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.
Month: June 2016
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.
A List of Surprises 