cacakerbamakhlukpolitik

I'm poking my head out of the superawful deadline hell (but I should be grateful, right?) and kicked myself for missing such interesting posts over the last week or so. With my track record of missing days you might be amazed to see me here at all--generally my excuses are of the pathetic I forgot, sorry sort. But here I am and I want to talk about reading aloud. Recently, I organized a whole day of writers talking about what they do and reading aloud from their work for my local RWA chapter, Maryland Romance Writers (where Pam Rosenthal is speaking on Oct. 21!) last month at the Baltimore Book Festival , and also had the pleasure of reading earlier this week for Lady Jane's Salon in NYC, which was a lot of fun. You can see some of the pics from the Baltimore Book Festival on MRW's Facebook page. What I found surprising was the reluctance of many writers to read aloud from their work, and this seems a phenomenon of the genre. Writers in other fiction genres read aloud at...

If I had the hours to spend a weekend in a museum, just about any museum, I would be there in a heart beat. I read about the Diaghilev ballet costume exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and sadly know this is another bit of history I'll never get to see. Imagine staring at Nijinsky's costumes and watching vintage footage of him dancing in that very outfit. I'm a museum junkie and think this exhibit is worth a little extra promo by the Hoydens, even though most of us won't get to travel to London to see it (maybe the exhibition will come stateside someday!). This from The New York Times: ttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/24/arts/design/24antiques: "The ballet impresario Serge Diaghilev hired boldface names like Picasso, Matisse, Georges Braque and Coco Chanel to design his costumes. While traveling to several continents with the Ballets Russes, Diaghilev was mercurial and demanding, and his tastes in fabric patterns ranged from Russian folk art to Rococo...

I recently had the opportunity to see something that I thought was not only very interesting, but that also does a great job of illustrating a larger point. In the course of rummaging through the impressive collection of park-related items that the Friends of Brandywine Springs (FOBS) has gathered over the years, the group's president, Mike Ciosek, came across the newspaper advertisement that you see here (you can click on the picture for a larger view). The full-page ad originally appeared in the "Resort Section" of the Philadelphia Inquirer (although at the top, it actually says "Inqurier". Nice.), on June 25, 1911. This was a time when Brandywine Springs Amusement Park was at its height, and four years before it was sold by its founder -- a sale that would begin the downward spiral that would eventually lead to its closing after the 1923 season. But in 1911, the park was operating at the peak of its popularity. According to this ad, over one million guests ...

 McDaniel-Peach House  Originally, this post was going to focus on the McDaniel saw and grist mills located on the northeast corner of Paper Mill and North Star Roads. However, once I started delving into the immediate area, I discovered that there are two historic houses nearby, each related in some way to the mills, and each with their own interesting stories. Eventually I'll get to all three sites, but here I'd like to start with the oldest structure of the group -- what I've dubbed the McDaniel-Peach House. This house is a bit unusual, in that even though it is quite old and even has an interesting story attached to it, I've not been able to find any detailed description (such as a National Register form or DelDOT report) written about it. What we do know is that the McDaniel-Peach House sits a few hundred yards north of Paper Mill Road, just above Willow Creek Lane, and about half way between North Star Road and Limestone Road. The McDaniels are one of the olde...

This weekend I rewatched the movie that began my fascination with the Regency era – the 1940 Pride and Prejudice with Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier as Elizabeth and Darcy and a wonderful screenplay by Aldous Huxley and Jane Murfin, directed by Robert Z. Leonard. I’m aware of the irony that the movie that set me on the path to writing Regency-set books is set in the 1830s, but the movie sent me to the novel and then to other Austen novels and to Georgette Heyer and Bernard Cornwell and Regency and Napoleonic history books and ultimately to creating my own stories. I love a number of adaptations of Pride and Prejudice , but in many ways this one remains my favorite. I’ve sometimes wondered if it seems to be so true to the mood and tone of the book to me because I saw it (at the age of six) before I read the book. But I’m currently in the midst of rereading Pride and Prejudice and watching the movie this time I was struck by how well it captures the spare, dry irony of ...

Underwear, that is. Smalls, short for “small clothes,” in the 19th century underwent a change as drastic as conquering the West and building bridges and cities. Of course, these changes reflected the changing status of women and - most certainly - their location: Eastern and Southern ladies wore gowns from Paris, laced-up corsets, and petticoats so bouffant getting through doorways or perching on settees could be problematic. Women walking across the country with a covered wagon had no time for such fripperies. Even so, a German writer in 1865 noted peasant girls working in fields in crinolines, and one Arnold Bennett captured the hazards in a scene from “Old Wives’ Tale: Two young girls unpack their mother’s new crinoline, and Sophia tries it on. “Her mother’s newly delivered crinoline ballooned about her in all its fantastic richness and expensiveness.... Then Sophia fell, in stepping backwards; the pyramid was overbalanced, great distended rings of silk trembled and swayed giga...

 John Bishop House  This past weekend, I and my family had the pleasure of riding the Wilmington and Western Railroad -- something we try to do at least a couple times each year (our daughter, especially, loves the train). In addition to being a pleasant, quiet ride through the scenic Red Clay Valley, the whole trip oozes with history. You really never go more than a couple minutes without passing some historic house, the ruins of a mill, or the remnants of a mill race. To anyone who has ever taken this trip, the house to the right should look very familiar. This picturesque gem (one railroad volunteer told me this view was his screen saver) is the John Bishop House, and it sits just west of Barley Mill Road, near where the road crosses Red Clay Creek north of Wooddale. The Bishop House is one of those wonderful old homesteads that's tucked quietly away from all of the noise and hubbub that is much of New Castle County these days. If it weren't for the train, in fact, very f...