting on a plane, and flying home!

Now I need more excuses to wear my lovely dress!

18th Century Stays

2011-02-21T13:07:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned in this post in January, I got it into my head recently that I needed a pair of 18th stays, which meant that I had to make them. I know some fine professional (costumers? tailors? sewists?) but I wanted the stays for early January and I only started asking around in late November. Not a good time to get on anyone’s custom project list. I was incredibly reluctant to take on a project as complex as stays, they’ve got to be really well fitted, and involve sewing little channels that all have to be the right width, and basically I was Nervous! But Stephen promised to help me, and Reconstructing History offered a before Christmas sale on their stays pattern and reed (for boning) kit, so I bought the kit and I was off!

One of the first suggestions in the RH pattern is to make a cardboard mock-up instead of a muslin one since it will give you the best approximation of the stiffness you will be going for. I used posterboard, and I’m afraid it wanted to rip rather a lot, but I felt I got close. I did not however, choose the right size, so Stephen kept taping me into the thing and telling me to cut off an inch here, a half inch there, I must have cut down and re-tried the thing 4 times before deciding I was ready to cut out the cloth. I used an adorable light pink linen that I had already in my stash for the outer and lining layers, I cut out a medium weight white linen (probably scrap left over from lining something else) as my two middle layers. I probably would have been happier with something a little stiffer, but I think I got the thickness right.

As soon as I had all the layers cut, I ran a basting stitch around all the pieces, and basted them together at the seams because I was feeling so worried about the fit. We fitted it again, took off a tiny bit more on the sides, then Stephen was kind enough to draw out all the boning channels for me. I sewed up all the channels on the sewing machine, in fact, I did as much as I could for the whole piece on the sewing machine. Since this is my first pair of stays, I was pretty sure they would be far from perfect, and as underwear they would not be seen by too many people. After I stitched the sides to the fronts and backs I tried them on again. They were still too big around. By almost 2 inches per side! I had tried them on before, but apparently, I had just not got them tight enough yet, and it was hard to tell until the pieces were boned.

I got incredibly discouraged then, and put them aside for a few days, but a couple week deadline was looming, I’m not the fastest at sewing (or anything else for that matter) so I knew I had to keep at it if I wanted them done by the colonial dance. So I pulled out the side seams, cut off 2” and before sewing them back together, put the eyelets in at the back. Most Colonial American stays only lace up the back, but I really dislike not being self sufficient. I hate not being able to dress myself. So my stays would lace up the back, and lace up the front. I started with the back eyelets since I knew they would be the less perfect eyelets, that I would get better with practice, and also that there was less room in the back so if I still needed to bring the stays in I might still loose a bit off the front, but none off the back. Once I had two rows of eyelets I stitched the sides back together, and finally! They fit!

The rest of that weekend and week was taken up sewing tape along the seams and outside edges. I only managed to sew the tape (I used off-white twill tape) to the outside with the machine, then turned the tape under and whipped the tape to the back by hand. All that hand-sewing meant that I ran out of time, but was still able to wear them to the 1775 Ball, I just sewed the front closed for the evening and pinned the shoulder straps there eventually they will tie, and since they were underneath everything, who could tell?

We had a great time dancing and hanging out with friends, and after wearing them for an evening I was fairly pleased, and happy to finish them up.

Now, I did not get the lining put in before the dance, because according to the RH pattern the historical thing to do was to put the lining in last so you could take it back out and wash it. I’m not sure I’d do it again this way, but I’ll see how I feel after wearing them for a couple weekends in the middle of July, then I’ll know better. I fitted the lining and serged the edges because I was not about to take out the lining and wash it if I did not think it could handle being washed. I hand stitched the lining while in front of the TV on quite a few snowy evenings.

In the meanwhile, I had started on a new sewing project (which will be my next few posts) but it meant that I took my time on the stays. I did manage to put in enough time that I got the lining in, and put in front eyelets and arm strap eyelets just before wearing them again this past weekend. I feel incredibly accomplished and very proud of my 18th century underwear! They are definitely not perfect, I have things I would do differently next time, but I am happy with the final product.

When is a history book too old?

2011-02-15T13:11:00.001-05:00

I was recently browsing in the library of the small college where I work, and I wandered into the section on German history. I was a little surprised that the section was so large, since the college does not strictly have a history major. Most of the shelves were taken up with books about World War II, which is to be expected, but there were a couple of books on the Holy Roman Empire, which is the reason why I had wandered into the section.

When looking at history books I always check the publication date. History information does get out of date. Every year historians are digging up new facts, and formulating new contexts in which to see the old figures. I like to imagine that we’re getting more picky about sources too, but I don’t want to swear to that one. The first book I pulled off the shelf had a publication date of 1983. Thirty years is pretty out of date, but I was willing to take a look at the book if the other couple were even older. The next one I opened was printed in 1967. The one after that was printed in 1928. 1928! I am shocked that that book is still on the shelf!

Now, that does not mean the book is worthless, I like to trace my sources back as far as they will go, often to books published in the early 20th century, but I’m obsessive. The book might have use in a historiography study, but I highly doubt anyone attending this college could even define historiography. The college where this book is shelved does not have a full history major. It is an undergraduate institution that offers 2 classes in Western Civilization, and one course on Contemporary Europe. I’m skeptical about the worth of the 1967 book, and I’m sure that the 1928 book has very little to offer the current students.

But I’m not a librarian, or a professor. I’m a lowly staff member with a love of history. I’m not going to make a fuss, the librarians are over worked and underappreciated. But I did want to say something here, and remind folks to check those publication dates before you trust anything you may read.

Dabbling in Academia

2011-02-10T14:24:00.000-05:00

What am I getting myself in for? Last night I drove from the college where I work, to another college almost an hour east, in order to volunteer away the next two months. I’m horrified and psyched at the same time.

There are a lot of Medieval Academic blogs out there. In fact, Medieval academic blogs have their own category on my RSS feed. I’ve never taken a college-level class in Medieval or Renaissance history, but my academic background always skirted around the edges of history, and I’ve taken graduate level courses in American Historiography, Material Culture, and Museum Studies. I pride myself that I am able to keep up with most academic texts, and I will admit to an unabashed love of college/university libraries. Last spring one of the blogs I read had a call for papers for a conference on Medieval and Renaissance topics that was to take place in April, right here in New Hampshire! I was so surprised! I have looked at all the colleges in NH and none of them offer graduate level MedRen courses. Colleges do not need graduate level courses to host a conference, but still I was not expecting to see something like this in a relatively short distance.

When I saw the call for papers I looked up the conference’s website, which was fairly limited, but included a large number of photos of college students in bad “medieval” garb. I have heard and sometimes seen the divide between academia and reenacting, the photos intrigued me, did stuffy academics barely tolerate the bad costumes? Were they wearing the bad costumes? I emailed the contact person on the call for papers about possibly interviewing her for the Living History Podcast, and said that I would be happy to volunteer my services at the conference itself. I have no idea what the professor must have thought of my email, I mentioned my employment at another college, and my reenacting experience, but I did not submit a resume. I know reenacting’s reputation, I did not want to seem like I was busting in to the middle of some place I did not belong. The professor emailed me back, but then did not respond to my second email for a few months. Then I wrote her, but when she wrote me back I did not respond for a few months. We were not very good at communicating.

Finally yesterday evening we did manage to connect. I drove to Plymouth State and we met for a half an hour. Our meeting was really good. The professor was super nice, and happy to hear about what I thought I could contribute. She told me about some of the great things they have planned for The Forum (that is what they all call the conference.) It turns out, what she really needs is an assistant, someone who has administrative skills and event management experience. I am an administrator with event management experience! And The Forum is totally in an area of my interest! But Plymouth State is almost an hour from where I work, and over an hour from where I live. I am not in a good position geographically.

After we met, we headed to a meeting of the Medieval Society club, the student club that is the source of the photos, and would help out at The Forum. The MedSoc (Medieval Society) meeting was also interesting. It was an organization run by students who had a lot of other priorities, and more enthusiasm than actual knowledge, but with guidance had potential. Oh how I wish there was one of those at the college where I work. I could be such a great resource! I have tons of extra clothing, a huge library of books, and have access to my biggest resource: Stephen, knows more and is a better teacher and leader than I am.

So here I am, with an opportunity to do what I love, albeit in a volunteer capacity. But it is such a long drive, and a lot of it would happen on weekday evenings. I need my sleep to be at all functional. At this point the conference is only two months away, and I’m not likely to get really involved until it is a month out, right? Right?

Please tell me I won’t regret giving away the next two months.

16th Century Backpacks

2011-01-28T16:30:00.000-05:00

I’ve been thinking a lot about period storage techniques. Last fall when we went to pack up camp, we had piles and piles of stuff that somehow Stephen managed to cram into our trailer and the back of the pickup truck. It was tight to say the least. We not only haul around our stuff, but we’ve got most of the guild owned items, a few tents belonging to other people, and a human sized, Medieval Dunk Tank belonging to the Sheriff Bracken Show. As I sat there on top of the piles of stuff in the back of the truck trying to attach the tie downs to keep it all in place I thought about how it was a good thing that all of our bedding was in garbage bags because it was easy to squish, but that it was definitely ugly.

In the weeks after our final 2010 pack-up we talked about the spring Connecticut Renaissance Faire show and the fact that we would probably be participating for only one weekend, the one that includes school day. One of the issues with doing only one weekend is: school-day weekend is in the middle of their run. We would not have a dress-rehearsal weekend during which we could set up. Worse, the school day is the Friday that starts the weekend, so if we wanted to set up ahead of time we’d have to take two days off the work week that week. Unless we set up while the faire was open. Well, we’re a traveling military unit, of course we’d show up in town and need to set up camp. We don’t have a wooden cart, and quite a few of our items are transported in big plastic tubs, but if we could get the tubs out of sight before the gate opened in the morning, then came in just after opening carrying as much as we possibly could, we can certainly set up all the tents, furniture, and cookfire in period-correct methods. In fact, it kind of sounds like fun!

This past weekend we had our guild winter meeting to discuss how things went last year, and what we want to do for next year. We did not get an entirely enthusiastic response to the plan of marching in and setting up camp in-period, but enough people thought it sounded good that it seems we’ll try it in May.

With that in mind, one of the tasks that I’ve set for myself for over the winter is building some more period-correct bags for all of our bedding. I really want to get rid of the garbage bags. Most of the Kampfrau woodcuts show women on the march with big cloth bundles on their backs, which would mean that we could still squish our bedding into the small spaces when they are in the back of the truck but they could sit around camp looking period, or even better, enter camp on the backs of one of our guild members. I’m going to try to make them out of a coated (waterproof) canvas; it might not be period, but I am willing to compromise in order to have dry bedding. I have been studying woodcuts since the fall specifically looking for the ways those backpack/bundles are put together. So far I have found a few examples that look like fairly contained bundles, that are all strapped together:

These images come from The Curious Frau website. There is an interesting woodcut on the Brown University website. You'll have to go there to see it though.

Anyone want to help me figure out how to make a bundle that would look like the woodcuts?

When is a cabbage not a cabbage?

2011-01-26T16:38:00.000-05:00

Not too long ago Deirdre Larkin of the Cloisters Museum (part of the Metropolitain Museum of Art) wrote an article on the cloisters blog, The Medieval Garden Enclosed, about Medieval colewort and kales which are part of the cabbage family. Since the Germans are well known cabbage lovers, and I spend a lot of my time reenacting Renaissance German I was delighted with the article, and intrigued with this part:

"Vegetables have changed far more since the Middle Ages than the medicinal plants or wildflowers grown here at The Cloisters, and it is more difficult for us to represent them accurately. The brassicas have changed the most. Our large, tight-heading cabbages do not much resemble the small loose-leaved medieval colewort."

But today I was reading Food in Medieval Times by Melitta Weiss Adamson. Adamson had this to say about cabbage:

“Of European ancestry, cabbages were originally headless, and were eaten by the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. Not until the first century B.C. do we hear of headed cabbages that may have been cultivated in northern Europe first. In the Middle Ages the headless kale, or colewort, was a staple food of the Scots, while headed cabbage was favored by the Dutch and Germans. Other varieties belonging to the cabbage family that were cultivated in medieval Europe, especially in Italy, were cauliflower and broccoli. Headed cabbage was usually boiled or made into sauerkraut, as it still is today. The fact that in Bavaria cabbage was eaten three to four times a day, as one sixteenth-century physician tells us, illustrates how important a foodstuff cabbage was for the common people. In the upper-class cookbooks, however, cabbage is rarely mentioned. Not only did it lack exclusivity, it was also thought to generate melancholy and cause nightmares. Its one redeeming feature was that it was considered an antidote to drunkenness. Cabbage juice with honey was recommended for people who had lost their voice, and cabbage leaves were used to dress wounds."

Now I’m confused. One is saying that in Medieval Europe the cabbage head as we know it had not yet been developed, the other is saying that certain cultures did have cabbage in head form. Although Food in Medieval Times was printed before the Cloisters article (2004) all of the sources listed on the article are much older (the newest is 1999.)

There is a good chance that the problem is in the huge timeframe covered by the term “Middle Ages” and in the large geography covered when one says “Europe” so they could both be right! Now I want to know: when and where is the earliest documented head of cabbage? When can we safely say that most of Europe had some form of cabbage that formed into a tight head? And which came first, cauliflower or broccoli?

Quilted Petticoat: Cheater Project

2011-01-10T15:46:00.000-05:00

Yup. I totally cheated. I feel very bad about it, but I came up with tons of reasons to justify the cheat, the most important of which may have been that I've been wanting to make myself a quilted petticoat since I first learned about them in 2002, and I have not yet been able to justify the time and effort to actually make by hand an entire quilted petticoat. But I love them! I even bought a beautiful gold silk about five years ago then two years ago cut it up in order to make one, but I chickened out after the fabcric sat around for another year so I made a plain skirt and several sleeve linings out of it instead. I figured if I finally plucked up the courage I could take the skirt apart, and quilt the fabric then put it back together. This is still a possibility.

At the beginning of December I began thinking Colonial again. There is a 12th night ball that a local militia group puts on that was so much fun last year (and was the reason why I made the gold silk into a skirt last year.) The plan is to attend again this year, and possibly do some other Revolutionary War events as well. I've got most of an outfit already. Actually, I've got most of two outfits, but what I needed to complete either one was a proper set of stays, and what I wanted most was a quilted petticoat.

I consider myself an intermediate sewer, but there are some things I have not yet attempted. I've never made anything that is boned. I'm more than a little intimidated, but in order to get a pair of well fitted stays I could either have them custom made at some expense and time, or I could attempt them myself (Stephen promised to help.)

With one big new project in front of me I really did not want to attempt two big projects, and the petticoat is not totally necessary since I have other petticoats. Also, there is an easy cheat. Not a perfect one, anyone who looks closely will be able to tell. Earlier this month I went to Homegoods and bought a quilt. A white cotton quilt, probably quilted somewhere in Asia using child labor. I cut it in half, took apart the side seams and stitched it into a tube. I put a waistband on it, and I've made myself a quick quilted petticoat.

I really like it, but I have not worn it out into the LH world yet.
I'm really hoping this is not going to be one of those projects that gets me all sorts of excited, then I wear it out once and am too embarrassed to wear out again. I guess we'll see what sort of reception it gets, and what sorts of events present themselves over the course of the coming year.

Next, on to the stays!

For examples of period Quilted Petticoats, I recommend Larsdatter's Links. You can also find Stays there!

Book Review: Dancing in the Streets

2011-01-04T12:50:00.000-05:00

I first read Barbara Ehrenreich’s book Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy a few winters ago. There was a certain something that drew me to the book, though the details slipped away. When trying to figure out why I love Living History so much, and what drew me to the renaissance faire, I’d often circle around the bookshelf, and pick up Dancing in the Streets, but could not determine what I might have read that specifically talked about living history. When I wrote up my initial bibliography of books published on the subject of Living history, I wanted to put this book on there, but could not come up with a good reason why. Serves me right for reading a book while answering the phones at a temp job I was holding at the time. This time I listened to it on unabridged audio book.

Ehrenreich wrote Dancing in the Streets after writing a book on “the dark side of human collective excitement as expressed in human sacrifice and war.” In Dancing Ehrenreich delves into the human capability for collective effervescence, and communal ecstasy. In doing so she covers a lot of history: from Ancient Greece, through Rome, early Christianity, the European Middle Ages, the Protestant Reformation and Industrial Revolution, 18th and 19th Century colonialism, the invention of the modern military, African diaspora cultures, Fascist Italy and Germany, modern spectator sports and more. More importantly for me, in talking about the history of collective joy, Ehrenreich talks about singing and dancing, about rituals, and about pageants. Folks who talk about the history of historical reenactment, about Renaissance Faires, about Living History, generally have to go back to pageants. Ehrenreich devotes several chapters in the middle of Dancing to the Medieval European carnival as a reminder of an earlier era when Europeans of all classes engaged in spiritual dances, and collective celebrations. Carnivals and pageants are fairly closely linked in Medieval Europe as forms of celebration. I have found so little written about the history of Reenactment, that a well written account of carnival pageantry is appreciated.

As a reenactor I’m often looking for convincing historical accounts of mindset and behavior in earlier periods, and Ehrenreich’s anthropological take on an ephemeral subject like expressions of collective joy really stuck with me. Ehrenreich is quick to point out the limitations of anthropology and of psychology, and ranges over a huge amount of historical ground, but does so in a manner that is easy to follow, and fun to both read and listen to.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of western thought, anyone interested in knowing how communities have come together in the past, in learning about the thoughts behind celebrations of so many different times and places. This is a cool history book.

Humanities are Important

2010-11-23T16:58:00.001-05:00

The academic blogs I read have been blowing up lately with the talk of budget cutbacks and how they are affecting the humanities at schools and universities in Britain and in the US. Here is a letter to the president of SUNY Albany who cut 5 whole programs of study, almost all in humanities. The letter is really quite clever, and addresses all the reasons for the cuts using examples from literature found commonly in classes in the departments that have been cut. Meaning: your reasons are faulty as you would have known, had you actually taken any of the classes in departments that you’re cutting.

I found that link on a blog that also has an article on the value of learning history that says the value of learning history is critical thinking skills, learning to question what you are told, and learning to look for the bias in all sources. At least, that is what I took out of the rather long entry. You’ve got to get past the first couple paragraphs to get to the good stuff (which is a lot like my blog posts, actually.)

I am not an academic, but I think that teaching is important, and I think that the humanities are very very important. Yes to help us make decisions, yes to think critically, but for me the important thing that the humanities do is give meaning to everything that we do. I look to history to answer the eternal why.
Why are food and meals important?
Why are families structured the way they are?
Why are there different forms of government all around the world?
Why do I get up and go to work every morning?

Some people find these answers in the study of biology and animal and human behavior, some people find them in religion or any number of other places. Some people do not ask these questions, and those I think are the saddest of all. When I ask those questions I see a long horizon of history stretching out in front of me where all the possible answers for all the possible whys can be found, if only I look hard enough.

Last night on the way home from work I was listening to Fresh Air, to Terry Gross interview Carlos Eire about his new memoir. Terry was talking to Eire about how he became a historian and about his studies of religious iconography. All my thinking about the importance of history, about education, about the humanities gelled when he said:

"You know, symbols encode, deep deep truths and allow us to perceive them in a non-rational way. And by non-rational, I don't mean irrational. I actually mean that these symbols speak to us at a level that is deeper, and affects us and shapes our personality much more than any logical discourse could. You know, the United States is a very symbolically impoverished culture. So most Americans have trouble understanding symbols and how symbols affect them. But people who are in advertising have it all figured out."

Especially the part about the US being a symbolically impoverished culture. To me it was the same as saying we are a historically impoverished culture, because the history that we claim as ours only goes back a couple hundred years. I’m sure Eire might explain it differently, but to me a symbol is anything that one can draw meaning from, and I look for meaning in everything! I find meaning by looking at history, and not just American history, not just European history.

Because I am asking why and am actively searching for meaning and because I think others out there might be too; that is why I spend so much of my time on Living History. Sure, there is the escapism, and the social circle, but I could get the escapism from novels, and the social circle from any number of other geeky pastimes. I’ve talked here on the blog about the fact that I do living history in order to educate myself and educate others, but I don’t think I’ve answered completely the question: why is education important? There are so many answers to that one, but the important one to me, the one that I think might need to be pointed out to those making important budgetary decisions, is that history helps bring meaning to our lives and helps us answer the whys we might encounter in our daily lives.

Where Are You From?

2010-11-12T06:00:00.002-05:00

I have spent a lot of the past two years reenacting a geographical area that does not conform to today’s geo-political rules. When someone asks me where I am from when I am in character the answer is: “the Barony of Reischach in Bavaria, that is a part of the Holy Roman Empire.” If I’m not in costume in character and someone asks me what I’ve been spending my time on lately I’ll tell them Renaissance Germany. Today, there is no Holy Roman Empire, and technically, there is no Germany during the time of the European Renaissance. This makes for all sorts of challenges, but presents a pretty good lesson too.
When in costume, in character, we’ve got to find unique ways of telling people we’re from the area that they think of as Germany. We talk about the German speaking lands, we mention Bavaria hoping that some adults will recognize it as a region in Germany, We talk about being north of the Italian city-states and south of the Low-Countries. Some make jokes when people ask if we are from Germany and say stuff like: “What a preposterous notion that all the German-speaking lands would be united. Next you will be saying that all the Italian speaking lands are under one government!”

It doesn’t always work the way we want it to. We set up at a school last spring. We had different stations focusing on different aspects of military and daily life in 1528, and as the students shuffled around we tried to give them things to see, things to do, opportunities to ask questions, and tons of knowledge. But in the bathroom after the event was over I heard a group of girls talking (they did not know I was in there) saying how they loved our Russian accents and wondered how hard the accent was to learn. They then did horrible fake Russian accents until I came out in my huge dress and hat with my Bavarian accent (it is different from a Swiss German, or Austrian, or northern German accent) and shocked them all into silence. I did not really feel like explaining while washing my hands, the context was just too weird and they were probably too embarrassed to hear me as they pushed each other out of the restroom.

The opportunity in presenting a past from a place that today has a very different identity is we are letting people know that our modern nation-states are inventions. Many would like us to believe that our current countries are almost inevitable. But by reenacting times when most of our modern countries did not exist, when the definition of a nation and one’s sense of place were far different, we can bring to life the concept of a paradigm shift. We can show that people thought differently about the places they lived in how we react, in what we say, in how we define ourselves. And that is a discussion worth having, an idea worth exploring.

Hitting the Wall

2010-11-09T16:55:00.000-05:00

Our house is draped in canvas right now. It rained on the Sunday of our last reenacting weekend of the season, so we had to pack up all the tents wet. In fact, we transported all of the tents back to our house, because Stephen and I had the only vehicle that could accommodate all the tents and poles, so even the ones that are owned by other people ended up at our house. Wet canvas is subject to mildew and mold which can completely ruin a tent, so as soon as it stopped raining (almost a week after we packed them up) Stephen took all the tents back out and laid them all over our yard. In the evening when I’d look up the hill they’d look positively ghostly, their indistinct forms were so amazingly white against the greys and blacks of twilight. Once the tents were on the lawn it rained at least a little every other day, and it is cold enough at night that there is frost. The things just were not drying. When we heard the weather report threaten snow on Sunday night Stephen and I dragged all the canvas inside: 1 large wedge tent, 1 dining fly, 2 pavillion roofs, 2 very long walls and 4 shorter walls. The ground cloths and rugs are still out on the lawn. We draped tents in the garage (one over the band saw and workbench, one over the motorcycles), one in the guest bedroom, one in the sewing room, one in the den, one in the upstairs office, one over the bannister, 3 in the downstairs bathroom. Stephen has already put out the word that next year the only tents coming home with us will either belong to us or to the guild, but not to any individuals; unless those individuals are willing to pay rent, prices not negotiable.

The canvas is such an apt image of the way I feel about reenacting right now. It is the end of the season and I am exhausted by all the reenacting, though we still have cleanup to do and podcasts to record, and blog entries to write, not to mention all the projects that I started during the season and never managed to finish!

In fact, we skipped our last event of the year. After 5 weekends of faire we were going to spend last weekend in the Pocconos with other people who reenact the same time that we do. But by the middle of last week two of the folks going on the trip had bailed out, and we were burnt out and not recovered from Faire. The thought of unpacking and re-packing just to un-pack again was heartbreaking, and the thought of camping in temperatures that were threatening below freezing had me really scared. We tendered our regrets, and I’ve felt relieved and guilty ever since. I still think it was the right decision, but it is really too bad we missed the chance to hang out and network with other folks who are interested in the same stuff we’re interested in!

A few weekends ago I did a bunch of interviews at a Colonial event for the Podcast and I asked one of the folks who agreed to talk to me if he was involved in other reenacting groups. He told me that he was, that he probably was involved in too many groups, that he participated in too many events, and had probably taken the hobby too far. It struck me that that is totally an end-of-the-season sort of answer. That I’m not the only one looking back and wishing I’d had a few more days at home, that I’m not the only one who is tired, and looking forward to a slow-down if not an absolute break.

During the last few weeks of faire, Stephen valiantly carried on the podcast without me. I was tired and the thought of talking for a half an hour or more about Living History on top of doing it every weekend (and our normal jobs and lives on top of that) was just too much for me. When faire ended even Stephen seemed reluctant to head up to the “studio” and talk about Living History. We both love it, but I think we’ve hit a wall.

Don’t worry, all you listeners, all you blog readers, this is only temporary. Already I’m planning all the projects to do over the slower months. We’ve got spring events marked in our calendars. We’re putting together some new workshops and discussions to have at Reenactorfest in February. Tonight I am glad that reenacting follows the earth cycles. It may seem like we’ve slowed down for a bit, but we’ve just got to do a little re-charging. We’ll do a little historical research, read some books, maybe sleep in. And we’ll get through the winter, then emerge in the spring ready to jump back in to history with both feet.

At some point we’ll probably even fold up all those tents.

Student of History

2010-09-15T13:50:00.001-04:00

Yesterday at a favorite blog of mine there was a post on How to be Professor Awesome, PhD. This appealed to me not from an advice perspective, but from the perspective of someone who is a member of the public who might attend lectures given by professors. I read it especially for descriptive words, to figure out what Professor Awesome, PhD would use to describe folks like me. For the most part he is describing the audience at a lecture that is open to the public, so “audience” or “audience member” work but I’m interested in the ways to describe us as those interested in history, but not of the establishment. Right at the beginning he is talking about “popular outreach” and “popular medievalists”. I don’t generally call myself a popular historian, because I do not have a degree in popular history (they do exist.) When addressing snobby professors, Professor Awesome, PhD described us as: “the plebs who are interested in your scholarship” I’m cool with being one of the common people of uncommon interest, but if I described myself that way to non-reenactors, I would need to do a lot of explaining and if I told that to reenactors they would think I reenact Roman times. Interesting food for thought, but much more useful for the blog entry’s intended purpose.

This morning on the radio there was an interview with Gen. David Petraeus. The host, Renee Montagne decribed Gen. Petraeus as a student of history, “and “quite a serious one.” ‘I ruminated on that descriptive phrase through quite a bit of my drive to work. When googling the phrase I’ve discovered that President Obama has used it to describe himself, and that bloggers use it with some frequency.

I’m not a historian, in that I am not paid to disseminate history and I do not have any advanced degrees. I am not an academic since I am neither a matriculated student nor a professor of any kind. I reenact history, but don’t necessarily call myself a reenactor, since I don’t recreate battles, and don’t do the Civil War or Revolutionary War. In the Podcast Stephen and I describe ourselves and our listeners as Living Historians, but we’ve never tried to define it, and I’m not sure that most people would know what I meant if I used it in the course of conversation. I certainly do like learning about history, so I feel it is fair to say that I am a student of history but does that really go far enough? Maybe for conversations with most people, it does.

Historical Cooking: The Steep Part of the Curve

2010-09-01T08:00:00.003-04:00

Detail of a camp kitchen from a 1551 painting by Matthias Gerung

Part 1 and Part 2 bring us up to this spring, now it is almost fall. The faire is less than a month away and I am in full panic mode about cooking at the faire. You’d think with a year under my belt I’d be less nervous, but I am totally not. I still don’t cook much at home, and last year I let myself get away with some things that I will not myself get away with in the long run. Now that I have a little more experience I really only want to cook historical recipes. Last year I used any old historical recipe from the couple of cookbooks I’ve got, now I want to be able to trace the lineage of all my recipes.

It started this summer with fritters. Last year Amanda cooked fritters. She does it with her 1830s cooking lessons, and she found medieval recipes too. She slaved over the fire cooking those fritters, and everyone loves them. Amanda will not be joining us in camp this fall and fritters seemed too ubiquitous to leave off our menu. They are seriously ubiquitous. The historic cooking blog I read did a whole series of posts on fritters, and most of the medieval cookbooks in my collection had recipes for fritters. I decided to photocopy and organize all the different recipes on fritters that I could find, so that I would not have to drag my recipe books to faire when making the recipes, and so I could decide exactly which recipe to use. While I was photocopying the fritter recipes, I decided to photocopy the recipes that I had used last year for similar reasons: I could take a photocopy to the grocery store when buying ingredients, and I could compare the similar recipes and see which one I liked best and which one was the most historically appropriate. Since I was photocopying all those I decided to photocopy other recipes I had already identified as ones I wanted to try this year, and once I was in this far I decided to photocopy recipes from my medieval cook books that looked like the ones I had made last year that I had found in non-historic circumstances. Over the past two weeks I have made a lot of photocopies (I’m sorry environment.)

I put all those recipes in sleeve protectors in a three ring binder, organized by recipe type. I also made sure to write on each recipe: what book I had gotten it from and where that book had gotten it (the original source.) I was really lucky that a lot of my cookbooks not only noted the source of the original recipes, but included the original text along with modern cooking methods. By looking up one of those original sources I found out that a lot of these medieval cook books have been transcribed (written out in modern English) and put on the web. Also at the same time I was madly immersed in cookbooks we went to Pennsic. I’ll write more about Pennsic later, but one of the more enjoyable things I did while there was attend a number of classes on cooking. While normally I am leery of using stuff posted on the web by random SCAdians, once I have met a person I feel much better about trusting their historical research. And a lot of the people I met do have web pages full of recipes. Needless to say I spent way too much time last week reading and printing out recipes.

While I was tracking down sources I was looking in particular for ways to justify the Alton Brown Lamb and Barley stew recipe that I’d made last year, so I was looking at a lot of mutton recipes and at meat cooking methods. I was looking for instances of directions for browning meat before cooking it and the use of carrots. I learned that browning usually only happened after everything had been boiled once, and that the further back you go the less carrots are a foodstuff, the more they are a medicine (at least according to the cookbooks.) I also figured out that the cookbooks I was predominantly looking at were written in the 14th century, whereas we portray the year 1528. Also, though I was finding cookbooks from Fance, Italy, Spain and England, it seemed like none of the German cookbooks (of which there are several) had modern recipe redactions in English. A few of them have been transcribed on the web, but I’m not feeling confident enough to do my own redactions.

Now I’ve gone through a few more cookbooks (Julie loaned me some) I’ve made a few more photocopies (my three-ring binder has grown from a half inch binder to a 1-inch binder) and I’ve figured out the new things I want to try this fall. Along with all the recipes that I’ve done before I would like to make:

Sweet & Sour White Fish
Stuffed Eggs
Cherry Soup
Poached Pears
Compost (a type of mixed pickles)
Ash Roasted carrots
Emperor’s Fritters (cheese)
Apple Fritters
Frumenty

Wish me luck!

Historical Cooking Learning curve

2010-08-30T15:04:00.000-04:00

I grew up steeped in history (check out this entry for more on that) especially “daily life” type history so popular at museums and among historians of the 1970s and 1980s. I was not yet out of college when I got my first museum job (entries about that here and here.) which involved talking about a lot of women’s daily tasks, of which food production and cooking played a major role. So when reading history books or thinking about history I have gravitated toward the study of food as a window into whatever time and place I was studying. However, that does not mean I did a lot of cooking.

I don’t cook a lot in my mundane life either. Usually by the time I think to cook I am too hungry to take the time to make something. I can cook, and I don’t mind doing it, but I lived alone for a number of years, then Stephen and I moved in together and he actually likes to cook, so I let him do most of that while my chore is cleaning up after his kitchen experiments.

So when Stephen started talking about doing a historical encampment and I volunteered to cook, I was embarking on a very new sort of endeavor. I had read a lot, I had attended a lot of museum workshops, I had even assisted at some of those workshops, but my experience level was negligible. I think I fooled everyone except Stephen into thinking I was old hat at all this. I had a couple of historical cooking books, a book on how to cook over a fire, and years of camping experience. Two other members of the guild volunteered to cook as well, and we practiced a few times at rehearsals before we actually had to prepare a meal for the entire group to eat.

The first thing that I attempted to cook was made of historical ingredients, but it was a modern recipe: Alton Brown’s Lamb and Barley Stew. I watched the Good Eats episode about barley several times, and I even made the dish at home on our modern stove before I attempted it over the cookfire at rehearsals. Stephen taught me how to cut up the leg of lamb and suggested an addition of fennel to give it that sweet and spicy flavor so common among medieval recipes. It was a huge hit with the guild. The next things that I cooked were from the book: The Magic of Fire. While the recipes were not necessarily historical, most of them were based on incredibly old styles of cooking. So I string roasted a chicken, ash roasted some onions, and made a couple of fritattas over the course of the run.

Das Geld Fahnlein preparing for the mid-day meal.

I did attempt some traditional medieval recipes as well. We had 9 days of faire during which we had to provide a meal, I did not want to repeat anything more than twice during that time. I used a recipe for buttered cabbage, and one for Apple Moye out of the book Sallets, Humbles and Shrewsbury Cakes and I made a Garlic Walnut sauce for fish out of The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy. These books were great for me because they had modern versions of the recipes as well as the original Medieval texts. The modern version included exact ingredient lists and measurements as well as cooking times. They were written with the idea the recipes would be cooked in a modern kitchen with things like food processors and ovens, so I had to pick recipes that did not call for those things, or alternate the recipes to use renaissance tools and cooking fires. Some recipes were more successful than others, but none of them were complete disasters. And as far as I know no one starved.

In the spring I had another brief chance to cook, we were going to attend Marching Trough Time in Maryland in April and we needed to do some cooking, but since we were only taking two vehicles, we did not want to bring the entire kitchen set-up. I made and froze a number of things to bring with us, so all we would have to do was heat them up over the fire, and not actually do a lot of chopping, butchering and prep-work. I made the lamb stew again, then I made an herb soup out of The Medieval Kitchen book. I also really wanted to make a Pea Pottage. As one of the quintessentially “old timey” foods, pea porridge is one of those foods that just about everyone calls to mind when they picture an old-timey family huddled around a smoky fireplace. I know it is a horrible cliché, and that not everyone ate peas porridge all the time. But it was eaten with a fair degree of frequency, and could easily be cooked up ahead of time and frozen. I looked up the recipe in a couple of my medieval cook books, but there were a lot of conflicting directions. There were too many choices on how it could be cooked, seasoned, and thickened. I got a package of split peas at the grocery store (because whole dried peas are not that easy to find) and thought about just following the recipe on the back of the bag, but I wanted to do better than that. Finally, the day I was going cook up the peas I was checking some of my favorite blogs, and a blog that usually concentrates on 17th and 18th century cooking had for her most recent post a renaissance era recipe, a recipe for Pease Pottage! The author of the blog got the recipe from a book on King Henry the VIII’s kitchen at Hampton court that she was reading. She wrote out the renaissance version with the old text, then wrote it out in modern English. There were no ingredient amounts or cooking times, but I had the back of the bag to tell me how much water to use and how long it took to cook the peas until tender. The transcription of the original was just what I needed, and it is exactly what I made when I went home. I did cheat a little, since I was preparing it at home, and used an immersion blender to smooth out some of the soup. I will not have that option when I make the whole thing in camp this fall, I’ll have to come up with a renaissance smoothing method, I’ve already got some ideas.

This is Part 2 of a series of entries on Historical Cooking. Read Part 1 here. Part 3 coming soon!

My Interest in Historical Encampments

2010-08-25T14:38:00.001-04:00

Or, why I started Cooking
Being an Incredibly Biased Rendition of the Birth of the Guild of Saint Morritz

I originally wrote this as background to a post about cooking, but that turned into a multi-part post about cooking, and this intro turned into its own entry.

When Stephen decided he wanted to start a historical encampment, I told him I wanted to cook at it. Actually, that is not how all this started. The first summer I met Stephen we were both working Renaissance Faires. In fact, the first time we got to spend any time together was when he invited me to help out with a tiny little faire where his armored combat troupe had been invited to participate. I borrowed a friend’s renfaire garb and went to help “squire” for the knights in armour. The knights were required to perform two shows for the day, which meant there was a lot of hanging out time when they were not bashing each other about with swords. They spent a lot of that time sitting in front of a historical tent, teasing me just to get me to blush.

After that single day at a small event I was determined to hang out with the Armored combat troupe a lot more often, and not because of the teasing. I wanted to squire for the guys, I wanted to sit in front of historical tents, I wanted to bring more history to events that did not have a lot of real history. I convinced Stephen that squires could be a nice addition to their armored combat demonstration, and it turned out there were plenty of women in bodices willing to “squire” even there were not a lot of 6 to 12 year old boys. I convinced them that the tent might be more than a convenient changing room, it could also represent the home of a traveling knight. Two years later I was able to suggest that an encampment be included in the storyline of the Connecticut Renaissance Faire (though with Vikings instead of knights) and the year after that the knights took the encampment over. We still just had the single tent, now a sad rag of its former self, but we had a canvas fly set up in front to keep the rain off, a table and some historical chairs, and a copper fire dish where we warmed apple cider. Pretty good for an endeavor that was really just a side project. Lest you think I was doing the entire thing on my own, I certainly was not. The other folks involved in the armored combat troupe thought an encampment was a pretty good idea and spent much more time on the faire days making the camp a lively and engaging place. By the end of the run that fall we were ambitious enough to try cooking a stew over our little fire, we all brought ingredients to the final Saturday, but before everyone arrived on site a dam broke upstream of the faire. It washed good portions of the faire away. We did not open that final weekend.

Things changed after that, the faire moved, our energies were directed elsewhere, some folks joined us, some folks left. Though we tried to make up a knight’s encampment over the next few years, it was never as successful at the one we did in 2005. But Stephen and I kept doing more historical endeavors, finding other ways to bring history to life, and when working with the cast of CTRF was no longer the focus for either of us, we got to think about starting a new history adventure. THAT was when Stephen said he wanted to start a historical encampment and I said I wanted to cook.

This is the intro to a series of posts about cooking. Part 2 is here, and part three is coming soon!

Yards!

2010-08-01T08:00:00.002-04:00

Many years ago I was lucky enough to work as a costumed interpreter at Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, NH. My first role was that of the Widow Wheelwright. At first I would sit in the dim kitchen sewing on a piece of cloth and thinking about how miserable Martha Wheelwright must have been, but as the summer grew warmer I was given permission to move my chair out to the yard where the light for my sewing was better, and where I could see more of what was going on in the busy museum around me. The Wheelwright yard was not much --a patch of grass, a few flowers around the door and some fruit trees taking up most of the space—but I loved it especially on sunny days. Not too long after I started I was given a wooden wash tub and told I could interpret laundry day. I could not have any fire, and I could only have water and soap out in the yard so I would not damage any of the period furniture inside, but it was something else to do, and very nice on a hot day to splash about and strew laundry all over the fruit trees. At one point a small pile of firewood showed up in the yard, I don’t remember who put it there or why (since I definitely was not allowed to burn it) but I had fun stacking it, and telling visitors how I had no income but a neighbor was nice enough to give me some wood for use in cooking and laundry etc.

I spent a year as a costumed interpreter then went back to school, but I returned the next summer to work in the gardens at SBM. I did not get to do much in the Wheelwright yard, it was a pretty sparse yard, but I got to work in a number of different yards and gardens all over the museum: the 17th century raised beds, the 1940s victory garden, the Victorian flowerbeds and glass house, the early 20th century immigrant yard (complete with vegetable patch and clothesline!) At the same time I was taking classes at schools and museums all over the Pioneer Valley about museum work and public history. In a small amount of time I managed to take three classes on Material Culture, I became good at studying people by studying the stuff they’d left behind. I looked at baroque chairs, early colonial houses, grave markers, tools for harvesting a cranberry bog, and more.

I finally managed to put it all together in a series of papers on the place of the yard in Colonial American life. I was (and still am) convinced that before the age of central heating/AC and electric lighting, people spent much more time doing the sorts of chores we now consider to be indoor chores in an outdoor location. Why in the world would someone sit inside to sew when it was so much brighter outside? Why would one do the messy jobs like laundry and butchery indoors when the cleanup is so much easier outside? I looked at archaeological evidence of paved yards, outbuildings and trash heaps, I studied art history for drawings and paintings of yards in active use, I looked at laws governing fences in 18th Century New England, and much more. I think of all the academic papers I’ve written I am still most proud of those works on the material culture of the Yard.

Just a few mornings ago, when looking at the artwork of the day that is delivered to me electronically by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I was struck by this 17th century drawing:

At first I was thrilled because it was only a century off from the lives we are portraying over at Das Geld Fahnlein but upon looking at the drawing, it actually was not much use for us. The details are indistinct, and we’re not portraying peasants doing harvesting sorts of tasks. But I took the time to go look for other drawing from the same series and took a good look at the October drawing:

and looking at that one I realized what had struck me about the first image. They are both yard scenes! Scenes of people working at their daily tasks in an out of doors (but not far from buildings) setting. Looking at the yard scenes made me feel all warm and happy.

A historical movie can have varying levels of historicity but to me if it contains a yard scene, it will have a space in my heart. Ever After has an early scene showing laundry being spread out on the hedges to dry, and the recent Pride and Prejudce movie has some delightful scenes set in the yard, including a montage showing the passage of the seasons reflected in the different sorts of farm work going on in the yard. Pure magic in my opinion!

Some people like to re-create the great battles of the past, some folks focus on clothing, or skills, or on the buildings of the past. If I could re-create anything from the past with no restrictions, I think I would have to make myself a yard. A simple, working yard, paved with cobblestones or hard packed dirt. With chickens and a plot for vegetables and herbs. A nice sturdy fence and some fruit trees. Buildings for the animals, harvest storage, maybe a workshop. And plenty of space to bring out chairs and baskets of sewing so I could sit in the sun and enjoy my yard.

Living History Bibliography

2010-07-29T11:40:00.001-04:00

As part of this blog I've put up a page which is a bibliography of all the books on Living History that I know of. To see it click on the Bibliography link on the left side of the page. I could only find 17 entries to put on my bibliography. That does not seem like very many to me, do my readers out there know of any others?

I am determined to read all the books I can find on living history and reenacting. As a reader, and someone interested in the culture of living History I really feel I've got to. Wish me luck, I'll be posting my reviews both here and as part of the Living History Podcast, then I'll be putting the links on my the bibliography page so you can tell how far I've gotten in my quest.

Book Review: Knights Next Door

2010-07-26T12:11:00.000-04:00

A few months ago I read a book similar to I Believe in Yesterday in premise but completely different in feeling. The Knights Next Door by Patrick O'Donnell is about O’Donnell’s experiences spending a year in as a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, or SCA. O’Donnell is a journalist writing from an outside perspective, but his girlfriend is in the SCA, and he has been to one or two events with her before he decides to jump in. He does join up expecting to write a book, but he seems to do so with a better understanding of what he is getting into, and a genuine interest in participating than anything shown in I Believe in Yesterday.

The prologue and every chapter of Knights Next Door starts with a quote from Shakespeare’s Henry V, which sets the historical mood, but also lets you know that the concentration is going to be on the more martial aspects of the Modern Middle Ages. The writer is from the mid-west and is able to join up with an SCA group called Darkyard, well known in the SCA for their fighting prowess, and gets help with his endeavors from a Cleveland group called “SFU” which stand for “Something For Us.” Over evenings and weekends they help O’Donnel with clothes, they lend him armor then help him make his own. He attends fight practices with his new friends, and learns all about the lives of the SCAdians he meets.
My favorite part of O’Donnell’s tale is that he gives voice to an amazing array of people that me meets. His chapter headings include The Contessa’s Tale, The Tale of Brannos’ Keep, The Teacher’s Tale and many more. Though we learn about the author’s first wobbly steps on the path to becoming an SCA fighter, he also gets his reader involved in the lives of those people who make the SCA a large part of their lives. We get to learn a little about a lot of different people, but we also meet a few individuals that O’Donnell follows for the year, and weaves throughout the book. We learn about their mundane jobs, about their love lives, about the trials and awards that are so important to some in the SCA. O’Donnell’s empathetic portrayal of some very real people made this into an enjoyable read as well as an informative one.

I also appreciated the frank discussions about the differences in what the SCA does and what we know of Medieval history. He discusses different levels of accuracy, and what different groups hope to get out of their involvement in the SCA. He discusses his transition from army surplus boots to some historical footwear, and how modern accoutrements will never be left completely behind. When discussing a visit to a spring time event in Mississippi called Gulf Wars he writes:
“It takes about 2 hours for the SCA’s time warp illusion to kick in… for the garb, the people and the events to gradually pull me along. But eventually, my eyes start skipping over the modern tents, dismissing them as irrelevant background, while I focus on the more medieval items… The shift of mindset is crucial for anyone pursuing this hobby. There will always be anachronisms. Members see the full half of the glass rather than the empty half. If that moment never happens, if you can’t suspend belief just a little, you go home and dismiss the Society for Creative Anachronism as a waste of time.” (p. 107)

And towards the end of the book he justifies the open but forgiving tone in which he discusses most anachronisms and, un-period attempts:
“I had scoffed at some of the makeshift equipment, at the passion many display for this game and at many of the “attempts” at clothing. But somewhere along the way, I had started looking beyond those shortcomings and started seeing things in a more forgiving light. It is easier to criticize something you don’t know and never try, I realized, than it is after you have struggled through the same, often difficult tasks.” (p.284)

He does not hide the less pleasant things he runs into: bitter internal politics, slighted members, a casual relationship with the history of the Middle Ages. But he manages to tell a sympathetic story all the same. I only have a few issues with his writing style: the clichés are a little thick, he repeats stock phrases a little too often for my comfort. The chapters are broken into small chunks so he has or do a lot of re-introducing and repeating when we get to the next section about something or someone he has not visited in a while. He hints at story outcomes I could have waited to find out about. Still the book was easy to read and the story kept me engaged.

While I have attended many SCA events, and have friends and colleagues involved on many different levels in the SCA I am not an SCA member, I have never been a part of an SCA group. From my position as a well-informed outsider I learned quite a bit from The Knights Next Door.

Book Review: I Believe in Yesterday

2010-07-21T17:07:00.000-04:00

I am always delighted and a bit scared when I find out there is a new book out there on Living History. I am delighted because there are not a lot of books out there on living history, and scared because not all of them are the most flattering to our quirky community. I am especially scared when a book is written by someone who is not even tangentially involved in the community, because I know we look like weirdos from the outside. I’m not sure someone on the outside can understand why so many of us are so passionate about history and about re-creating it. I am even more on alert when I find out the author of a new LH book is not an academic or anyone who studies people in order to find out about people. He is a journalist who writes quirky and often dark travel type books about his misadventures in foreign lands. Well, I always knew we were a tourist destination, how bad can it be?

I got the book: I Believe in Yesterday in audio format because it was the only format available in the US and because I have a very long commute so I like audio books. While the audio format has the subtitle: A 2000-Year Tour Through the Filth and Fury of Living History, the paperback has the subtitle: My Living Hell in Living History. And that really sums up this guy’s story.

Tim Moore is happy in his suburban life in an old house that he had extensively modernized, but one day he feels the pull of nostalgia, and wonders if he can make it as his ancestors had to live. I also wonder if he was desperate for another book idea since his previous books all seem designed to put him in awkward positions, what could be more awkward than going back in time when everyone knows it was rough and miserable? He visits 7 different centuries in seven chapters. Actually, instead of visiting the centuries, because as far as I know no one has yet to invent a time machine-- he visits, and participates in, reenactments of those different times and places. He goes in woefully unprepared and manages to make an ass out of himself in almost every situation. If you enjoy reading about someone else’s misery, then I recommend this book.

To be fair, I think he treats all the reenactors, living historians, and quirky characters that he meets very fairly. He does not make fun of them in writing, really only himself. He does manage to lie to them, a lot. He leaves folks with the impression that he knows what he is doing, then writes about how he tells the public all the disinformation he can make up, he ignores people’s warnings, does not do what they tell him to do (even if he has volunteered to do it in the first place) and generally makes himself and those around him more miserable in the process. The book would not be a bad book, if the author/narrator was not trying to be such a dumbass.

I enjoyed his descriptions of a wide variety of historical levels, of timeperiods, of types of reenactors, and environments. He managed to find seven very different experiences, each one had something unique to say about Living History and the folks who participate in living history. The first chapter was an Iron Age settlement that had been sold by the folks who built it to a guy who didn’t care, the second chapter he joined a group of Roman reenactors from France at an event in Denmark, the third chapter he spent a weekend with some crazy Vikings. The next few chapters he spent with more established living history enterprises, chapter 4 he spent at a Burgundian castle, and actually enjoyed himself playing with the cannon crew, chapter 5 he spent a week as a servant at a well established Tudor manor house. This chapter was the one that infuriated me the most. He got a job, got training, had someone make him a great set of clothes. And he totally blew it. He was surrounded by 300 other people, all reenacting the same thing that he was, and the best thing he did during the whole week was run and hide! He did the most damage to other people during this chapter, and I was so disgusted by the fact that he could have had a grand time and totally muffed it that I could not go back to the book for some time once this chapter was over. Chapters 6 and 7 were a little better in that by then he was a little less scared of bugs, he did not try to fight, he was never put in a position of any responsibility. For the last two chapters he tagged along at two reenactments in the USA, the first on a walk with a wagoner from the 1770s the second he shuffled around a Civil War reenactment in Louisiana as a war correspondent. He was lost for most of the chapter, but folks were so nice to him, and by the final chapter he had stopped complaining.

He had also, it seemed to me, stopped trying to find out what drew folks to re-live these rougher times, he had stopped trying to figure out if he could survive and just let other people do the surviving for him. The lessons were there if you are willing to look hard, but the end of the book still felt abrupt to me. I wish the dolt had learned more than the fact that it is possible to sleep under the stars with your head in an ant hill. I know I learn more and experience more every time I go out and do this, and I have not had nearly the opportunities for adventure that this guy had.

Thinking about Food

2010-07-13T17:13:00.000-04:00

At the end of a recent British cooking show that I found via the Historic Cookery blog a bunch of historians sit around a table and get to have a meal of recipes from a 14th century cookbook. Right at the end the only male at the table gets quite emotional (for a British academic on television) about experiencing the recipes he has before only studied as words on a page. The cook who had prepared the recipes comes back at him, “You enjoyed it!” and he admits to enjoying it and that it brought to life something he otherwise could only read about.

We’ve been working on food in the Living History Podcast. Last month we did an overview of why food is important and what adding cooking can add to an historical portrayal. Then we followed it up with an episode specifically on cookfires and what one needs to cook over an open flame. Some day we’ll have to do an episode on food storage and keeping in a time before refrigeration, or maybe the class conscious or religious uses of food.

This weekend is our first guild workshop for the upcoming fall season and we’re planning to talk cooking in preparation for the upcoming event schedule. This fall we’ll be cooking for the guild five weekends in a row, sometimes three days per weekend; sometimes one meal per day, sometimes two. I’m thinking about meal planning and our daily schedule, weekend attendance as well as what new receipts I want to try.

So, dear reader, have you any suggestions for me? Any historical dishes that tickled your fancy, or any books on food that made you want to waltz into the kitchen and never come back out?

On a related note. A great article recently came out of Colonial Williamsburg talking about why they recreate historical skills and not just historical objects. I think this totally applies to cooking and eating, so I’m including it here.

First Person Blogs

2010-06-18T08:22:00.004-04:00

Some blog entries are easy to write. Others, for no particular reason, I agonize over and the writing just comes out all stilted and weird. This is one of those posts. I am determined to put it up though! So here goes:

Among all my blog searches, rss feeds, and quest for all things Living History related on the internet I come across some beauties every once in a while. Today I want to tell you about blogs from the first person perspective. Yup, blogs written as if they were in a different time, far removed from our own. There are basically two different styles these blogs can take: actual historical text, just digitized in blog form; or reenactors and modern folks writing as if they were a historical character.

Historical texts

Every day I learn about more and more primary source material that is being digitized and made available on the web. Most of these are in archives or library collections, but some of them --particularly those that were written as diary entries in the first place-- are put up bit by bit, blog-style. A blog that I have been enjoying written by "Two Nerdy History Girls" had a post that contains a good list to be starting with here check the comments of this post too, tons more are mentioned.

Modern Interpretations

There are a few reenactors out there that are writing blogs from the perspective of the persona they are portraying. My favorite is this colonial impression and this later impression, of a doctor both done by the same individual. He wavers between totally history based posts, and some the wink at the current era, but I find he does a great job balancing both.

There are a few blogs that I’m not sure if the writers are reenactors, or what their relationship is to the history they are writing about this Mozart blog is a bit of a mystery to me, but still fascinating. A now solved mystery is about the author of Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog in fact, there was so much mystery and hype about that blog, that a bunch of medieval scholars have written a book about it! I have not yet read the book, but it is on my Amazon wish list!

Early Inspirations

2010-06-15T09:17:00.001-04:00

As a senior in high school and my first few years of college I did not do much with history. Distracted by grades and friends, I did some of the normal teenage things, but I still dabbled in the historical arts. I took classes in the history of science, which seemed the most engaging and interesting way to study history (high school and Freshman hist. classes are not, generally the most riveting classes.) I still did class projects that involved my own historical interpretations – dressing up as Marie Antoinette, and writing a Hesiod style epic poem on Pandora, with a feminist twist.

And, while working at a local bookstore I picked up a notecard with a painting on it. A painting called “The Shepherdess", that seemed to me to leap off the card and speak to me about a girl and about a place and time in history. I knew enough even then to realize that the painting the notecard depicted was a Victorian representation of a much older time, but I still loved the image. I wanted to step into the image. Even if the girl was only wearing a costume of an older time, well that was exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to wear that costume. I wanted to stare soulfully at an artist, walk the path with a herd of sheep. I always pictured it to be set in a dusty corner of France in mid-summer. I purchased the notecard, and pinned it up in several dorm rooms and apartments for years after.

The painting of which I speak is one of many Shepherdess paintings by William Adolphe Bouguereau, this one done in 1889. I still plan some day to make myself that outfit, and try to capture a historical moment akin to what Bouguereau captured, and what drew even my distractible teen-aged self into a world where the past and the present slide a little closer together.

Positive Interactions

2010-06-01T11:53:00.002-04:00

A bit ago an acquaintance of many years remarked on the fact that us renfaire performers (and even the merchants (we’re all performers at the renfaire)) are great at creating the illusion of intimacy. We are inviting and engaging, we walk up to complete strangers and ask them to participate in our lives, or our made-up lives. After years of training folks to do this, we’ve had people come back and say that they are better at their real jobs, better at working retail, better at communicating with clients, than they were before learning how to be a renfaire performer. Renfaire folks quickly get over their fears of approaching strangers or they do not last as performers.

We are also trained to go with the flow. There is a popular renfaire training game called: “Yes, and…” where you are forced to agree with the most outrageous statements, then expound on them. It means you can throw weird scenarios at us and we’ll probably toss them right back. I’ve got a friend who says wacky things to see what other people will do, so the other day he asked me what would happen if rain fell up from the ground instead of down, I said we’d all have to wear clown shoes to keep dry. He thinks it is one of my endearing habits, that I can keep up with him in a conversation, I think it is partially training.

A while ago on the radio there was a story about a troupe of improvisational actors who create their own reality and invite others to participate in New York City. The scenario that the radio show particularly concentrated on was a fake birthday party for an unsuspecting bystander. The entire troupe went to a bar, picked a mark, and threw him a birthday party, like they knew him. They picked a fake name, made up a backstory, and everyone gave him giftcards and paid attention to him all night. Their mark protested for a long time, but even after he stopped trying to tell them that he was not who they thought he was, he still felt awful and like reality had skewed on him. I have to imagine if you had put a renfaire performer in that spot, they’d have absolutely no problem being someone else for the night.

Does that make us skewed, just because we could easily fall into someone else’s fake reality? Does it give us an edge that we can engage with complete strangers? I am by no means suggesting that there are not people in the world who do this naturally. Really effective sales people, nomads and travelers, group organizers all have to have a level of empathy and consensus building. Is it worse somehow if some folks are trained to it instead of developing it on their own? I know I am grateful for the training.

The Stages of Historical Accuracy

2010-05-27T11:22:00.000-04:00

I’ve been having an online conversation about accurate items, that not only look right from afar, but are constructed using historical methods. Also this past weekend we learned that this fall’s Connecticut Renaissance Faire will be open into the evening: until 8 pm on certain evenings, so we’ll need to add historical lighting methods that will not burn the camp down. I had quite an involved conversation trying to convince a guild member that we could acquire period-looking implements in the next few months. Both conversations sparked a thought pattern about the “stages” of reenacting. Just like the stages of teenagers or the stages of grief when we are building our living history kit and props we tend to go through stages. Sometime we combine stages, or skip a few, but I think many of you will find these fairly familiar. In fact, even once we have established ourselves on the path to historical accuracy, sometimes adding just a little new bit (like, lighting, say) you might have to go through at least some of the steps all over again. And really, we’ll never be spot-on there will always be room for improvement.

1.   They did this so I will do this.
When first starting out we were probably all pretty sad in our attempts to mimic history. We often got only the basic gist right. We do things like, say: they wore corsets back then, so I will wear a corset. The first attempt we’ll probably end up in a corset from the wrong period, made out of the wrong materials, we’ll wear it on the outside instead of on the inside, but gosh darn it, they worse corsets so I am too. Or maybe you said: they hunted with bow and arrow, so you go to the sporting goods store and get a modern compound bow, a Native American style quiver, and a Robin Hood hat for accessory. This is a good and natural first step, and should be mocked only gently and with the passage of years.

2.   Others reenacting something similar to me did it this way.
OK, we’ve figured out the corset looks wrong, and someone hissed at us that that bow is too modern. We’re taking the next step down the path to historical accuracy. Luckily, many people have trod these paths before us, and some are willing to sell us all that we desire, or look good in their own portrayal and are willing to share what they know. Amazingly, there are quite a few conventions in the Living History world, that have little to do with historical accuracy. Viking chairs stick in my mind; one medieval reenactor thought it was a good way to make a chair, and had some info to back it up, now the darn things show up in all sorts of reenactments from a thousand years worth of European history. Eventually we all learn this lesson: even if another reenactor says it is right for your period, ask for documentation, or search for your own documentation, cause they may not be right!

3.   I saw something that looked similar in a woodcut.
Now we’re getting down to it. We are not content to read about it in books, or copy the other reenactors, we want to copy the people of the time, or at least look like they did. So let’s look at pictures! Photographs are all well and good after a certain date, but what if you are reenacting something before folks had the capability of photographing every little thing? Well there are still visual representations in the form of paintings, woodcuts, illustrations, sculpture. But just because all of Lucas Cranach’s women wear red dresses does not mean every woman in Saxony in the 16th century wore red. Still, we’re getting closer, especially if we use more than one visual source, say both a painting and a woodcut, from a relatively small timeframe and geographic area around which we our portrayal springs. Once you’ve got the look down, you’re moving along nicely, but we’re not there yet.

4.   They used these materials
That beautiful flowing dress, just like all the tapestries, and that funky shoe, just like all the woodcuts are still going to come off as not quite right if the dress is polyester and the shoe is vinyl. OK, that might be an extreme example, but we’ve all seen folks make something really pretty, but out of the completely wrong materials that make everyone feel slightly uncomfortable. This is especially true when one uses modern synthetics, but is still true even if one is just using the wrong type of wood in your woodworking projects, or a different type of clay in your ceramics. In our guild, we use a lot of redware pottery, because we’ve got a good supplier. We’ve got more evidence for whiteware pottery though, so over the next while I hope to replace a lot of the redware. Since pottery has the tendency to break with rough handling I’ll probably replace what I’ve got as it becomes necessary to do so.

5.   This was constructed using period methods, from an extant piece.
Since we’re talking about reenacting and re-creation, and not using actual historical pieces (see this post for my opinions on that) we are creating, or commissioning objects from the past. Once you’ve already gotten so your things are looking right, and feeling right, there is still another step down the road to historical accuracy, and that is making those objects using period constructions methods. It will not really be right, until it is made in the same method that it would have been made in the time and location you are portraying. We are not always able to do this, it cost more money, takes more time, and sometimes is simply unavailable, but everyone striving for accuracy will sigh and moon over this stage, even if not all of our items ever achieve it.

******
Different portrayals of mine have different levels of accuracy, heck, different items among my historical stuff are at differing levels, even if I use them for the same portrayal. There sometimes comes a point where I will tolerate different levels and not others, and certainly not all in the order that I have listed them here. But the stages are good for me to think about when I am thinking about picking up any new item to add to my stash.

The Most Popular Thing in Camp

2010-05-21T11:03:00.001-04:00

A few Mondays ago at the Connecticut Renaissance Faire’s spring show was School Day. The day when buses of kids descend on the grounds for mayhem and a little bit of learning if we can cram it past their stimulation soaked brains.

I have plenty of experience with school groups in historical settings, At Strawbery Banke I enjoyed field trips when I was a regular interpreter (tour guide) but had a few bad experiences as a costumed role player. At Plimoth Plantation I was only working in the gardens, not in costume, so I’d hide in the decorative borders and weed or water while observing the flustered teachers trying to line up their kids and follow all the rules in order to get them through the visitor center before the kids could even get to the 1627 village. Then I’d watch from the herb garden and the nature walk as the kids screamed past on their run to the village itself. For two years I ran CTRF’s school program. This time was my first in the encampment on school day. The experience was different from what I expected, and it was the same.

At the faire our encampment is set up on a back row that has only the games, a couple of stages, and us. It is a wide, grassy row with plenty of visibility and no shops, so you can tell that our set-up is different from a long way off. In fact, I’d say a lot of the kids never made it into our encampment. I know that the rowdy groups I heard about and encountered when I ventured out of camp either calmed down before they got to us, or didn’t bother stepping inside our camp. Since we’re set up in a very open semi-circle people come in and have a good view of all the things on offer. Ilsa and Wilhemina were tending the fire with Magda, who was also beading some paternosters. Sibalda was doing some copperwork at her worktable, Albert spent a lot of his time standing at the gate with a pike (and showing off the military prowess of the Landsknecht,) Gustav spent most of his time on the stage not too far off with his kid’s show called Master At Arms. I cycled around as needed and spent a lot of time sitting on a bench in front of the Houptman’s tent, which we had open a bit so people could see inside, and so Stephen’s dog Freke can see out, and get his share of the attention.

And that is one huge share.

Freke joined us on site last fall on dress rehearsal weekend, but we had planned during the faire itself to tie him up at the treeline in the wooded participant parking lot, behind all the trailers where he would not disturb anyone. We thought we were not supposed to have pets on site during open hours. But one of the owners likes dogs and saw him in camp during dress rehearsal, saw how well behaved he was, and decided to let him stay in camp for the run. One of our friends made him a metal studded collar (round studs, they just look pretty, they are not painful) and we tied him to one leg of the rope bed (much safer than tying him to a tent pole.) All through the fall he guarded the entrance to the Hauptmant’s tent, and proved a very popular addition to our camp.

He was the hit of this spring’s school day. Folks would come in and make a beeline for the cook fire, but when it turned out we were only boiling turnips, they’d spot the dog and run for him instead. Freke was great. He stood at the door of the tent, at the limit of his rope and wag his tail and stick his tongue out the side of his mouth. Some asked if they could pet him, I told those folks that he liked to lick, so they would get licked if they petted him. Most kids did not mind. They would kneel in front of him in big groups and pet his head, scratch his back, and get him to shake hands. He has a horrible habit where, if you stop petting and turn away he puts a paw up on you to remind you to pay attention to him. It is incredibly endearing the first couple of times, and most people who do not know him find it charming, while Stephen and I have to put up with it every evening whenever he wants attention.

One group of kids that came to visit the dog took a look inside the tent and said: “look, this is his house, and there is his bed.” Meaning the tent and double size rope bed was for the dog. I corrected them, that it was my husband’s tent, and our bed, that the dog slept under the bed at night. A few made silly remarks about folks having dogs in the Middle-Ages. The most memorable group came by with a worksheet I wrote up a bunch of years ago, called “You’re the Journalist” it is a series of questions they are supposed to ask a “person on the street” i.e. a participant at faire. A human participant. The entire group interviewed the dog.

Now, I was stationed near the dog at the door of our tent to both keep people out of the tent (because part of it still has modern stuff in it, blocked off so that it is not visible from the door; and because we’d rather our nice stuff not get stolen) and to make sure the dog behaved. He is still a dog, and a rescue dog at that. He loves people, but we are never completely confidant that he will not react badly, or that a stupid person might not be mean to him. So all these people with worksheets could have interviewed anyone in the camp. Heck, they could have interviewed me and petted the dog at the same time. But no, they wanted to interview the dog.

The first questions is: “Are you a noble or a peasant?” the kids asked each other, but I butted in figuring if this is going to be the way it is I’d cram some information in there whichever way I could. I answered that Freke’s master is a baron, so that makes Freke a noble dog. They then asked me: “How does Freke spend his days?” “What does he eat?” “What would he do if he met the king?” For the last one I said that we are very respectful of the king so Freke would sit, or possibly lay down just like we would bow or curtsey. The last question on the shees is: “Do you have any advice for me?” so the kids asked me if I thought Freke would have any advice for them. I said he would probably tell them to pet him some more and be nice to dogs. Well, it is some sort of lesson, right?

I have told a lot of people the story of the kids interviewing the dog, and I think I’ve figured out why the dog is so popular. He is entirely approachable. To kids it is tough to approach adult strangers, especially ones that are dressed up and talk funny. That is why kids in costume in Living History situations will sometimes be mobbed by fellow kids. Well dogs are also approachable, they are not adults. Heck, other than a leather collar Freke is not dressed up either. He just pants and sticks his tongue out, and licks hands and faces. In a world of strange experiences, sometimes something familiar and non-threatening is just what the kids need as a key to unlock everything else.

Photo at top of CTRF’s Robin Hood Faire School Day. Photo in middle of our youngest guild member with her favorite pal Freke taken by Jennifer DeBeniditto.

The Stuff of History

2010-05-18T14:23:00.001-04:00

At Marching Through Time we ran into a gentleman who is legendary among our crew. Back in 2007 Reenactorfest held an East Coast conference in Gettysburg. It was not terribly successful in terms of attendance, but we had a good time and met a bunch of new people that don’t attend the event out in Chicago. While we were there all the ladies were seduced by a charming chap in a gold wool coat and green wool jacket (from an Irish regiment, you know.) He offered us chocolate cigarettes out of an antique silver cigarette case and asked us to dance one by one and could he dance! We also found out that he was a singer and played the bagpipes. We’ve talked gushingly about him ever since.

The thing about indoor conferences, is that you don’t really get to see the elaborate set-ups that can accompany a reenactor’s presentation, so all we got to experience was the dashing uniform and charming manners. That is not the case at outdoor events that showcase entire encampments! We ran into Mick again at Marching Through Time (Julie told us he’d been there the year before) and this time we got to see Mick’s full encampment set-up. Mick and a mate of his had a lovely tent set-up portraying the life of an officer in the British campaigns in Africa in the 1880s. While being as charming as ever Mick was delighted to show off the amazing campaign furniture: mahogany beds, and clever folding tables, ostentatious candle holders and lovely sets for mixing drinks. The most amazing stuff that they showed us were the antique items that they had. An extraordinarily well preserved shaving kit, some incredibly effective ice chests, even some of their uniform pieces!

At first I was a bit jealous of the amazing things that are still available to a reenactor who is portraying a time less than 150 in the past, but then I thought about the wear and tear even the best preserved items must go through when they are packed in cars and carted around to outdoor weekend-long events. It is not just the wear and tear, this year at MTT the Vietnam camp went up in smoke. Their Vietnam era tent caught fire and was quickly reduced to ashes, many of the historical items inside were damaged too. There is a good eyewitness account of the blaze here. I heard that the leader was devastated at the loss, and I totally can not blame him. But the fact is, if you bring items to outdoor events, there is a good chance they are going to be damaged, if not irreparably.

I have had a rule for the past five years: any item that I bring with me to any sort of living history venue, I have to be ok if it does not come back home, or at least does not come back home in the same shape it left in. Pottery gets broken, clothing gets ripped, mold and mildew get into everything. Items walk off, they get damaged in transit, they get lost for months at a time. This is not to say that I would not bring nice things with me, but I just make sure I would not be broken-hearted if I never saw it again, and would not be sad it if became a little bruised and banged up in the Living History process. This is all coming from direct experience, and in our case applies only to recreated objects, but what of the folks bringing historical objects out to play?

I am museum trained. That does not mean that I think every item over 50 years old should be locked away in a climate controlled vault. In fact, I think that if the public does not have access to the stuff of history it will cease to have meaning, and we as a society will be much poorer for it. I guess if the objects exist in a quantity that makes them easy to find and affordable to replace, then it is a good thing that they are used as they were originally meant to be used. I'm not sure I could ever do it unless I was assured of the item's survival in the longer term. There are tons of items out there that deserve preserving, and sometimes that means not using the items, just caring for them in ways that will make them last for generations to come.

I’m not going to make a fuss, I’m not even going to bring it up at the next event where there is some old, gorgeous object being subjected to the weather and sticky fingered handling. But I did want to mention it here, and reaffirm that I will stick with reproductions.

The Engaged Visitor

2010-05-11T17:16:00.001-04:00

Not that long ago me and the gang went down to Marching Through Time, a timeline event hosted at Marietta House in Glenn Dale, MD. It was the first timeline event I’ve ever participated in, and it was fascinating. I have tons of commentary, that I will probably spread over the next month by topic. I hope other folks find it as interesting to read as I found it to contemplate and write.

The point of us going was to network, not just with reenactors in general, but with folks who reenact the same stuff that we do. It was really interesting to see how another group does it. --We’ll have to get out to California at some point, I’d love to see their take on the Landknecht as well. And a trip to Europe at some point is a must, of course-- When we got to the event it felt very much like an event put on by reenactors, for reenactors. It was only open to the public from 11am to 4pm, which is an incredibly short amount of time to fit in all the demonstrations and to see all the different encampments. There was a reenactors mock battle on Sunday morning for which the public was not invited.

But the purpose of the event, according to the literature, was as a fundraiser for the historic property. As a fundraising professional I have to question the event’s efficacy based on the low visitor turnout. As an educator I was amazed at the level of engagement of the visitors that we did encounter.

Almost every member of the public who walked through our gate into the Landsknecht encampment seemed genuinely interested in what we were doing. Most of them had a handout with questions they could ask at each encampment, and the shortest interactions usually involved those who only came to ask the specific question. But there were a number of other interactions where the folks stuck around for quite a while, they asked in-depth questions, and got some of the more nuanced bits of history that we, as Landsknecht, deal with. They instantly got that we were experiencing the protestant reformation as it was happening, and how that influenced our views on Christianity. I’ve had more than one interaction where folks understood we were speaking from a 16th century perspective, but could not get it that there wasn’t a specific ideology called Lutheranism in the time when Luther was still formulating his opinions. People also asked good questions about the peasant rebellions: how did the peasants figure out how to form armies and fight? This was an awesome jumping off point for us because the peasant bands were often trained by former Landsknecht, and it gave us a chance to explain how pike formations are not that tough to learn, and pike are pretty easy to construct. We also got to talk about the nuances of being a fighting unit that was formed for the purposes of a single barony, but fought for the overall ruler of the Holy Roman Emperor, but only if they were paid; and they might be paid better by an enemy of the HRE and what that would mean as far as money and loyalty. There were more, I could go on, but the point is that these visitors were way more engaged than your average event visitor.

What I want to know is: where did Marietta House find all these incredibly interested visitors? Where did they advertise this event, and how did local folks who love history find out about MTT? Are people in the greater DC more interested in history (specifically obscure European history) than people in other regions? Or was it that since there were such a small group of visitors that it weeded out the casual visitor with only a passing interest, so the interactions we got were all higher caliber, even if we only got a few interactions per day?

Next year I might have to get out of camp and ask some of the organizers and employees about the audience, how they find it and how it finds them.

Photo of a member of Das TeufelsAlpdrücken Fähnlein from Drifting Focus.

The Tribulations of Being a Trendsetter

2010-05-03T12:25:00.002-04:00

The reenacting guild that I’m in, we’re a new guild. We had our first meeting in May of last year, and our first event in September. That is not to say that I’m new to living history, far from it, but most of what I’ve been doing recently has been a mish-mash of different periods with varying levels of historical accuracy. I first started making my own historical clothing back in 1999, and made my first Landsknecht outfit in 2003. I started belt weaving in 2001 using 1970s craft books and loom from my mother. I started collecting cookware for historical cooking demonstrations (of an indeterminate time period) in 2005. In 2008 Stephen purchased historical tents that could pass for both the middle ages and the 18th century.

When setting up the guild last year we put a big emphasis on historical accuracy, in timeperiod and in place, but we only have so much time and money to put into building an entire encampment, so Stephen and I told each other and the guild that we would not achieve perfect (or even exemplary) historical accuracy the first year. For the first year we’d go for passable and getting the overall look down, while we spent the next few years making steady improvements. We do not have anyone officially in charge of historical accuracy, and we don’t have hard and fast rules. Since everyone was making new clothing we did set very specific clothing guidelines, both written and verbal, and asked that all clothing designs and materials be OKed by Stephen or me before anyone got too far into their outfit, but for furniture, cookware, accessories and much else, we all made do for our first event.

Other than “clothing OKer” I don’t have an official role in the guild structure. But I am Stephen’s partner, and I have been doing this history stuff for a very long time. I like to think that my vision has shaped the formation of the guild since a good number of the initial camp accessories were mine, and I came up with a cooking demonstration as one of our initial focus points. As someone in charge of clothing decisions I made my outfit up ahead of the first guild meeting (well the bits and pieces were done, I had not quite finished the whole thing) so new folks would have something to look at. And look at it they did! This spring one person went so far as to copy my dress practically in its entirety in her initial sketch, we convinced her to change it up a little in the design, I have not seen the finished product yet.

So now I find myself in a conundrum that I should have seen coming, but did not grasp fully until fairly recently. It is assumed by most folks that not only do I OK dress designs, but that what I do and what I have must be kosher within the group.

For the initial cooking demonstration I pulled out a bunch of my 19th century cast iron cooking pots, a grill I bought off a colonial suttler, my renfaire eating knife, and some modern wooden bowls and plates. While I yearned for copper cookware and pottery pipkins, I bought pottery from Old Sturbridge Village, which does Early American redware. Halfway through last fall it became apparent that some more cookware would be helpful, and before I knew it other guild members had bought more colonial and early American stuff to supplement what we already had. I knew the stuff they were buying was wrong for our time, but I’m not sure I had made it clear to the other guild members exactly how wrong it was! I felt horribly guilty that other people were spending their money (none of us are rich here) on items that they will not be able to use in the encampment in a couple of years. At this point we are acquiring better items, and I think there are no hard feelings about the items we’ve already got, but I know I will not feel safe until we have an actual written-out set of guidelines (or images) about accuracy in foodways presentations.

A few weeks ago a member of the guild asked me to weave her a belt like the belts that I wear. At first I was absolutely delighted, I have not woven a new belt in a while and am looking forward to it as a fun, yet productive, diversion. I also don’t mind making a little money (or barter credit) on historical stuff. But now that I’m sitting down to weave the darn thing I am questioning its historical accuracy. The woodcuts we have definitely show women wearing belts, but I have not done any research (or come across anything specific) to tell me what those belts are made of. I know the technology to make the sorts of belts that I do is in use, but as far as I know the narrow fabric bands that I produce are more likely to be used as reinforcement in a waistband or skirt bottom, or thin ones as lacing, or short ones as garters to hold up stockings, or as trim on hats. If someone asked me to prove that wearing colorful woven bands as belts was done, I could not do it.

I think I’ve got to go back to my prospective client and fellow guild member and let her know I have no historical documentation for my choice of belt, and offer to withdraw the commission if she is so inclined. But my trouble is this: should I continue to wear my own belt knowing that the women did wear belts, but of unknown (to me) material; or do I skip the belt altogether until I can figure out exactly what belt would have been worn? Especially given my role as unofficial trendsetter?

Photo from Drifting Focus

Making Judgements, Part 3: My Criterion

2010-04-27T12:41:00.001-04:00

Read Part 1 or Part 2.

My Own Criterion
In all of my living History presentations, I try to make a good presentation, whether that is an entire encampment, a personal presentation, or a small part of a larger whole. But what makes up a good presentation? I think a good presentation must include Accuracy, Empathy, and Education. And if you have high levels of all three, only then can you call your presentation an authentic representation of Living History.

Accuracy
I think accuracy is the biggest contention of the Living History world. To some people accuracy is everything, and to those folks if you do not have accuracy then you do not have anything. I think history is a puzzle composed of a thousand pieces, but for which we only have 1/3 of the pieces! I do think that striving for accuracy is important, but that sometimes certain details might be sacrificed for the whole picture.

At a museum where I was working in the gardens, there was a long term debate about the well in the back yard. There were records indicating a well, but the spot archaeological work had not found its location, so when the back yard was restored, a well was not included. In my opinion, a more accurate picture might have been achieved if a well had been included somewhere in the yard, even if it was not the original spot, as opposed to leaving it out altogether.

Empathy
For me it is important to get the feel of a time and not just the look. You might have the best looking outfit, but for reenactors often the best part is putting that outfit on, moving around in it, and recreating tasks that a person wearing that outfit might have done. I recently attended a Living History Presentation where the person presenting was wearing a horrible version of a nineteenth century outfit. It was so modern it was really jarring. But her presentation really captured something of the person she was presenting, so that by the end I had forgiven her for the outfit. She definitely had the feel in her word choice, her tone of voice, her physicality which made it a fair presentation. It would have been really good presentation if she had had a more accurate outfit, but was decent without it.

Education
If nothing is gained by your presentation then it looses its meaning for me. However, that does not mean the educational gains have to be huge. If I am learning something, then the presentation is a success, if I can teach something to other people, then the presentation is a success. If I have read something then I put that into practice or if I interact with someone else who teaches me something, then it is all good! But if I just get dressed up and wander around and no one’s knowledge is increased, then I’ve got to question the validity of that presentation.

Authenticity
In order to produce an authentic living history presentation, I think you must combine accuracy, education, and empathy. If you are accurate but there is no life behind your presentation then I am not convinced; if there are things that are obviously out of time and place I have trouble buying in; if neither you nor others gain anything from the presentation, again, I might question your motives. But a really great presentation can transport me, teach me, and make me feel, at least a little, like what it must have been like in a different time and place.

All that is what I believe makes a good presentation, but I don’t yet think I’ve answered the question about why I do it. I gain so many things beyond the search for the perfect Living History presentation. I make connections with other people who are kooky like me. I have friends all over the US because of reenacting and living history. I have fun doing it, dressing up and presenting life in times long past. And very occasionally I make money at it, though at this point that is a minor note in the overall experience.

Making Judgements, Part 2: How Museums Do It

2010-04-22T10:01:00.003-04:00

Read Part 1.

How do museums do it?
Obviously, most of us reenacting out here are not professionals, but professionals rate themselves all the time, in order to get grants, satisfy shareholders, attract consumers, make better products, so I was wondering if we can apply some learning from any sort of professional organizations to reenacting and living history. The first group that pops into mind is actually already included, at least in part, under the Living History umbrella and that is museums. I feel slightly qualified to talk about museums because I have worked at them and studied them in an academic setting. Heck, if I was still doing the school thing I could probably get a paper out of rating museums, but I’m not, so you blog readers are stuck with my ramblings. In fact, I’m going to throw in some terms that I’ve gleaned from my work in other not-for-profit fields that seem to apply to museums (thus, to Living History) as well.

Mission and Goals
Most business books for dummies start by making a big deal out of having some sort of statement of your goals. My Museums 101 course also started with a study of museum missions statements. It is good to write down or at least articulate your goals, what you are trying to do and, very briefly, why you are doing it. Since for most people LH is a hobby, very few of us do this individually, but it might be a good idea to ask ourselves, do we have goals we are trying to accomplish? LH Groups are more likely to have this sort of thing since having more people involved means you need to communicate more. How will a new recruit know whether or not they want to join unless you have something to tell them about the group?

Preservation and Education
Most museums have preservation and education as part of their mission statements. Children’s museums might only have education, and there are some history and art museums that might concentrate more on preservation, but most museums try to do both. It is my opinion that a Living History person or group should also try to do both, but in different ways than museums do it. Museums usually concentrate on preserving the artifacts of history, other than those concentrating on the last 100 years of history most reenactors can not afford actual artifacts, and are probably not as well set up as museums to care for those artifacts (I know there are exceptions to this rule, I’m speaking in huge broad generalizations here) but we do work to preserve the past by bringing it to life. For me, history has to be a part of why you are doing this, even if it is not the only part. I am also a big fan of education too. At least educating yourself and the other members of your group if you never plan on educating others, (but what a noble goal it is, to educate others!)

Benchmarking
But how do museums judge their effectiveness? Well, most other nonprofits (a lot of businesses too) judge themselves by quantifying what they do, then comparing it to years past or to others in the same field. That is a really simple way to define benchmarking. There are entire industries out there dedicated to benchmarking, I’m no going to be able to do it justice in a few sentences, but I think it is a good thing to keep in mind as a LH participant we can up our goals or accomplishments into little chunks that can be measured. We can measure off our own numbers from years past, and many of us do this subconsciously or in passing conversation. It is also good to remember there are other folks/groups out there doing our same period, or reaching our same audiences. They may not be exactly the same, they might be in a different geographical area, have different types of participants, even be concentrating on a different time-period; but I bet if we break down what we are doing we can compare some if not all of the things that we do.

Audience satisfaction
For a museum this is the big one. How many people are coming through your front doors, how many visitors come back, how are you impacting the community that you are a part of? Museums spend a ton of time and money trying to figure this stuff out, and I think LH folks should not ignore it either. This can apply to those groups focused outward, did the public at the event seem to be having fun? Do they come back every year? Are you seeing more of the public at your event? Are they learning something? I think this applies equally to the inward focused reenactor: Are you having fun? Are you learning something? Is the hobby enriching your life?

I know that a lot of this might seem like more work than a hobby should take, but don’t we already take up tons of our vacation time, weekends and evenings working on our kit, our clothing and our next event? Maybe while you are hand-sewing your next undergarment you can take some time and think about this stuff, I think you’ll be amazed by what you learn.

Read Part 3.

Making Judgements, Part 1: A Warning

2010-04-21T16:28:00.003-04:00

It is part of human nature that we look at the world around us and judge the other people we come into contact with. We categorize, we stereotype, we rate based on our own series of merits. Over at the Living History Podcast Stephen and I are trying really hard to be inclusive, using the broadest definitions and giving air time to as many different voices as we can. Doing that feels good. It makes me believe that there might be a chance to form a community, that there are tons of other people out there that share the same things that I do. But we’re not all the same, and that is ok too.

But what if we want to categorize? There must be some judging we can do? Well, I do tend to make judgments about the other LH groups and individuals that I come into contact with, though I try to not make quick decisions based on a single meeting, and I try to take into account what the group is trying to accomplish, and not just my own criterion. But there, I’ve admitted it, I do judge.

Now I’m sure all my readers are on the edges of their computer chairs (or couches or whatever) to find out what my own judging criterion is… well, it is twofold: based on my own criterion for myself and the stuff I’ve learned working in the non-profit world, and is accompanied by a warning about hypocrisy. I’m sorry, I’m going to make you wait for later entries to hear about my judging criterion, I thought they deserved their own entries. Besides, I think the warning about hypocrisy might be more important.

The novel Diamond Age by Neal Stevenson may be one of my “must read” books. It is a good story, told well, that tackles some big topics like self-governance, education, and the control of technology. One of my favorite passages is about how, in a permissive age where everyone is allowed to name their own morals, the biggest sin is hypocrisy. If you say you are the most moral, then people will hold you to it. If you say you have no morals, but then it turns out you do, hypocrisy raises its ugly head and other people get to judge you on it. (It was much better said in Diamond age, I just don’t happen to have a copy on me right now.) It all goes back to the fact that we love to judge other people, and will do so based on what they profess themselves if we have no other means by which to do so. But running around calling other people hypocrites mostly reflects badly on the one doing the yelling as much as it does upon the person being judged. I take that very much to heart.

Part 2: How Museums Do It, Part 3: My Criterion.

Landsknechts and Teenagers

2010-04-09T11:18:00.003-04:00

I am having an email conversation about a new landsknecht dress I’m going to make for a friend and I’ve been having a hard time describing the Landsknecht’s relationship to clothing. It has gotten me thinking about ways to describe all sorts of historical clothing distinctions that we lack today.

The clothes you wear every day say something about you to those sharing in the same culture. This is as true today as it is historically, but what has changed are the areas that our clothes demarcate, the distinctions one can gather by looking at a person’s clothes. Nowadays you can tell the difference between someone who is going to the office or going hiking based on their clothing, but the same person could go hiking on Sunday, then go to the office on Monday. Historically you are much more likely to tell someone’s class or their occupation based on their clothing and those distinctions are not going to change from day to day. So I’ve come up with different modern analogies to describe historical clothing distinctions.

When describing the differences between noble and peasant clothing in Medieval Europe I like to think about modern cars. Most cars have tons in common: 4 wheels, engine in the front, steering wheel, seats, windows etc. and most garments from a particular time and place in Medieval Europe are going to have some basic building blocks that are the same. But the difference between a brand-new luxury car and an old beater are pretty significant. Both upper-class clothes and luxury cars will be made out of different materials than your lower-class cousins. The luxury car comes with a lot of add-ons and the beater is more likely to be repaired and repaired until it just falls apart, the same holds true with medieval clothing. The analogy is not perfect, but it makes sense to me.

Now the Landsknecht are different. Landsknecht are the soldiers of the Holy Roman Empire from the early 16th Century. Most Landsknechte were the children of farmers or the second and third-born sons of merchants and artisans, but once they joined up they no longer dressed like their roots. There is not a set uniform, but they did have an incredibly distinct style of dressing that did not conform to the class structures that they came from. When thinking about describing the Landsknecht and their clothing it is important to think about the landsknecht in relationship to the other people in 16th Century Europe, they were feared and looked down on at the same time. They were not beholden to the same clothing rules as the rest of society, and they used this freedom to express something of the spirit of the landsknecht. What sort of modern analogy came to me? Teenagers!

Teenagers have a freedom of dress that children (their parents buy them clothes) and adults (we are expected to wear certain types of clothes) do not. Sumptuary laws, those laws that governed what a person could wear, did not apply to the landsknecht, so they wore what colors and styles they could get their hands on. Teenagers often do outlandish things: brightly colored hair, piercings, wild clothes, to differentiate themselves, and impress their peers. Landsnecht large brimmed hats full of ostrich feathers and puff and slashed clothing are often described as an intimidation tactic. If a Landsknecht does not die in battle but retires and returns to regular life, they are expected to give up their Landsknecht clothing, and go back to the more accepted, more conservative clothing styles. The same things happen to many teenagers when they get “real” jobs. I can totally picture the respectable townspeople when they saw the lines of pike approaching locking up their valuables and their daughters, the same as some modern parents would like to when a group of rowdy teens comes along. When I am at a stoplight and a car pulls up beside me that is blaring music, and racing the engine, and completely crammed with kids I just sigh and hope that our paths diverge soon, I can picture the respectable townsfolk of Europe doing the same thing.

Haute History

2010-03-21T09:16:00.002-04:00

I admit, I do not regularly check a lot of museum websites. I travel there every once in a while, especially if the museum has come up in a blog post or in conversation. So sometimes (actually quite frequently) I miss out on exciting things that museums are doing.

One thing I recently missed (I found out about it days after the project’s completion) was a really cool embroidery project at Plimoth Plantation. The Boston Globe has a good story here, the museum has a blog from the project, but of course now that the project is over it is a little tough to just browse and figure out what went on.

Just recently I came across this article published back in 2006 but I’d never seen it before. It is a photo article in Colonial Williamsburg's magazine of models in beautiful colonial clothing, but photographed in modern model-y poses. I love the way you can get up-close and personal with the photographs that are part of the slideshow, and the modern poses add another dimension entirely. It behooves us living historians not to forget that the time we portray and the time we are living are intertwined.

Going Back in Time

2010-03-01T21:28:00.002-05:00

One of the interesting bits I’ve discovered as a member of the Living History Worldwide community, is there seems to be a split between those folks who enjoy and attend closed reenactment events (those events where the public is not invited, and the whole thing is in time-period the whole time) and those who more enjoy public events where they teach the public as well as interact with fellow reenactors. Now this is not a very strict rule, I like a few closed events, and there are certainly folks who might do mostly closed events that will enjoy a big public gathering every once in a while. We are human and thus infinitely shaded in our opinions.

But based on my very wide stereotyping I have made some observations (very unscientific observations, I promise.) I have noticed that folks who seem to mostly do closed events are far more likely to express the opinion that they would like to back in time, that they would feel more comfortable living in a different era than the one we’re stuck in. CNN did a whole story based on folks who would rather live in a different time (thanks Julie.)

I am not one of those types. I like the era that I live in as much as I would any other. I think I’d find just as much to complain about if not more in any other era. I like modern sanitation and medicine, the internet, my car, and my ability to marry a person of the same sex if I so choose. I’m not saying we’re perfect, there is still plenty to complain about and to work towards! I’ve thought about it. I entertain the notion all the time, what would it be like to go back in time to live in the 1400s, the 1600s the 1900s; I do not have a great desire to find out.

Now, I love to know more about the past, I love to learn by putting on the clothes, and doing the tasks. While most people have heard the saying about being doomed to make the mistakes of the past if we do not learn from them, it is practically my religion to be mindful of the past. Being mindful of the past is what I strive for every day, and teaching history to others is part of that creed. Wile I can have fun at a closed event, a lot of that is based on the assumption that at least the participants are learning from the event even if the wider public is not.

Is this a fundamental dichotomy? Do all people who prefer closed events want to live in the past, and are all people who prefer public events content living in the present? I doubt it, just like I doubt that all Republicans would never hold a liberal view, and that all Democrats must be opposed to conservatism. But might this breach in the reenacting world mark us as separate camps, separate parties? I hope not, but I wonder.

Why can't we be friends

2010-02-11T12:00:00.000-05:00

The past few weeks my friends and I have been thinking hard about the living history community, or lack thereof. There are tons of people who bring history to life by recreating the dress, the skills, the environments, the personalities of the past. However, we are a pretty fragmented bunch, working in small groups, to incredibly various ends. This is not necessarily a bad thing, it means that most folks who want to get involved in a group re-creating history have a lot of different groups to choose from, all representing different time periods and geographies, different levels of historical accuracy, recreating different slices of life, groups have different governing structures, aims and goals, time commitment, you name it. There might just be an infinite number of different ways to style a living history group or organization, and the only reason why there are not an infinite number of living history groups is the limited number of people to join those groups!

As an insider this diversity can be a challenge, but for a non-participant it is almost impossible to navigate. To someone whose interest in living history is only tangential what is the difference between a renaissance faire, the SCA, an experimental archaeology group, a member of Regia Anglorum, a LARP, a Heritage site like Yorvik, and a museum like Higgins Armory; a couple hundred years of history? When talking to a friend, work colleague, or acquaintance about what I do when I’m not at my nine-to-five, they are very easily confused. Heck, I often get asked about civil war and revolutionary war reenactments when I talk about my interest in dressing up and portraying the past, because I’m in America, and those might be the two most popular time periods to re-create.

But I don’t do all of those different types of living history. I don’t want to --well, most days I don’t want to. When I am introduced to a friend of a friend they draw on what little they know, and try to continue the conversation by saying something like:
“you reenact the Renaissance, are you a member of the SCA?”
or
“You do Renaissance faires, do you do that Live Action Role Play stuff?”

my answer is no. I don’t. Then I feel I have to explain why; I need to justify my choices in reenactment, and explain that I am not one of them. If the question is about the Revolutionary war or the civil war I can fairly easily explain that I am interested in a different historical period or in reenacting less military aspects. When the question is about a group recreating a similar time-period and geographic location, I have a harder time being neutral in my answer. It is hard not to go for the: “I am better than them” sort of answer, to put others down to make my own choices appear less kookey.

Over the past few years, I’ve made a concerted effort to not degrade any person or group that could at all be considered living history, or historical reenactment, particularly since attending Reenactorfest, working with more diverse groups, and especially since starting the podcast. There are too few of us doing this sort of thing, and as my friend Amanda put it: “Why does there have to be a ‘them’?”

As a whole, I have found different living history and reenactment groups to be friendly and welcoming, and very willing to engage in a cross-group dialogue about living history. What other people can we talk to in a meaningful way about this wonderful way of life? But we still have trouble when talking to strangers. Time after time I see reenactors and living history folks put down other groups to perfect strangers. Or even sometimes to other reenactors in a “aren’t we both better than those Hollywood types” or something equally ridiculous.

I am going to work harder at being nice to every type of living history group. I hope you will join me.

There is a little translator in my head

2010-02-07T12:00:00.000-05:00

When I am participating in a Living History event where the public is in attendance I have a little translator in my head that interprets what a person is saying to me, and translating it into something I can respond to.

Like when a hapless member of the public asks if that cook fire is real while my water boils over in front of them. I’d love to say something direct (and probably sarcastic) to answer them, but the translator (and educator) in my head has already taken the statement and turned it into an inquiry about what I am doing, and a request to know more. So I can smile and explain that the wind is blowing so hard that my fire is burning hot and fast, so I’ve got to keep a constant eye on it out here.

The translator works especially hard when I am in first person, when the year for me is 1529 instead of the current year, but it still works even when I am in the present. It is possible to ask dumb questions, but my translator will make them less dumb.

but more on being in 1529, that translator does work much harder. For one thing we’re speaking modern English, even if I have a funny accent. There are tons of technological advances, social innovations, learning methods, worldviews that are different between then and now. If I really was from 1529 and you really were from 2010, we would spend a lot of our time struggling to communicate, and less time learning abut how we are both different and the same. So the translator works on the way out too, and allows whatever persona I am in to speak in a way that is comprehensible to my modern audience.

Does the translator ever get in the way? Oh sure. I bet people would learn lots if I let them hear all the political, racial, social views that a person in 1529 might hold, but for the most part the events that I am participating in are attend by a public that is there to enjoy themselves, and I’d like the conversation to last more than a few sentences before they back away because they’re so uncomfortable. I’d like them to tell their friends they had fun, and come back for more next time.

So please, if you are at an event and you don’t know exactly how to ask the questions that you’d like to ask, give it a try, the little translator in the reenactor’s head might do the work for you, then you can have a lovely conversation.

Rest home for forgetful reenactors

2010-02-03T12:00:00.001-05:00

When we got to the FPIPN (First Person Interpreter Practitioners Network) conference we had no idea what to expect. When sitting in the meeting house in the middle of Mystic Seaport we were surrounded by people, but they were all bundled in their normal 12st century coats and Jackets (there was a negative degree wind chill outside, and the building was not being heated) so it was really hard to tell who these people were and what we were in for. After a quick introduction by one of the conference hosts the keynote speaker warmed us all up with a few jokes about working at Plimoth Plantation long enough to now be his own father-in-law (the first season he was at Plimoth he played the role of a pilgrim who gets married in 1627, now he plays the father of the pilgrim that his first role marries.)

One of the funnier warm-ups was this:
When we all get old and imfirm they will need a special nursing home for us. When our memories start to go, we’ll have trouble figuring out who we really are. He said: “all of us at the plantation, we’ll all be Priscilla Alden.”

What an image!

It is not schizophrenia, I really was the wife of a baron of Bavaria, if only on the weekends.

First-Person Networking Conference

2010-02-02T15:38:00.002-05:00

Stephen, Tom, Amanda and I attended an interesting conference this weekend. The Association for Living History, Farm and Agricultural Museums has, as part of its membership, a lot of networking groups on various specific topics. There is a group that talks about first-person interpretation, also known as costumed characters, or historical role-players. This group held their own mini-conference this past weekend at Mystic Seaport in Mystic, CT. It was well attended by the folks at Plimoth Plantation, and the Mystic folks, and there were a number of small museums that sent one or two delegates. There were some independent folks there, and us representing Autumn Tree Productions, the Guild of Saint Morritz, and the Living History Podcast. We’ll be doing a podcast episode on the conference, and I don’t want to duplicate all of that, but there were some points I thought I’d mention here that may not make it into the podcast.

This entry will mostly be patting myself on the back; this is my blog after all. But if you’d rather not hear glowing reviews of myself and Stephen (from a definitely biased source) I will be putting up another entry soon on the best keynote speaker I think I’ve ever witnessed (and I have never met the guy before, so no pre-judgment on my part.)

For my own part, I felt like we made a really strong showing. As an “independent” and one for whom this sort of thing is not my main source of income I was worried about being surrounded by all of these professionals. But all of our training and hard work paid off; we were able to keep up in all the conversations about the industry, about living history topics, and about training tips and techniques. In one session the presenter asked for volunteers to do a bit in character. I volunteered was paired with another volunteer who got pretend to be a clueless member of the public. My partner had a chip on her shoulder. She got right in my face and asked me all of the stupid questions we all get bombarded with, why was I dressed like that, wasn’t I hot in that, who was I supposed to be. I answered every single one of her questions, and got across who I was and as many facts about where I was coming from as I possibly could. I did not let her phase me, I was totally cheerful and worked to keep the interaction moving in a positive direction. The other person who volunteered to show us their character got an easy partner, who was totally willing to be lead along, and he did not give her any information until he had been much prodded to do so. So kudos for me and ATP.

Stephen did even better when we got to show off our stuff at dinner that night. To set the scene, we’d been hearing talks all day on playing to the real, not being afraid of the darker emotions, or playing characters that are not likeable. After all the seminars on Saturday everyone gathered for a dinner, where we were encouraged to come in costume and in-character. There were some 14th century folks, and a scattering of various revolutionary war era people. The two largest groups were the pilgrims in 1627 and the Mystic folks in 1870s Victorian splendor. Stephen took a look at these two groups representing fairly repressive protestants and in his big German way announced that he was a baron (the highest ranking official there, though George Washington was close) and that we were Catholic. He said it as a challenge to the entire room, the effect was positively electric. In fact, no one dared sit with us at our table! We dealt with that problem by moving to join another table and we ended up having a lot of really good conversations, both in first-person, and then out. After all that talk about being real and not being over-the-top, it felt good to show that sometimes over-the-top is being real, and that not every age is repressive. I was worried that we might have gone a bit too far, but Stephen told me that as he was leaving the conference one of the organizers came up to him and told him to please continue to be big and German. Stephen answered that he didn’t think he could be any other way.

Well Rounded Reenactor

2010-01-23T17:35:00.001-05:00

I’ve recently been active on a couple of living history and reenactment type forums, mostly for the sake of the podcast. I’m enjoying the discussions there with different types of reenactors that I would not normally get to mix with. I am amazed by the different sorts of living history going on out there.

When I was working at Strawbery Banke Museum (more than ten years ago now) as a costumed interpreter and tour guide, a Civil War reenactment group came and set up on Puddle Dock for a weekend. Since I was playing the maid in the governor’s mansion I was in the year 1870, only 5 years off from the civil war folks. On my break I walked around their encampment and said hello. One of the young female reenactors walked back with me after my break and we sat on the porch swing and talked living history. She was in high school, I was in college, she was reenacting as a hobby, I was a professional. But I was a bit jealous of her. She got to make her own clothes and wear them out and about, mine belonged to the museum and were too big for me. The group she was involved in were all friends and had a lot of fun together. I enjoyed my colleagues, but we were working together, not hanging out.

I’ve never been a member of a colonial or civil war group. I’ve set up summer camps, worked in museums, done a number of renaissance faires, I’ve presented in schools, and entertained in corporate settings. This past fall Stephen started a reenacting guild, but I almost don’t count that experience since it is a new unit, which is based on the living history tenets that Stephen and I share, that I certainly did not get as a result of participation in other units. Besides, it is a 16th century unit, European history, not American history.

I know there are probably folks out there that are jealous of all the wonderful experiences that I have, and I certainly would not give them up. But some day I will have to join a well established unit, portraying the civil or revolutionary war and see what that experience is like. Maybe then I will feel like a more rounded reenactor, or maybe I’ll just find a new experience to set my sights on… SCA member, experimental archaeology, what else am I missing?

Dancing my way to History

2010-01-12T14:12:00.004-05:00

When I was a teenager I attended several contra dances with my parents’ friends, but that was a long time ago. Since moving back to New Hampshire in March of last year, I’d been attempting to get to a contra dance, now I’ve been to 2.

For those of you who do not know, a contra dance is a line dance, but not the country western type. It is a bit like a square dance, but without the funny clothes. It is a bit like English country dancing, but totally based in New England. These pages do a better job than I at explaining it: Wikipedia, YouTube Videos.

Contra dancing interests me at this point in my life for the same reasons it did as a teenager: dancing is fun and it is a cool thing to do in the evenings; but it also interests me for its regional and historical significance.

Celebrating Regionalism
Since college I’ve lived in Massachusetts mostly, but last winter we bought a house in New Hampshire. It was not a big move geographically, but it felt big since we were buying a house, in another state, and in the state where I grew up. As part of the whole “settling down” thing I feel like I should get more involved locally but I have very little desire to attend any school board meetings, and making friends in a new region is a slow process. As part of the process I decided to look up local contra dances since I remember it as one of the fun local winter activities. Besides, contra dance attendees are friendly, local folks, who are a little quirky, just like me.

Nelson
When I mentioned to my mother that I was looking for a contra dance for Stephen and I to attend she talked to a contra dancing friend who highly recommended the dance out in Nelson, NH. She said it was very authentic and a good place for beginners. I looked at a map and thought: Nelson is in south western NH and I live in south-central NH, how far away could it be? It turns out it is over an hour away, up twisty country roads, long past cell phone service, where cable television fears to tread. Stephen and I drove there on the second Saturday of December (Nelson’s weekend dances happen on the second Saturday) not long after a snow storm. The roads were still icy, and it was dark dark while we were driving since the dance started at 8 and the sun had gone down at 4:30.

The GPS drove us past the hall once, but on the way back we found the building, attached to the town library, all lit up with a few folks just going in. The hall is a quirky little hall, where the floor slopes away towards one corner, so folks all night end up dancing downhill and everyone ends up squished into the bottom corner. The band was doing a sound check as we arrived, it was two younger men on a guitar and a fiddle that had no problem filling the hall with music. We got there early and got to chat with some of the organizers, then got a quick lesson in the basic steps by the night’s caller.

The way contra dances work is that there is a series of steps that make up all of the dances. These include a lot of swinging one’s partner, things like do-si-dos, and moves to change places up and down the line. At the beginning of the dance the caller will explain which steps this dance will need, in their proper order so folks can walk the pattern once. Then once the music starts the caller will call out the moves just before you do them, so half way through swinging your partner the caller will say, “now hold hands and circle round” so the dancers remember what comes next. It all started coming back to me as we started dancing, and Stephen had very little problem catching on because we’ve both danced English country dances, which are the grandparents of contra dancing. Besides, all the other dancers were happy to steer us around to make sure we ended up in the right place if we ever messed up on a step.

The most fun thing about the dance was definitely the people that we met. There were folks of all ages and dancing ability, everyone was super friendly, and interested in us since we were new and also friendly. If ever there was someone sitting out a dance because they did not have a partner, someone, probably a complete stranger, was sure to ask them to dance the next round. Everyone was that concerned abut keeping everyone involved and having fun.

What I had failed to mention to anyone at the start of the dance, was that I had had pretty bad allergies in the morning so I had taken a strong decongestant. By 8 in the evening I was still all fuzzy headed and having trouble focusing. Needless to say all the spins and swings made me incredibly dizzy, so I had to sit out every other dance just to get my bearings back. But Stephen was having fun dancing with new people and the dances were fun to watch even if I had to sit out. We did not stay too late, and I was incredibly miserable and car sick the whole ride home, but it was totally worth it.

The Connection
Why is this entry in a blog on Living History? Because contra dancing is a grand tradition that goes back to the founding of the United States. The hall in Nelson had hosted similar dances since the early 1800s, and similar dances had been danced in Nelson since before it was a town. Technically this falls more under a living tradition that living history, but to me it is the connection to the past that is important. That there is a dedicated group of folks, that there are tons of these groups all over New England, who keep an old-fashioned type of dancing alive, and make it their own, is magical to me. The folks I talked to were all aware of their participation in a longstanding tradition, and of that tradition’s place in the history of their region.

Sudbury
This past Friday Stephen and I participated in a “contra” dance even closer to its historical roots. A Massachusetts rev war reenactment group holds a 12th night celebration at an old tavern and inn. The festivities include a 12th night cake, a flag ceremony, a crowning of the king and queen, and tons of dancing. It is open to the public, we got there through a friend of a friend and could not pass up the opportunity to both gussie up our colonial outfits and do some more contra dancing.

The inn was fantastic, all the rooms were restored beautifully, and the hall just fit everyone in. The dancing was an older style, somewhere in between the English country dancing we did at faires and the modern contra dancing we’d experienced last month. The dances were still done in lines, and there were a few swings and do-si-dos but there was more variety of moves, and the dances were all slower in tempo than at the contra dance. I was glad that there were 6 of us there who knew each other so we could switch up partners, since this group seemed a little less inclined to ask strangers to dance.

Everyone was still friendly, and Stephen ran into some friends he had not seen in well over 10 years. It was different dancing in big skirts and restrictive tops. The dances that I sat out I spent a lot of time watching the different styles of colonial footwear spin past. One of the most striking parts to me was knowing that this reenactment group had been celebrating in this hall for the past 40 years; so there was triple history: the history of12th night dances in the American Colonies, the history of the inn, and the history of the reenactment unit itself. I am glad we were able to make new connections there too.

The Importance of Volunteering

2010-01-01T15:53:00.002-05:00

You’re not going to get paid for some of the most important things you do in your lifetime. I’ve re-learned that lesson this week, and I’m glad because it is an important one.

In today’s society we do all need money to get along, for all those basic things like food, shelter, health, etc. so we spend a lot of time and energy focused on money. But a lot of the times that I have done work that did not come with a salary I have gotten other needful benefits like community, companionship, and knowledge. I hope that society, or at least the community I was doing the work for also benefited, but I find that much harder to quantify. I am not on the outside looking in so I’m not sure how much perspective I will really be able to gain. Besides, sometimes the simple things are easier to keep in mind when I’m staring at my checkbook wondering how I’m going to pay to get my car fixed.

My parents and school instilled the volunteer spirit in me from a very young age, but it was not until I got to choose my own volunteer experiences that the worth and the meanings really came alive for me.

One volunteer experience with a lot of quantifiable benefits was when I called up Plimoth Plantation and volunteered to spend a few hours working in the gardens each week. I came up on a Friday afternoon and by the end of my three hours of volunteering I had a job. I almost hesitate to give that example because the obvious thing I got out of it was money. But more important for me than the money was the chance to work for an institution that I admire, even if it was only on the edges (or the floral borders as it were.) Also, I got to learn: about a time-period I knew less about, about new plants and how to better care for them. I got access to a very cool library with books I never otherwise would have found, and I got to spend a sunny summer and autumn outdoors in beautiful spaces.

A friend of mine recently shared a even better story. A friend invited Norah to volunteer in her colonial clothes for a local historical society, and a few months later she and the Society worked out an even more beneficial arrangement, Norah would volunteer some of her time, energy and knowledge, and the society would let her live in one of their historic properties. Norah got a home, and a lovely one at that, while the museum and the entire community benefits from her boundless energy and great historical knowledge.

When I was not far out of college and struggling with grad school and my job I decided to refresh my historical and theatrical sensibilities by volunteering at the Vermont Renaissance Festival. I gained a lot of similar things there and at subsequent faires and festivals as I had at Plimoth: a chance to work out of doors in interesting settings, knowledge of a different time-period (and in this case a different continent), eventually I even got paid a little. I also met my love at the faire, an incredibly important benefit!

The year that is so recently over saw Stephen and I undertake two ambitious new historical ventures. We started a historical guild portraying many aspects if the life of a band of mercenary soldiers from the Holy Roman Empire in the year 1530: The Guild of Saint Morritz. In less than a year it went from a seed of an idea that germinated in an airport in February, to a group of 13 folks with clothes, props, tents, furniture, and skills of the Landsknecht performing 4 weekends at the Connecticut Renaissance Faire. We did not get paid, we bought and made our own costumes etc., we did our own research, and learned and grew as a group. What we got in return were some great new friends, we also got to bring some history back to the renaissance faire, and we got to teach the visitors of the faire as well as the other participants all about an interesting time and place, and that the folks back then were different and they are the same as us.

Our second project, only recently launched, and definitely in the growing stages is the Living History Podcast. While on a basic level it is Stephen and I sharing what we know about the art of historical interpretation, on a deeper level it is a new way to connect with even more folks in the living history and reenacting community. We get to share our knowledge, interview interesting folks in different circumstances, meet folks who listen in, and be an active part of the ongoing dialogue about the future of living history. This is not a paid undertaking, but the opportunities that we are hoping will spring out of this endeavor will make it all worth it.

I do wish that I was paid for the things I love to do, not because being paid would assign a value to the work, but because then I could devote more of the time that I now spend earning money to the activities that I feel reflect my proper place in this life. (I really do love my job, it is fantastic and I am so happy to have it, it is just not my dream job.) But in the mean-time I’m not going to complain that I spend a lot of daylight hours earning money, instead I’ll be thankful that I do have a job that I really enjoy, plus in my spare time I get to learn and play in history among interesting individuals and good friends.

I can’t wait to see what the new year will bring!

A New Venture: Living History Podcast

2009-12-19T13:02:00.003-05:00

I really was not staying busy enough with my regular job, new house, and all the reenactments that I've been doing lately. So Stephen and I decided to launch a new venture we are now producing a podcast called: Living History, the Podcast for the Reenacting Community. We've got a couple of episodes up already at:

http://livinghistorypodcast.com/

We'll try to do weekly shows on all sorts of living history related topics like: interacting with the public, event survival 101, public perception of reenactors, interviews with all sorts of reenactors, history professionals, and more!

We really hope this podcast is going to be a dialogue between many different areas of the reenacting community, because we are a diverse body engaged in so many different aspects of history. We hope folks will contribute topic ideas, disagreements, new perspectives, anything at all relating to Living History, which is a wide category.

Please listen, then if you would not mind giving us a rating and review on iTunes we would appreciate it!

Creating An Identity Out Of Culture

2009-12-16T10:06:00.003-05:00

On my commute to work I am listening to A Feast Of Words a biography of Edith Wharton written by Cynthia Griffin Wolff in the 1970s. I am enjoying it for the most part, much more than I do reading actual Edith Wharton fiction, and it is long enough that it fills up quite a bit of my commute. There is a bit too much psychoanalysis in it for my taste, the biography feels very 70s in that way, but I am learning a lot about Edith Wharton, and a little about myself too. The author spends a lot of time talking about Edith Wharton’s fiction as a protest against the stuffy late Victorian society that Edith Wharton grew up in, and frames her life as a rebellion against the repressions of her mother and the society that created her mother (see what I mean about rampant psychoanalysis?)

But this morning on my way in to work Griffin talked about Wharton’s time in France during World War I, when she witnessed first-hand the German destruction of the French countryside. She was struck by the detritus of every-day life that was left behind after the Germans had blasted away whole portions of towns, she was moved by the lives that the blasting had revealed. According to Griffin,

“[Germany] had aimed to destroy those things that support life—the countless, habitual, humdrum associations and pursuits that give meaning to existence. Plodding grimly through the mud, her quick novelistic eye missing no detail, Wharton began to formulate a new notion of tradition: it is the matrix within which individual personality is defined—a delicate framework of familiarities and understandings by which man’s sense of self is confirmed and reconfirmed in his main daily encounters. Civilization is not something external to each of us, nor is its primary function one of suppressing freedom and growth. Rather, the civilization of any given time and place becomes an integral element in the personality of all its members: it sustains them, informs their existence with meaning, and changes—even as their lives change—with a slow, measured continuity.”

- Cynthia Griffin Wolff, A Feast of Words, The Triumph of Edith Wharton

I heard the above and thought, this is so true! This is what I have been trying to get across in every historical reenactment I’ve done for a public audience. This is why I think there is a place for first person interpretation as a form of education. While I may play only one person out of an entire civilization, I believe it is possible to shed some light on that civilization in this manner. Personalities, and living history character personalities especially, are not created in a vacuum.

I think this is especially important for new reenactors to understand. It is incredibly daunting when your new persona is a blank slate, when the possibilities are almost limitless, but at the same time the facts about a given historical person are so few. I think, to many people the initial steps in character development can be the hardest to overcome when getting into reenacting.

When I start in on a new character for a new period, or maybe just a different show or event, I often go in trying to think about the larger culture that I am portraying. What has attracted me to this particular culture? What seems totally outside of my experience? What about the culture at large is important for me to get across to my audience? Often the characteristics of a person can come out of the answers to those questions. This has been especially true in the two personas that I created in the past year.

Hanne is the wife of a military leader from the Holy Roman Empire in the year 1529. That much I knew when I set out to create a character. Now I’m not crazy about the military stuff, but really wanted the chance to do cooking demonstrations and participate in a new historic encampment. So I took a look at the cooking I wanted to do and decided that Hanne should be pragmatic; though the captain’s wife, she knows how to cook, wash dishes, and doesn’t mind teaching others. One of the amazing things to me about the Landsknecht (Holy Roman Empire Military troups) or any military unit is their pride. Pride seems to be a big part of being involved in military matters, so I translated that into Hanne as a pride of family, and protectiveness of the unit of which her husband is the leader. This also allowed me to play a noble woman who is proud of the work she is doing, so she does not mind getting her hands dirty. I got to show off the fact that Hanne is lower nobility, she expects to wait on those higher up than herself, and that not all noble ladies are prissy princesses. I was too busy cooking and keeping house during most of the encampment weekends to delve much more deeply into who Hanne is, but I felt perfectly comfortable talking to audience members, and knowing that I could answer all questions as Hanne saw the world, and in a way that might get at some larger cultural traits.

Sarah is very different. We were asked to present some topics at a “Pioneer Day” school show. Stephen has a solid Wild Bill Hickock presentation, and we had a good foundation on a “Talk Like a Cowboy” presentation by our Friend Tom. Amanda was willing to tackle a campfire cooking demonstration (though that one did not fly at the last minute, hopefully next year we’ll overcome a school system’s fears about fire.) I had tons of nineteenth century research under my belt, and even a couple of characters, but the Irish Maid in the governor’s mansion did not feel right for this setting, and I did not want to do some poor downtrodden farmer’s wife. One of the topics that I found intriguing from my studies about Nineteenth Century America was the spirit of innovation; this plays out in the industrial revolution as well as the western expansion movement. Innovation did not stop there: politics, religion and family life were receiving widespread attention and undergoing a lot of upheaval in the Nineteenth Century. This applied to both the eastern United States, where most of my research had been done, and further west, especially since the railroad meant that people and ideas could travel, and printing innovations meant that opinions and ideals were traveling faster than they ever had before. Sarah turned out to be an itinerant lecturer, spreading the benefits of new educational philosophies to one and all. She is upbeat and positive that social change can be enacted. She takes for granted the availability of newspapers and magazines (I make sure to mention them often) and finds the hardships of travel to be an adventure. She is still awkward when out of her comfort zone, she is an urban dweller who is uncomfortable facing the realities of a farm life. She believes that the ideas and opinions she is presenting are cutting edge, and must therefore be the right ideas. There is not a lot of room for real life in her rigid ideals. This is also the way I think of nineteenth century reform movements, whether it was the abolition movement or the temperance movement. I only had 20 minutes to talk to these kids and get across a fuller picture of people living the pioneer life and how they saw their place in the world. I used the facts I had on hand mixed in with physical mannerisms, modes of speech, opinions, and cultural assumptions to create a living breathing person.

If you’re new to reenacting, and scared to take the plunge, the best advice I can give you is keep researching, keep reading. Find out as much as you can about a time-period, about a place and time. Keep hold on the facts that fascinate, some day they will suggest a personality to you that will let you live within the culture because, “the civilization of any given time and place becomes an integral element in the personality of all its members.”

The most popular reenactment I’ve ever seen

2009-12-08T20:06:00.002-05:00

I’ve never been to Gettysburg during a reenactment event. I know this is a tragedy, and one that I must remedy soon, but I am mentioning it now not to get an invite, but to state right off the bat that this is not a post about that sort of reenactment. I’m not talking about an event with tons of participants, but an ongoing experiment in historical marketing that has become the darling of New York City, and of the media elite. And one that I admire very much

Beekman 1802 is a farm, that two men --Josh and Dr. Brent as they are referred to in their blog-- bought, restored, revitalized, and are now marketing to the world through sales of goat milk soap and other farm or local artisan products. Two things intrigue me about Beekman 1802: the way that it is a historical reenactment, and the fact that they are a marketing phenomenon.

Living the Historical Reenactment
I don’t consider house museums to be living history, because they do not seem alive. Of course a house can seem alive, when it is lived in, when there is action in the house. To me, you can call a historical house living history when it is used as it was when it was lived in. I think a hearth cooking demonstration can be living history, and living in a restored house, especially restored to evoke a certain time and story is definitely living history. Did Josh and Brent restore the Beekman farm to the year 1802 exactly? the web page photos indicate to me they did a pretty good restoration. Do they live in it as a reenactment? well, not exactly, they’ve got a modern kitchen, use electricity, they are not living their lives as a reenactment, but they are bringing history to life in the way they are running an active farm, selling products with historical roots, and most importantly to me, they are using the history of the farm as an incredibly effective marketing tool.

Marketing the Historical Reenactment
I stumbled across the web page Beekman1802.com by following a link to a nifty holiday decoration. Once on the site I surfed around and discovered a restored farmhouse, a herd of goats, some blog entries, and some soap. At first I didn’t get it. How could these guys support this gorgeous farmhouse and themselves (Dr. Brent had recently given up a professorship in New York City) on just soap? I know tons of people selling hand made soaps at farmer’s markets, artisan galleries, and fancy boutiques, but it is not a lucrative business. In my opinion the market is rather flooded with fancy soap; and I have a hard time justifying the purchase of fancy soaps when I’ve been using the same brand most of my life and it works just fine. Since subscribing to their RSS feed I have been able to discern two success factors: An astute marketing of history, and notice by the elite media.

Some of the blog entries on Beekman 1802 are stories from the perspective of a little girl living in the Beekman house in 1802. I don’t think they are written particularly well, but they connect Josh and Brent to those who built the house. Much better written are the entries about the products they are selling under the Beekman 1802 brand. Every entry connects the specific product to that product’s history and to the region. Especially well connected are the stories of their blacksmith friend, who is using old methods, working with his hands to create something authentic. As the authors of the book Authencity and the authors of the Museum Audience Insight Blog at Reach Advisors have written: authenticity sells. And one of the most authentic things out there is history.

While I’m sure their soaps are great and their cheeses are fantastic (anyone who wants to gift me some I’d be happy to find out for you) those products are not really what they are selling. They are selling the authentic historical experience, and I say, bravo Josh and Brent.

The other entries that shed light on Beekman 1802’s success are the media mentions. When I started reading their blog I found the entry written after Josh and Brent had been photographed and interviewed for an article in Vanity Fair. They’ve made it on the Martha Stewart Show, and I heard mention of Oprah, but now can not find it again. A recent entry included a New York Times photo slideshow that included a photo of soap, but mostly concentrated on the old house, looking so charming with a layer of new white snow. I don’t know how Josh and Brent did it, but they’ve made it in the elite media, they are a marketing success. To top it off, I hear rumors of a 10 episode show on the Discovery channel about Josh and Brent. It makes me sad that I will not have cable by the new year, I'll have to wait for DVD.

These media outlets are not covering traditional reenactors in any large numbers, so what it is about Josh and Brent? They are articulate and good looking, they have very 21st century sensibilities. They play up the history, but they do not obsess, they concentrate on the product and on their lifestyle, not so much on the lives of the dead and gone. They’ve got a good story to tell, and they tell it very well.

If Josh and Brent write a book, a beautiful picture book like the Tasha Tudor ones, I will keep a copy beside my bed, to prove that it can be done, that you can successfully be living history.

Tweed Ride - Fun with History!

2009-11-20T10:47:00.003-05:00

While listening to NPR the other day I heard this story about people having fun with history. The story is about a group of bicyclists that took part in a “tweed ride” in Washington D.C. Participants dressed up in various costumes composed of tweeds, plaids, argyles and more. Apparently the trend started in London and has spread to quite a few US cities. My brother took part in the one in Boston this fall.

The thing that I like most about the photos I’ve seen and the stories I’ve heard is the moustaches. Real ones and fake ones, moustaches on men and women! One can not take ones self too seriously while sporting a fake moustache. Sometimes I get bogged down in being historically accurate, or in trying to be super educational, it is good to remind myself that history is fun. It is also good to remind the rest of the world beyond us history geeks that history is fun too! It is not all bloody battles and it does not have to be dusty and booring. Sometimes it sports quite a dapper ‘stash!

Still the best reenactment experience I’ve ever had

2009-11-11T20:25:00.008-05:00

The best reenactment experience that I’ve ever had was in 8th grade. I was lucky to have a really meaningful historical reenactment at such a young age, in fact I ended up writing my college application essays on that historical reenactment and the activities that developed out of it. This experience that I’m being so vague about was actually a unit for both Eighth Grade Social Studies and English that incorporated lessons in computers too. Every eighth grader at my middle school spent a quarter of the school year (well it seemed like a lot back then) participating in a program called: “Immigrant.” For an entire unit our soul task was to write a journal from the perspective of someone from Ireland during the potato famine of the 1840s and 50s who emigrated to the United States. Not that most of the immigrants would have been literate, but the point was mostly to get us thinking and experiencing the immigrant’s perspective, and also thinking about how to articulate something as complicated as the choice to pick up and leave one’s homeland for unknown territory.

The teachers had done a phenomenal amount of research to set up the unit. There is not a ton in middle school text books on the Irish potato famine, or at least not enough to base an entire unit of study. Nowhere near what an eighth grade class would need to write journals for more than a month. So the teachers had to rely on sources written for adults, they had to guide us though a culture and economy far removed from even Nineteenth Century America, let alone 20th century America. They ended up sharing a lot of primary materials with us, the first time I can remember learning history from primary sources. Our most important primary source was the ship’s log from a vessel that made the voyage across the Atlantic from Liverpool to Boston with a cargo full of Irish immigrants. Everyone in the class got to pick a family off the ship’s log, so the journals were not just from our imagination but represented real people.

The reenactment did not end there. In order to simulate the ship voyage, we spent an overnight in the computer lab, reenacting the voyage from Ireland to the United States. The teachers divided up the computer lab into two parts. What was normally the classroom part became above decks, where we first boarded the vessel and where we had our meals. The computer part of the lab became the ‘tween decks, where the immigrants were crowded into narrow bunks. They had sea noises playing in a loop on a tape deck that, as the evening wore on, they would switch to babies crying. I swear half my classmates wanted to cry themselves when the tape with the babies was playing. The teachers dressed and acted as the crew of the ship, being all gruff and harsh to the poor Irish that were their cargo (the captain reminisced about the voyage in the other direction -- Boston to Liverpool -- where the lumber in the ship’s hold kept nice and quiet.) They fed the students meager meals (actually we were fed quite well, but the power of suggestion is an amazing thing.) And as the evening wore on they did give more classroom-style lectures (short ones) on ship conditions and the plight of the Irish on board a sailing vessel.

Students got to do their own reenacting beyond writing journals. I dressed up for the voyage; no one else in my class did, though they were not surprised to see that I had. We all had to sign our own version of the ship’s log, recreating the act that was our key to the past. We ate meals and got to know the families that were bunked near us. Most alarmingly, we were given family updates. Little slips of paper that told us which members of our family were ill and, as the evening/sea voyage wore on, which ones died on board ship. We then got to experience a ship funeral, and afterward have a lively discussion about Irish Catholicism and what it meant to not have loved ones buried in a cemetery, but tossed overboard with only the Protestant ship’s captain leading a service. Late into the evening (actually not that late, but with the windows covered it felt very late) the teachers shut off the ocean sounds tape and played us a song. A sad ballad with lyrics taken directly from letters written by a father left be hind in Ireland writing to his son in America. It resonated so deeply with me, that I can still sing a few snatches of the song though I have not heard it in well over ten years.

What a bare recitation of the facts can not reveal is how deeply involved we all got. As we started our journals it was fun to put in details about the list of names we had been given, to make them into actual families. When we were writing abut the decision to leave Ireland, to leave beloved family members behind, it was easy to get involved in the tale. When immersed in the recreated world below decks it was easy to forget about the modern world, to get caught up in the mood. I can still recall very vividly the feeling that we were doing something that was real, that that each and every one of us now had a stake, an ownership in a time and place other than our own.

Maybe the experience sticks with me because thirteen is an impressionable age. Maybe it is because once I was out of the eighth grade I came back every year to help out the next class. Maybe it is because my “Immigrant” experience included editing a book of journal excerpts, even taking a trip to Ireland my junior year of high school that the initial event stands out so strongly in my mind. I like to think it was the first time that I became aware of the full potential of historical reenactment as a key to the past.

In every reenactment that I have participated in since “immigrant” I have been trying to recapture some of that feeling. I find myself striving not just toward accuracy in the trappings of a reenactment, but more importantly a connection with the feelings of a place and age not our own.

Photos: Ty Houston as the Ship's Captain, Larry Bickford as the First Mate, Alena at Blarney Castle.

Landsknecht Dress Diary; “Hanne v.1” Part 4

2009-10-28T20:16:00.009-04:00

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Finishing
The final step to complete the dress was sewing the skirt and bodice together. Every picture I have seen of the Landsknecht stuff, the women do not have any gaps between the skirt and bodice, making me think they are connected. The men’s clothes are often pointed (tied) together, but the women’s stuff does not look pointed to me.

I had created a complication for myself by making a front close bodice, and a side close skirt, so I could not sew around the entire skirt and bodice. I stitched around from the right front of the bodice, all the way around the back to the left side skirt opening. Then I put hooks and eyes along the left front of the skirt and bodice so that I could get the dress off and on with openings that did not line up! I stitched the bodice to the skirt right at the point where the waistband met the skirt gathers, so that the waistband was almost entirely on the underside of the bodice.

Headgear
To cover my head I made a little cap to hold my hair, like the little caps worn by women in the Cranach paintings. I made mine out of yellow linen and wool left over from Stephen’s new outfit. I measured around my head and cut a band of yellow wool to hold the cap in place. I stitched it into a circle, and folded and ironed in the seam allowances. I cut a circle 24” in diameter out of the linen, and gathered it into the wool band. I machine stitched the band to the linen because I thought that this first one would just be my prototype on the way to making one out of some shear fabric that looked a little closer to the look in the paintings. But I liked the linen one so much that I spent my time on other things and never got around to making a different one. To hold it on my head I did my hair in two braids that I wrapped around the crown of my head and held in place with barrettes so they would not slip. My hair is not quite long enough anymore to tie up with ribbons in a more historical fashion. Once the cap was on top of the braids they both helped to keep my slippery hair in place., with the help of two straight pins on the top of the cap to help keep it from sliding off my head.

I also made a hat. Spending so much time out-of-doors I hate going out without a brimmed hat of some kind, and the landsknecht have such interesting hats! The simplest is a platter hat which is 2 big circles sewn together with a head hole cut in the bottom circle. These hats are most often seen with a lot of ostrich feathers on the top of the cap. I wanted something a little more involved, so I did a platter had with a square top. Stephen made an educated guess on fabric size and cut a prototype out of some scrap fabric we had laying around, wouldn’t you know he got it right on the first attempt! Both the head hole size and the amount needed to fold into a good square. I cut my wool based on his scrap fabric prototype.

The deal with the square is that you cut a square piece of fabric with a head hole in the center. You lay it out on a flat surface and fold the corners in to the middle, then you take the new corners created by the fold, and fold those into the middle too. That is the shape of the hat. I hand stitched the upper folds to each other starting in the middle and stitching toward the corners. That was the top of the hat.

For the brim I machine stitched two circles together (both with head holes since the square would be going on top) and ironed the heck out of the seam. I stiffened the brim with a round of wire, a nice thick wire that a friend had picked up. The wire was already fairly round because it came off a spool, so all I had to do was lay the hat down, lay the wire on top in a circle just slightly bigger than the outside of the cloth, and duct tape a bit of overlapping wire to keep its shape. Making the wire a bit bigger than the cloth meant that the wire stayed in place and the brim stayed nicely round and not too floppy. I squished the wire through the head hole, between the two brim circles. I also put a few stitches around the wire through the outer seam, just to keep the wire in place. I hand stitched the brim of the hat to the square top part, since the brim was now very tight with the wire inserted. I did not finish the edge, just sewed the three layers (two brim, one square) together and figured that the seam would be hidden by my head.

I sewed ostrich feathers around the hat by tucking the ends under the square part, and just catching the feathers with a few stitches to keep them in place. I also sewed a couple of ties around the head hole since this style of hat acts like a kite on a windy day, and I did not want to chase the darn thing all over the faire grounds.

Wearing my creation
I wore this dress every day that I was at the Connecticut Renaissance Faire this season, a total of 7 days. I wore it with a plain renaissance chemise underneath, since I ran out of time to make a more historical and geographically correct hemd. I also did not make my own hosen, but wore long stockings with my square toed (often called cow-mouth) shoes. On cold days I wore my wool-lined leather hood which Stephen made for medieval events. Totally not right for the Landsknecht, but really warm and waterproof, so good enough for a first-year endeavor. As the wife of a baron I added some chain necklaces, one that was fake amber beads (though I lost that one after the first weekend) a nice curly chain that my parents brought back from a visit to Lithuania (I do not know what metal it is made of, or if it is historical in any way, but it looks old, and I can’t really wear it anywhere else) and a “gold” chain I got for cheap at a department store.

I wore a woven belt at my waist, mostly to hide the point where the bodice and skirts joined. I wove it on a belt loom out of some nice wool yarn. I wore a second woven belt around my hips so that I could pull my skirt up in a poof around my waist, just like in all the woodcuts. Since the poof around the waist reminds me of the inflatable tubes that kids wear when learning to swim I call the hunk of fabric my swimmie, and now my entire guild group does too. It is so helpful to have the skirts up and out of the way when lugging firewood or bending over a camp fire as well as looking just like a woodcut.

And that is the whole outfit!

Landsknecht Dress Diary; “Hanne v.1” Part 3

2009-10-24T14:50:00.014-04:00

Read Part 1, Read Part 2,

Bodice Construction
The tricky thing about the bodice of a landsknecht dress is that you don’t necessarily wear a bra underneath it. The bodice itself is supposed to provide support. There is no boning in this bodice, all of the support comes by fitting the fabric really well. Back in the patterning stage I made a duct tape version of the bodice and drew out the seam lines based on the “Period Patterns” pattern. I cut up the duct tape bodice along the seam lines, and lay it underneath my pattern trace in order to modify the pattern piece to my size while still maintaining things like arm holes, and seam placement, seam allowance etc.

To start the bodice I first cut the lining material out. I made my lining out of a rather stiff cotton canvas. I had some left over from another project, and was hoping it would give me the right shape while not being visible. I cut out the two front and two back bodice pieces. I like to put a seam up the middle of the back to get a closer fit. I stitched them together up the back, at the shoulders and the sides, so the bodice lining resembled an unfinished vest. I put it on inside out, and pinned up the front. Stephen then helped me pin and draw out where the seams actually should be. It turns out my shoulders are also slightly uneven! After that I had left and right pieces that were slightly different, but closer to my measurements. Stephen also pinned the pieces in such a way that the cloth formed a natural shelf for bust support.

Once I had all the pin lines chalked out, I ripped out all the stitches and used my lining pieces to cut out my bodice pieces and bodice guards. I stitched up the back seam, the shoulders and the sides on the wool bodice fabric, ironed those seams flat, then set it aside.

Bodice Guards
Using the bodice lining I patterned out the guards. I was planning for a strip of the green wool to go around the neck opening in the bodice and down the front closure, slashed with black underneath it, just like on the skirt part.

Using tracing paper I drew out the bodice lining edges, then measured two inches in towards the rest of the lining, and a half inch beyond that for seam allowance. I did not need to worry about seam allowance on the other side since it was still figured into the lining and not finished yet. When I had the pattern I drew various slash patterns on it until I found one that I liked, then cut out both the green wool of the guard and the black cotton I had used underneath the skirt guards. I used tailor’s chalk and an exacto knife to cut them, just like I had on the skirt. Once I had all the pieces cut and slashed I began the painstaking process of assembling all these various parts.

I used light basting stitched and stitched the black under guard to the green slashed guard. Then I used a much tighter stitch to sew the guard that went around the back of my neck to the guards that went down the front, and ironed the seams flat. I then pinned the guards in place around the pink wool bodice, right sides out. I pinned and re-pinned because this part was tough to get right. Some of the time I used the old dressmaker’s dummy that belongs to Stephen, but most of the time I just lay the dress on the edge of the ironing board to pin around the arms etc. Once I had the guards pinned to the bodice I lightly stitched that in place along the outside edge, mostly outside my seam allowance. I did not bother stitching the inside edge in place, since that would all have to be hand-done later. The final step was to sew the lining in, this one I did right sides together, so the right side of the lining covered the guards, and the pink wool. This seam was the actually real outside edge seam so I did nice tight machine stitch on this one, up one front side, around the neck line across the back around the other side and down the other side of the front. Since there were so many layers I cut the seam allowances fairly close, snipped all my corners very tight, and did a thorough ironing job while the thing was still inside out, and again when it was right side front.

After quite a break to recover from all that excitement I loosely zig-zagged the armholes, more to keep the lining and front together while I did my hand work, and for eventually fitting the sleeves, though all that stitching will have to come out eventually. Then I tackled the inside edges of the guards. The cool part about stitching the black to the green first was that I now had lines of stitching at exactly where I wanted the fold to go, so I cut the black fabric very close to that stitching line, and ironed under what I could of the seam fold before blind stitching the guard down along the inside edge by hand. Since I did this after attaching the lining, my hand stitches show on the inside of the bodice. If I was to do it again I might stitch the inside of the guards first before sewing in the lining.

To get the length of the bodice just right, I put on the skirt and the bodice and had Stephen chalk the line where the two met. Then I folded the excess to the inside, ironed it flat and hand stitched the bottom edge. If I had not sewn the guards down through the lining I probably could have flipped the bodice inside out and machine stitched the bottom seam. I’ll know for next time.

Sleeves
The sleeves ended up being the most complicated part of the entire process. I relied heavily on the pattern, plus a little advice from Stephen. The sleeves are actually three layers thick: the outer pink wool layer that is puff and slashed, an inner yellow silk layer that is puffed and shows through the pink slashes, and a black cotton that is the actual lining. The black cotton is the layer that is actually the size of my arm so I cut that one out first and stitched it up to make sure the fitting was correct. It was a little short so I cut a new one a bit longer, and based all the rest of the cutting on that one.

Next I cut out the pink wool layer, I cut it 7 inches longer than my black lining layer to get the multiple puff effect that I was going for. I wanted to have two puffs each at the wrist, elbow and shoulder. I chalked out where I wanted those puffs on the black lining, then pinned the pink layer on to it. I eyeballed the amount I wanted each section to puff, and moved the pins around until I felt I had it right, then chalked those lines on to the pink. I needed the chalk lines on the pink in order to cut the slashes in the right locations (i.e. only on the puffed parts.) I spent quite a bit of time chalking in the slashes for each puff. Since the sleeve tapers, it was awkward to have the same number of slashes for each puff, and almost impossible to have them evenly spaced. In the end I measured the width of each puff section separately and determined the slash pattern based on each puff. When I cut the slashes, I cut both sleeves, as this was the part that would most determine if the sleeves would look symmetrical.

Once I had that all figured out I tackled the yellow silk “lining”. The silk got cut at the same length as the pink so that it would also puff, but I cut it 7 inches wider than the pink to provide the actual bulk for the puffs and so it would show through the slashes. I put gathering stitches along the top and bottom of each puff, and gathered the yellow so it was the same width as the pink. If I had to do it over again, I would probably do only half the rows of gather stitching. Once the yellow was gathered to the same width as the pink I put zig zag basting stitches along the edges of the sleeves and along the top and bottom of each puff.

Then I stitched up the pink and yellow so I had a tube, and did the same for the black lining. I ironed the seams flat, turned the black inside out and stuffed the pink and yellow inside the black. This meant that I had right sides together. I sewed up the wrist seam, turned the lining to the inside, and ironed it flat, so that the bottom of the sleeve was finished. I then pulled the black lining material up so that the shoulder of the black was lined up with the shoulder of the pink and yellow. Since the black is significantly shorter the pink wool puffed up, since it was slashed, it puffed in all the places that I wanted it to. I did a quick basting stitch around the shoulder to hold it in place.

To get the puffs to look right -- the wrist puffs smaller and the shoulder puffs bigger—I put the sleeve on and slid the pink up and down my arm to get the puffs to the right shapes. I then asked Stephen to safety pin around each puff so I could take the thing off and sew the puffs in place. I did this by hand, with little stitches to catch the fabric just above and below each puff. I’m not sure there is a way to do it by machine. I actually thought about putting some nice trim in between each puff, but changed my mind when the hand stitching just to keep the puffs in place took so much time. Besides, the yellow silk underlayer was fancy enough when matched with the wool guards on the rest of the dress.

Once the hand sewing on the sleeves was done, I machine stitched the sleeves to the bodice. Since the linings were structural to both the bodice and the sleeves I could not hide the shoulder seam under a lining, instead I whip-stitched the rough edge just to keep it from fraying. I am so glad the inside will never be seen, ’cause while the outside looks good, the inside sure ain’t pretty!

Read Part 4