Candlelight Stroll 2013

Family Parlor in Goodwin Mansion

This past weekend was the second weekend of Strawbery Banke Museum’s Candlelight Stroll. This is the Big Event for me in my position of Manager of Special Events. The month leading up to this past weekend, and the last couple weeks in particular have been hellishly stressful, but the weekends went off beautifully. Yes, the first hour of the first Saturday was spent running around fixing all the things, and there was a bunch of stuff that I wanted to do that did not get done in time. But visitors seemed to have a good time, I got some compliments, and only the nit-pickers found anything to complain about.

So Candlelight Stroll is big.

Eight of the museum’s houses are set up how they would have looked in December, in eight different time periods. That means 8 different research bases, 8 different stories to tell, 8 different sets of costumes, music, food, everything. Oh, and eight different sets of decorations made from local botanicals in historically appropriate designs. Every house is full of light, and role players, and activity.

Then there are the demonstration and exhibit houses. During regular museum open hours there are demos of: Hearth cooking, weaving, pottery, coppering, and blacksmithing. This past weekend those were joined by: windsor chair making, tin smithing, and basket making. Then there was all the food: the museum has a new cafe, plus this year we served booze in the 1777 tavern, free hot cider and cookies, and museum members got their own food-filled reception.

Then there was all the live music. Local choruses singing carols, piano music in the Visitor Center, bands in the Cider Shed, Roving guitarists. And puppet shows, and wandering role-players, and a kid’s treasure hunt, and Saint Nick handing out candy, and horse-drawn carriage rides, and hands on crafts...

Yes, I am in charge of all of that.

I get a ton of help from the Horticulture Department, Curatorial, Education, Development, heck, every department. This is by no means a one-woman-show. But ultimately if it falls apart or succeeds I am the one responsible.

Making magic like this event, I absolutely love that. I love that visitors have a magical-non-commercial experience. I love creating safe, celebratory experiences that have a ton of really rich history thrown in.

But I really missed role playing. I was not in historical costume, I was not personally bringing the past to life. I got to hire a bunch of really talented people to do it, and that was definitely satisfying, but not the same.

Peek in the door to Rider-Wood

I’m looking forward to next weekend, when we get to do it all over again for the final time this year, and I’m looking forward to the next time I get to dress up, even if it won’t be for a while. Read this entry on entry page

Renaissance Toiletries

This fall I did not blog about the Connecticut Renaissance Faire because I was starting the new job, dealing with some health issues, and well, life. Now, most of the posts I was going to write have drifted from my brain but one that I still want to write about, even several months later, is my Renaissance toiletries kit. I love being well organized when I pack, and having to haul and hide a whole lot of modern stuff is a pain. So over the years I've been trying to add more of the daily items that I think it likely a noble traveler would need to carry, to replace my own toiletry items that I schlepp from event to event.

Wooden box containing my historical hair supplies

The first group of items that I did this with were my hair items. Instead of using modern hair goop, bobby pins, and elastics, I put together a kit that contains:
horn combs
thin twill tape and needles
herbal hair salve
a few brass pins
some bone bodkins
a lovely reproduction copper mirror

Open box of hair supplies.

The bone bodkin idea I got from Janet Stephens (Her youtube chanel is fantastic!) She uses them the same way we use modern hair clips, to hold sections of hair out of the way while working on other hair bits. Janet also talks about sewing hair into place instead of pinning it, and she is not the only one that I've seen doing this. I attended a wonderful workshop at Pennsic 39 all about hair wrapping that was so well researched and right on. Unfortunately all I have of that presentation is a paper handout, which is safely tucked on my shelf of paper copies and hand-outs. The mirror was a birthday gift from some fellow guild members, I think they ordered it from England, I'm not sure.

The last bit is the hair salve. My hair is totally shiny and frizzy and if I did not put something in it I would constantly look like I was touching one of those electric balls that makes your hair stand on end. In my every-day life I use a lot of coconut oil, or "hair moisturizer" products, and I could have put one of those in a little ceramic bottle, but I wanted something more historical. Most of the Renaissance hair recipes I found were for lightening the hair, or make it grow thicker, so in the end I made up my own recipe involving lanolin, almond oil, and some herbs that I knew were available in Renaissance Europe, meanwhile I'll keep looking.
Most of this fits into a nice little carved wooden box that I found at a Renaissance faire. Since two of us in the guild bought the same box I painted mine so we could tell them apart, and because we know that so many of the wooden pieces would have been painted, but have not survived in their painted state. I love my box of historical hair supplies! The only problem I've had with keeping it stocked is with the really thin twill tape. I tend to wear the hairdos home, then forget to put the tape back in my box and it gets lost somewhere along the way. Luckily twill tape is cheap and not too difficult to replace.

My small wooden chest, covered by a pillow sham case.

My "Bling" box.

The hair stuff box looks nice in my small wooden chest along with some reproduction letters, pouches of coins, playing cards, spare hosen, and what Stephen and I call our bling boxes: round wooden boxes that I painted blue on the outside and lined with black velvet where we keep our jewelry, big gold chains, massive rings, fancy paternosters, pomanders and other little tid-bits.


More on toiletries: A few years ago I picked up a pitcher and bowl, and made some quick little towels to go with them. We had a hand washing set-up just like all the paintings of the annunciation. Not long after I bought them we broke the big white bowl I got for hand-washing, but that was okay because I replaced both bowl and pitcher with a better looking set of ceramics with a lovely ochre glaze that I got at HomeGoods. This past year I found two little ceramic oil and vinegar pourers at Pier One, they are yellow glazed, so they clash pretty horribly with the hand washing set but I don't care. One pourer we've filled with dish detergent for the”kitchen”, the other I used for rose water (also found cheap at homegoods) for our hand washing.

Our hand washing station.

Stephen's straight razor, brush, and other odds & ends.

I'm slowly trying to increase my historical toiletries kit. I'm researching liquorice root as a form of toothbrush, I've made a sunburn salve for the end of each event day, I found a lovely kit on another reenactor's blog. She uses several Lush products, specifically their bar deodorant and dry toothpaste, I think both of those would be easy enough to "pass", even if they are not historical. If I forgot to put away my toiletries before we open up to the public (that has never happened before) I would feel totally fine if next to the water pitcher there was a creamy white soap-looking bar wrapped in oilcloth, when the reality is I forgot to put my deodorant away. For our usual shower soap we use Dr. Bronner's Liquid soap, and that is easy enough to put in a little ceramic jar. Some of my jars I got from potters who supply for local reenactors, others I got from the Plimoth Plantation potters. They were labeled ink wells, but I think they are perfect for more apothecary type uses.

Stephen already shaves with a straight razor, and is collecting his historical shaving gear to go in his little wooden chest with his bling box, extra shoes, gloves, all those little things. This year I want to make some better towels for hand washing, hopefully out of linen, and hand hemmed instead of the machine hemmed cotton ones we have now. This may be a never ending project, but I’m enjoying it. Read this entry on entry page

Halloween and What I'm up to

This always seems to happen, I hit the end of October and just feel like sleeping for the next few months. Last year I did manage to blog a tiny bit in November, the year before I did not manage a single post in November. Yup, it is a trend.

This year I’ve spent the last month and a half jumping in the deep end of event management here at the museum. My first day was October 1st and my first event was October 25th. Luckily the person I am replacing was both very well organized and willing to come in and spend a number of days helping me get going. I have relied very heavily on her past planning and notes as I get going organizing and carrying-out special events here at the museum. Now, I am not in charge of all events; weddings and private events are handled by someone else, educational events and fundraisers are different too. I am in charge of Halloween, Christmas, Independence Day, and a wine and food festival in the fall. That means my schedule is very heavily weighted towards this time of year, just when I am getting started!

Halloween was interesting. As an event it strays pretty far from some of the museum’s mission: specifically the part about encounters with history and preservation, but it does have a lot to do with community which is also part of the mission. The Friday and Saturday before Halloween the museum opens for safe and spooky (but not scary) trick-or-treating for kids of all ages. There are a few activities, some Halloween themed entertainment, but mostly it is a chance to walk around the neighborhood that is Strawbery Banke Museum and fill a bag with all sorts of candy. With the help of the properties department I got to purchase over 35,000 individual-sized pieces of candy. Just the smell of all that candy was enough to give anyone a sugar high. Over the two evenings more than 3,000 visitors came through. By the end we had just a few pounds of candy left, and from what I heard folks seemed pretty satisfied with their experience.

So what did all that have to do with history? Very little, unfortunately. The event really is geared towards all the local families that want a safe place to trick-or-treat, and the evenings are so crowded that a lot of the historic houses are just too small and too fragile to be used in this manner. Could more history be injected into the event? Heck yes! I did not have a lot of time this year to come up with anything new, these past few weeks have really been about learning the ropes, but anything I am involved in inevitably gets history injected into it, and all these events take place at a museum! Next year I’ll have those trick-or-treaters learning some history, I guarantee.

Next up, the biggest event at the museum: Candlelight Stroll. Three weekends in December, every building on the museum grounds, 300 years of history, over ten thousand visitors expected. This one is a whopper, so if you don’t hear from me for a while please understand I’m bringing history to life in some of the most exciting, magical ways that I know how.

Then come visit me at the museum!


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A Different Kind of Costume

As of the end of September I am no longer a Costumed Roleplayer at Strawbery Banke Museum. I have given up what may have been the best job ever, but since this is the second time I have given it up, I get the feeling that it won’t be the last. I guess I know what I’ll be doing when I retire!

I gave up the job because the wages are so low that I was not able to contribute to my family in a monetary way. We’ve got a mortgage, two cars, pets, medical bills. Yes, I probably could have changed my lifestyle to reflect the abysmal pay, but I can’t ask my family to do that too. And the commute was killing me. An hour and twenty minutes each way is a hard slog.

Well the commute is not going to change, but I’ve been given a stellar opportunity. The person in charge of special events (or at least some of them) at the museum where I’ve spent the last two years is moving on, and after I gave my notice as a role-player and expressed my interest in the events position the museum hustled to make me an offer. I am now Strawbery Banke’s Manager of Special Events! I’ll be able to use the skills I honed stage managing renaissance faires, then tempered in fire up at the college. I’ve only been in the job a week and a half, but I’m enjoying it so far, I’m not feeling overwhelmed yet.

There are four main events that I will oversee, the 4th of July, a wine festival, Halloween Trick-or-Treat, and the December Candlelight Stroll. I’ve jumped in feet first planning the Halloween event, luckily it is a fairly low-key event whose sole purpose is to give the community kids a fun, spooky (but not scary) experience. Christmas is the biggest event and will follow shortly after. It is the one I am most worried about and the one I am most looking forward to. If anyone who reads my blog wants to come help out, I promise I run a really fun event!

But on the title of this post. I only took one weekend and one day off in between my last day of role-playing and my first day in the new position. Most folks had been informed (especially the ones who read email) that I was switching from seasonal to regular staff, but some still mentioned that it was a shock seeing my come in wearing “normal” business clothes. I did not look like I stepped out of some other era, nor was I wearing the interpreter uniform of a burgundy polo and khaki pants. But one of my role-player buddies who is very perceptive observed of my office attire: “it is just a different kind of costume.”

So I’ll be living less history during the work week, but I’ll be able to do more of my own reenacting on the weekends, and hopefully I’ll get to create magical events where scores of people will get to experience Living History.


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Presenting the Presentation

The day of my presentation I was so incredibly nervous! I had hard copies of my various notes, plus originals for the handout. I had electronic versions in my email and on my iPad, I even packed a shirt to change into so I would not have to wear my red uniform shirt during the talk. Of course when I got to work the person playing Mrs. Shapiro called out sick, so I had to scramble into my back-up clothes and spend the day being Mrs. Shapiro. Actually that was probably better, it meant I could stay in Mrs. Shapiro mode and only think about feeding the family, and Avrham at work, Mollie at school. Mrs. Shapiro did not give presentations to colleagues. But when the crowds died down in the afternoon I was again stuck in my own thoughts, getting more and more nervous. At the end of the day I practically ran out of Shapiro house to go get ready for my talk.

Since it was not scheduled too far in advance, and because my talk was advertised as mostly for role-players, I did not have too big a crowd. Still, enough people did show up, and everyone who did was very attentive. The folks in the education department had asked for an advance copy of the bibliography so they could order some of my recommendations for the little library, they ended up ordering a ton of books! It was awesome to see all my old friends (in book form) waiting for me to tell more folks about them.

I started by talking about how important it is that we never stop honing our skills as interpreters (costumed or uniformed.) That we need to keep learning and developing new skills no matter how long we have been at it. Then I segued into an activity to determine what some of those interpretation skills are. I got some resistance at the beginning of the activity, but most people seemed to get in to it, and everyone seemed to figure out what I was aiming for. It started with everyone writing down various types of skills from a couple of different types of occupations: historian, teacher, and actor. I asked them to write down skills that they might use as interpreters, to think of those things that the best of us do well, and attitudes we all strive for.

The next part I was up in front of the whiteboard, while the group shouted out various skills they had either written down or just though of. I filled up the entire board with my horrible handwriting, my audience only corrected my spelling twice. The point was not really to have everyone read and memorize the skills we put on the board, the point was to help my fellow interpreters recognize the diversity of skills one can draw on in our profession and help them recognize ways to keep learning. When someone seemed to have a little trouble articulating an idea they had I was often able to fill in with a vocabulary-type word to describe the things we all do, but never talk about. As I wrote down skills I pointed to the various publications where my audience could find out more information. Before we finished each section i made sure to go back to the list I had compiled ahead of time, there were only a few things in each section that no one had yet mentioned that I thought were important enough to add. For the most part, my fellow interpreters got the important skills all on their own.

Once the board was full, folks asked questions, of me and of each other. We had a heated discussion on "telling the truth" and what that meant as a role-player. I tried to not let one or two people dominate the discussion, but at the same time I certainly did not keep an iron grip on the lines of discussion.

The whole presentation plus discussion ran for just over an hour, and I got quite a few compliments when it was done. I did not get a lot of constructive criticism, my guess is that the workshop was so far outside everyone's experience of other workshops that they did not have a lot to compare it to. I did have one participant come up to me the day after and share one of her favorite Emily Dickinson poems, and that was incredibly special.

Now I want to give my presentation to more groups, see if I can inspire more people who do historical interpretation (in costume or otherwise, at a museum or on their own) to hone their skills and never stop learning.


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