Junior Role-Players

As the school year starts back up, we’ve said goodbye to the Junior Role-players at Strawbery Banke. I will definitely miss them. During the summer SBM runs all kinds of summer camps: half day camp for the littles, craft-centered camps for the 8 to 12, and role-player camps for the older kids. They get to try out all the history, all the clothes, and what it is like to be in character out on the grounds of the museum. I have tons of good stories to tell you about this year’s juniors, but first, a memory.

When I worked at SBM while I was in college I befriended a junior role player. He had been involved in the museum a lot longer that I had and knew more about the history and about roleplaying. At the end of my first season I was given the christmas program assignment of the most boring house on the grounds. The Puritan/Protestant winter house has no decorations because they did not celebrate Christmas. We could not have a real fire, the kitchen where I sat had a string of red christmas lights buried in the ash in the fireplace. I was assigned to tell stories to my two “step-children”, two poor juniors who had to sit with me in that dreary house. Cory, the boy assigned to play Jack Wheelwright, step-son to Martha Wheelwright (my character) was such a good sport. We made our own fun, told stories all evening long.

The next summer Cory volunteered a couple times a week, usually in the library, and if i was working he would stop by to visit.We talked about everything. We both loved history, hated high school, and had a theatrical disposition that got us in trouble one day. I forget whether it was early spring or late fall, either way the sun was setting before closing, so the flood-lights came on in front of the house where I was stationed. There had been very few visitors before Cory had shown up, so it did not take long while we were chatting for us to discover a musical we both loved. I don’t remember if it was Les Miserables, or Little Mermaid (probably Little Mermaid.) Soon we were both singing and showing off in the flood-lights. We were not all that different in age, he was almost through high school, I had completed two years of college. I remember getting in trouble for that one!

Sometimes we joked, Cory and I, that one day he would go in for a job interview at the Smithsonian and I would be the one conducting the interview. I hope, wherever Cory ended up he is doing well. Read this entry on entry page

You Have To Believe

I listen to NPR a lot, and recently on the way in to work (my temp work while the museum is closed) I heard a story  about a man who plays Santa Claus at this time of year. He said the most important thing, for him is he must believe that he is Santa. Even in the face of teenagers and beard pullers he must believe, once he puts on the suit, that he is Santa.

How true!

As someone who spends quite a bit of her time as someone else, often in the face of teenagers and (even worse) retired age men, I must believe that when I am dressed as Mrs. Shapiro and enter museum grounds, I am Mrs. Shapiro. I am in my kitchen preparing meals for my family. When in camp and I get dressed as Hanne Reischach, I am Hanne. On the march in foreign lands with my husband. If I don't believe it, who else will?





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Remembering Diana Wynne Jones

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.

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My Interest in Historical Encampments

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!

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Yards!

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. Read this entry on entry page

Early Inspirations

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. Read this entry on entry page

Still the best reenactment experience I’ve ever had

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.
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What is a Niddy-Noddy for?

Some of my clearest memories of childhood are our family vacations, in and around the Northeast United States, and often into Canada. We would get in the car and drive, spending the nights at campgrounds or in rustic cabins. We would spend our days hiking and doing outdoors-ey activities or at historic sites, house museums and gardens. I don’t remember the names of the house museums or of the people who lived there, any more than I remember the names of the campgrounds, but I do have vivid recollections of docent-lead tours, rickety staircases, huge fireplaces, and dozens of niddy-noddys.

The Niddy-noddy would most often be sitting in a chair by the fireplace, or propped against a spinning wheel. I remember dozens of docents’ eyes lighting up when they ask the children on the tour (usually my brother and I) what this strange shaped contraption could possibly be. For those of you not subjected to house tours as a child, it is a wooden pole, with cross pieces attached perpendicularly at each end sort of like an uppercase ‘I” except the cross pieces are not flat like an “I” but at ninety degrees to each other. I was an incredibly shy child, so even though I knew perfectly well what it was (and what it is used for and even the rhyme) I would wait for the docent to pick it up, or at least gesture meaningfully, and tell me all about spinning fibers into cloth and winding them from the spinning wheel on to the niddy-noddy.

As a teacher of history myself I love using material culture: objects, buildings, costumes, to teach something about different time periods and ways of life, but I have to wonder at the effectiveness of such teaching techniques. Did I really learn anything about life in Colonial and early Nineteenth Century America when I was taught the rhyme that women would say while winding their yarn on to the niddy-noddy?

I was at a middle school in Connecticut, doing a short presentation about life in the European Middle ages, just a sneak peak for the 5th graders to get excited about what they would be learning in 6th grade, where I dressed up a girl and a boy from the class, and lead a short discussion about where clothes come from and how that shapes fashion and clothing styles. While their classmates were getting into tunics I asked the audience what clothing was made of and where cloth came from. A few of the 5th graders came up with wool coming from sheep and yarn being used for knitting, some even got to clothing being sewn out of cloth, but not the concept of cloth being woven from threads. I made my poor volunteers hold out their arms like scarecrows while I showed off the fact that their tunics were made of rectangular and triangular pieces of cloth, because rectangles (and triangles cut from rectangles) are the easiest to get out of whole pieces of cloth that have come off the loom.

I did learn more than just how to identify a niddy-noddy, I learned about pre-industrial, labor intensive cloth making practices. Did the kids in the 5th grade learn more than that they look funny in tunics, and that in the 6th grade they’ll learn about people wearing tunics? I hope so, even if only that you can make triangles out of rectangles.

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Flowers on Mothers Day

When working as an interpreter at Strawbery Banke Museum I had a lot of memorable and moving experiences, but one of the most emotional, was working on Mother’s Day when the costumed rolepayer who was playing Mrs. Shapiro, the Jewish immigrant, came in to the interpreter’s lounge with a large bouquet of flowers. The grandson of the original Mrs. Shapiro, now a very old man, had come to visit the museum and had brought his “grandmother” flowers.

What a show of support and connection! As an interpreter of a historical person it is always a bit daunting, knowing you are representing someone else in a very real way. I’m sure that the interpreter playing Mrs. Shapiro was very different from his grandmother, but Mr. Shapiro was moved by the fact that she was not forgotten, that her memory was evoked in order to educate. Many of us who reenact do it to help others learn in tangible ways, and forgive our own inadequacies by justifying the outcome: if these people learn a little about our past and about the world that we live in, then it is worth my blunders.

It is even more daunting for those who reenact recent history, since the audience is much more knowledgeable and more likely to notice any slip-ups. But the emotional connection to our audience and to our subject is greatly expanded the closer in time your subject gets. The role player at the World War II general store at Strawbery Banke would pull out an old photograph and talk very movingly about her “son in the war”. The photo was her own. It was a photo of her father as a young man when he served and was wounded in the war. There was something about knowing the direct connection that really did it for me.

On the whole I prefer portraying long-ago sorts of history, Medieval Europe, Colonial America. Even history 100 years ago allows me to feel more open in my character interpretations, also that I am helping folks learn about stuff they might not get any other way. I may not ever get a bouquet of flowers on Mothers Day, but I will strive to build emotional connections to mothers, daughters, brothers, friends and family with each portrayal I take on. Read this entry on entry page

Sentimental Story

When I was 12 or 13 I was almost too old for the children’s section of my local library, but I was not old enough for the adult section. I was a late bloomer so I found myself reading more and more as my friends and classmates all went through puberty and got (in my eyes) weirder and weirder. I read books that that were not too lengthy, too depressing, or about falling in love, and was always looking for more books. One day in the kids section in the basement of my local library I found a set of thin books about a girl named Kristin, living in 19th Century America, and next to that was a set of books on a girl named Samantha living at the turn of the 19th into the 20th century, and next to that a set on Molly, who lived through World War II. The books were fiction, but they had non-fiction history bits at the end, and each series of books followed the girls through a year of their lives. They had adventures, they went to school, celebrated holidays, got into fights with siblings, and generally acted like girls. No falling in love, no moping about, and doing it all in lovely dresses and interesting times.

I enjoyed all the books, read them all more than once, and in a fit of great rebellion and daring (I still feel guilty) I cut a reply-mail card out of the back of one of the library books and sent for the American Girl catalog. It turned out there were dolls that went with the books, gorgeous dolls with all the clothes from the pictures, plus doll furniture, accessories, and of course the books. I loved the catalog almost more than the books. It came in the mail quarterly, and was thrilling every time. I carried it around in my school bag, I read it cover to cover, over and over. Though I asked my parents and my grandparents for one of the dolls, I knew they were much too expensive. Instead I made lists of all my favorite accessories, I’d mix and match from the different time periods, and make my dream doll, I’d dream about owning all of the book sets in beautiful maroon slip covers. I did not actually get to purchase the books until I was 16 and according to my mother much too old for that sort of thing. But we found them on sale at a discount store, and I did read and reread them. Meanwhile my brother had discovered that he could take the cards out of the back of my catalogs and embarrass his friends by signing them up for a subscription to the American Girl Catalog delivered 4 times a year (very embarrassing for a teenaged male I’m told.)

While I was still receiving the catalog American Girl added a number of girls to the three I knew and loved. Felicity was the colonial girl, Addy escaped from Slavery during the Civil War, and Josephina grew up in what was Mexico before the southwestern states joined the union. They came out with a magazine, which I decided could never be as thrilling as the catalog. Besides, I was getting too old even in my own mind. After I was in high school and college and only peripherally aware of the goings on in American Girl they came out with baby dolls, modern dolls, and added a depression era girl and a Native American girl to the mix. I did hear about developments from time to time, in bookstores, and the occasional catalog, but for the most part they dropped off my radar. Until I started working at Strawbery Banke Museum.

I worked at Strawbery Banke Museum for a year in between my sophomore and junior years of college as an interpreter, or glorified tour guide. As one of the younger interpreters I was asked to work in the American Girl program during the summer.

It turns out there are a number of museum around the US licensed to run programs based on the books and dolls. There is only one museum program allowed specifically based on each of the historical dolls, so only Colonial Williamsburg can run programs on “Felicity”, the Colonial doll. Strawbery Banke has (or at least had) the license to run the “Molly” program to correspond with their WWII program. In this program the participants (mostly girls and their families) pay an extra ticket price and get a special tour of the museum, they get to meet characters from the time period (not Molly though because all the girls on the tour represent Molly) do activities that Molly does in the book (for WWII it was collect scrap metal and make purchases using a ration book) and have lunch from the time period (the poor 1945 girls get peanut butter and fluff sandwiches.)

The folks who staffed the program were all the younger interpreter/tour guides (we represented the camp councilors like when Molly went to summer camp.) The kids who went on the tours tended to either know a lot about the story, or know nothing about World War Two at all but from what I could tell they all enjoyed a museum program designed especially for them. Younger brothers enjoyed the Fluff sandwiches if nothing else. I liked working the program, though Molly was the least interesting to me, being the doll closest to modern times. I did not tell my fellow interpreters about my earlier obsession with the books and dolls, we were all college students, and above that sort of materialism.

While I was working on the program American Girl was bought by Matel, which was a huge disappointment to me, I hoped that American Girl would not change too much, but did not hold out a great deal of hope. At the end of that summer American Girl, the books and the dolls, dropped out of my life for the second time. Or more precisely, I was no longer keeping track of American Girl. I did not think about American Girl again until I acquired pseudo-nieces and nephews.

I now often spend Christmas with my boyfriend’s family and his siblings’ children. Giving gifts to kids can be a lot of fun, it is the chance to introduce another generation to all of the things that I loved as a kid. After the first couple of Christmases giving my favorite books and giving a lot of cool toys, I dared think about American Girl again. The 13 year-old was probably too old, and the 7 year old might be too young, but I dared to hope that the 7 year old could grow into it, and convinced a number of people to go in with me (the dolls are still darned expensive) to get Tessa the Felicity books and doll. I enjoyed my time browsing through the online catalog, and picking out a doll and some accessories, but that was nothing compared to the day that the box arrived on my doorstep. I came home from work and saw the box, lightly dusted with snow, in that telltale shape, and my heart beat a little faster. I had been waiting for 15 years for a package of that size and shape to show up on my doorstep, and while it was not for me, it was still thrilling. I did not attend the Christmas celebrations at which the books and doll made their debut, but I’m told that Tessa loved the books, was amazed by the doll, and (perhaps more telling) her older sister expressed her desire for an American Girl doll and promised she was not too old at all. (Maybe next year Alyssa.)

As for myself, when Stephen and I exchanged gifts that Christmas, there was a suspicious shaped box in my pile, and I did not get much past a corner of the wrapping before I was in tears. I received Samantha Parkington, my own American Girl, when I was 29. Some things are worth waiting for.

At the end of 2008 American Girl retired Samantha Parkington, the Victorian-era girl and the first book and doll set ever made. You can no longer buy Samantha, her outfits and accessories. Today the historical doll and book sets are only a small part of American Girl’s offerings, with baby dolls, modern dolls, and books and magazines on topics for modern girls (hair braiding, peer pressure, and many more.) It is my hope that the Samantha retirement is not the first of many more. There are those of us out there who love the dolls not just for their book tie-ins, but also for their historical subjects. And childhood dreams can be fulfilled many years later.

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One of My Favorite Museum Stories

It has been a bit since I last posted. Work, paper writing, and holiday prep have taken up my time, but not diminished my interest in all things history related (hence the papers, on the topic of history museums no less!) This post was actually something I wrote up for an assignment this semester, about moving museum experiences. It is also one of my favorite museum stories. I'll have to write up the 4th grade story later, but for the mean time, enjoy!

My sophomore year of college I was not terribly interested in history, I was a theatre major, taking classes in as many different departments and disciplines as I could get away with. A favorite professor (in the Mathematics department) who knew I was around over winter break invited me along on a trip to Old Sturbridge Village with a visiting professor who would be teaching a class in historical theatre in the spring. So the Math professor (from Tennessee) the visiting professor from California, and I, who had been to plenty of New England museums but never OSV, went on the self-guided tour.

In back of one of the houses was a shed that we wandered into, full of firewood and animal feed. One of the professors looked up and wondered about the round metal thing hanging from a rafter. I told her it was a punched tin lantern and was used in barns because the holes made sure the wind did not blow it out, nor would it light the barn on fire if knocked over. I knew all this because I’d made punched tin lanterns in Girl Scouts many years before.

The next house we entered by the front door and headed straight up the stairs that were jammed into the small space in the front hall. The other professor proclaimed that these were rather cramped, and I piped up again and explained that the chimney was in the middle of the house, so it was located right behind the stairs and there was no more room to spread out. I then had to assure the professors that I really had never been to this museum before but that many old houses, including the one I grew up in were the same.

I learned quite a bit on that tour of Old Sturbridge Village, there was and still is plenty of history that I do not know, but I also learned that my parents, many museum visits, even scout activities had been conspiring over the years to teach me without my even realizing it. While that trip to OSV was particularly memorable, it was the accumulation of a lifetime of museum visits that added up to a life changing experience. It seemed I had developed a love for history that had snuck up on me, and it seemed only natural to try to help others achieve the same through activities, field trips, and experiences rather than through text books, and classroom lessons.Photo behind the farm at Old Sturbridge Village taken by Alena Shumway, April 2008.

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Convergence: The Bog Man’s Daughter

In the 8th grade, my class was visited by a costumed performer portraying a Nineteenth Century Irish peasant. To this day I can vividly remember my reaction.

The 8th grade where I attended middle school had a great program, where all the students got to be Irish immigrants during the potato famine and we all kept diaries from the perspective of a real person who came to Boston during the mid-1800s. it was a fantastic learning opportunity, lasting for an entire quarter of the school year, and I’m sure I’ll be writing more here, since it was one of my first reenactment and living history experiences. but for the purposes of this post, it is enough to say that by the time it was over I knew a heck of a lot about the Irish potato famine for a 15 year old student from New Hampshire.

Later in the same year, once the program was over, but not over so long ago that the teachers did not think it was still beneficial, we had a special guest at our school. A woman came to our classroom to do a one-woman show called The Bog Man’s Daughter. I remember the teacher introduction barely, but it went something along the lines of: this woman is coming from the Museum of Science in Boston, she is a professional at the sort of stuff we’ve only been playing with. She is going to do a play about bogs and turf, which we’d learned about earlier in the semester, and about the ancient bodies that had been found preserved in the bog. In fact, the title, the bog man’s daughter game me the strong impression that this would be a woman portraying an ancient Irish culture hundreds, perhaps thousands of years before the stuff we’d studied.

When she stepped in to the area at the front of the room that had been cleared she pulled a piece of paper out of her basket, read to herself for a little then peered at is the audience and recited a line:

“I’m nobody, who are you?”

And I was instantly turned off. I was disgusted and disappointed. I felt justified as she continued:

“Are you nobody too?
Then there’s a pair of us
Don’t tell they’ll banish us you know.”

Now I don’t believe that many or possibly anyone else in my 8th grade class had the same reaction, because as far as I knew none of them had read poems by Emily Dickinson, and that poem in particular, before. I loved the poem and was upset that someone else was using it, but I was more upset that it was a nineteenth century American poem, and this woman was supposed to be from Ancient Ireland! Truly I do not remember much else from the show, other than I spent a lot of it thinking that I could have done a better job, had a better accent, been more consistent and certainly would not have started with an American poem, even if the word “bog” did appear at the end of the second stanza.

I have thought about my experience quite a bit, especially before I visit a classroom where I am in costume, in character, giving a lesson in a history I know and love. I know that we will not reach all students, but I certainly hope that we will reach most, and especially the ones that love history as much as I did/do.

This year as part of my readings for graduate work in Museum Studies I have read a lot of articles and books on museum theater (or theatre if you prefer) and two of them have mentioned the Museum of Science’s theater program, in fact, both of those have talked quite a bit about The Bog Man’s Daughter. The first article I read was in Case Studies in Museum, Zoo and Aquarium Theater. The article was written by the playwright, of the Bog Man’s Daughter and talked about finding a hook to make bogs interesting to a modern American Audience. The second was a book: Museum Theatre by the first woman who acted the part of the bog man’s daughter and for all I know may have actually been the person who visited my school. They both talk quite eloquently about bringing a vague topic (bogs) to life, from one of their most famous perspectives (the Nineteenth Century Irish maid.) They both mention the ingenious use of the Emily Dickinson poem, and neither of them find anything wrong with it, since the poem is read in a letter, supposedly from the character’s brother in America.

Did 8th grade me misunderstand their intent? yes, partly. The writer and performer had never meant it to be about Ancient Ireland but had always set it in the nineteenth century, and were fairly consistent about that. Did they misrepresent the culture even so? Yes, partly. The use of a well known American poem might have been initially put in because it is recognizable to many (and a fantastic poem.) But it put me off right out of the gate because Emily Dickinson is so tied to New England and America, so I had a hard time believing all the Irish stuff that came after that point, even if the performer had gone on to explain the poem’s place in her story. I didn’t buy it, so the performer had an uphill battle with me, and never quite won me back over.

We performers know we can not reach everyone, and for most of us knowing that we’ve reached even a few can make the performance worthwhile. But recreating history, when our audience has such a mixed amount of knowledge and tie to history, can be treacherous, in ways we may not first suspect.


Photo of Alena Shumway as Bess Brown, Photo by Jess Boynton. Read this entry on entry page

Personal Ghosts

Most of us carry personal ghosts in our hearts and in our memories. Those of us who have portrayed historical people sometimes carry ghosts from long ago.

Point of Dreams a novel by one of my favorite authors Melissa Scott, and her partner Lisa Barnett incorporates a very interesting premise, that of the ghost tide. In Point of Dreams, a historical based fantasy, ghosts are very real and astrology rules everyone’s lives. So when the stars are right everyone’s “personal ghosts” make themselves felt more strongly than any other time. In the story it is not necessarily a scary thing, in fact most of them are a comforting presence. An old woman who misses the companionship of her sister can talk to her again, the main character hears the patter at his heels of his favorite childhood pet. My favorite part of the ghost tide concept comes when it is revealed that one of the characters is haunted by a long dead king of his native land. He is of no relation to this king, but having studied the king and made contact, he will be greeted by the king every ghost tide.

Most of us carry personal ghosts inside us, in a much less manifest way of course. But we know people who have died, that we think about, care for, and all that. Some of us, especially those who have made history a part of our lives, may have ghosts from places and times well removed from our own but have quite a strong connection with.

The first specific person that I portrayed as a costumed roleplayer was Martha Wheelwright, poor widow of a sea captain, in the Wheelwright house at Strawbery Banke Museum. When her husband died and left her with a lot of debt the 26 year old Widow Wheelwright was granted permission to live in one third of her husband’s house after it was sold. On quiet mornings at the museum I sat in her kitchen and thought and thought about what it would have been like to be Martha. Was she angry, depressed, resigned to her fate? Was it as quiet in her kitchen as it was right now? I was never able to learn much more about her than my initial research revealed, but I thought a lot about her, and think about her still. Martha Wheelwright has become one of my personal ghosts.

Oh the things I would ask her if there really was a ghost tide. I’ll leave out a soul cake tomorrow just in case.

Photo of Alena (not in costume) and Nate Shumway at Wheelwright house, 1999, photo by Don Shumway. Read this entry on entry page