Humor me....

Ah, the season is upon us, where we find ourselves getting ill with all sorts of nasty little ailments. Now I want you to take a second and describe for me some of your least favorite symptoms for me.

Let me guess in your long list that you used at least one, if not two, three or four of these, hot, cold, wet and dry. No I am not a mind reader, and yes I understand your pain but I know these words because their magic was once seen as the answer to… well everything. Hot, Cold, Wet and Dry were also known as the four humors. Not haha funny humors but the basics of the entire body and universe. Almost every physical thing in this world can be described using these four humors. In a perfect world all four would be perfectly balanced but the world isn’t perfect so two of the four are always more prevalent. In fact, according to this Greek idea that dates to ­­­­­before 370 B.C. and was stated by Hippocrates everything was broken into four parts.

For example: The Elements, there are four; air, earth, water and fire. Even in those the four humors are prevalent. Fire is hot and dry, earth is cold and dry, water is cold and wet and Air hot and wet. Of course the system isn’t perfect because water earth can be hot and wet, and air can be cold and dry. But like I said the world isn’t perfect. Yet this system every house wife and doctor would know until the realization of germs in the 1860s. Then like the four elements there was four humors in the body, Phlegmatic, Choleric, Melancholic, and sanguine.

Someone who was Phlegmatical was cold and wet. These people are more relaxed, caring and peaceful in nature. They are more content with themselves, steadfast and consistent in their habits and seek the same in their friends. They also tend to be more slow in their speech and clumsy in their ways. Their body was controlled by phlegm; you know the stuff that comes out of your nose, a product that was/is produced by the brain and lungs. In in relationship to the elements they were equated to water.

Water  of the Four Elements by Joachim Beuckelaer 1569

Next is Choleric, these people were hot and dry. They were egocentric and extroverted. Easily excitable, impulsive and tried to instill those ways into others. They are task oriented, with efficiency in mind. They show leadership, were good at planning, practical and appreciate when other people notice. However, their rash behavior often meant they were easily angered. Think King Henry the IV. This idea was probably why he had 7 wives. They often dealt with bought of gout. They were like fire, strong and powerful and their bodies were controlled more by the yellow bile in their body. Bile being what your spleen produces and we now know doesn't exist.

Fire  of the Four Elements by Joachim Beuckelaer 1569

Someone who is Melancholic is like earth, cold and dry. They are despondent, quiet and analytical. They are often too serious for their own good. Their body had too much black bile which was thought to be produced by the gallbladder and like Yellow Bile doesn't exist. Someone who is melancholic often suffers from depression.

Earth  of the Four Elements by Joachim Beuckelaer 1569

Finally we come to air, I mean Sanguine. These people are courageous, hopeful and carefree. They have too much blood in their body, which is produced by the liver. They are warm and moist in nature. Like the wind they go were ever their heart takes them.

Air  of the Four Elements by Joachim Beuckelaer 1569

Ok so yellow and black bile aren’t real but the idea kinda works and it went deeper. Now your body changed as you did. I tend to be by this system more Phlegmatic. I am controlled by my lungs, I have asthma, because the fates thought it would be funny if the thing I should stuck the most at would be breathing. Unfortunately for me one of the fun side-effects to that is a wonderful chough and yawn, I tend to sneeze a lot. I am not slow in my speech or thoughts in that way I am a little more choleric but I am content being myself and being by myself. Now according to the humoral system since I tend to be more cold and wet I should eat the opposite, Hot and dry to balance out what my body was naturally. Pork, mustard, pepper, salt, carrots, parsnips, asparagus and Lamb are hot and dry. Lettuce, spinach, and cabbage are cold and dry. Beef, vinegar, onions, olive oil and pumpkins are hot and wet. Water, fish, milk, cheese, and some berries are cold and wet. I should stick with hot and dry but if I must eat cold and wet like fish, I should cook it with things that are hot and dry, fish does taste pretty good with a mix of vinegar, oil, pepper and mustard.

If you were sick you would look to the symptoms. If you had a cold, you were chilled with phlegm. You should eat warm and dry things. Dry to dry out the phlegm and warm to bring up the chill. If you had the flu you were hot and dry so you should eat cold and wet things. Cold to bring down the fever, and wet to get rid of the dryness.

So there you have it. The four humors, hot, cold, wet, and dry. Alright flu, I have the solution to you… the flu shot and for the cold, be prepared for lots of tea and tomato soup. It wasn’t a perfect system but it worked for all of them. 

Let down your hair

“Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.”

Alright for a Northern European Mutt, I don’t have the golden locks of Rapunzel. I in fact have my Grandma K’s hair. She was the daughter of two Swedish immigrants with thin brown hair that does not like to stay up. It is thin and I am lucky if what I put up in the morning stays up exactly as I put it up and even luckier if it dries if I put up when it is wet. It is a pain in the butt and while it is long I have nothing on Crystal Gale. However I will never cut it short again.

Women's hair England c. 1100-1300

I will say historically I am pretty good when putting my hair up. I can do most years with easy. It does help that in most centuries the clothing and hair was pretty well covered. There is almost something relaxing about not having to worry about your hair. Whether it was in a low bun or covered in a coif or head rail it was nice to have it out of the way and covered up. I like doing those eras because I don’t even feel the need to wash my hair so often. It goes back to hygiene and the bible. Corinthians 11 in the bible stated “but every woman that prayeth or prophecieth bare headed, dishonoureth her head.” It was also a time where bathing was rare for the covering helped keep dirt and oils out of their hair.

Anglo-Saxon hair coverings 600-1154

Somedays I wish I could walk around with a covering over my hair. To hide when I just don’t want to wash it. To help keep it out of my face, and to help hide the fare maiden idea. Unfortunately, our modern society frowns on hiding anything. Look at Frances response to the Burkas on the beach. They have nude beaches but they fired on women who cover up. Yet we frown on “loose women” who bare too much.

A woanm helping with the work and wearing a coif that has the ties of a head-rail. 

I love my long hair, I love twisting it up and letting it down when I get home. For convince, putting it up is nice plus shutting your hair in a car door or window is my equivalent of nicking my-self shaving or a paper cut. Plus when I put it up I limit the risk of eating it later, both when it slides into my face, and into my food. So to prince charming unless you have a glass of wine and chocolate my brown locks stay up. At least Rapunzel’s happy ending was actually happy.

Blanketed in love

When I was little there was a long afghan my mother had knitted when she was laid up after breaking a few bones. It was long, covered in cables, beige in color and absolutely gorgeous. She is so proud of the work that she put into and my brother constantly fought over it. It was so warm and I loved wrapping myself up in it and curling up near the woodstove with a good book. My brother thought so too. It has lasted through my brothers and my destruction. We destroyed so much and that lived. It is still on the couch for me to use when I visit home.

When I was a baby my Aunty G crocheted me a multi-colored blanket, it is small, but I have used it throughout my life, the perfect lap blanket, the colors have faded a little and it has broken in places but I just fix them up.

As I grew up and went off to college, my cousin T gave me a new blanket, covered in blue and green with little frogs, it folded into a pillow and when you folded it out it had a little hidey hole for my feet. I love that blanket. It went with me on every swim meet, and It still sits in my living room. It was the perfect studying blanket and it helped me stay warm on the cold swim bus rides to and from meets.

A few years later my Grandfather died and I drifted towards a beautiful rainbow crocheted blanket made by his mother. It sits on the back of my couch currently but I did take it with me in my move to WV and then back. It is one of two, my brother has the other one. It is so nice to wrap it around my shoulders on a cold winter night with a cup of tea or glass of wine.

In the end they are worthless to anyone else but to me, but to me they are value beyond price. We fought over that first knitted blanket but now and then we shared it. As the fall and winter nights come on, those blankets will keep me warm as I knit away and drink my tea. So thank you to the women in my life who have kept me warm. I am a bit to sentimental but it is keeping me warm at night.

Knitting on point

I will be the first to say some of my ideas can be a bit on the borderline crazy. One of those ideas came to me back when I started my research on the history of knitting. It started when I was trying to track down when different types of knitting needles came about. When I was able to track down knitting beginning around the 14^th century and was done in the round. I had already guessed earlier knitting was done on double pointed or pin-needles but further research not only proved that pin-needles weren’t around until the late 1700s early 1800s but circular needles didn’t appear until around 1940s. Have I ever mentioned I love it when my instincts are right?

The Madonna Knitting c. 1400. She is making a seamless garment with double pointed needles and if you look closer there are two colors of yarn. This is thought to be the oldest image of knitting

Images I found and continue to find showed that image. People, both male and female knitting in the round on double pointed needles. Now I learned how to knit socks on circular needles but after doing a few hats on double points I decided to do it on socks. The first thing I noticed that although I was fearful of losing one of the empty needle, I didn’t. The next part was a nice little surprise. I now didn’t have to do any math beyond gaging to do my socks. I hate math so this was an extremely pleasant surprise. It almost does the math on its own. Heels are perfectly set up on the needles that the math almost does itself.

A girl knitting with double pointed needles in the Faroe Islands. Note she is working with two colors hanging from her waist and four needles, three with the holding the project one working the stitches.

I then decided to try it on a 17^th century sweater. The problem with this is they don’t make double pointed knitting needles that you can buy long enough for knitting a sweater. Hats, mittens and socks yep, but sweaters nope. If you’ve been following my blog over the last year you know that I did make some long enough. What I have found was awkwardness. After a while the awkwardness has gone away, the movements have gotten smoother, and the unfinished needles got smoother too.

A sock knitter in 1646 from the Victorian and Albert Museum. again working with two yarns probably 2 colors and I love how he has socks draped over his sholder.

I may never use circular needles again. 

Not Jarring around

“Every woman who must manage a home, be it large or small, owes it to herself to have a well-planned kitchen or workshop one that is good to look upon and easy to work in.”

Maybe my kitchen space would be easier to work in if I didn’t leave items on the kitchen island like bills and sewing supplies. So when I decided (because my freezer was way too full with zucchini bread and next few months’ worth of dinners) to can the spaghetti sauce I needed to make before my freshly grown tomatoes rotted into the mush I wanted them to be but wouldn't be willing to eat, I had to clean it off first. So after cleaning off the island, buying jars and a jar grabber, buying a few more tomatoes just to be on the safe side, and then prepping everything. This prepping included grabbing a book I bought four years ago at Colonial Williamsburg about Self-Sufficiency[1] and after finding and reading the section on canning, particularly hot water canning, and a phone call to my mother to make sure I was on the right track, I got to work. I prepped, laying out so that once I started cooking I wasn’t hunting for things later on. I chopped my tomatoes, ground up my herbs I had dried over the summer and turned on the stove.

An hour later the tomatoes were cooked, and might I say tasted wonderful. Now came the challenge, but I had it well in hand right? I boiled the jars in my lobster pot, which is way too big for my range, and had boiled the lids in a smaller pot. As I loaded the jars up with the sauce, I realized while this could go terribly wrong and it might the next time I try this but this was not only easier than I thought but almost relaxing. I even did it an hour later with strawberries.

The Strawberry Jam never actually became jam but I will use it to make pie for Thanksgiving.

I had canned once before when I was little. We had picked raspberries over at my neighbor’s house and a few days later my mom and I were mixing raspberries, sugar, pots and somehow the dishwasher was involved in there. Of all the times we went and picked berries at my Grandma’s house, my neighbor’s, in our garden that was the only time I remember canning. I remember wanting to do it after reading Blueberries for Sal, and just about every other thing in life that I read that took place in the past.

Jam Cans boiling in the pot

In the end I am proud to say I canned and was somewhat successful. There was a few cans I did have to re-process from the jam but not from the sauce. Yet my attempt was successful. However, if I stop writing come March I have died from my poorly canned food but at least I canned.

The end result... 3.75 pints of Tomato Sauce and 13 pints of strawberry soup. 

---

[1] Gehring, Abigail R. The Ultimate Self-Sufficiency Handbook. Skyhorse Publishing; NY, 2012.

Tish-tosh don't forget the Piss-pot

Last week I talked about Prospecting on a Mountain and I am going to admit my weirdness and tell you something that pleased me. It was more on the view of a historian then the actual view I saw. Here is the problem we often have with a particular kind of museums. In museums that depict life we have to question ourselves, one who are the people we are trying to represent, and in trying to create a home or life experience how far is too far. For me when it comes to the daily life topics we often don’t go far enough or even put it out there for people to think about. This means when I saw a chamber pot in more than one room I may have had a complete joyful moment.

Jan Steen, Women getting ready for bed, note the chamber pot in right corner

That is right I got excited over seeing the piss-pot. Here is the thing though, when we talk about daily life, we talk about food, laundry, drinks, daily tasks, and other little bits of history. However unless, the bathroom plays into a story it often gets left out but it would very much be part of every home or hotel. I was even more excited to see that not only was there no indoor plumbing in the upstairs sections of the hotel. To top it off they had a variety, not only in shape but also type.

They had one like this one, unfortunately there was too many of us for me to get a picture of it

Even the best moments have had interpretivly was those wierd connection, birthing in an unknown place with people I didn’t know.  I personally have never had to do it but when I was playing a woman who had, I connected with a woman who had done just that, a military wife. I was asked by a child what the pot was under my bed, I told him and then asked him to check it and see if my "son" had cleaned it out that morning.  The little boy got so grossed out ran out of my house and his father looked at me laughing. He told me "That is the most realistic and best thing that has ever happened thank you. "

Ok so I might be a little weird but let us point out if there wasn’t a pot of any kinds. You are either going to become very constipated or things are going to get a little gross. So to any museums trying to make me feel at home, remind me I will need to go the bathroom, place a piss-pot under the bed or even just the room. The moments when I have made the most connections with people over history is when I was connecting them to day-to-day lives. Talking about trash, chores, poop, food and hardships makes the history not only more real but it creates a personal connection that you can’t get anywhere else.

The Romans were the first to create an idea of indoor plumbing.

Off Prospecting

Last week I took off, well at least from blogging, since my mother came down and we shared Clam Chowder made from the clams I dug a few weeks back. Other than the fact I burned the pork it turned out pretty good, or at least that is what my Grandma, my mom’s friend, my mom and later my dad assured me. A few days later however I was standing at the top of Mt. Holyoke in Hadley, Massachusetts at Skinner State Park for one of my jobs. The summit building was built in the early 1800s when people were starting to become fascinated with prospecting. No not gold searching but view searching.

Looking down over the Connecticut River Valley 

As for prospecting it gave quite the view. It was a tourist idea, to get people out and when you reached the top the mountain, you would be provided with drinks of water. This summit house grew over the years, a tram was added, and for 25 cents you could ride to the view. This gave easier access to even the handicap who couldn't see the view before. The business grew and then additions were added, a hotel and today it is part of the D.C.R (Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation). Looking out over the view I was a little homesick as I saw the mountain I grew up with off shadowing in the distance. It is amazing to think that the River that wound around in quite snake like fashion. I would love to have seen how it looked throughout the years from when the Natives wondered the land, to the building and expansion of the summit house.

I would love to build a house right here

We often think of vacationing as such a modern idea but even the Kings and Queens in England were known to go on little journeys and travels to second homes to “get away”. By the 19^th Century, especially with the invention of the train, it became a bit more available for the Middleclass. By the mid-1800s with the Transcendentalist movement which was not only led by but inspired by writers like Henry David Thoreau (who was a known visitor to the Summit house), the idea of spending life communing with nature was being seen as a grand idea. I would like to point out only 200 years before the Natives had been doing just that in these areas. They of course walked it. By the time the 1800s though trains were not only made travel easier but quicker this allowed people to get out and see parts otherwise unseen to the average person. By the end of the 1800s and the beginning of the 1900s this expands to not only all over the United States but for the wealthy the word. Just as soon as Horses were forgotten for far off travelers, trains were over looked by the automobile. In the 1920s trailers became available so you could live in comfort with out depending on hotels. This idea of prospecting for knowledge and connections is nothing new. It is something that connects us all.

I clearly need a vacation now though since I have decided to write a blog on vacations.

A not so simple image

What is your least favorite task to do around your home? That is a sign of living a guess, unwanted tasks meant to keep you humble maybe, but unwanted none the less. Some of these tasks to help us stay healthy and can be almost soothing at times. When sewing there is always an unwanted consequence, laundry. I hate doing laundry but I love the outcomes, clean clothing and the look of it hanging to dry on the line. The simple image strangely is almost relaxing and a wink into time and I love that.

Norman Rockwell mid 20th century, all those task we dislike but must do

The invention of the washing machine diffidently made the task of easier but none the less it is still an almost unwanted task. Can you imagine the task before, dragging great basins, soap/lye(fine ash), sticks, battledores, never mind the laundry and perhaps chairs and something to do while you wait all the way to your laundry spot. You then need to fetch water which is why you dragged everything to the water, for it is much easier to carry everything to the water then the water to the laundry. You also need to get a fire started, boil the water. Meanwhile your largest basin you place your laundry a layer at a time, placing the clothing and then lye all the way to the top. The boiling water was then poured over top and when it came in contact with the lye it would form soap. You then would stir it, drain the water and do it again. Eventually you would take them to benches beat the cloth with wooden paddles called battledores before rinsing it in clean water and wringing it out. It would then be laid flat on the grass to beach in the sun. An all-day daunting task with a-lot of waiting, Waiting for the water to boil, waiting for the lye to sink into the clothing, waiting for it to dry. There are also images of people laying the clothing out on a green grassy knoll to bleach in the sun. Eventually the laundry was taken from the ground and hung on the line. The process changes, washboards replace stirring sticks and battledores and different soaps with more ideas of how to get rid of stains become available.

1582; A German Scene of women doing laundry. Washing and Beating with Battledores, laying it on the ground to bleach and hanging it

I have washed clothing in this method, the rinsing part is particularly enjoyable on a hot day, as you stand in cool water raising the cloth up and down, and splashing yourself in the process. Today there is not really a part as cooling to do. The image though of clothing hanging on the line is romantic, a glimpse perhaps to what is often thought of as a simpler time. Nothing was simple about it, but it was does make an amazing image.

The washing machine made the work a little easier to bare but these old style machines are a far cry from what sits in the laundry room today.