A friend of mine had a little cat shelf – he’d gotten it to replace an ratty old wicker hamper that his cat slept on, and of course, his cat refused to have anything to do with it. So, he asked if mine might like it. Heck, worst case scenario, they won’t like it, I pass it on to another cat owner. As it turns out, I didn’t need to worry – I had only gotten it through the door and they were all over it. Carmen seems to have warmed up to it nicely.
Carmen on her new cat shelf
So, time to briefly interrupt the Williamsburg chronicles to take a look back at 2013. Overall, it was a pretty darn good year, and it was overdue. The grandma-related low-level-PTSD-type-hell finally faded.* When the phone rings, I think “fucking telemarketers” instead of “what the hell went wrong at the care center?” Along with other related mental lifts, it’s a vast improvement. (And took long enough to get here, that’s for sure.)
My house is still a total fucking disaster area, but I did the things I wanted to do this year, things I’d told myself I would do for years. I continued with grad school, and took full advantage of winter/spring/summer/fall breaks.
In January, I cashed in all the Mariott points I’d earned going back and forth to Phoenix and my friend Allen and I went to Aruba. I highly recommend it, especially in January. Stay downtown!
Aruba Renaissance Ocean Suites
Flamingo Island
The iguanas are like squirrels there
Breakfast at the Dutch Pancake House
I’d love to know where they stole the sign from
Butterfly Farm, Aruba, Jan 2013
Butterfly Farm, Aruba, Jan 2013
Beware of Attack Butterfly – Butterfly Farm, Aruba, Jan 2013
Than came spring break – and Spring Training with the Padres!
Spring Training 2013
Spring Training 2013
Spring Training 2013
Spring Training 2013
Spring Training 2013
Then the Padres came and played the Baltimore Orioles in May, not long after the semester ended, so I made a mini-getaway out of it.
There was baseball…
Warmups, Padres at Orioles
Warmups, Padres at Orioles
I couldn’t NOT take a picture of the Oriole bird!
Wandering around…
Baltimore, May 2013
Baltimore, May 2013
Historic ships…
USS Torsk
USS Constitution
Dogs of the Navy
And of course, the Baltimore Aquarium.
Baltimore Aquarium, May 2013
Baltimore Aquarium, May 2013
Baltimore Aquarium, May 2013
July means the beach, no matter what.
Elizabethan Gardens, July 2013
Southern Shores, July 2013
Southern Shores, July 2013
Bob, our porch lizard
Columbus Day break, I headed down to Virginia Beach for another mini-vacation for the Sea Glass festival. Also discovered the Virginia Museum of Modern Art – check it out if you are in the area.
The very foggy night view from my room
So, this is a thing
The to finish off the year, I hit Williamsburg for a couple days – you’ve already seen most of that. :)
Sure, there were several instances of my beating my head into the wall writing papers, multiple trips to the vet to determine that Lily is just normally abnormal, Prozac for Carmen, lyme exposure for Moxley, and a car that is starting to show its age, but overall, 2013 was a vast, vast improvement over the 5 years prior to it. I doubt that 2014 will be the travel whirlwind that this year was, but I found so much recharging energy in the little trips that I took, I’m already planning on another 3 or 4 days in Williamsburg in May.
I hope you can look back on your own 2013 and see all kinds of good things.
*The backstory: My grandmother started showing obvious signs of dementia in 2008, lived 2,000 miles away, and I was the emergency contact/PoA/MPoA/supposed “adult” in the situation. It was hell. In 2010, she was finally admitted to a care center, which helped but brought its own new set of stressors. She passed away in April of 2012 in her sleep, finally releasing her from her own worst nightmare come to life. It’s taken a while to feel “normal” again.
So, after Great Hopes Plantation, it was definitely time for lunch, so I popped into Shield’s Tavern.
Shields Tavern Christmas Ornament
Crayfish and shrimp stew and beef pasties (think colonial empanadas) absolutely hit the spot. Honestly, I was kicking myself that I didn’t have 4 nights there so I could have dinner at Shields as well. The dinner menu makes me drool just reading it.
Then it was back over to the DeWitt Museum for “What is Family” – a presentation by…ack, I cannot remember her name – about Ann Ashby, a woman who had been a slave. Her husband, Matthew Ashby, had bought her and her three children and then petitioned to have them freed, all while managing to keep them from being sold to pay his debts. There are several stories about Matthew, but not as many about Ann, and that was what they wanted to focus on. It was very moving and interesting, and it was nice to hear about her story and what happened after he died, how she worked to support her family, and her second husband (who was kind of a twit) and more than just “Ann was the woman that Matthew freed.”
Then it was on to Raleigh Tavern for “Revolutionary Holiday – Behind the Ballroom Doors.” That was a fun one. It was much less about slaves in domestic service (though some of the interpreters were slaves) and much more, “sitting around with the service crew and listening to them talk about their bosses” – a bit reminiscent of sitting around with some servers at a particular sports bar I frequent. That was the first half – the second half was a presentation by a free black woman (and damned if I can remember her name) talking about a lot of the hypocrisy that was going on – people at the Victory Ball who had bought their titles and not fought, people who had fought and weren’t invited because they weren’t white, and some rather funny things about marriage that stand today. This woman had several acres of land, and was widowed and refused to marry again without a pre-nup, and that always seemed to be the sticking point… So she quite happily stayed single.
I finally had some time to just wander around and enjoy the decorations and such – managed to get this shot of the sunset from Merchant’s Square:
Sunset at Merchant’s Square
Then it was on to the Market Square Illumination. The fife and drum corps marches and they light torches in front of all the buildings around Market Square.
Market Illumination at the Courthouse – it’s not nearly as torches and pitchforks as it looks.
It is just beautiful and the music sends a chill up your spine. I managed to get a video of the corps marching from one building to the next – the video isn’t great, but the music is lovely.
Had just enough time to get back to the hotel, do a quick change and back to Chowning’s Tavern for dinner – but you’ve already heard all about that.
After dinner, it was time for the Ghost Walk. And rain. Fortunately, most of the Ghost Walk was set inside different buildings listening to ghost stories. I thought it would be more “when we were doing restorations, things kept moving around until we found documents telling us ‘this particular rocking chair was next to the fireplace, not across from it'”, but it was still fun.
Unfortunately, just as it let out, the skies really opened up. And while my windbreaker did its job as well as it could, by the time I got back to the hotel, I was a rather cold and soaked mess. Fortunately, the Woodlands has a nice little coin-op laundry room and a big fireplace in the lobby. Changed into my super warm sweatpants and fluffy socks, dumped the wet stuff in the dryers, and spent a nice time in the lobby reading and getting warm again. To the two nicely dressed couples also in the lobby – sorry about the sweatpants, but I don’t know of a better way to get warm that doesn’t involve alcohol.
So, Tuesday was a really long day, so this is going to be split into multiple pieces. Normally when I go to Williamsburg, I just wander around fairly aimlessly for a couple days, I see what I see, eat a ridiculous amount of food, and that’s that. Very unstructured. My brother had been down there the week before and bright me the program schedule for the week I’d be there and it was absolutely stuffed with programs and events – to he point where I had to set up a spreadsheet to figure out what I needed tickets for, and that I wasn’t picking overlapping events. Nerdy, but worth it.
So, off at a very-early-for-vacation-hour to the Great Hopes Plantation, which is a relatively new installation. It is based on an actual typical “middling” Virginia plantation that was located a county or two away from Williamsburg. (And also typical of many Virginia plantations at the time, small, not particularly wealthy owners, maybe 10 slaves, surviving season to season.). It’s interesting from the farming aspects of it (like Claude Moore Farm up in McLean, the main cash crop is tobacco) but also where Williamsburg’s African American program really shines.
Going to Williamsburg as a kid a rather long time ago (we won’t actually count the years,) slavery just wasn’t mentioned. I don’t know if someone thought it wouldn’t be appropriate, or would turn people away, or they hadn’t figured out how to present it, or they just were afraid of doing a terrible job on it. (I did have one employee tell me that there was a period of time where they did acknowledge it with a one line, “There are things in out history we are not proud of…” and that was the extent of it.)
The last time I went to Williamsburg in the Spring of 2010, I went to the Raldolph House tour/program and instantly realized, “Well, damn, this is new!” The Randolph House had been open since 1968, but that was the first time I’d seen any house tour that actually focused on the lives of slaves in domestic service. It was fascinating, informative, and heartbreaking – all the things it needed to be to get the point across that the “happy slave” or “benevolent slave owner” narratives are crap. So I had high expectations that Great Hopes Plantation would be right at that level, and I was not disappointed.
The title of the program was “A Holiday Wish” and without giving the entire thing away, it was about what one particular slave at this plantation desperately wanted for Christmas. Going in I wondered if they would get into the massive destruction of families in the slave system. By the end, I was on the verge of tears, sniffling loudly and thinking, “Yup, nailed it.” The young lady doing the interpretation of Molly (who was a slave at the original Great Hopes Plantation) did an amazing job of conveying the utter heartbreak and destruction that the slave system caused (beyond just the fact that the entire institution just sucked) and it seemed to move a lot of people. It seemed to me that the vast majority of the folks there were hardly clueless to the familial destruction due to slavery, but seeing it expressed in a real person right in front of them made it far more real than just lines in even the best history book. (I talked to someone else later In he day who had seen it and she expressed exactly what I had been thinking, “You know, but you don’t know.”) There were more than a few teary-eyed folks at the end, and a spontaneous hug-line formed when she finished. The real Molly may have died 200 years ago, but the Molly in front of us was real and didn’t deserve her lot or pain in any way shape or form. We couldn’t fix it, but we could acknowledge the hurt. (Probably some “Sorry my ancestors were assholes with no concept of humanity” in there too.)
It wasn’t preachy, it wasn’t over-sanitized, it was just good. A few people seemed a bit uncomfortable with it – I’m not sure if they expected some “happy slave” narrative, or just couldn’t process it. But I would put it in the “successful programs” column to be sure. Afterwards I had a chance to talk to the young woman playing Molly and about how the programs keep getting better and hitting on more and more “non-rich-white-guy” aspects of life at the time (and the total absence of slavery in my visits when I was little) and she agreed that it was definitely getting better. Then she started talking about how she really wanted to see the Indian narratives become included as well. And the stories of the poor whites in the area. “And the Irish convicts! Everyone has a story and we should tell them all!”
As long as Williamsburg has people like “Molly” working there, it’s just going to keep getting better.
Yes, this one gets it’s own post. My second day in Williamsburg I headed to Chownings Tavern for dinner and had a terrific time. Flight of ale – check. Welsh Rarebit – check. Salty Virginia Ham on top? Check. Enough sodium that I’m probably still retaining water almost two weeks later? Check, and who cares, cause it was SO good. They even have their recipe for Welsh Rarebit online here. (Though they didn’t serve it with the tomatoes in the tavern, which is just as well, because winter tomatoes suck.)
For the flight of ale you get 3 roughly half-sized mugs and I chose Old Stitch, Tavern Ale, and Josiah’s Home brew. All good, the home brew rather tart to me. As I’m sitting there stuffing my face with melted cheese and beer, there is a table of three women across from me, the oldest had to be at least in her 70s, and she looks over and asks, “Why do you have three mugs?” I tell her it’s the flight of ale and it’s three different beers. I get two thumbs up and a “Good for you!!” in return. I’m thinking this lady is fun to go out with.
Now, beer and melted cheese and ham was only the beginning. The actual dinner was “A Dish of Pork” – even without a description, can you really go wrong? But the description sealed it – melt-in-your-mouth ribs. Oh. My. God. These were heavenly. Fall off the bone and perfect. However, if you order it, be prepared because it is HUGE. After the beer and cheese and ham, I could only get through about half of it. (The rest was very good later at the hotel.) Overall, a great meal with super nice folks – and more came later because I am a putz.
I headed out for what turned out to be a very soggy evening and by the time I got back to the hotel, my bag was soaked, and as I emptied it out I noticed that my notebook was not there… I realized that I had left it sitting on the table at the restaurant. Ack. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if it was gone forever – I doubt the Great American Novel is in its pages, but when I go places I like to write things down.
So, the next morning I got up and my first stop was back to Chownings just as they opened for lunch. As I was walking over there, I also realized I was really hungry and they have a good lunch menu, and if nothing else, I’d grab some lunch and see if they found my notebook. No sooner did I walk through the door to the dining room, I see my notebook on the bar!! And I might have actually yelled, “YOU FOUND MY NOTEBOOK AND KEPT IT!”
My server from the night before also came over and found me and was very happy to see that I had my notebook back – she said they’d tried to catch me out front the night before but must have just missed me, and that she was sure I’d be back because she’d seen me writing in it the night before. I was just happy that they’d found it. I then proceeded to have more beer, more melted cheese (this time without the ham – both ways are very good) and brunswick stew. (Also very good, especially on a cold day.) I also realized that as late as I had gotten up, realistically, I was having beer for breakfast…
So, if you find yourself at Chownings and lose something – they will find it and keep it for you. Again, many thanks to everyone!
Chownings Tavern Sign Ornament – I told you I got ornaments everywhere I ate…
Fire in the street outside Chownings Tavern – the things you could get away with 200 years ago.
I know you were dying to hear about it. :) (And this won’t be the only post – you’re gonna get one for every day I was down there! I KNOW!)
First, if you have a chance to go down to Williamsburg in the weeks before Christmas when it’s all decorated, do it. Second, of you can stay at one of the “official” Williamsburg lodgings that are on the shuttle route, do it as well – that shuttle will be your friend by the end of the trip. (You can also have your purchases sent to the hotel. Very convenient.) I know people have a lot of mixed opinions on Williamsburg, it’s too sanitized, not real enough, etc, etc. but that is the challenge of any public history project. You want to educate, you’d like it if people actually enjoyed learning *something*, and personally, I think there is a point of diminishing returns when you’re trying to recreate something. (I do not think Williamsburg suffers by having paved streets, indoor plumbing, and restaurants with proper refrigeration.) Every year the programs get better, more inclusive and delve deeper into what was happening in the town and surrounding countryside. Is it perfect? No. Does it get people interested and engaged in history? Hell, yes.
Got down there Monday, just in time for a program at Raleigh Tavern about an English employee who had just arrived and was talking about Christmas back home. The short version was, “Just got here, everyone hates me, and Christmas is gonna suck.” The longer version was actually quite interesting and I certainly learned some interesting things about 18th century Christmases in England and what stuck in the colonies and what didn’t.
Then it was over to the DeWitt Museum for Decorative Arts & Abby Rockefeller Folk Art Musuem. It pains me to say this, but as many times as I have been to Williamsburg, I did not know this museum existed until I saw the photo of the “No Stamp Act” teapot in TH Breen’s “Marketplace of Revolution” and saw that the teapot was at this museum. So, I was on a hunt for the teapot as much as anything else. It isn’t a big museum, but it is great. Found the teapot, saw all kinds of terrific decorative and folk art, and I would highly recommend it to anyone with a couple hours in Williamsburg. Found some very delightful things along with the teapot:
Sea Turtle Soup Tureen, DeWitt Museum
Dollhouse, DeWitt Museum
No Stamp Act Teapot, DeWitt Museum
Rhinoceros Record Player, DeWitt Museum
My attempt at German Frakturs (the lion detail was already there)
Then it was on to dinner at Kings Arms Tavern. (I’ll admit, I went down there as much for the food as the history.) I started with a champagne cocktail*, because if you can’t have a champagne cocktail when you’re on a Christmas vacation, when can you? Then it was on to the Sally Lunn Bread.** Oh my god, this is so good – slightly sweet and I could have eaten the entire basket if I didn’t have other great things coming. Then it was on to the cheese plate – brie, gouda, cheddar, pub cheese, toast points and a “tomato conserve” – sort of a tomato relish that went great with all of it. But, it got better – because they also bring around a traditional relish/condiment selection with pickled watermelon rinds, pickled sweet indian corn, and chopped salted ham. All of which went really well with the cheeses. (I’m not a big brie person, but pair it up with some salted Virginia ham and I’m in.) I then had what I swear was the best porkchop I have ever had in my life – brined with maple and whiskey, then cooked with a wonderful mustard glaze. It was amazing – I highly recommend it if you are down there. By the time dessert came around, I was utterly stuffed, and decided on a port to end the evening. Very, very good and just perfect to finish things off.
Kings Arms Tavern Christmas Ornament
The view from my table, Kings Arms Tavern
Dessert, Kings Arms Tavern
* From the menu: Champagne, sugar cubes soaked in bitters, a Cherry and a Twist. Very tasty!!
** There are many recipes for it online, you can also find the recipe in the Colonial Williamsburg Tavern Cookbook, or buy the mix from the Williamsburg Marketplace.
Or does it seem like the media is acting like Target, UPS and FedEx all got together and decided to conspire to make a clusterfuck of Christmas on purpose?
Target didn’t turn off all the payment security protocols on Black Friday and say, “Hey, let’s see what will happen now!” (Also, the problem isn’t just “Target is terrible at security” – it’s an antiquated credit card system in the United States.)
UPS and FedEx cannot control the weather. They can run model after model to anticipate shipping volume, but they’re just that – models. It might be spot-on, but there are so many variables that it could very well be wrong. We just don’t hear about it if the shipping volume is less than predicted – only if it’s higher and there are delays.
While there are tons of companies out there intentionally doing crappy things for a buck – I don’t think these three companies were trying to be the Grinch that stole Christmas.
and no, it does not mean you can punch a family member, no matter how much you really might want to.*
I hope everyone out there had a nice Christmas – I know I did. Lots of books, lots of candy and a new camera. I only got the memory card for it this afternoon, so I haven’t had a chance to inundate the internet with more photos of my pets just yet. (But I do have the space for ~4,000 photos, so consider yourself warned.) The animals are all having a good time with their new toy as well. (Though it is difficult to explain to the dog that the toys for the cats are just that – the toys for the cats.)
One funny thing about our Christmas (at least to me) is that my brother and I are not morning people, so we have a very leisurely afternoon brunch on Christmas. I’m usually up long before he is, so I was flipping through Facebook yesterday and everyone’s Christmas was already over – and ours hadn’t even started yet! Kind of extended Christmas for me. :)
OK, one quick video from the new camera – don’t worry, there are no cats in it.
ETA: I almost forgot – my brother got stuff for the National Zoo for me, too! Chilling stone, scratching mat and climbing triangles!
*It’s the day church charity boxes are opened and the proceeds distributed to the needy in the parish. But I do understand the desire to punch a family member at the holidays and have a special day just for that – but I think it falls during the Festivus Airing of the Grievances.
I hope your day was filled with love.
It’s Christmas Eve and I’m sitting at Beijing Tokyo waiting on my shrimp tempura bento lunch – it’s my reward for braving CVS today for a couple last minute stocking stuffers. Which isn’t really unusual, there are lots of folks out snagging last minute Christmas stuff and having lunch. What’s odd is that it is Christmas Eve and I am sitting here having lunch and I am completely relaxed. I cannot remember the last time that happened at the holidays. I even finished wrapping all the presents last night and today is just getting the stockings sorted out and watching NORAD track Santa.
I thought maybe it was because my finals were early so I had more time to get ready, but that was kind of cancelled out by the fact that I left town for four days after the semester was over. I don’t think I got my shopping started any earlier than normal. Baking weekend was at the normal time and I don’t think I skimped on the baked goods for the neighbors. Things just came together this year, and I don’t know exactly what changed this year, but I sure as hell hope to repeat it next year.
Here’s hoping that your Christmas Eve is as happy and relaxed as mine is.
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Musings of a marginally sane feline-appreciating female. 