Author Archives: kittycalash

Medical Monday

12 Monday May 2014

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The view across Nassau St

The view across Nassau St

Today I’m procedure plus seven, and glad to be on this side of the OR. Surgery is never a fun or pretty thing, and even the most rational action (take care of this now, before it gets worse) seems crazy to your self-protective mind (but it’ll hurt!).

I am very fortunate that my surgeon has a sense of humor and a skillful hand, though when the visiting nurse saw the incision and said, “Wow, he’s good. That’s no Rhode Island incision,” I will confess I was of two minds. One, sad that I was not typical of the Ocean State in the way of a mahogany chair, and two, scornful and proud because of course I went to Boston where they can tell left from right, thank you.

Your foot goes in the sling, and you have to move your leg about.

Your foot goes in the sling, and you have to move your leg about.

I’m still not quite ready to read (I work my way through the Times, but I don’t know that it sticks), and I am definitely not ready to sew.

There’s a lot of time spent on physical therapy, reminding muscles that they’re just fine, and can wake up now. In the hospital, you are provided with a trapeze to lift your leg and encouraged to move it about. While oddly old-fashioned, and seemingly borrowed from Foyle’s War, it does work. I can’t slide my leg back-and-forth on the bed, but I can move if someone holds it up just a little bit. (The socks they give you are color coded: yellow is fall risk. I called them duckling feet, and the nurses were entertained.)

Lemon Ice. Delicious.

Lemon Ice. Delicious.

The other big focus is meals. In the hospital, you call and order your meal, and it is the only place I know where you can order Lemon Ice for breakfast with fruit and coffee, and where the kitchen will call and wake you up to make sure you place a dinner request before it’s too late.

Time becomes a strange thing: often, it’s measured in the blocks between doses of painkillers, and I find my sense of “early” and “late” are altered. The world gets small, focused as it is on basic needs, and small is how it will stay for a while. Every day is better, and this time around so much better than the last, but it will still be a while before I can really read and write and sew and think.

Thanks to everyone for all of your comments last week! They were very nice to read when I got my phone back on Tuesday, but replying was beyond my ken last week.

No, he didn't eat them

No, he didn’t eat them

The next week or two are going to be cat-like for me: meals, naps, exercise, and today, perhaps a trip to the porch. Fortunately, I have experts here to provide advice. Mr Whiskers understands the importance of meals, and fully appreciated the fragrant salad placed before him on Mother’s Day.

Fortunately, he left the flowers unmolested, and moved on to staring out the window at the birds who sounded like they were saying very rude things about him.

Kitty Calash On Hiatus

05 Monday May 2014

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A nurse on the ward at the Hospital of St. John and St. Elizabeth Hospital, St. John's Wood. Photograph by Henry Grant, 1954. Museum of London Image Number 008798

A nurse on the ward at the Hospital of St. John and St. Elizabeth Hospital, St. John’s Wood. Photograph by Henry Grant, 1954. Museum of London Image Number 008798

Gentle Readers, you may recall this post. In February, it seemed May would never come, but it has, which means a temporary halt to writing, posting, traveling, and sewing.

Thank you for reading, commenting, and sharing till now: there should be more fun come this summer, sooner if all goes well.

Frivolous Friday: Fashionable Reading

02 Friday May 2014

Posted by in Clothing, History, Research

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Portrait of a seated young lady, watercolor on paper by Anna Maria von Phul, 1818. Missouri History Museum, 1953 158 0013
Ladies’ Monthly Museum, v. 5, plate 71. July 1, 1816. Casey Fashion Plate Collection, Los Angeles Public Library

Anna Maria von Phul’s delicate watercolors of Saint Louis in 1818 (example at left) remind us that cities in the hinterland of America have never been as far behind the times as coastal dwellers might imagine. As a former resident of the Great Fly Over, I know how defensive people can be about their relative sophistication, and that could be why our Young Lady here appears slightly defensive in her posture.

The young lady is certainly fashionable in that white gown, and literate, too, though we cannot see what she is reading; perhaps Maria Edgeworth.

It took some doing to find a similarly posed and dated fashion plate with a book, for fashion has always been more fantasy than reality.

The HFF: Historical Food Fortnightly

01 Thursday May 2014

Posted by in Events, Food, History, Living History, Making Things, Reenacting, Research

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2f053ddd402318588e6c094c0ec0e6b4Every now and again Facebook proves itself useful: without following Dobyns & Martin Grocers, I would not have known about this interesting cook-along, the Historical Food Fortnightly.

The challenges look interesting, and I particularly like the seasonal fruit/vegetable one. This seems like a wonderful chance to cook historical recipes using seasonal, local ingredients, and I do like to remind people that historical eating is grounded in seasonal, local, eating. Plus pounds of raisins and sugar and gallons of alcohol.

Your local historical archive (or whichever one contains the works relevant to your interests) can be a great place to get started assembling documentation on local eating. Receipts for foodstuffs can be mixed into other accounts (cotton for your daughter, a parasol, a pair of shoes for your wife, 5/8 yard pink silk satin self) but you can still quantify tea, sugar, spices, Madeira, and flours. I find fresh produce somewhat harder to track–you won’t count what is growing behind your house– but fear not, New Englanders! Some of that hard work has been done for you.

A bill of fare for August

A bill of fare for August

J.L. Bell of the fantastic Boston 1775 blog wrote the book-length historic resource study General George Washington’s Headquarters and Home—Cambridge, Massachusetts, which I read before we went up to the “Washington Takes Command” event last July. (That sentence just seemed crazy, even to me…yes, I read 650 pages plus the event program to prepare for a 6-hour event…)

The report can be downloaded as a PDF, and if you’re looking for food, where you want to go is Chapter 6, Daily Life at Washington’s Headquarters (page 173 and following). On pages 195-197 the Steward’s Purchases are listed, sorted by Fruits, Vegetables and Grain, Spices and Flavorings, etc.

While Washington was maintaining (or causing to have maintained for him) a Genteel Household, the list of purchases is helpful in documenting the variety and types of foods available in Cambridge. I suspect that similar kinds of documentation exist in the historic resource reports or room use studies for places like Gunston Hall.

I cannot manage to keep up with the Historical Sew Fortnightly right now– things went pear-shaped in December— but we have to eat, historically or otherwise!

Tactical Strategies

30 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by in Events, Living History, Reenacting

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One of the things I liked best about this year’s School of Instruction was the Petite Guerre demonstration that followed a discussion of those tactics by Dr Stoltz of the 5th NY.

Mr McC & the Young Mr share a tree; note British officer and Hessian

Demonstrating skirmishes instead of linear warfare makes sense, given the numbers of men who take the field at events, and the smaller engagements will reflect exchanges common between the sides during the war.

What I like in particular is that using ‘petite guerre’ tactics requires the commanders and soldiers to tailor their actions to a site (site specific immersive experience: you cannot go wrong) and as the action unfolds, soldiers at all ranks are forced not only to move but also to think. Any action where the interpreters have to think is likely to create a better experience for visitors—and no great surprise, that usually makes a better experience for interpreters. It also flatters the site managers and visitors, who will appreciate that you’ve taken the time to explore and understand their place, and its place in history.

While you don’t necessarily want to fight the Battle of the Comfort Station, skirmishing around a site with buildings provides an objective, while multiple buildings and some woods or undergrowth provide cover for the Light Infantry troops and opportunities for deceit.

Of course, depending on troop size, it may be that each man needs his own tree. On Sunday, the Young Mr kept close to Mr McC, demonstrating troop [leg] length.

It’s hard to be invisible when you’re tall.

But I do mean this seriously: scaling events to available resources allows for a better interpretation.

That’s common sense, and sound museum practice, and that’s pretty much the business living history practioners (aka reenactors), are in: interpreting the past to visitors. Best practices for professionals and hobbyists are grounded in the same principles:

  • Primary source research
  • Material culture research
  • Site, resource, and audience- appropriate delivery
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Direction provided by Mr C with spontoon.

Building an encampment and tactical demonstration on the first two principles grounds the event in in historical authenticity. Adding the third principle, and increasing the use of smaller group tactics, tailored to the participants and site, would be a subtle but strategic shift to build a more engaging experience that better educates visitors and might even attract new recruits.