Category: Events

Free-for-All Friday

On By kittycalashIn Events, History, Living History, Reenacting
Well, at least I can dress myself.
Well, at least I can dress myself.

Most sadly, my obnoxious yellow gown will not be finished for this coming weekend, so I will not be flaunting my goods in such flashy clothing. Instead, I will be dressed like a giant version of the darling Miss B, whom I fear does wear the Space Invaders print better than I.

The real point, of course, is the action expected for Saturday, June 25, at the Craig House. The press release is fairly general about how we’ll be representin’ New Jersey’s 18th century civil war, and no one has leaped up to portray Little Anthony the [Quaker] Insurrectionist, but here’s the scene:

Craig House is empty the day of the battle. John Craig is with the Continental Army, leaving Ann Craig to flee with chattel, child, and two slaves in two wagons. This leaves the house and remaining property vulnerable to occupation and depredation.

An armed member of the Association for Retaliation is snooping around the Craig house and catches Loyalist and Quaker refugees who are squatting/hiding, as well as a “London” trader. He can’t let them go, and he is afraid to move them for fear of the British by day and the Tories by night. The Retaliator is joined by a local farmer who has stopped by to check on Mrs Craig’s safety in the surrounding commotion of the troops moving towards the coming battle. 

“Disaffected” smugglers use the chaos of the war in New Jersey to continue trading with the British and Loyalists. The “London trade” feeds the taste for tea, fabrics, rum, lemons, and sugar that even the Revolutionaries cannot shake.

Quakers are viewed with suspicion and animosity for their pacifist, anti-slavery views, which gives the impression that they are Loyalists. Harassed in Philadelphia by various committees requisitioning blankets and other goods; by 1778, the Quakers’ abolitionist views make them vastly unpopular in Monmouth County.

These characters in search of a plot will encounter each other at Craig House and, with some history improv, portray the tension and conflict between New Jersey residents in the Revolutionary period. Want to come out? Craig House is here, and a visitors’ guide is here.

Privacy and Proximity

On By kittycalashIn Events, History, Living History, personal3 Comments
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Feeling the Wyeth at Kiefer House

It has been a long time since I read Bowling Alone, and longer still since I read A Pattern Language or Jane Jacobs, but all of those came to mind this past weekend.

I don’t mythologize or romanticize the villages of the past: we all know how The Crucible turns out, but I thought about privacy and proximity, and I thought about scale. Let’s take privacy first.

In this century, it’s difficult to experience the past as anything more than a series of simulacra which we piece together in a crazy quilt of understanding, but past notions of privacy are far different from our own.

Bedroom

Early one morning, as I lay in a creaking rope bed, I considered how unfamiliar most of us are with the noises of other humans. The wall of our bedroom just barely fit against the exterior wall, and moonlight on whitewash showed the spaces between planking and the plaster, and we slept with the bedroom door open to take best advantage of the cool evening cross breeze.

As I lay awake, my companion happily asleep, I pondered the true extent of my laziness. How much clothing did I really need to wear to go up to the public facility? How loud would relieving myself in the chamber pot be? And what would the reaction be? (I have been on the side of someone else’s choice not to use a chamber pot, and said, “I wouldn’t care,” but one never knows.) And though I elected to put on more than my shift and walk to the public convenience, I began to wonder: what did the people in the past tolerate, ignore, or politely decline to mention?

What did living together feel like, when people shared smaller spaces? When the boundary between private and public, bedroom and parlor, was pierced with holes?

Weekend in the Country

On By kittycalashIn Events, Living History, Reenacting3 Comments

IMG_7261 When I climbed the stairs to Hosmer’s Tavern for Sunday dinner, the kind ladies at the front door told me, “Your family’s in the back room.” This directive gave me pause, for while I am one to argue that we each define our families for ourselves, I did not believe the young woman necessarily understood my theorizing on the dangers of calling people “families” when you don’t know their genealogy. Then I saw this image, taken at Jones House the evening before by the lovely Mrs LC, and realized that the young lady on the porch may have seen something I am too vain to admit.

Still, we were a fairly lively party that gathered in the shade before Foster-Tufts House to take in the scene and exercise our sketching powers. My favorite milliner was stationed inside the house, and I was delighted to acquire a new straw bonnet that wants only trimming before I wear it– probably as soon as August.

DSC_0405 Mr S had the most meta experience of all of us, for as I photographed him, an artist was painting him drawing. We could not have had a better living history through literary theory weekend if we had tried. Mr B worked with the camera lucida, something that is beyond my abilities. (It is an unintentionally meta image of Mrs B photographing Mr B while I captured both of them: my junior year art history professor would be dismayed.)

DSC_0439 Representing leisure is something I haven’t done before. My idea of living history fun is to work, and as one of my friends says, [My] idea of fun is harder than most people’s work these days. We had some work to do in preparing breakfasts and suppers, and in cleaning up, and as I shopped in the weeks before the trip, I saw the absurdity of packing up food and dishes to prepare a dinner party 400 miles away. You can’t let a trifle like absurdity stop you, or most of us would cease to function, so I packed the Largest Platter in Existence and carried on.

My Grandfather’s Trunk

On By kittycalashIn Events, History, Living History, Reenacting2 Comments
Some objects you can't shake. And then you buy them.
Some objects you can’t shake. So you buy them.

When I was little, one of the games my mother and I played was “I packed my grandfather’s trunk.” You start with that line, and take turns adding an item in alphabetical order. The trick is, you have to repeat the whole string as you go along, so that by the time you’re packing a zebra, a zither, or zwieback, you’ve got to remember the other 25 things you and your companions have packed. It’s a good game for waiting rooms when you can’t run around, and fun for people who love words. How many nouns that start with “y” can you think of?

After lining the bottom with paper, I packed the linens.
After lining the bottom with paper, I packed the linens.

In less than a week, I’ll be packing someone else’s greatx-grandfather’s trunk for a trip westward into the (relative) wilds of New York State to join a Sketching Party. Despite two intense weeks, I’ve persevered on the orange check gown and made significant progress on the Thriller Spencer and finished the second sheet. This is a trip to a different class altogether, one of my two annual forays into the mercantile class of the early Federal period.

It’s quite the thing, packing your alter ego’s equipage for another century, and as I’ve enjoyed a longer commute recently, I’ve pondered the ways in which we stereotype certain kinds of living history practitioners. Progressives don’t always travel light: they travel right, and in this case, it means a quantity of baggage to create the proper simulacrum of an 1814 excursion.

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It’s a quantity of stuff, isn’t it?

While I decry the use of film and television as sources for historical costuming, I do appreciate them for inspiration, and it is remarkably easy to get someone else hooked on a good adaptation like the BBC’s 2009 Emma. The depiction of the picnic on Box Hill is particularly good (i.e. excruciating) and the pile of materials required for appropriate comfort is overwhelming to anyone who prefers to travel lightly. Never before have I considered a turkey carpet a possible accessory to an excursion, but when one intends to ape one’s betters and bring culture to the frontier, anything is possible.