19 January 1596: Walter Hay, a goldsmith, brought up on charges per the Elgin Kirk sessions for playing bowls and golf (obviously an athletic enthusiast) on a Sunday when he should have been attending to the sermons in the kirk. Five pounds and a promise never to do it again. The eldership of the church…
Category: history
Daft Days & Discipline
In these daft days between the Yule and Hogmanay celebrations it’s easy to lose track of time, as Fergusson suggests. He also claims this is the time to enjoy ourselves in all the usual ways: Let mirth abound, let social cheerInvest the dawning of the year;Let blithesome innocence appearTo crown our joy;Nor envy wi sarcastic…
Who is the Claverack Giant?
I am delighted to tell you the Claverack Giant site is now live! You may recall that I received a grant from CREATE to create a digital collage project about the strange cryptozoological past of this small Columbia county hamlet. Our local history has all the usual elements of upstate New York — Mohican history,…
Old Friends
Also at the McManus but a bit different from the art upstairs; though some new ones here, too:
Frida @ the Broad Art Museum
On a short break (thanks Louise) I hied myself over to MSU to see the (relatively new) Broad Art Museum as it was featuring an exhibit on Frida Kahlo. The exhibit included photos and letters, mostly between Frida and her family, although with some of her doctors, too. It was an intimate sort of set…
Empty Met & Heavenly Bodies
Thanks to Bertie, we headed down to hit the Met before hours to enjoy the last day of the Heavenly Bodies exhibit, then ran up to the Cloisters to see the other location. Oddly enough the medieval setting worked well with the fashion inspired by the church. And there was even a good bit of…
Disreputable Magic
My thoughts have turned perhaps inexorably to the intersection of crime and magic in the Middle Ages, as my interests seem to intensify where they overlap. Or it just amuses me as I turn my mind to other topics to exercise different muscles in my head (so to speak). Missing Strange & Norrell (the series;…
Re-Imagining the Olympics
The 2012 Olympics are over. If you weren’t in the UK you might not have been aware of just how transformative these two weeks were. That I’m even talking about it is evidence enough. Like many of my geek and writer friends I’ve often found myself in the position of fighting against the popular attention…
Profiled at Eden Baylee’s Blog & News
I am profiled over at Eden Baylee’s blog today. Drop by and say hello to find out what lurks inside my mind lately. I suppose it’s the usual sort of thing, but Eden has some interesting questions that I have not had in an interview before, so maybe you will learn a few new things…
History Witch: Anglo-Saxon Death
I think the impulse that defines an academic nature is that one responds to difficult moments by turning to the past to see how others have coped with similar times. So still reeling from unexpected grief, I turn to history as I contemplate the ways we deal with the inevitability of parting from those we…