tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-47779114331725471602024-03-13T11:50:39.735-07:00MotherBedford.<br>
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.<br>Naftzgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17495360045609974113noreply@blogger.comBlogger86125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4777911433172547160.post-49452483686506498872016-01-02T10:24:00.003-08:002016-01-02T10:24:30.505-08:00EU Required Notice Explained<span style="font-size: large;">I just want to note, to my readers outside of the U.S.A. ~ The banner regarding cookies that appears at the top of the page (and which can be hidden by simply clicking on "Got It") was placed there by Google. The banner stating: "<span class="cookie-choices-text">This site uses cookies from Google to deliver its services, to personalize ads and to analyze traffic. Information about your use of this site is shared with Google. By using this site, you agree to its use of cookies.</span>" was required by laws issued by the European Union requiring websites to identify any cookies used by a website. My blog does not use any cookies of any kind in and of itself. ~ Larry D. Smith</span>Naftzgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17495360045609974113noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4777911433172547160.post-45935353180303141152015-02-28T21:01:00.000-08:002015-02-28T21:01:25.766-08:00The Subject Of This Post Is The<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5GvtFIW5WY4ns40gcO0x9I3-Z6yM-cmxtUu6n3O5VQbxj2Bn-gcJfqTxyGyqYWI_SR8Sw2FxBCe9yyukxo1EPtxsCcjVm6IFbv83zgUx6yukqUxeyo-Y5YxggvVwcFNtb5LXxEAZz_ac/s1600/The.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5GvtFIW5WY4ns40gcO0x9I3-Z6yM-cmxtUu6n3O5VQbxj2Bn-gcJfqTxyGyqYWI_SR8Sw2FxBCe9yyukxo1EPtxsCcjVm6IFbv83zgUx6yukqUxeyo-Y5YxggvVwcFNtb5LXxEAZz_ac/s1600/The.jpg" height="468" width="640" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">No honestly! It's the subject of this post ~ the, that is.<br /><br />It really isn't my intention to offend all of those quaint little Ye Olde Shoppes that dot the land, but you talk kinda funny. In case you don't know it, your name is telling me: <i>You Olde Shoppe</i> as if it is calling me, the customer, an old shop. Perhaps it should be retitled as 'Me Olde Shoppe' if it is intended for the shop to be the <i>olde</i> one.<br /><br />The point of this post is to note the ancestry of the letter 'y' when used as a substitute for the Anglo-Saxon symbol called a thorn: Þ The symbol started as a Norse rune, that corresponded with the English word: <i>giant</i>. In Old Norse, the symbol 'Þ' (lower case 'þ'), named <i>þurs</i>, was pronounced as we today, in English, would pronounce <i>thurs</i>. As the symbol and the 'th' pronunciation moved from the Old Norse to Old English, the name of the symbol changed to <i>þorn</i>, which in today's English, would be pronounced as 'thorn'. Between the 8th and 15th Centuries, the <i>thorn</i> became the symbol of choice to express the sound of 'th' throughout the Scandinavian and Northern Europe countries. By the mid-1400s when William Caxton created his English alphabet, most of the letters and symbols that he borrowed from the German and Italian alphabets translated directly into his English alphabet. That is, most but not all. The <i>thorn</i> was one that did not translate directly, and so Caxton, in his English alphabet, substituted the letter 'y' for the 'þ' symbol.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxxDOo6bUCSgijpjnV4vozdpmoKTk3AQcILWL8kjN9DR3A4Wb3SdNuur7ZWyN8jMQ58USEq7bqy1XJCL3CqpduJFsoecPs4fE6x8YhSLnCqZiZIwXiRVK4tnjutFdtFcG0IMVGOhMAPgE/s1600/The2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxxDOo6bUCSgijpjnV4vozdpmoKTk3AQcILWL8kjN9DR3A4Wb3SdNuur7ZWyN8jMQ58USEq7bqy1XJCL3CqpduJFsoecPs4fE6x8YhSLnCqZiZIwXiRVK4tnjutFdtFcG0IMVGOhMAPgE/s1600/The2.jpg" height="320" width="259" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><br />The use of the letter 'y' in place of the 'þ' symbol, coupled with the letter 'e', to write the word that we today would pronounce as <i>the </i>was used in printed as well as in handwritten documents into the 1700s. Likewise the word <i>that</i> was usually spelled 'yt'. The reader became used to seeing the 'y' used in place of the 'th' combination, and so could read through a document without problem.<br /><br />The spelling of the word 'you' as 'ye', such as in the phrase:<i> Hear ye, hear ye!</i>, became popular as a result of its usage in the Bibles printed through the 17th and 18th Centuries. Contemporary readers knew, as they read a document, the difference between ye/you and ye/the by understanding the context of what they were reading. And so, modern readers should know the difference in regard to the context; a store with the name 'Ye Olde Shoppe' would not make sense to be pronounced as <i>You Olde Shoppe</i>, so it could only be pronounced as <i>The Olde Shoppe</i>.<br /><br />Now, the only thing to figure out is why the shop-owner thinks there needs to an 'e' at the end of the words 'Old' and 'Shop'. Apparently, the shop-owners want their customers to visit <i>You Oldeeeey Shoppeeeey</i>.</span><br />
<br />Naftzgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17495360045609974113noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4777911433172547160.post-5047180657816650422014-12-28T12:57:00.000-08:002014-12-28T12:57:04.967-08:00It's Fashionable To Hate Fruitcake; So I Guess I'm Not Fashionable<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVNvTktbI9SwRX85vY8bFhUyInRALW4PeF7n6Ys4wpfYRCvT2Pd0kC00lX4Lu3J4HBnKUhwOVq79N5gjrNcTfhcIjf9ue7VLvDTllNviYkv85S6uJL1Vb2r_6vyi9kq-h3hyx4-NnzVF8/s1600/PlumPudding01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVNvTktbI9SwRX85vY8bFhUyInRALW4PeF7n6Ys4wpfYRCvT2Pd0kC00lX4Lu3J4HBnKUhwOVq79N5gjrNcTfhcIjf9ue7VLvDTllNviYkv85S6uJL1Vb2r_6vyi9kq-h3hyx4-NnzVF8/s1600/PlumPudding01.jpg" height="513" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">During the Medieval Age, a soup was created using mutton stock as the base, to which various types of chopped up fruits were added. Plums, in the dried version of prunes, became the favored ingredient of this soup because of the flavor they imparted to the mix. Eventually the dish became known as <i>Plum Soup</i>. By the 16th century, the soup evolved into a pie with the addition of meat and suet, and baked within a pastry shell.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">According to the Mother Goose's nursery rhyme: "<i>Little Jack Horner sat in a corner, Eating his Christmas pie. He put in his thumb, and pull'd out a plum, And said 'What a good boy am I!'</i>." It was the Plum Pie, descended from Plum Soup, that became the Christmas pie eaten by Little Jack Horner. Tradition claims that Plum Pie became associated with Christmas by being formed into a rectangular, rather than a round, shape to represent the manger-bed prepared for the Christ Child.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">During the English Interregnum, while Oliver Cromwell was in power as Lord Protector, the Puritans frowned on any sort of extravagance. Unfortunately for Plum Pie, it was identified as one of those extravagances, and was outlawed throughout the British Isles and the British colonies in North America. In order to avoid trouble, but to still enjoy the dish, the people of England disguised it by forming it into a round ball and calling it <i>minc'd pie</i>. To 'mince' something means to crush or shred something. Beef suet was minced before adding it to this pie, and so the name would have been appropriate. Plums continued to provide the pie its distinctive flavor.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">By the 1800s the name of the dish had been changed to <i>Plum Pudding</i>, being baked without the pastry shell. The dish has remained in that form to the present-day, and is uniquely associated with Christmas. To many people, myself included, plum pudding is the quintessential Christmas treat. I've never tried it, but I am sure that plum pudding made on July 4th would probably be bitter. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Now, most people today have no idea what is meant by the name 'beef suet' or why it was added to plum pudding. The suet is a fatty substance that surrounds a cow's kidneys. When the cow is butchered and cut up into pieces for human consumption, the fat surrounding the kidneys is sold as 'beef suet.' When steaming a pudding, the cook crumbles (crushes or shreds) the suet into tiny pieces to be mixed throughout the pudding batter. The purpose of using suet in the pudding is to create hundreds or even thousands of tiny air spaces throughout the dish. The suet melts late in the cooking process, after the starchy batter has begun to set, and therefore tiny spaces are left where the suet particles had been.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">In order to make a <i>proper</i> plum pudding, actual beef suet is used, and the pudding must be steamed in boiling water for about four hours. Water must be continually added as it boils away, and therefore making a plum pudding using suet is not undertaken by most cooks. In recent years, a type of jelly or sauce, composed of diced apples mixed with various spices and marketed as 'mincemeat', has been substituted for the actual <i>minced</i> suet/meat. Although it reduces the baking time to about forty-five minutes, the product has a heavier texture.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Recipes for plum pudding varying from cook to cook. Some recipes call for every type of fruit available along with a couple spices, while others limit the variety of fruit to two or three mixed with seven or eight spices. Some recipes insist that only fresh fruit be used, while others call for glace fruit (which is candied fruit: diced and covered in concentrated sugar syrup). Regardless of the particular ingredients, most plum puddings contain diced nuts, especially almonds or walnuts, in addition to the fruit: hence the alternative name, <i>fruit and nut</i> cake.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSVIdsDYAGr3Af-udJB9Wg4QaX9kGcRW84qpgFMFx2Nd3w6my93D7aCsmC8s1d_vtS8QU_CpflHpS0UfFX1v8zzCWYK7rFSYx0tAIQJF9wZPuC6eBNiecGFNZDsNrj-agbwlfV2wcIAQU/s1600/PlumPudding02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSVIdsDYAGr3Af-udJB9Wg4QaX9kGcRW84qpgFMFx2Nd3w6my93D7aCsmC8s1d_vtS8QU_CpflHpS0UfFX1v8zzCWYK7rFSYx0tAIQJF9wZPuC6eBNiecGFNZDsNrj-agbwlfV2wcIAQU/s1600/PlumPudding02.jpg" height="301" width="400" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Plum pudding, or Christmas pudding, contains a certain amount of alcohol, imparted by the ingredient of plum brandy. Any brandy will do, but plum brandy is the only one that would, of course, contribute to the 'plum' flavor of the dish. I guess you could leave the plums out, and add peach brandy to the mixture, but then the dish should bear the name: peach pudding, and it certainly would not be very 'traditional'. It should be noted also, that just prior to serving the dish, additional brandy should be spooned over the outside surface, which is then set afire so that a beautiful bluish haze envelopes the pudding.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">While the traditional plum pudding, from the 17th Century onwards, was baked in a round bowl, giving the product a domed shape; the dish can be baked, like I do, in a bundt pan (sometimes referred to as an 'angel-food cake pan') or in any other baking dish.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">And so now we come to the 10,000 pound elephant in the room. It has become very fashionable to dis (<i>i.e.</i> disparage) plum pudding, (or rather 'fruit cake' or 'fruit and nut cake') these days. Television personalities will not be caught dead claiming that they like the dish. And events are publicized in which 'fruit cakes' are loaded into catapults and trebuchets and launched hundreds of feet into fields by fanatics declaring that that is the only thing that can be done with them. Granted, the 'fruit and nut cakes' produced by commercial bakeries tend to be poor imitations of the original plum pudding; they sometimes are so dry and tasteless that they deserve to be destroyed. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Whether those fashionable people who zealously gloat about hating 'fruit cakes' have ever eaten real, homemade plum pudding is not known. I bet they, like myself, would come to love the dish. The surprise of biting into a fragment of walnut, followed by the sweet juiciness of biting into a piece of candied cherry, is something that makes Christmas: 'Christmas.'</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>Naftzgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17495360045609974113noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4777911433172547160.post-75207627348903538862014-08-12T20:17:00.001-07:002014-08-12T20:17:22.448-07:00With A Flick Of The Wrist<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_bFtu6OZqQiMt2nUsMFok2OhbzRYiSt6dCppAMTsXkIxGpLvj5Z90JHyx9v0jQue8slWAZnFGtafaULfu48WTpOYLWL2x13a1yaUM-5LQ0Wy6mgQJoB_FYVbumbNDL1se4u8ArAc13GE/s1600/HandFan04.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_bFtu6OZqQiMt2nUsMFok2OhbzRYiSt6dCppAMTsXkIxGpLvj5Z90JHyx9v0jQue8slWAZnFGtafaULfu48WTpOYLWL2x13a1yaUM-5LQ0Wy6mgQJoB_FYVbumbNDL1se4u8ArAc13GE/s1600/HandFan04.jpg" height="409" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">In 1827, at the age of twenty-five, Jean-Pierre Duvelleroy established a business at #15 on the Rue de la Paix in Paris, France to produce hand fans. Although the company changed hands (no pun intended) over the years, and although the demand for hand fans dropped drastically when electric operated fans came into vogue, the Duvelleroy company is currently still operating. Hand held fans were very fashionable in France and elsewhere, including the United States.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The object of this post is a hand fan that I purchased for a few dollars at a local flea market a couple years ago. As with any item that comes into my possession, I inspected it carefully to discover more information about it. The inspection of this item revealed that it was constructed of two layers of paper pasted together with fourteen blades between them that appear, at first glance, to be ivory, but upon closer inspection seem to be bakelite. Bakelite, invented in 1907, was an early precursor of plastic. The blades have swirling line designs etched into their surfaces, part of which are then painted with a gold colored paint. The two ends are given sturdiness by the attachment of bakelite 'guards' which also have swirling line etched designs on their surfaces.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikbXO1my8akf17VkgTqSQDS2QG-GxWAtAcg1lG8hV-JVmUYKxFGzlPfUbZAMfIop9T8Gy_IOFBNsDPC8mYw6OvwglTWe1Z6ctDCpHDL8x6k6txK9dBJBSd1eko2ZFcq6cO1Ayh4J8HGrI/s1600/HandFan01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikbXO1my8akf17VkgTqSQDS2QG-GxWAtAcg1lG8hV-JVmUYKxFGzlPfUbZAMfIop9T8Gy_IOFBNsDPC8mYw6OvwglTWe1Z6ctDCpHDL8x6k6txK9dBJBSd1eko2ZFcq6cO1Ayh4J8HGrI/s1600/HandFan01.jpg" height="360" width="640" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The paper <i>mounts</i>, or solid paper surfaces, of the fan have what appears to be a lithographed scene on one side and an engraved design on the other. The 'front' mount bears a colored scene of seven ladies in a garden. At first I thought that the scene depicted the Seven Muses ~ but then I remembered that there were nine, not just seven, muses: Calliope (the Muse of Poetry), Clio (the Muse of History), Euterpe (the Muse of Song), Erato (the Muse of Lyric Poetry), Melpomene (the Muse of Tragedy), Polyhymnia (the Muse if Hymns), Terpsichore (the Muse of Dance), Thalia (the Muse of Comedy) and Urania (the Muse of Astronomy). I then thought that maybe the scene depicted the Seven Graces ~ but then I remembered that there were only Three Graces: Aglaia (the Grace of beauty), Euphrosyne (the Grace of Mirth) and Thalia (the Grace of Charity). Although I can't identify them, the seven ladies are dressed in beautiful, flowing gowns, and the garden in which they meet is dense with vegitation with an ancient stone temple in the background. The back mount of the fan is plain with an engraved border of musical instruments positioned amid gracefully arching flourishes in imitation of acanthus leaves. On the back is attached a small rectangular piece of the same color paper as the fan mount and printed with the wording: <i>With Best Wishes from Penn Alto Hotel George D. Worthington</i>. It would appear, from the similarity of the paper and ink color of the attached rectangle to the fan mount, that the attached piece was not added as an afterthought, but attached at the time that the fan was produced.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">And finally, on the back mount, in very small print at the base of the mount, is the wording: <i>Maquet Grav 10 Rue de la Paix, Paris</i> (meaning that it was 'engraved' at that address). </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigX8ptr_pYOR5S7q0E7RcZVzGCQENyxuIrtpfbrvt_48P2jDQ7H96m8Q2jbZ6tIq75i5byw8-2wYK7yMAIIML3yjhrVP1H74z18tQL-cWLVj_qSOOaRottw0KpkRmTmtI8kbiMdiXlnsU/s1600/HandFan03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigX8ptr_pYOR5S7q0E7RcZVzGCQENyxuIrtpfbrvt_48P2jDQ7H96m8Q2jbZ6tIq75i5byw8-2wYK7yMAIIML3yjhrVP1H74z18tQL-cWLVj_qSOOaRottw0KpkRmTmtI8kbiMdiXlnsU/s1600/HandFan03.jpg" height="281" width="400" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">As noted above, the Duvelleroy hand fan company was established at 15 Rue de la Paix. Whether a portion of that business was also located at 10 Rue de la Paix has not been determined. What is known is that the address had a long history of culture. In the late-1800s Charles Frederick Worth (1825-1895) maintained a business titled: Frederic's at 10 Rue de la Paix. Mr. Worth is credited with having created the so-called "fashion industry" and "haute couture". Then, in 1903, the perfume company, Caron, established by the brothers Ernest and Raoul Daltroff, moved from Rue Rossini to 10 Rue de la Paix. Perhaps the Duvelleroy company produced fans for Caron, who might have marketed them along with their fragrances.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">What I later discovered was that George D. Worthington managed the Penn Alto Hotel circa 1923-25. He might have had the fans produced and stamped with the message: "With Best Wishes From Penn Alto Hotel George D. Worthington" to celebrate his taking over the management of the hotel. The fan would have been a very fashionable accessory for the lady who stayed at the most fashionable hotel in the city of Altoona, Pennsylvania.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The hand fan was ostensibly used to generate a breeze of air, but it also provided the lady who wielded it with a 'language'. This language was invented as part of its advertising by Jules Duvelleroy, a son of Jean-Pierre who managed the company's London House.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix_VUlajS1BOYDS2OBgzbaVsTj0Tb3dRk5EdWZz1P7uFljrYGVfTjYzFJpAUKevl1rE4Q5WQyU3RGNWjTk-Hu0pzaSCtaX5ul9KQ1mpYmTnpbNRGtz3JmGRQxEE_u1Ja8Qs-V4-fDNLFY/s1600/HandFan02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix_VUlajS1BOYDS2OBgzbaVsTj0Tb3dRk5EdWZz1P7uFljrYGVfTjYzFJpAUKevl1rE4Q5WQyU3RGNWjTk-Hu0pzaSCtaX5ul9KQ1mpYmTnpbNRGtz3JmGRQxEE_u1Ja8Qs-V4-fDNLFY/s1600/HandFan02.jpg" height="298" width="400" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"> A fan extended all the way open, and held in front of the face just below the eyes said "Follow me". But if the lady opened her fan all the way and covered her left eye with it, she was saying "I am engaged". A fan only partially opened and held below both eyes said "I love you", and if the lady then closed the fan as she dropped her hand forward, she was asking: "Do you love me?" So, with a flick of the wrist, the lady would let her feelings be known.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>Naftzgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17495360045609974113noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4777911433172547160.post-22766349636456691472014-07-15T09:43:00.000-07:002014-07-15T09:43:02.131-07:00That Polecat Stinks To High Heaven<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrHDPnnmz2qrHh2lz_QcCv4bxEK9rpoeQuEETpsPnHqssr1YHE-OfbK9Ao_tz3HAXGdMqzXwk8jjXtDP7or3mWq8xR0DAllBBoRZSc6_opb4_EBf1t9SmUENJYrF0FBxNdCZfvDvJWynA/s1600/Polecat01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrHDPnnmz2qrHh2lz_QcCv4bxEK9rpoeQuEETpsPnHqssr1YHE-OfbK9Ao_tz3HAXGdMqzXwk8jjXtDP7or3mWq8xR0DAllBBoRZSc6_opb4_EBf1t9SmUENJYrF0FBxNdCZfvDvJWynA/s1600/Polecat01.jpg" height="427" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">My home is located in the valley formed by the South Dry Run creek (pronounced <i>crick</i>, rhyming with 'pick'). Our three to four mile long valley, originating with a number of springs in the vicinity of Smith Corner, and culminating where it empties into the valley cut by the Frankstown Branch of the Juniata River, is one of the many hollows that cut into the Appalachian mountain range in this south-central part of Pennsylvania. On the other side of the hill that forms the south wall of my hollow lies Singer Hollow, and on the other side of the hill that forms the south wall of Singer Hollow lies PawPaw Hollow. Benton Hollow and an unnamed hollow lie farther to the south. And then, about three miles south of my home, "as the crow flies," stretches the Polecat Hollow.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">And, in case you haven't guessed it yet, the polecat is the subject of this blog post. Many people, even many of those who have lived in this corner of the world all their lives, believe they know what a polecat is. Polecats, they believe, are those stinking varmints covered in black fur with blotches of white on their heads and stripes of white down their backs or sides and sometimes on the tips of their tails. What most of those people, who believe they know what a polecat is, don't know, is that those black and white animals are skunks; they're not now, nor ever were polecats.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The polecat ferret, or rather <i>Mustela putorius</i>, a member of the Mustelidae family (which includes otters, badgers and weasels), was common in Europe. Skunks, which were somewhat unique in the animal world for their jet black and pristine white fur, were native to North America. The skunk was originally believed to belong to the Mustelidae family, but more recently was moved to the Mephitidae family (which consists of mammals having a stench). Although the polecat ferret was similar to the skunk in many ways, it differed in that it bore cocoa brown fur over its back and lighter colored fur on its belly. The polecat ferret, having a strong musk odor, could easily be mistaken for a skunk at first smell.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">When our ancestors came from the Old World, they found the black and white animals that sprayed an horrendous smell when startled, but they also found similar stink-spraying animals covered in fur that was a dark cocoa brown color with tan stripes or spots. They apparently weren't true skunks but they smelled alot like skunks. The immigrants from the European regions of Germany and Switzerland remembered the 'polecat ferret' of their homeland. When those immigrants encountered the foul-smelling brown and tan varmints, they associated them with the polecat ferret they knew back home. They probably assumed that the two animals, black/white and brown/tan were two different things, and so they called the black/white ones 'skunks' and they called the brown/tan ones 'polecats.' What the early European settlers in North America did not know was that the skunk did not necessarily have to be covered in black and white fur: the animal can bear cocoa brown and tan fur, just like the European polecat ferret. And so, the names of skunk and polecat became intermixed here in the wilderness of America. Eventually, as such things sometimes go, the names got so intermixed that the Euro-American settlers tended to call them all 'polecats'. It has come around to the point that today a large percentage of Americans call the black and white animal: polecats, and don't even know that a brown and tan variety exists (unless they encounter one in the forest).</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The name <i>polecat</i> is believed to have been derived from a combination of the French word <i>poule</i>, meaning 'chicken' and <i>puant</i>, meaning 'stinking'. On the other hand, the name <i>skunk</i> is believed to have been derived from an Amerindian word <i>seka-kwa</i>, meaning 'urinating fox.' An English translation of that word, <i>squunck</i> is claimed to have been used as early as the 1630s in New England. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Polecats (or rather, skunks) are generally avoided if at all possible. The threat of startling one, and being sprayed as a result, contributes to their being avoided by human beings. But in the past not all of them were avoided; sometimes baby ones would be treated as pets. In more recent years, laws have been enacted protecting these mammals, but in the past the scent glands would be removed from baby polecats. The animal, without its noxious odor, acted like an affectionate cat (that is if such a thing could actually exist ~ please don't hate me, cat-lovers). My mother told me stories about how her brothers would 'unscent' a baby skunk and it would become a very playful and fun pet. The current laws prohibit removal of the scent glands, and so you can't legally own polecats as pets. Unfortunately for them, polecats / skunks have very poor eyesight. They can only see about ten feet away, and that is a contributing factor in why most people only see one when it is lying dead on a road (having been hit by the car it couldn't see and from which it could not get away). The title expresses the concept that the polecat's odor was very strong ~ strong enough to reach as high as Heaven ~ which is indeed a very long distance away.</span><br />
<br />Naftzgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17495360045609974113noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4777911433172547160.post-15027798439695191872014-07-07T20:12:00.003-07:002014-07-07T20:12:48.589-07:00If You're Going To The Store, Get Me A Poke A Cherries<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoV4CG-9x-53ScO3QEpanv3b_BiG8PtkOJY1daSPbaTCYCPlzzVpTrvmejp7sFtIGx_um1cmtiyqYMx0t9X4QnZUdqS8gWDYR4PDN4KZiphGPvBde2rTEtXwtPh4_pmEZpPOLC9V_03rM/s1600/Poke02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoV4CG-9x-53ScO3QEpanv3b_BiG8PtkOJY1daSPbaTCYCPlzzVpTrvmejp7sFtIGx_um1cmtiyqYMx0t9X4QnZUdqS8gWDYR4PDN4KZiphGPvBde2rTEtXwtPh4_pmEZpPOLC9V_03rM/s1600/Poke02.jpg" height="640" width="600" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">In 1978 Trevor Horn, Geoff Downes and Bruce Woolley wrote a song that was first recorded by The Camera Club, and later by the Buggles. That song took its title from its opening line: <i>Video Killed The Radio Star</i>. The song bewailed the end of the popularity of radio occasioned by the rising popularity of video. My lament is that 'television killed regional dialects'.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">In the United States, where the primary, though not official, language is English, there are a number of regional dialects and accents. An accent is a variation in the way certain words are pronounced, whereas a dialect is a distinct variation within a language that encompasses more than just pronunciation. Pennsylvania Dutch is a well-known dialect within the English language. I'm sure that most people reading this post already know what is meant by 'Pennsylvania Dutch', but for those who do not, I'll provide a brief explanation. The word '<i>Dutch</i>' in the name <i>Pennsylvania Dutch</i> is commonly believed to have been derived from the German word <i>Deutsch</i>, meaning German, or the German people. Although that sounds good in a folklore sort of way, in actuality the word <i>Dutch</i> had been in use for centuries (by the English, that is) as a name for the people who settled all along the Rhine River, which flows from the Swiss Alps in Canton Graubunden, Switzerland to the Netherlands, where it empties into the North Sea: the <i>Low Dutch</i> for those residing in Liechtenstein and Netherlands and <i>High Dutch</i> for those residing in Germany and Switzerland. Most of the Mennonite immigrants to the New World came from Switzerland and the German principalities of Rhineland-Palatinate, Baden-Wurttemberg and Hesse (<i>i.e.</i> High Dutch), and they settled primarily in Pennsylvania. Those emigrants retained their appellation of "Dutch" even after they established their new homes in Pennsylvania: hence they became known as <i>Pennsylvania</i> Dutch. As noted, Pennsylvania Dutch is a dialect of the English language, and therefore employs English words, albeit in variations of grammar and syntax. There are even dialectical variations of the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect ~ the Bedford sub-dialect, variously called the Central Pennsylvania dialect, being one of them. This region was settled by many Ulster-Scot, Irish and Scottish families in addition to German and Swiss ones who migrated westward from the Pennsylvania Dutch region of eastern Pennsylvania. It was inevitable that they should intermarry. And when they intermarried, their speech became curiously intermingled.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">There are numerous websites on the internet and many books in libraries which provide examples of the idiosyncrasies of Pennsylvania Dutch, so I won't list them all here. The point I want to make here is that for many years my ancestors and I got to enjoy the uniqueness of our language. The way my parents, aunts and uncles, and grandparents spoke was familiar and comfortable to me. And then television came into our lives. Suddenly everyone was speaking an homogenized form of English. Regional dialects and accents were reserved for the hillbillies and hicks of the movies. Suddenly, Pennsylvania Dutch, and its sub-dialects, had become a joke. And that was definitely something to lament.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">So last night ~ on the TV ~ on a show titled Our Secret Slang, devoted to telling about the origins of words we use every day, they talked about the word '<i>poke</i>'. Many of the people they interviewed thought that the word referred to the verb meaning to prod, as with a finger, but I instantly knew they were talking about a small container. I remembered the many times that we went to a grocery for a poke of black licorice candy or to a hardware store for a poke of nails. Of course now, as I compose this post on my computer, I prefer to spell words as they should be spelled. Therefore, I choose to spell out 'poke of nails', denying my Pennsylvania accent to be revealed; but when I was younger I would have pronounced it 'poke a nails'.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The word <i>poke</i> comes from the 12th Century Old French <i>poche</i>, which meant 'purse', from which was also derived the Old North French word <i>poque</i>. The French comes possibly from the Germanic word <i>puk</i>, which was derived from the Proto-Indo-European root <i>beu-</i> meaning 'to swell'. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig8J1xAPUOgNS-99vhb9d9W3tgPPF2x3TTtTbpZgGjVIDXpJtkUkbOFvuHke_A5EYM2O93gJu-vaGyB5kg5NkChS7iPaO5j7gazhEquA28xX_Mv09BA5e-OWvkMc-8xrL5d8PUvykVnOQ/s1600/Poke01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig8J1xAPUOgNS-99vhb9d9W3tgPPF2x3TTtTbpZgGjVIDXpJtkUkbOFvuHke_A5EYM2O93gJu-vaGyB5kg5NkChS7iPaO5j7gazhEquA28xX_Mv09BA5e-OWvkMc-8xrL5d8PUvykVnOQ/s1600/Poke01.jpg" height="400" width="338" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">When I was a child, and pokes were in common use in south central Pennsylvania, they tended to take the form of small brown paper bags that measured roughly four inches by two inches by eight inches high, when fully opened. One of those pokes could hold ten or twelve pieces of delicious black licorice candy or 15 six-inch-long 20-penny nails. If you needed to buy a gallon of milk, three cans of peas and a loaf of bread, there was no way that you could expect to carry it all home in a poke; you needed a bag. And that is where the phrase <i>a pig in a poke</i> comes from: it would be quite an impossibility to fit a pig ~ any size pig ~ into a small bag. And so 'a pig in a poke' was used to describe some impossibly incredible claim.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Now the thing about a dialect, as compared to an accent, using the word <i>poke</i> as an example, is that it was used for many years in the region of south central Pennsylvania where I grew up. And it was certainly not an example of an accent. It wasn't a matter of us pronouncing the word slightly differently from the way the people down in Alabama did; it was more of a matter of us using the word while those Alabamans didn't. Those of us and our ancestors who lived in this portion of Appalachia that cut through the center of Pennsylvania used a number of words that most people elsewheres did not ~ or at least in ways most did not. For example, some of them pertained to food. Most people used the two words of 'buttered' and 'bread' to express what we knew as a single word: <i>butterbread</i>. When we covered the butter on our piece of butterbread with about a quarter inch layer of sugar (enough to track a rabbit according to my grandfather, Eldon Smith) it became <i>sugarbread</i>. It is possible that our word butterbread was simply derived from the German word <i>butterbrot</i> and that our word sugarbread likewise came from a German word: <i>suikerbrood</i>, but who knows for sure? And our sense of the time-space continuum sometimes got skewed because we would think nothing of saying "I'll meet you somewhere around eight o'clock tomorrow at the church." The word <i>somewhere</i> referred to the time, not the place. The little nuances of our dialect hinted towards its relationship to Pennsylvania Dutch, but it wasn't as heavy on the 'Dutch' part as you might hear down east (such as the way we would add an 's' to the ends of words like 'toward' and 'end' that functioned just fine without). While we were comfortable when we spoke all of the usual, peculiar Pennsylvania Dutch words and phrases, such as 'redding up the room' when we knew that guests were coming, or that we planned to 'put up' (<i>i.e.</i> can) twenty jars of applebutter. But where Pennsylvania Dutch was practically one hundred percent German in origin, the dialect that thrived in our neck of the woods was German mixed with Irish and Scottish words. We thought that gas prices were 'gettin awful dear' each time they rose and we didn't like anyone 'messing around' when we wanted to be serious, so we'd tell them to 'scram'. Those words and phrases came from our ancestors that could trace their lineage back to the British Isles. So when mother ordered us to stop messing around because she needed to get the room all redd up, she was not strictly speaking Pennsylvania German.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">You probably noticed that I used the past-tense of the verb 'to go' above when I remembered getting pokes of stuff. That's because we very seldom get pokes of anything anymore ~ they've become a thing of the past. It's partly because all of the stores you go to use the same size (different color) large plastic bags. Even if you all want is a pack of chewing gum or one birthday card, the clerk puts it in one of those same size (different color) large plastic bags. But it's also partly because of the fact that you never hear the word <i>poke</i>, in regard to a small bag, spoken on television anymore. The homogenized English spoken on television killed the regional dialects. Oh, and the photo at the top of this post is of a poke a cherries.</span><br />
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Naftzgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17495360045609974113noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4777911433172547160.post-10598114327930962222014-06-28T19:59:00.002-07:002014-06-28T19:59:49.865-07:00There's Not Enough Room For A Bed In There<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQRAyqMjCX-iN114yMx9Z7yjaLlZWlZnzBpj7x3fAhgLb7Ic-SX88pHwEeZR7BSxqZZYZZTNjhTaZsoSuklN83J4XfulrMSiVUN66CVcPG1euPmHZBjONozcJYdV3qQTVU2n4UbVszElA/s1600/HousePlans.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQRAyqMjCX-iN114yMx9Z7yjaLlZWlZnzBpj7x3fAhgLb7Ic-SX88pHwEeZR7BSxqZZYZZTNjhTaZsoSuklN83J4XfulrMSiVUN66CVcPG1euPmHZBjONozcJYdV3qQTVU2n4UbVszElA/s1600/HousePlans.jpg" height="343" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The <i>invalid room</i> was one of a number of rooms that once occupied homes, but which have almost completely disappeared from the modern contractor's lexicon. The word <i>invalid</i> was derived from the negated form of the Latin word <i>validus</i>. Validus meant strong, and the negated form was created by adding to it the prefix <i>in</i>: producing <i>in-validus</i>, meaning un-strong, or infirmed. Although seldom used today in our super-pc (<i>i.e.</i> politically correct) society, a member of the family, often elderly and terminally ill, was referred to as an invalid. The invalid room was the bedroom in which the family cared for their invalid member.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">It's hard to believe, but at one time we residents of the United States of America, like residents of many other countries, cared for our loved ones, when they became elderly and/or terminally ill, in our own homes. The elderly family members were not exiled to 'nursing homes' as soon as they started to cough. They were provided with a bed in a room on the ground floor of the house, often close to or beside the kitchen. In some cases, a side room would be converted into an invalid room simply by the addition of a bed, in others a room would be dedicated to the function. During the Nineteenth and early-Twentieth Centuries, houses were often constructed with an invalid room included in the original design. Until it needed to function as a bedroom for the infirmed member of the family, an invalid room might be employed as a 'den' or 'pantry' or a storage room. As noted, the invalid room was often close to the kitchen, making it convenient to provide for the needs of the infirmed person. Rather than having to carry trays of food or buckets of water to an upstairs bedroom, the family members simply needed to carry them from the kitchen into an adjoining room. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Perhaps the reason that many modern day families do not even consider caring for their elderly and infirmed members in their own homes is because their houses are not equipped with a room that can even be converted into an invalid room. Accomodating their invalid loved ones needs may seem so overwhelming because of the lack of a space that can function as an invalid room. It's a shame that houses are no longer built with long-term care of our elderly family members in mind.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The diagram at the top of this post shows the plans for a house typical of the early 1900s. The room highlighted in red could be used for any purpose; it was perfectly suitable to be used as an invalid room.</span>Naftzgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17495360045609974113noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4777911433172547160.post-49091365108687527812014-06-22T20:26:00.001-07:002014-06-22T20:26:03.421-07:00Kindest Regards And Greetings Gay<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdr30xFvqVtdELE9L0xcRuZ_k3vbh8mwWvCu7JWAv6klcu_-45gVU-ZBVtCktn0_m7WZOf911vpb8XNJOVLRXtKLKdoOgtlxOlnKd9twZuok0EeqqADUHVnWVO2LOCrkSnjNYXuodEcgQ/s1600/GreetingCardBirthday27.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdr30xFvqVtdELE9L0xcRuZ_k3vbh8mwWvCu7JWAv6klcu_-45gVU-ZBVtCktn0_m7WZOf911vpb8XNJOVLRXtKLKdoOgtlxOlnKd9twZuok0EeqqADUHVnWVO2LOCrkSnjNYXuodEcgQ/s1600/GreetingCardBirthday27.jpg" height="385" width="640" /></a><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Merry Christmas; Happy Birthday; Easter Greetings; Be My Valentine; Congratulations On Your Graduation, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. There are many holidays to celebrate and many sentiments to express, and there's a greeting card for every one of them. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhog_YlqBooqcKU6FoYmAEsIqcobciYnG_gYbFY1NSpAD8KLzRvJ0YpyCYaSTYYWPtoOXFi_v06z2NVMU161yn9JD_eNElL-biSRiVsJNn8A4Nvl9I_V8RG-uPHtx4zT2aXgKmRZcKa6r0/s1600/GreetingCardChristmas56.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhog_YlqBooqcKU6FoYmAEsIqcobciYnG_gYbFY1NSpAD8KLzRvJ0YpyCYaSTYYWPtoOXFi_v06z2NVMU161yn9JD_eNElL-biSRiVsJNn8A4Nvl9I_V8RG-uPHtx4zT2aXgKmRZcKa6r0/s1600/GreetingCardChristmas56.jpg" height="313" width="400" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">And if you have a unique sentiment to express to a loved one (such as "<i>Congratulation for advancing from party-pooper to grumpy-guss</i>"), there's bound to be a blank card on which you can write that personal sentiment. There's even greeting cards shaped and sized specifically in which to hold a monetary bill or personal check (which the receiver hopes is at least a twenty), as if the cash won't fit in a regular card.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNEAPHoQx7WAoH446KSLoejNCasyr0tKx9j30kfcubtFtgDVKoNY69XARDQJSmkaJUtEZgjWRtKw58EjV41arv9D-UBdkjilKMNqUlvp26xjRtO3ST3jGBOol5aPYzfpomoAbPpH6veNk/s1600/GreetingCardNewYear02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNEAPHoQx7WAoH446KSLoejNCasyr0tKx9j30kfcubtFtgDVKoNY69XARDQJSmkaJUtEZgjWRtKw58EjV41arv9D-UBdkjilKMNqUlvp26xjRtO3ST3jGBOol5aPYzfpomoAbPpH6veNk/s1600/GreetingCardNewYear02.jpg" height="640" width="411" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And not intending to offend the poorer residents of Planet Earth, I would venture to say to say that nearly everyone alive at this time has probably received at least one greeting card in his or her life. Greeting Cards tend to be ephemeral; they're like wisps of smoke from a fire, appearing to us and then vanishing as quickly as they came. Well the situation with Greeting Cards is not exactly like wisps of smoke. Greeting Cards don't really just vanish into thin air like smoke does. They get stuffed into drawers; they get stacked on shelves; they get pasted into scrap books; and they get bound together, fifty to one hundred perhaps, with a rubber band holding them tightly, and then placed in a box that is pushed into a corner of the attic. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW7QmX8F9oeY8iwevSGGMfSidP_l6UcJaX8Y2RLOozi9iaWrQvxuU-MVyz5P1weA-SZVG3MZbiDhwN4rg653mZqImpTEZBEw-x-9mc2NinieyhmZYn34j6zu9x39MGoo4AsbLrq1gmckU/s1600/GreetingCardChristmas02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW7QmX8F9oeY8iwevSGGMfSidP_l6UcJaX8Y2RLOozi9iaWrQvxuU-MVyz5P1weA-SZVG3MZbiDhwN4rg653mZqImpTEZBEw-x-9mc2NinieyhmZYn34j6zu9x39MGoo4AsbLrq1gmckU/s1600/GreetingCardChristmas02.jpg" height="310" width="400" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">Some recipients cherish and keep the Greeting Cards that brighten their day, while others detest having them invade their personal space, and throw them in the trash as quickly as they can (that is to say, as soon as all of the party guests leave).</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I must admit that I am a cherisher of Greeting Cards. The serene, idyllic, snow-blanketed forest-scape that fills the six by eight inch surface of a Christmas card not only fills me with joy when I receive it in the mail on December 22 ~ it also gives me a warm fuzzy feeling on August 14 when I again fall under its spell it while looking for a relative's address on the envelope.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbpSfC1WXjTkwSTgVzi6OPhnWChKAdjqx3O7tDvEhHIgQoxpP7pAD1y8IW-xo1L0rvUlJC_O06R8qVwhmz1bzpq4DRcPgk7FM5ORwsmW2JkIhiXg6LeYFozyAu9wNQv-kcfTQecLUcxDk/s1600/GreetingCardEaster10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbpSfC1WXjTkwSTgVzi6OPhnWChKAdjqx3O7tDvEhHIgQoxpP7pAD1y8IW-xo1L0rvUlJC_O06R8qVwhmz1bzpq4DRcPgk7FM5ORwsmW2JkIhiXg6LeYFozyAu9wNQv-kcfTQecLUcxDk/s1600/GreetingCardEaster10.jpg" height="402" width="640" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"> I also must admit that I just made that up to make my point ~ that is, the part about looking for a relative's address "on the envelope", because if the truth be told, I remove all my cards from the envelopes and throw away those disgustingly banal hindrances to my speedy enjoyment of the cards. I have saved most of the Greeting Cards that I have received since I was in my teens. Perhaps in another fifty years they'll seem as quaint and charming as the ones exhibited on this post.</span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj21U2UUkJWJnxzGh9GGjRPduJAenClkABl7AoFeyXitPt4a1FKc_Ze0DbEJxPqjt3VBwq1DpNryVi2BjEIN1yb1CCYbwEKRDN5PI74Vgcf7ARWSaWxbTqvCoVZx4tVRPt7ZDlCHKCtPmA/s1600/GreetingCardChristmas69.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj21U2UUkJWJnxzGh9GGjRPduJAenClkABl7AoFeyXitPt4a1FKc_Ze0DbEJxPqjt3VBwq1DpNryVi2BjEIN1yb1CCYbwEKRDN5PI74Vgcf7ARWSaWxbTqvCoVZx4tVRPt7ZDlCHKCtPmA/s1600/GreetingCardChristmas69.jpg" height="267" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The Greeting Cards which are exhibited on this post date from the 1890s through the 1930s. The predominantly popular art style for that period was Art Deco, and some of the cards are fine examples of that style. The Christmas card shown here which bears a ship sailing through frigid waters and the Birthday card which contains a turreted castle on the hill are examples of Art Deco that one finds in 'readers' and other children's books from the early 1900s.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_vgwVJ5h52pHrd-ld26JuQ8d5hgaudQPpA1z9dyyOcQ2lfjWguGOCTUat-gIWxVSht95Fh9Impne9r6CDstw39UxG09K3zghFuvb9AAfkfZvB8y_fGxE_Lsny34__sFUYnYp25lHjneg/s1600/GreetingCardChristmas21.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_vgwVJ5h52pHrd-ld26JuQ8d5hgaudQPpA1z9dyyOcQ2lfjWguGOCTUat-gIWxVSht95Fh9Impne9r6CDstw39UxG09K3zghFuvb9AAfkfZvB8y_fGxE_Lsny34__sFUYnYp25lHjneg/s1600/GreetingCardChristmas21.jpg" height="402" width="640" /></a></span></div>
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Many of the cards were manufactured in Germany, and of course although the verses are in English, the style of those cards cannot help but to have been influenced by German culture at the time.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2OljrBagAHIj5VlbMRK_pcy6RZr3JWZludyF9d1G31YAyxbChlHjuBb4eT3NcUmNE6oMBTw5kIvtRSb5-ZfDOr_NnvJ97AB8piK1e7E7zQKgYkhx8zYMKeGvSXToPt0ArVvhzbNZL_Go/s1600/GreetingCardValentines06.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2OljrBagAHIj5VlbMRK_pcy6RZr3JWZludyF9d1G31YAyxbChlHjuBb4eT3NcUmNE6oMBTw5kIvtRSb5-ZfDOr_NnvJ97AB8piK1e7E7zQKgYkhx8zYMKeGvSXToPt0ArVvhzbNZL_Go/s1600/GreetingCardValentines06.jpg" height="400" width="231" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">Notice the swastika that appears on one New Year's card; it had nothing to do with the German Third Reich. </span><span style="font-size: large;">The card was produced in the year 1908, and the swastika was simply borrowed from the ancient Hindu symbol for peace ~ it actually at one time represented the sentiment of 'well-being', and was derived from the Sanskrit words: </span><i style="font-size: x-large;">su</i><span style="font-size: large;"> (meaning 'good') and </span><i style="font-size: x-large;">asti</i><span style="font-size: large;"> (meaning 'being'), combined with the diminutive suffix: </span><i style="font-size: x-large;">ka</i><span style="font-size: large;">.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVPWsLafcw4n4lziLSai06VseG76Zpix3DiFEnpmRFeXpb1uAm5fJB81JeNsRDDOTYDiYJLxD2_i1hlMe9g_vAlvWHhorMq1R62dn8V_qU4erDkAF8aWJv145fpUBJSDVjR2rDOn72c6E/s1600/GreetingCardBirthday16.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVPWsLafcw4n4lziLSai06VseG76Zpix3DiFEnpmRFeXpb1uAm5fJB81JeNsRDDOTYDiYJLxD2_i1hlMe9g_vAlvWHhorMq1R62dn8V_qU4erDkAF8aWJv145fpUBJSDVjR2rDOn72c6E/s1600/GreetingCardBirthday16.jpg" height="640" width="408" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">Other cards bear visual symbols popular at the time, which stood for the sentiments of love, friendship and so on. For Christmas cards, the roly-poly figure of Santa Claus, popularized by Thomas Nast in his 1881 poem "<i>A Visit From St. Nicholas</i>" was prevalent by the 1920s, but less jovial images of the bringer of gifts still appeared occasionally, as depicted in one card.</span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">And it might not be readily noticeable from the images, but all of the cards shown here consist of a single layer of heavy card stock, printed only on the front side ~ as compared to modern day folded paper cards that are printed on the inside in addition to the front.</span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: x-large; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKzF6D3yySZM2S2tA9ypiUP6RPHMeDq-l-Bb9J-SBueyP9DMnZ4hu4Z-bwPtgDZ7SFqewS61cQGVQlUh-az_1fsJI8aMBNxmtZdM9Oz7VcyotN-Hy5SFVWWWqkYRnFLcld70uwJrLOhAY/s1600/GreetingCardEaster11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKzF6D3yySZM2S2tA9ypiUP6RPHMeDq-l-Bb9J-SBueyP9DMnZ4hu4Z-bwPtgDZ7SFqewS61cQGVQlUh-az_1fsJI8aMBNxmtZdM9Oz7VcyotN-Hy5SFVWWWqkYRnFLcld70uwJrLOhAY/s1600/GreetingCardEaster11.jpg" height="396" width="640" /></a></div>
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Naftzgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17495360045609974113noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4777911433172547160.post-27176812136217751112014-06-19T11:19:00.000-07:002014-06-19T11:19:47.857-07:00In The 1970s, Many People Got Their Clothes At The Fripperer<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyJhoaZybNno13kQJC31PPeKLQP5SxnnnUaBiEEG2w69ZG7EYdeHQQrOBOeVLwetw0I0SANLoAvTr_jT-4SQ12uJiMZwg4iqLW3-q5hpolk5GFMbFgqeuPAFXUbOwdjWU2OCV8B41GHk8/s1600/Clothing03a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyJhoaZybNno13kQJC31PPeKLQP5SxnnnUaBiEEG2w69ZG7EYdeHQQrOBOeVLwetw0I0SANLoAvTr_jT-4SQ12uJiMZwg4iqLW3-q5hpolk5GFMbFgqeuPAFXUbOwdjWU2OCV8B41GHk8/s1600/Clothing03a.jpg" height="640" width="508" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I'm sure that every reader of this blog post already knows what a frippery was ~ assuming, that is, that we are living in the 1700s. And therefore every reader will also know, again assuming that we are still living in the 1700s, that a <i>fripperer</i> was a person who worked at the frippery. What? You don't know what I'm talking about? Well apparently you're the only one, because everyone else knows that the frippery was where you took your old, worn out or damaged clothing to be refurbished and resold to someone else. Now, does that ring a bell in your memory?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The <i>fripperer</i>, according to the definition in the Oxford English Dictionary, was a '<i>dealer in cast-off clothing</i>'. Clothing has always been expensive. Look at today's prices. A man's dress shirt costs around sixty dollars; a pair of children's shoes can cost over sixty dollars. If you want three pairs of pants and two shirts, you better take two or three hundred dollars with you when you shop. Two hundred years ago, clothing was just as expensive, though in a different way. In the day and age when the lady of the house had to spin her own thread from flax plants or sheep shorn wool, the 'cost' of producing the material to be used for clothing, in addition to the actual making of the clothing, was expensive in terms of her physical labor and time spent. And even after spinning the thread, the housewife had to either weave the thread into cloth herself, or barter with the local weaver to have her cloth woven. And then, on top of that, she had to cut and sew the cloth into pants, shirts and coats for her husband and children. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The fripperer, usually a man, in trying to make a living, provided a much needed service to people who couldn't afford, in time, material or skill, to make their own clothes. Townsfolk, who couldn't raise either sheep or flax, or at least couldn't raise enough of it to produce the amount of cloth they required for their clothing, might take advantage of the services provided by the fripperer. In the same way that a cordwainer made new shoes while a cobbler repaired old shoes, the tailor made new clothes while a fripperer mended old ones. The fripperer not only collected the 'cast-off clothing', by accepting free donations or paying a fraction of their true worth, but would sew and darn any holes in them. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv2E_k_Y_HnMR5gO93pT7S1IJOfKSqqjBZzKK4yzLhLEYf7zfvQDNnrm_5CjevsnBh-DcGYSd_kSDWD4BeihPL6rSiC0TDiSLtlbaP1rKZj1N8RJhwQa1HIEAxh-8lEyiUDD25AbclKMY/s1600/Clothing02a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv2E_k_Y_HnMR5gO93pT7S1IJOfKSqqjBZzKK4yzLhLEYf7zfvQDNnrm_5CjevsnBh-DcGYSd_kSDWD4BeihPL6rSiC0TDiSLtlbaP1rKZj1N8RJhwQa1HIEAxh-8lEyiUDD25AbclKMY/s1600/Clothing02a.jpg" height="400" width="380" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">He would sew on buttons where missing and replace lace where it was torn. He would have washed the clothing and perhaps even ironed them in an effort to make them desirable to his customers.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Certain sources note that fripperers dealt not only in 'cast-off clothing', but also in used furniture and household goods.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">So do we have to be living in the 1700s to avail ourselves of the services of a fripperer? Certainly not ~ I can find great bargains in used and refurbished clothing at the local fripperer ~ the Goodwill store. That explains the title of this post. After the 'summer of love' in 1969, as young people cast off the shackles of conventional society in favor of becoming hippies, many found that their newfound lack of money left them without the means to buy expensive clothing. The Goodwill Store became a mecca where they could find cheap, but good clothing. And today, this modern-day fripperer still provides that service to either people who can't afford the high cost of new clothes, or who want 'vintage' clothing.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoz_143GwVKA3Y3HHvCFV26uwLuDN2lyfFzifvZ238JJr5XMlunhquwjakp0M6hUYo4z6h_IjGWUH4uO46p8R9aqTptNoDUsjho_kJrlULnTGOzjcr9lC58zuICzh7HiUhVvDjjvwt7fM/s1600/Clothing03b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoz_143GwVKA3Y3HHvCFV26uwLuDN2lyfFzifvZ238JJr5XMlunhquwjakp0M6hUYo4z6h_IjGWUH4uO46p8R9aqTptNoDUsjho_kJrlULnTGOzjcr9lC58zuICzh7HiUhVvDjjvwt7fM/s1600/Clothing03b.jpg" height="400" width="318" /></a><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">By the way, the shirt and pants exhibited on this post did not come from a fripperer, although they look like they might have. They are just some of the clothes I wore in the 70s ~ in my 'hippie' days. I simply thought they'd illustrate some clothes that might have been mended and resold by a fripperer ~ they certainly were 'mended'.</span><br />
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Naftzgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17495360045609974113noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4777911433172547160.post-68452880124233284682014-06-16T23:34:00.000-07:002014-06-16T23:34:32.574-07:00Let's Try To Win A Prize On The Midway<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKxoKL1i8r9ttsNZ1lj4zXRVo-_PVvncoDQvLpxRBCjGVLUgdj6AJ5YpRxoc8d1KfRxjm3YuCyOQMTNaUdtQAMYRTW4Co1RHaFUl_z5WcUochqFvFZK4_4QIfpPTARH9bOGbNveH_3ACQ/s1600/Goblet02a.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKxoKL1i8r9ttsNZ1lj4zXRVo-_PVvncoDQvLpxRBCjGVLUgdj6AJ5YpRxoc8d1KfRxjm3YuCyOQMTNaUdtQAMYRTW4Co1RHaFUl_z5WcUochqFvFZK4_4QIfpPTARH9bOGbNveH_3ACQ/s1600/Goblet02a.JPG" height="640" width="432" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">People spend money on <i>carnival glass</i> items most every day. The beautiful bowls and drinking glasses and goblets and vases shine in iridescent golds, like the breast feathers of a ring-neck pheasant or in iridescent bronzy-purples, like the head feathers of a grackle. This glass artform, which was variously called rainbow or aurora glass, supposedly got its name from the fact that it was often given away as prizes at carnivals. Despite its exquisite colors and designs, this type of glass, the poor-man's Tiffany, was inexpensive to produce, and therefore could be purchased by common people.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The item which is the subject of this post, and pictured above, is also carnival glass. I'm not joking; it is truly carnival glass. I know this because my father told me of how his mother, Jennie, had actually won it as a prize at a local county fair or carnival in the 1920s.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The type of glass shown here is more formally called "<i>red cut to clear</i>" glass. Cut glass is not actually 'cut'. It is produced by taking pressed glass (<i>i.e.</i> glass blown or pressed into a mold) and sanding (<i>i.e.</i> cutting) certain parts with a sanding wheel. In this case, the glass is clear with a thin layer of red over the surface, and when the glass is sanded, the thin layer of red is sanded or cut off 'revealing' the clear glass underneath.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">So although an antiques dealer would probably refuse to acknowledge that this goblet is carnival glass, there is no denying that it was won as a prize at a carnival. And you know the saying: If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...it probably is a duck.</span><br />
<br />Naftzgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17495360045609974113noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4777911433172547160.post-90586247683561197832014-06-13T09:49:00.000-07:002014-06-13T09:49:31.467-07:00These Shoes Are Enough To Curl Your Toes<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgROo62RBVijyouyzDOE8YdW7JWqc9H6Q0sPP3zFtwROBGlrcWHlasqvrjNcEYJdFxvVcjw4Ylurp0jdtUQRAN_Nv33nk5A6fTbmxMSUruPdfJ0OxzQ687c7PbAEYaJu46dLiLUpbzlHvE/s1600/Shoes01a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgROo62RBVijyouyzDOE8YdW7JWqc9H6Q0sPP3zFtwROBGlrcWHlasqvrjNcEYJdFxvVcjw4Ylurp0jdtUQRAN_Nv33nk5A6fTbmxMSUruPdfJ0OxzQ687c7PbAEYaJu46dLiLUpbzlHvE/s1600/Shoes01a.jpg" height="556" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The phrase used for the title of this post is one that has, traditionally, been used to describe a taste sensation that is extremely sour or bitter, such as eating a lemon. We're not eating any lemons here, but the shoes pictured on this post surely look like they could force your toes to curl if you wore them all the time.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The fact of the matter is that this style of shoe was (and still is) considered comfortable in some parts of the world. It's called a <i>Jutti</i>, and originates in the Punjab, a portion of the Indus River Valley in (what is today with recent geopolitical divisions) northwestern India and southeastern Pakistan. The shoes are just one example of the fabulous leatherwork that has come from the craftsmen of the Punjab over many centuries.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWTiWGoHHjsElk5yaeFGXXCNu17rqTU6luxAZ35WRjgYOuvsmEjJKbvZTGI0_IacSVsyMzHVIQ_830iopMZ3_4lkpLhPfQRXWhu2H69rYGja22tcHWdg455zSs25K5GROicWOlOZbAB5U/s1600/Shoes01b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWTiWGoHHjsElk5yaeFGXXCNu17rqTU6luxAZ35WRjgYOuvsmEjJKbvZTGI0_IacSVsyMzHVIQ_830iopMZ3_4lkpLhPfQRXWhu2H69rYGja22tcHWdg455zSs25K5GROicWOlOZbAB5U/s1600/Shoes01b.jpg" height="250" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">Jutti resemble what we in the United States of America would call a 'loafer', usually having a flat sole and a closed upper (meaning the top portion covers not only the top of the foot, but also wraps around to encompass the heel). The Jutti's cousin is the <i>mojari</i>, which has an open back and resembling what we would call a sandal. Both, jutti and mojari, are distinguished by elaborately decorated uppers in which colored beads, pieces of mirror and shells are used to create bold designs. Juttis for men and women are made in practically the same shape, but with the one exception that for men, the toe of the shoe is extended toward a point and then folded, or curled, back upon the vamp. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQo7DplEiCkC1v4712n06CnMIYjBmS7v9-R1rq_gIb1FphGjRY7h795LG_L9SXLFkaV8o8ZZSSx8wM7shSSZF48Ty8CXzkNa4vb_8eCrhGyweo7Yn5IcpSfwIjCoaUnf_XHB1lsKk2H-U/s1600/Shoes01d.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQo7DplEiCkC1v4712n06CnMIYjBmS7v9-R1rq_gIb1FphGjRY7h795LG_L9SXLFkaV8o8ZZSSx8wM7shSSZF48Ty8CXzkNa4vb_8eCrhGyweo7Yn5IcpSfwIjCoaUnf_XHB1lsKk2H-U/s1600/Shoes01d.jpg" height="345" width="400" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">Tradition states that the curled toe was meant to mimic the curled tips of Punjab men's moustaches.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The example exhibited here is possibly dated to the 1800s. The pair had been part of a collection exhibited in the Crawford Museum in Breezewood, Pennsylvania. When the museum was closed, many of the items in its collections were sold, and that is how I came to possess this pair of shoes. As can be seen from certain of the photos, the soles and heels of these shoes are fabricated from layers of leather sewn together with leather thread. The uppers appear to have been constructed of a combination of leather and fabric.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJrY5ozbjVW4ttsshun7vo0O6zqSoNL8T97f1NOVrDEEtgn2jflXpk2caWd7xe_bhyphenhyphenmTpqmXhvWDuuZ7td-B2kbDbNcqSB5FPK7e7_5I9dz6NPMwMDwku_WoBRF1Ytt0n7EJ2fJKdBxws/s1600/Shoes01f.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJrY5ozbjVW4ttsshun7vo0O6zqSoNL8T97f1NOVrDEEtgn2jflXpk2caWd7xe_bhyphenhyphenmTpqmXhvWDuuZ7td-B2kbDbNcqSB5FPK7e7_5I9dz6NPMwMDwku_WoBRF1Ytt0n7EJ2fJKdBxws/s1600/Shoes01f.jpg" height="520" width="640" /></a></div>
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<br />Naftzgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17495360045609974113noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4777911433172547160.post-24935635532980104512014-06-11T06:50:00.000-07:002014-06-11T06:50:38.492-07:00A Pot To Piss In<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv1CK0bjfPlgiC4JKQnXirZP_JHx4GnjRJICjXJ_plFWzw4mKUuuWsjQkRSWanfgvZMky5lP79cPAuPJgmAm2Nmd4bdLrrdLDOXgsCfQRn35t8mfhhTYBU_CB5wWAYTFBBcKZLn2QgScU/s1600/ChamberPot01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv1CK0bjfPlgiC4JKQnXirZP_JHx4GnjRJICjXJ_plFWzw4mKUuuWsjQkRSWanfgvZMky5lP79cPAuPJgmAm2Nmd4bdLrrdLDOXgsCfQRn35t8mfhhTYBU_CB5wWAYTFBBcKZLn2QgScU/s1600/ChamberPot01.jpg" height="315" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">Pardon my words, but the title of this post is from an old saying, the entire phrase being: "We were so poor, we didn't even have a pot to piss in." That, of course, implied that the speaker was not just poor, but rather was very, very poor, or as it might have been said: dirt poor. The phrase, and its sentiment, came from a time not so long ago, perhaps only one hundred to one hundred and fifty years ~ when few families had indoor plumbing, and mostly everyone had to walk (or run, as the case might be) from the house to an out-building, aptly named the 'outhouse', to empty their kidneys and bowels. At night, a trip to the outhouse might be dangerous because of wild animals prowling around, so everyone owned one or more chamber/piss pots. If you didn't have even one in your house, you were indeed poor.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">There was one aspect of a chamber pot being kept and used in the bedroom that everyone instinctively thinks of when the subject is brought up ~ the smell of urine.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTwj33rnPHYlwNEf9SsSVHmJj7hDvbaK0k-fS_FEgfMMBCB8YpQbGsRGf6f4Qo5SV7yhT1cHeHN2D_NzsT0LPfwYVmAKOcPLhVEYqxSoORnRl0mO3jZmmVlpnQx81DO-jnyizSbr4Cskk/s1600/ChamberPot04.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTwj33rnPHYlwNEf9SsSVHmJj7hDvbaK0k-fS_FEgfMMBCB8YpQbGsRGf6f4Qo5SV7yhT1cHeHN2D_NzsT0LPfwYVmAKOcPLhVEYqxSoORnRl0mO3jZmmVlpnQx81DO-jnyizSbr4Cskk/s1600/ChamberPot04.jpg" height="307" width="400" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"> In a day and age before the producers of television commercials began to convince everybody that what they were selling was less intended to make them money than to benefit the viewers' lives, people put up with many things that were natural and ordinary. Ordinary smells were accepted as natural; they weren't considered offensive. They just were there and you had to deal with them. In those pre-industrial-age days, people rode in carriages or wagons pulled by horses ~ those beasts of burden who gave off certain smells. They resided in houses warmed by fireplaces or furnaces that burned wood, kerosene or coal, and coincidently produced the smells of wood smoke or kerosene and coal fumes. And those people bathed themselves and washed their clothes with unscented soap made from lye. Television commercials for products that a few entrepreneurs decided everyone needed (or could be convinced to need) changed all that. Few people grasped the fact that the sale of a particular product was the primary motivation of the television commercials that told us that teeth of any color other than pristine white was the horror of all horrors, and that we should buy toothpaste-XYZ in order to be able to function in society. Few people realized that it was simply a company trying to make millions of dollars when they pushed soap detergent-XYZ, which promised to make dingy red teeshirts more brilliant and redder with each washing. And when the television commercials dwelled on the fact that BO (that thing that was too terrible to even speak its name aloud) was so offensive that a single whiff of it would drive mankind insane, shelves and shelves of products reeking of 'lavender potpourri' or 'vanilla-rosebud' appeared in stores. And as technology advanced, all things natural and ordinary became taboo. The chamber pot, which harbored the natural and ordinary smell of urine, became taboo after plumbing (and television commercials for air fresheners) made that smell unfashionable.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Suddenly there was running water being piped into houses ~ plumbing; and the next thing you know, water closets ~ renamed commodes in later years ~ were hooked up to the pipes of running water. There suddenly was no need for outhouses ~ or chamber pots. And that smell that emanated from the thing pictured in this post became a thing of the past.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The chamber pot was a standard item found in all houses for centuries prior to the introduction of plumbing in homes throughout Europe and the United States of America. They tended to be kept in the bedroom, usually under the bed, within easy reach, but they might also be kept in other rooms for handy use. Emptying the chamber pot was a daily chore usually assigned to one of the children of poorer families, or by a maid in a wealthier household.</span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsw_I-x_QbtMoqWUNNkRZG7UHz2qnY91vSuI76u1_3SbfnKBFIwWW6Lahgx_OafuQaDho6C7jwmtxY5paWfRpNMR9PlIngvbLc34EnJ_Y0ak_aEEq51vcWpj0A7HblVp_DIP6S4o9N5cw/s1600/ChamberPot05.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsw_I-x_QbtMoqWUNNkRZG7UHz2qnY91vSuI76u1_3SbfnKBFIwWW6Lahgx_OafuQaDho6C7jwmtxY5paWfRpNMR9PlIngvbLc34EnJ_Y0ak_aEEq51vcWpj0A7HblVp_DIP6S4o9N5cw/s1600/ChamberPot05.jpg" height="212" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">Chamber pots were predominantly made of ceramic, including white ironstone china such as the one shown here, but they were also constructed of metals, such as tin and enameled tin. Richer households boasted of chamber pots made of</span><span style="font-size: large;"> silver. Chamber pots to be found in antique stores today often are missing their lids, but originally all of the pots would have had lids to prevent the odor of urine from constantly wafting into the room. As one of the photos shows, the lid was formed with an inner ring that helped in trapping any smells within the pot, sort of like how the "s" trap in a sink's plumbing works. Ceramic chamber pots tended to have one handle, but ones with two handles existed. The two-handled style was sometimes called a 'marriage pot'; the two handles supposedly facilitated handing the pot from one spouse to the other. The metal chamber pots often had a wire handle and resembled nothing more than a metal bucket with a lid.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">My father, Bernard Smith, often told the story of how, after he had gone off to army training in Florida during the Second World War, he had written to his mother. In his letter, my dad noted that the one thing he missed (<i>i.e.</i> or rather wanted, but couldn't have), being in the army, was the chamber pot. Jennie, his mother, wrote back and simply said: "The floor shows that you often missed it when you were home too."</span>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdJEkmrV2bqlgfrPtgb7wq-kbK7sSzLLODhxo9MqJbJ2OjP5sflvDXrNaC-t4GiqNIB6KmUZ4y4ofA8wU6M2XMb2gUTgQDmW2nBvEw45k2Uzlxd-NvcKmfYMtNfJGboiwQZ15V60v9w40/s1600/Pillow01a.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdJEkmrV2bqlgfrPtgb7wq-kbK7sSzLLODhxo9MqJbJ2OjP5sflvDXrNaC-t4GiqNIB6KmUZ4y4ofA8wU6M2XMb2gUTgQDmW2nBvEw45k2Uzlxd-NvcKmfYMtNfJGboiwQZ15V60v9w40/s1600/Pillow01a.JPG" height="529" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Some, but not many, aspects of child-rearing has changed over the centuries. Today children are revered and adored, their status being just below that of angelic cherubs. But at one time, children were tolerated, at best. They were, as noted in the famous proverb, 'meant to be seen and not heard'. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Children were, no doubt, loved as much by their parents in the 1700s as they are today, but daily life was quite different in the 1700s than it is today, and children were, understandably, treated differently. Men and women, alike, worked from sunrise to sunset: the men in the fields, planting crops and harvesting the same, or taking care of livestock and performing farmwork; the women cooking, washing the family's clothes and spinning flax and wool into thread. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwwD9PNOnyPA3YV8-KSk9lBJHPGz4icavY8TJyL0A72ewsFbveA7d_5MwPR1idN1o-uHwkmtkHE-AcFWpYOcGkHSDW4NQUDqEg_6smoGzQcxBb5Fxj8gCXVfiIGN9zbmrFWFwyg5sZHTo/s1600/Pillow01c.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwwD9PNOnyPA3YV8-KSk9lBJHPGz4icavY8TJyL0A72ewsFbveA7d_5MwPR1idN1o-uHwkmtkHE-AcFWpYOcGkHSDW4NQUDqEg_6smoGzQcxBb5Fxj8gCXVfiIGN9zbmrFWFwyg5sZHTo/s1600/Pillow01c.jpg" height="326" width="400" /></a></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">There wasn't much time left for either of the parents to spend playing with their children, and so the children were left to fend for themselves. But guess what? We're alive today ~ proof that apparently not all of the children of the 1700s died because they weren't coddled or pampered.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Coddling and pampering aside, one thing that has not changed through the centuries is the desire of parents that their children would be safe from harm. It is often claimed by historians that the infant mortality rate was high, and to compensate for that, parents gave birth to numerous children. But there are other sources that confute that claim, countering that the percentage of children who died in infancy then was no greater than now: the lack of contraceptives might have been a greater factor in the size of families. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBw8hrvceTceTdF37rJEBPJrbRhMjWoUku4IxFwcp7E3G9LsuIvFmUxot6LM6UeLD9kV4OJDlCvMXzshbG83Mh1Nfo2CxRGTt3n0Zs7j1n97cldQTmw90LYfHL9BAt7l01KfBw-Bkgfog/s1600/Pillow01d.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBw8hrvceTceTdF37rJEBPJrbRhMjWoUku4IxFwcp7E3G9LsuIvFmUxot6LM6UeLD9kV4OJDlCvMXzshbG83Mh1Nfo2CxRGTt3n0Zs7j1n97cldQTmw90LYfHL9BAt7l01KfBw-Bkgfog/s1600/Pillow01d.jpg" height="313" width="400" /></a></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Whether a family included three children or thirteen would not have influenced how much the parents loved those children. And the loss of any one of their children would surely have broken the hearts of those parents as much then as now. One difference between the 1700s and today, in regard to child-rearing, is that we currently have the results of many studies that show us what works and what doesn't. Ensuring that our children are safe from harm doesn't have to rely on trial and error any longer. But trial and error, with infant deaths resulting here and there, was the only thing parents had in centuries past. Instead of being able to reap the benefits of an extensive study, as parents can in the present day and age, parents of the 1700s either had to discover their own way, or learn from their elders.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The object displayed in this post is one of the things that parents learned from their elders and used to ensure that their baby did not die in its sleep. Although it appears to be just a fancy cloth item, similar to a doily, which is an ornamental cloth or paper mat used to protect furniture surfaces or to contribute, visually, to the presentation of something. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFZHe5RA3ME8Yq3Hq7CMhHlsYH9u1qbwS6ABIO2lzyo2X0OtdUx0hKVbnsHf2F4Bvi3QzzGpOrLdbs95Fq_4H0_5eOTQKjXjr6QpL08WYyYebFskUjt5OasFZcAa9gwICSCzLGuUdO8ps/s1600/Pillow01f.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFZHe5RA3ME8Yq3Hq7CMhHlsYH9u1qbwS6ABIO2lzyo2X0OtdUx0hKVbnsHf2F4Bvi3QzzGpOrLdbs95Fq_4H0_5eOTQKjXjr6QpL08WYyYebFskUjt5OasFZcAa9gwICSCzLGuUdO8ps/s1600/Pillow01f.jpg" height="574" width="640" /></a></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The primary reason this object resembles a doily is due to the lacey border material. But if not a doily, what is it? It looks too delicate to be a wall hanging. And besides, dating from the late-1700s to the mid-1800s, the item's age would preclude it from being a miniature quilt created solely for the purpose of being hung on the wall as a decoration. Prior to the recent century, women did not waste their precious cloth scraps or thread to create miniature quilts and such to hang as artwork on a wall. Perhaps the item exhibited here was a 'sampler' ~ a cloth article created by a young girl on which to practice, and show off, her skill at sewing and embroidery. But, although the item certainly exhibits a variety of stitches and sewing techniques, the 'standard' structure of a sampler is absent. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi906oAcL80zb_N5EpylHtoKsKvNu4hch5GGq41hK8yHElfGHuiSMryjMytkmtocnSG5bqUP4kSDh0LUsFbxWGWzBcOIR8rZ4Dvg-fh9Y6LRVAMjag2c3Tr0HRH5wtT1kNuPftR3N1yAMo/s1600/Pillow01e.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi906oAcL80zb_N5EpylHtoKsKvNu4hch5GGq41hK8yHElfGHuiSMryjMytkmtocnSG5bqUP4kSDh0LUsFbxWGWzBcOIR8rZ4Dvg-fh9Y6LRVAMjag2c3Tr0HRH5wtT1kNuPftR3N1yAMo/s1600/Pillow01e.jpg" height="340" width="400" /></a></div>
Samplers tended to be constructed of linen material; this item is comprised of silk and velvet. Samplers tended to showcase the letters of the alphabet sewn onto the linen in order to reveal how proficient the young girl was in using the needle; this item bears no letters at all. The actual purpose of this item may surprise you. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The object of this post was intended to be placed in an infant child's cradle or crib, on which to rest the baby's head. The object is completely flat, and does not resemble what we today would call a 'pillow', but a baby's pillow is just what the object is. Through trial and error, mothers learned that a baby's head should not be lain on a fluffy or plush pillow with the risk of the baby suffocating. But all the same, mothers wanted to fawn over their little ones, and so made these cloth items to brighten the baby's cradle. The mother who sewed together this beautiful example used various types of cloth, including velvets, satins and silks, and then added a border of intricately designed lace. The back, shown below, was constructed of a piece of red silk. The baby whose head rested on this beautiful pillow was very fortunate to have a mommy who loved him or her very much.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi24IA3IjZSHRpH5vHJwtdrVpd8cqNLLRqTqnt9aF0qejHbj-2ox6F9r5dGFrzNzWKRPNSdQdMG0X-sIAN_klehObFloqYxzNx3M_rSFE0ClRhwjBZvTtjyuzet_fEYwISbS3tHQAjZ1_k/s1600/Pillow01b.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi24IA3IjZSHRpH5vHJwtdrVpd8cqNLLRqTqnt9aF0qejHbj-2ox6F9r5dGFrzNzWKRPNSdQdMG0X-sIAN_klehObFloqYxzNx3M_rSFE0ClRhwjBZvTtjyuzet_fEYwISbS3tHQAjZ1_k/s1600/Pillow01b.JPG" height="542" width="640" /></a></span></div>
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Naftzgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17495360045609974113noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4777911433172547160.post-17205384807849121342014-05-29T10:39:00.001-07:002014-05-29T10:39:08.890-07:00The Idiot Bushes Are in Full Bloom<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOFFwpXbmDWzV-cCjxJBxgLdeo-Uaz-XVt8dtm6d2QNtBwwD13WTA7BE6dOZWjMy6rzlLfL9CTeXndnHKZhqXVxB7m0igb444HYH7W_5fC5o_QuLOudkY3xw1QRisAdu47V9ApuNeN3f4/s1600/Honeysuckle01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOFFwpXbmDWzV-cCjxJBxgLdeo-Uaz-XVt8dtm6d2QNtBwwD13WTA7BE6dOZWjMy6rzlLfL9CTeXndnHKZhqXVxB7m0igb444HYH7W_5fC5o_QuLOudkY3xw1QRisAdu47V9ApuNeN3f4/s1600/Honeysuckle01.jpg" height="540" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">My father, Bernard Smith, was very knowledgeable about many things. He could quote passages from Shakespeare and other authors; and he could discuss (intelligently) theological matters with the best of theologians. More than a few times I witnessed my father doing mathematical calculations in his head. He encouraged my own interest in biology and, at a very young age, dinosaurs. Of course I adored him and believed, as most kids probably do of their own fathers, that he knew Everything (that's everything with a capital "E"). Always possessing a keen sense of humor, he would tell me and my siblings that if I ever had a question about something, all I had to do was to ask it. If he didn't know the correct answer he would respond: "That was a very good question, why don't you ask me another?"</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Despite all of the things that my father knew, one thing stumped him ~ the idiot bush. The <em>idiot bush</em> suddenly appeared one summer in our yard ~ not among the other wild bushes that covered the hillside behind the house ~ not along the creek ~ not out of the way anywhere, but smack dab in the open space of the yard. Okay, so it wasn't in the front yard, but in the portion of yard that bordered the garage, so it was kinda out of the way. Maybe that is why my father didn't immediately mow it down. It really didn't bother anyone. It just was there. And boy did it grow! </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNnYYI0ez8jIMOo_37Kn2bBszM8F2o81XI5hepIdUMpStFoAZ65ZVG87KkRjtdCueA7ENJfrQ7-y35aF5CaZcGAL9dgwkLis4LYSS1_t_Pp_aaXGWRSfI2_XbtTpFlhDUEPQvdwCxfEgk/s1600/Honeysuckle03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNnYYI0ez8jIMOo_37Kn2bBszM8F2o81XI5hepIdUMpStFoAZ65ZVG87KkRjtdCueA7ENJfrQ7-y35aF5CaZcGAL9dgwkLis4LYSS1_t_Pp_aaXGWRSfI2_XbtTpFlhDUEPQvdwCxfEgk/s1600/Honeysuckle03.jpg" height="296" width="400" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">The bush was almost six feet tall by the end of the summer, with seven or eight long, slender 'branches' sprouting upward from the base of the primary one. Suddenly there was another, similar bush, growing just three feet away from the first. Although there were now two distinct bushes, we always referred to them as 'the idiot bush'.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">My brother and I were warned not to cut down the idiot bush, so when we mowed the yard we had to work around the two space-grabbers. Every time that I mowed the yard, and had to dodge the arching branches, I muttered a word or two of disapproval. In those days when I mowed with a push mower, I preferred simple yards ~ yards that required only a few swipes, straight up and down, without being slowed down by trees or bushes. So suddenly there were two bushes standing in the middle of the very yard that I preferred to mow in a few swipes, straight up and down.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Why did my dad name the bushes that suddenly appeared in our yard: the idiot bush? Probably because it was one of those few things that he did not know the answer to. And I'm sure if we would have asked him why he named them that, he probably would have responded: "That's a very good question; now do you have any others?"</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPzJ4zABHZypFlHMdtuO_y146OXF2jGdAeId236zCPdZvi9Zgf52sFFzhqi5vGVFQKEFd9Dv38KaCkNyzqoAn8CKA2LuMXgGQiPq92K3dBt8GU6Px08hUUT_5srpy9ajwFls6NZK4cS2w/s1600/Honeysuckle02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPzJ4zABHZypFlHMdtuO_y146OXF2jGdAeId236zCPdZvi9Zgf52sFFzhqi5vGVFQKEFd9Dv38KaCkNyzqoAn8CKA2LuMXgGQiPq92K3dBt8GU6Px08hUUT_5srpy9ajwFls6NZK4cS2w/s1600/Honeysuckle02.jpg" height="295" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">My father passed away thirteen years ago. The idiot bush (both of them) had to be cut down when I constructed my house and needed to use that portion of the yard for my septic drainage field. But that wasn't the end of the idiot bush; over the years I watched them sprouting just about everywhere. They grew on the hillside, along the creek, and by the side of most of the roads on which I drove my car.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Times change. Instead of being able to ask my knowledgeable father questions about things like "What kind of bush was that?", I now have to find the answers elsewhere. So I searched on the internet and discovered the true name of our idiot bush: Japanese Honeysuckle.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The photos on this post are of the Japanese Honeysuckle (<em>Lonicera japonica</em>). The United States Department of Agriculture has listed the Japanese Honeysuckle as an invasive weed. That's a shame, because the delicate flowers that cover the bush are very beautiful. Depending on the type of soil, some of the plants bear white flowers with yellow stamens, while others bear pink or even purple flowers. On my property, the plants that grow along the creek tend to bloom with white flowers, while the ones that grow along the slate outcropping of the hillside tend to bloom in a beautiful pinkish purple.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ8freNFkkHV2nuLk0ukCYoeFTWumJZgLjOJkzeDYTbZEJyoZAkSxa8A6xR8HIVUXyrwLky37yHyHx4awYUUK8ztn09l-vLEnJ4Nu1eAfMpSU1hxJ91K-Cs-jXCUqHU6YNc9o_AHRh07Q/s1600/Honeysuckle04.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ8freNFkkHV2nuLk0ukCYoeFTWumJZgLjOJkzeDYTbZEJyoZAkSxa8A6xR8HIVUXyrwLky37yHyHx4awYUUK8ztn09l-vLEnJ4Nu1eAfMpSU1hxJ91K-Cs-jXCUqHU6YNc9o_AHRh07Q/s1600/Honeysuckle04.jpg" height="312" width="400" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"> The flowers of the Japanese Honeysuckle have a fragrance similar to vanilla. According to many sources, the plant produces many berries that ripen from green to black; all of the bushes in my area produce red berries that don't change color before falling from the plant. The plant spreads rapidly. The plant is considered a vine because it will intertwine itself with trees or other structures in which it comes in contact. Because of their capacity to grow anywhere, in good or bad soil alike, and because they propagate by either rhizomes underground, runners aboveground, and/or seeds, they tend to grow right where you don't want them and are large bushes before you know it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I'm older now than my father was when he christened the honeysuckle plant as: the idiot bush. I think of Bernard Smith everytime I see the idiot bushes blooming.</span>Naftzgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17495360045609974113noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4777911433172547160.post-56427117379940146212014-05-25T13:56:00.002-07:002014-05-25T21:48:57.492-07:00Here's My Card, S'il Vous Plait<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJdcS7mNT72R7wfy2GqnM4Q35d91bF79TnOAjhnZPHPkjcHFPaEGUhG98G4a3f5Gg1WUNQvhJh1-sqdzKn79kmt0vcZOmUtLyviU1A-zxBOn7_6bzOJnfmhR1BmtF4wcwL8e5gFrx2Ra0/s1600/CallingCard02a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJdcS7mNT72R7wfy2GqnM4Q35d91bF79TnOAjhnZPHPkjcHFPaEGUhG98G4a3f5Gg1WUNQvhJh1-sqdzKn79kmt0vcZOmUtLyviU1A-zxBOn7_6bzOJnfmhR1BmtF4wcwL8e5gFrx2Ra0/s1600/CallingCard02a.jpg" height="200" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">You might think that you're a real sociable person. You have 327 'friends' on Facebook (a dozen or so of whom you have actually met in person), and you honestly believe that your Twitter followers really care where you went last weekend. And so, as you sit in front of your computer or with your android tablet or phone in hand, tapping out your tweets and posts, you are convinced that you are connecting with others. The fact of the matter is that despite all the advances in technology, and irregardless of all the gizmos and doodads we have on our phones, we human beings are becoming less and less truly sociable.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Years ago, unlike during the present age, people were genuinely sociable. They met and interacted with each other in physical reality ~ not just in virtual reality. Many human beings engaged in an archaic ritual that was known as 'visiting' ~ travelling to another person's house and talking to that person - in person. I know that it might sound unusual to some readers, but people actually did that at one time.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The object of this post is an ephemeral relic of that sociable ritual of 'visiting' ~ the calling card (often referred to as the <i>visiting card</i>). </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3bMIWaXBA4FYfR3lXMPDqf6_d0ya3ogENz-7F_gmp7Kb4lctMBQg8zEzqt5xjyeEVwrLYkjpfA6u8aze147WjWxz0ZHBCZqji1EsJ8nSSfm-UJuoZ5PGcoEVwkPQS_VyFfR3CCkXBjic/s1600/CallingCard01a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3bMIWaXBA4FYfR3lXMPDqf6_d0ya3ogENz-7F_gmp7Kb4lctMBQg8zEzqt5xjyeEVwrLYkjpfA6u8aze147WjWxz0ZHBCZqji1EsJ8nSSfm-UJuoZ5PGcoEVwkPQS_VyFfR3CCkXBjic/s1600/CallingCard01a.jpg" height="193" width="400" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">Back then, in that genteel age named for Britain's Queen Victoria, of the House of Hanover, there existed what was known as <i>polite society</i>. Gentlemen opened doors for ladies and assisted them in being seated at the dinner table. In return, ladies said "thank you", instead of calling the men 'sexist pigs'. Friends and associates met at parties for the purpose of enjoying each other's company ~ not just to get drunk and pass out. Men, and women alike, used their fingers to grasp things, not to convey bad thoughts toward one another. </span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUK2JdwyaTzcGIzp3bvYcx3lzukMNObfyA7AyL1007LhjRmrVQNL2uu6h4abh8kVIpNQOxCibNKoO_Y7zYHAdPG_UYY-3HUMc_hwqmax7ISLzjpwudvFy3btzBPIor5-OQ0aTX_E_YSLc/s1600/CallingCard08a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUK2JdwyaTzcGIzp3bvYcx3lzukMNObfyA7AyL1007LhjRmrVQNL2uu6h4abh8kVIpNQOxCibNKoO_Y7zYHAdPG_UYY-3HUMc_hwqmax7ISLzjpwudvFy3btzBPIor5-OQ0aTX_E_YSLc/s1600/CallingCard08a.jpg" height="195" width="400" /></a></span></div>
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Arising out of the air of politeness that imbued mankind's social interactions was the announcement of the arrival of visitors at parties, other social events, or just on a summer evening. And that is where the calling card came into use.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">It is claimed by some sources that calling cards came into general use in China as early as the Fifteenth Century. Within two hundred years, they were in vogue throughout Europe. The cards were quite popular in Great Britain and the United States of America from the Georgian to the Victorian eras.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Despite eventually becoming popular with the middle and lower classes, as anything in vogue tends to do, the calling card's use, originally, was confined to the aristocratic level of society. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB42TTVf9WjEKO5DTY6vH3eG2LmuM72cGg2MIX28XoN5z2XIcICeLW5l2DEIbFWgrr6GAOz_Yd5lQVL1_XVL3Bi901pI4ilCdWmldSEWOm1tlBGcnoJhBKM-Gnr2rxBS7I2RCodNZ0UnQ/s1600/CallingCard03a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB42TTVf9WjEKO5DTY6vH3eG2LmuM72cGg2MIX28XoN5z2XIcICeLW5l2DEIbFWgrr6GAOz_Yd5lQVL1_XVL3Bi901pI4ilCdWmldSEWOm1tlBGcnoJhBKM-Gnr2rxBS7I2RCodNZ0UnQ/s1600/CallingCard03a.jpg" height="313" width="400" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">It was not just from a desire for exclusivity; the etiquette of the calling cards required that there be servants to make them function properly. A person who wished to visit the home of another would present his card to the maid or doorman of the intended party, and then either wait there, or return home to wait, for a response. The gentleman's address might be written on the back of the card if the lady he wished to visit was not already an acquaintance. If given an approval, by the receipt of the other party's card, the intended visitor would present himself at her door once again, and he would then be admitted. </span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYBn0AEJyGVog2D2uFDMHBrRvIO5Io9e8ZchsqbJw51YRQwKqPIZQq8G-2jzxzPvhF5K1zo5ODYSlhVfckfy4rGD6GNzAi2N5OOF8rJJkYQpCO39D-DZiSilVmXP3JHUTHlTDRw8Qs_AQ/s1600/CallingCard06a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYBn0AEJyGVog2D2uFDMHBrRvIO5Io9e8ZchsqbJw51YRQwKqPIZQq8G-2jzxzPvhF5K1zo5ODYSlhVfckfy4rGD6GNzAi2N5OOF8rJJkYQpCO39D-DZiSilVmXP3JHUTHlTDRw8Qs_AQ/s1600/CallingCard06a.jpg" height="215" width="400" /></a></span></div>
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Oh, and I wasn't being sexist a sentence or two ago when I stated that a "gentleman" would present "his" card... In polite society, a woman did not make such a bold move, unless she wanted to be labeled a 'tart' or something worse. The ritual was only completed if and when the lady instructed her servant to hand-carry one of her own cards to the gentleman. If she failed to do this, or mailed his own card back to him in an envelope via the postal service, it was a sign to him that she did not wish to have his company.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSI0wK2upcde210xb2rNlHgBSFlvzrFlaXTv3nfjV5v2w_ihR-bwEXpQ8JvNbZkK-BAJDz2iucRywCsil1wj9bNJeNp3sOwy5xFQU5EZKQatvIoVg8pAJyPyOJWz3oYujkThb5WDJlc1w/s1600/CallingCard09a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSI0wK2upcde210xb2rNlHgBSFlvzrFlaXTv3nfjV5v2w_ihR-bwEXpQ8JvNbZkK-BAJDz2iucRywCsil1wj9bNJeNp3sOwy5xFQU5EZKQatvIoVg8pAJyPyOJWz3oYujkThb5WDJlc1w/s1600/CallingCard09a.jpg" height="296" width="640" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">Similar to the present-day business card, calling cards were printed on heavy card stock and were generally under two inches by four inches. A common size was one and one-half by three inches. Initially, calling cards were white, with the person's name printed in black ink, such as the one given out by Hannah A. Burger, and shown at the beginning of this post</span><span style="font-size: large;">. The name might be printed in a standard font, such as Times New Roman, but in italics for effect, or it might be fancied up by employing a script font.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTUQu3ti6IqXo6ldLAAIjKh1d7SDgMdwYzrwA4bP0SSPb2HL09HIJFfoRfMgV4-e2u1tmnON2w_Si_ns1n61QudbcNlBAlvH87Pe8sBBeCXV0OXsiL5OUJqroKedOyPic3JCZ8DGhJwGY/s1600/CallingCard05a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTUQu3ti6IqXo6ldLAAIjKh1d7SDgMdwYzrwA4bP0SSPb2HL09HIJFfoRfMgV4-e2u1tmnON2w_Si_ns1n61QudbcNlBAlvH87Pe8sBBeCXV0OXsiL5OUJqroKedOyPic3JCZ8DGhJwGY/s1600/CallingCard05a.jpg" height="213" width="400" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">As shown in the examples illustrating this post, sometimes the initial letters were printed in a different, more elaborate font for emphasis. Some individuals wanted more extravagant cards, and to that end they paid the printer extra to fill the empty space around their names with images of flower bouquets, animals or, as shown in one example above (that of Hezekiah Cobler), the card owner's own likeness. It should be noted that Miss Cobler also gave out cards with only her name on them ~ I wonder how she decided to whom the picture ones should be given?</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnO4piBiFpMva8GgiZSEj2YDAz9GxRT_50lEMClsSYGAmUSOkpoYN4jpsXOuSJXX012UX0SxwTulKOAzE59pUpNb8oQlZy1-L-5HyR8XHkrL3RRY-Doo9RBWldFlL0jmjKOxGF3o0_Aos/s1600/CallingCard07a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnO4piBiFpMva8GgiZSEj2YDAz9GxRT_50lEMClsSYGAmUSOkpoYN4jpsXOuSJXX012UX0SxwTulKOAzE59pUpNb8oQlZy1-L-5HyR8XHkrL3RRY-Doo9RBWldFlL0jmjKOxGF3o0_Aos/s1600/CallingCard07a.jpg" height="368" width="640" /></a><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">In the examples shown here, the two full scenes (of the boy coaxing the lobster, and the puppy with a ribbon) are unique. The card of Harry Reininger includes a scene in which a boat sails past three palm trees along the shore. Perhaps he had visited a South Seas island at one time and longed to return there, or perhaps it was just a dream of his to someday sail past a beach lined with palm trees. The images on the cards undoubtedly revealed something of the person's character.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaiJW73BDqg-C2kOGFH0xjngEUe0bmsRTzGt2TU1qrQNfvZh0F2TzjO5R94AU52DH0kHXRslVPpuv56b_odFYzA9dITbATvZtVA2W-8OQgIjEhX2cE7Ez3gkZSugfV2MCXn-7wAgNy12I/s1600/CallingCard04a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaiJW73BDqg-C2kOGFH0xjngEUe0bmsRTzGt2TU1qrQNfvZh0F2TzjO5R94AU52DH0kHXRslVPpuv56b_odFYzA9dITbATvZtVA2W-8OQgIjEhX2cE7Ez3gkZSugfV2MCXn-7wAgNy12I/s1600/CallingCard04a.jpg" height="220" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">The card of Cora M. Walter is unique in this collection, because it contains not only a scene in addition to her name, but also an inspirational poem.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Also, quite unique, is the card pictured below, which has an overlay of a hand holding a rose, from which a child, or perhaps a cherub, is emerging. The overlay lifts upwards to reveal Catharine Grabill's name. The purpose of the semi-circular cutouts is unknown; perhaps they were included simply as a design element.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJyZFF76HNHz71MVcUHheLiNv4Ba_Jjineb1yZsEYrmFLvepZUVqpSabqRnNU4kE1THC2vXUPVKz1ftpiha-C0cKfQC_fDzVsYYCyMJWe6UCbrR93rqQOZ4c30vccxnPUEc9G9E5H9xX4/s1600/CallingCard10a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJyZFF76HNHz71MVcUHheLiNv4Ba_Jjineb1yZsEYrmFLvepZUVqpSabqRnNU4kE1THC2vXUPVKz1ftpiha-C0cKfQC_fDzVsYYCyMJWe6UCbrR93rqQOZ4c30vccxnPUEc9G9E5H9xX4/s1600/CallingCard10a.jpg" height="230" width="400" /></a><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzZ-lcHASeQYPbIEuQZXRPF56S8v4bD0Z9SxUK0r8rvZKHJkr1fhX96eh2zCdyzUqToQo2-3pdwxgHBidUpji0SFp4kEl-wY77a88Y20PxFrBfORyrnziBMkrKjoMAWPte8WvDHkX35BY/s1600/CallingCard10b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzZ-lcHASeQYPbIEuQZXRPF56S8v4bD0Z9SxUK0r8rvZKHJkr1fhX96eh2zCdyzUqToQo2-3pdwxgHBidUpji0SFp4kEl-wY77a88Y20PxFrBfORyrnziBMkrKjoMAWPte8WvDHkX35BY/s1600/CallingCard10b.jpg" height="268" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The last card exhibited here is the <i>business</i> card of D. Miles Walter, who advertised to print a pack of visiting cards for only 10 cents for forty of <i>the nicest cards ever brought before the people</i>.</span><br />
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Naftzgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17495360045609974113noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4777911433172547160.post-89074155149902171832014-05-15T21:21:00.000-07:002014-05-15T21:21:19.871-07:00Butter Made From Apples<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5-pgkVWUUs-HulErv0TAXh3CzNUuA0UcNSx0wTxVYzNMNsDgJQ5DNAUMZekpKSErwC9XirxWJrinkAVtVvhY6Y5UuhvmeZJiON1kaB8pfm7W_qUCdWtYGDMbbfIKb13AshAc8Cws7pXE/s1600/Stirrer01a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5-pgkVWUUs-HulErv0TAXh3CzNUuA0UcNSx0wTxVYzNMNsDgJQ5DNAUMZekpKSErwC9XirxWJrinkAVtVvhY6Y5UuhvmeZJiON1kaB8pfm7W_qUCdWtYGDMbbfIKb13AshAc8Cws7pXE/s1600/Stirrer01a.jpg" height="293" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I have a number of wooden tools, each of which consist of a long, straight pole with a shorter piece of wood attached to the one end, at right angle to the long pole. The short pieces of each of these tools have one or more holes bored into them. The long poles of these tools range from just under four feet, to just over seven feet in length.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">On a post a while back, I reminisced on my family undertaking the butchering of pigs when I was young. In that post I noted that they often would combine the making of apple butter with the butchering. The wooden tools that I am displaying here were used in the making of apple butter.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">To make apple butter, you didn't make a quart at a time; you made gallons at a time. And because you made gallons at a time, it took a number of people to work at it. As noted in the previous post about pig butchering, all the families in the hollow joined in ~ that meant my parents, grandparents and aunts and uncles (because it was only relatives who comprised the families in our little corner of the world). Since it took two or three strong-backed men to suspend our large (forty gallon) iron kettle from a wooden pole tripod and two or three equally strong-backed women to fill the large iron kettle with water, it was best done when everyone was gathered to butcher the pigs than to call them in on another day. While some members of the family were doing the grunt work of getting the kettle hung and filled with water, and making a roaring fire underneath it, others busied themselves with peeling and coring ten or twelve bushels of apples and then chopping them into quarters. I can remember a time or two, as a young boy, being allowed to carry and dump the apple segments into the kettle. (I remember also stealing a bite or two of the apples on the way to the kettle.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Did I mention that there would be a roaring fire under the kettle?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"> You had to boil the cut up apples, along with sugar and some cinnamon, in the water in order for their pulp to caramelize and turn into a thick, sticky 'butter'. The mixture in the kettle had to be stirred almost constantly for up to six or eight hours to prevent any of the apple mash from settling to the bottom of the kettle, where it might burn. So how do you stir the contents of a large iron kettle over a long period of time with the heat of a fire emanating from it? The answer is the object of this post ~ a stirring stick at the end of a long pole.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The finished apple butter would be spooned out of the kettle and deposited in glass jars. Each family took a couple jars, and enjoyed the tart, apple flavored jam through the following winter.</span>Naftzgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17495360045609974113noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4777911433172547160.post-73557049595346691542014-02-23T15:59:00.000-08:002014-02-23T15:59:34.051-08:00Is Anyone Else Tired Of Upping?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">Everybody seems to be upping these days. One television commercial after another has someone either upping or wanting to up. And if you personally have not upped recently, then you must be in a deep coma or dead ~ because everyone seems to be upping or wanting to up.<br /><br />Well, I am here to state that I dislike the new verb that's being trumpeted left and right, just about everywhere you turn: to <i>up</i>. While I was growing up, we never upped anything. We might increase this or that, but we never upped this or that. We never planned to up our knowledge of anything, but we might enlarge or enhance our knowledge. And we most assuredly did not up our game, although we might try to become better at what we did.<br /><br />It seems that only recently, <i>i.e.</i> over the past five years or so, the verb form of the word <i>up</i> has been used so extensively. For the first half a century or so of my life I never heard anyone using the word <i>up</i> as a verb. As I mentioned above, nowadays it seems that hardly a day passes that you don't hear the word <i>up</i> being used as a verb by someone in the news media, on a television or radio commercial, or on a website. For a number of years I endured working for a boss who felt that he had to abbreviate words. My boss's boss told him that his reports were "too wordy", and that he needed to reduce them somewhat. Instead of realizing that his boss meant that he should condense his thoughts into smaller, more concise sentences, my boss thought that he should cut down the words themselves. So, instead of writing out the word <i>through</i>, my boss would write<i> thru</i>. Instead of <i>approximately</i>, my boss would write <i>apxx</i>. My boss's paragraphs still contained two hundred sentences and his sentences still contained eighty to one hundred words, but most of his words contained 20% less letters. I disliked my boss's misguided attempt to follow his boss's directive. So when my senses began to be bombarded with one person upping this and another person upping that, instead of the first simply increasing this and the latter intensifying that, I found myself disliking it more and more.<br /><br />Now, although the use of the word <i>up</i> as a verb has, in recent years, upped tremendously, such usage is not new. A check of the Oxford English Dictionary reveals that there are actually seven senses of the use of the word <i>up</i> as a verb. The earliest evidence of the usage of the word as a verb can be found circa 1560-1. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first sense of the word as a verb was <i>to drive up and catch</i>, and it was illustrated: "For uppyng the ground byrde in porte meade." In 1584-5, the <i>Order For Swans</i> directed that "The Swan-heard...shall vp no Swan nor make any sale of them, without the Maister of the Swannes...be present." The second sense of the word as a verb was <i>to make up, form or compose</i> and was illustrated by the 1658: "And Animal together blow'd and made. And up'd of all the shreds of every Trade." The third sense of the word as a verb was <i>to raise up (a weapon, etc.) esp, to or upon the shoulder</i>. This third sense was illustrated by the 1887 "She ups her stick and begins to belabour him across the shoulders." The fourth sense of the word as a verb was a nautical term meaning <i>to heave or haul</i>. The fifth sense of the word as a verb was noted as a term used in card-playing: <i>to raise (a bid, stake, etc.)</i>. The sixth sense of the word as a verb was <i>to rise to one's feet; to get up from a sitting or recumbent posture</i>, as illustrated by the 1643 "The true-bred Gamester ups a fresh, and then, Falls to 't agen." The seventh, and last, sense of the word as a verb was <i>to move upwards, to arise or ascend</i> as illustrated by the 1737 "A chimney-sweeper ups and downs it in a Chimney, with his long broom."<br /><br />Who am I to argue with a word usage dating back to at least the 1560s? I guess I'll up my knowledge . . . that is, after I up from my chair to get something to eat.</span><br />
<br />Naftzgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17495360045609974113noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4777911433172547160.post-32815818676900124052013-12-26T18:52:00.000-08:002013-12-26T18:52:33.380-08:00It's Colder Than All Get Out<span style="font-size: large;">My aunt Margaret Ann Noffsker, my mother, Dollie's next older sister in her family of ten, was a character. She chose not to marry and spent her life working and doing things for and with many other friends. In the small town of East Freedom, Pennsylvania, Ann Noffsker was a very popular person. Everyone seemed to know Ann, and Ann seemed to know everyone. That's what made Ann such a 'character'. She was always in the thick of things, and an advocate of anything that was popular. At times Ann seemed to be larger than life.<br /><br />It was my aunt Ann whom I first heard speak the words "all get out" ~ in sentences such as: "It's colder than all get out" or "That crash was louder than all get out." It was also my aunt Ann whom I first heard utter the phrase "Oh my aching tonsil". That one was usually uttered when she would be amazed or when she wanted to express to you that what you just said, or did, pushed her to the limit of which she could fathom. This phrase might be connected to the former as Ann would exclaim: "Oh my aching tonsil, that yellow is brighter than all get out!"<br /><br />A check of the phrase on the Internet revealed that the phrase 'all get out' was, and continues to be, popular especially in the Appalachian region of the eastern United States of America. (East Freedom is in Appalachia, so that part fits.) Some sites presented the assumption that the phrase literally implied 'getting out' of, or from, something. But the way that the phrase was, and still is, used by people such as my aunt Ann, tend(ed) to embrace the impression of a <i>superlative</i>, meaning that it expresses something bigger or greater than anything else.<br /><br />So remembering my aunt Ann saying: "It's colder than all get out!", I realize that I loved her more than all get out.</span>Naftzgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17495360045609974113noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4777911433172547160.post-2294532486528547942013-12-23T20:24:00.002-08:002013-12-23T20:24:58.909-08:00Don't Put Your Horse Away Wet<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQcCL5JoZIYKjONGhgTXvqb0GMnxULIk9hg5CetlA-_IuDdzygfyTOZSblQvpXOxy9BGgb0DRmHvus8Vj7_6j4O2rlG90n-5LgWnYSXlp1KoFabi5FabI7qfo5XapUel1JCTzdbG3Ii4A/s1600/Blanket01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="588" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQcCL5JoZIYKjONGhgTXvqb0GMnxULIk9hg5CetlA-_IuDdzygfyTOZSblQvpXOxy9BGgb0DRmHvus8Vj7_6j4O2rlG90n-5LgWnYSXlp1KoFabi5FabI7qfo5XapUel1JCTzdbG3Ii4A/s640/Blanket01.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I was visiting a local antique emporium this past weekend and came upon another example of someone selling an item of which they knew nothing about. On a table was a beautiful (in the eye of the beholder) piece of fabric that was titled a "horse blanket". The implication of the title was that the item was a blanket placed over the back of a horse that had been ridden hard and was sweated wet, needing to be dried off. The only problem was that the blanket was made of horse hair, which would not have served very well to dry off a wet horse. What the slightly ignorant (in regard to knowledge) antique dealer did not know was that the item should have been titled a "<i>horsehair</i> blanket".<br /><br />Horsehair is seldom used today, but at one time it was a material used in a number of ways. The most common use for horse hair was in house plaster. The plaster used in houses during the 1800s and early 1900s was composed primarily of lime and sand, such as marble dust, with some sort of strengthening agent. A very common strengthening agent was horse hair. Horsehair was also used in furniture upholstery; the hair, being springy, allowed upholstery to maintain comfortable shape for a long time.<br /><br />When winter time came around, another use for horse hair became evident ~ to make sleigh blankets considerably warmer and water resistant.<br /><br />The photo at the top of this post is of a horsehair blanket. It measures a mere four feet, five inches in width and five feet in length. The blanket's two faces are composed of different materials: the top, or front, is composed of horsehair woven with wool, and the bottom, or back, is composed just of wool. Between the two faces, like the cotton batting in a bed quilt, is a batting made of sawdust or straw.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKnh_RF61gw70dg-rPY9ah4aiuOPOjcVOIyMs9gsw3ORg2GJemnVmhnR3W39Ub_ClC2hiOCaBcGcN1x9sgv8BlvaO3GqC445EJE_4Rk-Lci1VrQMUP4-cnlVz5Y7UKHk2ENvBCSXUxCjo/s1600/Blanket02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKnh_RF61gw70dg-rPY9ah4aiuOPOjcVOIyMs9gsw3ORg2GJemnVmhnR3W39Ub_ClC2hiOCaBcGcN1x9sgv8BlvaO3GqC445EJE_4Rk-Lci1VrQMUP4-cnlVz5Y7UKHk2ENvBCSXUxCjo/s400/Blanket02.jpg" width="273" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"> <br />A horsehair blanket, despite its small size, tends to be quite heavy. The weight of the blanket was intentional. After being seated on a sleigh, or in an open front carriage, the riders would lay the horsehair blanket over their laps. The weight of the blanket kept it from blowing off the riders' laps as the sleigh was in movement. Before placing the blanket over their laps, a foot-warmer, holding glowing coals, might be placed at the riders' feet. (For those of you who have been following this blog, you might remember that this was noted in the post of 26 June, titled: Who's Got Cold Feet? ~ Not Me!)<br /><br />Some horsehair blankets are brightly colored (the colors being dyed in the wool prior to weaving), whereas others, such as the one shown here, are left in their natural colors. Designs, such as the alternating light and dark blocks in this example, would have been devised and produced in the process of weaving it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbYFVKX-lsmw-PnyJyOEOMMaGQJT7Jpw2CUtMlGGnMUJ6LpwIWVH5oiJsu5qt5Ugs4GHOxN_Po8fF_hZquKwsxboe3-VGdhOxyJRFKv_RXulC9msO2AdU3MtY9317wM4FkYiAEYZqVyT8/s1600/Blanket04.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbYFVKX-lsmw-PnyJyOEOMMaGQJT7Jpw2CUtMlGGnMUJ6LpwIWVH5oiJsu5qt5Ugs4GHOxN_Po8fF_hZquKwsxboe3-VGdhOxyJRFKv_RXulC9msO2AdU3MtY9317wM4FkYiAEYZqVyT8/s1600/Blanket04.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbYFVKX-lsmw-PnyJyOEOMMaGQJT7Jpw2CUtMlGGnMUJ6LpwIWVH5oiJsu5qt5Ugs4GHOxN_Po8fF_hZquKwsxboe3-VGdhOxyJRFKv_RXulC9msO2AdU3MtY9317wM4FkYiAEYZqVyT8/s400/Blanket04.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />Oh, and one last thing . . . you certainly would not want to cover up with one of these horsehair blankets and fall asleep. As heavy and warm as they tend to be, you'd awaken quite sweated ~ you'd probably feel like a horse that had been ridden hard and put away wet.</span><br />Naftzgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17495360045609974113noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4777911433172547160.post-28748094266173850482013-12-16T23:15:00.005-08:002013-12-16T23:15:44.393-08:00Who Is That Little Girl?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">Wait a moment. That isn't a girl ~ the hair is cut too short to be a girl. But she does have a dress on, doesn't she?<br /><br />Actually, the child standing alone in front of a black curtain was my father, Bernard. He was born in the year 1919 in the Nofsker house that stands across the valley from my current home. His maternal grandfather, Aaron Bowser, share-cropped for a living. He and his wife, Linnie, would live in with a family while he did work for them, and then when he found a new family that needed work done, they would move on and take up living quarters with the new family. Aaron was known for repairing fences and might take up residence with a family while he repaired the fences around their farms. At the time that my father was born, his mother, Jennie was staying with Aaron and Linnie while he share-cropped for Lecky Nofsker. And that is why my father was born in the house across the valley.<br /><br />The photo that appears at the top of this post would probably have been taken circa 1921, when my father was two years old, maybe three. And that is indeed what he normally wore at that age. All children, whether boy or girl, wore the type of garment in which my father was photographed. He once told me that families dressed their children in this type of garment until they reached the age of five or six. When they started attending school, the boys began wearing pants, in the form of knickers, and a shirt.<br /><br />The garment my father was wearing at the time he was photographed was actually a type of shirt or blouse. The length of the shirt, and the fact that no pants are evident, is what makes the garment appear to be a dress. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk5gPo3H2198sLymJyynN45HRoVwwz9dhVNnHuxLALzHeV1z6INVQ5dlCpDFkbCEUpSlrkEPXLu_ppCyboVDxdhTYjBOL45Z5Ri1I4CZZr131aeBfJvIebyukBDrJbMR98YZH9Bv_7EVQ/s1600/Bernard02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk5gPo3H2198sLymJyynN45HRoVwwz9dhVNnHuxLALzHeV1z6INVQ5dlCpDFkbCEUpSlrkEPXLu_ppCyboVDxdhTYjBOL45Z5Ri1I4CZZr131aeBfJvIebyukBDrJbMR98YZH9Bv_7EVQ/s640/Bernard02.jpg" width="324" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">Little girls wore the same type of shirt as a dress, but of course in the early 1920s, the little girls did not start to wear pants when they began to attend school.<br /><br />The photograph to the right shows my father at about the age of four. Notice the way the collar hangs down over the back. It's almost identical to the collar on the garment in the earlier picture. The fact of the matter is that my father might have been wearing the same type of shirt in both pictures. After he started wearing pants, the long tail of the shirt would simply have been tucked inside the pants.<br /><br />The two additional photos below display one of my father's shirts, with a detail of the collar, which was made by a sort of tatting. The material of which this shirt was made appears to be a cotton muslin. The photos are very close to the actual color of the item.</span><br />
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<br />Naftzgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17495360045609974113noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4777911433172547160.post-77409883758484899242013-12-14T13:32:00.000-08:002013-12-14T13:32:31.049-08:00Flail<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">In Latin there was a word that stood for 'a winnowing tool' or 'whip'. It was <i>flagellum</i> (which was, itself, a diminutive, or more concise, form of the word: <i>flagrum</i>: 'to whip'). Some sources give the origin of the Latin as a Proto-Indo-European word: <i>bhlag</i>, which signified 'to beat'. The people of the northern Europe region who spoke Old High German converted the Latin word into its own: <i>flegel</i>. The people who spoke Low German or Middle Dutch contrived the word: <i>vlegel</i>. Old English used the Old High German form of flegel with a slight variation to become<i> flighel</i> or<i> fligel</i>. In the Middle English, the word was written as <i>fleil</i>, while the Anglo-French spelled the word <i>flael</i>. While the word, with its meaning of a tool for beating or winnowing of grain, came into use by the year 1100, the modern usage of the spelling <i>flail</i> was derived from its earlier sources around the 15th Century.<br /><br />The flail was a tool used to separate useful grain seeds from husks and other unusable parts of the wheat or rye plant. (Corn, in some cases, might also be threshed to remove the kernels from the cobs.) The tool consists of a long wood pole or staff, called the <i>hand-staff</i>, a shorter wood pole, called the <i>swingle</i> (variously, the <i>sweple</i>, <i>swiple</i> or <i>supple</i>), and a strip of leather or hemp rope connecting the two poles. The wood most commonly used for the parts of the flail was holly. Holly is fine-grained and not easily broken; it made the ideal material for the flail, which took a lot of beating. The hand-staff is aptly named because the user, known as a thresher, would grasp, with both hands, the longer of the two wood poles. The <i>swingle</i> (which was derived from the Old English: <i>swingan</i>, meaning 'to strike' or 'beat') would hang freely from the one end of the hand-staff, called its 'head'.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The flexible connection between the two poles being the leather strip or hemp rope, the swingle could be swung in any direction.<br /><br />The job of threshing was performed on a dirt floor in a barn. Wooden floors, no matter how well constructed, would have enough cracks between the planks to lose a substantial amount of the grain. The dirt floor would be prepared by being swept clean. A dirt floor of the barn would have, over time, become very tightly packed, and therefore could be 'swept clean' of loosed dirt, rocks and stray items. After sweeping the floor, the thresher would sprinkle it with water just to make it all the more free of any loose dust. A quantity of straw (<i>i.e.</i> the harvested and dried grain plant, whether wheat or rye) would be piled onto the center of the floor. If there were more than one thresher, they would position themselves around the strawpile. The thresher would use an up and down motion to slap the swingle down and onto the pile of straw. Rather, the thresher simply moved the hand-staff so that it's head alternated being raised up and then directed back down to the floor. The swingle could not help but be slapped down flat against the pile of grain-bearing straw. The continual striking of the flail's swingle would force the grain kernels to be knocked out of the heads of the straw. The action did not squeeze out the grain, but instead shook it out (keeping the grain intact and not crushed). An astute farmer would build his barn with threshing in mind. That means that doors would be placed on opposite sides; those sides being against the direction of the wind. As the wind blew through the barn, it would whisk the bits of husk, broken up and aggravated by the threshing activity, away from the central pile.<br /><br />The photos attached to this post show a flail from the 1800s.</span><br />Naftzgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17495360045609974113noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4777911433172547160.post-39941653254188665912013-12-09T13:10:00.001-08:002013-12-09T13:10:57.326-08:00Grammy's Apron<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">My maternal grandmother, Bertha Mae Nofsker, was commonly known as <i>Grammy</i> Nofsker. I use the word 'commonly' as an adverb to describe the verb phrase: 'was known as' not in the sense of something that is simple, uniform or ordinary, but rather in the sense of something that is entirely, totally or universally. You see, I called my grandmother: Grammy, and my cousins called her: Grammy. But everyone who lived in the valley created by the South Dry Run creek also called her: Grammy ~ whether they were related to her or not. There are non-relatives who attend the church in which she was an early, prominent member who talk about Grammy Nofsker even to this day, nearly fifty years after her death.<br /><br />The picture above was taken when Bertha was in her late teens. That's her on the left, with her best friend Emma.<br /><br />Grammy was a tough old lady in the last years of her life (that is, when I knew her, up to when I reached eight years old). And I imagine she was a tough young lady long before I ever knew her. Bertha's life had always been tough. She had been born out of wedlock. Her birth grandmother (a Shoop) came to live with her birth grandfather (a Boyer) ~ each was widowed at the time ~ and they apparently never married each other. Bertha's mother, Ann Boyer, just in her late teens, suddenly had a new house-mate, Richard Shoop, also in his late teens. One thing, as they say, led to another, and on 31 October 1884, a baby girl was born. Richard never married Ann. Perhaps both separate families ~ the Boyers and the Shoops ~ were embarrassed by what had happened. In any case, Ann raised her child by herself. Oh, did I forget to mention that Ann already had given birth to a boy before the Shoops moved in with her family? The boy, Albert Weyandt, was three and a half years old when Bertha came along. He only lived to the age of four. When Bertha was about three years old, Ann married Daniel Earnest, and he filed formal adoption papers to share legal custody of the child with his new wife.<br /><br />So I guess you could say that there was a happy ending to the turmoil that defined Bertha's childhood ~ right? No, that wasn't to be the case. In fact, when Daniel Earnest adopted Bertha, it was probably the start of a tougher period in her life. You see, Dan Earnest never really accepted Bertha as a daughter. Daniel and Ann gave birth to two boys and two girls during the ten year period from 1887 to 1897. And while he doted on the two girls, Kathleen and Annie Mary, he made Bertha work with the hired farmhands in the barn. It was as if the story, <i>Cinderella</i>, had been written with the Earnest family in mind. And, one thing, as they say, led to another, and at the age of fifteen, Bertha gave birth to a son; the baby boy's father was one of the negro hired hands. The family always claimed, whether it was true or not, that Grammy had been raped ~ we'll never know for sure. But what we do know is that Daniel Earnest never accepted the child of his adopted daughter, even to the extent that he had accepted her. A US Census return taken in the year 1900, included the Daniel Earnest family. The return listed Bertha Shoop as 'step-daughter' and Dewey Shoop as 'step-grandson'. Daniel, who probably was the one who gave the census-taker his family's information, could just as easily have given Bertha's name as 'Bertha Earnest', and he could have listed her as 'daughter' ~ he had legally adopted her twelve years earlier ~ but he chose to alienate her and her newborn son.<br /><br />Bertha grew up, married Henry Martin Cleveland Nofsker, and gave birth to ten children. But when their youngest child, my mother, Dollie, was only four years old, Cleveland died. What was Bertha to do? What could she do, but go on with her life, run her farm and raise her family of ten children. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Of course the older kids helped with the younger siblings. But life still would have been tough for Grammy. My mother told me tales of how Grammy had broken an arm when she fell off the haywagon as they were doing their autumn chores; she suffered from arthritis in that arm ever after. The photo to the left shows Grammy with her next to youngest daughter, Margaret Ann. They look like they're in their 'Sunday-best' dresses.<br /><br />So what really is this post supposed to be about? The title says "Grammy's Apron", but nothing at all has been said about any apron. All the biographical information that was given above was for the purpose of showing how my maternal grandmother came to be a tough old lady. But that was not what I, and perhaps most people around her, saw day after day. What I saw was a loving, compassionate face, welcoming, sheltering arms, and a lap into which I could curl when I was sad ~ and her apron. For sure, I remember seeing Grammy dressed in her Sunday-best dresses, that is, on Sunday. But the rest of the time, my image of Grammy was of her in an 'everyday' dress with a gingham, striped or checkered apron. <br /><br />All the older women in our neighborhood wore aprons over their everyday dresses. And they were definitely dresses ~ women did not wear slacks, trousers or pants at that time. The aprons covered the entire front of the women. Beginning at the neckline, a strip of cloth wrapped around the neck and supported a 'bib' that covered the woman's bosom. The bib was attached at its bottom to the top of a wider piece of cloth that extended from the waist down to below the knee. In the 1960s, when I remember Grammy, women's everyday dresses's hemlines were mid-calf length. The apron was nearly long enough to cover the entire length of the dress. At the waistline, two strips of cloth were pulled around to the back to be tied in a large bow, or if they were long enough, to be pulled on around to the front to be tied there.<br /><br />Then there were the pockets. I think the pockets were what made the apron so wonderful. The part of the apron called the bib might hold one or two side-by-side pockets. Then there would be that one giant pocket at the waistline, or there might be two medium-size pockets at the waistline and one larger pocket along the bottom of the apron. But even if an apron did not have sewn-in pockets, a woman could transform her apron into a pocket simply by grabbing the two lower corners of material and pulling them upward.<br /><br /><br />The pockets on Grammy's apron were a treasure trove for a seven year old boy. Sometimes they held a spool of thread with a needle stuck into it and maybe a pair of small shears. Sometimes there would be a book or a pencil in one of the pockets. Often there were a few coins and a fancy piece of jewelry, such as a brooch. The pockets of Grammy's apron was sometimes used by my brother and me to stash our own treasures. If we were out taking a walk and found an interesting colored stone, we'd run to Grammy and she'd hold one of the pockets open so we could drop the treasure into it. I can also remember when Grammy took us along to gather cherries, she would grab the bottom corners of the apron and pull them upward to create a large pocket into which Leon and I would deposit the cherries we picked. I also remember Grammy grasping the bottom of her apron and wiping it over my face and head when I was either dirty or sweated from running and playing.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The photo above is the only one I have that shows Grammy with her apron on; when a photo was taken, Grammy, like anyone else, wanted to be seen in her best clothes. This photo, though, was one of the few that were taken somewhat spontaneously, while she was feeding the chickens. I think it was Grammy's apron that softened her toughness for me. It's a shame that women no longer use them.</span><br />Naftzgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17495360045609974113noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4777911433172547160.post-63737459031370280632013-11-08T08:36:00.000-08:002013-11-08T08:36:00.588-08:00Beware ~ This Post Contains A Whole Bunch Of Words Stuck Together<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">The manner in which a sentence in the English language allows the reader, or speaker, to pause or come to a stop is by the employment of elements called <i>punctuation</i>. Through the use of commas, colons, semicolons and a few other marks, the sentence directs the reader to pause briefly or for a longer period of time. Then, when the end of the sentence ~ the particular thought ~ is reached, marks such as periods, question marks and exclamation points signal that end. The word punctuation comes from the Latin word meaning 'to prick'. When the earliest writings were made on vellum (<i>i.e.</i> very thinly tanned leather), all of the words tended to flow, one after another, in a continuous stream without any form of punctuation to separate one thought from another. That, coupled with the fact that the first word of a new thought/sentence was not uniformly capitalized, made reading difficult. The Greek scribes began to make a small hole in the vellum with the sharp tips of their feather quill pens at the end of one thought. The pricked hole served as a signal that the ongoing thought had come to an end.<br /><br />As a thought took form in the writer's mind, and then was written out as a sentence on the surface of the vellum, it was considered to take a circuit from beginning to end. The Greeks combined the word <i>peri</i>, meaning around, and <i>odos</i>, meaning way, to form the word <i>periodos</i>, suggesting that the sentence had made its way around a kind of circuitous route from beginning to end. The periodos, a mark to suggest that the sentence's circuit had been achieved and was finally concluded, took the form of the round prick hole that the scribes had devised to separate one thought from another. They had been making those little round hole marks at the end of sentences and now those marks had a name: <i>period</i>.<br /><br />Every now and then, during the course of the sentence, brief pauses needed to be indicated. The Greeks had a word to suggest cutting: <i>coptein</i>. From coptein comes our word <i>comma</i>, a mark of punctuation that literally cuts the sentence in two without bringing it to a complete halt. Writers love commas. Despite the fact that there are grammatical rules for the use ~ or non-use ~ of commas, some writers just plop them anywhere in the sentence. What's that saying? Ah yes, "the more the merrier."<br /><br />The <i>colon</i>, the English word for another mark of punctuation was the same as the Latin, and both were derived from a Greek word meaning portion or member. The colon is often used to introduce enumerations: lists, categories and the like. In most cases, the words preceding a colon will comprise a complete sentence, and therefore the colon takes the form of a period (indicating that the primary thought making up the sentence is finished), but with an additional period directly above it. The implication, when a colon is used to introduce any type of enumeration, is that if the words following the colon would be removed, the words preceding the colon would constitute a complete sentence. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br />Writers needed a mark of punctuation that would indicate the separation of multiple statements within a single thought or sentence. They found that mark in the form of the <i>semicolon</i>, consisting of a comma with a period directly above it. The word <i>semi</i>, meaning partly, was combined with the word <i>colon</i> to indicate that any two portions of a thought or sentence separated by the semicolon would consist only as partial thoughts. Aldus Manutius the Elder, an Italian printer living from 1449 to 1515, established the use of the semicolon to signal a change in direction between two thoughts within a sentence; why you would not simply separate the two thoughts by a period, and create a second sentence instead of tacking the second thought onto the end of the fist sentence, is anyone's guess.<br /><br />The <i>parentheses</i>, as a punctuation mark, came into use in Middle English. Derived from the Greek phrase meaning <i>alongside of</i>, or in addition to, the parentheses were created as a means to include additional information within a thought or sentence. This punctuation mark (which actually includes four types: parentheses, brackets, braces and chevrons) is used to contain explanatory and/or qualifying information. If the content within the parentheses marks is removed from the sentence, the thought should not be affected in any way. The bulging shape(s) of the parentheses resemble the sides of a bag holding a bunch of extra information for the sentence.<br /><br />Writers eventually saw the need for ending punctuation that would be more expressive than the simple period. Excitement and inquisitiveness were two expressions that the period did not convey. There was an exclamatory word in Latin that translates as the emotion of joy: <i>Io</i>. Scribes began using this expression of joy to end a sentence that likewise expressed joy or excitement. Over time, in order to conserve space on the vellum, the "I" was placed above the "o", resulting in the mark that we use today and call the <i>exclamation point</i>. The question mark developed from the Latin word <i>quaesto</i>, meaning 'question'; the question mark is quite simply the first letter of the word quaesto: "q" written above the last letter of the word quaesto: "o".<br /><br />Without the punctuation marks, as in the earliest writings, the foregoing would appear as:<br /><br />the manner in which a sentence in the english language allows the reader or speaker to pause or come to a stop is by the employment of elements called punctuation through the use of commas colons semicolons and a few other marks the sentence directs the reader to pause briefly or for a longer period of time then when the end of the sentence the particular thought is reached marks such as periods question marks and exclamation points signal that end the word punctuation comes from the latin word meaning to prick when the earliest writings were made on vellum ie very thinly tanned leather all of the words tended to flow one after another in a continuous stream without any form of punctuation to separate one thought from another that coupled with the fact that the first word of a new thought sentence was not uniformly capitalized made reading difficult the greek scribes began to make a small hole in the vellum with the sharp tips of their feather quill pens at the end of one thought the pricked hole served as a signal that the ongoing thought had come to an end as a thought took form in the writers mind and then was written out as a sentence on the surface of the vellum it was considered to take a circuit from beginning to end the greeks combined the word peri meaning around and odos meaning way to form the word periodos suggesting that the sentence had made its way around a kind of circuitous route from beginning to end the periodos a mark to suggest that the sentences circuit had been achieved and was finally concluded took the form of the round prick hole that the scribes had devised to separate one thought from another they had been making those little round hole marks at the end of sentences and now those marks had a name period every now and then during the course of the sentence brief pauses needed to be indicated the greeks had a word to suggest cutting coptein from coptein comes our word comma a mark of punctuation that literally cuts the sentence in two without bringing it to a complete halt writers love commas despite the fact that there are grammatical rules for the use or nonuse of commas some writers just plop them anywhere in the sentence whats that saying ah yes the more the merrier the colon the english word for another mark of punctuation was the same as the latin and both were derived from a greek word meaning portion or member the colon is often used to introduce enumerations lists categories and the like in most cases the words preceding a colon will comprise a complete sentence and therefore the colon takes the form of a period indicating that the primary thought making up the sentence is finished but with an additional period directly above it the implication when a colon is used to introduce any type of enumeration is that if the words following the colon would be removed the words preceding the colon would constitute a complete sentence in other words the colon is often used to introduce enumerations writers needed a mark of punctuation that would indicate the separation of multiple statements within a single thought or sentence they found that mark in the form of the semicolon consisting of a comma with a period directly above it the word semi meaning partly was combined with the word colon to indicate that any two portions of a thought or sentence separated by the semicolon would consist only as partial thoughts aldus manutius the elder an italian printer living from 1449 to 1515 established the use of the semicolon to signal a change in direction between two thoughts within a sentence why you would not simply separate the two thoughts by a period and create a second sentence instead of tacking the second thought onto the end of the fist sentence is anyones guess the parentheses as a punctuation mark came into use in middle english derived from the greek phrase meaning alongside of or in addition to the parentheses were created as a means to include additional information within a thought or sentence this punctuation mark which actually includes four types parentheses brackets braces and chevrons is used to contain explanatory and/or qualifying information if the content within the parentheses marks is removed from the sentence the thought should not be affected in any way the bulging shapes of the parentheses resemble the sides of a bag holding a bunch of extra information for the sentence writers eventually saw the need for ending punctuation that would be more expressive than the simple period excitement and inquisitiveness were two expressions that the period did not convey there was an exclamatory word in latin that translates as the emotion of joy io scribes began using this expression of joy to end a sentence that likewise expressed joy or excitement over time in order to conserve space on the vellum the i was placed above the o resulting in the mark that we use today and call the exclamation point the question mark developed from the latin word quaesto meaning question the question mark is quite simply the first letter of the word quaesto q written above the last letter of the word quaesto o</span>Naftzgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17495360045609974113noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4777911433172547160.post-67358980268428077502013-10-19T20:06:00.000-07:002013-10-19T20:06:01.651-07:00I Don't Have Much Moxie ~ Just One Bottle, In Fact<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUrVjHCkRi65dAD-gyfjcVxxbwvO4hX6ibBuQFoTpW4TqW_AIHXL1t7_qGaCHIU1Fv9cV8g-ZHd_EJOgPVC5S-d8D8Xpqe7Zu0EX1rJWI-24xZhpIKq6kq3CCLZeLwQhM5ChOxldqbSlU/s1600/Moxie01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUrVjHCkRi65dAD-gyfjcVxxbwvO4hX6ibBuQFoTpW4TqW_AIHXL1t7_qGaCHIU1Fv9cV8g-ZHd_EJOgPVC5S-d8D8Xpqe7Zu0EX1rJWI-24xZhpIKq6kq3CCLZeLwQhM5ChOxldqbSlU/s400/Moxie01.jpg" width="355" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I possess a bottle with some brown liquid inside. The metal cap over the mouth of the bottle could be easily popped off, and the brown liquid inside could be tasted to determine if it had spoiled over the years. You see, I purchased the bottle at some time around the year 1990, so it is twenty-some years old. Put two and two together, and you discover that the brown liquid inside the bottle is probably as old as the bottle itself. The bottle contains a type of soft drink, soda or pop (depending on where you live) that was popular in the 1950s and 60s. One little corner grocery store in the town of Hollidaysburg continued to carry it, along with many other outdated brands, into the 70s, 80s and 90s.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I could amaze all you readers by stating the exact circumstances of my purchasing the bottle, providing all of the details, beginning with the faint squeaking of the door as I entered the shop, but I don't actually remember anything at all about the visit. One detail that I can surmise is that I probably purchased more than just the one bottle at the time because I probably wanted to drink some of the brown liquid ~ I really doubt that I would have spent any money on a single bottle with the brown liquid inside just to take it home to sit on a shelf - for twenty-some years!<br /><br />The bottle that I possess contains a brand of soft drink that was called Moxie.<br /> </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8PrTWvF5k0vnQgmn10QfWt9Y2oHtu-xipN8IBbN4dWL9kRERxKHb9tEpGA7M5GFxGARlS2gvqDkrfmyGZ_1WmVAwNuRkgggf0dt15J0Z7zvI5t-tYX8L_Aks0pnIt69ctvjN86pISYLk/s1600/Moxie02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="342" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8PrTWvF5k0vnQgmn10QfWt9Y2oHtu-xipN8IBbN4dWL9kRERxKHb9tEpGA7M5GFxGARlS2gvqDkrfmyGZ_1WmVAwNuRkgggf0dt15J0Z7zvI5t-tYX8L_Aks0pnIt69ctvjN86pISYLk/s400/Moxie02.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">The word <i>moxie</i> is an American slang word. You won't find it as an entry in the Compact Oxford English Dictionary, although it is included in the standard OED. The definition provides two options: 1. An American soft drink; 2. Courage, guts, nerve, energy, pep. The second option of the word provided in the OED certainly gives an impression of the word, moxie, but it really doesn't focus on the unique aspect of the word. The word <i>moxie</i> would not be easily substituted for any of the words "courage, guts, nerve, energy and pep" by themselves. It possibly might work as a substitute for any combination of two or more of those words, though.<br /><br />Moxie was not just a single action, such as 'courage' or 'pep'. It encompassed a variety of feelings and emotions that gave you 'courage'. It expressed the reason you had the 'guts' to face some oppressive situation. Roget's Thesaurus defines the word, <i>moxie</i>, as "the quality of mind enabling one to face danger or hardship resolutely", and then lists twenty-seven synonyms.<br /><br />The soft drink that was sold under the brand name Moxie, was developed from a 'tonic' that was invented in 1876 by a resident of Maine, Dr. Augustin Thompson. The native Indian tribes, who inhabited the region that the English settlers called Maine, knew of and used parts of the <i>moxieberry</i> plant for medicinal purposes for many years prior to Dr. Thompson's concoction. Whether the Indians knew of any beneficial effects of the moxieberry plant is unknown at this time. Dr. Thompson might have known of the native peoples' use of the plant, but he claimed that the concoction that he marketed to "cure brain and nervous exhaustion, loss of manhood, imbecility and helplessness..." had been discovered by a man named Moxie at some undisclosed location near or south of the Equator. In the 1920s, with the widespread development of carbonated beverages, as a result of the Prohibition movement in America, a company in Boston, Massachusetts began to bottle and sell the soft drink, Moxie, its flavor being derived primarily from the gentian root. The invigorating effects proclaimed by Dr. Thompson for his original tonic became the basis of the marketing campaign for the new soft drink. And so, it was suggested, if you drank Moxie, you would be endowed with the invigorating effects of a tonic, and therefore filled with a resoluteness and strength of being to conquer anything: in other words, you had a lot of moxie.</span><br />Naftzgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17495360045609974113noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4777911433172547160.post-8545550137462991812013-10-13T19:14:00.000-07:002013-10-13T19:14:01.874-07:00The Baby Spinning Wheel Is No Baby's Spinning Wheel<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMSuVESj7WfCppjV-wHaHVXvWvPnx27taYdMwTPFEM83R3BM5J2gzwYd2QhUttaHk-md2RxLNWoKaaiuwEnDxEwXIf0ZsygzueT9P9WS9lXFuTbNzfUFZ0UFm89UMqgLYTfCzLDbeArL8/s1600/SpinningWheel04a.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMSuVESj7WfCppjV-wHaHVXvWvPnx27taYdMwTPFEM83R3BM5J2gzwYd2QhUttaHk-md2RxLNWoKaaiuwEnDxEwXIf0ZsygzueT9P9WS9lXFuTbNzfUFZ0UFm89UMqgLYTfCzLDbeArL8/s640/SpinningWheel04a.JPG" width="256" /></a><span style="font-size: large;">A tiny spinning wheel that sits on a blanket chest in my entryway is certainly no child's toy. The wheel measures only ten inches in diameter. The height of the entire piece to the highest point, which is the tip of the distaff, measures a mere three and one-half feet. It is definitely a small piece. But, like I said, this is no child's toy, despite the fact that everyone who sees it thinks it is.<br /><br />The diminutive spinning wheel shown in these photos would be called a <i>castle wheel</i>, so named for the number of 'spires' that rise upward. Castle wheels could be much larger than this though; that name referred more to the structure than to the size. The aspect of the size is what gives this spinning wheel the more common name of <i>bride's wheel</i>.<br /><br />In the early 1800s, which is the probable date of this bride's wheel, and earlier, when a man and woman married, the woman left her family and moved to a new home, which was the choosing of the man. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0BKoRaEminrN9RkiwjVwPjLc9wrxwUO59I4-vAMWMF6Foe9zY_gV7wqOoEUHbm2OfeDPD29g5BkAJrAY9mv-UZHr_-2K-NE9maey7CCOFPDSIoBSRRtRW5IMj1Y50IRCDGiKI5VG8Gcs/s1600/SpinningWheel04d.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="341" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0BKoRaEminrN9RkiwjVwPjLc9wrxwUO59I4-vAMWMF6Foe9zY_gV7wqOoEUHbm2OfeDPD29g5BkAJrAY9mv-UZHr_-2K-NE9maey7CCOFPDSIoBSRRtRW5IMj1Y50IRCDGiKI5VG8Gcs/s400/SpinningWheel04d.JPG" width="400" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">Oftentimes, the young couple did not have a tract of land in the immediate vicinity of their families, and needed to travel a distance to start their home. The family might have only a single wagon on which to haul all of their possessions. The bride's wheel was created as a small, easily carried spinning wheel. <br /><br />Because of its small size, the bride's wheel is often mistaken for a child's toy. But it is fully functional. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL6l9Z26WxLrHOwutBBrg_fMch2lt6GzrSJVuOzklPUTdilcTC6KClEoXT5qBmaETh3W3O2U0-zNVRjB5G_Ud2MAgRqzr8o88zzfPoVnF2PhoP9m5Jc9Le5VdaqoMdDVg6pMW_dPoZ9vg/s1600/SpinningWheel04f.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="373" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL6l9Z26WxLrHOwutBBrg_fMch2lt6GzrSJVuOzklPUTdilcTC6KClEoXT5qBmaETh3W3O2U0-zNVRjB5G_Ud2MAgRqzr8o88zzfPoVnF2PhoP9m5Jc9Le5VdaqoMdDVg6pMW_dPoZ9vg/s400/SpinningWheel04f.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
The young bride would use this type of wheel until the family could afford to purchase a larger, 'full size" flax wheel. <br /><br />In the images, notice the small white balls on the ends of various turned parts of this wheel. The white balls are actual ivory. Also notice, in the images of the wheel, there are turned half-spokes of ivory between the wheel's black painted wooden spokes.</span><br />Naftzgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17495360045609974113noreply@blogger.com0