Blog Archive for Sarah Albee, Writer of History and Science Books for Kids

Ancient Career Women

Posted November 11, 2013

One of the more prestigious and cushy career paths of the ancient world would have to be the job of Vestal Virgin, in Ancient Rome.

A downside was that the job was probably a little dull. Your only duties were to be sure the holy flame of the goddess Vesta’s temple didn’t go out. Oh, and you weren’t allowed to have a boyfriend while you remained on the payroll. If you did, and were caught, you faced the deeply unpleasant prospect of being walled up with a day or so’s worth of food and water, a bed, and a lamp. (Your blood was sacred, and couldn’t be spilled, so entombment was the preferred mode of execution.)

But there were tremendous upsides. If you were lucky enough to be chosen (while still a very young girl, between about 3 and 10 years old), your parents would be thrilled. They’d have bragging rights modern-day Ivy League parents could only dream about. And you and five other vestals enjoyed privileges far exceeding those of any other women in ancient Rome. It was like winning the Golden Ticket. You lived in luxury at the public’s expense. You didn’t have to answer to your father. You could conduct business in your own name, and make your own will. You could ride through Rome in a wheeled carriage. Even the highest magistrates in the city had to make way for you. Should you happen to cross paths with a condemned criminal, his life would be spared. And seriously, in the scheme of things, considering some of the old toads your aristocratic parents might have signed you up for life with, purely out of business considerations, remaining free and unmarried must have seemed pretty appealing to a girl like you.

And you only had to serve for thirty years. After that, you were free to marry the person of your choosing, and it was considered extremely prestigious for a man to marry a former vestal, so you probably had your pick.

Herm of a Vestal Virgin (Getty Museum) A work by Canova from the J. Paul Getty Museum’s collection.

Beatles’ Beat

Posted November 8, 2013

In Paul McCartney’s song I’ll Follow the Sun, the only percussion comes from Ringo smacking out the rhythm with his palms on his own knees.

A Beet Down

Posted November 6, 2013

According to a food preference poll taken in 2008, beets are among Americans’ top ten most hated foods. They’re not grown in the White House garden, because the Obamas hate beets.

How Carrots Won the Trojan War page 54

Baked Goods

Posted November 4, 2013

When the Assyrian city of Nineveh was sacked by the Medes and the Babylonians in 612 BC, the library was set on fire and the upper floors caved in. The fire baked the clay tablets into terracotta, which allowed them to survive for thousands of years, when archaeologists dug them up.

The Secret Museum 75-6

Ghosts in the Machine

Posted November 1, 2013

When I was a kid, I remember being traumatized by an especially violent version of Grimm’s Fairy Tales that we had on our shelf. Deep dark forests, child-eating wolves, ogres, giants, witches, and trolls (most of whom were also child-eating). As you may know, these stories weren’t initially geared toward kids, but came from an oral tradition of Central European folk tales passed along for generations, which the brothers Grimm compiled and first published in 1812.

What I find rather fascinating is that the events in some of these tales weren’t too far afield from the grim existence of central European lives in the Middle Ages. As William Manchester describes it in his A World Lit Only By Fire, much of central Europe really was surrounded by a vast and menacing forest, and there really were child-eating boars, bears, and wolves, as well as actual outlaws who attacked travelers and rarely got caught. (6). So it wasn’t much of a leap for people to believe in ogres, giants, witches, and trolls. And dragons of course.

I came across a story about Venetian cloth dyers in the fifteenth century in Amy Butler Greenfield’s book A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire. At that time, Venice was a major world power, and its dyers had helped make it so. Their techniques for dyeing cloth–especially the very expensive scarlet–were shrouded (sorry) in secrecy, and guild members were sworn not to divulge their methods. Those who violated the guild rules faced brutal consequences.

But another way that Venetian dyers kept their techniques secret, according to Greenfield, was to spread ghost stories, which prevented people from hanging around the dye-making district of Venice. And people believed these tales. One told of a white ghost that haunted the dyeing district. Another was a specter in a black cape who hunted people “foolish enough to approach the dyeworks after dark.” (32)

A Dragon; Unknown; Thérouanne ?, France (formerly Flanders), Europe; about 1270; The Getty Museum; 83.MR.173.89

Steel, Flora Annie. English Fairy Tales. Arthur Rackham, illustrator. New York: Macmillan Company, 1918.

Grimm’s Household Tales, 1912. Brothers Grimm, Marian Edwardes (translator), R. Anning Bell (illustrations)

Mouthy

Posted November 1, 2013

Several thousand years ago, a scribe writing cuneiform bit his clay tablet. A modern curator saw the teeth marks and brought the tablet to his dentist, who estimated that the teeth marks had been made by a seven-year-old boy.

The Secret Museum 75

Captive Audience

Posted October 30, 2013

According to the Roman writer Suetonius, Emperor Nero refused to allow anyone to leave the theater while he was singing, even in an emergency. Consequently, some women gave birth during his performances.

Cabinet of Roman Curiosities 94

Rescue Dogs

Posted October 30, 2013

I grew up on Looney Tunes cartoons, and one of my favorite tropes is the slightly tipsy Saint Bernard who rescues someone and then unclasps the barrel around his neck to make himself a martini. Here’s one example:

I saw a Saint Bernard in New York the other day, and it got me to wondering whether or not Saint Bernards really were used as rescue dogs, and whether or not they actually had barrels of brandy strapped around their necks to warm up avalanche victims. The answers, I discovered, are yes and no. They were rescue dogs, but they didn’t actually carry brandy around their necks.

Since the early eighteenth century, the monks living in a monastery near the St. Bernard Pass in the Swiss Alps used these dogs to help guide travelers who got lost in heavy snowstorms. Evidently the dogs have an amazing sense of direction and a high tolerance for cold.

The monastery was founded way back in 1050 by a monk named St. Bernard de Menthon, expressly to rescue trekkers who were trying to navigate the snowy, dangerous 49-mile passage between Italy and Switzerland. Often the dogs would dig through the snow and lie on top of an injured person to keep him warm.

Source: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/st-bernard-200801.html?c=y&page=1

Diary of a [Seventeenth Century] Wimpy Kid

Posted October 28, 2013

I subscribe to Samuel Pepys’ diary. Every evening I get an installment that corresponds to the same day and date that he wrote, 353 years ago. And every once in awhile he writes an entry that is really notable. Such as this one from last Saturday. Each of the three paragraphs from this date is enlightening:

This morning one came to me to advise with me where to make me a window into my cellar in lieu of one which Sir W. Batten had stopped up, and going down into my cellar to look I stepped into a great heap of turds by which I found that Mr. Turner’s house of office is full and comes into my cellar, which do trouble me, but I shall have it helped.

To orient you a little: this is London, 1660, eleven years after King Charles I was executed, and two years after Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth, has died, and the royalists are now back in power. Young Samuel, having helped reinstate Charles II to the throne, has a new job at the Navy Office, and they have promised him a new house. So he and his wife, Elizabeth, have just moved into a Navy-owned building and are busily renovating. Sadly, their neighbor, Mr. Turner, has not been as vigilant as he ought to have been about getting his cesspit emptied regularly.

And the next paragraph in this entry:

To my Lord’s by land, calling at several places about business, where I dined with my Lord and Lady; when he was very merry, and did talk very high how he would have a French cook, and a master of his horse, and his lady and child to wear black patches; which methought was strange, but he is become a perfect courtier; and, among other things, my Lady saying that she could get a good merchant for her daughter Jem., he answered, that he would rather see her with a pedlar’s pack at her back, so she married a gentleman, than she should marry a citizen.

Lots of stuff going on here, but what most jumped out at me was his boss and benefactor, the Earl of Sandwich, who is feeling flush and wants to deck out his wife and child with black patches, a very popular fad during the seventeenth century. I blogged about these before. And finally:

This afternoon, going through London, and calling at Crowe’s the upholster’s, in Saint Bartholomew’s, I saw the limbs of some of our new traitors set upon Aldersgate, which was a sad sight to see; and a bloody week this and the last have been, there being ten hanged, drawn, and quartered. Home, and after writing a letter to my uncle by the post, I went to bed.

Yicch, imagine. The “new traitors” he’s referring to are men who supported Cromwell and who probably had a direct hand in Charles I’s execution, who have been tried, condemned, and executed. As was common for people executed for treason, their heads and limbs were displayed around town. What a sight to behold on the way to your upholsterer’s shop.

See how cool this is? You, too, can subscribe to Sam’s diary by visiting this link. Just click on the line that says “Receive diary entries by email daily.” You’re welcome.

Samuel Pepys via Wikimedia

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/1-ornamental-patches-on-face-17th-century-photo-researchers.html

Net Worth