Tag: nifty stuff

More from the Department of Nifty Stuff

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Because writers, as I’ve observed before, are intellectual packrats who gather up odd bits of information just in case they may need one of them someday:  The scholarly hairdresser who figured out how to do the Vestal Virgins’ seven-braid hairdo also takes on 18th-19th century papillote curls — the “curling-papers” we read about in period fiction.

When I googled on “papillote curls” to retrieve the link, I also found links to blogs where other recreationists have gone on to try the process themselves, which is how I learned that the process works best on hair that hasn’t been washed for a day or so — “every day” hair-washing being a mostly 20th-century innovation.  And in the “everything is connected to everything else” department, I liked the hairdresser’s comment that this particular style and curling method didn’t become popular until technology had advanced enough for paper to become relatively cheap.

More Neat Stuff

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Regency and Napoleonic-era fans and writers take note:  Google Books now has La Belle Assemblée, Volume 2 (January through June, 1807) available on-line and as a PDF download.

Also neat, though not Napoleonic:  Boston viewed from the air, in 1860.

The Return of the Intellectual Packrat

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By way of apologia for having been Away From Keyboard for a couple of days, have a couple of nifty research sites.

The Memoirs of Pascal Bonenfant.  The site name notwithstanding, this isn’t actually anybody’s memoirs; rather, it’s a collection of research sources and links for 18th-century social history.  There’s a database of thieves’ cant, and a page with recipes from a period pharmacopoeia (I really want to know what the “Powder of Millepedes” — Take Millepedes prepared 12 grains; Saffron 3 grains; Flower of Benjamin, Salt of Amber, each 2 grains; Ginger 1 grain; Oil of Aniseed 1 drop; Bring all to a Powder — was supposed to be prescribed for), a “List of the Flying Coaches, Stage Coaches, Waggons, and Carriers” going in and out of London in 1721, and a plethora of other fascinating things.

And then there’s the Food Timeline page.  If you want to find out the wholesale price of wheat in Philadelphia in July of 1762 (5.5 shillings the bushel), or the cost of a  Thanksgiving turkey in New Jersey in 1931 (39¢ a pound), this is the place to look.

Because if you really want to write about the past and make it real for your readers, you don’t just want the wars and the politics.  You want the food and the drink and the furniture of everyday life as well.

Some Things Never Change

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Found while looking through my bookmarks the other day,  a blog post from back in 2010 talking about something even earlier:

A (personalized and encouraging) rejection letter from William Dean Howells, in 1900.

I don’t know if Howells also had a stack of pre-printed “your manuscript does not meet our needs at the present time” letters, but I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to find out that he did.

This, Now, is a Cool Thing.

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The remains of Richard III have been found underneath a car park in Leicester and positively identified by DNA matching.  (There’s a guy in Canada who’s a direct descendant of Richard’s sister Anne.)

More Nifty Internet Stuff

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If a little learning is a dangerous thing, then a lot of learning is, well . . .  pretty damned neat, actually.

For example:  Gothic for goths.

Because, face it, what up-and-coming young goth — or anyone else, for that matter — wouldn’t want to know how to say, “My fancy new black underwear is chafing”?

(Sa feina niuja swarta undarklaiþs meina gneidiþ mik, in case you’re curious.)

God, I love the internet.

The Perils of Lexicography

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Merriam-Webster lexicographer Kory Stamper of harm•less drudg•ery has an entertaining but pointed blog entry about dealing with the sort of people who take the dictionary as an authority on things for which it isn’t one.

Ten years ago, we added a second subsense to the noun “marriage” that covered uses of “marriage” that refer to same-sex unions. Someone eventually noticed.

Outrage! screamed about 4,000 emails, all flooding my inbox in the space of a week. How dare you tell us that gay marriage is okay now?

I was not surprised, honestly: I drafted a long, thoughtful reply about how words get into the dictionary, noting that this sense of “marriage” had been used by both proponents and opponents of same-sex marriage since at least 1921, and finishing with the caution that the dictionary merely serves to record our language as it is used. I spent the next two weeks doing nothing but sending this reply out to everyone and their mother.

But that wasn’t the line that made me laugh out loud at my computer. That line was this one:

As for the dictionary being a moral guide, it never was and it never should be. We enter the words “murder” and “headcheese” into the dictionary, but that shouldn’t be read as advocacy for trying either one of them.

Anyhow — go read the whole thing. It’s good.

Shiny Internet Stuff

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Writers are intellectual packrats.    Set one down in a used book store or a library sale, and he or she is likely to come away with a history of carrier pigeons in World War I, a Peruvian vegetarian cookbook (in Spanish), and five non-consecutive volumes of The Bobbsey Twins . . . all on the grounds that “they might come in handy someday.”

Their browser bookmark lists are equally eclectic — you never know, after all, what information you might turn out to need.  Today’s interesting find:  a YouTube video by a woman whose passion is historical-recreationist hairdressing; in this one, she first dissects and then re-creates the complex seven-braid hairstyle of the Roman Vestal Virgins (and Roman brides, but they only had to wear it for one day instead of all the time.)

She doesn’t speculate on the maintenance of the hairstyle — and it’s not the sort of thing that the ancient Roman primary sources, being written by men, would have bothered to talk, or even think, about — but just from looking at the way the hair was first braided and then put up, I’d guess that the multiple braids were done once or twice a month (or week, or whatever — I’m not an expert on braid-care), and then the style itself was put up in the morning and taken down again at night.

Shopping for the Writer in Your Life

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It’s that time of year again.   If you’ve got a writer in your life, here are some places to shop:

Levenger’s, home of desktop porn writer’s and reader’s furniture and accessories in wood and leather and other high-end materials.  Check out their portable editor’s desk, or their cast iron combination ruler and paperweight, just for starters.

Or there’s Museumize, for all sorts of replica artwork, jewelry, and knick-knacks.   If you want a gargoyle or a pair of New York Public Library lions, this is the place to go.

Or you could get him or her the world’s best fruitcake, which comes from the Collin Street Bakery in Corsicana, Texas.

If all else fails, there’s always a gift certificate from the brick-and-mortar or online bookstore of your choice.  It won’t win points for originality, but — writers being, almost invariably, insatiable readers — it will almost certainly be appreciated.

Another Item from the Department of Nifty Stuff

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More research gold — the Metropolitan Museum of Art has put a bunch of its publications up on the ‘net for on-line reading, PDF download, or print-on-demand.

All sorts of books are available: titles like The Armored Horse in Europe, 1480–1620 or Cochineal Red: The Art History of a Color or History of Russian Costume from the Eleventh to the Twentieth Century, to name just a few.

Man, I love the internet.  Time was, you’d have to go hit a major research library (if not travel all the way to New York) to get some of this stuff.

Uphill.  In the snow.  Both ways.