Living on the water

My current work in progress is about a young Melungeon girl who ends up living on a steamboat. Part of my research for this story includes the steamboats of the 1830s-1840s period.

I had the privilege several years ago to have dinner and a show aboard the Branson Belle.

 

My protagonist, Flora Jean, starts out living on a shanty boat with her parents. Much like this one here: 

 

I don't know the source of this picture or the location but as you can see there is a body of water in the background and by the looks of the trees, it looks like it might be winter time. Apparently those who lived on the water were able to pull their boats up to land during the winter months. 

Why live on the water? During the Indian removal and the time of the Trail of Tears, people of color lived on the water to escape the US Cavalry that tried to herd Native Americans into internment camps. African Americans were almost always seen as runaway slaves or they were kidnapped and sold. The Melungeons were considered either Indian or African American but were actually sometimes a mixture of both or simply neither. It is thought they are descended from either from Native Americans mixed with Portuguese or even Turkish or Middle Eastern descent. Still, if caught, they could have been mistaken for Native Americans and herded into the internment camps before marching onto Oklahoma.

Shantyboat living fascinates me. I love the water and I particularly enjoy boating. I have always wanted to rent a family houseboat for a vacation but haven't talked my husband and kids into thinking it's a great idea:

 

What about you? Would you like living on a houseboat? Or do you think I'm nuts?

  

Pattens: Medieval Overshoes

source: unknown 

(If you know the source, please let me know!)

So how did you keep your feet dry in the middle ages?

Why, with Pattens of course!

Outdoors, both men and women wore loose pattens or galoches to keep their feet dry. Fishermen used them as did women mopping their floors. They were thick wooden platforms with either buckles to attach them over shoes or they were made with a full overshoe on top. These were usually worn over boots.

Remember, there were no paved roads in the middle ages, and people often threw their garbage and chamber pot contents into the streets. Combined with animal dung, it wasn't a pleasant place to be putting your tootsies.

Crow's Nests in Ships of Old

Source

Source

When navigating the seas, Vikings used crows as navigational equipment. Crows are land lovers, and when the weather made visibility difficult, they released crows to see which direction it would fly. Since they almost always flew toward land ,they followed the crow's path. Some Norsemen carried the birds in a cage tied to the top of the mast. Later, as ships changed and grew larger, they placed a sailor in a bucket high atop the main mast to look for land, pirates, and other dangers. The name "crow's nest" was given to this tub.

Today, the crow's nest is a thing of the past as navigational equipment has advanced, making sailing the high seas much easier than ever before.

 

About 120 years ago, a cache of manuscripts, mostly fragments, was discovered in the storeroom of an old Cairo synagogue. Its members had deposited them there over many centuries. This collection of documents managed to be both heterogeneous and comprehensive at the same time.

Adina Hoffman is the author of “House of Windows: Portraits From a Jerusalem Neighborhood.” Peter Cole is a poet and translator. As they relate in their engaging book “Sacred Trash,” the materials in the storeroom included letters, wills, bills of lading, prayers, marriage contracts and writs of divorce, Bibles, money orders, court depositions, business inventories, leases, magic charms and receipts. One early examiner of the cache described the scene as a “battlefield of books.” The most recent deposits were made in the 19th century; there were fragments that dated back to the 10th century. Another early visitor described the scene thus: “For centuries, whitewash has tumbled” upon the documents “from the walls and ceiling; the sand of the desert has lodged in their folds and wrinkles; water from some unknown source has drenched them; they have squeezed and hurt each other.”

The challenge presented to researchers, to reconstruct documents out of fragments, remains akin to the challenge embraced by jigsaw enthusiasts, save that in the case of the Cairo cache, there were very many pieces, from very many puzzles, all mixed up together, in one great mess. Though scrutiny of this material continues, several books drawing on the documents have already illuminated the lives of Mediterranean Jewry. At least one masterpiece of scholarship and imaginative reconstruction owes its existence to the cache: “A Mediterranean Society,” the Israeli scholar S. D. Goitein’s five-volume study of medieval Jewish communities — in all their “quotidian glory,” Hoffman and Cole add. Goitein is one of the heroes of this book, one among several who committed themselves to the collection’s study. The story told by “Sacred Trash” is both lively and elevating; it is best read as an extended act of celebration of Cairo’s historical Jewish community, their documents and their documents’ 20th-century students (though the authors also find space to relate the less creditable activities of the storeroom’s plunderers, pillagers and looters).

The cache was known, and is still commonly referred to, as a “geniza.” This word, which is barely translatable, holds within it an ultimate statement about the worth of words and their place in Jewish life. It intimates the meaning “hidden” or “concealed.” But behind that notion, when applied specifically to manuscripts or books, two further, ostensibly contradictory meanings lurk. The works to be hidden or concealed have either a sacred or a subversive character. Those that are sacred are to be protected and preserved when no longer usable; works in that countercategory, which are subversive, and therefore fit only to be censored or suppressed, are to be put out of view. In neither case is the work accessible, but for quite opposing reasons. The one is to be treasured; the other, condemned. A geniza, then, serves the twofold purpose of preserving good things from harm and bad things from harming. Over time, “geniza” became the name for a place that held any redundant or obsolete documents. It was the great achievement of the men and women who worked on the Cairo texts to recover them from obsolescence. Where others saw rubbish, they found riches.

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(via Books - Image - NYTimes.com)

Look who's reading my book in NEW JERSEY! It's Thea, Daisy and Otis! Thanks, kitties! Go here to see these sweet kitties featured in my latest newsletter!

Stop the presses!

Here's an article about my book in a local paper. I still giggle when I see my name in print.

Source: http://www.residenz-muenchen.de/englisch/treasury/pic06.htm

Wouldn't it be delightful to own one of these? Just imagine the delight of pulling out each little item and using it. I don't know what's best -- the items themselves or the clever way they all fit with such tidy precision into the beautiful box.

From the Museum's Website: 

Travelling set of Empress Marie Louise of France (silver-gilt,
gold, mother-of-pearl, tortoiseshell and other materials; width of case 56 cm);
Martin Guillaume Biennais and workshop, Paris, 1812

The set was a present from Napoleon, "Emperor of the French", to his second wife, Marie Louise of Austria, the eldest daughter of Emperor Franz I of Austria. The precious case has a number of cleverly disguised secret compartments and bears the signature of Biennais, the most famous goldsmith of the day, under the key-plate. It contains more than 120 items, made from silver-gilt, gold, mother-of-pearl, tortoiseshell, ivory and ebony, and including a dinner service for two, a toiletry set, writing and sewing implements, a measuring rod, a screwdriver and even dentist's instruments.