I am reading an interview with a historian that set out to weave the type of textiles that was sold to plantations for use by enslaved people using period appropriate looms.
But because I knew nothing about weaving, everything had to be explained to me, down to the most basic tacit knowledge: things that an eight-year-old girl in 1828 would have known, because when she was not winding yarn around a quill to help her mother, she was working on the family’s loom herself…
The great challenge of our work as scholars—at least, those who are interested in historical reconstruction or the histories of any craft tradition—is that almost none of what we want to know is written down—because it didn’t have to be and it didn’t need to be articulated. So to be in a situation where expert weavers had to talk to me like I was a child was one of the best things that happened to me in the course of my research for this book.
For my textile, weaving, historic textile, history enthusiasts
The interviewer is also a weaver!
SW: … That’s really awesome. You’ve taught this class now for two semesters. What have you learned from your students?
SR: Their expertise as makers has clued me into historical experiences most scholars have glossed right over. A 1930s Federal Writers Project interview with a formerly enslaved octogenarian might reference a grandmother’s sewing prowess, but then a student will say, No, you can’t just skim over by that! Do you know how many hand stitches it takes to do the seam of a dress? If you’ve never handsewn a skirt (and I haven’t), you might need to be reminded of the labor involved. One student reproduced a 19th-century skirt as her final project, and it was all about the stitches. Their reading of primary sources picked up on things that I missed.
And this took me in new directions in my own research. You might remember a discussion of sewing labor in the final chapter of Plantation Goods and the implication of a cloth’s width for a woman’s work routine. If you know how to cut the pieces for a shirt from a 32-inch-wide piece of fabric, it is going to mess everything up when you’re given a bolt of 28-inch-wide cloth. I had seen letters from slaveholders in the 1830s and 1840s complaining about the narrowness of the cloth and how enslaved women didn’t “understand” these fabrics. This wasn’t transparent to me as a historian. Only with students talking about the expertise involved in cutting cloth into the components of a garment did I realize what a difference it made when, say, a New England weaver was haphazard and turned out fabric four inches narrower than the usual variety. That error would reverberate in the lives of people 1,000 miles away who might face extreme forms of violence because they couldn’t meet their daily production quotas. Or they might experience other kinds of privation—a lack of rags for postpartum women, for example—because a wider fabric left scraps while a narrower one did not.
you cannot convince me illegal immigration is a real problem and I’m sick of pretending it is. yk when you were a kid and you got mad at your sibling for crossing an imaginary line that you drew in the car? that’s what you’re doing right now except you’re actually killing people over it
I get how we need records of who’s in the country for like census or tax purposes, yk boring logistical stuff. but you know what we could do with people who don’t have the paperwork? send them to the courthouse to fill out their paperwork. boom problem solved and you didn’t have to spend 80 thousand dollars detaining and deporting them
to be clear when I say “boring logistical stuff” I don’t mean like tracking your actions, I mean like population maps to help answer truly mind-numbing questions such as “where is the best place to build a new highway” and “how many hospitals does this municipality need”
Saw a post pointing out that the idea of a Saturday-Sunday weekend is in itself cultural Christianity being applied to the whole “secular” world, that in Israel the weekend is Friday-Saturday and in some Muslim-majority countries the weekend is Thursday-Friday or only Friday (in others it’s Friday-Saturday as well.)
Anyway to make a truly secular and inclusive world I propose a Monday-Wednesday work-week and a Thursday-Sunday weekend. I think anyone of any or no religion could all get behind this.
snobby new yorker accidentally gets stranded back in time in the revolutionary war and they genuinely cannot handle the fact that everything important is happening in boston and philly
like they understand it rationally but in their heart they’re like “lin manuel miranda lied to me.”
back when hamilton first came out I made my parents listen to it and afterwards my dad said “well. that’s not historically accurate.” and when I looked at him for clarification he added “no one in the 1770s would have referred to new york as the greatest city in the world.”
If you’re just learning about this, some of the other questions you might ask yourself next are:
- Why the fuck is there even a US military base in Aruba? - Why the fuck are there even 4 US military bases in Australia? - Why the fuck is there even a US military base in the Bahamas? - Why the fuck are there even 2 US military bases in Bahrain? - Why the fuck are there even 3 US military bases in Belgium? - Why the fuck are there even 2 US military bases in Bulgaria? - Why the fuck is there even a US military base in Chagos archipelago apparently aka “British Indian Territory”? - Why the fuck is there even a US military base in Cuba? (this is of course Guantanamo bay, which is just straight up an illegal occupation of a foreign country to host a US torture prison) - Why the fuck are there even 2 US military bases in Djibouti? - Why the fuck is there even a US military base in Egypt? - Why the fuck is there even a US military base in Estonia? - Why the fuck are there even 3 US military bases in Greece? - Why the fuck is there even a US military base in Greenland? - Why the fuck are there even 6 US military bases in Germany? - Why the fuck is there even a US military base in St. Helena? - Why the fuck is there even a US military base in Honduras? - Why the fuck are there even 2 US military bases in Hungary? - Why the fuck is there even a US military base in Iceland? - Why the fuck are there even 2 US military bases in Iraq? (when the Iraqi government keeps demanding that the US leave the country) - Why the fuck are there even 7 US military bases in Italy? - Why the fuck are there even 8 US military bases in Japan, if you exclude the several bases on Okinawa? It’s 13 including the ones on Okinawa. - Why the fuck is there even a US military base in Jordan? - Why the fuck are there even 2 US military bases in Kenya? - Why the fuck is there even a US military base in Kosovo? - Why the fuck are there even 5 US military bases in Kuwait? - Why the fuck is there even a US military base in Latvia? - Why the fuck are there even 2 US military bases in Lithuania? - Why the fuck is there even a US military base in the Marshall Islands? - Why the fuck is there even a US military base in Norway? - Why the fuck is there even a US military base in Oman? - Why the fuck are there even 9 US military bases in the Philippines? - Why the fuck are there even 5 US military bases in Papua New Guinea? - Why the fuck are there even 5 US military bases in Poland? - Why the fuck is there even a US military base in Portugal? - Why the fuck is there even a US military base in Qatar? - Why the fuck are there even 3 US military bases in Romania? - Why the fuck are there even 2 US military bases in Saudi Arabia? - Why the fuck is there even a US military base in Singapore? - Why the fuck is there even a US military base in El Salvador? - Why the fuck are there even 2 US military bases in Somalia? - Why the fuck are there even 8 US military bases in South Korea? - Why the fuck are there even 2 US military bases in Spain? - Why the fuck are there even 2 US military bases in Syria? - Why the fuck are there even 2 US military bases in Turkiye? - Why the fuck are there even 2 US military bases in the United Arab Emirates? - Why the fuck are there even 5 US military bases in the United Kingdom?
Note: This list (that i got from this website cause their data was pretty recent and they had it in a handy list form) does not even seem to include things like the military airbase in the Netherlands where the americans keep nuclear bombers, or shannon airfield in ireland that the americans get to use freely for their genocide in Palestine, and used for their wars in afghanistan and iraq, so this list seems to be very far from complete.
The thing about gay sailors in the Victorian era is that England and America had totally different takes on it. In the british navy they could, and did, literally kill men for having consensual relationships with other men. But in the US navy, even tho John Adams literally copied England’s naval regulations when making America’s version, he chose to leave out every proscription against sodomy. And no one knows why!!! England was like hmm yes the death penalty and America was like i dont really see how thats my business. And like gay American sailors could still be charged with things like “uncleanliness” or “indecency” (charges that were vague enough to cover a lot of different things) but bc it wasnt specifically forbidden in the regulations “the commanding officers [were given] wide discretion to prosecute, punish, or ignore.”*
And by and large US officers seem to have ignored it. We literally have the records of every flogging (the most extreme form of punishment allowed during these specific years) onboard a naval vessel for the years of 1846-1848 and almost all of the cases that involved homosexual activity “unambiguously refer to male/male homosexual activity involving attempted assaults on children, not consensual couplings between adults.”* There are also multiple recorded instances throughout the Victorian Era of an American sailor coming forward with a charge of sexual assault and pulling in other sailors or even officers as witnesses who tell their captain yeah i totally saw them and didn’t say anything until this sailor told me it was nonconsensual. There are even records recorded by naval recruitment officers of men with extremely explicit gay tattoos being allowed to join the navy. Why did the US navy not care enough to even include it in the regulations while the British navy literally hanged men for it??? Were we so hard up for sailors that John Adams was like bitch we need every gay sailor we can get????
And weirdly enough this was true on American Whaling ships too! In the recorded cases where homosexual activity led to sailors being disciplined (in some cases punishment so mild as just being dropped off their ship at the next port) it was usually in situations where rape was involved and/or there was a high degree of ship disruption related to it (guys getting into a public knife fight for example). Idk I just think thats so interesting especially when America and England were so similar to be so different in this particular area is fascinating
*quotes from Unruly Desires: American Sailors and Homosexualities in the Age of Sail by William Benemann
Adams is also the right to legal counsel and innocent until proven guilty guy.
being against arbitrary prosecution seems to have been a Thing for that guy
although its not unexpected that [tumblr] finds talking about gay sailors way more fun. anyway, here’s an Adams quote taken way out of context as a little treat:
“The shortest road to men’s hearts is down their throats.”
I wanted to get a video of this ghost crab but every time I got close to their hole they scuttled back in, so I tried getting clever with it. I made a little sandcastle and shoved my phone into it, hit record, and walked away. Crab was VERY suspicious of this addition to their environment.
girl you erected a mysterious black monolith that contained all the knowledge your culture had ever collected were you hoping he’d develop rudimentary tool use
You want everyone to be able to slot into a pride and prejudice au but no one can accurately fit into the niche that Mr Darcy and Elizabeth have cornered which is completely and uniquely deranged and sophisticated in a way no marvel character, nay, not even an over watch character, can dare compete with
miss piggy: you are sad and pathetic and small and far too green, both your status and wealth are an embarrassment, and your mother’s voice is shrill and painful… un. like. moi! *hair swish*
kermit: *stunned open mouth silence*
miss piggy: yet every day since i first saw you at the dance all i have been able to think about is how you are suitable for nothing in life but to be my bride! you are below me in every possible way but you simply must let me marry you!
kermit, flailing uncontrollably: THIS IS YOUR IDEA OF A MARRIAGE PROPOSAL?!?!
