All Dressed Up - 1900 Style

Did they have a telephone? Was there running water? What kind of buggy did they use? What did they wear? The questions I face every time I sit down to write are never ending. Finding the answers is one of the joys of writing historical fiction.

What women wore at the turn of the 20th Century is at the top of my list since one of my characters is a seamstress. I got help on this topic from a trip to the Living History Farms 1900 Farm and to the Iowa State Historical Society.  Another resource came to me recently in the form of a new social media friend.

I'm delighted to be guest blogging today at J.P. Lane's blog All Dressed Up. I share some of my thoughts about 'stepping back in time' through my writing. I hope you'll come on over and take a look.

While you're there, look at some of her other posts. Joan delves into the intricacies of fashion going back hundreds of years. Her discoveries are fascinating. No doubt I'll be asking her to take a look at what I write about fashion in the WWI era.

Author J.P. Lane is a former fashion designer who also has 20 years of writing under her belt. She was an Addy award-winning copywriter for the Miami Herald's marketing division and has been published in other leading Florida publications. In her thriller, The Tangled Web, (due to be republished in May) she takes you behind the postcard facade of the Caribbean to reveal a horrifyingly corrupt underworld visitors never see.

If you'd like to know more about Joan:
Follow her on twitter http://twitter.com/jpLANEauthor
Follow her blog http://jplanewrites.blogspot.com

Playing with paper dolls

Paper dolls. My sisters and I played with them when we were little. I don't remember who the characters were, but it was great fun to change the clothes over and over, imagining the dolls in different settings. Paper dolls. A great way to spend hours as a child.

Fast forward to today. One of my favorite shows this year is Downton Abbey.  This terrific Masterpiece Classic series on PBS has held me spellbound, fueling my passion of the moment for all things WWI.  Sadly, the season finale was on Sunday.

What would I do until season 3 airs? As it turns out, someone has answered the question. Play with paper dolls! The enterprising folks at Vulture have created paper dolls for the key Downton Abbey characters.

These paper dolls are a hoot. The Dowager Countess, for instance, includes six changeable faces to convey her different expressions. But they are all the same! Likely funny only to those who watch the series.

The idea of paper dolls is perfect. The timing is perfect.  A childhood pleasure meets an adult pleasure. I love it when the stars come into alignment!

We remember them all

The stories we can know from reading cemetery stones are brief but often poignant. Read a stone marking the death of a young man in 1918 or 1942 or 1969 and you may guess this person died in the service of their country. And you wonder about the family they left behind, the life they didn’t get to live, the lives they hoped to ensure others could live.

This Memorial Day is poignant for me, being so far from home. But I’m thinking about all those who have served and are serving our country.

Last Memorial Day, I went home to Jackson County, Iowa. The Spragueville Cemetery, where my folks are buried was dedicating a memorial recognizing all veterans who’d served in all wars.  My dad served in World War II.

It was as pretty a day as you could hope for – blue skies, a breeze that kept the flags waving, peonies in full bloom. My cousin who served in Viet Nam and his wife joined us. Veterans listed on the memorial dated to the Civil War.  I was glad to see so many of my family's friends and neighbors come for the tribute.

This month, we’ve been visiting Italian cemeteries.  We’ve seen many memorials to Italy’s soldiers who died in WWI. Today we saw our first memorial to soldiers who died in WWII. I felt a momentary conflict. Did these men take up arms against the Allies?

And then I realized it didn’t matter. These men left family behind. They didn’t live a full life. They died trying to ensure others could live.

It is Memorial Day. We remember them all.
 

Biking to heaven

We didn’t make it to church yesterday because of the rain. We did penance today, biking half way to heaven to reach a church on a hill.

We’ve been visiting all the churches in this area. Massa Macinaia, San Leonardo, San Giusto. All of these were within easy walking distance.  The one we hadn’t visited yet was one that seemed most intriguing. Built at the peak of a fairly high hill, San Ginese is visible for miles in all directions.

Confined to our house yesterday, we were ready to stretch our legs today, so we mounted our trusty one-speed bikes and headed toward San Ginese. I have not been on a bike with any consistency in years. Getting to the supermarket and back each day this week – a round-trip distance of only a couple of miles – has left my thighs burning. I knew San Ginese would be a challenge.

We asked directions from time to time. The word an elderly Italian woman used repeatedly was ‘lontana,’ which roughly translates to ‘a heck of a long ways.’ And she pointed up hill. She was right.

It took us an hour of riding, pushing, resting and starting again to get the 5-6 kilometers to San Ginese. When I could catch my breath enough to look, I had to acknowledge the views were excellent.

The church was locked, but we toured the grounds to the music of someone practicing the cello in a nearby house. A monument to local soldiers killed in WWI was particularly moving.

The trip back down was much easier – though I should mention that I only have breaks on the front tire so my left hand, as well as my heart, got a workout as I wondered if I’d be able to stop when I needed to.

Half an hour later, we were picking up groceries at the supermarket and for the first time, I biked back to the house without feeling as though my legs would burn up.

Perhaps that is my reward for biking half way to heaven.

Ciao!

Last WWI Doughboy Dies

Frank Buckles, the last of the World War I doughboys, died on Sunday. He was 110.  Buckles drove an Army ambulance in France in 1918. 

Buckles was only 17 when he enlisted, lying about his age to get to serve. An astounding 4.7 million Americans served in the Allied armed forces between April 6, 1917, when the United States entered World War I, and the Armistice of Nov. 11, 1918.

When President Wilson and the United States Congress declared war after several years of a non-intervention policy, our standing Army numbered only about 100,000. The National Guard numbered around 120,000. The National Defense Act of 1916 enabled the country to increase armed forces numbers through the first nationwide draft.

Going from nothing to something was a monumental effort. And it was done on one day - June 5, 1917. All men between the ages of 18 and 31 were required to show up at a makeshift draft office on June 5 and sign up for military service.

The government was not sure that everyone would show up as required by the Act, so they closed schools and businesses, creating somewhat of a party atmosphere. One day did not yield enough men for the war. Two additional dates that year signed up a wider range of ages.

I've been interested in this because my grandfather was one of those men.  He received a deferment because he was the sole support of his wife and child. I still have the paperwork he received granting the deferment.