Instrumentation

http://www.medieval-life-and-times.info/medieval-music/waits.htm

SO, sometimes I get to writing and reading and wondering about the things that provide the richness to the background (which might not be surprising, since that is the essence of world building), and get inspired to put together a post.  I've written about how technological advances spread and impact one another (granted, it was a long time ago, maybe I should revisit that).  We have all seen how tools develop as technologies improve and innovative thinkers and tinkerers add their touches.  It's important to remember that these innovations touch all aspects of our lives.  One aspect that I've done a little digging on is music, more specifically instruments.
    There are times when you want to do a little more than just add a lute player to a scene to give it depth.  Sure, the lute is a forerunner of today's guitar (though just like regular evolution, the one doesn't just magically become the other without overlap) and easy for the average reader to imagine, but there are so many other sounds that may lend a distinct air to a scene that it seems a shame to always go for easy.  Quite naturally, all of today's instruments had forerunners (and bastard cousins) which may add a taste of authenticity to your ancient realm.
    While the lute may have become the soloist's instrument of choice, it's generally too fragile to rough travel (bad for adventurers) and can be expensive to maintain.  Their construction was the realm of highly trained individuals.  Learning to play would also require a master's guidance.  On the plus side, they are surprisingly light... However, try replacing your broken f-string in some backwater burg on a foggy night and you might run into some issues.

http://home.earthlink.net/~curtis_bouterse/id7.html

    Patrick Rothfuss describes a fair number of instrumental options at the local performance space in his work, but so many of them are stringed.  Clear bias, I say.  We've become so enamored with the rock-god guitar player image that we fail to remember the wide variety of other instruments which have graced our world.  Happily, there are plenty of instruments that are more durable than the lute and perfect for your party of adventurers.
    You've seen drums.  What's wrong with percussion?  Conga players the world over will tell you of their versatility.  Keep the thing dry and you're good to go.  Even if the head gets damaged, how easy is it to find a supply of fresh skins to stretch?  Snare drums are a little out of reach in most Fantasy settings, technologically speaking, but armies have long used drums to provide a marching tune for their warriors.  Need a new set of sticks to play with?  Just get out your old whittling knife, or beat on the damn thing with your hands.  If you want to produce a wide range of tones, get yourself a xylophone, folks have been building them (and their kin) for more than a thousand years.

http://www.myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=24010

    Flutes and horns (wooden, or actual horn) are universal and pretty damn durable too.  You can find them in all sorts of shapes and sizes.  Mastering them, much like anything else, may not be easy, but almost anyone can learn the basics.  Today the recorder is still used to teach grade school kids how to play music.  The only real issue is that you can't exactly sing while performing.  Then again, some folks aren't great singers, so perfect for them.  Furthermore, using music as break, or an interlude, for storytelling has a long tradition.
    Sure sure, there is nothing wrong with a guitar solo.  All I'm saying is that there is a whole world of music out there.  Just because around every campfire today you can find some teenager with a guitar doesn't mean that we need to include them in our stories.  I love watching episodes of the Sharpe's series of films where someone just strikes up a tune on a pipe, or lets loose with a marching song.  It sets a tone for a simpler time.  Hell, musically, the Medieval period was a simpler time.  Go give a look and see if changing your instrumentation might not just change the feel of your writing and your world.


References

general article - http://www.thefinertimes.com/Middle-Ages/instruments-in-the-middle-ages.html
lute history - http://www.art-robb.co.uk/hist.html
xylophone history - https://www.vsl.co.at/en/Xylophone/History
images with audio - http://www.music.iastate.edu/antiqua/instrumt.html
brass - http://www.aswltd.com/guidebr.htm
composers - http://www.themiddleages.net/life/composers.html

Why live near a Volcano?

Every now and again I catch up on the news of the world.  Way too often I seem to hear about some small village (or city for Pete's sake) endangered by the eruption of a volcano.  Now, we generally know where these things are (new spouts are naturally not part of this line of thinking).  We know what they can do.  What the fuck, people?
    I couldn't say if many of the folks living around volcanoes go in for the whole, "fiery mountain god" kind of idea, but unless you're sacrificing virgins on a daily basis, I'd imagine you could move a fair distance out for safety's sake.  Go ahead, take a road trip up to the fiery mountain once a quarter.  No need to perch on the slopes or hang in the shadow of.  Ten miles out is close enough.  If the ground quakes, you know you've done something wrong.
    There must be some good reasons for staying.  Why else would you risk fiery death or pyroclastic flow?  "We may have a dozen feet of volcanic ash dropped on us from time to time, but the view is just spectacular!"  It just doesn't scan.  Ah, time to make the research.  

Aden, with Portuguese fleet. in Braun & Hogenberg.1590

To the geology!

Simply put, volcanoes occur in areas of the planet's surface where the underlying hot stuff escapes to the surface.  These can be:

1) subducted plate boundaries, like the Pacific Ocean's "Ring of Fire,"  where oceanic crust is forced down into the hot mantle, melting at depth and forcing its way back to the surface.  

2) spreading centers, like the mid-ocean ridge in the Atlantic, where plates move away from each other, leaving a gap for lava to leak to the surface.  

3) "hot spots," like the Hawaiian Islands (you can visualize the rotation of the plate by the arc of the island chain) create volcanoes emerging from point sources, which have a number of possible explanations (hey, give these guys a break, it's not like you can see this stuff happening).  

Thematically related, though rather different, "mud volcanoes" are a horse of a different color (which you can read more about on the webpage noted below).  Moving on  

The last essential (to this blog post) point of interest, is that the material that erupts from these volcanoes varies in composition, depending on whether it's spitting out pure mantle material (which isn't homogeneous) or melted crust material.  The molten rock will also melt the "country rock" that it passes though, further altering the composition.

oooh rocks!

This might not seem like a benefit to many people, but without these, it's tough to find places to live in the Pacific Ocean (and other bodies of water).  Plenty of landmasses are built entirely out of volcano (see: Islands, Hawaiian).  When they eventually start sinking back into the sea (well, erosion helps) you get your guyots, and later your atolls (which are very handy for nuclear tests).  These are nice places to do some snorkeling and see all the pretty fishies around the reefs.  Atolls can also shelter lagoons and islands, perfect for shipwrecking sailors.
    Volcanoes can also be the high ground in the middle of a relatively flat region.  It's always important to have a good view of the surrounding countryside.  Basalts also make great foundations if you don't want your walls to be undermined.  While most sane people wouldn't build their castles on the top of an active volcano, it's not always possible to know.

Trosky Castle, CZ

you also get Dirt!

Yup, mineral-rich soil seems to be the best reason for tempting fate by living in the shadow of a volcano.  While fresh lava flows and ashfalls are hardy hospitable to growing things, after a fair bit of weathering, it provides quite a fertile home.  Volcanic soils (generally andisols) are very high in Iron, Aluminum, and Silicon, which in this form are easily accessible to plant life.  These soils are well drained, but hold water readily, allowing plants to recolonize quickly after volcanic ashfalls.  

    Depending upon the climate, all kinds of things are grown in volcanic soils.  In the USA, the Pacific Northwest has some pretty damn productive forests sprouting from the stuff.  Tropical areas grow fruit, coffee, and rice as major cash crops.  Italians are still producing wine from grapes harvested on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius.  Tobacco, a notorious soil depleter, is also popularly grown in the stuff.    

Final thoughts...

Mount Vesuvius has had eight major eruptions in the last 17,000 years, which seem like pretty good survival odds for the locals (sorry Pompeii), considering that the soil in southern Italy outside of the Naples region is otherwise very poor (limestone bedrock).  When you have to choose between scratching out a living in the "safe" zone, and living the high life in the shadow of fairly unlikely doom, it seems like an easy choice (until your luck runs out). 

Notes
Cascades geo - tellurianstudies.weebly.com/geology-how-the-cascade-mountains-were-formed.html
Mid Ocean Ridge -oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/05galapagos/background/mid_ocean_ridge/mid_ocean_ridge.html
Hawaii - sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110629091644.htm
Volcanic soil - volcanology.geol.ucsb.edu/soil.htm
Mud volcano - hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanowatch/archive/2005/05_10_13.html

Soils - volcanology.geol.ucsb.edu/soil.htm
Growing things - http://blogs.agu.org/magmacumlaude/2011/02/02/foliage-vs-geology-plants-on-volcanoes/
Mount Vesuvius - geology.com/volcanoes/vesuvius/
Wines on Mt. Etna - http://www.winewordswisdom.com/wine_reviews/mount-etna-wines.html
Ash Fall agricultural effects - http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/ash/agric/
Atolls - education.nationalgeographic.com/encyclopedia/atoll/

Goliards (I can hear the collective, 'huh?')

This Summer, the lady and I took the opportunity to attend the Philadelphia Renaissance Faire (largely in part to see "The Mountain", but also 'cause we dig that kind of thing).  During our visit, we were lightly scandalized and heavily entertained by The Creepy Bard's performance.  During the show, he mentioned that none of the songs he performed were, in fact, from the Renaissance.  They were 19th Century (I seem to remember. It was hot), as there were no available tunes from the time-period to be sung.  Well, this idea started me off to research (eventually).  Today's are the first fruits. 

http://www.britannica.com/art/minstrel

Primogeniture is a concept that kinda sticks in the craw for any of us younger sons.  We all understand that land is equivalent to power in the the olde tyme version of ruling the world and divvying it up would counter that, but you'd think that Papa could spare a little for the younger ones.  Unfortunately, younger sons had to find some other way to make a living than the old fashioned one.
    When making alternate career choices, the aristocracy had few options.  They might end up as their brother's strong rights arm (or join a mercenary company), maybe go into business (heaven forfend!), or go to university.  University could lead a couple of different ways, but for most nobility it led to the Church.  While this might have been right up some of those spoiled little brats' alleys, it appears that it wasn't for all of them.  To add insult to injury, there were never enough positions for all of these graduates (apparently some things never change), so what were they to do?  It is in these disaffected youths that we find the roots of the goliard.
    While the word eventually evolved (14th C) to simply refer to a minstrel, the goliard began as a cleric.  Granted, these gentlemen do not seem to have ever been apprised of what being a cleric entails, as they engaged in all forms of debauchery.  Apart from being drunks, gamblers and womanizers, these younger sons widely employed the literary arts to criticize the Church (as well as devising tunes to laugh and drink with).  Their satires mocked Pope, monastery, and parish alike, for their improprieties.  Some goliard works are collected under the title "Carmina Burana".  While some of these "high-spirited youths" eventually moved on and joined the establishment, the goliards as a group were heavily censured by the Church, eventually having their privileges as clergy removed (which they then wrote songs about as well).
    Literary works were only a part of why their privileges were revoked, however.  Goliards, being unemployed, tended to wander about, acting as tutors and itinerant preachers (sometimes teaching naughty words to traditional hymns, in Latin).  They are reported to have been regular disturbances at church services, keeping themselves entertained and poking fun at the establishment.  Politically they were active as well.  Some goliards were connected to student disturbances at the University of Paris, connected to the intrigues of the papal legate.  It was the goliards' ability to connect with and rile up the populace that seems to have been most responsible for their eventual fall.
   

Ah, so there is some music preserved from the time.  Unfortunately for us, this stuff is in Latin.  One of the reviews I encountered for a collection in English accuses the translator of being ham-fisted to make the rhyme and meter work properly.  Translation is always an art of compromise, but in art it is doubly difficult.  This part of the search will have to continue.
    As for those who wish to apply the goliard (or the concept) to their work, they are an interesting case.  While they were a rebellious lot, they seem to have been trapped within their own system (those who wanted more than to simply gamble, drink, and chase the ladies).  Their effectiveness was limited by their erudition, writing only in Latin.  They lacked the courage to make a true break with the Church, like later reformers would.  Longevity may be ascribed to there being an abundant supply of second sons and the difficulty in keeping track of all of them in that specific time and place as they wandered the countryside.  
    The presence of a similar group in a Fantasy setting is reasonable.  Primogeniture is a commonly held tenet in most Fantasy worlds.  Robin Hobb uses it as a focus in her Soldier Son trilogy.  Any time there are roles defined by birth you will get backlash.  If all second sons of the nobility really did become an officer in the military, how top-heavy would that organization be?  Too many Chiefs and not enough Indians, as my mother would say.  
    Employing them as a true template is simple.  They are a fine example of grumblers.  They are tolerated by the Church, probably because they have political connections, but only up to a point.  Once the Church brought the hammer down, the goliards disappeared quickly enough.  However, they did have all the tools available to overthrow the system.  They had a knowledge of the inner workings of the church and its doctrines.  They had a working relationship with the masses.  They had some political connections.  If they had ever gotten truly organized they could have been a dangerous group.  Enter the hammer.

 

Notes

The Creepy Bard - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGyNOV2-TrX35r6vOvwg7MXt2t2aATU6H

Britannica Entry - http://www.britannica.com/art/goliard

Wiki - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliard

The Cambridge Songs - https://archive.org/stream/cambridgesongsgo00breuuoft#page/n15/mode/2up

Another Blogger - http://everything2.com/title/Goliard

Carmina Burana (lyrics) - http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/works/orff-cb/carmlyr.php

a poem from the Archpoet - http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/source/golias1.asp

more verse - http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/goliard.html

Creature Culture VIII: Saying Goodbye (not me, don't worry)

It has long been said that how we treat our dead is what separates humanity from the beasts.  As a Fantasy author, I suppose I need to extend that a little bit.  All of the traditional Fantasy peoples seem to share this need to treat their dead with some kind of ritual.  Perhaps it is because Fantasy creatures are all simply extensions of the human experience which allows us to investigate our psyche in an abstract form, perhaps there is some connection between higher cognitive processes and the fear of death, or maybe some of us writers just aren't all that creative.  Hey, this is my head, you can get out at any time.  Be thankful.  Anyway, whatever the root of all this pomp and circumstance, creatures die and those that remain need to stash the bodies.



    Pondering mortality may very well be what caused the birth of religion.  Once you understand that we will all die one day, it's hard to feel like what we accomplish on this planet means anything.  We want some reward at the end for all of the hard work that we go through, or at least some sort of meaning to existence beyond propagating the species.  Barring that, we'd like our problems to be someone else's fault.  If the fear of death caused the birth of religion, then it's only natural that the transition into that great beyond be dealt with in a ritualistic manner (whatever that might entail).  Humanity has certainly evolved a wide variety of practiced to ease that transition, ostensibly for the dead, but for the living as well.

Preparation
So you've got the corpse of a loved one, what do you do with it?  Whatever you're going to do, you need to act quickly.  While a funeral is a method of coming to terms with death and sending an individual into the afterlife in some style, you don't want the side-effects of decay to play a starring role (see: funeral for a certain Lannister).  Jewish tradition still encourages acting quickly following a passing, even with modern embalming methods.
    Bodies are often ritually cleansed, either by the family or by professional hands.  Then they are dressed for burial, often in their finest clothes or the trappings of their profession (though some cultures/religions opt for a simple winding sheet, or ritual raiment).  The garb of the deceased seems to be more influenced by whether their religion suggests that they can "take it with them" than by the method of disposal.  Famously, the Egyptian pharaohs were interred with fabulous riches, as well as helpers and animals (or at least statues of them).  The ancient Greeks put coins over the eyes of the dead to pay the ferryman for their passage in the netherworld.  Some Native American tribes left food for the deceased, while the Nez Perce sacrificed wives, slaves and horses to join a dead warrior in the afterlife. The Chinese emperor, Qin Shi Huang, famously constructed his mausoleum to house an army of terracotta soldiers and chariots.  However, many traditions prefer the simpler angle.  The Jewish people bury their dead in plain white garments to show that their actions are what their God judges them by, not their wealth.
    Finally, the bodies are posed, usually eyes and mouths closed, some with hands clasped over the chest, others in the fetal position (it varies widely).  In the Pacific Northwest, one tribe would use clubs to break the bones of their greatest warriors so that they could be fitt in little boxes and hung as totems of protection for the village.  As we say, practices vary.
       
Disposal
As ugly a reality as it may be, something has to be done with the corpse.  You can't just leave it where it expires, to stink up the place.  It needs to be disposed of in some fashion.  Even when people were dying by the bushel during the Black Death (insert spooky music) and the corpse carts were rolling down the streets, people did their best to inter the bodies, even if that meant being dumped in mass graves, or burning the houses with the afflicted still inside.  There really are very few ways to dispose of a corpse with "dignity".
    The two primary methods of disposal are burial and burning.  How and why you go about this where it gets interesting.  The Apache buried the body and burned the deceased's goods as quickly as possible to keep the spirits away (as the dead apparently resent the living).  Burials might have been in graves, caves, tree platforms, cairns, mounds, or an infinite variety of tombs and mausoleums.  The Urnfield Culture (1300-750 BC), which stretched from western Hungary to eastern France, apparently wanted the best of both worlds, cremating their dead and then burying the ashes in pottery vessels.  Shinto followers bury some of the ashes and keep the rest in smaller in-home shrines.  In some cultures, they'd accumulate a fair number of bodies before incinerating the lot together in a grand ceremony.
     There are outliers to these basic practices.  Tibetan and Mongol peoples traditionally exposed corpses (Sky Burial and Air Sacrifice respectively) to be devoured by animals, as a returning of the body to nature (be careful in your research, video gets pretty graphic pretty quickly for the Sky Burial, though not included in the notes below).  The Maasai Tribe does the same since they apparently don't believe in an afterlife, except for chieftains, who get buried.  There are plenty more, I'm sure, but it's a beautiful day outside and this is getting depressing.

Ceremony
This is the section about what those left behind do.  Mourning periods of various duration are extremely common.  The wearing of black is, obviously, a ritual in many traditions.  Some widows wear only black for the remainder of their lives.  Ritual markings, whether through paint or scarring mark some Native American traditions.  Irish "keening" for the dead consisted of crying, wailing, and reading poetry lamenting the loss of a loved one.  The Irish stopped clocks to show how time was unimportant in such times and also covered mirrors in black draperies, since it was thought that the dead might look in through them.  Shinto tradition has mourners turn the regular items of life (like shoji screens) literally upside-down.  Stories of the dead are often shared by mourners.  Family and friends will often bring gifts of food, not to mention cash, to lighten the immediate family's load in their time of trouble.  Drinking, quite naturally, takes its place in many of these traditions as well.  Hell, we haven't even gotten to the religious rituals associated.
    Funerals are most commonly presided over by a religious figure (we discussed their importance before, right).  However, captains of ships, other military leaders, even a stranger passing by will do in a pinch.  This is where the words of consolation are traditionally spoken, wishing clemency for the deceased and consolation for the bereaved.  Mourners usually turn out in their finest outfits and may bring flowers or tokens connected to the deceased to place on the grave or pyre.  Flowers and incense often play a role here.  As ever, music tends to play a role where people have difficulty expressing themselves.  We turn to traditional tunes to connect us to the deceased and all who have gone before.  I always find the ceremonial shovelful of earth for the mourners to be especially morbid (does that mean that I helped to put him/her in the ground?), but it seems to be common enough.
    Many cultures mark the individual graves of their loved ones with tombstones or other markers.  This seems natural enough when the Shinto engage in ancestor worship, but seems a little odder for the rest of us.  We've all seen the vast memorials that "great", or at least rich people build for themselves.  Still today, many people will tidy the graves of their ancestors on All Saints Day.  Others will visit on the anniversary of their loved one's passing, or birthday.  Jews often mark the visiting of a grave by placing a small rock on the headstone.  Others will leave gifts to the spirits, as their religion suggests.  Apparently the Vietnamese will leave thick wads of counterfeit currency at the monument so that the deceased can buy whatever they need in the afterlife.  

Doing a bit of digging (sorry, sorry) has really got me thinking about how the population of my world treats their dead.  It's simple enough to take bits and pieces of tradition and mash them together, but it's another thing entirely to assemble an honest rational of why.  Do your peoples have religion?  What do they expect from their religion?  If they actually can have conversations with their gods, how does that change things?  Will there be misinterpretations of what their gods want?  How does the reality of their surroundings impact their customs and traditions?  Do those customs and traditions conflict with any of their neighbors' (like we outlawed some Native American traditions, or the Chinese outlawed the Tibetan)?  Damn, there is a lot of work to do ;)  I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.  

Sources (besides my own skull)
Jewish Tradition - http://jewish-funeral-home.com/Jewish-burial-customs.html#_Toc68663324
Native American - http://www.deathreference.com/Me-Nu/Native-American-Religion.html
Terracotta Army - http://www.travelchinaguide.com/attraction/shaanxi/xian/terra_cotta_army/
Urnfield Culture - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urnfield_culture
Shinto Tradition - http://www.worldclass.net/TeachingGlobally/WorldReligions/shinto_funerals.htm
Sky Burial - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_burial
Other interesting Traditions - http://matadornetwork.com/bnt/10-extraordinary-burial-ceremonies-from-around-the-world/
Irish Traditions - https://www.funeralwise.com/customs/irishwake/

A walk in the woods

Hey all, back to it with more reading from Fossier (pg 175-185).  I hope you enjoy.  Again, please feel free to comment on the post, ask questions, or make suggestion for future posts.  All of this is put down (essentially) for me, but I know that a few of you out there do share my enthusiasms.  

http://blogs.unimelb.edu.au/librarycollections/files/2014/01/Forest_14992.jpg

    Little Red Riding Hood traveled a dangerous road through the forest, as did Hansel and Gretel.  Highwaymen waylaid merchants (and Robin Hood robbed King John, if we believe) who passed through its depths.  All manner of fantastical beings seem to have lived within the shade of the greenwood, dancing within the fairy-rings, and abducting young people who strayed from the road.  If we listen to the tales, the forest was a dark and mysterious place where good-hearted people tread only with the greatest of care.
    In all honesty though, the Middle Ages were the time when humanity began to tame the forest.  Forest use was highly regulated regarding the felling of timber and the pasturing of animals (no goats or sheep, thank you very much).  Deer may have been protected, but there are plenty of other animals to hunt.  Ferns and undergrowth were used to stuff the mattresses.  Proper husbandry of the forest was essential to much of Medieval village life.
    Wood is, obviously, one of the most widely used resource in the forest.  Hard woods were employed for erecting defenses (especially before they started employing stone, or later as a quick and cheap substitute), framing homes, building furniture, tools, staves, and so on.  Soft woods, branches and undergrowth (not good logs) were primarily used for burning or building fences.  Bark could go to the dyer, or into teas and medicines.  Charcoal was made, but reserved for the forge, or for use in cities (reducing the chance of fires).  Yup, used for pretty much everything.  However, they were very strict about what wood could be cut down, and replacing the materials that they used.  Burned materials were primarily deadfalls and there were harsh punishments for those who violated the rules of the forest.
    Fossier mentions that the peasant of the Middle Ages isn't known for "market gardening."  This means that, like their ancestors of the previous few thousand years, foraged to supplement their farming.  The list is quite extensive: berries, hazelnuts, almonds, walnuts, olives, mushrooms, chestnuts, medlars, acorns, squash, pumpkins, tubers, cherries, figs, apples, quinces, pears, garlic, onions, mint, oregano, and so on.  To this list, he adds items that could be planted, such as asparagus, leeks, chard, cabbage, rhubarb, artichokes, carrots, parsnip, and beets (I assume this "planting" is much like it is thought our ancient ancestors may have planted seeds in specific places so they might have a good idea where to look for food when they returned the following year).  Because foraging was such an important part of peasant life, during wartime, they could live off the land for quite some time.  
    With all of this activity going on, a walk in the forest anywhere near a settlement, would hardly be a solitary experience.  It makes me think of all the old Czech women coming home on the trams, with their baskets full of freshly picked mushrooms (though the best spots are still a carefully guarded secrets).  Add in foresters cutting down trees, people collecting fuel for the fires, with forest guards keeping a careful eye on them all, and you have quite a busy place.  Certainly, those who lived there year-round (making charcoal, hiding out from the law, or some other reason) garnered a certain reputation for consorting with demons, but the forest was not as forbidding a place as we might imagine.

I can get paid for this?

Right off the bat: no, I don't get paid for blogging, not in a cash sense.  I certainly enjoy gathering knowledge and sharing it.  I enjoy expressing myself with the written word.  Some day, these musings may serve as signboard, or a conduit to the readers of my fiction, which could then enhance other areas of profit.  However, at present, this writing (in no way, shape, or form) pays me in the modern conventional sense.  

http://www.visitmuseums.com/exhibition/illuminating-fashion-dress-in-the-art-of-medieval--219

    Fossier lumps Medieval workers into three categories: those working for wages, those working without pay, and those who work for minimal, or undefined (even non-cash) benefit.  The wage-earners were often city-dwellers, earning by the day or by the piece of work produced.  The unpaid might have been slaves (for a certain period), but most worked within the family unit in farms, or similar endeavors.  What struck me as fascinating was  the third sort, living with minimal (or no) fixed pay, but "living on advantages attached to the activity..."  These are the characters that strike us as odd, when we encounter them in Shakespeare, Chaucer, or even Dumas.  These are characters that live on the fringes, working the system and finagling their way through life.  How downright un-Medieval of them.
    It wasn't enough for the Church to mess with the social and spiritual lives of its adherents; it had to mess with the economy too.  Because the Bible says you're not supposed to covet your neighbor's ass (there may be additional support for this line of thinking) the Church essentially outlawed profit motive, at least any more profit than your neighbors'.  Price fixing and standardization of products (density of the weave in cloth, or the size of a loaf of bread) were widely practiced in Medieval Europe.  You were supposed to work for the good of the community, not to line your own pockets (this is why money-lending was only allowed to the Jews).  If you wanted to "get ahead," you had to be the only game in town, deal in bulk, or find some shady way to cut costs.
    Creating a system of standardization is all well and good for the wage-earners, but for those fringe characters I mentioned, it doesn't quite do the job.  Limits, like the ones enumerated above, only really work when you are dealing with a physical end-product.  Fossier identifies these people in a wide range of roles, including,

        "...the ministerial, who served as the agent or the accountant of the demesne,
        but also the chaplain and the bodyguards.  It also included all of those, from
        the apprentice old-clothes dealer to the village knight, who lived with no schedule
        and no wages on what they could glean from their 'office,' which might come
        in the form of a portion of the taxes collected, the alms or oblations of the faithful,
        or the profits from occasional pillage or minor theft." (Fossier pg 124)

A tax-collector (widely reviled in all literature in all eras), who might earn a percentage of the taxes he collects, is much more difficult for the Church to control than a baker.  Service industries would generally provide a venue for this loophole.  Fossier also identifies household servants (like those odd hangers-on you see in Romeo & Juliette) as belonging to this group.  Incidentally, most of the servants of the church fit roughly under this umbrella, since they produce no tangible product and have no fixed income.
    Trying to wrap your mind around living in such a condition is not simple.  The tax-collector example is one of the easier ones, but even if you do your job to the letter of the law people will hate you (especially if you find everything they were trying to hide from you when you stop by for the accounting).  When you put money in the "poor box," who do you think is poorer than the priest, who owns nothing?  A knight with no wars or quests to impress his lord with must have had a hard go of it.  Cheating seems like a tantalizing option.  
    Lackey, or hanger-on, always seemed an unlikely role to choose for oneself, but in a world as strictly regimented as this, it begins to make more sense.  Social strata were not fixed, but limits on how you earned money created a significant barrier to improving your lot in life (plus the Church told you that you shouldn't want to).  Tax-collector and other governmental roles required some serious connections.  By attaching yourself to a rich household, not only were you assured the basics (food, shelter, clothing), but your fortunes might rise with theirs.  Being a companion to the heir to a house might allow access to the higher strata of society, or at least their victuals and booze.  Becoming the confidant of a lord could have all kinds of perks otherwise unattainable (including those political appointments unavailable to the rank-and-file).
    Living in a modern world where we all try to save for retirement, have to pay for health insurance, and have to fill out mountains of paperwork to keep track of it all makes this undocumented world a little hard to envision.  Handshake agreements were common, since most folks couldn't read anyway.  Piss off the wrong person and you were out on your ear, no takesey-backseys.  In this marginal group life was especially tenuous.  You served at the will of those above you, and you'd best not forget it.  This is the essence of Feudalism (as much as I said the institution didn't really exist).  These relationships and social obligations were what shaped the world they lived in and allowed it to function.
    Once the Church fragmented (the Protestants and all that junk), the strictures on commerce began to relax.  With that, the merchant class really blossomed and the Medieval Period drew to a close.  Those in between groups began to disappear.  For the writer of Fantasy, this brings an interesting question.  If we want to include this dynamic in our society, how do we reproduce it?  Do we need a church to forcibly remove excessive profit (or usury)?  Are there other forces we can use to create social stratification without immobility?  Fun fun fun.  If you have some ideas, please feel free to share in the comments.  
    

Referencing The Axe and the Oath (Fossier 2010) pgs 117-131

Disease and response

Inspiration from Fossier this week is all about ignorance and our responses to that ignorance.  Divorcing oneself from the collective knowledge of our time is one of the most difficult processes in understanding our past.  It's easy to sneer at the ignorance (meaning the lack of knowledge, not the failure to comprehend available information) of a population, even regarding subjects we only barely understand.  We all have a concept of computers, engines, manufacturing, chemistry, history, medicine, and so on, which is built on a lifetime of experience.  It's not easy to turn it off.   

A man with leprosy ringing his bell to warn of his approach.
http://www.ancient-origins.net/news-general/uncovering-ancient-roots-leprosy-001367

I grew up in a household where both parents were involved in the medical profession.  I still seem to have to tell people that being cold doesn't give you "a cold."  There are plenty of myths about how to treat illnesses  and injuries that are downright frightening to the medical professional (though plenty of the old remedies, some that we are still rediscovering, actually work).  "Feed a cold and starve a fever," anyone?  We're not too far removed from our imaginative (if incorrect) past.
    Our responses (treatments) were based on dealing with the symptoms of a malady, because often we had no idea what the causes were.  In some cases, we still don't know where chemistry/biology ends and psychology begins.  It's difficult for a modern individual to know what to do when encountering someone suffering from a severe form of Tourette's Syndrome (a relatively mild tic could also be disconcerting if repetitive) or having an epileptic seizure.  How were our ancestors supposed to have any idea how to react?
     It turns out that our ancestors reacted in all kinds of ways and ascribed a variety of sources for epilepsy, even though Hippocrates determined it to be a hereditary condition in 400BC.  Popular superstition at the time suggested that those suffering from epilepsy were touched by the gods.  Later Christians suggested that sufferers were possessed by devils and, being unclean, might be able to pass this condition though physical contact, or with their "evil" breath.  The idea that epilepsy may be infectious persisted up to the 18th century.  Oh, the idea that someone having a seizure can swallow their tongue is also a myth.  The ancients may have been on to something though, go search a list of famous sufferers.
    Leprosy is one of those diseases that brings an immediate shudder when you imagine contracting it.  The effects are disfiguring and may be debilitating.  Fear of this disease was so high that lepers were forced out of communities (leper colonies were organized up to the 1940's), or forced to wear special clothing and ring bells, so that the fearful could flee their passing.  Some thought that lepers had been afflicted by the gods, others thought it genetic (since family members seemed to be affected).  Because those affected with leprosy take a while to develop symptoms, the mode of transmission was impossible to determine.  However, since it was disfiguring, might make you lose some extremities, and had no cure, nobody thought it might be God's "good" touch.
    The lack of tools with which to combat these afflictions led to drastic measures, much like those undertaken in response to THE BLACK DEATH (sorry, it's just such a dramatic name).  Loads of illnesses we laugh off today were significant issues: polio, typhoid, whooping cough, measles, smallpox.  Life at the time was tough enough without infectious diseases, it's no wonder people were afraid.  Fossier suggests that this fear and ignorance may have led to lumping a number of maladies together.  Who could tell the difference between leprosy and eczema or psoriasis?  These more common maladies may even have served to stoke the hysteria and blow the reported cases well out of proportion.
    Plenty of modern authors are using infectious diseases as plot points.  GRRM has his version of leprosy.  Plagues are a significant concern in Scott Lynch's port city.  Boccaccio's The Decameron is a series of tales told by those attempting to entertain each other while hiding out from the plague in their native Florence.  It would be easy to build a madman or an outcast, but I'm waiting to see some affliction used in a positive light.  Would the elite ever have a "chickenpox party" because the scars were chic?  Would a Tourette tic be adorable to a glitchy AI? (wow, that might be in incredibly bad taste, but it makes me think of Max Headroom)  While "consuption" may have been somewhat romanticized, I don't see anyone hoping to get tuberculosis.  Anyway, there is nothing that says a disease in your world has to have a real world corollary.  This is Fantasy, people.  


Butter and burns - http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130820-should-you-put-butter-on-a-burn
Tourette Syndrome - http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/tourette/detail_tourette.htm
History of treatment of epilepsy - http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ert/2014/582039/
Leprosy - http://www.medicinenet.com/leprosy/page2.htm

Medieval Monogamy

Yes, I continue to be inspired by the same book.  It give brief answers to so many questions about daily life and makes so much sense that it's a little disturbing.  Written by a scholar, it's lain out in a less than scholarly manner (which he states from the beginning as his intent).  There are no attributions, so I almost feel as if I'm cheating as I write these posts.  However, as I've stated before, since I always call my work Fantasy, the idea is to use ideas that seem plausible to make my world feel more real to the reader (and myself).  Truth and reality, as hard as they may be to unearth in the best of times, are not necessarily the goal.

Charles II of Naples and Mary of Hungary, Queen of Naples

"The age difference between man and wife in the most usual style of marriage meant that the home sheltered a young woman of sixteen or eighteen years and an adult male ten or fifteen years older." (Fossier pg 88).  Take a second to let that sink in.  This simple statistic is the confluence of a significant number of social factors which lead to large scale societal responses.
    The first thought that struck me, upon reading that statement, was that most men apparently got married between the ages of twenty-six and thirty-three.  While that doesn't seem like such a stretch in the modern world, most of us think of families getting started much earlier back then (in 1960, the average American man was getting married at 22 and his partner was 20).  It's important to remember, though, that men needed to be able to provide a home for their families.  Remember that post about the implications of there being more men than women?  Ladies were a valuable resource.  Guys needed to establish themselves in the world before parents would consent to the match.
    One structure limiting this economic establishment was the apprenticeship contract.  Learning a craft under a master was a time consuming and laborious proposition.  While the details of the contracts may have varied, based on master or profession, the majority prohibited marriage until the end of the term agreed.  Furthermore, apprentices tended to live in the master's home and make little to nothing in terms of wages.  It was only upon reaching the status of journeyman that a craftsman could afford to think of the fairer sex, and even then he couldn't open his own establishment (in guild controlled areas) until achieving the rank of master.
    While the Church held major sway regarding sexual practice, it's difficult to imagine the average woman holding off until sixteen, but impossible to imagine the average man waiting until after his twenty-sixth birthday.  Surprisingly, the Church's answer to men's quandary (at least in France) was hookers.  "... the medieval Church saw it as the only concession that could be admitted to the tyranny of sex." (pg 90).  Apparently, the church actually ran the bawdy houses, in accord with the local authorities, allowing men to make donations to the church in penance for the sins they committed within.  This is not to say that all prostitutes were Church sponsored, there were streetwalkers and ladies who worked the bathhouses as well.  The point is, to maintain this cultural norm, folks kinda fudged another one.
    Even today, people have difficulty understanding May-September romances.  Either they think that the woman is taking advantage of the rich older man in his dotage or that the man is trying to prove his virility (it's still very rare for the woman to be much older).  Imagine then, how things were long ago, when medicine was not as advanced and the years wore harder on the human frame (think dentistry).  Additionally, as we have seen, these marriages were less likely to be love stories than they were best available options.  Small wonder that adultery was winked at by society.  Who doesn't feel for Lancelot and Guinevere?  Arthur may have been a fine king, but we all get it.
    Using this information in a fictional setting can be a bit dicey.  As I've stated before, it's important to have an idea about the social influences which lead to certain practices so you can figure out how to include what you want in your own.  If you are fascinated by the age differential, then by all means, go ahead.  The concept of young men needing to prove themselves before being wed makes sense in all kinds of worlds, but maybe not if the genders are equal.  How do people view adultery?  Do they joke about it, like Chaucer does in The Miller's Tale?  Will your army provide their own prostitutes for the march, or do they discourage such camp followers, like Joan of Arc did?  Have fun with your world, but be alert to how small changes may have a ripple effect across the entire social dynamic.


Modern Marriage - http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/03/getting-married-later-is-great-for-college-educated-women/274040/

Pregnancy in Medieval Life

Still reading Fossier's Axe and the Oath, so all quotations, data, or wellsprings in the following posts are from such unless otherwise attributed.  Oh, and the author's source material and statistics are based on Medieval France.



Pregnancy is not traditionally a focal point of a Fantasy story.  Birth may be a popular starting point, with some kind of portend or prophecy foretelling of the little one's destiny, but the mother is rarely the hero (all credit to Mrs. Potter, who may have been the true hero of that particular story).  To be honest, I must admit that I've rarely encountered pregnant characters in any sort of writing, regardless of genre.  Granted, pregnancy does limit one in terms of adventuring, and many women who are the heroes of their stories are rather young (therefor un-wed and perhaps virgins as well) at the beginnings of their stories, but the general lack is surprising since, "...every woman was pregnant every eighteen months, on average, during the course of her marriage, hence a dozen times according to the demographic norms of the age."
    Obviously a woman in her third trimester is not in the best shape to go out slaying dragons, but then again, life hardy ever waits for us to be ready for any form of adventure.  If we do encounter a pregnant woman, they are most often portrayed as hiding those early stages from the world at large (or a clueless Fitzchivalry) before disappearing for the remainder of their term.  Obviously, women have been bearing children under the most difficult of situations since time began.  Women are able to handle much more pain and stress than we give them credit for.  There is no reason why a pregnant woman could not be actively involved in some perilous adventure (plus it'd give an easy method of keeping track of time in the story).  Many modern women still work right up until their due date.  After all, you don't have to be swinging an axe to have an adventure (though I can think of a few pregnant women I've know that I wouldn't hand an axe to for fear of my life).
    Those women in stories who are spoiling for adventure, or just aren't interested in conceiving, seem to regularly imbibe contraceptive draughts in Fantasy stories these days.  While there is plenty of historical evidence for concoctions intended to prevent (or abort) pregnancy, most Fantasy writing doesn't seem to provide a reason for the secrecy that they continue to impose on this practice in their Fantasy wolds.  Christian tradition has a couple passages that the Church has used to construct its dogma against contraception, but why impose it upon your world?  Granted, there are plenty of reasons that a religion might want to discourage its adherents from limiting their reproduction.  Another reason for contraception is the stigma of a child being born out of wedlock.  Again, not necessarily a thing in your world.  Once you remove Christian influences in your setting, many social "norms" become superfluous (unless you reintroduce them intentionally).  Maybe a female military would be supplied with contraceptive potions as part of their standard kit.  You could put wise-women on the main street next to that stuffy old apothecary.  Feel free to remove any stigma if it serves no purpose in your world.
    Ladies in courtly stories seem to always be either youthful and unmarried or well past their child-bearing years.  Where are the ladies in their prime?  While they may be "indisposed" during difficult pregnancies, or during the final few days, most women can, and do take full part in life/work right up until the end of their pregnancies.  There is no reason to exclude them just because of their swelling midriffs.  Furthermore, a female protagonist who is, or becomes, pregnant during the course of a novel could create a "ticking clock" situation in which whatever task she needs to accomplish would become more and more difficult as time goes on and her condition becomes increasingly more (eh?) cumbersome...
    Final thoughts, for the day, connects to the idea that with a married woman being pregnant every eighteen months (take into account that you can't conceive while you breast-feed), there was really very little time that she wasn't expecting or had a little one at the breast.  The rich might employ wet nurses for infants and nannies for the older children, but most women would have a full range of children that needed to be cared for (depending upon the depredations of illness), much like the Stark family or the Brady Bunch (though both of these examples had servants to help them).  Women in poorer families would be working all the while, perhaps with children underfoot, to make ends meet.  Pregnancy was a matter of course for these women.  It was no extraordinary circumstance.  Children were an increase of the family fortune, by way of a little pair of hands, ready to be put to work as soon as possible.  Make sure that moms are an important part of your world.

Some intriguing numbers from the time:
average 12 pregnancies per married woman
25-35% children were stillborn
20% of the dead in cemeteries are children, aged 7 and younger
4.5-6.5 children per household survive into adulthood

Balance and Disruption

I picked up a copy of The Axe and the Oath, by Robert Fossier, a week or so ago and am really enjoying the style.  It is so dense in material that I found myself going at it with a pen and marking it up (yes kids, this is another joy of owning a paper copy, marginalia).  Reading this book properly is going to take some time.

http://www.turismo.intoscana.it/allthingstuscany/tuscanyarts/cassone/

Some of my earliest posts are related to natural resources, where they occur, and the implications regarding their presence or absence in a Fantasy world.  Works of Fantasy and Science Fiction have done this fairly frequently: desert worlds, ocean worlds, realms of endless night, and so on.  Taking a commonly used resource and figuring out a workaround, as well as its societal implications, is an engaging exercise.  However, we need not be so extreme in our applications.  A simple unbalancing of the norm is all that you need to have a significant impact.
    In my recent reading, I encountered the statement, "Among adults... the female sex seems to have been in the minority, particularly in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, at a ratio of eighty to ninety females for every one hundred males." (Fossier).  He goes on to say that it is this imbalance which created a market (in a manner of speaking) for ladies that had men hunting the hedgerow country for them, or doing battle in tourneys for their hands.  Older widowers would have to wait in line behind the younger men (unless they were rich, of course), which makes me think of Fiddler on the Roof (damn, now that song is going through my head).  Anyway, we see how a slight market imbalance can lead to all sorts of societal implications.
    I can hear many of you thinking, "What about the  dowry?"  Well, that practice doesn't really mean what you think it means (or at least what I thought it meant).  First of all, in some cultures there is the complementary institution of the bride-price (where the prospective husbands put up the cash instead of, or in addition to, the dowry).  Secondly, the dowry was intended to act as support for the wife and children, and was actively managed by the women of early India.  In some cultures the dowry was expected to be held in trust, in case of divorce.  In others, it was intended as an emergency fund.  While the dowry may have been employed at times to buy a rich trader's way into the aristocracy, or to make one's daughter more attractive to suitors, it was not always thus.
    Anyway, while we shouldn't think of women as a commodity, their relative lack in a society creates a significant effect throughout the community.  The modern man will happily make a complete ass of himself for the woman he desires, now imagine if there were that much more competition!  The "distinguished old bachelor" starts to become a more reasonable choice when you think of the consequences of this shift.  Ladies would have much more control over this system as their "value" rose.  Mistreatment and abuse would decrease.  They would gain an increased political and economic voice.  This did, in fact, happen in certain areas during the Hundred Years War.  Unfortunately, as the ratios balanced back out things went back to normal.
    One clever approach to the a reversal of this idea is covered in the Chanur Saga, by  C. J. Cherryh.  The Hani are a feline people, with a culture extrapolated from the social workings of lions.  In a clan, there are females, children, and one adult male (the "Lord").  The male is big and powerful, having to fight off rivals for clan leadership, but the ladies do almost all of the work (both physical and mental).  Over time, the males have essentially bred for size and aggressiveness, while the ladies are smaller and tend to be more intelligent (though we find that this may be more a function of nurture and nature).
    Humans might not fall into such leonine patterns, but what would the fallout be?  Would human men just become bigger assholes (from a historically repressive perspective) if there were truly "two girls for every boy"?  If the ratio really started to skew to making women more dear, where there was one women for every ten men, would we become more like bees with their queen?  Hmmm I seem to have gone over some of this in the Creature Culture posts, but thinking about how nature has already put us through some of these societal stresses really fires my imagination.  
    As Fossier tells us (see the intro), the lack of women had a variety of social implications.  Some men had to quite literally go searching for a mate, not some specific woman, but to find any available woman.  Women were promised in marriage much younger than they had been, even before child-bearing age.  Even spinsters (yup, I did a post on that too) had significant economic value for their families.  This unbalancing of the genders set men on the move and improved the lot of the ladies in both social and economic realms.
    While gender balance has been the focus of this post (and I still don't view women as possessions, promise), this line of thinking can be widely applied in your world building.  If steel is rare, smiths are revered and snake-men will pillage for it (see: "Conan the Barbarian").  When wood is scarce, you find another fuel for the fire (peat, dung, what have you).  Things do not need to be completely lacking in order to have a societal impact.  Conversely, some things are valuable to us because they are so rare.  After living in Brazil for a little while, where avocados were free and available on the tree outside, their price in PA is really galling.  In Brazil, it seemed like the old ladies always knew which ones were perfectly ripe and ready to be plucked.  Old ladies in Czech know where to find the best mushrooms in the forest.  Have you seen the prices for morels, much less truffles?  Yeah, sorry, it's lunch time.
    Anywho, add some imbalances to your peoples to make things interesting.  Maybe your female-poor folks become raiders who carry off their female victims.  Slavery is not an original American idea, perhaps there is a trade if balances in only one of your planet's cultures are significantly skewed.  Maybe your abundance of women rise to dominate the economic and political scene, while the men become pampered dandies.  Perhaps your slight abundance of women simply encourages more to take up arms and defend the homeland.  It's your world, I'm just sharing my take on the available tools.  Enjoy.


Dowry Wiki - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowry
Dowry in India - http://www.hitxp.com/articles/history/origin-dowry-system-bride-woman-india-british/

Information and Communication

http://users.trytel.com/~tristan/towns/florilegium/popfabr04.html

The selection your news outlet is an important process in this modern era.  Websites and television channels offering their version of the truth seem endless.  The time in which we live has been referred to at times as "The Information Age."  Sources are differentiated by having different topical focuses or political slants.  Some consumers focus on one primary outlet for their information, while others go to specialized outlets for individual topics of interest.  In devising a Fantasy world, the topic of information dissemination leads us to a number of questions with significant implications.  

    With all of the information available to us today, most people consider themselves relatively savvy consumers.  However, most of us don't regularly research the politics of both sides on an issue or visit multiple sources to fact-check.  We go with sources we trust.  For many people, they still trust what their preacher tells them from the pulpit every Sunday, which has a long tradition.  Others will listen to the statements made directly by the government (town crier or media rep) for political movements and changes in the world.  Some prefer to listen to those who have seen situations firsthand (tv personalities and editorial writers, or travelling merchants and tinkers) who share their experiences in anecdotal form.  Then there are those who enjoy rumor and gossip, which is available from pretty much all of the sources at some time or another, if you catch them in the right mood.   

    Information sources are naturally less reliable in a Fantasy setting (even Tolkein's palantir could mislead the user) than we are use to.  Eyewitness accounts are notoriously untrustworthy, even when the viewer has the best intentions at heart.  Written messages can be easily lost, damaged, delayed, or faked (though this can necessitate the fun of seal making).  Authoritative texts did not (well, some today still don't) have the peer review process that modern scholarship requires, plus mistakes could have been made in the scribing porcess, or in subsequent copying.  All of these problems may arise when seeking after knowledge, assuming that the information is even there to be found.  In an interesting twist, those absorbing the information might recognize the information as false, or misleading, and use that knowledge to their advantage.

    We are all concerned about the validity of the information we receive and establish a kind of relationship with the mouthpiece who delivers it (the somewhat recent flap over Brian Williams is a fine example of the perceived betrayal of that trust).  While it may be more difficult in a Fantasy setting to prove that information is false or misleading (intentionally or not), the breaking of trust is that much more significant.  Giving your word seems like a cute relic of the past, but it was extremely significant to our forebears for the simple reason that important decisions often had to be made on very limited information.  Consequently, being caught in a lie or breaking your word in a world that relies so heavily on hearsay could have a serious impact on both social and business relationships.  

    In a Fantasy world, knowing who to trust is one of the most important factors in survival (see: GoT).  In many adventuring stories, your characters will be outsiders.  Without someone to vouch for them, they will quite naturally be viewed with mistrust and apprehension (doubly so if they are carrying weapons).  It may serve you best to send them off in disguise to gain the trust of the populace, but they should beware of being found out and destroying that fragile bond.  Knowing who to go to for good information and who to ignore as untrustworthy are complementary skills.  Sifting widely circulated rumors for truth may be the most valuable skill of all.  

    Misleading your characters though lies and half-truths is a time-tested plot device.  Is it the aged councilor (who secretly needs money to keep his ailing wife in healing draughts), or the back alley foot-pad out to save his own skin who is telling you the truth?  There is the old 'misunderstood prophecy' route, which Star Wars beat us over the head with.  The turn-coat in your midst out for personal gain also has a strong presence in the genre (as well as Shakespeare).  When information is so scanty, it is hard to know who to trust.  The gullible and the openhearted may be ripe for the picking.  Perhaps only the keen-eyed and the cynical would survive in a time like that.  However, they may also miss out on opportunities that the believers would jump at.  Playing with that dynamic within a party of travelers can be a fun opportunity for character development.

Collecting

http://www.museumofthecity.org/city-market-places/

    I was just getting my hair cut this morning, and had a conversation with my hairdresser about, not exactly comics, but the superhero industry.  It's odd to live in a time where comics can not only be adult, but cool as well.  To be candid, I haven't collected comics for some time.  When I was a kid I subscribed to The Avengers (the Black Knight, Wasp, Hercules, and others line-up.  Yeah, not really a classic period).  Luckily, one of my brothers had one to The Uncanny X-Men, so I got to read those too, if I asked nicely.
    As I got older, my tastes changed a bit, and I moved away from superheroes.  Comics seemed to grow up with me as the subject matter got "grittier" and more sexual, though for a while they were really going over the top, especially the independent ones (not one I collected, but did you ever read "Faust"? Jeez).        
    The other day I was regaling my girlfriend with tales of comic collecting in the late '80s-'90s.  I gave her some light history of the major players and the independent comic scene.  "The Comics Code," was something she'd never heard of (if you're in the same boat, go read The Ten-Cent Plague).  Part of the fun at the time was 'the hunt' for back-issues to fill in the gaps (graphic novel collections are a relatively new phenomenon).
    The more you got into it, the more you wanted to learn about you favorite characters' history, their origin (not the re-boots or flash-backs they did from time to time, but the original stuff).  Marvel stuff went back something like 20 years or more, at the time, depending on the title and they hadn't really done much in the way of reprints.  To seek out those back-issues, you got to know all of the shops in the region.  When I was a kid, there were at least 8-10 within easy driving distance of my folks' place.  After a little while though, you knew most of their stock and had to move on to other resources.
    Regional cons came through a couple times a year, bringing in new retailers and the talent behind the books.  This was the place to fill in those gaps and to build the value of your collection, getting the signatures of those men (to my recollection, not really any ladies doing it when I was a kid) who created those prized works.  Here was where you met the most devoted collectors, who could find what you wanted, but here was also where you would likely pay top dollar.  They knew the value of what they had, and while they were willing to deal, I'm sure they could read the hunger in my young eyes.
    As I got older and began to travel more, I'd make stops in the local comic shops.  You dip your toes into new pools and new worlds open up.  Those impossible to find couple of issues I'd lacked for years might be sitting right there, waiting for me.  Titles I'd never heard of blew me away.  Around this time, the internet had made its presence felt, and you could find pretty much anything you wanted for a price.  The trouble was that you were never sure about the quality.  Collectors know the difference in value between Fine and Mint, even if you mostly care about the story, you don't want to overpay.
    Today there are many more assurances when purchasing online, but this post is not about e-commerce, it is about collecting.  My experience as a comic-book collector mirrors that of collectors of all sorts throughout history.  Someone discovers something wonderful and new in a local shop and becomes an enthusiast.  They might move on to a seasonal market, seeking the best that region has to offer.  There, they make contacts to further their passion.  Perhaps they seek out older and rarer expressions of their passion.  Maybe they delve into the means of production or of distribution.  Perhaps they convince the travelling merchants to acquire something for them in a distant land.  They may travel themselves to acquire this thing, or see where it is made.  Who knows where this ends?
    Our passions can lead us on many adventures.  That, after all, is the point of this blog.  At one time, passionate comic collectors were much like rare book collectors, wine enthusiasts, stamp collectors, and so on.  Scouring dusty cardboard boxes filled with the mylar bagged ephemera of some other geek's hocked adolescence is a treasure hunt to a comic fan.  We live for that moment of discovery.
    The unbridled passion of the collector is central to the plot of The Maltese Falcon and numerous other works.  Why we collect what we do can have many sources.  Some love the connection to the past (their childhood, or further), or to distant lands.  For others, the goal is merely to acquire an object of beauty to appreciate.  Old books may provide insight into the how things have changed, both in the way people think and how the text itself may have developed over time.  Whatever the reason, collecting creates an odd community of passionate individuals with great stories.  Tell one. 


Do you have any great collecting stories?  How far have you gone to acquire that thing which would "complete" your collection?

Reference I Love (VI): Booze

http://www.theworldwidewine.com/Wine_articles/Wine_parties.php

One of the most intense pleasures I get while writing is doing the detail work.  Story and character are, naturally, of prime importance, but (as you can see from this blog) I love creating the world around them.  History has long been a passion, and while Fantasy is not strictly history its application can add a sense of grounding even when you throw in some really batty shit.  In an effort to keep enhancing my abilities to tell a compelling story, I keep my reading broad.  Most recently, I've been reading George Saintsbury's Notes On A Cellar-Book (1920).  I couldn't care less about which vintages he preferred, it's the detail that surrounds which catches my imagination.
  The role of the wine merchant and the importer were the first elements which caught my eye.  Not only dealing in individual bottles or cases for private consumption, these guys were handling casks and tuns.  The author recounts the names of a few reputable men who would never lead him wrong and the importers they preferred (though he suggests that extreme brand loyalty may have been somewhat unnecessary).  The quality and availability of the product these men were selling were a significant issues.  Wars and other more mundane logistical concerns hindered or shifted the trade in, or preference for, all kinds of goods.  In a time when hosting a fine dinner was a significant social requirement, having the right procurer was vital.
    How the author tastes is much more interesting than what he tastes.  Because the author tends to buy in larger volumes (talking of purchasing bottles of wine by the dozens), he approaches alcohol rather differently than most.  He preaches patience with certain wines and speaks of others as though they are sprinters, who flag over the long run.  He can make these assessments because he laid down a couple dozens and tasted them over the years.  With Scotch he recommends keeping a 10-14 gallon solera, blending in the new with the quality old stuff to create a more unified experience while simultaneously barrel-ageing it (a practice he replicated with various spirits in different quantities over the years).  He would also experiment with blending (bottled) single malt scotches from different distilleries at home, on a glass by glass basis.  Thinking of glasses, there is an entire chapter devoted to glassware.  Apparently, he quite literally put his money where his mouth was (referring more to the booze than the glassware).
    In many chapters, the author discusses overarching changes in tastes regarding alcohols.  Sweet champagne was the rule at one time, as opposed to the preponderance of modern bruts.  Scotches used to be darker and sweeter from being aged in sherry or madeira casks, the new ones were lighter and drier. Changing tastes also move from drinking Scotch in toddy form to whisky and soda.  Rums were traditionally darker and more tar-like.  Naturally, tastes continue to evolve, but it is fascinating to imagine the historic palate.  Did they crave sweeter alcohols because sugar was harder to come by?
    One of the real pleasures in reading old books is in divining the full implication of a statement.  Following a series of comments on American whiskeys, the author notes, "That they are or were generally drunk 'neat' is, I believe, the fact; and if any rational comparison of the state of America and England in regard to alcoholic liquor were made, this fact would have to be taken into 'high consideration.'"  Obviously the author does not hold American whiskey in high esteem (he had stated previously that it was only good for drinking straight, and not at all in other combinations).  Using this method of consumption as a basis for comparison may be implying that he felt Americans did not have a refined palate.  Potentially it related back to the Prohibitionist movement (which he makes frequent comment on), especially in America, suggesting that Americans abuse alcohol more often (encouraging the Prohibitionists).  Finally, his disdain for Americans taking their whiskey 'neat' suggests rather strongly that he rarely did likewise, which is rather interesting when considering that he spent many years living in Scotland.
    I could go on and on about all of this (I have done a fair amount of trimming to this post, believe it or not). His musings include a fair number of recipes for toddys, flips, and other concoctions which tantalize the reader (I admit, I tried a Scotch and milk last night).  There is a chapter about how to arrange your cellar wherein he discusses some of his residences through the years.  When you take your time working through a book of this nature, it can lead to research in all kinds of directions.  Granted, to get to all of the 'good stuff,' you must wade through his masses of literary allusion and staunch opinions, but he obviously had fun assembling this work.  If nothing else, skip to the end where he lists some choice menus.  Imagine taking part in some of the grand dinners and their associated libations.  GRRM, eat your heart out.

Old Books

Luddites wreck textile machines in this drawing from 1812. (Public Domain)

I admit that I'm a bit of a Luddite.  I have little interest in owning a smart-phone.  I prefer to do crosswords on paper (yes, I still do crossword puzzles).  I prefer to read books on paper.  For a brief while I flirted with e-books.  Living overseas, it doesn't do to collect more paper than you can fit in two suitcases (who needs to pack clothing?) and books in English are much more expensive than those in the native tongue, but it didn't last.  I had to leave a fair few behind me in Prague when I left.  That was hard.  I don't get attached to many things, but books (I'll include comic books as well) have always held a certain place in my heart.
    When I was a child, I had a very good friend named Matt (we are still friends, though life has taken us in different directions).  He and I shared many enthusiasms, especially involving books.  The one thing about him that always broke my heart was that his passion was for the story alone and not for the object that contained it.  When he returned a book to me, invariably the spine was broken and the pages dog-eared.  I assume that it was his method of devouring the work, getting into every nook and cranny of the page. Conversely, when I finish reading a new book, I could probably return it to the shop for a full refund (you can work out what it means psychologically, that's not what I go in for).  Matt has always been an early adopter of technology and you'd think that he'd be big on reading electronically.  The funny thing is, when I sent him the first draft of my novel, he had to get it bound to read it (and the copy he mailed to me was a beautiful gesture).  I like to think that that means something.
    Shopping in used bookstores is a favored pastime of mine.  Part of this stems from me not being able to afford to pay full price for all of the books that I want to consume.  Part of this stems from me enjoying the process of combing through shelf after shelf of titles, uncovering lost (at least to me) gems from another age.  I love seeing some of the old artwork on SciFi and Fantasy titles.  I also like combing through the "Literature" portion of bookshops, finding old hard-backed copies of classic works in odd sizes.  I like browned paper with ragged edges.  I like how it falls open in your hand without having to break the spine. Sometimes you find notes from the previous owner identifying particularly moving passages or perhaps simply the date of purchase.  Sometimes you find an older version of a story you already know, or an unedited version, it's like listening to an old Springsteen bootleg, when he was still working out the lyrics to new songs live on stage.
    I have nothing against e-books, or the people that love them.  Having moved a number of times in the US, I understand what a pain in the ass it is to cart around a small library.  I just know how easy it is for me to lose track of things on a computer.  If I bought all of my books for kindle, or some such, how easy would it be to forget that they lay there, unloved (because unread is unloved to a book).  I don't browse my computer's memory in search of inspiration, and I hate going back a few pages in an e-book to confirm something I think I know that has just happened in a story.  I need my books to stare at me longingly and accusingly from a pile.  I need them to remind me of the larger world.
    Part of the joy in bookstores (like record shops) is the joy in discovering something you didn't know you were looking for.  With all of the algorithms written to help you find what you might like based upon your personal past enjoyment, it's easy to miss the wonderful.  It's too easy to pigeonhole ourselves with such able customer service as the internet provides.  The electronic world is an amazing thing that makes much of our modern world possible (as it makes it possible for me to bother you faithful few with this).  Online publishing has created a marketplace for an incredible number of new voices.  I will not speak against it.  However, for me, the glowing screen is often a cold unfriendly place, which is rather averse to the outdoors, needs constant updates, and requires recharging.  It does not sit well in my armchair and can be expensive to fall asleep while holding.  Where is the fun in that?