Showing posts with label Juliet Waldron. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Juliet Waldron. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 29, 2023

Legend of Sleepy Hollow--Redux



How I loved The Legend of Sleepy Hollow when I was a kid! Of course, my initial introduction was to the Walt Disney version, which most of my cohort saw in movie theaters. Who can forget poor, terrified Icabod Crane on his broken down mount, fleeing from the "headless horseman" as the Specter thundered after him in that pell-mell race to the bridge beyond which it was said that the apparition could not pass! Maybe I missed the point, but if memory serves, my sympathies lay with the skinny school-teacher, who'd dared to court the local heiress.  Or maybe, Disney spun the story that way. Darned if I know at this late date, 70 years later. 



 
In yellow and green, Major General Philip Schuyler's drawing room;
The fireplace before which Alexander Hamilton married Elizabeth Schuyler

As an adult, about 30 years back, while doing research for several novels set in the Hudson Valley at the time of the Revolution, I had occasion to finally read Washington Irving's original story. Unsurprisingly, the Disney version which I remembered was not exactly what Irving (1783-1850), one who grew up in that storied valley, originally penned.  Irving was a famous wit of his day, a writer in post-Revolutionary America, whose fame today rests on two short stories, Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

Irving certainly knew these little valleys, filled back then with descendants of the Dutch original settlers. In a few of these rural backwaters, the inhabitants still spoke Dutch and practiced their ancestral folkways. Old Dutchmen still gazed with disapproval at their "feckless" and "acquisitive" British neighbors, just as the Amish do "the English" today, right here in my neck of Pennsylvania.




In the elaborate language of Irving's day, when people often readstories aloud beside the fire, we learn that Icabod Crane, the lanky, threadbare schoolmaster, is Connecticut born and raised, which makes him an outsider in this rural valley. In those days, the people of Connecticut. unlike their next-door neighbors, the New York Dutch, had been founded by dour fundamentalist Calvinists, who arrived in that "savage-filled wilderness" with strong beliefs and many superstitions. Their Sundays were filled with morning to evening Church services, at which attendance was definitely not optional. 

The Blue Laws, "no business conducted on Sunday," were strictly enforced. Sunday dinner was cooked on Saturday and served cold. You couldn't even move a chair across the dining room to accommodate a new guest without violating their version of scriptural law. They firmly believed in witches and The Devilish Supernatural. It is mentioned in the story that Icabod often read his copy of Cotton Mather's History of New England Witchcraft, "in which he most fervently and potently believed."

The New York Dutch had their superstitions as well and Icabod just naturally loved these scary stories, too.  The old women in whatever house the schoolmaster was lodged each week--most of his pay for teaching the children of the town was room and board--were only too happy to share their own local goblin-filled tales with him. At one of these firesides he was introduced to the "Galloping Hessian," a hooded figure on a black horse who haunted a stretch of road which ran along a creek and passed the local churchyard. This spectre was reputed to be, as you probably know, a cavalry-man from the Revolutionary times whose head had been "carried away by a cannon ball," for which he was doomed to perpetually search.


Major General Philip Schuyler's Home Today
(Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton's childhood Home)


Penniless Icabod, who dreams of marrying the heiress, Katrina Van Tassel, dreams not only of her, but of her wealth as well. His plans, should she marry him, are to eventually sell the family land and invest "in great tracts of wild land," to pack his bride and all that he can into a Conestoga wagon and head west, "to Kentucky, Tennessee or the Lord Knows Where." Portrayed here is the New York Dutch view of Connecticut Yankee--shrewd and acquisitive! 

This, information, to my mind, removes some of Disney's whitewashing of Icabod as the hapless victim of -- as he is drawn -- Big Brute Brom Bones. Now, Brom doesn't have book learning, but he "had more mischief than ill-will in his composition; and...there was a strong dash of waggish humor at the bottom." The original of Brom was certainly not "Bluto," but your standard, garden-variety Alpha Male. He'd expected to win Katrina sooner or later, as she was the finest marital prize available in their valley.  in his mind, Icabod, was an unexpected, ridiculous interloper, to be disposed of as soon as possible. This he proceeds--after some earlier, clumsy attempts--to to do, by cleverly playing on the schoolteacher's biggest weakness, his well-known belief in the supernatural. 

We may also surmise, as we read the original tale, that Katrina herself decided to move things along by pretending to be charmed by Icabod. Brom, after all, is described as enjoying his bachelor life a great deal, out with his "boon companions," riding around on fast horses half the night and generally not showing a willingness to get serious and settle down. 

Not to overly bash Disney, whose goal was to entertain kids, I'll stop there, but reading Irving's original story, written for adults to enjoy as well as children, was a real treat.  

~~Juliet Waldron
 

Friday, September 29, 2023

About the Mi'qmak






 


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 The First Nations' tribes of the St. Lawrence River Valley once were many. Not all shared the same language group or lifeways. Different tribes of Iroquois as well as the many members of the Algonquin/Huron group shared the abundant resources of the powerful river. Among these, probably some the first to encounter the European invasion in the 1600's were the Mi'qmak who lived around the St. Lawrence Bay area as well as in New Foundland, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and the Gaspe' Peninsula.  Their language belonged to the Algonquin family of languages, and, historically, they were members of the Alongonquin Abenaki Confederation, a league formed in opposition to the Iroquois. Later, the Mi'kmaq would be drawn into colonial wars between the British and French colonizers as well. 

As they were among the first indigenous people who encountered Europeans, between 1500 and 1600 it has been estimated that half their population died from newly introduced diseases, such as measles, mumps, diptheria and, of course, that great killer, smallpox. The first explorer they met was probably John Cabot, an Italian exploring for the English, who described them as fierce and warlike. Even earlier, they had even encountered European fishermen--Basque, Portuguese, French, and English--who had discovered the piscean bonanza of the Grand Banks, rich with Cod and whales.    

Originally, the Mi'kmaq were seasonal nomads, who called themselves "Lnu" (the People), people of the Red Earth. In the spring and summer they could be found on the coasts as they followed spawning events. Even as early as March, smelt were running in the thawing rivers, and later came the herring. Then they found waterfowl eggs and waterfowl themselves, birds busy nesting. 

There were always shellfish along the coasts and other kinds of fish, which they caught in loosely woven baskets, and by the use of ad hoc stone weirs built in the rivers. Here, they speared the fish they'd trapped. They also caught salmon, sturgeon, and even lobster and squid, out in the ocean using large sea-worthy canoes (5.5 to 8.5 meters) with a bark exterior and a cedar wood frame. These canoes were able to sail to the shoals around the islands and, in historic times, there are reports of the entire families traveling island to island in them. Lastly, in autumn, eels ran, providing a finale to their fishing season. They dried what they caught, pounded the flesh to flake and packed that in caches for winter.

Fine craftsmen before first contact, originally they made tools of stone and bone--hooks and arrow points and spear-heads--as well as many different size needles and awls for piercing hide and bark. They women were experts at basket making, these constructed of bark and decorated with porcupine quills, dyed in red and yellow (ochre), charcoal and ground shells. Those four colors, red, yellow, black and white, were also used in face paint and body decoration. They used wood to create spoons and kettles, these last heated by the addition of hot stones as well as finely made grass baskets.

In the autumn and winter, they would retreat inland, away from the gales of the coast, to hunt moose, elk, deer and caribou. Later, their efforts would focus on beaver, as the European fur trade had a lust for beaver pelts for men's hats. In colonial times, with both white men and red, hunting beaver, those clever creatures were nearly pushed to extinction. The Mi'qmak also hunted foxes, lynx, marten, and anything else which sported a beautiful winter fur coat. 

The Mi'qmak word for their homes, "wikuom" became our generic "wig-wam." These were oval, built of bent branches covered with bark and hides, easy to set up as they went from place to place. They loved to tell stories and these--elaborate creation stories of Creator "Mntu" who made everything, including the first Glooscap, his grandmother, as well as legends, hunters' and warriors' tales, stories that were particular to the band. The "Puoin" was a healer or shamen, also an interpreter of dreams. Interpreting dreams was often nightly pastime, because, long before Freud, they believed in the importance of their dreams. They often made important decisions based on what they believed were messages in their dreams, advice from their personal or tribal totemic figures or other interested spirits who watched over the lives of individuals.

The Mi'qmak were accustomed to living out-of-doors and did so, despite the weather, in even a time now called "the little ice age,"  unlike the Iroquois and Algonquin, who lived in palisaded villages in long houses. They considered settled living to be weakening. 

They also scorned growing crops as their neighbors did. Digging in the ground was not what real men did! Their social organization has been described as loose extended kinship groups, each group advised by a sagamore, a man who gained his position through his experience and reputation as a successful hunter, not by any exercise of power. The district chiefs were called Orsaqmaw and these men formed a great council by which the different groups of Mi'qmak negotiated among themselves about hunting territory, personal disputes and war-making. Decisions were made by consensus, which took time, reasoned debate and considerable debate.   


* Information gathered at various Canadian Heritage sites, particularly the Heritage sites of NewFoundland and Labrador.

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Tomorrow is Indigenous Childrens' Remembrance Day in the US and in Canada, a day in which we remember the removal and indoctrination of First Nations' Children in official "boarding schools." These "schools" existed (supposedly) to "Kill the Indian and save the man," but the reality, we know was far diffierent, perhaps akin to the way the Chinese now abduct Tibetan and Uyghur children, hoping to turn them into small copies of the Han who are the ruling group in China. Sadly, we in the West provided the model, which the Chinese, with their attention to detail and modern psychological techniques have now "perfected."

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Juliet Waldron~~ all my books are listed here @ 

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Thursday, June 29, 2023

St. Lawrence River--a world changes forever

 

While researching a new historical bride story for Quebec, I realized that once again I have bumped up against a landscape which has totally changed since my childhood. My parents and I lived for a time on Skanaeateles Lake in New York State, when the midstate area was still a bustling industrial region. Post war, people looking for work came down Route 20 past our house. In 1953, many of these travelers were aiming to turn north and head to Massena, New York, where ground on the long debated seaway (since before World War I) had at last been broken. 

This project was first proposed in the 1890's, as a way to open the vast interiors of Canada and the U.S. to maritime trade. Miles of rapids would be eliminated, rapids which the first travelers into the Northwest territories had navigated by portage, and, later, in the 19th century, by a series of canals. The canals were too and narrow to accomodate large modern ships, so there was a trans-shipping industry with much loading and unloading, in which smaller ships carried ores, coal and grain from Canada and the American midwest, to the nearest deep water port. Of course, the largest visual cue for anyone airborne surveying the territory between the Atlantic and Lake Eire was the magnificent drop at Niagara Falls.  

When I was very small, my parents took me through upstate New York, way up past my family's homestead near Schuylerville, NY to the shores of the St. Lawrence. From the American side, I saw many lovely islands dotting the river, some with "castles" built upon them. There were also terrifying rapids, and, in between small boats, some fishermen, some sightseers, out for a day's work or pleasure on the river. My mother told me stories about  one of her great-aunts who had spent her summers working as a cook on one of those pretty touring vessels. 

Eisenhower was president when the project began; he was still president when, in 1959, the seaway was, with much fanfare, completed. Young Queen Elizabeth arrived on HMY Britannia to do some official ribbon-cutting and sail on a small section of the newly completed Seaway. At last the interior of both Canada and the U.S. were open, cutting costs for the shippers and making the Great Lakes, and all the rich commodities both north and south of the border, available to ocean going ships.



Well, fanfare of trumpets for Progress, which was the watch-word for the optimistic 1950's! 
I don't want to omit, though, that there were also many severe individual losses, as old family farmlands, small historic river towns, and even some of those "thousand islands" were demolished, as grand mansions, fertile fields and fecund wetlands alike vanished beneath the water. A long established way of life beside this great river was forever lost. Generations of families who had lived tranquil, seasonal lives here, lost their land and homes through Eminent Domain.

One group who probably lost more than anyone to modernization were The People of the Flint, a group of Iroquoian (Six Nation's) people. Most of the those on Kahnawake reservation now are Mohawk, but others once belonged to their southern brothers, the Caughnawagas. Still others were refugees, fleeing the European take-over of their heritary lands.

Forty thousand three hundred and twenty acres were originally granted to the Iroquois. Today, thirteen thousand acres remain. The rest has been taken by non-native encroachment and abetted by mismanagement by the same government officials who were entrusted with the job of enforcing the original treaty. They were aided by surveyors who modified old maps at the expense of the Kahnawake people. Modern cessations were also forced upon the tribe to make way for a railway, hydro-electric dams, highways, bridges, and, finally, the Seaway. This has permanently severed the ancient relationship with the land and the river enjoyed by these original inhabitants. The people have suffered in many ways as their old seasonal continuities, energetic, subsistence lifestyle, and food ways were lost along with access to the river.

Moreover, it didn't take long for the unintended consequences to appear. Invasive, destructive new species arrived in the Great Lakes and in the St. Lawrence. Now, Zebra and Quagga mussels clog freshwater intake pipes for the large midwestern cities that ring the lakes. Sea lamprey kill many sport (and regional food staple) fish. They have also been known to attach themselves to swimmers. The Round Goby, arriving in Black Sea bilgewater from Eurasia, poisons river bottoms with botulism, which then infects the environment and kills native diving birds. The Goby also has a nasty habit of chowing down on juvenile native species of the prized sportfish and on that original First Nation's staple, the once-plentiful White Fish.  A reedy invasive, Phragmites (Phragmites australis ssp australis) look pretty, but these now grow in thick mats and smother native plants--including the smaller native Phragmite species--upsetting the wetland food chain necessary for many North American foundation species of plants, fish and animals. 

This great Seaway, built at an (estimated) cost of 5 1/2 Billion dollars of today's money, has proved, like many past public works, a blessing for some and a curse for others. Capital wealth has been generated, certainly. The pay-off has been huge for the company owners, for stockholders as well as the workers who, (before our heavy manufacturing base collapsed) benefited with high standards of living in midwestern cities like Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Toledo and Sarnia. 

Once again, the old adage, "Man proposes; God disposes" has proved both true and apt.

~~Juliet Waldron  
All my historical novels





The barge image above
Image: Wikipedia (public domain)
US government agency DOT
By 20px|link=User:Kcida10|Kcida10 Kcida10 (talk) (Uploads). - https://www.transportation.gov/fastlane/new-years-eve-ends-seaway-navigation-season, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47277919




Wednesday, March 29, 2023

The Night the Moon Sang

 

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 My husband, two little boys and I had driven 7 hours north through snow and ice from Connecticut to Maine to see his favorite cousin, Susan. She and her family were house-sitting in a large, lovely 18th Century sea-captain’s home whose sloping lawn stretched down to an inlet of the sea. 

The whole world was electric blue in the twilight when we piled out of the VW and waded the last few feet of their driveway. We stomped our feet to get rid of snow in the unheated  mud room. The kitchen was wood-fire-piecemeal hot, and Susan was belatedly beginning to work on a sink full of dishes. 





The family lived for the winter in a few downstairs rooms, and kept the pipes warm for the owners, who were off sailing in the tropics, a life-style unimaginable to us. Sue’s husband was a potter, and while he made beautiful things, from dinner services to exotic display pieces, they were not exactly flush with cash. Beans or spaghetti and homemade bread were probably supper that night; I don’t remember.  It was Susan’s birthday, so she’d made a delicious, heavy, scratch chocolate cake, and I’d brought up Grandma Carol’s family famous “Cowboy Cookies.” 

Night grew deeper. Finally, the kids and cousins were extinguished; the adults were all talked out. We retired to couches and sleeping bags. It was cold as the hinges of the 9th Circle of Hell in any room not heated by a woodstove, an utterly clear and magnificently dark sky starry night—at least, until the full moon got up over the tall black pines. Then it was like day out-of-doors, the moon balefully glittering down on those crisp, fresh pillows of snow. 

Susan and I had agreed to wake up later, because we’d consulted the almanac and learned that there was to be a lunar eclipse around 1 a.m. It was the night between our birthdays—mine would be tomorrow. We were a kindred pair of magical-mystery-tour women, both Pisces in the cusp. We were not about to miss such a grand celestial side-show.

Exhausted from carbohydrates and driving , I’d fallen into a deep sleep, but in what seemed only a few minutes, I heard Susan's voice in my ear.

“Juliet! Get up! Get Up!”

I sat up groggily. I could see her quite well with the moonlight pouring in the windows; it was amazingly bright. 

“Get your boots and get downstairs—quick—quick--hurry!”

I did as she asked, for she sounded almost desperate, as if something was terribly wrong. Not only that, but she enforced the idea by rushing out of the room as soon as she finished speaking. I heard her feet going down the stairs rapidly. I got my boots on and followed, fast as I could. When I reached the kitchen, there she was, my coat in hand.

“Is it the eclipse? What’s happening?”

“Come on—quick--hurry! You have to hear this! It’s crazy!”

I threw the coat on and followed her out the door. The first breath, as we stood on the back steps, froze my nose and made me choke. It must have been zero—or lower. She gestured upward toward the moon, sailing high over the forbidding, snow robed pines. 

As we stood there, trembling, it acquired a halo of dull red for the eclipse had begun. The snow-weighted branches randomly cracked in the cold. I had an odd feeling inside my head; I seemed to be looking up through water.  Next came a kind of hum, a low tone that reverberated through the scene, and then I heard sweet tones, like a flute or an electronic instrument, ring across the sleeping, snow-shrouded land and out across the icy ocean which could be seen--and heard--at the bottom of the slope. 

The veiled moon grew redder; the haunting tune repeated. Susan grabbed me by the shoulder. 

“Do you hear it? Do you?”

“Yes! Yes! What …?” I kept looking up and down and side to side to see if anything was different or if anyone else was nearby, but I couldn't see any human-made light, shape, or motion. We were alone and shivering with the snot freezing air and the sheer weirdness of the snow-bound scene under that muted, dire moonlight.

“Thank God!” Nervously, Susan giggled. “I thought I’d completely lost it.” 

She was cheered now that we had both "completely lost it." ;)

The tones were beautiful, melodic –and almost, in some peculiar way, perfectly normal. 

Well, when the “music” stopped, we went back inside and attempted to awaken our respective spouses, but that was hopeless. Neither of them wanted to leave the warm cacoon of their beds—besides, they believed their Pisces women were engaged in some weird, flipped out folie à deux.  

Now, if you are thinking about “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” go right ahead.  Our trip into  The Uncanny Valley happened in 1973, four years before Spielberg’s blockbuster.  In fact, when I heard those tones in the movie all that time later, the hair on the back of my neck stood up and a cold chill ran down my spine.

I'd remembered that frigid night in Maine when a blood red moon sang to Susan and me.


~~ Juliet Waldron




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Saturday, October 29, 2022

Windego, and other Monsters




Fly Away Snow Goose


WINDEGO: An evil spirit of the northland, a monstrous creature who comes prowling in winter, hungry for human flesh; it is remorseless, pitiless. 

If the year was a lean one, winter was a hard time for the hunter/gatherers who lived in the NWT. The People would leave their summer camps in small groups and scatter into the vast emptiness, away from the lakes and rivers where they'd all come together as a tribe to trade and celebrate the fat season of summe. Our of necessity, they'd change their tribal, summer way of life to retreat to live in isolation, hunting and trapping the range around them, away from others who were now engaged in the same thing. Sometimes, it did not go well; the hunters were not lucky; the game was scarce or had changed from their accustomed paths of migration. 

Then, the spectre of starvation haunted the isolated camps, and sometimes people were driven to desperate measures in order to survive. A man who had eaten his family in order to stay alive, was said to have "gone  Windego." Such a primal sin was viewed with horror, so a monster was created to explain this counter-cultural behavior. A few of those stories came to be written down in early colonial times, but the oral versions were well known to those who were exposed to the fierce winters, who sometimes had experienced, first-hand, hunger and the awful struggle to survive. 

It is said the Windego eats his own lips and checks, so his skull is always partially visible, and he arrives surrounded by a stench so horrible that it even overpowers the bitter winter wind.  People, driven to this extremity, were believed to have been taken over by this dreadful being, and that was the reason they had committed the unholy crime of cannibalism.  In fact, during the 19th Century, early Canadian psychologists defined "going Windego" as a "culturally based" disorder.

(Thunderbird--well known to the Northern First Nations--
among the Tlicho, Thunderbird was referred to indirectly, as "Father."
He's one of the good guys.)

Today, the Windego is, in some quarters, viewed as a cryptid. Wikipeidia defines cryptids as "animals that cryptozoologists believe may exist somewhere in the wild, but are not believed to exist by mainstream science." Cryptozoology primarily looks at anecdotes and blurry photos, the sort of  claims rejected by the scientific community. These monsters now feature in YouTube videos in all manner of ghastly forms, but this vision of the Windego is of only passing interest to me.

"Windego" appears to me--not as a myth created by "superstitious 1st Nation's People," --but as an acutely observed form of human personality disorder. I didn't figure this out on my own, but by listening to Buffy Sainte Marie's song called "Priests of the Golden Bull." 

She makes a connection with the storied monster and the unfettered greed and disregard for the cooperative behavior which holds together our societies. Look around. The Dark Triad personality, (where a subject possesses a toxic combo of Narcissism, Michiavellianism and Psychopathy) is having a good run these days among CEO's, Tech Bros, politicians, and the sort of "religous" figures who live in gated mansions and always need their followers to send more money. 

In a world where it's considered smart to get rich while ignoring the human suffering or the irreparable harm pursuit of this quarter's profits causes a community -- or the arm done to the water, the air, or the planet -- Ms. Sainte Marie sees the ever-hungry, cannibalistic Windigo. The "Greed is Good," mentality is on display everywhere. 


Take a look at ever so many modern companies, their successes measured by how many jobs they've eliminated, or how they've stolen pension funds from retirees in the course of a merger, or how many rural communities they have destroyed, for instance, building a petrochemical refinery or an industrial pig farm next door to a small town which doesn't have the clout to fight back. 

"Gentrification" in cities raises rents until the essential workers--those who run the store checkouts, clean the buildings and streets, teach and/or care for children and seniors, can no longer afford to live close to where they are employed. Other casualties include small entrepreneurial businesses of all kinds, from restaurants and local bars, to independent bookshops and corner convenience stores.





Today's Windego doesn't just live in the deep woods. These days, he (or she) is seen as a "celebrity," on our television screens, and all over the internet and Twitter. Many are even elected to high public office. Worst of all, their "Not my brother's keeper" attitude is now held up to young people as the smart way to live. 

Instead of dwelling on psychos and cannibals, instead, let's take this time of All Hallows, All Saints and All Souls to find some peace and to give thanks: to remember our ancestors, our friends, mentors, and family who have passed beyond the veil. Let's also remember our honored dead, the kind of people who served and helped, rather than injured, the common folks of our communities and our country. 


~~Juliet Waldron 
All my historicals may be seen @






 






Thursday, September 29, 2022

About Elizabeth II -- Reminiscence

 


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 Inevitable that several of us BWL authors will write about the death of Queen Elizabeth, so here's my contribution. I still can't quite believe she is gone, even after ten days of a most Royal sendoff. She's been The Queen for most of my life. I do remember George VI's death, however, as this was also big news at our house. My parents discussed how brave the king had been, during the war, staying in London with his people, throughout the nightly bombing. 

On the great stage of today's (apparently) endless train of planetary disasters, her death doesn't mean much beyond the UK and the remaining commonwealth nations, but how well I remember Elizabeth's coronation, which took place when I was eight. With an Anglophile Mom, I couldn't help hearing--and viewing (for a new wonder, a television had just arrived in our home) an English Coronation, full of glittering regalia and history. 


(Free Image from Pixabay)

The idea of showing this rite to the public had been much debated beforehand--such a break with tradition! Those grainy black-and-white images of a beautiful young Queen inside her fairy-tale golden carriage, riding through gray, battered, postwar London, now all decked out beautifully for the celebration. The procession to the Abbey was followed by film of the mystery taking place inside. This was ground-breaking, this showing of so much of an ancient ritual to the public, but it proved to be a huge hit with the viewing public all over the world.  From now on, television would give those who liked to "royal watch" a whole new tool with which to engage. 

Anticipating the event, The New York Times was suddenly full of articles on the British royal family and also on English history, a news glut on a single subject, from the time of the death of King George VI onward to the crowning of the new, young queen.   From this time, I'd date my ever-increasing, ever-expanding, sixty year passion for learning about human history. 


https://www.amazon.com/Roan-Rose-Juliet-Waldron/dp/149224158X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2R221JXX8BYFN&keywords=Roan+Rose+Waldron&qid=1664379252&qu=eyJxc2MiOiIwLjg0IiwicXNhIjoiMC4wMCIsInFzcCI6IjAuMDAifQ%3D%3D&sprefix=roan+rose+waldron%2Caps%2C59&sr=8-1

Certainly, at first, this history was of the WASP kind, as that was the brand on offer at my house. I had a scrapbook filled with articles clipped from Newsweek, the NYT, Look, and whatever magazine resources we had that dealt with current events. I was not a tidy kid, so this was a messy affair of white paste and missing bits of text, but I was thoroughly engaged while making it. 

When Mom took me to England after her divorce, I ended up in a country boarding school in Penzance. Here, I found myself regularly singing "God Save the Queen." My 5th form classmates were rather surprised to learn I already knew the words, but, with a Mom like mine, this had been inevitable. I had been taught that "When in Rome, do as the Romans do" so I adapted as fast as I could in all ways. 

I'd had no idea that a person could live on cabbage and potatoes and slices of brown bread and a single pat of butter, but that was what was on offer in boarding school, so I wolfed it down like everyone else. Post-war, even in the early sixties, things were tight and war-time frugality was still the order of the day. In winter, the school was kept at 45 F., and so our wool and flannel clothing was a necessity, not an affectation. We shared a once a week bath--3 girls bathed and washed their hair in the same tub. Therefore, the water was super hot to start, but I was often allowed that first bath by default, because no one else wanted to brave the temperature.

In London, while sightseeing, I saw huge open swathes of emptiness and broken bricks in some places, in others, like around St. Paul's Cathedral, there was an expansive green void on every side, where that huge ediface stood, white and shining, perfectly alone, a miracle of survival during the Blitz. 

.  

When Mom and I transferred ourselves to Barbardos, in what was then the British West Indies, we sang "God Save The Queen" there too. Barbados was part of the old British Commonwealth, and called Elizabeth II "Queen of Barbados," but I understand that this "Island in the Sun" has become a republic (as of November, 2021), and replaced the British Crowned head with a President, while remaining as part of the Commonwealth of Nations. English rule, begun in Barbados in 1627, has ended at last,  and with it, the days of Bajan schoolgirls singing "God Save the Queen."  



--Juliet Waldron



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Friday, April 29, 2022

Love, Madness & Mozart


 

 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0089F5X3C




 

That persistent character who keeps coming back; I think most writers have a few of them. Sometimes they inhabit a book that can’t, or won't, ever be satisfactorily finished. These conundrums are in every writer’s desk drawer and on every hard drive. 

My particular dark horse always returns around her birthday, at the end of April. She’s here, hanging around, just behind the curtains, even during day-light. I’m once again re-re-imagining scenes I’ve already visited many, many times. I’ve journeyed to her world for forty years now.

My Mozart is the first book I ever completed. A satisfactory ending, I think, still eludes me. Like Konstanze of Mozart’s Wife, this young heroine insists on speaking in the first person, which both narrows and deepens her POV. It’s like writing while pinned inside her dress. 

I’ve heard authors talk about having a “channeling” experience with their characters. There are many accounts of automatic writing and spirit dictation, some sounding as if they should be taken with salt. At least that's what my day-light self thinks. However, after the experience of writing this initial, and, perhaps never-to-be-finished story, I believe other-worldly communications can happen. Ordinarily it takes a period of concentration and study to make your characters  ("the dolls") get up and move independently, but in the case of a channeled story, they arrive fully realized, walking and talking.

So here's what I've learned, forty years after my attempt to tell this ghostly story. For a while, at least, after Mozart's death, Miss Gottlieb coped with her tragedies, until, in a final cruel blow, she lost her voice. After that, she appears to have lived on, among of the walking wounded, enduring a life of poverty until her death. Such was the fate of the first Pamina, pure heroine of The Magic Flute.

I'm glad I hadn't known her true ending before I wrote the one for this story. I was willing to follow the fantasy of a limited kind of HEA , not only for my sake, but also, the rational self argued, for marketing reasons.  Any darker ending was too painful--for me, for prospective readers--and, no doubt, for my spirit informant herself.

Wild Tulips 


 
So now it’s tulip-time April, and Green May is on Her way again. Tomorrow is Miss Gottlieb’s birthday, and once more I have glimpses of her spring-time, numinous world, animated by youth, love, and music. It makes sense that the “old” holidays too are upon us, Saint Brigitte’s Day, May Morn, Saint Walpurga’s night, Beltane, and all the other Divine Feminine Maidens who rule the second Cross-Quarter Day of the year.
   
My Mozart is “romance” in the original sense of the word, in the much the same way Romeo & Juliet  may be called "romance." Not romance in the commercial sense, but the old-fashioned bloody insanity of love, the madness which can, so easily, end in tragedy. The true domain of "Romance" is Castle Perilous, which makes drawing a final line under a tale of a hopeless passion so very hard to do. 


~~Juliet Waldron



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Saturday, January 29, 2022

Joys in January

 

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Cold, tired, eyes full of blue, black and glitter--that for me was January after our family moved to upstate New York in the early 1950's. I arose in the dark,  ate oatmeal and the obligatory spoonful of cod liver oil chased with a shot glass of orange juice, and then got ready for the school bus--boots, leggings, coat, scarf and gloves plus whatever homework I had before trudging out into the sunrise over the snow banks. In those days, the snow had been piling up since October, and by now it was also well glazed with ice. I remember shivering, standing on our porch sheltering from the ever-present North wind and peering, eyes watering, into the gold and red of sun just cresting the stand of trees on the next ridge, anxious to see the bus in time to get down the long driveway in time to meet it. (Needless to say,  there was BIG TROUBLE if I didn't.) 

 

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I remember playing outside in that cold with friends on most Saturdays. There were sliding hills, of course, but there were also enormous drifts in every yard to exploit. We'd tunnel into them and then sit inside, pretending we were in caves or that we were Indians or Inuit, sheltering during a winter hunting expedition. I remember me and my friends bringing candles, throw rugs, dolls and matches along to better enjoy our pretend.

After we'd furnished our "igloo," we'd light the candles and apply the flame to the wall and ceiling of until it dripped. The melt would speedily refreeze, but after a great deal of this careful work, we achieved a shiny frozen shell that might endure, during a truly bad winter, well into March.  Mittens beaded with frozen pellets of snow, toes aching from the cold penetrating our boots, we'd enter child's fantasy land. I have no idea how we endured outside as long as we did, before the inevitable surrender and numb escape indoors for warmth and hot chocolate. Those physical experiences, even so long ago, helped me to imagine some pivotal scenes in "Fly Away Snow Goose."

There are many birthdays for me to celebrate in January--of the living and the dead. Two cousins were born in this month, but also two of grand-girls, the youngest of whom just turned twenty-one! They are all Capricorns, like my mother, whose birthday was also in this month.  (How many families, I wonder, have this aggregation of birthdays in a single month?) 

In the days when my Muse was visiting, I also celebrated the birthdays of two Dead White Men during the month. Alexander Hamilton's birthday is January 11, either in 1755 or 1757, as historians argue over the date. Paper records kept in tropical Nevis have not always survived.

Perhaps Hamilton himself muddied the waters on the date, wanting, rather like Mozart, to keep his hard-won status as a  prodigy for as long as possible.  Born in the West Indies into a family in constant financial distress, with the appellation "bastard" attached to his name, it was of monumental importance to Alexander that every possible strategy to assist his climb the social ladder be employed.   

   Young Hamilton as ADC to General Washington by Charles Wilson Peale                   

I never had birthday parties for Hammie, although I'd loved him the longest of all my dead white man crushes. Here I am in Nevis back when it barely had an airport, and the electricity only ran between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. My mother took us there--intrepid travelers that we were--back in the mid-1950's. Here's a happy January picture of me on the lava sand beach near where the Hamilton home was once supposed to have been. 


And of course in the days of Mozart madness, I'd prepare for weeks before. I remember the first birthday party we had, it snowed heavily and I spent the morning digging parking places for my friends. Some cancelled, because the weather was truly nasty and the roads treacherous, but here are the intrepid few who came to that first party, all of them writers.


Mozart's birthday party was a thing for many years here. At one gathering, an entire poetry/writing group of perhaps twenty souls arrived, and our small house was warmed by all of those folks, by Mozart's music and much spirited conversation. I always made syllabub, which has to be started a few days before you intend to serve it. The centerpiece was always a glorious German bakery treat such as the one seen below, and we all laughed like children, riding on the sugar/wine high. Winter was outside the door and life was tough, but right now we could forget it all and just be happy.



The baker I talked to about the cake turned out to be not only a recent immigrant from Austria, but a huge Mozart fan as well! He beamed and told me how pleased he was to do this. You can see that he fulfilled my expectations and then some.






  

Wednesday, December 29, 2021

12 Days of Medieval Christmas

 





In medieval times, Christmas was ardently Christian, but there were naturally Pagan traditions aplenty to be found hidden within the celebration. Some of these ancient traditions, like the German "Bad Santa" Krampus, still have plenty of fans.



The Twelve Days of Christmas themselves are both a memory of the Roman Saturnalia (Rome, which was The Empire of its time) as well as the even more ancient human observance of our planetary trip round the sun. The Sun's rebirth --that shortest day, when the sun is weakest, Winter Solstice--became, in Christian calendar, Jesus's natal day. We use the 25th now, but that had to do, I believe, with 18th Century adjustments to the western calendar. 

Those twelve days are no longer observed with the same pomp as in medieval times. Some years, after a bad harvest,  the poorest villagers might have been hard pressed to have enough to eat for the rest of the winter.  During famine years, it must have been a feat to manage any kind of "feast," but the custom of pre-Christmas fasting always helped to shore up supplies. 

Imagine twelve whole days of celebration! During that time, a peasant farmer or craftsman was not supposed to so much as lift a tool, although they were allowed to feed their livestock. This means that a great deal of planning necessarily went into preparation for this prolonged "vacation" at each year's end. Extra wood had to be cut and stacked close by houses. Stores of hay and grain laid into barns so that it would be a minimal task to feed the animals. Just like today, however, nothing changed for the "essential workers" of the time. Cooks, housewives and scullery boys, or the servants at the Castle. All these people remained on the job.

The 24 days preceding Christmas is called Advent and was the occasion of this fast. In the Late Middle Ages, this meant no meat, cheese, or eggs could be eaten--although this particular tradition is no longer part of our (consumption-driven) culture. In the past, there was a belief that a person must prepare themselves both physically and mentally for the upcoming ritual experience of the Divine Mystery that was to come. 

If you were a peasant, however, there was a practical reason to consume less before Christmas--simply to conserve enough of what food stores you had in order to provide for those festive 12 days.  The poorest villagers lived hand-to-mouth upon a diet of beans, barley or oat porridge, and near-beer, their menu filled out with whatever green stuff they could scrounge from the edges of their Lord's forest.   

Besides food for man and beast, other supplies had to be stocked as well. Wood for fuel was a necessity, of course, but specific types of wood was split and stacked together--hazel, beech, oak and ash all being used at different times during the cooking process to adequately heat those earthen or brick ovens for the baking of meat, bread and pies.  Hazel twigs burned hot and were fire-starters; beech and ash supplied a steady heat, while oak lasted longest of all and burned the slowest.

Rush lights were made by soaking rushes in left-over cooking fat and pan scrapings. These would burn for about an hour, hot, and bright, but smoking heavily and carrying the odor of whatever fat had been used, and this was the way a medieval peasant "kept the lights on" during the long, dark winter nights. This was making of rush lights would have been going on in late summer, July and August, while the reeds (species: Juncus Effusus) were still growing, and the pith which would absorb the fat, was well-developed.     

                                                             he farming year of 4 Seasons
      

Pork was the traditional food of Christmas in the British Isles, a custom with pagan roots.   The wild Boar was hunted to extinction in Britain by the 13th Century, so the Christmas pork then on would have to have been domestic. Those medieval pigs would have looked rough, though, feral and unfamiliar.

Pagan associations of the pig feast at midwinter are many. One of the most interesting discoveries at the famous Neolithic sites of Woodhenge and Stonehenge  were mountainous heaps of pig bones. Such feasts are a well-attested-to-tradition in many Germanic, Slavic and Norse cultures.

                                              Freya and her brother Freyr, Gods of the Vanir.*
                                                   Here, Frey is shape-shifted into a Boar.


Getting the boar's head -- the centerpiece of any prosperous farmer's feast -- ready for the table was laborious task which began with slaughtering, scraping, and butchering, followed by a bustle of preservation. Sausage was made from the blood and the hide readied to be tanned. Every bit of that pig would be consumed in one way or another. 

                                                                       Semi-feral hog

Pig's are "thrifty" animals, and in medieval times fed well in the woods upon acorns as well as the standard remains of human cooking. Then as now, the pig gave his all! Removing the skull from the meat and flesh was no easy feat. After this careful dressing out, the remaining flesh and ears had to be carefully preserved for eventual presentation at Christmas Eve Supper. 

The housewife would store the fleshy remains in a simple pickling liquid (vinegar, mustard seeds) until it was time to prepare it for the feast. Then she would remove it from the pickle and stitch it back together--a sort of taxidermy job-- and fill the pouch with a stuffing mixture of raisin paste and nuts, after which it would be roasted. Serving the boar's head on a platter surrounded by greenery traditionally began that first festive meal of the Christmas holiday.  

The medieval farmhouse had been decorated with Holly and Ivy. Sometimes, a Christmas Crown, an open wattle basket decorated with sprigs of Holly and Ivy was woven by the men and hoisted up high above the rising smoke of the central hearth where it would remain for the next twelve days. Holly and Ivy--representing of male and female--was a custom left over from more ancient religious observances. In medieval times, though, it was often said that if there was more ivy than holly among the decorations, the house would be ruled by the wife during the next year.  

Pastry for pies, both sweet and savory, had to be sturdy enough to stand up by themselves, as this was before people had a great many kinds of differentiated cookware, such as today's pie pans. Frumenty was a sort of yogurty smoothy made of cracked wheat and milk and flavored with dried fruit, nutmeg and cloves. These exotic spices arrived in a medieval kitchen after a 7000+ mile trader-to-trader journey. Other dishes served might be a sweetened milk gelatin or a gelatin cone of meat scraps, called a "Shred Pie." 



There would be church services every day. Masses were celebrated in honor of the birth of Jesus and in honor of the many saint's days which cluster throughout the twelve days. St. Stephen's Day is next (known in the UK and her still extant colonies) as "Boxing Day." December 27th celebrates the feast of St. John, Apostle and Evangelist. On the 28th comes the Feast of the Holy Innocents, which commemorates the slaughter of new born boys ordered by King Herod. The memorial of St. Thomas Becket, Bishop and martyr, a "turbulent priest" murdered by order of King Henry II of England, comes on the 29th. Next comes the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, which often falls upon December 30th. The last day of the year is the feast of Saint Sylvester. The following day, January 1 of the new year, is celebrated as "the Solemnity of the Nativity of Mary, Mother of God" in Christ's mother Mary is honored.  In some denominations, this last is said to be in honor of the Circumcision of Jesus, falling as it would, eight days following any proper Hebrew boy-child's birth.  


Twelfth Night, the final celebration, had many traditions. One of them was Wassailing, which could be a parade around the village or just around the kitchen, accompanied by singing, piping, banter, and still more food and drink. Villagers would visit one another's homes and sing carols. Sometimes drink was offered by the homeowner as a thank-you. In some places, the tradition of Mummers, men and women in costume, was a time-honored part of the Twelfth Night celebration.

                                                  Mummers singing and dancing in costume

In apple orchards, offerings of toast soaked in punch might be placed in the branches of the trees, or glasses of cider were poured into the orchard earth, as a thank-you offering to the fruit trees for their cider. At the Twelfth Night feast, a Lord of Misrule was chosen by passing a large freshly baked loaf of bread around the table. As everyone tore off a piece and put it into their mouths, one of them would discover the single pea that had been baked inside. This person became Lord of Misrule, crowned with a garland. His office was to devise party games and tell jokes and tales. Often these feasts would dissolve into riot, with people pelting one another with bread and leftovers and rowdy, drunken dancing. This was the night when the Magi found Jesus and worshiped him as "King of Kings."
 
                                                                   The Four Seasons

Then, like a bucket of cold water emptied upon everyone's head, came "Plough Monday," the day when farmers returned to their fields and women cleaned house and began to card wool, and spin and weave again. Another Christmas had gone and the toil of the year had once more begun. 




~~Juliet Waldron

All my historical novels @ Amazon

My historical novels @ Books We Love

Sources:

Life in a Medieval Village by Francis Gies and Joseph Gies        http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004HIX4GS

*Vanir-the original Norse gods, overshadowed in surviving stories by the later arrivals--the Aesir gods with whom people now are more familiar--Thor, Odin, Frigg, Balder etc.

How to Celebrate Christmas Medieval Style:

https://youtu.be/BY2TN8E5yAs




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