cacakerbamakhlukpolitik

This is something I had been thinking of doing for quite some time, but now the time seems right. Spurred on by a few recent comments and some fascinating emails, I've decided to launch the MCH Nostalgia Forum . It's a stand-alone page on the blog here (accessible from the tabs above), designed to be an outlet for stories and memories of a more recent nature than are usually covered on the blog. Here is what I put as a lead-in to the page (because yes, I am that lazy): " Nostalgia is what you can remember. History is what your grandparents remember ." -- I don't know if any wise man ever said that, but someone should have. Obviously, the general scope of this blog is the older history of Mill Creek Hundred -- from the late 17th Century up until the early 20th Century. Of course, the region didn't stop then, though. There are many stories to be told from the last 75 years or so of the area's history, too. This page is an open forum for anyone wishing to sh

I'd like to extend a warm welcome to Katharine Ashe, who manages to juggle teaching history to undergrads with writing critically acclaimed historical romances. Her latest is In the Arms of a Marquess , hailed as "a unique adventure romance" by Romantic Times. In the Arms of a Marquess is part of Avon's new KISS and Teal campaign . For every copy sold, Avon will donate 25 cents to raise awareness and $50,000 for Ovarian Cancer research. Even better, Katharine is here today to talk to us about one of my favorite topics: India. Without further ado, Katharine Ashe! A Taste for the Exotic I have a confession to make. My first beloved romance novel was not written by Jane Austen. Or by Georgette Heyer. Or Kathleen Woodiwiss. Or any other of the great ladies of English and American romance. The novel that made me a devotee of romance fiction doesn’t even take place on the shores of the Atlantic. I fell in love with romance when at the tender, impressionable age of fourt

 White Clay Creek Presbyterian Church  In the early days of Mill Creek Hundred, two religious groups played major roles in the development of the area -- the English Quakers and the predominantly Scotch-Irish Presbyterians. By the early 1720's, the latter group had established two bases of worship in the hundred -- Red Clay Creek Church in the east and White Clay in the west. Since I've been slowly posting pictures of headstones from the White Clay Creek cemetery , I thought it was a good time to look at this 300 year old congregation, currently in its fourth church and second location. White Clay Creek Presbyterian Church sits on the north side of Kirkwood Highway, at the base of Polly Drummond Hill Road. Before it was known as Polly Drummond Hill, though, the high ground to the north was called Meeting House Hill. The meeting house for which it was named was not where the present church is, but about a mile up the road, on Old Coach Road (actually, it's on an old sec

Ever wondered what was happening on this day in history? Ever wanted to be living someplace other than here, maybe someplace where issues could be openly fought against? A few months ago, I wandered into my neighborhood Starbucks, desperate for an escape from the usual economic and political news. Much to my surprise, the Washington Post offered a new feature on its front page: “ A House Divided ” is a daily blog offering news and views about the American Civil War. Interviews with re-enactors soldiering through Fort Sumter’s fall despite the Federal government’s near-shutdown on the same day, thoughtful essays and funny videos, legal decisions by tribal courts – this blog brings an era’s passions and their impact to life. It’s also a wonderful refuge from today's storms. I promptly hunted for more places like it. The New York Times offers a similar blog, Disunion . “One-hundred-and-fifty years ago, Americans went to war with themselves. Disunion revisits and reconsiders

This will have to be one of my briefest posts ever because I'm scrambling to meet a deadline for my next nonfiction book -- to be titled ROYAL ROMANCES: TITILLATING TALES OF PASSION AND POWER IN THE PALACES OF EUROPE . This volume will have about 17 chapters, and at present (though anything can change), the table of contents takes us from Edward III and Alice Perrers all the way to William and Kate, with a bonus chapter about my experiences in London for their royal wedding earlier this year. Portrait of Louis XIV from 1670 At the moment I am researching the fascinating liaison between the Sun King, Louis XIV and Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart de Mortemart, better known as the glittering, and wickedly witty marquise de Montespan. Nicknamed "The real queen of France," she bore the king seven illegitimate children, 3 of whom died before the age of 11; the rest he legitimized and they went on to found some of the great aristocratic houses of France. Athénaïs utterly fasc

To celebrate the release of RIPE FOR SCANDAL today, I'm returning to a post from last year about Newfoundlands. I feature one in SCANDAL, the stray, shipwrecked Gulliver. Like Pen in PLEASURE, he's a hero in his own right, but he's not quite as ready to be the family pet as she was. I based his personality on my godmother's wonderful Newfie, Ashley (she came with the name) who we often called Mrs. Pedecaris (as in "you are a great deal of trouble"), with a little of the beloved Newfie of my childhood, Hanuman, thrown in (he liked to "answer the door" by jumping up on it and opening his mouth over the small window so the new arrival was greeted by gullet and teeth), and with the "must save all swimmers" instincts of another Newf (my godmother's mother's dog) Gladstone. *** All the wonderful who-ha that has been generated for cats in the past week has me thinking about dogs getting short shrift. I’ve posted about Mastiffs previously,

Juliet Grey is over on The Huffington Post today busing myths about things the French queen never did or said. Check it out (I'm so proud!).

I’ve been researching how women through history have settled quarrels, and interestingly, more than one source reports that women rarely dueled. But it doesn’t take much to surfing on the net to check that claim---and apparently, there are certainly plenty of historical records reporting dueling women. Woman fought, like their male counterparts, over lovers, insults (perceived and real), gossip, and ultimately, for their honor. They fought with all kinds of pistols and a variety of swords and knives. There is a long, long list of dueling women in history. Check this out: http://www.fscclub.com/history/armed4-e.shtml Here are a couple of the more notable duels between women: Lady Almeria Braddock and Mrs. Elphinstone >(1792) A certain Mrs. Elphinstone expected no more than a cup of tea when she paid a social call to Lady Almeria Braddock’s London home in 1792. But the visit veered off into decidedly unladylike territory when the hostess, evidently enraged by a casual comment Mrs. Elp

 Main Street in Stanton, courtesy Ken Copeland  There are, of course, countless unknowns and mysteries surrounding many aspects of the history of Mill Creek Hundred. There are plenty of names, dates, and places that are either lost to time, or frustratingly unclear in the historical record. One of these mysteries though, in my mind stands out above the rest. It dates back to the very beginnings of MCH, and has been frustrating historians for at least 120-some years, and I would imagine probably a good bit longer than that. It has to do with the early history of the first community established in what would become Mill Creek Hundred -- Stanton. More specifically, it has to do with the origins of the odd-sounding name by which Stanton was known before it was renamed "Stanton". It is well-documented in the historical record (and recently brought up by a commenter on another post) that in the 18th Century, the village near the confluence of the Red Clay and White Clay Creeks

 George A. Wolf postcard of the old Marshallton Mill  I think anyone who does historical research would agree that one of the most enjoyable experiences associated with the task is when you run across a connection or a fact that makes you sit back and say, "Wow, I did not see that coming!" I had just such an experience recently while doing what I figured would be some quick, mostly fruitless research. It dealt with a man who wasn't born in, nor did he live in, Mill Creek Hundred, yet some of what we know of the area a century ago is because of him. He's probably not well-known to most these days, however some detail-oriented people who enjoy old pictures and postcards may be somewhat familiar with the name of George A. Wolf. His name is on many of the picture postcards of Wilmington and the surrounding area that date from the first decade of the 20th Century. Because his name appears on many of the pictures I've seen of Wilmington and vicinity (especially Br

I just got back from a lovely few days at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland. Among the highlights were a superb Measure for Measure , a very fun, exuberant Pirates of Penzance , and a brilliant new play called Ghost Light . Ghost Light was conceived and developed by Jonathan Moscone (Artistic Director of the California Shakespeare Theater ) and Tony Taccone (Artistic Director of Berkeley Rep ), written by Taccone and directed by Moscone. It explores the 1978 assassinations of Moscone’s father, San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, and Supervisor Harvey Milk by Supervisor Dan White. But rather than being a docudrama that recreates historical events, Ghost Light focuses on Jonathan Moscone’s response to the loss of his father, both as a fourteen-year-old boy and as an adult man, struggling to direct a production of Hamlet . The story that emerges is rooted in historical events (events that I remember vividly, as a twelve-year-old at the time of the assassinations) yet

 The Stanton "Covered" Bridge  It's understandable if the title of this post may be a bit confusing in a couple of different ways. First, you might be saying, "I've never heard of a covered bridge in Stanton." Secondly, you might be asking, "What's the deal with the quotes around "covered"?" As it so happens, both of these items are connected, and they led me on a journey to what I think is a very interesting lost bit of local history. Then, as a bonus, the answers I found helped me make sense of another picture that had kind of bugged me for a while now. And in the process, I was exposed to a type of structure that I didn't even know existed, let alone existed right here in our area. My guide on this journey was Will Truax, a bridgewright from New England ( here's his blog ) who repairs, restores, and rebuilds covered bridges for a living. His expertise was crucial in figuring out just what it was I was looking at in the

A recent discussion on Twitter about the depiction of the Jewish moneylender in Heyer’s THE GRAND SOPHY intersected with an authors’ loop discussion about minority villains in Romantic Suspense novels. In both cases the author was called racist, and I find it very tr oubling for multiple reasons to label an author racist merely because they have a non-white villain/antagonist in their book. However, as many pointed out on Twitter, if you only have one minority character and the depiction is stereotypical and offensive, then yes, you have opened yourself up to just such a charge. It’s a fine line thing and I think it’s worth discussing (hopefully without offending anyone too greatly). In Heyer’s case, the charge itself may well be true (her biography certainly points to her having held anti-Semitic views), but the depiction of a nasty Jewish moneylender in the Regency period doesn’t strike me as any more “racist” than the modern depiction of a nasty, Italian mob boss on THE SOPRANOS (wh

This month I thought it would be good to share a photograph from a building in North Corktown. Below is an image of the Franklin School, which used to stand on 7th Street (now called Brooklyn) just south of Pine Street. The photo was taken in 1881. Courtesy of the Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library ( Source ) Construction began on the Seventh Street School (as it was originally called) in 1865 and was completed by the summer of 1866. It was two stories tall and contained six rooms and a basement. The Gothic-style building was designed by the English-born architect Gordon W. Loyd , whose other designs include Central United Methodist Church (1866) and the David Whitney House (1894). The contractor was Aaron C. Fisher. In February of 1867 the school's name officially changed to the Franklin School, after Benjamin Franklin. This is the school's location as it appeared in an 1885 atlas of the city; ( Source ) Although the school was built to accommodate t

 The 1813 William Morgan House  About two hundred yards north of Corner Ketch, straddling Doe Run Road, sits a beautiful matching set of a house and barn. The pair of two-century-old fieldstone structures (and a slightly newer frame one) make up the William Morgan Farm, and they're just another example of the quiet history sitting all around us here in Mill Creek Hundred. The story begins, not surprisingly, with William Morgan, who purchased 235 acres of land north of Corner Ketch in 1797. The National Register of Historic Places (to which it was added in 1987 as part of a group of MCH sites) nomination form states that Morgan bought the land from an agent of the Penn family, although it seems a bit late for that to me. In any case, I've not been able to find very much definitive information about William Morgan. He probably came from Pennsylvania, since later on his daughter is listed as having been born there in 1777. There is a William Morgan, Revolutionary War veteran,

Recently, I exhumed an old file from my archives, a satire I wrote during my 3L year of law school in the winter of 2005/6. The novel, which I called Two L , was based on the plot of Measure for Measure , transposed to current day Harvard Law. As I was readying the files for publication, I realized that there was just one problem. (Okay, two problems if you count the fact that reformatting the old files was completely kicking the tenderer parts of my anatomy.) The problem was that current day was no longer current day. As I read through the novel, I was struck by just how much had changed since 2006, both at the law school and in the world. My main character, the eponymous 2L, makes a comment about her grades, a royal flush of A’s and A-‘s. HLS no longer has grades. They’re on a pass/high pass system now. There’s a great big new student center that wasn’t there when I was there five years ago. And I’m sure there have been other changes, if only I knew where to look for them.

If anyone happens to be in the area this coming Saturday, August 13, 2011, and is looking for something fun to do, the Wilmington & Western Railroad  will be having its now-annual Summerfest . In addition to three trains running that day (all pulled by one of the WWRR's steam locomotives), there will be a number of other events and attractions taking place at the Greenbank Station on Newport Gap Pike, just down the hill from Kirkwood Highway. Trains will depart from Greenbank at 10:30, 12:30, and 2:30, all headed for the Mt. Cuba Picnic Grove on the banks of the Red Clay Creek. After a half-hour layover at the picnic grove, the train will return to the station where there will be lots going on. For those of you who like to eat, there will be food available provided by Backyard Louie's BBQ , and ice cream from Woodside Farm Creamery . There will also be magicians and musicians roaming around, as well as facepainting for the kids. But don't worry, us grown-ups won't b

For RWA and RomCon I made small bookcover pins for friends and people I was on panels with. Lots of people asked me how I did it, and I promised to share directions. I figured sooner was better than later, so here we go! Print your cover onto heavy stock matte paper. I like to make the covers 1.5” tall and surrounded them with a border. Cut them out. Lay out on a sheet of hard, slick plastic (I like to use page protectors). With a small paint bush, put one coat of Elmer’s White glue on the back and two on the front, allowing each coat to dry separately. This seals the paper. Once dry, trim off any excess glue. Don’t worry about it being too thick, the glue will dry clear. Press them flat for a few hours or overnight, as the glue sometimes makes them curl a bit. For the next step, the future pins need to be suspended in such a way that the liquid 2-part epoxy resin can be poured over them and drip off without the pin becoming one with the surface it’s resting on. I made a support out of

Writing a historical novel is like time travel. The lucky reader gets to vicariously live in another era, through the story told in the book’s pages. But after the author has done all the research, how can he make the reader believe the story actually lives in that period? All of the words on the page must somehow sound right, whether they’re dialogue, exposition, or quotations. The reader must believe she’s living the characters’ story with them – even though it takes place worlds away from her. But how on earth can an author pull it off? The vocabulary from that era may be so different that it’s hard to express what happened. Blackmail and homosexuality, for example, are fairly recent terms. To make life even more fun, sentences may no longer be put together quite the same way. Modern grammar discourages adverbs and encourages informality, habits that could mark social status centuries ago. Even harder is making the reader believe he’s listening to dialogue spoken centuries