Category Archives: Photography

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Things I Learned on Mother’s Knee (or some other joint)

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Steve’s mom had knee replacement surgery yesterday.  He called his sister after work to see how the procedure went (all well), and then asked, “So, did you get the old knee?”  She laughed, of course, but I was thinking it would be a great addition to our museum cupboard in the dining room.  Then Steve asked if it was legal to keep human bones.  Huh?  Hmmm.   I’ve discovered that there are no federal laws prohibiting the ownership or sale of human bones.  Prior to 1987, most bones were imported from India, and until 2008, China also exported human bones.  No more.  There are some state laws restricting the import and export of human remains across state lines, and Native American material is very much protected under the Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.   So we have a right to bear arms and bare bones.

She had her hip replaced a few years ago.   I wonder what they did with that?

The Museum

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Happy Birthday, Dad!

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My father was born on July 10, 1933.  He died in 2010.  He had a group of work colleagues who were also born in July, and they used to call themselves the SRA Cancer Society.  My father did have prostate cancer at one time, but surgery eliminated it completely.  He died of Alzheimer’s.  He was never one to celebrate his birthday in any obvious way, but he did enjoy fine dining.  Fortunately for him, he had the wherewithal to enjoy the very finest.  I benefited from the “trickle down effect” of that boon, meaning that I have dined well on his generosity myself.  On the occasion of his 70th birthday, we stayed at The Benbow Inn near Garberville, CA.  Located on a river in the redwoods, this beautiful resort was established in 1926.  My father counted it as one of his favorite places.  The first time I went there was on the way north to Oregon for my sister’s wedding.  My 9-month old daughter Susan was with me.  Ordinarily, children are not allowed in the dining room after 8pm, but the management made an exception for my father, who promised that the baby would be beautifully behaved…and she was.  Later that evening, I realized she had a bit of a fever and digestive distress, but that only mellowed her out.  The next time I visited the Inn was my father’s 70th birthday.  I had begun to notice signs of memory loss and confusion during that trip, but he was completely in his comfort zone at the restaurant. My mother and brother look a bit skeptical in this photo:

I remember the delight he showed in settling in at the bar and sampling from their extensive selection of Scotch before dinner.  I compare it to my absolute thrill at finding a decanter of sherry in my room.  So nice of them!  The next day, we had them pack us a picnic to eat while out hiking.  It was elegant and tasty, but a far cry from the granola bars and such that my father usually took on his woodland walks.  

I think I set the camera on a tree stump and used the self-timer on this one…

My father would be participating in the heavenly banquet of eternity right now, and I can imagine him enjoying himself immensely in that setting.  I’m off to get myself a little supper, probably just some hummus and a glass of Shiraz, but I eat and drink to his honor in gratitude this evening.  I love you, Dad.  To Life!!

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Broadcast News

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I was interviewed by a local news station on the 4th of July and asked about what it’s like to wear 19th century clothing in 106 degree heat.  The interview lasted about 10 minutes, and I talked about the resilience of the pioneers and how they adapted to their environment and lived in harmony with it instead of attempting to control it at all costs…or something like that.  In my mind, I was reaching for a thoughtful perspective.  However, the editors chose about 10 seconds of me talking about evaporation, hydration and not lacing up my corset so tight that I can’t breathe.  I can’t figure out how to link to the MOV file that I have in order to show you.  Watching myself on camera is humbling.  Why are my nostrils so large?

Peering through the open-backed pews at St. Peter’s


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Pinball Wizard

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My weekend working at Old World Wisconsin is over for this week.  We’ve survived the brutal heat, although the beeswax candles in St. Peter’s did not…one suffered from heat exhaustion to the point that it fell out of its holder and now lays tangled in the brackets of the sanctuary lamp chandelier.  Another of its mates is listing at about a 90 degree angle.  We’ve had no significant rainfall since June 16.   Crowds have been sparse, way off the season norms.  How do I stay sane while the sweat drips down my corset?  I meditate and sew.  I was taught to make pinballs during my training week.  These are dodecahedrons (12-sided spheres) of 5-sided bits of fabric, sometimes called “Bucky balls” (named after Buckminster Fuller and his geodesic domes).  They hold pins and needs like a pincushion, but can also be used for playing hackey sack or juggling, or hung with a ribbon on a Christmas tree (not that anyone in the 19th century used them for that!).   I find it fun to pick out the bits of fabric and mix and match the colors…and it’s a whole lot simpler than quilting.  I can sew 12-20 stitches per inch by hand.  I’ve made about 10 of these so far; a few have not been stuffed yet because finding the scrap wool and fabric to put inside requires a “supplies requisition form”.  I have begun to hand hem linen towels as well, and when I’m at the Hafford House on Tues. and Wed., I crochet rag rugs.  So here are some photos of my handiwork, and a shot of my favorite visitor today: a butterfly who landed on the 173 year old wood and spread his magnificent wings for me. 

Hope you had a great weekend; maybe unlike you,  I look forward to Mondays because it’s my day off!

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Interesting Inconsistency vs. Efficiency

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People are inconsistent.  We must be; we’re alive, living, responding, changing.  Funny thing is, in the West we’re often taught that this is a bad thing.  It isn’t efficient.  It isn’t dependable.  It goes against all kinds of Protestant ethics of order and purpose and such.  But in Eastern cultures, it’s often celebrated.  “If you see the Buddha in the road, kill him.”  When the Buddha becomes a monolith, a never-changing dogma, it is no longer a life-giving source. I look to historical information and try to understand why people did what they did for a living now; I’m a historic interpreter.  I keep fighting this penchant for landing on the “right answer”, the one that describes order and purpose and makes sense.  I’m learning more that the joy of interpreting history is found in saying “we don’t know why”.  We’re quirky; isn’t that marvelous?  We change, we evolve, we digress, we’re capricious.  In many cultures, gods were like that, too.  It was acceptable, maybe expected.  But in Western theology, that became a bad characteristic for a god, and immutability became important.  We want something dependable, something stable, so much that we’re willing to construct it and enshrine it.  Why?  Because it allows us to stop trying to be responsible in the world?  The effort of responding is perhaps a constant drain, and we are lazy by nature?  I think of cultures that are resilient, flexible, responsive to the environment, and I think that consistency is maybe not that important or beneficial after all.  

  “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance, 1830

What made me think about this?  I was looking into Wisconsin history, and the history of the Upper Peninsula, and came across the story of Henry Schoolcraft.  His first wife was half Ojibwa and helped him in his scholarship of Native American cultures.  His second wife wrote a popular anti-Tom novel in response to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s famous book and disapproved of mixed-race unions, thereby alienating her stepchildren completely.  Why would the same man be married to both of these women?  “I don’t know why.”

Bookshelf at the Raspberry School, Old World Wisconsin

I recognize in myself a tendency to try to put my partner in a box, to figure out the consistent rules that will help me predict his behavior.  There aren’t any, really.  But he is hardly a sociopath.  He simply wants to be allowed to communicate his thoughts and feelings as they arise, to be understood in the moment, known intimately for the authentic and complicated man he is.  He is more than willing to talk and reason and explain honestly and even to make promises and act on them in order to gain my trust.  Perhaps it is simply my natural laziness that wants to put labels on him and save myself the trouble of paying attention.  Truly caring about a person requires great effort.  It is hardly efficient.  It necessitates all kinds of little adjustments.   And that is a valuable process, a craftsmanship of sorts.  Which reminds me of this clip my brother-in-law sent me which he titled: Precision East German manufacturing in the workers paradise.  I’m not sure if he was trying to be cynical.  I think it illustrates a very authentic part of human process. 

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Happy Interdependence!

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We survived the festivities at Old World Wisconsin in 104 degree heat!  I wore a very special costume that had only been worn once before.  It was silk and “tropical weight” wool with beautiful accents of military buttons and lapels and florets. 

I was interviewed by Fox 6 News about my experience wearing 19th century clothing in the heat.  I relayed information about what I was wearing and how it felt and then said that I thought people in the 19th century lived more closely in harmony with their environment instead of trying to manipulate or change it.   Therefore, they get used to variations in temperature and become more resilient….or something like that.  Then I went into the church and played a few hymns on the pump organ while the assembly sang.  Then another interpreter took over and I sang descants along to some more hymns.  When that concluded, we closed the building and got ready for the parade.  I was part of the Temperance Society and marched singing a song to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic urging the whiskey shops to close!  Steve carried the banner of the Democratic candidate who lost to Rutherford B. Hayes.  There were stirring speeches, but we omitted the reading of the Declaration of Independence in order to keep the program short.  It was, after all, about 95 degrees in the shade.  After that program, I got to go take my lunch in the air-conditioned break room and sample the potluck goodies (including root beer floats!) that the staff had contributed.  The afternoon visitors were few and far between, so I spent the time doing some sewing and mopping my head and neck with a handkerchief dipped in cold pump water. 

After work, I dropped my costume off and changed into 21st century clothes.  Now I’m home sipping a cold Wisconsin beer and lying nearly naked in front of a fan.  It’s 90 degrees in the house, but that’s still cooler than it is outside!  No matter how independent we think we are, we are still part of the environment, still interconnected to life, still dwellers in a habitat, trying to survive.  That teaches me to respect the planet and everything on it and to strive to become happily interdependent in the world.

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Going With the Flow

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Change and the movement of life – flow and motion – energy passing through places and phases.  Here I sit in an old house with the shades drawn and the ceiling fans going fast, aware that the heat index is at a level that prompted my employer to call most of the staff and direct them to stay at home.  It’s hot and humid…but only for now.  This is what my street looked like in February:

I have been reading through some letters and journal entries that I wrote in the year 2007, the year before my husband died, when my teenaged girls were in serious distress and the entire family was in deep pain.  Here’s a list of feelings I wrote about:

depression, disappointment, hurt, shame, guilt, disgust, loneliness, despair, anger/frustration, regret/sorrow, fatigue, pain, inadequacy, fear, fragility, helplessness

Here’s a list of feelings that I decorated with a jagged black boundary and labeled “Off Limits, Not Allowed”:

Beauty, Happiness, Joy, Love, Health, Excitement, Passion, Rest, Pleasure, Peace

I wrote: “What do you do with feelings?  They’re supposed to have ‘a beginning, a middle, and an end’, but when you’ve had the same feelings swirling around you for a half a year, a year, several years — they aren’t just feelings anymore.  They become a way of life.  I feel like Job — afflicted with boils.  These hives on my legs itch like crazy, and I have no clue why I have them.  I just keep hoping they’ll just go away.”

When you attempt to stop the flow of energy and movement and turn your present feelings or thoughts into a way of life, it may seem like you’re taking control and choosing something you want.  It may turn out to be something that mires you in suffering, however.  That’s something of which to be aware.  You could apply that to the physical environment: attempting to regulate the temperature and keep it at a constant 72 degrees Fahrenheit as a chosen way of life may cause you to suffer inordinately whenever the temperature is much lower or higher than that.  Aversion and attachment causes suffering.  Letting go of them allows the dance of life to swirl you into new places.  If you find joy in the movement and change of life, you will not be disappointed.  If you insist on sitting in the same pile of ashes for years, you will inevitably feel itchy and uncomfortable.  You can hope that changes miraculously, or you can get up and move.  As Jesus said to the man sitting at the Sheep’s Gate Pool complaining and making excuses, “Wilt thou be made whole?” (John 5:6)  Do you want to enter the flow of life?  It’s your choice…

Here endeth my sermon to myself.

 

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Enigmatic and Ethereal

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The land is parched.  It hasn’t rained for more than two weeks, and that was just a shower, really.  Clouds gather and pass, rain pummels areas just to the north or south or west, but not here.  Water vapor hangs in the air; the humidity makes the evenings sticky. The ceiling fan keeps up a tinny hum, the slight breeze causing a cooling evaporation on the surface of my exposed skin as I try not to move.  Oh, but if I inch over the cotton sheet, I might find a cooler surface…just there…maybe?

I glance out the window to see if the maple leaves are moving, quivering, even a little bit.  They are still, and the moon is full.  It looks so cool and pale in the dark sea above.  I have to go outside and stand under it.  Perhaps its snow white radiance will bring an icy wind from space.  I invite Steve to join me for a night walk.  I put on just a sheer sundress, slip into sneakers, and grab my camera.  The neighborhood is quiet.  Televisions and air-conditioners keep the people shut up inside their suburban catacombs while we explore the world above…above the rooftops, above the concrete, above the tangible, above and beyond comprehension.  Where we are is no longer “Milwaukee”, it is in space, outside of time, anywhere and everywhere.  We are moving through existence.  We are.

 

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Summer School

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The Raspberry School is part of the Norwegian area of Old World Wisconsin.  The one-room schoolhouse dates back to the late 19th century and brings back memories for lots of visitors who went to schools like this one.  One fellow I talked to said he loved telling people that he graduated 3rd in his class…and omitting the fact that there were only 3 pupils in his grade level.

Multi-aged classrooms became a “new” education idea again in the 70s when I was in grade school and when my kids were in elementary school in the 90s, but ours only spanned two grades.  I remember when we all walked home for lunch in the middle of the day.  No lunch pails needed. 

Each desk at the school has a slate and a slate pencil (no chalk, just slate on slate) and a copy of one of the McGuffey Readers.  I never used one as a child.  What about you?

But I found the most fascinating thing I learned last Monday at this school was about the Pledge of Allegiance.  The 1892 version by Francis Bellamy reads: “I pledge allegiance to my flag and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”  With so many immigrants from different nations, allegiance to a new flag was part of public school education.  It wasn’t until 1923 that the phrase “the flag of the United States of America” replaced “my flag”.  Bellamy protested, but his opinion was ignored.  Twenty years after that, in Japanese internment camps, all those over the age of 17 were asked if they would swear unqualified allegiance to the United States and “forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, to any other foreign government, power or organization”.  It wasn’t until 1954, when atheism and Communism were perceived as national threats, that “under God” was added.  Francis Bellamy’s granddaughter asserts that the author of the original pledge would have objected to this change as well.  

To what or to whom would you pledge your allegiance?  Liberty and equality (which Bellamy wanted to include but knew the state superintendents were against equality for women and African Americans) and justice are the three great ideas of the American political tradition, according to Dr. Mortimer Adler.  Are we in agreement on supporting these ideas in the U.S.A.?  It’s something to think about as Independence Day approaches.  Feel free to submit an essay in the comments section.  Spelling counts, but neatness doesn’t (it’d be typed, after all). 

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Keeping Cool – Old Style

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We haven’t had rain in a few weeks, and things at Old World Wisconsin (the outdoor living history museum where I work) are very hot and dry.  We closed down to a skeleton crew on Thursday because the heat index was over 100 degrees.  Only 25 visitors came the entire day.  I worked both yesterday and today, and now I have my swollen ankles propped up on the couch.  I don’t have air conditioning at home, either, but I do have a ceiling fan and a strategic plan to keep the house cool.  That plan involves making it as dark and cave-like as possible.  Here are some other tips for surviving the heat:

  • cheat on the number of petticoats you wear  (I went down to only one, but I don’t think anyone knew).

  • hide a wet dishcloth under your skirts or drape one around your neck.

  • plunge your hands and wrists into cold water from the pump.

  • skip the corset, if you dare (I haven’t tried this yet).

  • move as little as possible.  This means I opt for sewing over playing the pump organ.

  • drink lots of water and stay in the shade (well, that’s obvious).

  • take a cue from the oxen, Ted & Bear, and get a friend to lick your ears.  Strategic evaporation, you know.

Hmm.  That sounds rather interesting….I think I’ll go find out what Steve is up to.  ‘Bye!