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LollygagMy mother was almost always in motion. She organized closets, making neat stacks of hangers, clothes, towels, and sheets as she assessed what could stay and what needed to go. In a sink full of hot water she soaked the labels off used peanut butter jars in case the jars were needed for a future project. She dusted the books in the living room with a feather duster, bringing in a step stool to reach the top shelves. Sometimes my sister, Melissa, and I went with her to run errands, especially in the summer when school was out. We had skinned knees and sunburned arms and our straight hair was pulled up off our necks in ponytails. Our mother had short hair and long legs and she walked quickly everywhere she went. If our dad was with us, he would tease her and ask, “Where’s the fire?” Depending on her mood, Mom might laugh and shake her head, or she might press her lips together and walk faster and Melissa and I would slip out of our flip flops trying to keep up. “Come on girls, don’t lollygag,” Mom would say, looking back to make sure we were coming. “Lollygag,” we would whisper to each other, giggling. “Lollygag, lollipop.” Occasionally, we went with her to Dr. Sacco’s office, where she worked part-time. She worked through her break, eating apple slices with one hand and writing notes in a chart with the other. We sat in the break room eating sour cream and onion potato chips and watching her. On her way out, she’d remind us to wash our hands when we were finished.
One day when I was sixteen and Melissa was fourteen, our mother slept late. It was the first time we could remember her staying in bed. When she finally came into the kitchen, she was still wearing her robe and she looked like a faded version of herself. She was breathing differently, like all of a sudden it was something hard to do. Later that morning, Melissa and I went with her to see Dr. Sacco. Along the front sidewalk to the office entrance, there was the smell of freshly-laid pine straw and we walked slowly, all of us. They took our mother back right away, muttering about how they’d never heard of her being sick before. Since everyone there knew us, Melissa and I got to wait in the lab instead of in the waiting room. We watched the nurses put little glass tubes in a machine that twirled around and when it was still, they pushed orange rubber tops into the tubes with their fingers covered in thin gloves. “Do you think that’s blood in there?” Melissa asked. I shook my head. “I don’t even want to know.” The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
So what if you're not the best?By Fay Funk QuailBellMagazine.com I was thirteen the first time I saw a woman perform in a rock band. It was D’arcy Wretzky, the original bass player for the Smashing Pumpkins. I had liked the Smashing Pumpkins for a few months already, but I had never thought to look at pictures of them until I became bored one day and did a Google image search. In those images I saw someone who looked like me, doing something I never thought I could do. It caused a paradigm shift. The Smashing Pumpkins went from a band I liked to my absolute favorite band. I also became very interested in female bass players, and spent many hours searching for bands with girls on bass. Once I found the Pixies, with their prominent and distinct bass lines, everything clicked into place. I asked my dad for a bass guitar and had my first bass lesson on January 2, 2005. As I delved deeper to learn more about the bass player who started it all for me, I found that not everyone liked D’arcy as much as me. Anger and resentment were frequently present, but the most painful of all was the dismissal. She was a mediocre bass player at best. She didn’t even play bass on the recordings for Siamese Dream--Billy Corgan played them because he could do it in fewer takes. She was boring, mundane, and only in the band because she was beautiful. She was entirely replaceable, and contributed nothing of value to the band. At the time those dismissals really bothered me. She couldn’t be useless—she was the person who inspired me to play. Was I aspiring to uselessness by aspiring to be like her? It didn’t feel that way, but everyone was telling me that was the case. It hurt a lot.
Those criticisms don’t bother me anymore. It’s not that they aren’t true; it’s just that I realized they aren’t really bad things. The criticisms against D’arcy are really just a description of the way bass players often are. The vitriol aimed at D’arcy is the result of intense internalized misogyny present in rock music, and not because of her failings as a bassist. There are a million and one mediocre male bass players out there, both in bands that are successful and bands that are not. D’arcy was never the most dynamic person in the band. The same is true most bass players; it’s a personality trait so common in bassists that it has become a stereotype. It’s true that D’arcy didn’t play bass on Siamese Dream, but it’s also true that James Iha didn’t play guitar for the same reasons. I’ve never seen him called talentless because of that. D’arcy is the everyman of bass players, except that she’s a woman, and a strikingly beautiful woman during her time in the Smashing Pumpkins. That was the hardest criticism to shake, that she was only in the band for her looks. She was a mediocre bass player, so why pick her out of the scores of other mediocre bass players if not because of her beauty? I don’t doubt that her beauty was a benefit, but I also know it was not her only contribution. Anyone who has ever been in a band knows that a lot more than musical ability goes into making that band work. Billy Corgan described D’arcy as the “moral authority” of the band, providing a sense of integrity that was fundamental to their success. I don’t think he was just saying that, either. D’arcy left the band in 1999, and the Pumpkins only lasted for one more year after. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
A Graveyard Beneath the SanctuaryBy Misty Thomas QuailBellMagazine.com Monumental Church on East Broad Street in Richmond, Virginia was once the old Richmond Theatre. But in 1811, one of the worst urban disasters in the history of the United States happened here—or at least one of the worst to happen in the middle of a stage play. On December 26, 1811, a fire broke out in the theatre and ended up killing a total of 76 people, 72 of those on the spot! The church was actually built over the massive grave site of those that were burned in the fire. Architect Robert Mills built and designed the church as a monument for their lost lives. This church now serves as a historical landmark, a church, and a crypt that many say is incredibly haunted. The victims who lost their lives in the fire of 1811 are still buried in the church today. Their remains are now enclosed in beautiful mahogany boxes that were walled into the crypt of the church basement. You would think with so many remains of victims of the fire, there would be legends and ghost stories. And there are! There have been quite a few ghost stories associated with the Richmond Theatre fire of 1811. Many church workers and paranormal experts have confessed to having eerie experiences at Monumental Church. There have been voices heard coming from the balcony of the church and unexplained noises as well. Many of the doors slam shut without anyone being around them and some of the doors will open and close freely. Church workers have told stories of leaving their tools in one spot, only to have the tools disappear and reappear in a completely different place. Some workers have heard heavy footsteps in the church and it is said that some of them were so scared, that they never returned to Monumental Church ever again. Caretakers have mentioned that motion detectors have gone off at random times without a person in sight. After searching all over the web, I found out that a paranormal team was sent in and featured on GoodReads.com. The team of experts explored Monumental Church and set up audio and video recorders. They came back with some audio of an unidentified woman saying “Come up here.” Monumental Church is still open for tours and weddings have also been held there. It does have a very creepy feel to it. It is a crypt after all. I’d be surprised by anyone who didn't get chills down their spine just from stepping inside the doors of this hollowed ground. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Dark Florals and Other Witchy ThingsBy The Fashion Fairy QuailBellMagazine.com Double, double, toil and trouble. Summer has culturally, if not scientifically, ended. What's that stirring in our Quail Bell cauldron? Why the perfect potion of deliciously wicked fall fashion! Here are our top picks for this season's gothy trends: 1. Dark florals Floral playsuit, Topshop Floral combat boots, Francesca's Collection Flower Power leggings, Forever 21
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New Web Series Makes Historical Interpretation CoolBy QB History Buff QuailBellMagazine.com A couple of days ago, Jezebel.com posted about actress/comedian Azie Mira Dungey's former life as a historical re-enactor at Mount Vernon, George Washington's famed estate in Alexandria, Virginia, and how it's inspired her new web series, “Ask a Slave.” All of the scenarios in the videos are based on real experiences. Check out “Ask a Slave” on YouTube.
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Ding-dong, the rapist's dead.By Brainy Bird QuailBellMagazine.com Just the facts, ma'am? Cleveland kidnapper Ariel Castro hanged himself with a bed sheet, committing suicide in his prison cell. And so the man who imprisoned three women for a decade could not tolerate prison himself. Some people say good riddance, while others say he deserved to suffer longer, and others still don't know what to say at all. Wikipedia has a whole page called “History of suicide,” where it mentions some famous folks who committed suicide and talks about the perception of the act. In Classical Greece and Rome, suicide was considered no biggie or at least that it was “acceptable under certain circumstances,” as the University of Missouri put it. Yet we live in a Judaeo-Christian world (happy Rosh Hashanah, y'all). In the JC moral code, suicide is not okay. The philosophy is, you've got to repent, sinner, and only God decides when it's time for you to go.
This suicide was not imaginary. It really happened. Nobody on The Quail Bell Crew is nostalgic for the days of Hammurabi's Code, either. An eye for an eye, our tail feathers! But Ariel Castro's story as a torturer, his one-thousand year sentence, and his dramatic ending are all otherworldly. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Last Nail in Zooey's CoffinBy Christine Stoddard QuailBellMagazine.com I finally caved in and watched “New Girl” because my inner pop culture nerd held a gun to my head. Of course, for that metaphor to work, I suppose this little nerd creature had the barrel of her pistol pressed against the inside of my skull. Or something. Regardless, I was tired of having “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” as my only reference for the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope. In fact, that one doesn't even count because Kate Winslet's character Clementine spurns the trope with her line: "Too many guys think I'm a concept, or I complete them, or I'm gonna make them alive. But I'm just a fucked-up girl who's lookin' for my own peace of mind. Don't assign me yours." Clearly I'd seen “Breakfast at Tiffany's,” but I wanted to watch something made in or after 2007 when film critic Nathan Rabin first coined the “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” term. Here are Rabin's original and often quoted words:
In typical 'me' fashion, I'm coming into the discussion a little too late because I don't tend to watch TV shows during their current season. Yet this is also the perfect time to dredge up the dead six-year-old from her grave. According to everyone from New York Magazine to The Atlantic, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope has died. So it's a good thing that death intrigues me.
First, here's a quick re-cap of why so many people dislike the trope and therefore characters like Jess (Zooey Deschanel) in “New Girl.” The blog, Bucking the Wave, perhaps put it most concisely in a review of “500 Days of Summer”: “These women are always happy and quirky, have no real lives of their own, and exist solely to push depressed men to do things and save them.” These characters suffer from a savior complex, or delusions of grandeur that are ultimately condescending. These women are condescending because they think they can “save” people, but the term is mostly condescending toward them. A woman's purpose should not be a man. Hasn't feminism taught us at least that much? The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
A Ghostly Woofy and a Dead Little GirlBy Misty Thomas QuailBellMagazine.com One of the greatest places that I have discovered in my many explorations in Richmond, Virginia is in Oregon Hill—the famous Hollywood Cemetery. Hollywood Cemetery is the final resting place of many famous people. There are presidents, generals, soldiers, historians, and governors buried there, and even a few children and small family pets. One of the greatest urban legends in Richmond stems from this cemetery, the story of the Richmond Vampire. However, there is another one: the tale of the cast iron dog. Hollywood Cemetery is one of the most popular places to visit in Richmond. I have been here quite a few times since I first moved here, almost six months ago. Hollywood opened in 1849 and is on over 135 acres of land. People are still being buried there today, but it has an incredible historic background as far as its inhabitants go. In the 1860’s, it is said that there was a young girl who would walk by a store on Broad Street every day. There was a cast iron dog outside of the store that she loved. It was rumored that she would pet the dog, hug it, and even talk to it as she would pass by. She treated the cast iron dog as if it were real and some say she genuinely did love this dog made of iron. The little girl died when she was two or three years old (stories say both) of scarlet fever. Most of the stories in Richmond history say that the dog was placed by her gravesite in Hollywood Cemetery by the store owners. They knew how much she loved the dog. The store owners thought that it was only appropriate for the dog that she loved so much to guard and protect her at her final resting place. At the time, there was a shortage of iron so this was considered quite the grand gesture. The legend is that the dog protects the little girl and watches her grave. There have been many people who have said that they have seen the dog's eyes watch them as they get closer to the site. Many have even claimed that they have seen it change position. There have also been a few folks that have heard it barking at night and even seen it walking around the cemetery. Perhaps all of these stories are true or they're all elaborate tales to help further protect the little girl’s grave. One thing is for sure, the dog and its many tales have definitely caused quite a stir. Check out Quail Bell's documentary on Richmond's cemetery, Richmond's Dead and Buried. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Bluer than velvet was the night{{ Outfit: 1960's blue velvet mini dress; old Chuck Taylors; mysterious fishnets }} The weather here went all crisp 'n' cool a couple of weeks ago, but I'm still in a summer mood. My one (cold) comfort is the luxe textiles I can pull out now; velvet is certainly the most dreamy fabric in the world! I'm afraid my camera lens was pretty dirty when I snapped these. If you can live with the spectral effects, so can I.
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The Battle of Business in the Appalachian PlateauBy Sidney Shuman QuailBellMagazine.com I was born and raised in a small town of 8,000 by the name of Abingdon in Southwest Virginia. Abingdon is the seat of Washington County and was my home for my entire childhood until my departure for college. It was all I ever knew as home. Originally named Wolf Hills by Daniel Boone, Abingdon holds a unique charm because of its vast history and ability to keep its historic spirit alive, even though it's feeling the effects of globalization like any other place. Abingdon offers activities such as horse and carriage rides, war reenactments, and ghost tours. It is home to many landmarks, including the Barter Theatre, the state theatre of Virginia; the Martha Washington Inn, a former college that is now one of the finest hotels in the area; and the Virginia Creeper Trail, a hiking trail made from a former railroad route that links to the Appalachian Trail. Abingdon hosts the Virginia Highlands Festival, an arts and crafts festival that lasts two weeks at the end of July/beginning of August, and has been an annual event for 65 years now. These main attractions mixed with the nostalgia I have for spending my childhood in Abingdon make me proud to call it home. Abingdon has followed many food and entertainment trends as I have grown up. First, there was the free WiFi coffee house, Zazzy’z, which is still thriving today. When cupcakeries became trendy, next thing Abingdon knew, Babycakes Eatery was in the middle of town. Now, the craze of microbreweries everywhere brought has brought about a new hotspot: Wolf Hills Brewing Company. Wolf Hills features many locally brewed beers, as well as live entertainment most evenings. Because Abingdon is such a small town, it's a great place for business owners to test out mega trends, as long as they're the first to do so in the area, have the proper strategy, and market themselves efficiently. Abingdon's size also lets business people network easily just about anywhere there's a group of people. Economic trends have shifted in a contradictory way since the days when I was growing up in Abingdon. The national embrace of the "local" movement became popular in Abingdon, too, with farmer’s markets and small businesses promoting Abingdon’s storybook image. This image, however, is being tarnished by the overwhelming sprawl of corporations and major businesses. Abingdon has multiple McDonald’s, Subways, and Dairy Queens throughout a town that only has three Interstate exits. I see this not only in my small hometown, but in many areas in the United States.
Cities and towns are becoming less personal and travel is less important to some because many places have similar appearances and therefore hold less novelty. There is a constant battle between these two movements—the local one and the corporate one—and the battle has finally reached the small town level. Abingdon has kept up with localizing megatrends, but still struggles to lure in tourists. The town shortened the Highlands Festival from two weeks to one week for the first time this year due to lack of interest in artisans and the area overall. This is one of the events for which my town is best known and the fact that interest in such a unique local movement is unsettling to say the least. Although the return to local movements is an important economic trend to consider, it is impossible for a small town like Abingdon to battle a driving force such as (sub)urban sprawl. As for Abingdon and other small towns like it—following megatrends mixed with what makes the place unique and proper promotion will keep both locals and tourists mutually interested. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Venetian Glass PensI love words. I love lines. I love the stories you can weave into books and drawings with a thousand swishes of a pen. I love typography and calligraphy and making sure that words and pictures get mixed together into a beautiful mess of this thing called "art." I'm the sort of person who collects pens and art supplies and actually uses them all. I'm also the sort of person who is inordinately fascinated by ultra cool trinkets, gadgets, and gizmos—especially historical ones. Last summer, I was being my usual procratinator self and browsing Etsy even though I had no money to spend. I found something that made me stare at the screen in astonished delight at the pure existence of the thing: Guys. GUYS. It's a glass pen—literally, a pen made out of glass. Including the nib. This beautiful piece of craftsmanship is made by hand by the Thai artisan J. Nagadhana, and this is her shop.
These pens originated in Venice in the 17th century. They were favored not only for their beauty but for their superiority over other dip pens (this was, of course, in the age of quills—there was no such thing as a ballpoint pen or even a reloadable fountain pen). The nibs are made from twisted ribbed glass rods, and these grooves mean that the pen is capillary fed. This means that the ink can be loaded up to the handle and the writer only has to dip the pen into the inkwell once every few lines or even pages! The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Filling up Kindles Instead of Bookshelves
-- Jo Henry, director of Bowker Market Research Bowker, Pew Research, the Book Industry Study Group (BISG), and other book market trackers continue to document the relentless growth of ebooks, along with the parallel decline in print book sales, and the changing attitudes of book buyers and readers. The study that gets the most attention—because it’s big, in the number of book buyers surveyed, and it’s comprehensive in the range of questions it asks—is Bowker’s U.S. Book Consumer Demographics and Buying Behaviors Annual Review. The latest study, based on information from almost 70,000 Americans who purchased books in 2012, is available in its exhaustive entirety from Bowker for $999, but the findings most important to writers, publishers, and booksellers have been reported piecemeal in various publications and on book-related websites. Here’s what I’ve gleaned from different sources:
By the end of 2012, online retailers held 44% of the overall book market, up from 39% in 2011. Bookstore chains held less than 20% of the market in 2012. Ebooks grew to 11% of the market, up from 7% in 2011. Readers who own ebook reading devices have radically altered their book buying habits. By the end of last year, 80% of purchases made by these buyers were digital, up from 74% in 2011. They prefer ebooks over mass market paperbacks. They made 76% of all their book purchases, print and digital, from online retailers. (Tablets, by the way, are rapidly replacing dedicated e-readers as the devices of choice, according to the latest news on that market.) Women still buy more books than men, and the imbalance is growing. Women made 58% of book purchases in 2012, up from 55% in 2011. Hardcovers were the only category in which men led in purchases. At the end of 2012, 53% of book buyers said the state of the economy did not make them cut back on their spending. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Beware of the fangs!By Misty Thomas QuailBellMagazine.com Editor's Note: Quail Bell first ran a story about the Richmond Vampire in 2011. Check it out here. After I had heard about the Church Hill Tunnel's famous collapse, I did countless hours of research. I looked into the first accounts of the people that were interviewed at the time. There are so many stories of the horrors that they saw and there are a lot of people who had asked me if I had heard of the Richmond Vampire when I first moved to Virginia from Atlanta. Of course, being that I have only been here close to six months, I hadn’t. Then I began to learn more about this so-called Richmond Vampire. Here's a refresher if you didn't read my story this past weekend: The Church Hill Tunnel collapsed on October 2, 1925. It collapsed on a locomotive and quite a few people were killed and buried under the wreckage and rubble. Amidst all of the wreckage, onlookers say that they saw a man escape the collapsing tunnel. His muscular body was covered in blood and it looked as if his skin was peeling off of his body. He had burns all over him and his teeth looked like bloody fangs. Soon after he escaped the tunnel, onlookers say they saw the "vampire" run into the Hollywood Cemetery and hide in the mausoleum of one W.W. Poole, and that is where he rested or died. The true story of this man is that he was a locomotive fireman named Benjamin Mosby. He was a sturdily built 28-year-old who had been helping to shovel coal into the locomotive. When the tunnel collapsed, he ran out of the wreckage, very burned and scarred. His teeth had been knocked out and chipped from the collapse, making them fang-shaped. Mosby ended up getting to Grace Hospital and died there. The legend of Mosby going into Hollywood Cemetery is a bit far-fetched because of 1) the distance between the tunnel and the cemetery, and 2) just how massive his injuries were. I suppose that the onlookers made up this urban legend to have a ghost story of their own to tell later on. Since those days, there have been mentions of noises and orbs around the grave site of W.W. Poole, but no one for sure knows if it is the spirit of this so-called Richmond Vampire or another spirit trying to tell us something. All that we can figure out is that this is a pretty creepy ghost story to tell the small children in your life around Halloween. It will either make them want to go explore Hollywood Cemetery or keep them out! Check out Quail Bell's documentary about the cemeteries of Richmond, Virginia at RVADeadBuried.com. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Let's Talk About SyriaBy Christine Stoddard QuailBellMagazine.com Shakespeare's “Sonnet LX” reminds us that there's finality to everything: “Like as the waves make towards the pebbl'd shore, so do our minutes, hasten to their end.” You just saw your Labor Day weekend come and go, after all. Summer no more. Hotdogs and white pants, begone. Even twerking will eventually fade away, Kansas-style, “dust in the wind,” kaput. But all this talk of Syria should not end—at least not yet—because the matter is not over. As tempting as it may be to remember this as the summer of Daft Punk singles on the radio, push the social history out of your mind for sec. There's some political history in the making right now and one day your grandbabies might ask about it. Grandbabies or no grandbabies, all of us have a responsibility as global citizens to sit up straight and pay attention. Reading The Washington Posts's “9 questions about Syria you were too embarrassed to ask” today reminded me of how easy it is to coast through the day with little to no reflection. Or maybe reflection isn't a problem, but perhaps reflecting on things outside of your immediate reality is. Bank accounts, phone bills, broken appliances, cat vomit on the carpet, whatever. People have always worried about minutiae and today I felt like just another frazzled human being in the history of mankind. I nicked myself pretty badly while shaving; the air-conditioning in the coffeehouse where I had lunch broke; I begrudgingly filled out a stack of researcher's permissions at the library. It wasn't until I headed home at long last that I took a nanosecond to wonder about the world outside of my ever-growing to-do list. Anyone who took high school or freshman psychology probably recalls Maslow's hierarchy of needs. First, we must fulfill our physiological needs, like grabbing grub or signing that darn lease, before we can mentally move on to concerns like safety, like putting locks on the doors of your ugly new apartment. After safety, we think about love and belonging: finding a “bestie,” online dating, wedding drama, blah, blah, blah. After love and belonging, we fret over our self-esteem, e.g., Am I [fill in the blank] enough? Once we've nailed down some sense of self-respect, we can focus on self-actualization.
Self-actualization is the stage where we concentrate on developing ourselves, but that doesn't have to be such a literal endeavor. Developing yourself should involve engaging with your community—locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally to differing degrees, depending on your obligations and priorities. But not engaging on any level with all of these communities is selfish. At the very least, we should all be aware of what's going on in the world. If you don't mind being selfish, consider this: Can you really be your happiest, most creative, most productive self if all you ever do is gaze at your own navel? In middle class America, your physiological needs should be met no problem. That's the privilege of being born to the “right” parents in the “right” country at the “right” time. Usually the same goes for feeling stable and secure. It's those next three levels on the pyramid that are harder to achieve. When your homeland is ravaged by civil war and has been for two years, your concerns are much more primal. Who cares about “Blurred Lines” when your children are starving or your house is a pile of rubble? You'd have to be insane to think about signing up for yoga class when rebel groups are kidnapping, raping, and otherwise torturing your neighbors. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Welcome to Club MedBy Sarah Sullivan QuailBellMagazine.com In the basement of the University of Virginia’s Claude Moore Medical Library, past the silently cramming students and thick tomes of medical texts, is one of the university’s hidden treasures: the medical history museum. In a school known for its collection of historical objects pertaining to Charlottesville and Thomas Jefferson, the museum offers a refreshing array of exhibits ranging from ancient surgical instruments to Renaissance anatomical texts. For the medical or historical enthusiast, it’s genuinely worth a visit—most importantly because you can directly read the medical texts. A little somethin' from Claude Moore—the UVA Medical School Class of 1867 The museum focuses primarily on historical medical texts, including several late medieval texts published as early as 1493. Several of the texts are small, while others are massive bound works two feet long weighing in at over eighteen pounds. One is a copy of Andreas Vesalius’s groundbreaking work on human anatomy; another deals with Elizabethan-era methods of handling plague. Along with texts, the museum contains numerous medical artifacts. There are several exact replicas of ancient Roman obstetrical tools, which were procured by UVA staff during WWII and oddly resemble modern birth tools used today. One of the most sobering items in the museum is an early twentieth-century iron lung, preserved from the days of terrifying polio outbreaks that left children dependent on mechanical ventilation. And it wouldn’t be a UVA museum without a terrific collection of local medical history. A recent exhibit focused on 19th century price fixing among Virginia doctors in 1848, which displayed the blatant racism evident at the time; delivery of an African-American baby cost significantly less than that of a Caucasian one. Another exhibit focused on nineteenth-century medical springs, believed to cure a variety of ailments. Yet another nineteenth-century text chronicles the daily medical log of a doctor who regularly used bloodletting, purgatives, and questionable medicines when treating patients. There aren’t many museums focusing solely on medicine; while many Virginia museums include early or Civil War medicine in their exhibits, it’s tough to find somewhere anywhere that focuses exclusively on the history of patient treatment. So if you’re ever looking for a medical museum that spans the millennia, give UVA’s a try. The UVA Claude Moore Health Sciences Library historical exhibits are open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Scrapes on My CarBy Luna Lark QuailBellMagazine.com Scarlett Johansson is one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood—and she has cellulite. Most women do. Miss Scarlett is human, who knew? And real, unadulterated, pre-Photoshop human flesh is beautiful because it is authentic and it is authentic because it is flawed. Life experience helps you recognize the beauty of a blemish. One of my favorite celebrations of cellulite came from Go Kaleo on March 6:
See, the media isn't very grown-up. And as much as I like Gerber baby food (truth) and Hello Kitty (also truth), I am grateful to be a grown-up. Adulthood has allowed me to gain all sorts of insights. That's why I'm not too bummed out about my scratched up car.
Once, I, too, abhorred cellulite. I cringed at the sight of myself in shorts and short skirts. That was before I accepted that no matter how much I exercised, I'd probably always have cellulite. Why? Because I'm a human and female humans in particular can't expect a bunch of fancy creams to get rid of all their dimples. These dimples are here to stay, just like the scratches on my car. I shouldn't complain, either, because those dimples remind me of my body's healthy fat content, fat that keeps me warm when it's cold and alive when I'm sick. My car has scratches because I actually drive it. It doesn't loaf about all day. I work that baby. In four months, I've put about 7,000 miles on it and it's nowhere near being put out to pasture. I usually drive it somewhere in the morning and somewhere in the evening and then take it for a trip on the weekend. Sometimes I even drive it in my dreams. This car has whisked me away to beaches and mountains and cities alike. With all that driving, it's no shock that I've already gotten a few pebbles in its horseshoes, so to speak. Once, on a steamy June evening, I scraped the side of it on a tombstone that dated back to the 1800s. I admit that my immediate reaction was to pity the car and only afterwards inspect the tombstone for damage. Instead of screaming, “Stellaaaaa!”, I was screaming “Historyyyyy!” (All's well in the tombstone department. I don't think a zombie's going to chase after me any time soon. At least not for this minor infraction.) The first month I owned my car, I wanted to keep it pristine. I even made a promise to myself. Then I snapped that promise's neck. And now my car has cellulite. But, hey, so does Scarlett Johansson. Both are beautiful. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
A Literary Comic for Our Literary FriendsI always get really excited when I discover artists who draw literary inspired comics. One of my more recent findings is Incidental Comics by Grant Snider, which made my heart nearly explode into tiny little fuzzy balls of happiness. Seriously, how awesome is Snider’s work? He does quirky and comedic caricatures for themes related to books, art, and even roller coasters! My pick of the day has got to be this work titled Stray Books. Why? Because it reminds us that books are friends which never go away. And even though it's over now, happy Friendship Month! (Because a belated wish is better than none.)
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The Sparkle in the Ho-humEditor's Note: Ever wanted to look inside of the mind of a crafter? Well, once again, we make that possible: I have taken a real notion to be working with fabric recently. I decided to make a fabric book as I have seen so many gorgeous ones on the Internet and always wanted one. I dont have a sewing machine so I made this fabric book with needle and thread (plus fabric glue). It was fun and I do love it, even if it's not as accomplished as some of the wonderful ones I've seen elsewhere. I have added some essential oils to it. too, so that it smells good when being handled. I can't show you Quail Bell(e)s all the pages as some are reserved for a design team piece using "Artistic Stamper" stamps. (You will spot a few of the number stamps stamped on to fabric throughout the book.). My calico and the "new" lace all came from Calico Crafts, as did the buttons. The strips of silk ribbon are from The Artistic Stamper. The rest of the book is made from vintage and reclaimed fabric and lace from my own little collection.
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A Real Life Poltergeist or Urban Legend?By Misty Thomas QuailBellMagazine.com When I first heard about the tunnel that goes underneath Jefferson Park and Richmond, Virginia's Church Hill neighborhood, I could not stop thinking about it. Every day since I was told about the tunnel, I would get online and do research, read books, and try to find any other information on it that I could. I read a book by Walter S. Griggs, Jr. that should have taken me a month, in about a week. In the beginning of the book, he speaks of how he could not stop thinking about the tunnel when he had first of it, too, and how it consumed him in his everyday life. I was beginning to think the same for myself and I still am.
For those unaware of the Church Hill Tunnel disaster, I’ll explain briefly. The tunnel was built in the early 1870’s by the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad Company. The plan for the tunnel was for it to connect the trains from the docks of the James River to 17th street. The average Richmonder however, did not know that the tunnel was being built under already unstable ground. When the construction began, the crew found many fossils, bones, and teeth of marine monsters dating back to pre-historic times. Despite landslides and collapses, the company continued building. Lives were lost almost every day during construction, but the worst of these disasters was in 1925 when the tunnel completely collapsed on a locomotive and a few flat cars, killing at least four people, perhaps more. The tunnel was sealed shut for safety reasons. When I heard that this tunnel was under about 4,000 feet of my neighborhood, Church Hill, I could not stop thinking about this was some crazy, real life version of a Poltergeist film! It is incredibly interesting to me that this neighborhood was built pretty much on top of a burial ground, so to speak. As I began to become more and more intrigued by my neighborhood, I decided to do more research about the urban legends, if any that have come from this tunnel and it’s collapsing. I read of residents near and around the tunnel hearing the slight whistle of a locomotive underneath the ground and light screams that could possibly be the souls of the people that were trapped and killed inside of the tunnel. Apparently, there is a lot of supernatural activity that happens around the tunnel entrance and exit in October. Some witnesses have even seen a man trying to get in or out of the tunnel, perhaps to try and save the locomotive. It is sad and incredibly frightening to think that there are souls captured underneath my neighborhood. In my life, I have been to some very haunted cities and I have now added Richmond very close behind New Orleans as far as being terrifying goes. But the greatest urban legend that I have learned from doing research on the Church Hill Tunnel is about the Richmond Vampire. That, however, is a whole other story I'll be sure to tell you soon. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
MythBusters: Fashion History EditionMyth: Only lewd women wore underwear before the 20th century. Well, it depends on what you consider underwear. If this is what you consider underwear: Then no, women didn't wear underwear like that before the 20th century. But if this is what you consider underwear: 1830s Undergarments from The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City Then, yes, women have been wearing underwear for thousands of years! Before industrialization and mass production, clothing was extremely expensive. Not only was fabric time-consuming to produce, the making of the garments themselves was a time-consuming process. People didn't have a million pieces of clothing like we do today. (That's why folks didn't have walk-in closets way back when, if at all!) Colorfast dyes, i.e., dyes that won't wash away, are a relatively new invention, having only been around for a couple hundred years. So clothing was not washed very often to preserve the color, and also to save the textile from too much wear. Furthermore, clothes had to be protected from the grime of the human body. Something needed to be worn directly against the skin, something that would absorb sweat and oils and could be washed regularly. And, after shaped silhouettes came in style, women needed something to mold their outerwear into the correct, fashionable shape. Thus, underwear was very important. Undergarments were almost always white, and could be washed and changed regularly. Underwear changed through the ages. Ancient women tied bands of cloth around their breasts for support, a very (very) early form of the bra. The base garment for all women since the Middle Ages has been, until fairly recently, the chemise or shift, a plainly cut, white garment that fit close to the body. The historic equivalent of an undershirt, really. At various times, women have also had bloomer-like garments, which fit around each leg and connected around the waist. It's important to note, though, that these garments were always crotchless to make going to the bathroom easier. As the years went by, women started adding petticoats and shaping garments and padding in order to achieve the "correct" silhouette of the era. In fact, the most important part of an historic garment is the underwear, as that is what gives the garment the correct shape. That's why today's women love Spanx! |
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