Thanksgiving Primary Sourse

One of my design teachers yesterday told us that he had heard that they did not actually eat turkey for the first thanksgiving and it was more likely that they had lobster.. I'm not really sure if i believe it, but it is plausible. So, i decided to do some research..
First of all, wild turkeys can be found pretty much all over eastern America. I don't have a picture showing what the turkey situation was back then.. but the first thanksgiving took place in New England which is well inside turkey territory.

The only written account from the first "thanksgiving" in America is written by Edward Winslow in 1621. In Edward Winslow's document he writes, "the foure in one day killed as much fowle, as with a little helpe beside, served the Company almost a weeke"... "and the went out and killed five Deere, which the brought to the Plantation and bestowed on our Governour and upon the Captaine, and others."
so.. yes... they had fowl and yes.. the had deer.
another rumour is that they aren't sure if Indians actually attend this "first thanksgiving" in fact, the Wampanoag did attend along with the colonists.

So the results are so:
they are unsure if there was turkey or not. but they did eat some sort of fowl.. and deer. no accounts of the eating lobster though.




sources: http://plimoth.org/education/olc/source.html

Shorthand Buisness

I've taken to shorthand again. it takes practice but it's actually pretty simple to learn. I think the most difficult part of it is writing it then trying to read what you've written. other than that, easy peasy. Maybe it will help people in taking notes for school if they learn a couple popular phrases. There are many types of shorthand, but i am learning Gregg shorthand which is the most popular form beating out Pitman Shorthand. Developed by John Robert Gregg, I'm happy to anouce Gregg Shorthand came out in 1888 which was a wonderful year full of Victorian goodies.
The difference between Pitman's and Gregg's Shorthand is that Pitman's system is based on line weight to differentiate between phonetics. Gregg uses different line lengths, make it easier to write with a pen making it more practical for today's uses since fountain pens are no longer in popularity.
If you'd like to teach yourself you can go to :

http://gregg.angelfishy.net/anaboutg.shtml
or
http://books.google.com/books?id=uxELAAAAIAAJ&printsec=titlepage&source=gbs_summary_r&cad=0

I use a book written by Louis A Leslie titled Gregg Shorthand : Functional Method
A book is easy to learn from because you can write on the pages. Shorthand has really experienced a decline due to the computer, so you can find these books at old book sales.

Mystery Object

I went to a flea market a couple weeks ago and saw this Object:
I'm really not sure what it is.. maybe someone knows... a spinning wheel, I suppose? most spinning wheels are made with wooden wheels so.. ahh. I don't know.

Dreams

If children have been good all day,
And kept their tongues and lips quite clean,
They dream of flowes that nod and play,
And Faries dancing on the green.

But if they've spoke naughty words,
Or told a lie, they dream of rats:
Of crawling snakes, and ugly birds;
Of centipedes, and vampire bats.

Taken from an children's book circa 1896. There is NOTHING worse than ugly birds. Goodnight children.

Dreams from The Child World. London: John Lane. third edition. 1896. pp. 174.

The Dangers of Onanism

I've been researching for my next zine.. which will be on sex and I came across this: I won't be using it in my zine so I thought I'd place it here. the image is cut in half but should be chronological.


so. I urge you.. please PLEASE be careful when practicing the secret sin.

Hippie Origins

So, I was reading Soiled Doves: Prostitution in the Early West by Anne Seagraves, and she mentioned that when one would go to an opium den to smoke, since, in most dens, there was a lack of furniture, one would have to smoke their opium leaning on one hip... like so:
Seagraves mentions that this is perhaps where the word "hippies" came from.. but.... after some thought and some wiki searching, Hippies come from the 70's. They were followers of the jazzy Hipster movement in the 1940's.. so i went looking for the origins of Hipster instead. After a little more wikipedia surfing, which is not the most truthful place ever, I found two theories:

1. Etymologically, the words hep and hip may have been derived from hepi, a word in the West African language Wolof that means “to see” or hipi that means "to open one's eyes".

2. "Hipster" derives from the slang "hip" or "hep," which are derived from the earlier slang "hop" for opium.

and apparently hipsters were originally called hepcats... (how forties...) I don't really know if Hipsters smoked opium since there weren't many opium dens left in the 1940's.. but if they did.. i guess it would make a lot of sence.. anyways.. I'm curious what the true origins are.