Mound Builders--New Discoveries, New Speculations

 

I am originally from south west Ohio, close to the big river which gave the State it's name. One of my happiest childhood memories is going on picnics to the many mounds built by that lost -- and until fairly recently -- mysterious, ancient people. I consider those early visits to the little museums that  sprung up in their vicinity, a major inspiration for my love of history.

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When I was small, we often visited Fort Ancient and the justly famous Serpent Mound, going there for family picnics. I remember one visit to Fort Ancient when I was disappointed not to see the skeletons that had been there before. My father - or perhaps my grandfather - read all the careful labelling to me, as the bones fascinated me. Together, we studied the worn teeth, the signs of arthrithis and injuries on the bones, caused, my elders explained, by hard work and chewing cornmeal full of stone ground grit. 

Serpent Mound

I'd spent a lot of time with these skeletons, lost in imagining what their lives had been like, so hard and so short. Most had died in the thirties, and I pictured them hauling the materials from which the mound had been so carefully constructed, or growing corn and hunting deer in the valley below. With the help of museum imagery, I imagined mothers in their bark houses, grinding corn, or tending to babies, and children learning from their elders and sometimes playing too. 

A docent explained that it would have taken 19 generations of workers to create that great "fort." Even in the fifties, it was shown in the dioramas that this massive construction was not a simple heap of earth, but had been constructed carefully, to some unknown plan, and begun with a strong, stable foundation of stone and timber. My father, an engineer, remarked on the skill involved and on how much earth had been moved by a people without draft animals, all of it carried in baskets on their backs, and steadied by a tump line wrapped around the forehead. 

The bones were gone, though, and I was disappointed. My family reminded me that the skeletons belonged to someone's family, and that it had been decided, after Indigenous complaints, to hide them away. "You wouldn't want your family dug up and displayed in a museum, would you?" (I don't know if these bones were re-buried as they often are today, but, back then, probably not.) Although I accepted this, the museum somehow seemed empty to me, as if people I had come to know were absent.

At that time, Mound Builders were considered a "mystery." Even the local Tribes - Miami and Seneca -had had no stories to tell curious settlers about who had built these mounds or what their fate had been. Over time, I learned that these ancient people built their mounds, not just in Ohio and Indiana, but all over the Mississippi drainage basin, from Louisiana to Georgia. Some are as far north as Canada! We are now learning that these mounds were great ceremonial centers, many used only seasonally, as centers for trading and religious festivals in honor of the Sun, Moon, and the Circle of the Year. In some places, actual cities formed in places like Cahokia, near St. Louis, Mo. and Poverty Point in Mississippi. These contained thousands of inhabitants, their numbers rivaling and often exceeding the size of the greatest European cities in existence at the same time. 

About twenty years ago, scientists began to see the mounds in new ways. As time had progressed, and ever more ancient sites were explored, it became apparent just how many people had been in the Americas before the Spanish arrived. The extent of the deaths caused by European "Guns, Germs & Steel,"* was at first estimated at a quarter of the native population, then at fifty percent, and now, the latest studies show that almost 95% of the original population of the Americas may have died!

Hernando DeSoto's two year travels searching for gold, spanned 1540-1542. He traveled from Florida's west coast through today's Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, and back over the Appalachians again into North Georgia, then on to Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. He left a record of all the numerous cities he saw, and of all the battles he fought along the way, as the Indians had swiftly learned to fear and resist him. The worst consequence of his visit was to spread smallpox and all the other European diseases, to which the Indians had no resistence, all along the way. 

By the 1600's, when English and French settlers began to enter these same areas, they found these once bustling cities standing empty.  The tribes who remained claimed to know nothing about the mounds, nor about those built them. Perhaps this was a kind of social amnesia after what had been, after all, a cultural apocalypse. Perhaps it was simply a refusal to share anything sacred with these invaders, who stole, murdered and enslaved whereever they went.

Since the early 2000's, more research has been conducted at various mound sites, including my childhood happy places, Fort Ancient and The Serpent Mound. Some of this research has been accepted by mainstream archeology, though much is still under review.  (As history teaches, new theories and discoveries often find difficulty in being accepted by the establishment.) Another new thread has been scientists discovering that the "old tales" that are still told by the few remaining Shamen to be found among modern American tribes are surprisingly synchronous with the stories and "myths" connected to European standing stones and mounds. It has begun to appear that ancient people alike, all over the world, carefully watched the skies for the same stars and the same seasonal changes.  

Now, Fort Ancient has many gaps in what have been for all these years assumed to be walls, but the new field of archeoastronomy has begun to demonstrate that these openings were set where they are in order to observe the rising and setting of certain stars and star groups, ones associated with death rituals and the safe passage of the soul into the Other World. At the Serpent Mound, these same sightlines are set at the apex of each curve the great snake, himself a symbol of the underworld. 

Astonishingly similar to many ancient Egyptian beliefs, these same stars guide the soul into the land of the ancestors, using the Milky Way and the same stars which were so important to the Egyptians, such as Sirius and Deneb. A glowing circle where the cloudy shine of another galaxy is visible to the naked eye, was, to those ancestral people, the goal of each and every traveling soul.  

Juliet Waldron

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Indian Mounds of the Middle Ohio Valley, A guide to the Mounds and Earthworks of the Adena, Hopewell, Cole, & Fort Ancient People, Published 2002, by Susan Woodward and Jerry N. McDonald

Guns, Germs & Steel, Pulitzer Prize Winner 2002, by Jared Diamond

https://www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-Steel-Fates-Societies-ebook/dp/B06X1CT33R/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2I4CR3L33JWN9&keywords=jared+diamond+books&qid=1669681681&sprefix=Jared+Diamond%2Caps%2C76&sr=8-1

And for some convincing speculation:

The Path of Souls, Gregory Little 

https://www.amazon.com/Path-Souls-American-Skeletons-Smithsonian/dp/0965539253/ref=asc_df_0965539253/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312174369544&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=6480905854475676947&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9006604&hvtargid=pla-567617217296&psc=1

Period Detail or: The Writer's Dilemna

 

Roan Rose   ISBN:  149224158X

                            https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/roan-rose/id1023558994?mt=11

  
https://www.amazon.com/Roan-Rose-Juliet-Waldron-ebook/dp/B00FKKAN98/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1490904741&sr=1-1&keywords=Roan+Rose

https://bookswelove.net/waldron-juliet/

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Writing popular historical fiction always leads to a dilemna--how much period detail can you "get away with" without alienating the casual reader? The audience for historical fiction is broad and it's difficult to find the correct niche, the readers you want to reach and entertain.  My own problem as a writer who hoped to make a few dollars from this "hobby" was exactly this.

Who was I writing for? Where was my "market"?

 

In the beginning, I naively hoped to bring more realism into the world of romance--or rather into my imagined new brand of romantic-historical fiction. Much to the dismay of editors, I could not leave out the flies or the fleas or the dirt, or the endless lugging of water, or the everyday sheer drudgery of an ordinary woman's life in the past. Her hair had to be hidden and her head covered, and her mouth must remain closed.

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

Escaping into a dreamworld of history, usually with privileged protagonists who have servants (or slaves) laboring in the background over laundry and cooking and child care, did not particularly call to me. Trips to the backhouse in the winter, housekeeping, and women's cultural and gynecological issues--for example, Constanze Mozart's repeated near-death experiences while bearing six babies in nine years- interested me more. 

Relationships are the key to any storytelling success, but if these are not placed in the context of historical period, I, as a reader, can't take a story seriously. I sincerely try to make my own stories as authentic as I am able by doing research, by attending re-enactments and spending time with the experts there. They, like me, truly want to walk back into another time and place, immersing themselves not only with the pleasures, but the pains and discomforts, of the times in which our ancestors lived. 

Beyond the consequences of living in a world ignorant of germ theory or human anatomy, the second class "weaker sex"status of women was established and enforced by religion, by law and by custom. Women had very few legal rights, no contraception, no protection from abuse by spouses or intimate partners. There were strict rules for dress and deportment which applied to every social class and in every culture. China bound aristocratic women's feet so that girls grew up while enduring excruciating pain and became fit for little but sex, smoking opium and perhaps penning poetry. Victorians forced their girls into binding corsets that produced high-fashion "beauty," but deformed internal organs and shortened their lives.

Such battles appear to be still going on for women globally. Even here in the West, where, I'll admit, things are somewhat better in 2022 than in the world of 150 years ago when we couldn't vote and could be committed to life in an asylum on the say-so of a controlling father or bored spouse. We generally still don't get paid or promoted like our brothers.

 

These and other reflections about the dues paid by creators, brings me to The Northman, a film by Robert Eggers, now exiting movie theaters, a film which I caught just at the end of it's less than glorious run. What happened to this brilliant historical movie at the box office is, in my opinion, a tragedy, but a not unexpected one. (Set this movie beside the 1958 The Vikings and you will see what a long way historical accuracy has come in big-budget Hollywood films.) 

Scholarly research, breath-taking reproductions of weaponry, of clothing, of ships and towns, beautiful photography and settings, an all-star cast who acted their hearts out, a great depiction of Norse/Icelandic magic and an epic love-and-revenge story, it has is a financial "flop." Not even those warrior scenes and buckets and buckets of blood could not attract the same folks who appear to love the two Netflix Vikings series, one I could not watch. 

The reality is there is little that is admirable about Vikings. The Northman showed us why.  Plainly depicted is a society powered by toxic masculinity and a violent proto-Capitalism which involved stealing from everybody else they encountered and either murdering or enslaving the rest.  It is based upon an Icelandic saga, the one which became the inspiration for Hamlet. 

The hero, Amleth, is from a ruling class who are supported by campaigns of murderous ferocity, their wealth and life style supported by robbery and slaving. When his father, a local king, is murdered by his uncle and his mother is (apparently) abducted, Amleth, a mere pre-teen, must run for his life, vowing vengeance as he goes. We have no idea how he survives, but when we next see him, he is grown, a mercenary for Viking slavers in the lands of the Rus. He is now a full-grown berserker warrior, a ripped killing machine who has suppressed every human feeling.  Maybe "anti-hero" is a better designation for this character, although, naturally, that would not be the case for the original hearers of the tale.

I know something about Norse/Icelandic mythology, so I put my--meaningless--stamp of approval   ;)   on the mythic content of the movie. Those many magical episodes made perfect sense in that context. The mix of grim reality and the numinous and terrifying world in which the characters dwell brought the story to life for me. Here, and, and fairly successfully I think, is portrayed the Viking mind-set.  

Women's magic--sorcery was very real and much feared by the people of this time--was also powerfully conveyed. Before the Aesir gods of Asgard, were the mysterious, primordial Vanir gods. Among these survivals of earlier times was Freya, goddess of sex and sorcery, one of the few truly powerful female figures in Norse mythology. 

This same kind of Feminine Power is also exercised in other cultures. Olga of the Birch Trees, a Slavic witch enslaved by Amleth's band of mercenaries during one of those atrocity-filled Viking raids is introduced.  Although I tend to resist love stories in such settings, I got into this character. Amleth on his way to revenge (and given a kick-start by his encounter with another Slavic sorceress) naturally responds to Olga's ferocity and she assists him with her knowledge of potions. Additionally tasty was the addition of Icelandic legends concerning their island's clever Blue Foxes. And who could find fault with the Valkyrie carrying the slain-by-the sword warriors to Valhalla, those ritual markings carved into her teeth, howling like a demonic wolf, riding her winged white horse across the stormy sky?

--Juliet Waldron

http://www.julietwaldron.com

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004HIX4GS

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Hamilton's forbidden flame, Angelica

 

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Angelica Schuyler ("Engeltke") named for her grandmother, as was Dutch custom,was born on February 22, 1756, probably at the home of her grandparents, the fine house called Rensselearwyck. Her parents, Catherine van Rensselear and Philip Schuyler, had been married during the alarms of the French & Indian War the previous year, on September 17th, 1755. Albany was, in those days, another semi-rural village in the upper Hudson Valley, hanging precariously on the edge of the wild frontier. The French and their powerful Indian allies had been on their doorstep many times before and now were menacing the English/Dutch settlements once more. 

The marriage was noted in the family Bible, just nine days after the Battle of Lake St. George where Philip Schuyler was a Captain and aide to General Bradstreet. If you do the math, you will see that  the young Captain had been summoned back from the army by his soon-to-be father-in-law. Catherine, the "Evening Star" of Albany (per the eligible bachelors of the valley) was a famous belle in her day but her flirtatious days were now over. Her first born daughter would grow up to be an even more famous coquette--on three continents.

Angelica seems to have been her father's favorite, a real sparkler right from the start. In her early teens (14) she was sent with her parents' good friends, New York British Governor Moore and his charming wife Lucy, for an extended stay. In New York, she apparently absorbed ideas about status, and for her the word "Colonial" now carried a cruel sting. I believe this was where she made up her mind to marry an English aristocrat, instead of one of her land-wealthy, but less sophisticated Hudson Valley cousins, the expected course for a Patroon's daughter. When Angelica returned home at last, she arrived in Albany with a music master and a harpsichord. She alone of the daughters was sent to what was then an  innovation among the Dutch--a boarding school to learn French, and the other courtly graces. Nothing was too good for General Schuyler's bright, pert eldest daughter. 

“Carter and my eldest daughter ran off and were married on the 23, July,” (1779) Unacquainted with his family connections and situation in life that matter was exceeding disagreeable and I signified it to them.” Phillip Schuyler to his friend, William Duer.  

This “Carter” was actually John Barker Church—after the war, when news came that the man he’d supposedly killed in a duel was still alive and well--he would resume his proper name. The cause of his flight from England was probably far less glamorous, for Church was bankrupt and a well-known gambler, an unpromising history that Philip Schuyler may have known.

Carter became commissary supplier to Admiral Rochambeau and General Jeremiah Wadsworth during the Revolution. Commissary was a fast way to accumulate a large fortune, as sub rosa skimming and was the norm. His war-profiteering accumulated a large fortune. Eventually, with plenty of money in his pocket, he would become a member of parliament and live in England in lavish style, owning a country home as well as a fashionable house in London.    

At this time, however, the family was still in America, and the Revolution raged in the Hudson Valley. 

"Mrs. Church is delivered of a fine boy. I hope her sister will give me another.” Philip Schuyler to his son-in-law, Alexander Hamilton September, 1778, soon after the Battle of Yorktown.

Angelica gave birth to her first born at The Pastures, the Schuyler home. A few months later came the famous Tory and Indian attack upon the house—Angelica & four month old Philip were present, as well as a pregnant Betsy Hamilton and the girls' new born sister, Kitty, and the rest of the children of this large family. 

                                        Angelica Church, baby and maid by John Trumbull

The Marquis de Chastelux remarked after the war: "Mrs. Carter, a handsome woman told me that going down to her husband's office (the commissary at Newport) in rather elegant undress, a farmer who was there on business asked who the young lady was. On being told that it was Mrs. Carter, he said, loud enough for her to hear, 'A wife and a mother has no business to be so well-dressed.'"  The farmer had mistaken her, because of her "immodest" dress, for some dandy's mistress. 

Angelica loved clothes, hats, and the latest fashions. She must have reveled after her marriage to John Church in freedom from the frugality of Dutch tradition, where three good dresses were "more than enough" for any respectable woman. 

These next letters were written when Angelica and Church departed from America in 1789. It would be  1797 that they would finally return.

 

November 8, 1789, Angelica Church to Alexander Hamilton:

      "I am not much disposed for gaiety- yet I endeavor to make myself tolerable to my fellow passengers…Do my dear Brother endeavor to sooth my poor Betsey, comfort her with assurances that I will certainly return to take care of her soon. Remember this also my dearest Brother and let neither politics or ambition drive your Angelica from your affections. ..Adieu my dear Brother, may God bless and protect you, prays your ever affectionate Angelica, ever ever yours.” 

And here is Hamilton's reply: 

    “After taking leave of you on board of the Packet, I hastened home to sooth and console your sister. I found her in bitter distress…After composing her with a strong infusion of hope, that she had not taken her last farewell of you…The Baron little Philip and myself with her consent, walked down to the Battery; where with aching hearts and anxious eyes we saw your vessel, in full sail, swiftly bearing our loved friend from our embraces. Imagine what we felt. We gazed, we signed, we wept…”

    “Amiable Angelica! How much you are formed to endear yourself to every good heart! How deeply you have rooted youself in the affection of your friends on this side of the Atlantic! Some of us are and must continue inconsolable for your absence.

    Betsey and myself make you the last theme of our conversation at night and the first in the morning. We dwell with peculiar interest on the little incidents that preceded your departure. Precious and never to be forgotten scenes! ...However difficult, or little natural it is to me to suppress what the fullness of my heart would utter, the sacrifice shall be made…”

From Betsey: 

“My Very Dear Beloved Angelica—I have seated myself to write to you, but my heart is so saddened by your Absence that it can scarcely dictate, my Eyes so filled with tears that I shall not be to write you much but Remember, Remember, my dear sister of the Assurances of your returning to us, and do all you can to make your Absence short. Tell Mr. Church for me of the happiness he will give me, in bringing you to me, not to me alone, but to fond parents sisters friends and to my Hamilton who has for you all the Affection of a fond own Brother. I can do no more. Adieu Adieu Heaven Protect you.”       

When she and her husband returned from their first sojourn in London, Angelica loved to shock the City with the latest novelties in style. Walter Rutherford, detailing one of her dinner parties, speaks of "a late abominable fashion from London, of Ladies like Washerwomen with their sleeves above their elbows, Mrs. Church among them."  

She and Hamilton continually played seductive word games when they wrote. It is notable that Hamilton wrote so much to Angelica about his work during the hectic time when he was America's first Secretary of the Treasury, attempting to set the wheels of public finance successfully turning. You may make of their affection what you will, although there were rumors about this glamorous pair were rampant in the circles of his political enemies--and finally in scurrilous pamphlets--for years. 

Two of Hamilton's biographers, (James Flexner and Robert Hendrickson) seem to believe Hamilton and his sister-in-law consummated their passion. How unlikely this was--betrayal between affectionate sisters, especially in the Schuyler's closely bonded family--is persuasively argued by Ron Chernow. Infidelity between those two would have been an explosive, corroding secret that it would have been nearly impossible to keep.

18th Century conventional morality ran in two very separate tracks--one for men and one for women-- even for beautiful, worldly, sophisticated women like Angelica. She may have been a kind of danger junkie, leading on so many powerful men, but, playing this game, she could wield far more power over these hopeful lovers than their wives ever could, forever promising, but never quite surrendering.  No one mentions John Church's affinity for dueling as an aspect of their reticence, but his handsome matched set of pistols were employed by many fool-hardy gentlemen. They would finally put an end to the gallant Hamilton himself. 

 Eight years after the tearful departure, Angelica would return to America, just as Hamilton resigned from his heroic stint as Secretary of the Treasury. By this time, despite all those confiding, flirtatious letters that had traveled back and forth across the ocean, she seems to have become anxious about her continuing hold upon Hamilton's affections. As the Church's attorney, Hamilton found himself responsible for purchasing their new home in New York.  In February of that year, she wrote a rather spiteful letter to him. He had enclosed "no plan of the lot and no description of the house. How can I bring out the furniture when I do not know the number of rooms my house contains...?"

She goes on: "I am sensible how much trouble I give you, but ...it proceeded from a persuasion that I was asking from one who promised me his love and attention if returned to America... for what do I exchange ease and taste, by going to the new world...?" 

To which he could only reply that he and Eliza were "strangely agitated between fear and hope, anxiously wishing for your return...We feast on your letters..The only rivalship we have is in our attachment to you and we each contend for preeminence in this particular...To whom will you give the apple?...Yours as much as you desire, A.H."

This hot and heavy signature, like so much of their correspondence, teeters on the edge of impropriety. This same tone is a constant in their letters until Hamilton took himself permanently out of the game on that ledge at Weehawken. He, however, was not the only important man to be enchanted by her.

Benjamin Franklin adored her. Thomas Jefferson seems to have had designs upon her during a time in France when he was the U.S. Minister to the French Court and she was present, sometimes without her husband. In 1788 Jefferson even invited her to come and stay with him at Monticello when they both returned to America. He further suggested that they could travel together, perhaps to Niagara Falls. 

Angelica's apparently relaxed views on "extra-marital escapades,"*(1.) invited these advances from Jefferson. She had previously acted as a go-between for the painter's wife, Mrs. Cosway, herself an artist and a particular friend of Angelica's, who was enamored of the famous author of the Declaration of Independence. Mrs. Cosway became Jefferson's mistress and so close were these three that Jefferson's own copy of The Federalist bears the "surprising dedication"*(2.) 'For Mrs. Church from her Sister, Elizabeth Hamilton.'" 

In Paris, Angelica was presented to Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and invited into all the highest Enlightenment circles, as well as maintaining her own very active salon. Later, in England, Angelica once more bedazzled all who met her. Here she was presented to George IV and Queen Charlotte.  After this triumph, as in France, all the finest salons opened to her and to her wealthy husband. 

Insurance in those days was a private legal arrangement between gentlemen, although there was always a high risk of ruin for one or the other parties to the deal, especially if a ship laden with cargo went to the bottom. John Church seems to have (at least partly) shifted his love of gambling into this side of the business world, although he remained famous for his love of night-long, high-stakes card games. He certainly provided Angelica with the glamorous wider world of which she'd dreamed as a girl, as well as all the glittering parties, clothes and jewels anyone could need. When the family returned to New York in the late 1790's their parties were soon the talk of the town, as were her diamonds and the solid silver plate upon which she served dinner guests. Angelica was definitely a "material girl."

Betsy/Eliza 

Whatever Angelica and Alexander may have sometimes fantasied, I believe that Hamilton married the right sister. Elizabeth was faithful, loyal, a frugal manager, and a loving mother. She was exactly what a self-absorbed genius required in a wife, a woman who, no matter what happens, always "stands by her man."  Angelica and Hamilton, on the other hand, were too much alike. She was as high-maintenance as he. Far better suited to her was Church, who could provided the travel, the luxury, and the free rein that she craved.  She couldn't have her cake and eat it too and it was better for all concerned that it turned out that way.

At the end, though, Angelica came home to America. She is buried in Trinity Churchyard, near the graves of Alexander, Elizabeth and their oldest son, Philip. Her husband, John Church, is buried far across the sea in Westminister Abbey.

~~Juliet Waldron 

https://bookswelove.net/waldron-juliet/

*1. Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton, page 315

*2. Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton, page 315

For a colorful account of Jefferson in Paris, see the 1995 Merchant-Ivory movie of the same name.    

Crazy & Yoga

My Historical Novels

Alexander Hamilton & Elizabeth Schuyler, A Master Passion

My grandmother lived through the Spanish Flu. Long ago, when I was a youngster, she told me the scary story of how she'd sat in an upstairs window with her school friends in NYC, all of them watching in fear as body after body was carried from neighboring buildings. 

Bad old days, was her unspoken message: 
Don't worry little granddaughter. Things like that can't happen in these marvelous modern times.

Right as Grandma was about many things, she has proved wrong there. Now my husband and I are isolating; we are hoping and praying for deliverance for our friends and families. We also send our prayers for health and continued strength to our needlessly endangered and overworked health care community. We pray too for the rest  of the world. Each country now shows its true colors in the way it treats its poorest citizens--and many wealthy nations like ours are failing the test.

It would be ironic to drop dead of a heart attack -- instead of the  virus -- over political events an elder recipient of social security can do nothing about. I'll stop venting now and talk yoga instead. 

I've written about Yoga before on this blog. I have tinkered with Yoga since the 1960's. As powerful as Yoga is--this exercise which joins breath with precise movement--I've never been a consistent practitioner.  Of course, that fact alone means that I am exactly the kind of person Yoga was meant for.*  Discipline is as important in yoga as it is in any other exercise--and as it is in writing. That means you have to work out as near to daily as possible. I've been writing daily for years, but best case for me with Yoga has been attending a class twice a week. 

Still, not even that would have been possible for me before the new, sophisticated senior classes, because I'm a skeletal wreck. I don't mean I'm thin. What I mean is that inside I'm badly joined. Tendons are sub-par, misaligned; I have Scoliosis. Maybe I didn't come like that, but that's the way my torso's been since my teens. I have never -- even on my best 110 lb. day--been able to touch my toes. 

As a result, I've had to wait for Yoga's full revelation to arrive in my 70's with the advent of Silver & Fit. The hidden truth is so simple that for years my befuddled Western head wasn't been able to comprehend, but the light has begun to dawn at last. Since the gym closed, I've found I'm able to carry on my practice a bit at home, probably for the first time ever in my life.  

Recently, yoga has been helpful in keeping (what's left of) my sanity, so I'm going to share one of what are called "foundational" poses. It's a simple -- and on the surface, easy -- exercise, but poses are still complicated to explain. Whatever, I'm about to try.

The door opener for me was Mountain Pose, so that's the one I'll use here. It's a great place to start, or even if you never get an inch farther, I think this pose is magnificently powerful in a time when we truly need to BE HERE NOW.* There may not be a future, after all.

The illustration above shows the proper posture. However, the way in which the posture is acquired -- where you actually begin -- is important. So is the breath, but I'll explain that as I go. 

You begin with the feet. My instructor told us to stand hip-width apart, not "together" as above, so I'll add that caveat here. Therefore, your feet are aligned beneath your hips, leaving the natural gap between them. Next, turn your toes ever so slightly outward, just a small bit of angle. Hands are against your sides--as much as your structure allows--with the palm open and facing forward, the thumbs turned out.

After you've got your feet placed, straighten up slowly--perform every move with attention -- and then slowly push your heels together. This push activates your calves, next engages your knees, thighs and then your belly, all of which are all now involved. Once you've engaged the core muscles in the gut, you pause to check that your tailbone is pointed down. 

Naturally, as the tension ascends your body, you will pull your shoulder blades--very gently, please -- together. The breastbone pushes out, and you can help this with a deep breath. For most of us elders, the shoulders won't want to move much, but do what you can. Remember to keep the shoulders down. 

(Digression: Yoga is not about force, which is the very Western notion that your will can overcome muscular deficiency, and that you are not a Jock worthy of the name if you can't push yourself through any pain to perfection in less than a week. This attitude will inevitably end in OW! DAMN! You'll yank something deep inside, have to take a lot of Advil(c) and then just sour grapes quit.) 

Back to Mountain Pose instruction. 

Now take another deep, conscious breath and be certain that you are still looking straight ahead and that all those muscles are still contracted. Don't tilt your head up or down. Keep the thumbs of the hands aimed back. At this point, you can feel your "meat suit" self line up and balance. Imagine your head on a string, the crown gently pulled upward.

Here is where you remain, breathing deeply and slowly, in and out, in and out, for at least eight breaths. You can, if you like, imagine that you are a mountain, plugged into the great energetic being that is our beautiful Planet Earth. Don't forget that you are giving back as well as taking and you'll feel yourself become part of the cycle. Hold Mountain Pose until you find your mind wandering, then stop if you must or continue on to other postures you have a hankering for. 

I hope you will find Mountain Pose as restoring as I do. I return to the endless cleaning of surfaces, newly acquired groceries, etc. feeling refreshed and ready not only for the tasks ahead, but with spirits raised--despite the news. I'm not worrying about a future I cannot control and may not even see. The breathing and the posture re-adjustment helps me keep sane in times which are, frankly, terrifying. Somehow, in the middle of this disaster, we need to remember to keep our humanity and our compassion--both for ourselves and for others. Personally, for me, I've been finding even a little bit of this ancient practice smooths the way. 

~~Juliet Waldron                                     https://bookswelove.net/waldron-juliet/

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The Trials of a Fluffy Kitty

First of all, Happy Birthday to Alexander H., born on Nevis January 11, 1757. To begin, I will post a quote of his that feels utterly relevant.

"...a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that ... those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants."  ~~The Federalist Papers


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The trials of a fluffy kitty...



Here is the "Fluffy Kitty" the day she came to us as a baby, a bitten-up kitten who had just been to the vet so he could drain an abscess from a bite. 

My husband and I have learned a lot about her over the years both by observation and by inference. Kimi is the only one who could call us on any of these suppositions, but she's not talking, except for the ever-useful word "meow." 

That's what she said to my friend Patti who found her on the porch of her Palmyra house on a cold December day. Kimi was hungry and cold and Patti could see her ribs through the fluff, and also see that she'd been hurt. Hundreds of $$ of vet bills and a few days later, Patti brought Kimi to me. Patti already had three indoor cats in her double wide. She was was still covered with ticks, in her ears, her paws and just everywhere. Patti and I stopped counting after we'd removed thirty.

Life for her improved after that, for, with antibiotics and wounds stitched, she was already on the path to better health. We had a set-back, though, when the abscess had to be drained again. My husband and I soon learned that this little girl had been badly handled by whoever had originally “been responsible” for her -- before they'd decided to throw her away. 

I've come to believe that this is her story. As little kitten, she must have been a yellow fluff ball, looking more like a stuffed toy than a living being. This had led some cat-ignorant people to treat her like one. They'd probably allowed their children to tease her, chase her, and handle her far beyond her ability to endure. If Kimi was already a shy kitten, (and some kitties are emotionally fragile) this man-=handling must have pushed her beyond endurance. She became the hissing, clawing, fearful little girl who first came to live with us.



Kimi was definitely not a fan of being touched, not unless she initiated contact herself. If you reached out to pet her, you'd better come at her slowly and touch gently. Otherwise, there there'd be a steam-kettle worthy (dragon worthy?) hiss and she'd speedily decamp, glaring over her shoulder at the clod human who'd displeased her. She distrusted our other cats too, unsurprisingly, as she'd been beaten up and bitten while trying to get food at some stray cat feeding spot. 

None of the other cats who lived here liked her. She wouldn't play, she wouldn't accept an introductory sniff or lick; she wouldn't play or share the food bowl or space on the couch or be any fun at all. She was just plain scared, and her obvious fear made her a target for our top cat, a large streetwise male. There were periods when she spent most of her time hiding out in a grungy pile of rags in a basement box. In fact, she came darn close to becoming known as "Basement Cat."  




I began to coax her to come upstairs and sit with me, and then into accepting grooming, which her long hair definitely required. I bought a wide-toothed dog brush to start, so that it would pass easily through her thick, matted fur without tugging.  This way we began to break the ice. 

Gradually, she began to believe my intentions were good. After all, her  fluff was too dense for her to care for by herself. As all cat owners should know, hairballs are a standard problem for cats. Nature obliges felines to groom thoroughly every day. All that hair goes in, but if it doesn't come out one end or the other, then the cat will be sick, sometimes fatally. Brushing and combing are a daily must, especially for such a fluffy kitty. 



We'd brush until we'd get a growl. Nail clipping was the same--a few at a time. At first, these beauty treatments were all trials for Kimi, but slowly this necessary handling became routine. 



We still wait until she approaches us for attention and then obey the message of the tail lash which signals "ENOUGH." Her only significant daily trial is Anthony. He arrived last year, absolutely certain that all the other cats must be dying to play with him—and if they refused, he’d chase them all over the house mercilessly. I think, however, that "still he persisted" might win the day, even faced with her determined suspicion.  

Who can say? She may yet learn to enjoy the company of the other cats.

~~Juliet Waldron

OB/GYN and the historical

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For women's history month, I thought I'd check into a topic that isn't exactly hearts and flowers, but which (perversely, maybe), drew my searching feminist interest. After all, what did our fore-mothers' experience in their real lives? Inevitably, after the romance comes the babies. It's Mother Nature's plan to trick us that way.) Women then had to cope with their bodies as well as their emotions when caught up in an amorous physical relationship. Exactly what, in the 18th Century, did that mean? 

The very first historical novel I wrote, Mozart's Wife, got me researching a kind of social history that has, until lately, been little regarded.  Back in the 1980's when I began to write a novel from the POV of a young Viennese woman  who had the fortune/misfortune to marry the Rock Star of her day, I had to do some serious digging to unearth information about these female rites of passage, from birthing customs, feminine hygiene to contraception. It's top secret info into caring for what--believe it or not--one of our modern (?) politicians is still referring to as "lady parts." 

A good part of Constanze’s life, and rarely mentioned by Wolfgang’s biographers--who, for many years, loved to pile on her for not being the same sort of caretaker of genius that his father had been--the poor girl was pregnant or convalescent from childbirth. For six  out of the nine years their marriage lasted, she was expecting. The longest interval between her pregnancies was seventeen months, the shortest (on two occasions) six months. In 1789 she was bedridden for months. Her legs swelled, she had intermittent fevers and racking pains in her legs and abdomen throughout the entire pregnancy. The daughter she bore that year died at birth and very nearly took Constanze with her. No wonder the poor creature was often distracted. Not only was she struggling to manage a household with an income that came in and went out like some kind of wildly irregular tide; her energies were concentrated upon staying alive.

From the Mozart Family Letters, and from what I’ve read to research her symptoms, it would appear that Constanze nearly died of puerperal fever on two separate occasions. Childbirth and the resulting illnesses brought doctors, midwives, wet-nurses, and prescriptions--and attendant expense. It would be difficult, even today, to keep a woman with such an obstetrical record “in good general health.” And the cure for her ailments? Trips to the spa to bathe in the hot water--and who knows what microbes lurked in those pools, in continual use since Roman Times--and, of course, leeches. The leeches actually might have helped, as they draw blood through areas where swelling or infection has caused circulation to stagnate. They are so used in hospitals today. There is also an anesthetic the critters secrete when they latch on which may have a welcome local effect.

All large European cities were dirty. There were backhouses behind the apartment buildings. If the latrines were inside, this meant a collection point at the bottom of the house which was occasionally scooped out. What this meant for the summer water supply is not hard to guess. The brief life of four of Mozart’s children and the illnesses of the parents are not unusual for the 18^th Century. However, it can only be imagined how difficult the birth and death of four infants in such a short space of time was upon the mother.

“Congratulations, you are a grandpapa! Yesterday, at half past six in the morning, my dear wife was safely delivered of a fine sturdy boy, as round as a ball. Her pains began at half past one in the morning so that night we both lost our rest and sleep. At four o’clock I sent for my mother-in-law and then for the midwife. At six o’clock the child began to appear and at half past six the trouble was all over. My mother-in-law by her great kindness to her daughter has made full amends for all the harm she did her before her marriage. She spends the whole day with her.”

Raimund Leopold, as he was named, was born strong and healthy, but what the proud father originally wrote to his father is an 18^th Century tale, one that today sounds totally crazy. 

“My dear wife….will make a full recovery from her confinement. From the condition of her breasts I am rather afraid of milk-fever. And now the child has been given to a foster-nurse against my will, or rather, at my wish! For I was quite determined that whether she should be able to do so or not, my wife was never to feed her child. Yet I was equally determined that my child was never to take the milk of a stranger! I wanted the child to be brought up on water, like my sister and myself. However, the midwife, my mother-in-law and most people here have begged and implored me not to allow it, if only for the reason that most children here who are brought up on water do not survive as the people here don’t know how to give it properly. That induced me to give in, for I should not like to have anything to reproach myself with.”

It was a good thing that Grandma Cecelia, tactful for once, managed to persuade Mozart that babies do not live long on sugar water! And, certainly, Constanze doubtless did have milk fever more than once, because while they had money, Mozart, that 18th Century husband-whose-word-must-be-obeyed, never allowed her to nurse. Of their six children, only two survived to adulthood. Her last baby, Franz Wolfgang, was probably nursed by his mother, but this was only because that final summer of 1791, the couple were stony broke. In Mozart's mind, breast feeding was "lower class," a stigma that, if you think about it, has lasted for a very long time in our western "civilized" society.  

After Mozart died, Constanze never bore another baby, though she did marry again. I had to assume that such a fertile woman had at last learned the unholy secret of contraception. When I did a little research into that veiled subject, I learned that there weren't a whole lot of options for a "decent" married couple in the late 18th Century. Perhaps she'd learned the trick with the natural sponge and lemon juice or vinegar douche. Perhaps her new husband used a sheep gut condom--there are images of these quaint relics online--complete with a red ribbon to keep it snugly fitted.

~~Juliet Waldron

The Schuyler Sisters

A Master Passion

 

Seen from a certain angle, the Schuyler girls were fairy tale princesses. They had white wigs, French dresses and a daddy who owned most of upstate New York. They had other identities, too, as frontier girls, occasionally in peril because their father’s kingdom really was land which had once belonged to the first people who'd come here. This backstory is a familiar feature of the early days of America, how plantations--that obscuring euphemism--took root, their aim to "tame"  (harvest) all they could get from a bountiful "wilderness.” 

That's not the foreground of my stories. The girls are. They drew my  interest particularly because I'm deprived--an only child. I've had to research the experience of siblings. As I read about the life that these girls lived, I realized that Margaret, Elizabeth and Angelica literally grew up together. Dutch ladies they were, but you could almost call them "Irish triplets", these same sex sibs born bam-bam-bam in 1756, 1757, and 1758. How could they not be emotionally entwined?

Back to the fairy tale idea. As it happened, these Schuyler girls each grew up and each one married a handsome prince.

Margaret was the youngest and the last to be married. She chose a life in the old-time Hudson Valley Dutch style, which, by that time, was already passing away. She married a van Rensselaer—her cousin, a boy she’d known all her life, whose family owned "the other half of upstate."  Land was the basis for her husband's wealth, though this, i8n the next generation would prove impossible to keep.  It was a safe and well-nigh predictable marriage--even though her father was, as usual, incensed because it began with an elopement--so romantic it was almost de rigueur for any spirited 18th century lady of fashion.
 

 Margaret Schuyler van Rensselaer

Elizabeth, the middle sister, married a wanderer, a fortune-seeker, a self-taught knight in shining armor who sometimes, like Sir Lancelot, went completely mad. Her life overflowed with drama, and she was nowhere near as materially comfortable or secure as the other two sisters, but she always knew who she was: her husband's "Queen Bess." She bore eight children and raised every one in a time where this wasn't a given. She lived almost until the Civil War, still standing by her man and his reputation fifty years after death had parted them.
 

 Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton "Betsy"

 

Angelica was, by all accounts, "the fairest of them all." She picked for herself a dashing lord of the material world, a buccaneer with a credible alias as an English gentleman. Her daring husband knew how to conduct a lady out an upstairs window and down a ladder in the middle of the night, away to a forbidden marriage. After the romance was over, he became a businessman with the stamina to write insurance all day and gamble all night. With his position and money, he took Angelica to London, and to Paris where her wit and beauty enchanted royals as well as the brilliant and the notorious.

Angelica Schuyler Church

 

Of these ladies, I’d imagine that only Betsy would ever have stood before a blackened, cavernous fireplace with a stick of wood or a ladle in hand, directing the business of her kitchen. The complex odors of a wood fire, which seem to us moderns like camping, would have filled the room and saturated clothing. Mrs. Hamilton wouldn't have worn her good dresses down in the cookshop, barely even for a visit. A certain amount of greasy smoke would have been everywhere, necessitating a spring cleaning that ended with a white washing. There was little of the new stove technology in her world, except, perhaps, in the better city homes she shared with her husband in Philadelphia and New York.

 

Like the English great houses, these early American “mansions” would not have been in a rush to modernize. The best they could do was to create a wing to house a kitchen, often a one story addition to the back of the house. In the cities, the kitchen would be down stairs--way downstairs!

There were plenty of hands—labor both slave and free—and plenty of fuel, for the menfolk are busy chopping down the great northeastern boreal forest, consuming it for building and energy, for shipping and industry. She might not have dirtied her hands scrubbing the floors, but she’d know how it should be done, and she wouldn’t hesitate to explain it to you while you worked on your knees before her. She wasn’t retiring, although she probably wasn’t taller than five feet. Nothing shy about this lady within the confines of her home; she was a Leo and a Schuyler, too, after all.

 

The Grange, NY, NY

Alexander Hamilton's final home

Upon which he spent entirely too much money.

 
Theirs is a delightful family/historical story, three women living through such a profound transition. I only wonder that it hasn't been retold more. It's been an honor and a delight to attempt to try.

 

 

 

~~Juliet Waldron

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