Understanding Historical Perspective

Such an intriguing title, isn't it?  Sounds boring, I know, but stick with me here.

I'm sure a million bloggers will blog about 9/11 today. Its been all over Facebook.

But I had a new thought about it today - well, new for me.

I was lying in bed, telling myself I really really needed to get up, when the radio turned back on. The dj was in the middle of "this day in history", and specifically, in the middle of reading a blurb about 9/11. There was no silent moment of remembrance, no emotion really, just a guy reading a paragraph like it was something that happened too long ago for anyone to remember. The next blurb was something that happened over 100 years ago.

I was indignant. How dare they read over something so monumental as the attacks on 9/11 like it wasn't important?! I remember that day! There had been other tragedies in America since I was born, other wars, but that was the first BIG one I experienced and remember. And their reading made it seem like nothing.

Then I thought - I wonder if that is how our veterans who were at Pearl Harbor, or Normandy Beach feel when their days roll around. We mention it on the news, read a little blurb, but there are a whole lot of Americans who didn't really experience that.  Do they feel like we don't give it enough serious thought? Do they feel glossed over?

I had one particular history professor that spoke a lot about historical perspective and bias. Everyone looks at history differently, based on their own personal experience.

I didn't know anybody lost in the 9/11 attacks, I suffered no personal loss. So my remembrance is not as poignant as some people's. But it is no less important.

My kids don't really get this day- they weren't even born yet, they weren't even thought of yet, Mr. Curly and I weren't even dating yet!
But I'm going to work on that. Because nobody should be made to feel that a major tragedy doesn't matter.

So on our next big remembrance day, try to see the day from the POV of someone who has been there.  I know I will try.

Why Vacuums Don't Suck

Vacuuming is my least favorite chore. Which is why I constantly ask Mr. Curly to help me pull up carpet and refinish the hardwood floors in our house.

We did that in SD. When we first pulled up the carpet I was confused as to why the edges of the room had smaller, nicer finished boards than the middle of the room did.
I soon realized the answer - carpets.

Whoever built our SD house had money - even the woodwork inside the closets was trimmed out nicely and stained, a sure sign of money in houses from the early 1900s. And whoever built it put carpet in their formal room.

Only, I'm pretty sure there were no vacuum cleaners at the time. If I remember my Victorian home history, these houses would've just had carpet tacked down in the middle of a room. Tacked down, so that it could be pulled up, taken out to the clothes line, and have all the dirt and junk beat out of it.

So yeah, I hate vacuuming, but when I think about having to drag carpet outside to beat it clean, vacuums don't really suck.

But I'm still not going to stop asking Mr. Curly to pull up our carpets, even if it is just to do this:

source

In Love With An Historical Figure

If you grew up like me - enthralled with old movies, old books, and history in general, than you won't be surprised to hear this:
I regularly develop crushes on dead guys.

My first HUGE historical crush that has had everlasting effects: Doc Holliday.  Tragic figure.  So romantic.  I won't bore you with all I know about him, and all I imagine about him.  But I do have, in my collection of Gilded Age and Western Historical books, no less than a dozen books that are either exclusively about Dr. J. H. Holliday, or speak about him.

After I saw Gone with the Wind, Rhett Butler was it.  Clark Gable.  *Sigh*

Thankfully, my husband is ok with this.  The guys are dead.  And the crushes are brief.

I developed a new one today.  I was reading Epbot, which led me to mentalfloss, and this post about 31 Disney Villains and Those Who Voiced Them.
And I came across this picture:



Ratigan, from The Great Mouse Detective (a highly underrated film, I must say.  I love it!) and his voice, Vincent Price.

He is just the epitome of old school class and smooth oiliness.  Very similar to Clark Gable.  I think it just is made so much better because Ratigan is one of my favorite villains.  A touch of class, a grasping for higher society, and yet always dragged down by his roots.  He's good.
And Vincent Price looks like he could fill that roll in real life.

Anyway, there's just a bit of goofiness for you.  And warning: mentalfloss.com appears to be something I could waste a bunch of time in!http://www.epbot.com/

Well gee whiz that's swell.

Mr. Curly, thoughtful man that he is, printed off this article for me: (click the image to enlarge)

I don't know who did the underlining or circling, certainly he didn't.  And while I completely don't agree with statements like "his topics of conversation are more important than yours" or "don't complain if he's late for dinner or even if he stays out all night", there are parts I like.

Like - take a 15 minute rest and refresh your make-up before he gets home.  Wouldn't that be nice, ladies?  To greet your husband looking your best, making him see you've still got it?

Wash up the kids - wishful thinking I know, but I know Mr. Curly appreciates clean kids.  I wish the Curly Kids did too!

Clear the clutter, stop the washer, dryer and vacuum before he gets home - I attempt to do this, mainly because once Mr. Curly is home, I want to spend time with him - not time cleaning!

Show sincerity in your desire to please him - this is huge!  I want Mr. Curly to sincerely want to please me, so shouldn't I want to be sincere?  To quote Linus, I want our home filled with "nothing but sincerity for miles around!"

I like to make Mr. Curly happy, to do little things for him, but there is a reason he comes in the back door and passes the fridge on his way to the recliner.  He can get his own drink, put his own feet up!  I don't say that to be mean, but honestly, I spend a lot of time helping out three little ones, if he needs to relax when he gets home, he can do that without me!

However, as much as we can be cynical about this (and really, do we even know if it truly is an article from 1955, or a clever forgery?), or scoff and say "how unrealistic," read this goal:

"Try to make sure your home is  a place of peace, order and tranquillity where your husband can renew himself in body and spirit."

Doesn't that sound beautiful?  Doesn't that sound like a place YOU want to be too?  It does to me.  It sounds like a place I want my kids to love to come home to after school, and to bring their friends to.

Whether I work or stay-at-home, whether I spend my day in pajamas or dress up and wear an apron, I will strive to make my home a place of comfort and love, peaceful and welcoming.
It doesn't have to be perfectly clean, it doesn't have to smell like fresh baked cookies (though candles can help with that), I don't have to have a drink ready and help Mr. Curly off with his shoes to have a welcoming home.  Love and desire to serve can go a long way.

And, thankfully, I have a thoughtful husband who doesn't expect me to create that home all by myself.  Every day he does something to which I can say "Thank you, Mr. Curly, for being so thoughtful." 

We have gads of books! Mountains of books!

About 6 years ago for Mr. Curly's birthday I bought him a set of office furniture. Now, not expensive office furniture, but still, instead of working off of an old chair in the guest room, he had a desk, filing cabinets, bookshelves.... And, if I don't say so myself, he enjoyed it. It was helpful as he worked his way through a master's degree and began his preaching career.

And with the exception of the desk (which was an armour style desk and went to my parents when we cut the old entertainment center into a desk), we are still using that office furniture.


When I bought the bookshelves, I imagined there would be plenty of room for all of our books. For 6 years I've been wrong. For 6 years they have been absolutely packed and overflowing with theology, divinity and other religious books.


But now, well, now he has an office, in a different building, with built in bookshelves.

So now these bookshelves are in my dining room, and look like this:



Please ignore the unpacking mess. We're working on it. And honestly, I thought they would be more full than that once I unpacked all my books that have been sitting in tubs in the attic for 3 years now (before that they were under our bed).


Though I have realized I have, maybe, a slight obsession. In the first picture, the bookshelf on the right has a shelf and a half of history books. No big surprise, I was a history major, I should have nonfiction history books. But out of that shelf and a half, three-quarters of a shelf is civil war and gilded era books. And of those books, three-quarters of them are on gunfighters, specifically Doc Holliday (this will come to no surprise to those who know me).


But I suppose it's good to have a theme. Just in case I ever really do start that master's program.


Post title from Beauty and the Beast.

Through the gray woods came lanterns with wagons and horses....

source

I drive about 14 miles to work every morning. And some mornings, when the sun is hitting the fog, making it rise up off the fields and the ground, revealing cows and silos, I wonder what it would be like to have lived that far from town in a day before paved roads and cars.

From what I've read, and what I can find, a covered wagon could travel about 10-15 miles a day. Maybe 20 if the ground was flat, the weather good, and the horses well conditioned.

But even at 20 miles a day, going into town from where my house is currently settled would've been a day's drive. It would have meant finding a place to sleep for the night (most likely under the wagon), so you could do your shopping and turn around a drive that wagon back home the next day, arriving late into the dark night.


Now, if you weren't going into town for much, you could take a horse. That would get you there and back in one day, but you couldn't carry supplies back to the family at the homestead. Not much reason for being gone all day if you couldn't show anything for it, is there?


It fascinates me really, always has. I love living in my little town; I loved living out in the middle of nowhere Kansas during high school. But I love it because it was and is a chosen isolation. Any time I want, I can jump in the car and be in town in 20 minutes (or less, depending on my driving speed).


In the days before roads and cars, if you didn't farm, you lived in the city. The city is where jobs were, and you had to live close to the job. If you were a farmer, you lived in the country, and there was no travelling "out to the farm" each morning from your warm house in town.


Now, thanks to progress, I can live in the middle of nowhere, and still work in the city.


I can step outside my door, in my pajamas, scream my lungs out, and nobody will hear me.


Or, as we did in high school, shoot cans off the woodpile from my driveway without fear of hitting any neighbors.

Read the Little House on the Prairie series sometime. "Little House in the Big Woods" is where the post title came from. They reveal a life that is simpler and yet more complex, sadder and happier at the same time. There never really has been a golden age, every age has it's problems and joys. But think about it next time you're out on the highway, how different things were, not so long ago.