[Artemisia] Feeling Older than dirt : period & non response

[Higgins, Elaine]

(Sorry, Yumitori, but I didn't see this thread until today, having had a
4-day weekend, and it's one I really want to answer.)

	When I was growing up, everyone had a party line, sharing
usually with 3 other homes.  You could pay extra to get a private phone
line.  Also, for a while, we did have letters as the prefixes to our
phone numbers.  Also,
Due to where we lived in relation to our city limits, it was a
long-distance (pay extra) phone call to some of my classmates who in
fact lived less than a mile away.  I remember doing our algebra homework
in Spanish! With one of my girlfriends, over the phone, so we were
learning both.  Plus, yes, my grandparents (in the same town) had a
wall-phone with a crank and an "old-fashioned" mouthpiece; I remember
thinking then how odd that was.
	As for t.v., we had a black-and-white one for years.  My Dad
wouldn't buy a color one until the color was "perfected."  Finally when
I came home from grad. School, having watched color t.v. in our dorm
lounge and missing it, I talked them into getting a color t.v.  I think
we got 7 or 8 channels; that's all there were in the area at the time.
And before we got a t.v., I used to go over to my friends' house across
the street to watch "Beanie & Cecil" & also "The Lone Ranger."  And
we're talking a large city in Southern California!
	On the other hand, I think about the experiences people miss who
believe everything is online: the feel of a wooly sheep (or other
animal), or of various fabrics, the feel and smell of shuffling through
Autumn leaves, or numerous aromas: spices, roasts, a bubbling pot of
chili ... .  Who remembers any more the feel of shelling peas?  (In
relation to that, I heard a song once on the radio, years ago, and it
was an "oldy" then.  The only line I can remember is, "And she sat
silently shelling green peas."  I'd like to find the rest of it some
day, if possible.)  What about the scents of flowers?  I designed a
4-year college curriculum once based on things that could NOT be learned
on the Internet!  Don't even get me started on the subject of ancient
languages, let alone the numerous ones disappearing because the
speakers' children watch English-language t.v.
	As for my persona, she would have been quite busy on her sheep
farm on the island of Flodday, off the west coast of Scotland (in the
late 14th century), seeing that everything ran well there, with the help
of a number of servants.  She would have spent her time overseeing,
spinning, weaving, maintaining the larder, sewing (and mending),
corresponding (in Latin, French, Scots Gaelic, and Norwegian), praying,
writing and illuminating her own Book of Hours, trying to keep up with
French fashions, and for those few occasions when other duties
permitted, playing her harp or playing hnefetafl with a couple of her
servants.
	As for things Iduna would have known/used (in no particular
order):
		The fork,
		Drop spindles and a spinning wheel
		An Irish-style harp
		The Irish half-Uncial hand (learned while she stayed in
the Benedictine nuns' monastery on Iona, and preferred), but also
several other hands including Carolingian minuscule
		Local coinage
		Oak-gall ink (home-made)
		Paper (both home-made and purchased)
		Books -- not to many, as they are expensive, but would
have had those of particular interest
		Equipment for raising sheep -- largely unchanged today,
for those small-flock shepherds
		A recorder (the musical instrument)
		Paints (for illumination)
		Gold-leaf (only used sparingly in illumination, due to
cost)
		An hourglass (a "new-fangled" thing)
		Soap
		Clothing in both the current and earlier styles
		Furniture: chests, tables, chairs, beds
		Tapestries and other wall-hangings and bedcovers
		An Inkle-loom
		A warp-weighted loom; later, also a horizontal loom
		An herb garden & a vegetable garden
		A coracle (small boat, for local trips)
		+ the knowledge necessary to run her home and farm,
including knowledge of herbs and "simples"
(What I could think of quickly)
-- Iduna Snorradottir

Elaine Higgins
Coordinator of Cataloging
Mansfield Library
The University of Montana
elaine.higgins at mso.umt.edu