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Topics Covered in Previous Months:
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Some of these topics are really pressing! |
Okay, the real thing isn't this big (only about the size of an apple seed), but it's still creepy...
This doesn't really fit in with any topic I've covered so far.
"Damn it but my head itches"
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Topics Covered in 2005 :Bedbugs"Did you have a good time at the sleepover?" I asked my daughter when she came home the other day. "Yes. And I didn't let the bedbugs bite." Obviously, my daughter had been on the receiving end of the classic nocturnal advice "sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite." Then she asked me if I'd ever seen a bedbug. Now, I know there were bugs in the beds in "old days" -- we even find bugs in our beds on occasion, despite the application of copious quantities of guaranteed-to-kill-spiders pesticide. But is there such a thing as a bedbug? And what does it mean to "sleep tight?" Many believe that bedbugs used to be common because people slept on straw or feather beds and the bugs naturally lived in these environments. That's not really the case. The bugs will live anywhere they can obtain ready access to human blood at night. In fact, even though bedbugs were virtually eradicated in the United States and most western countries fifty years ago, they are now making a comeback. It turns out that they are just as happy to live in a modern pillowtop mattress as in an old straw pallet. And because they can hide in tiny spaces and the adults can live for up to a year without feeding, they can be quite difficult to eliminate. Yuck. So much for the bedbugs. What about "sleep tight?" Until recently, I felt certain that I understood this instruction. An interpreter in Colonial Williamsburg explained the adage to me while pointing to the rope underpinnings of a colonial bedstead. If you dont keep the ropes tight, the bed (featherbed, ticking stuffed with straw or what we would now call a mattress) sags and the sleeper would be most uncomfortable. But recently, living history interpreters who take great joy in debunking historical myths have disputed this notion as well, claiming that "sleep tight" is just a slang phrase meaning essentially to "sleep well." Kinda takes all the fun out of it, in my opinion. Especially since, in this case, the "mythical version" with rope beds makes a lot of sense. I believe the jury is still out on this one. But the evidence for the bedbugs is pretty conclusive. So I don't care if I sleep tight. I just don't want the bedbugs to bite.
The Augusta CanalWe learned all about American canals in school, or so I thought. In the days before trains, men loaded goods onto canal barges. Then the barges would be pulled by draft animals trudging up the tow path. It was a slow means of transportation, but still faster and more reliable than overland travel. And canals became obsolete when railroads went through. So when we visited the Augusta Canal in Georgia last summer, I was quite surprised to learn that the waterway had been built in 1845, well after the advent of railroad. Were these people stupid? Didnt they know that canals were obsolete? Well, it turns out that they knew a few more things about canals than I did. Though the canal did serve as a means of transportation, it was built primarily as a source of water power. Water channeled off from the Savannah River flows through turbines, and the turning action drives machinery in factories. Soon after construction, the canal water powered a saw and grist mill and the Augusta Factory, a textile manufacturing operation. Henry H. Cumming, who spearheaded efforts to build the canal, envisioned it turning Augusta into "the Lowell of the South." Manufacturing plants soon lined the canals banks, including the Confederate States of America Powderworks during the Civil War. The 28 buildings of the Powderworks complex stretching for two miles along the canal were the only structures ever built by the government of the Confederate States of America After the war, the seven-mile canal was deepened and widened, and huge new manufacturing operations fueled an economic boom in Augusta. Workers flocked from the country to shanties in "mill villages" clustered around the textile plants. Some of these plants are still operating today on water power from the canal, making it the only intact industrial canal in the American South in continuous use. Not only the textile plants, but the canal authority itself uses the canal to generate electricity for its own use and sells the surplus to the Georgia Power Company. The canal also continues to supply water to segments of the city, just as it has for over 150 years. Last summer when we visited, we took a boat tour of the canal during which we were caught in a torrential thunderstorm and came away looking as if we had been riding under the boat rather than inside it. We returned -- in dry clothes -- to tour the interactive museum complex on another day. And my mental image of the obsolete canal is changed forever. To learn more about the Augusta Canal, visit http://augustacanal.com Stop by next month for "Revenge in Spades!" --K The Symbols of ThanksgivingI know last month I promised the November column would tell a story of revenge. But as I hung the "Be Thankful" sign in my dining room this week, I decided this wasnt quite the time to focus on revenge. (So I'll save that for next month -- the Christmas season.) Instead, I'm looking at the symbols of Thanksgiving. Though I have been known to simply crochet little Christmas hats for the spiders and bats of Halloween, I usually take those decorations down and then look for something to put in their place until I can start putting Christmas hats on the kids' teddy bears and unicorns (whose heads are tailor made for elf hats). I've never been terribly enamored of the turkey image as a decoration, in part because I was a vegetarian for many years and could see nothing thanks-worthy from either the turkey's perspective or mine. So I settled on the image of the cornucopia, the horn of plenty, overflowing with vegan alternatives to the traditional poultry-centric feast. I didn't actually like to eat the squashes any more than the turkey, but the colorful gourds looked better to me than a corpulent condemned bird. Anyway, we all know the association of the turkey with Thanksgiving comes from the pilgrims who landed at Plimoth in 1620. But where does the cornucopia image come from? The horn of plenty originates with the Greek God Zeus and the horn of the goat Amalthea. Legends differ as to whether Zeus broke the horn by accident or the devout quadruped broke off her own horn as an offering. Either way, out of remorse or gratitude, Zeus promised the goat her horn would be forever filled with whatever fruits she desired. Under the Romans, the story evolved into the symbol of the goddess Copia. She held the cornucopia to symbol endless bounty. And now it is associated with the Puritans from England who would be turning in their graves at the thought of paying homage to either Zeus or Copia. The cornucopia probably became associated with the American Thanksgiving holiday because it became a symbol of harvest festivals celebrated by numerous cultures. The "first Thanksgiving" with black-hatted pilgrims and feathered Indians feasting on turkey and pumpkin was actually more of an English Harvest Home celebration. Official days of prayer and thanksgiving were celebrated by colonists soon after -- and before -- the 1621 date we commemorate each year. One Thanksgiving Proclamation from 1676 admonishes the people to give thanks "when our Enemies are in any measure disappointed or destroyed--" those enemies being the "Heathen Natives of this land." This really plays havoc with the Norman Rockwell image of Indians and pilgrims sitting around the table together. But regardless of the later hostilities, there would have been no "First" Thanksgiving without the native Americans because they brought or showed the settlers how to find most of the food. Pumpkin pie was not on the menu, as the pilgrims had long since run out of flour and sugar, but they probably did eat stewed or boiled pumpkin. Mashed potatoes were also absent from the table -- if there was a table -- because the settlers had no dairy cows to produce milk and butter and many of them feared that potatoes were poisonous. Sweet potatoes were a common food for natives further south, but not in New England. Cranberries were plentiful in New England, but without sugar, they would have tasted a little different than what were used to. The feast may have included turkey, but some historians believe the settlers used the word "turkey" to describe a variety of different wild birds, so the fowlers could have brought in ducks or geese instead. Documentation indicates that the feast definitely included venison and fish. So why don't we see a picture of a cute little deer on our Thanksgiving decorations? The mystery remains unsolved. Next month -- revenge -- or Christmas -- or both? --K The Advent of AdventA few days ago, I climbed up to the attic to embark on the annual “hunt for the box containing the Advent wreath.” We have a pretty big attic, but all the Christmas boxes are stored at one end, so the hunting ground is focused. My problem is labeling. It’s not that I haven’t labeled the boxes -- I label them every year. But I reuse the boxes, and as decorations have multiplied and migrated to bigger quarters over the years, it becomes difficult to decipher the notes. I have the box that says “Advent wreath.” And one that says “Advent wreath-- really.” The Advent wreath was not stored in either of those, naturally. It was in a bigger box, placed right in front so that I could take it out first, labeled “Advent wreath, and I mean it this time.” That was probably about the tenth box I hauled down. So anyway, the Advent wreath is now on the table -- three purple candles and one pink candle surrounded by a collection of fake greens that get less realistic-looking each year. The kids fight over the right to light the candles each night during dinner. We light one during the first week, two during the second, etc. through the four weeks of Advent, just as I did with my family when I was a kid. And then I’m started to wonder why. I don’t think it was a tradition practiced by either of my parents growing up. I began to suspect it was rather new. In fact, it turns out that even Christmas is newer than I had thought. The first references to celebrations of the birth of Jesus don’t even appear in records until the 4th century -- more than three hundred years after the fact. There are several theories about why the nativity came to be celebrated on December 25. One of the most prevalent is the idea that Christians selected the dates of Roman pagan feasts, the Feast of the Unconquered Sun on December 25 and the feast of Aion on January 6, for the Christian celebrations of Christmas and Epiphany. That way, early converts wouldn’t feel like they were missing out on any parties. Christmas stretched for twelve days, with feasting and revelry and gifts to the poor. The custom of giving lavish gifts to ourselves is a relatively recent one. Ahem. Back to the subject of Advent wreaths. Though the practice of having one on the dinner table may be recent, the wreath itself has ancient roots. Catholics and Lutherans used Advent wreaths in services during the seventeenth century, if not earlier. And long before that, pagan families in Scandinavia lit candles on wreaths to ask the god of light to turn the wheel of the earth back toward the sun. Since Christians see Jesus as the light of the world, it is easy to understand why they would use candles as a symbol of the coming of light into the world. Similarly, the pagan use of evergreens as decorations to symbolize the return of the new life of spring was appropriated by Christians to celebrate the eternal life offered through Jesus. So the pagan wreath of evergreens and candles took on new meanings. The pink candle in the wreath is lit starting in the third week of Advent to rejoice in the fact that the period of waiting is half over. This to me indicates that Advent used to be a period characterized by a little more austerity than we’re accustomed to these days. Advent used to be a time of preparation and waiting. New converts to the faith prepared themselves for baptism, people prayed and fasted to spiritually prepare for the second coming of the Lord. Now, although we still have all that preparation to do, we don’t wait. The celebrations start as soon as the Thanksgiving turkey is off the table. By the time Christmas actually arrives, many people are already tired of it. Last year, I saw Valentine’s decorations going up on Christmas Eve. So that’s why I like my battered old Advent wreath. It reminds me to slow down during the month of December, to enjoy the time of anticipation and preparation. This morning, the kids were fighting over whose turn it is to move a figure onto the Advent calendar. Okay, sure they’re fighting. But at least they’re fighting over the important stuff. Until next month... --K
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