Here’s some of what was going down in America in 1892: Ellis Island opened to immigrants. The first official basketball game was played at a YMCA in Springfield MA. Lizzie Borden (or was it the maid?) murdered her parents. Thomas Edison patented the telegraph. In Newport RI, the tycoons of the industrial age threw glamorous parties in marble mansions- and about 15 miles away, in Exeter RI, a young woman’s body was exhumed because her neighbors thought she was a vampire. That unlucky lady’s name was Mercy Lena Brown.
History of Opinions on Witchcraft and Kindred Subjects
Again, apologies for the blogging hiatus. I’ve been busy! Not only have I been reading through a backlog of Godey’s Lady’s Books, I’ve been crunning around like crazy getting ready to move to a new home in lovely Salem, MA.
When I tell people about our impending move, reactions fall into two camps. In the first camp are people who say something supportive (I am pretty sure) through nearly unintelligible Boston accents (hi father-in-law, Doug!). In the second camp is everyone else, who say something supportive in standard American English and then unfailingly mention witches or Halloween.
It’s no surprise that people, especially those who aren’t from the area, associate Salem with spookiness. The city has gone in hard on the hags. Take, for example, the witch on the Salem city police badge, or the fact that Mike roots against his high school rivals the
Salem Witches every year in the big Beverly/Salem Thanksgiving day football game.
But Halloween is when Salem really goes for it. More than 400,000 tourists visit this city of 42,500 residents every October. You name it, Halloween in Salem has got it. Annual Psychic Fair and Witchcraft Expo? Check. Little Pumpkin Duathlon, whatever that is? Yes. A “night of magic, music, and powerful rituals” at The Official Annual Salem Witches’ Halloween Ball? Sure.
A 1908 newspaper article out of Washington, DC, suggests that Salem has been up to this shtick for quite some time. It describes Salem going nuts with the holiday spirit- the streets full of “peanut stands, cow bells, tin horns, and all other imaginable instruments of bedlam” and throngs of “Bostonians, Harvard students, and would-be bohemians,” jostling along “slowly but good-naturedly, blowing horns in our ears” as they join in the one celebration in the country “parallel to New York City’s Election Night festivities.” As crazy as the NY State comptroller election?! No wonder the crowd was “charged with suppressed excitement” for…wait for it…the big Fourth of July bonfire.
That’s right- if Salem was known for any holiday festivities in 1908, it was for the Fourth of July. It appears that Salemites didn’t hang a bunch of people in 1693 and then jump right into their scary hockey masks in 1694. So, you may ask, at what point did Salem go from a Standard Quaint New England Town to a Quaint New England Witch Town (or as I like to call it, QNEWT)? Great question- I’ve been wondering, too. Let’s get down to some edutainment, my friends.
Continue reading “History of Opinions on Witchcraft and Kindred Subjects”
Lady’s Mag
Sorry for the absence, dear readers! I am sure all six of you have been hurting without your history fix. A real post is in the works- but in the meantime, let me share some of what has been distracting me from the blog.
On a recent weekend getaway, I stopped to grab a magazine for some beach-side browsing. To my chagrin, there was no Real Simple available to satisfy my addiction to staring at photographs of things I will never buy attractively scattered on white backgrounds. So, I ended up buying a Cosmopolitan, something I haven’t read in many years.
People: have you read a Cosmo recently?
Reading a Cosmo as an adult, feminist woman was an out-of-body experience. Not even because I was angered by it, just because it seemed to have been written by teenage aliens. I had no idea what was happening. One article was about “crunning”…crawl-running. Crunning.
My Cosmo experience got me wondering about the evolution of the lady mag. I have since been enjoying flipping through the grandmother of women’s magazines- Godey’s Lady’s Book. Godey’s was the most widely circulated magazine in pre-Civil War America. It is fabulous. Check out the collection at archive.org– you can thank me later for introducing you to articles like “How I Came to Detest Babies!”, “Tom Snuggery in Search of a Wife”, “Gossip About Gloves”, “Charades in Action”, and “Extract from an Old Fogy’s Notebook.”
Godey’s doesn’t just have great charades tips- it has great illustrations. For our mutual enjoyment, I decided to pair up some of my favorite drawings in the 1850’s and 1860’s Godey’s in archive.org’s collection with some real headlines from Cosmopolitan.com. Allow me to reiterate that these Cosmo headlines are from an actual publication written by humans that is currently being sold for legal currency.
City of Lite (Beers)
At age 18, I was surprised to learn that I did not speak French.
This self-discovery was made in the literal first moments of my college education- my first class on my first day. “Bonjour!” the professor greeted my class. “Bonjour!” I replied cheerfully, opening my notebook and waiting for the English to start. “French frenchez french french frenchez blahzez blah blahz nous!” she continued, handing out syllabi.
L’uh-oh.
Behind the Scenes
Recently, I spent a day helping paint my sister’s new house. My soon-to-be-brother-in-law’s handiest friend, a soft-spoken middle-aged man, had been helping with their renovations for weeks. At the end of the day we all went out to dinner, and he and I made the usual chit-chat you make with people you don’t know very well. I asked what he did for a living, because that’s what one does. I’m not sure what I expected the answer to be. English professor? Retired architect? Artisanal carpenter, maybe?
“Have you ever heard of King Midas?” he responded. “I excavate his father’s tomb in Turkey.”
Oh, ok. Never has “How about you?” been such a loaded question.
Indiana Jones helps my sister do home repairs in his free time. Who knew? And who knows what else would surprise us if we looked at things a little harder? Places, people, and products sometimes have backstories you’d never expect. Let’s take a look at some of my favorites.
For Those Who Are At All Particular
I recently learned that my father-in-law grew up just down the street from the spot where the victims of the Salem Witch trials were hanged. The site of this disturbing episode in American history is now an unremarkable looking patch of forest abutted by a Walgreens, a juxtaposition I found jarring. Just a few feet from where terrified 17th-century women faced their executioners, people are now impulse-buying Starbursts.
Weird, right?
It made me think: what once went down on the land where I do my daily thing? So I did some digging into the town where I live- lovely Arlington, MA. Here’s what I found. Continue reading “For Those Who Are At All Particular”
Not So Easy Chair
Popular Science, vol. 88, no. 5. May 1916.
Popular Science, vol. 88, no. 5. May 1916.
Hawmps!
The US Camel Corps was a failed 19th century attempt to introduce camels as military transport in the southern United States. You read that right- ride ‘em, camelboys!
Look, we’re all adults here. We all played the Oregon Trail. We know what travel conditions were like on the American frontier before the completion of the trans-continental railroad in 1869. The United States had gotten a whole lot bigger when we annexed Texas, California, and New Mexico in the 1840s, but getting out to these new regions was a challenge. It was hot and unpleasant. Horses and mules weren’t cutting it.
Jefferson Davis had the answer: camels. While you probably remember Davis for his stint as President of the Confederacy, he had previously served as Secretary of War under Franklin Pierce, and even previouslier had served as a senator and member of the military affairs committee. Back when he was on that committee in 1848, Major Constantine Wayne had recommended that the Dept of War appropriate 30k to buy fifty camels and breed them in the American West. The committee didn’t go for the proposal, but the idea got Davis dromedary dreamin’.
On the Fence
What’s the difference between revenge and spite? Here’s what I think it boils down to: revenge is sweet, but spite is semi-sweet. Revenge wreaks satisfying havoc on the revengee, and then lets the avenger walk away from the car explosion in unruffled slow-mo. Spite wreaks satisfying annoyance on the spitee, but annoys the spiter in the process. Let me present two case studies.
Let’s say that my friend insults me, so I get him drunk, invite him down into my catacombs, and lure him into a dark corner with the promise of showing him my finest wine. While he is occupied with the nozzle, I grab him and chain him to the wall. Then I build a brick box around him, change over the laundry from the washer to the dryer while I’m down there, and return to the couch. My enemy will die while using the last of his cell battery to read this blog and reflect and on what he’s done, and besides making an extra trip to Trader Joes to replace the wine I accidentally bricked in there with him (you’re welcome, Jerry), there is no downside for me. I even got to practice my masonry. There’s only one victim, and that “victim” is Jerry. That’s good revenge- one loser, one winner.
Now let’s say that I am on my morning commute, and a man sits down beside me. He plants his elbows at leisurely angles as he unfolds the Boston Globe, apparently too good to just read celebrity tweets in the Metro like the rest of us. He spreads his legs so wide that I suspect that he sidelines as a gymnast. So I sprawl out too, sticking my elbow into his side like a chicken wing. When he realizes he is being challenged, he starts to put some force behind his spread, trying to push my legs back out of his way. I do the same. A baby starts crying, either because of the moderate delays caused by a medical emergency at Park Street/disabled train at Alewife/signal problem up ahead or because of how thick the air is with tension. My nose itches, but I can’t scratch it because moving my arm would give Globe an opening to regain territory. I am really far less comfortable than I would be if I just squeezed into the space he’d hoped to allot me, but that would make him and the patriarchy happy. So I will make him uncomfortable, and make myself uncomfortable in the process. It’s nothing but downside for everybody, but it’s worth it. That’s spite, baby- sweet, sweet spite.
Revenge gets all the glory. Let’s celebrate a monument to spite: The Crocker Spite Fence.
An Affair to Remember
Alexander Hamilton is hot these days. The Broadway musical Hamilton has the first Secretary of the United States Treasury singing and dancing his way back into American hearts- and generating a ton of buzz and bucks in the process. While Hamilton’s never been my favorite founding father, real or musical- I’ll take real John Adams/Mr. Feeney as John Adams in the film 1776, thanks- I would be at this show in a second if only a pair of tickets wouldn’t set me back nearly a grand. What am I, a national bank?
So for those of us who aren’t going to make it to the show until it is off-off-Broadway, here’s a true-life run down of one of the play’s juicier subplots. I would say that Hamilton spoilers lie ahead, but what else is history but a bunch of spoilers for presidential musicals, really? My 7th grade history teacher was basically the Reality Steve of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson.
A List of Surprises 