Tag: 10th Massachusetts

Battle Road Made a Man 

On By kittycalashIn Events, Living History, personal, Reenacting9 Comments

(with apologies for the child-centered content.)

Well, sort of.  The Young Mr sported a brand-new, all-hand-sewn frock coat and breeches, as well as brand new size 15 shoes (thank you, USPS Priority  Mail and Robert Land’s stock of the rara avis size 15.)  He was spotted in photos that were shared with me later, and there he is, front and center, in his new, blue wool broadcloth suit. (I do like the side eye Mr C is giving as he checks on the second row.)

When he was dressed on Saturday, the Young Mr had a real presence. There is something about a suit that changes a man– well, in this case, a boy into a man. On the ride home, he told his father, “Now that I’m growing up, it feels weird to call you mom and dad. I think I should call you by your first names.” (I’ll wait here while you finish laughing. Yes, it is funny. No, we did not laugh at him.)

It’s a curious idea to us now, marking transitions with clothes. For some, coming of age is marked with a car or at least a driver’s license. For others, it may be a first job, or apartment. But once, stages were marked in clothing, as boys moved from gowns to breeches, and later from dresses to short pants to long pants.

 Our clothing is so much less formal, that we are less accustomed in most cases to seeing men in suits. Even as young as I was in those last “Mad Men” years, I remember more formal times, and shopping with my parents, seeing coats marked up in chalk and thread for my father, and the ranks of shirts and heavy-hangered trousers and coats at Brooks Brothers downtown in Chicago.  (I went there once as a teenager with a friend to buy a present for her father; we were not warmly welcomed in our punk clothes, but the glass cases were unforgettable.)

For the Young Mr, that kind of formality is lost. There’s not much point in buying him a modern suit: he’s all t-shirts and hoodies and hand-me-downs from a friend at work he’s rapidly growing past. He’d never wear a suit, except as he steps into the past, and his fittings happen in private homes or workshops, and not in front of a three-panel mirror.

The Young Mr steps into the past to step into adulthood, and comes back to a present where he has many more years and rites of passage before he will truly be an adult.

In Tents Tuesday*

On By kittycalashIn History, Living History, making things, Reenacting

You know The Tent Article, don’t know? You do, if you’re camping 18th century private soldier style in your hand-sewn coat.

Scene of the Camp on Hampton Green, 1781
Scene of the Camp on Hampton Green, 1781

The Tent Article (hereafter The Document) pulls together documentation and research assembled by a team of living history enthusiasts dedicated to replicating the 18th century enlisted army experience in an accurate manner. Though the PowerPoint format affects the overall length, be warned: we are talking 300+ pages here.

No strangers to the pursuit of the accurate and never ones to shy away from an arduous task involving pointy objects and string, the 10th Mass assembled on Saturday afternoon for a round of tent sewing.

I first read The Tent Article in 2012, and was promptly ashamed of our hand-me-down tent which had everything to recommend it in terms of price, but wanted in terms of accuracy. In response, I began making 1/8″ scale models of tents to figure out how much linen I would need to buy in order to make a truly correct tent. Finally, all that edumacation in art and architecture had utility! Alas: distractions arose, cost overwhelmed, our then-primary regiment scoffed, and I abandoned hand-sewn tent plans.

Fast forward to Tyler Putnam’s blogging on The First Oval Office project, and I was once again intrigued. I began calculating how much vacation time I might need to complete a tent by hand in our living room. Well, thank goodness for finding fellow travelers, because lo and behold! The 10th Mass had tents in want of sewing, so I could learn a great deal without filling our home with excessive yardage.

“Sails.”

Progress was made last August in Newport, where the tents masqueraded as sails, but the canvas languished unsewn until last Saturday, when we duly assembled in Hopkinton and unfurled the vast expanse of linen. It was suggested that I might know some people with access to sail lofts (!), but in about 4 hours, a number of us managed to finish the final foot of backstitching and to flat-fell a little more than 60 feet of tent seams.

It's a vast expanse of linen.
It’s a vast expanse of linen.

The Document was consulted to make sure we were proceeding correctly, though the iPad misbehaved and forwarded us many pages to grommets. (I’m looking forward to those, as I enjoy sewing eyelets– and have just earned myself the dubious honor of sewing at least half of them, I’m sure.) We checked the images, threaded our needles, and off we went.

A few inches (feet) of felling had to be unstitched and resewn, but heavy linen is wily and some stitchers were newer to the process than others. But by the close of day, all seams were felled, needles packed, and tentage folded.

Next up, per The Document, are mud flaps. This should get interesting, as math in front of an audience usually is.

 

IMG_2728

I promised a pun, so here’s the worst. Somehow we got on to unfortunate reenactorisms, which collided with Star Wars, and brought us to the realization that what we needed were light sabres… ’cause it’s the 10th Massachusetts Regiment Light Infantry Company. We were punished for this hilarity by having to drive home on untreated roads into snow that looked like we were trying to take the Millenium Falcon to hyperspeed.

 

*It really happened on Saturday.

Less is More

On By kittycalashIn Events, Food, Living History, personal, Philosophy, Reenacting3 Comments

Though it may seem contrary to previous posts, there are times when I really believe less is more, and that’s when we’re out in the field.

Each year I’ve tried to improve our kit and impression by replacing or removing items, mostly to increase our accuracy but also to reduce what we carry. The less we have to carry, the less I have to pack and clean and think about and the more I can think about the history. This iteration of “What the heck can I quit?” was prompted by reports of a conversation with someone I respect, which caused me to rethink what we were hauling along and how I could change it.

The Box of Doom with the Pitcher of Inaccuracy
The Box of Doom with the Pitcher of Inaccuracy

We have stripped away most of what we used to bring for the comfort of the kid; as he has grown up, he’s needed less to feel comfortable and “at home.” We traded ground pads for bed sacks* very quickly, and we never had any iron to begin with. I’ve tried to keep within seasonal and historical cooking guidelines, but the largest hurdle and heaviest literal burden is the wooden cooler box.

Feeding the Young Mr is a tricky thing: he likes what he likes, and he likes a lot of it. What he likes are carrots, apples, and meat. There’s some swapping that can be done with seasonal fruit, but the largest hurdle is meat: if I can scrap fresh, needs-to-be-kept-cool meat, I can leave the cooler box at home. (At this moment, several gentlemen are suddenly feeling empty inside, with a taste of ash in their mouths. Dirt stew, boys: it’s coming.)

No iron, but what goes into the kettle?

I had gotten about as far as pease porridge when, in a completely costuming context, I came across links to The Sewing Academy.

The squeamish and childless may writhe at the handouts on dealing with nursing babies, hygiene, and winter clothes for children, but these Civil War resources have utility for all of us trying to be more accurate in our portrayals of the past.

I had not thought about packing frozen meat and storing it underground, and though I like the idea very much, it will not suit in cases where digging is forbidden. But it is certainly a way around the cooler box, and one I’m willing to entertain. (Check “No Refrigeration Required.”) “The Progressive Questions” help sketch out a responses to a variety of situations.

“Quoth the Mavens” contains this excellent definition: A truly progressive mind-set tries to figure out the logic of what was indeed used, rather than rationalizing modern logic into a period situation.

There’s nothing more to add to that pithy statement, but a renewed sense of dedication to accuracy and “less is more” thinking.

*As accurate as my attitude would be after resting arthritic bones on the ground, no one really needs to experience that. Call it a safety measure.

Military (History) Monday

On By kittycalashIn History, Research2 Comments
Map of the town of Providence by Daniel Anthony, 1803
Map of the town of Providence by Daniel Anthony, 1803

This past weekend, I went to an NEH workshop at the Northeastern that was really exciting: Digital Methods for Military History. If you’ve been following along here, you’ll know that I don’t just love clothes, I also love history, and military history. There’s an amazing amount of work being done that looks at the past in new ways, and that can hardly ever be bad.

I took notes both digital and analog, and tried to learn as much as I could. It’s all very exciting– I tried not to leap immediately to Map All the Data, but it’s hard not to. So much potential.

On Saturday, there were papers projects on Geographies of the Holocaust, and another on Viewshed Analyses of Iberian Fortifications— I’m mangling the title, for which I do apologize–but that last was so exciting. I began to see where the Young Mr’s love of gaming, history and warfare might come together to good effect in a scholarly way. I also saw how high school student projects mapping neighborhoods could build on work kids had already done collecting oral history narratives in grade school, and that really, high school students need digital toolboxes just as much as college students do.

Georectified map of Providence, using Mapwarper.
Georectified map of Providence, using Mapwarper.

Friday’s papers on networking were also fascinating: both the Muninn Project and Quantifying Kissinger. Digging into social and temporal connections illuminates new angles on history, or even helps find and locate men lost in battle. (Easier to do at Vimy Ridge than Stony point, of course, but applicable nonetheless.) Kissinger and the word collocation analysis was funny as well as insightful, and I think the two are often found together. Word analysis gave a sense of Kissinger and his personality that you would develop more slowly reading every document, which is why you want a historian to do the work for you.

Where does this leave me? (Map all the data!) With the firm knowledge that I need to focus very directly on one small project. John Buss seems ideal: one guy with known connections and origin, one set of letters, limited movement and short duration. (At least when compared to Arnold’s March to Quebec or all of Jeremiah Greenman’s diary.)

A discrete project seems likeliest to work on something like Neatline, once I figure out how to deal with the Omeka issue. Neatline was like a mash-up of database fields and Illustrator, so I felt pretty at home.

We also learned about Mapwarper, and georectification. That’s pretty cool stuff, too.

Georectified Providence without the underlay
Georectified Providence without the underlay

The process will require distilling the letters into data (places, dates, names); collecting maps; collecting data associated with the names– and that’s the easy part. I can imagine a map with clickable areas that link to letters, other images, stories– links building on links– but I haven’t sketched it all out yet, or even imagined a final product. First, I have to find a map.