Let's get dirty....

I am proud to announce a little known fact,  History is a dirty, unrecognizable mess of unrelenting psychotic, haphazered moments. Sounds like a lie, I know, but most historic facts people think are fact, are in truth myths we have continue to tell our children because they are cemented so much into our culture that the actual truth would be more shocking and seem like a lie. Most derive from before history was a profession.  When it was just history lovers reading one document and taking it as absolute truth. Then there was the grab onto one line and use it to address an issue that needs thousands of lines to explain. My favorite is thinking it is one way but in reality it is a whole different reason and it all stems from different centuries definitions of a word like doll, tight, tick, spit, gay, and so many others.

Bug Hunting 18th century

But I am not here to talk about misinformed, misinterpreted,  or misrepresented history but actually the dirty history. I realized in high school it was dirty. At the time I got really in to ceramics.  I started painting a representation of the birth of Jesus. I started with him, and then started painting Mary. I "finished" her but something was bugging me, she has walked and rode on a donkey for miles, is sleeping in a barn and yet she doesn't have a speck of dirt on her. Being the true to life person I was/am, I painted dirt on the hem of her robe. When my mom heard my answer why she laughed and said "Duh!"

I am sorry if I just destroyed your romantic view of Jesus' birth  but in my defense I have a point. We romanticise history to a ridiculous degree. Wars are seen as glorious rightful victories that we lose sight of the death, destruction, and just total loss they leave behind. We seen the settlers of 1620s new Plimoth as lost pilgrims and we loose sight of how hard there lives were.  We see Kings and Queens of lands and forget how their servants were treated.

Flour child-Morgan Weistling

The thing is lots of people get offended when we interpret people as dirty. I couldn't help but laugh at the number of complaints for museums about reenactors being "too dirty". We go to work where we cook, clean, garden, work with ash covered hearths, gather firewood, and so much more. I count it as a clean day if none of that manages to make it down between my skin and clothes. It is a clean day if I remove my socks and a puff of dust doesn't hit my face or dust stain shows where my shoe sits.  Then I have my baking job. I find flour in my shoes, on my pants, on my shirt, and on one occasion I found a good size piece of dough in my hair. We also work with a wood fired oven. I spent at least two hours with flour on one cheek and ash on the other. During those two hours a spoke to  about 100 guests and some v.i.p.s with the museums programs relation manager. No one said a word.

Meat Market -Joachim Beuckelear 1535-1575 Naples Capodimater Museum

I count it a good day if I walk away without dirt on my face or in my hair. History isn't clean. Dirt used to grow plants has cow dung and chicken dung mixed in. There are ribs on a spit with logs of wood falling into the sauce pan. Splinters of firewood stuck to your clothes, hands covered in bread dough, dust on the table, and leaves on the floor. Our fore mothers and fathers weren't afraid to get dirty or be dirty. They also weren't much about avoiding the dirty life. Those that did were rich or dead.

Maid asleep... let us too