cacakerbamakhlukpolitik

There’s been a lot of talk around the blogosphere and on Twitter lately about romance’s perfect hero “problem”. About how they’re all TALL, and MUSCULAR, and HOT (essentially, Hugh Jackman, Hugh Jackman in a wig, Hugh Jackman with a shaved head, you get the picture). And I thought, well of course they are, because we see him through the heroine’s eyes. And SHE thinks he’s hot. Right? Let me go to the personal side for a few examples. My best friend and I are very similar (arty, educated history geeks, close to 6’ tall, with quirky senses of humor that owe a little too much to Joss Whedon), but we couldn’t have more different taste in men. She likes BIG men. BEEFY men. Thick, solid, hard bodied, bullnecked MEN. Hugh Jackman at his biggest is just barely within her scale of manly. When I look at her current boyfriend, I see a husky, wide, unattractive Neanderthal. She refers to the men I like to date as Great Danes. They tend to be tall, thin, more elf than dwarf if you know what I mean....

At the end of the last post about former Stanton postmistress Naomi Harlan, we didn't really know much about her beyond what was in the short newspaper article. Besides her name and former post, we knew that she was, as of March 1925, awaiting trial for embezzlement. I'm still not aware of exactly how that prosecution went, but thanks to some great work by a reader and frequent contributor, we now know a bit more about Harlan's background. And thanks to another contribution, we have one more mention of her as heading the Stanton Post Office. Within a day of my publishing the post about Naomi Harlan and saying I didn't know anything more, Donna Peters had in my inbox all the information I couldn't find. I don't know how she did it, but she did. In my defense, and to Donna's great credit, almost every time Naomi is listed in a census she's either very hard to read or is listed -- sometimes comically -- incorrectly. As it turns out, Naomi was a born and rai...

I was thinking about baby names long before I was pregnant, though I was several months into my pregnancy before I settled on my daughter's name. I would try out different names, think about them for a while, try to imagine calling my child that as she grew up. By the time of my baby shower I was sure enough to tell my friends. At the end of the shower a friend's ten-year-old daughter patted my pregnant stomach and said "goodbye, Mélanie." The name was starting to seem inextricably intertwined with this little creature who kicked with increasing vigor. My daughter, Mélanie Cordelia, is named after two characters in my books, with a nod to Shakespeare. Just a couple of yeas ago I was naming the character Cordelia, who appears in my recently released Imperial Scandal . I went through a similar process to the one I went through naming my baby - making lists, trying out names. Save that the character who would become Cordelia already had a very clear personality in my mi...

Since I’ve been reviewing the laws pertaining to becoming a peer, I thought I’d do a quick post on some of the legalities of being a peer. All of these except the ones directly relating to Parliament also apply to peeresses, and continue to apply to them even after their husbands death (unless they marry a commoner). Freedom from Arrest, save for treason, felony, or refusing to give surety of the peace (basically to post a sum of money to ensure you don’t carry out whatever act you’ve been threatening to commit). This was why peers could not be thrown into debtor’s prison. This privilege extends to a person succeeding to a peerage who has already been arrested. Which could make for an interesting plot. Trial by Peers. This is exactly what it sounds like. Accusations of treason or felony (e.g. murder) against a peer could only be tried in front House of Lords. Freedom of Speech in Parliament. Pretty much self-explanatory. Immunity from Civil Actions. This was pretty much wiped out by Ac...

Just a quick little post here, since I unfortunately don't have anything to add beyond the clipping itself. As you can see, it seems Stanton had a bit of a scandal relating to its post office in the 1920's. The newspaper clipping -- from March 22, 1925 -- states that three local woman had taken the civil service exams for the postmistress position in the southern Mill Creek Hundred village. The position became available upon the arrest for embezzlement of Naomi Harlan, the former postmistress. At that point Harlan was out on bail and awaiting trial before a Federal Grand Jury. What ever became of her is something of a mystery. Even who she was is a mystery to me. I've searched for information about Naomi Harlan, including census records, but I have not been able to find anything about her. Nor have I found any mention of her court case or its outcome. This is probably one of those stories that was big for a short time (with Stanton being such a small community, I have to b...

Roosevelt Park circa 1930s. Courtesy of the Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library. It's hard to imagine now, but a large group of stores, houses and barns once stood directly in front of Michigan Central Station when it opened in 1913. Roosevelt Park, which was laid out several years later, was so successful in creating a grand, formal entry to the building that it now seems as if it had been part of the design all along. The railroad company had in fact simply constructed their train station where it was most convenient for them--along their already existing right-of-way and close to their newly-completed railroad tunnel . The terminal was accessible by both streetcar and automobile, and therefore the owners felt that they had fulfilled their obligation to make it publicly accessible. The construction of parks and boulevards was the city's responsibility. The idea of establishing some sort of park at this location was discussed when the very first preparatio...

Over the past few months, I’ve been taking a break from Napoleonic spies to hang out in a very different time and place: Kenya in the 1920s. I blame my friend Christina for this. (Hi, Christina!) Last year, she gave me a copy of Frances Osborne’s The Bolter , an account of the tumultuous life of Idina Sackville Gordon Hay et cetera et cetera. She collected husbands the way some of us collect books. Idina Gordon formed the lynchpin of the group that came to be known as the Happy Valley set, a group of English settlers in Kenya’s Wanjohi Valley with more old Etonians per capita than in Berkeley Square. They had their own club—the Muthaiga Club—polo matches, race week, and incredibly racy parties that included hard liquor, recreational drugs, and spouse-swapping. "Are you married or do you live in Kenya?" went the saying back home in England. For those who are fans of Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa , or the movie version of the same, many of the actors in this sub-society w...

I've been researching smuggling for my soon-to-be-started WIP (a revenue officer, a governess, and a ghost in Orkney!) . Mostly what I'm discovering is how incredibly widespread and shameless smuggling was. It operated in many ways like our modern-day Mafia--but before the 80s mob trials. Revenue officers knew who the smugglers were. Often they even had advance knowledge of smuggling runs. But they were so badly outnumbered that in many cases, the officer or two (even if he was backed by half-a-dozen dragoons) had to simply watch as sixty or a hundred armed men rode by escorting huge cargoes. There were cases of small fleets of smuggling ships coming into an inlet where a Revenue cutter lay at anchor and saying, "Cut your anchor and take off or we'll sink you!" (But with worse language, my book made sure to clarify!) And the ship had really no choice but to do it. Even if smugglers could be arrested, it was rare to find a jury that would convict them. This was bot...

The Robert Graham House While some of the (I'd say, to most people) surprisingly large number of 150+ year old homes in Mill Creek Hundred are relatively well known and fairly visible, others are a bit more "off the beaten path". And while these hidden gems may be less well known and less viewed, they are by no means less significant. In fact, one such house -- the Robert Graham House (entered into the National Register in 1997) -- tucked away on Crossan Road north of Corner Ketch hides within its walls an interesting and, to the best of my knowledge, pretty rare example of a building type that was common in its time. When looking at the house, the section that most looks "old" is the stone wing on the west end, closest to the road. However, it's actually the center section, hidden beneath a weatherboard exterior, that's the oldest part. To get the full story, though, we have to go back even further. In 1714, a Quaker named Daniel Worsley purchased 250 ...