Because of the government shutdown, the places maintained by the National Park Service were closed, so I did not get to revisit Benjamin Franklin’s Printing Press, which was one of the things I had been looking forward to.

But it meant that many of the smaller museums were getting more visitors than they might otherwise have, and it freed up some of our time to see some of those places.

In reverse order, we visited:

The Museum for Art in Wood which was interesting, but also now has a good bit of my money spent in its shop.

I didn’t take any pictures (it was a small space and much was behind glass) but I do recommend visiting if you’re in Philadelphia.

Especially the gift shop.

In the middle was the Independence Seaport Museum.

In addition to historical items related to sailing…

…they had a lot of model ships.

I got twitchy just looking at some of them.

And they also had two ships you could tour: Olympia and Becuna.

Becuna is a 1944 WWII era submarine, and I didn’t feel like being that confined, so we didn’t even consider a tour.

But we did go aboard Olympia, which is a nineteenth-century cruiser that went into service in 1895 and served through the first World War.

It was fascinating.

First and foremost was the relative luxury of the officers’ cabins and mess compared to hammocks and single wooden box the rest of the sailors had. But it was also steam-powered, which meant all the apparatus for running a coal engine. And the giant guns which looked to me like cannon but were labeled as rifles.

I didn’t take any pictures, despite the fact for most of the time we were the only people on the ship, mostly because I was ruminating about the ship as we wandered around. And I got a bit melancholy, thinking of all the war she had seen, and the amount of blood that had been spilled on her decks.

Yet, I recommend the tour, especially in the off-season when there aren’t many people.

The first museum we visited was my favorite: The Science History Institute.

It was delightful.

It had a little bit of everything.

I liked the other two museums but loved The Science History Institute.

One of the things we try to do as much as we can, is to leave our trips as unplanned as possible. This does a couple things: First, it keeps me from fretting about time and what we have and haven’t done etc. If we don’t have a hard timeline, then we can take as much or as little time at places as we want, and if we see something interesting, we can just stop.

One of those places we decided to randomly stop at was the Boyertown Museum of Historic Vehicles.

I am fascinated by old vehicles.

First, I love the way many older cars look.

Secondly, I read a lot of historical mysteries and romances–some of my favorites are those that weren’t historical when they were written (like Arthur Conan Doyle & Agatha Christie).

It’s one thing to read about a doctor’s buggy…

…or a stage coach…

…or a WWI military ambulance.

It’s something else entirely to see that vehicle in person.

To imagine packing all your worldly goods and everything you’d need to build a homestead into a Conestoga wagon and taking off for parts unknown.

Or to be rushing through London streets in a Hansom cab (or even worse, to be thrown from atop a carriage in an accident).

The carriage suddenly jolted violently, knocking her to the floor, and for a split second, it felt as if the whole of it would tip on its side. But after a few terrifying heartbeats, it slammed back down to the road and came to an abrupt stop.

…

Bess’s voice came from the other side of the carriage and Winnefred’s calm disappeared in an instant. Bloody hell, the girl had been thrown from the top of the carriage.
—Nearly a Lady by Alissa Johnson

You observe that you have some splashes on the left sleeve and shoulder of your coat. Had you sat in the centre of a hansom you would probably have had no splashes, and if you had they would certainly have been symmetrical. Therefore it is clear that you sat at the side. Therefore it is equally clear that you had a companion.”
— The Adventure of the Creeping Man by Arthur Conan Doyle

So I was delighted to stumble across this transportation museum and be able to take my time looking at all the different vehicles, and maybe tie them into the stories I’ve read that featured them.

More parallels in recent books.

This time it’s just how hard the British empire was trying to steal tea plants so they could grow tea in India, which they controlled.

I knew about the opium trade, but it was never clear in history lessons that the British empire was flooding China with opium in an attempt to control the country (and thus make money)

Who Speaks for the Damned (2020) C.S. Harris set in England in 1818.

Here we have mention of just how hard the East India company was trying to steal the plants and processes from the Chinese–and the start of the use of opium to try and drug the Chinese into submission.

One of these days the company is going to get its hands on the secret process the Chinese use to make the stuff, along with some seedlings of their precious Camellia sinensis, and then we’ll be able to grow and produce tea ourselves in India.

They’re impossible people to deal with, you know— the Chinese, I mean. They insist we pay for their silks, porcelains, and tea with silver because they have no interest in anything Europe produces. And the one thing we could use to trade with them, opium, they refuse to allow into the country.”

Death in Kew Gardens (Kat Holloway Mysteries, #3) by Jennifer Ashley set in England in 1881

I borrowed this book, so I can’t grab any quotes, but the mystery centers on tea plants. The British empire is growing tea in India, but the finest, most expensive teas, are still controlled by the Chinese.

If an Englishman in China commits a blatant crime—whether against another Englishman or a Chinese—he is tried by a British court, not a Chinese one. If found guilty, he is sent home, out of our reach.”

In both quotes, you can see the blatant racism, and the disdain for the Chinese, and how the British government was overtly trying to subvert the Chinese government.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Day is done, gone the sun,
From the hills, from the lake,
From the sky.
All is well, safely rest,
God is nigh.

Go to sleep, peaceful sleep,
May the soldier or sailor,
God keep.
On the land or the deep,
Safe in sleep.

Love, good night, Must thou go,
When the day, And the night
Need thee so?
All is well. Speedeth all
To their rest.

Fades the light; And afar
Goeth day, And the stars
Shineth bright,
Fare thee well; Day has gone,
Night is on.

Thanks and praise, For our days,
‘Neath the sun, Neath the stars,
‘Neath the sky,
As we go, This we know,
God is nigh.

Taps, by Gen. Daniel Butterfield

I came across an article on how the size of houses has changed over time in the United States. I found it interesting how there was a slow decline until WWII, then the square footage drops for the only time, after which house size skyrockets.

Now this is interesting in and of itself, but I know that my great-grandmother had (IIRC) ten kids, most of whom survived to adulthood (many of whom lived to 90, but that’s another tale), so I was curious as to whether the household size briefly increased once modern medical techniques came to the fore before decreasing.

Interestingly, the data I found didn’t show a bump in the 1900s, just a steady decline. (You can also check the census data.)

So of course, being me, I wanted to see how this data looked.

It turned out to be far more linear than I was expecting, although it did make a nice X.

Now to be clear, we’re looking at household size here, not total population, so that number should include not just children, but parents or grandparents or other extended family members. Which is why I found the steady decline so interesting.

But even more fascinating–and horrifying–is that as households got smaller, the size of the house in which those smaller families live has gotten steadily larger.

Don’t get me wrong–I live in a very small house and there have been many occasions where I desperately wished my kitchen was bigger, or that I had a separate dining room, or that I had another bedroom, or that I had more storage space. But for the most part I like living in a small house.

Which is why I find the increase is house size so bizarre. What on earth do people PUT in these houses? Do people in houses three times as large as my house even see each other over the course of a day?

So that’s one of the things that has been on my mind recently, and now I’ve nattered on about it I can close a bunch of browser tabs.

ADDENDUM the FIRST: The reason there was no household data in 1920 was because apparently the census takers didn’t count large households the same as was done in other years.

Day is done, gone the sun,
From the hills, from the lake,
From the sky.
All is well, safely rest,
God is nigh.

Go to sleep, peaceful sleep,
May the soldier or sailor,
God keep.
On the land or the deep,
Safe in sleep.

Love, good night, Must thou go,
When the day, And the night
Need thee so?
All is well. Speedeth all
To their rest.

Fades the light; And afar
Goeth day, And the stars
Shineth bright,
Fare thee well; Day has gone,
Night is on.

Thanks and praise, For our days,
‘Neath the sun, Neath the stars,
‘Neath the sky,
As we go, This we know,
God is nigh.

Taps, by Gen. Daniel Butterfield

Day is done, gone the sun,
From the hills, from the lake,
From the sky.
All is well, safely rest,
God is nigh.

Go to sleep, peaceful sleep,
May the soldier or sailor,
God keep.
On the land or the deep,
Safe in sleep.

Love, good night, Must thou go,
When the day, And the night
Need thee so?
All is well. Speedeth all
To their rest.

Fades the light; And afar
Goeth day, And the stars
Shineth bright,
Fare thee well; Day has gone,
Night is on.

Thanks and praise, For our days,
‘Neath the sun, Neath the stars,
‘Neath the sky,
As we go, This we know,
God is nigh.

Taps, by Gen. Daniel Butterfield

Just got back from a lovely hike in the woods, and as happens when I hike, I think about things.

Today, one of the things I was considering was the term “Black Friday.”

The other “Black” day of the week that came immediately to mind is:

That’s pretty much the opposite of Black Friday.

So… English is weird.

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory

Chimney Sweeps

Textile Mills

Coal Mines

They say in Harlan County
There are no neutrals there

You’ll either be a union man
Or a thug for J.H. Blair

Today

And that is why, despite all the disappointments, I remain a Democrat.

Thank you, to those who have served, who are currently serving, and to their families.

Thank you.

Being a woman, I have always been aware of sexism and misogyny, and how they shape the roles women take in the world. I’ve thought less, however, of the roles women played historical, assuming (from everything I’ve read and what little I remember of history from school) that female leaders and warriors are rare exceptions.

Although I haven’t recently written as much about it here (with the exceptions here and https://klishis.com/notreally/archives/10970), I’ve been reading a lot about it on Twitter and various blogs. (A good roundup of the science bits can be found here.)

What I can’t decide if whether things are still bad, or whether things are actually getting better, but as things improve more women are willing to step up and relate their stories and name the names of their harassers. My hope is that the incident rate of sexism and harassment is decreasing, but the rate of doing something about it is going up.

With that background, this post was was sparked by a couple things. I read two fantastic online articles: Historically Authentic Sexism in Fantasy and We Have Always Fought’: Challenging the ‘Women, Cattle and Slaves’ Narrative.

Additionally, I recently read two books about women in history. The first, She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth was very good, and the second, The Doctor Wore Petticoats: Women Physicians of the Old West, while interesting, was less well-written.

Both books raise interesting points about the various roles women played in society and how those roles were portrayed by historians, but I think She-Wolves does a much better job pointing this out.

She-Wolves emphasizes time and again how scarce the materials we have about these women—these female leaders and rulers of England—are, and how the views of these women are colored by the agendas of the (male) historians and chronicles who wrote about them.

For instance,

Matilda inherited her father’s commanding temperament, his ability to inspire loyalty, and his political intelligence—but the role she played and the qualities she possessed have been much obscured, then and now, by the preconceptions of the lords she sought to lead and the clerics who wrote her story. “Haughty” and “intolerably proud” are the adjectives indelibly associated with her name, phrases coined in those few months of her life when she tried to exercise power as a monarch in her own right, and repeated by historians ever since. Strikingly, they were never used to describe any male member of her fearsomely domineering family; and they do not fit well with what we know of Matilda in the decades before and after.
…

(T)he writer is troubled by the very idea of a woman holding power in her own right. Matilda was facing the challenge of becoming Queen of England … not in the conventional sense of a king’s partner, but in the unprecedented form of a female king. And kings did not deport themselves with a “modest gait and bearing.” Instead, they were—and were required to be—supremely commanding and authoritative.

So our opinions of these women are often formed from historical revisionism—histories written by men (of course) with a point to make (or an axe to grind). After all, most of these women lost their bids for power, so they weren’t the ones writing the history.

But the two articles, especially We Have Always Fought, point out that a lot of what women did simply wasn’t written down, and what was written was deemed unimportant solely because it was done by women.

In the US, primary school education is dominated by women. It’s also seriously devalued by almost everyone except teachers and their families—people who know how much hard work goes into being a teacher.

The other field that comes to mind when I think of a job that is seen as primarily female is nursing. Nurses are overwhelmingly female, and from what I can tell (I help in our school of nursing orientations, and so actually see each incoming class) the students getting degrees in nursing remain predominantly female. Spent any time in a hospital recently? If so, you know that the vast majority of your care will be performed by nurses.

Yet nurses are valued far less than doctors.

In the very early 90s, I was reading a lot of epic fantasy, and most of it had female protagonists. And time and again, when we were introduced to these women fighters or mages or wizards, we were always given a justification why they had taken that path. Not just a backstory, but the reason why they would follow a masculine path.

So, we were expected to be okay with gods and magic and mythical creatures, but a female fighter had to be justified or we might find her beyond belief.

I don’t read science fiction, but I do know what it wasn’t until 1995 that we had a female captain in Star Trek, and that was two years after we had our first black captain. (Says the rabid Deep Space Nine fan who could never stand Voyager.)

How is it that we were able to accept aliens and elves but couldn’t accept female fighters or women in command?

And then I come across things like this article, Invasion of the Viking women unearthed.

(T)he study looked at 14 Viking burials from the era, definable by the Norse grave goods found with them and isotopes found in their bones that reveal their birthplace. The bones were sorted for telltale osteological signs of which gender they belonged to, rather than assuming that burial with a sword or knife denoted a male burial.

Think about that for a second.

Because the women were buried with swords and knives and shield, it was automatically assumed they were male. Even though half the bones were later determined to be that of women.

[Warriors and women: the sex ratio of Norse migrants to eastern England up to 900 ad
Shane McLeod “Early Medieval Europe” 2011 19(3) 332–353]

It’s amazing just where casual sexism appears, and just how much it reinforces itself.

ADDENDUM the First:

There is a segment of the geek community that is actively hostile towards women. Lonely men who – because of their own socialization issues – have an emotionally regressed idea of who women are as people. While they believe in dragons and superheroes, a woman who is also into comics or games with her own point of view and interests is unimaginable to them — so they believe such women must be frauds.

Proud Dad Of Two Geek Girls Talks Superheroes, Disney Princesses, And Barbie

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
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