Medieval Homes

I love the Christ Child's walker!

From Medievalists:

The medieval homes depicted in these manuscript illustrations offer historians a lot of interesting evidence. They are often rectangular in design, and the key feature would have been the fireplace and chimney. McKinnon also notes that most of these images also show homes that are well-constructed and have several furnishings. She adds:

This observation suggests another conclusion: that a measure of material well-being and economic prosperity had been attained by at least some members of peasant society in the fifteenth century. The architecture depicted in these illuminations indicates that they had achieved a standard of living above subsistence level.

The article, “The Peasant House: The Evidence of Manuscript Illuminations,” by Sarah M. McKinnon, appeared in Pathways to Medieval Peasants, edited by J. Ambrose Raftis, which was published by the Pontifical Insitute of Mediaeval Studies in 1981. This collection of essays also features a piece on festivals that took place in an English medieval village. (Read more.)

Share

Ronald Reagan’s Uneasy Role

 From American Greatness:

The collective consciousness of a small town can create a sense of community and belonging. The same mindset, however, can also foster a certain exclusivity. Everyone is under the watchful eye of a small elite, and everyone participates in gossip. One lie can turn into many, and instead of being negated altogether, these lies become accepted as truth. The more they are repeated, the more strength they gain, and those who are the subject of falsehoods are changed forever. 

Peter Godrey’s 1947 film, “That Hagen Girl,” explores such matters, and it involves difficult subjects—such as suicide, illegitimate children, and madness—that Hollywood rarely examined in that era. Ronald Reagan plays Tom Bates, a war hero and a lawyer in the small town of Jordan, Ohio, who is essentially cast out of his hometown because of a rumor he fathered an illegitimate daughter.

Around the same time Tom is forced out of town, Mr. and Mrs. Hagen bring a little baby, Mary into their lives. It’s not clear where the little girl comes from, or who she is. The townsfolk put two and two together and get five. The rumor, based purely on speculation, becomes stronger as years go by. Mary grows up to be a beautiful young woman (Shirley Temple) but she is stained by the alleged sin of her alleged father. As a result, she is generally treated differently by the town. As one woman puts it, she’s not “one of ours.” (Read more.)

A review of the Ronald Reagan film King's Row, HERE.

Share

Clarence Thomas and the Nuns Who Inspired Him

 From The Daily Signal:

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is hailed by many for his inspiring life. But through it all, good or bad, Thomas stays focused on the important things in life. He never has forgotten those who helped him along the way. For many years on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the justice would visit his eighth-grade teacher, Sister Mary Virgilius Reidy, and dozens of her fellow nuns, in a retirement convent in New Jersey. 

Clarence Thomas was born into abject poverty in the segregated Deep South to parents who were poor and uneducated. His father left when he was 2, and he ultimately was sent to live with his grandparents in Savannah, Georgia. His grandfather enrolled Clarence and his brother in St. Benedict’s, a segregated, all-black, Catholic elementary school. It was run by the Missionary Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate Conception (most of them from Ireland), who endured disparaging slurs, including the N-word, for dedicating their lives to teaching black students.

“They wore that as a badge of honor,” Thomas recalls in the book “Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words,” which I co-edited with Michael Pack. The Franciscan nuns changed his life, and Thomas always has been grateful for their love and support. The nuns held their students to the highest academic standards, and did not allow them to make any excuse, even though these students lived under state-enforced discrimination. 

As Thomas recounts in “Created Equal”: “You knew they loved you. When you think somebody loves you and deeply cares about your interests, somehow they can get you to do hard things.” In the 1980s, when he was part of the Reagan administration, Thomas sought out Sister Virgilius, who was living in Boston. Thomas recalls: “I went by to see her, and I sat with her, and I thanked her for teaching me and making me believe that we could learn, and for not letting me slip into victim status and forcing me out of it.” 

In 1984, Thomas returned to his hometown of Savannah to pay tribute at an event honoring the Franciscan Sisters, where he said:  

There was no way I could have survived if it had not been for the nuns—our nuns, who made me pray when I didn’t want to and didn’t know why I should—who made me work when I saw no reason to—who made me believe in the equality of races when our country paid lip service to equality and our church tolerated inequality—who made me accept responsibilities for my own life when I looked for excuses. No, my friends, without our nuns, I would not have made it to square one.

Thomas again thanked the nuns when he was nominated by President George H.W. Bush to the Supreme Court in 1991, and Sister Virgilius, then 80 years old and nursing a broken arm, later testified on behalf of her former student at his confirmation hearings.  After Thomas joined the Supreme Court, for many years on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we would leave his home around 6 a.m. and drive up to Tenafly, New Jersey, to spend the day with Sister Virgilius and her fellow sisters, many of whom also taught Thomas and others at St. Benedict’s.

We had lunch in the cafeteria with all the nuns, and Thomas’ face displayed such joy as he reminisced about those days and caught up on how the nuns were all doing. He would visit sisters who were bedridden in the infirmary. When Sister Virgilius passed away in 2013 at age 100, we attended her funeral together. In October 2021, many celebrated Thomas’ 30th anniversary on the Supreme Court and his influence on American law, including a daylong celebration at The Heritage Foundation with remarks by the justice himself. But Thomas was more focused on an event earlier that week: the blessing of a statue of Sister Virgilius and two students at a cemetery where 200 Franciscan sisters are buried.

On a beautiful October day, in a small, private ceremony attended by more than 20 nuns, many of whom were in their 80s, along with friends and family members, Thomas greeted all of them with hugs and smiles. When he made his brief remarks, Thomas fought through tears to thank the nuns who changed his life. It was a beautiful moment that captured his humility. (Read more.)

Share

Elizabeth II in Paris

 
 

From Tatler:

The Queen’s first official visit to France was in fact as a young newlywed princess, in 1948, when she and the Duke of Edinburgh made a four-day trip to Paris. They enjoyed the delights of the city, including a night at the Opéra Garnier, a visit to the Flower Market in the Ile de la Cité, and a romantic evening along Rue Pierre Charon, where Edith Piaf serenaded them with a rendition of La Vie En Rose. It was followed by official visits in 1957, 1972, 1992, 1994, 2004 and 2014.

There were state dinners, tiaras and meetings with politicians and members of the public alike; a small taste of what King Charles might also expect during his time en France. Here, ahead of the reported trip, Tatler looks back at some of Her Majesty’s most magical French moments. (Read more.)

Share

Fake Meat Products

 From Fox Business:

Microsoft co-founder turned billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates said he is hopeful that fake meat products will eventually be a "very good" option for consumers even though the share of products in the "meat" market is small.

"I think eventually these products will be very good even though their share is small today," Gates said in a Reddit forum on a question relating to tackling the climate crisis, first reported CNBC. Gates said innovations like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, which are plant based food options that range from burger to chicken nugget alternatives, and the food technology company, Upside Foods, which takes animal cells to then grow meat in a laboratory environment, are crucial steps for reducing animal consumption. The climate activist pointed to more traditional approaches to avoiding meat like vegetarianism or going vegan and said, "that is great" but noted that most people will not choose to remove meat from their diet.

"I don’t think most people will do that," he said, noting that alternative meat products were necessary options to therefore lower meat consumption. (Read more.)

Share

The Jubilee Year of St. Thérèse of Lisieux

 From Aleteia:

The Catholic Church has also convened a Jubilee Year to commemorate the birth of the French mystic, author, and doctor of the church. This past January 8, the Holy Doors of the Basilicas of Lisieux and of Alençon were opened simultaneously, marking the beginning of the Year. The Bishop of Bayeux and Lisieux, Monsignor Habert, presided over the act. In the afternoon, the first mass for pilgrims was celebrated.

Fr. Thierry Hénault-Morel, rector of the Shrine of Alençon (Thérèse’s hometown), explains that “every two years, UNESCO pays tribute to personalities who, each in their own way, have worked and continue to work in the fields of education, the promotion of women, culture, science and the building of peace.” (Read more.)

Share

Damages

 From Breitbart:

The nearly 50,000 Afghans whom President Joe Biden’s administration housed on five United States military bases for months through 2021 and early 2022 cost taxpayers almost $189 million in damages to the facilities, a federal report reveals. Following the U.S. Armed Forces’ withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, Biden opened a refugee pipeline that has resettled more than 86,000 Afghans in American communities — many without having been screened or interviewed in person beforehand. Tens of thousands of those Afghans were housed initially at eight U.S. military bases, including 50,000 who were specifically placed at Fort Bliss in Texas, Fort Lee in Virginia, Fort McCoy in Wisconsin, Fort Pickett in Virginia, and Camp Atterbury in Indiana. Officials at those five U.S. bases, according to a Department of Defense Inspector General (DOD IG) report, noted nearly $189 million in damages which taxpayers will have to foot the bill to repair. (Read more.)

Share

Foot Warmers

 How people kept their feet warm in cold houses and coaches. From Home Things Past:

The Dutch used to be known for a certain kind of foot warmer found alongside other household furniture: a pierced box with an earthenware or metal pot holding glowing coals inside. They called it a stoof (stove) and you can see it in countless paintings from the 17th century on, like this one by Cornelis de Man c1670.

These foot stoves were also common in northern Germany. A stone slab was an alternative to the wooden top with holes. Similar foot-warming “boxes” were known in other countries too: see this French chaufferette. In Britain open fires were the most popular way of warming yourself indoors and foot warmers were not much used in the home, but some craftspeople had an earthenware pot of coals for heating their workshop, and this might be placed under a footstool. Foot warmers are visible in the paintings, but they could be completely hidden under a long skirt or cloak. They were used more by women than men. Did men’s boots keep them warmer? (Read more.)

 

From Jane Austen's World:

Bed warmers like the one depicted in the image above were made of brass tin or lined copper, and had long wood handles. The round metal pan was hinged so that it could be easily filled with hot coals. The pan would then be moved gently back and forth between the sheets to warm the beds on cold evenings. These bed warmers gradually fell into disuse in the 19th century after hot water bottles made of rubber became affordable and widespread.

Four poster beds

The thick hangings that surrounded a four poster or tester bed kept cold draughts out and body heat in. Popular since before the Elizabethan age, their design changed with the times: ornate in the 16th century, plain in the 18th century, and a rich but restrained neoclassical style in the 19th century. The bed and bedding materials varied according to wealth. Luxurious hanging made of velvet or brocade were often worth more than the wood bed frame, and in times past the rich would take the hangings with them as they traveled, leaving the wood bed behind. As improvements in insulation and draught exclusion were made, the four poster bed became more decorative than functional. (Read more.)

 

From Foot Warmers:

The stove or stoof in Dutch used a pierced wooden box with a metal or earthenware pot to hold the coals inside. This type of stove was also common in northern Germany. The Dutch also made foot stoves of elaborately ornamented brass. Some intricately decorated examples with carvings and piercings may occasionally be found.

By the eighteenth century, the use of foot stoves with a pierced tin and wood construction was essential in America, but sometimes it could prove to be dangerous. A third of the First Church of Roxbury was destroyed by the use of foot stoves in 1744. This use of foot stoves was prohibited after the fire.

The use of the word stow was often used the colonist's inventory prior to 1800. Agnes Lobdell of Boston suffered a fire 1760 and reports one of her losses as "1 Tin Stow" with a value of two pounds and five shillings. Easter Tinkom mentions "1 Stow & frame"; Rachel La Mottee, "Stove & pan," at three pounds ten shillings; and Jonathan Mason, "1 Tin Stove & Case." (Read more.)

Share

The Princess of Wales: Fashion Defined

 

 

From Tatler:

The Princess of Wales is lauded for her incredible sense of style, perfectly mixing a traditional royal wardrobe with contemporary flair. A champion of both British designers and the high street, she seems to grow more sartorially confident with every year that goes by. As she celebrates her 41st birthday, here are the looks that made Kate a true style icon. (Read more.)

Share