Reading this list of what spring cleaning meant in the well-run Victorian household makes me plenty glad to not live then with those standards. It’s from Country Gentlemen and apparently not the whole list, but the dizzying load of work…
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80% of American colonists
You remember the history lesson/s: how “our forefathers came to the New World searching for religious and political freedom” and so forth? Ain’t necessarily so, or if so, those lofty yearnings were tangential. In fact 80% of all white (mostly…
Some faces speak
Some faces just speak to you. You want to meet the person, drink wine together, take a walk, hear them talk. This is Mrs. John Philip Sousa (aka Jane van Middlesworth Bellis Sousa, 1862-1944). She has nada to do with…
Posted in WWWS
Humorous Phases of Funny Faces
In researching vaudeville acts for my next novel, I came upon J. Stuart Blackton, here pictured, who came to America from Yorkshire in 1894, gifted in rapid charicature, and created an act called the “Komikal Kartoonist.” As KK, he was…
Posted in WWWS
1900 predicts the year 2000
Predictions of the Year 2000 The Ladies Home Journal from December 1900, contained predictions by John Elfreth Watkins, Jr. of “What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years”. Mr. Watkins wrote: “These prophecies will seem strange, almost impossible. Yet, they have…
Posted in WWWS
Italian deer inherit the land
Some images work on your mind, whispering “story” or “metaphor” or “fable” or “warning.” Italy is freezing this winter, blanketed with quantities of snow unseen in many years. Here in the village of Alfedana in the mountainous spine of Italy,…
Which side are you on?
The new Ani DiFranco album, “Which Side Are You On?” calls to the great union song of the same title, written by Florence Reece, wife of Sam Reece, a coal miner and organizer during the bloody strike of 1931 in…
Posted in WWWS
Italian waiter, with attitude
Sometime in the 90’s, while I lived in Italy, American restaurant service style changed. I came back in 2000 and now all wait persons had names they needed to share. Go to a restaurant and be “taken care of.” Managers…
The wonder of boiled dinner
When Maurizio and I were first dating, he proposed a “cena bollita” (boiled dinner), a.k.a. “cena della mamma” (Mom’s dinner) on a cold winter night. Posed thus, with the aura of “la Mamma” and being the new girlfriend, naturally I…
The lady, unicorn, gorgon and manticore
During the Great Depression, a single woman in her 30’s, the sole heir of a very wealthy landowner in Kentucky inherited a palatial Victorian estate in a small town, surrounded by acres of immaculate gardens and hidden behind a high…
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