Donna Haraway’s Staying with the Trouble, which slides down easily and makes me feel like I can take deeper breaths than usual (physically and mentally) – Should you read this? YES!!! Read it!!!! It explains some of the underpinnings of my feelings about why we should not be “going to Mars”. (Sorry.) I always tell Danny he can go to the Moon when we are very old if he really insists but I will be here making healthy soil from compost and a lovely ecosystem for bugs, grubs, and fungus.
Women Who Make a Fuss: The Unfaithful Daughters of Virginia Woolf – Isabelle Stengers and Vinciane Despret – To go with the Haraway book. Useful background.
Fourth Grade Rats – a very annoying short children’s book I got on spec from a little free library and am putting right back out – It is about toxic masculinity I suppose where one boy persuades another, more kind and innocent boy that to really grow up, he must be a bully, and misbehave, and throw away all the toys he loves and his cartoon lunchbox and stuffed bear, etc. This doesn’t go well and our soft boi is miserable. Their moms discuss the situation and meet them with a mixture of sternness and laughing at them. Soft boi gets a hug and his stuffed bear is returned to him. That sounds nice but something about it annoyed the hell out of me. I think the part where the moms fix it. Figure yourself out! Jeez. So it is both putting the burden onto women, and also, condescending somehow. Also, sure fine maybe this would KIND OF happen at age 9 but try it in 5 years and see how it goes down.
Uncle Wiggly’s Fortune, by Howard R. Garis, in a splotchy pale green hardback from 1950, much like the ones I remember reading at my paternal grandparents’ beach house in the 70s as they were strangely short of books and yet had a large run, a whole shelf, of this Uncle Wiggly nonsense, which bored me even when I was small but I was desperate. I remember once starting to list out all the goofy chapter endings, where the author says something extra cornball and fake-down home, in a particular formula, like, “My! And if the butterfly don’t decide to take the grasshopper and use it for scissors to cut out a quilt pattern out of the tigerlillies to give to the post wagon man, then I’ll tell you the story of Uncle Wiggly and how he met the Littlest Hedgehog.” I made that one up, but let me find a real one. “If the parlor lamp doesn’t go out to a moving picture show and melt all the ice in the gas stove, the story will be about Uncle Wiggily and also some more about the horseshoe crab.” You may be able to imagine my childhood fascination (mingled with something a bit like horror, or snobbery) at these tag lines. They were foul, and boring, but I had to read them, and the only thing left to me was to overthink about the (horrible) style.
Looking it up now gives me a clue to where these books came from. Garis wrote a daily (!!!!) Uncle Wiggly story in the Newark News for over 50 years starting in 1910. My grandfather John A. Henry was born and raised in New Jersey (born in 1919) so he would have grown up reading this stuff maybe in the paper. It seems like a good theory – either he had some of these books as a kid, or he got them or was given them by his parents, to read to his children. I will have to ask my dad if he remembers them.
I guess we have to acknowledge Uncle Wiggly as a disabled protagonist – he walks, or hops, with a crutch.
Is he a manifestation of the African trickster rabbit? Even . . . a whitewashed one? Maybe! He is not very tricksy. But I could sort of see it.
I had also not realized Garis was a hugely prolific author not just for Uncle Wiggly but for a lot of the Stratemeyer syndicate books including early Bobbsey twins books. Probably the more boring of them.
As usual I spend more time writing about this nonsense than about the actually good soul-feeding book that I loved (Staying with the Trouble). Partly because i would have to think harder about what I’m saying.
I also read through a little new looking translation of Sallust (“How to Stop a Conspiracy”) which as I remember from some other reading/translation, is extremely confusing. To really understand what the hell is going on I would need to make a lot of little index cards for the cast of characters or generate an entire cheat sheet. Who said what, and who said who did what, and who said who said someone did something else, and for everything (this is the good part!) there is at least one other theory of what happened or some other group or different factions making different claims. Holy shit! Anyway, it also made me think again about Megalopolis which uses some of the names but none of the actual information or “plot” or anything you might think of as history, somehow. Like how you go from Sallust’s “everyone said something different and the situation kept changing very rapidly” utter chaos, to a grossly boring plot about a genius great man inventing something with the love of a good woman buoying him up, but also somehow it feels like the Fountainhead, I do not fucking know. WTF again, Francis Ford C?
Experimental liveblogging! I’m in Berkeley at Pegasus Books for Sunaura Taylor‘s book event for Disabled Ecologies. Sunaura is here in conversation with Yomi Young from the Shelterwood Collective.
I have been reading the book on Kindle but like it so well that I want a physical copy too!
You can read more about Yomi and her activist work in a zillion places but check out StoryCorps and maybe this article on the DJCC’s work early in the pandemic.
As Sunaura started her talk it only just now hit me that Sun-aura = Sonora like the Sonoran Desert. Oh! How did I miss that.
Crowd instantly on board with Yomi’s joke about doing some comedy performance art where they try to pass each other sheaf of papers in crip time (miming dropping papers and scrambling with hands)
Sunaura reads us a short section from the introduction, Age of Disability. “Environmenal destruction is a story of disablement.” (Of people and of the land). “Mass ecological disablement of the human and non-human world.” Her story and her research are deeply rooted in Tucson’s history.
I lived in Tucson briefly – only for a few months, but I loved it and the desert and its life very much! Good memories of my many visits (with membership) to the Desert Museum, geologizing all over with Halka Chronic’s classic Roadside Geology of Arizona, and sneaking through the weird ruins of Biosphere 2!
A main point of the book is that just as disabled people have adapted and created ways of being, living, healing, doing care work, and finding joy, we can, or must, do the same with our relationship with the land.
Yomi mentions being blown away by the balance of philosophical discussion and personal history in the book. She asks Sunaura, Why now? Sunaura replies, she knew she would write it someday and her whole career has been leading up to it. And it has taken her 9 years to write! Her own life is entangled with the narrative of pollution on the southwest side of Tucson near the air force base and Hughes facilities. Her origin story gives her the roots of thinking about disability and nature. Not just her individual problem but that it is a political issue caused by systems of harm, racism, war, etc. and impact a whole community. Injury to nature is harm to all of us humans.
(It is like 1 million degrees in this bookstore as we are a large crowd sitting on a raised platform (there was a lift). My kingdom for a fan, or the space to leave and find a bathroom to remove the long underwear I unwisely wore so I would not be cold on the way home. I also regret the woolly socks. )
Yomi talks about the way the book is constructed. She loves how obsessed with aquifers Sunaura is. The book itself has an aquifer! Which has this nuanced way of organizing information. The pages of the book have , running along the book, an aquifer with extra explanations!
Aw I love this. Yomi has the soul of a poet. And one that admires huge nerdiness. Yay!
Sunaura says this is her favorite question because she loves aquifers so much! She talks about understanding aquifers as relational and as connected. “Magical holders of ancient time.” Unimaginable amounts of water under there, fossilized water.
She notes that because she doesn’t use her hands to read, she doesn’t like footnotes at the end of the book. So the running footnotes felt better to her and metaphorically became parallel in her mind to the underground running stream of information underlying the book.
Yomi says the book is an important one for disabiliyt studies but also for the environmental movement as it is not often Yomi sees environmentalist advocacy or research that includes disability – She feels it is a gift to our community. Sunaura has blown her mind with the new framing of community, disabled ecology.
Sunaura takes that idea and talks about disabled ecologies and communities. When she returned to Tucson as an adult she was following the trails of disability. The pollution and contamination left a trail of people, of wildlife, who were harmed. Wildlife was drinking from the unlined, uncovered pits. The trees died. And the aquifer was permanently altered. Material injuries didn’t just impact humans. Disabled Ecologies is in some ways a mapping project. (You can map not just where the weapons are made, but where they go off.) Disability not just a personal lived experience. She talked with many people and there were so many narratives of disability and illness, in public health, in community activists, in litigation, and these narratives – and mobilizations were often racialized in various ways.
Another short reading – from the chapter The Ground Beneath My Wheels. “What was I to make of this patch of land…” She felt a sense of solidarity with the injured landscape and was drawn to get to know it just as she was drawn to get to know the human communities. “How was I to write myself back into nature?” She then reads a quote that mentions Yomi and her work! (Audience goes oooooh!) Sunaura then reads a bit that mocks the hell out of Edward Abbey and his misogynist, ableist, colonialist writing. (Quotes about possessing a beautiful woman; and a bit where Abbey exhorts everyone to get up out of their motorized wheelchairs. (Audience laughs and boos; I have double flipped off the air for good measure. Cartoonishly bad!)
Knowing an aquifer wasn’t hindered by (in)accessiblity – it needs research, imagination, and understanding to become intimate with the aquifer. “The injured underground became a sort of companion.” “The desert I desired was bursting with community.” “Knowing the desert was not nearly as important as learning to be responsible to it.”
Yomi talks about her own work about land and disabled embodiement. That disability is incompatible with nature – this is a lie – And that natural spaces must be pristine and untouched – that we (disabled people especially but all humans) damage and corrode it. We who have been harmed should be leading the thinking about how to heal together with the land.
Yomi asks Sunaura about Mexican American communities who fought so hard for the environmental damage to be recognized. They continued naming it over and over and confronting environmental racism in a way that was so effective. Outside of movements, we don’t often hear these stories, it’s all Erin Brokovich where someone comes in to save the people. The skill this community had to use every possible tool at their disposal – including impact litigation – is great.
Sunaura – Talks about Yomi’s work with Shelterwood. She started off this project not knowing about the decades of incredibly environmental justice activism in South Tucscon. They should be given credit for the aquifer protection laws that were passed in Arizona. They were really badass but even in Tucson they are not well honored. Decades of contaminated groundwater. the city officials did nothing. No investigation, etc. But the community knew something was wrong. And then in the 1980s as they mobilized the City blamed it on their “lifestyle” or their diet, racist ableist ways to deny responsibility and making the community feel it was their own fault. This is often something that happens with disability!
Then at some point people were like, cleaning up the environment is one thing but right now we all need health care!
Time check! It is nearly 7, yay read the book! Any questions!
Audience m ember asks What happened then! (We all holler, you have to read the book!) Sunaura and Yomi: The story continues. For a while, they got a health program at a clinic. They won a historic groundwater protection fight and passed strong legislation. But the continued fuckery of the system is still harming people. And they are fighting for things they need to live and thrive as disabled people. There is no end.
Yomi: It never ends. And it’s very important that we don’t leave anyone behind. We don’t stamp out disability. It’s part of the human condition. It’s about, how do we live with disablement. Not leaving bodyminds behind, moving together, at the pace of our most marginalist and most disabled. That’s what is really beautiful about it.
Sunaura: it is a hopeful book and the framing of disability is a hopeful one. i know from the beautiful expansive world of disablity community . how can we make that reality one for the non human world as well?
A really lovely interview and talk, and I look forward to actually finishing the book!
So far, it makes me think about what I was trying to say in my short essay here, “Thoughts on AI, comradeship, ethics, interdependence” which I rewrote and made a bit longer for my zine Tabahtea Triple Junction. There, I started in a different place, with some recent discourse on AI and sentience, and tried to recontextualize it to the relationships we build with non human things including land. Sunaura’s book is crystalizing a lot of that thinking for me in a very useful way!
Coincidentally I also just re-read some of the Haraway she mentions and my friend unixjazz had messaged me a few days ago to say he found an OG copy of Sandra Harding‘s The Science Question in Feminism from 1986 while he was on vacation and snagged it for me (another book mentioned in Disabled Ecologies!) So maybe it is no wonder we are thinking about similar issues as we imagine the underground ebbs and flows! I will be going to unixjazz’s Common Tools event later this month to talk about DIY assistive tech as a liberatory idea with ecological connections, too!
I had a relaxing and luxurious bath this morning in our new clawfoot tub, which is blowing our minds after some years of only having a shower in the house. While I was in there I read a good way into a book someone left on our sidewalk bench, Polaroids from the Dead by Douglas Coupland. I liked the title and was curious what Mr. “Gen X” inventor had to say. (For accompaniment, I put on Lou Reed’s album Transformer.) So far, Polaroids strikes me as mostly accurate in mood and content. I moved to the Bay Area in 1990 so it was all very familiar. It did feel a little more like the late 80s but still, accurate.
Part of the mood that I enjoyed was that it conveyed our (us being people roughly of my age in 1991 or so) attitude towards hippies and the 70s, which was that they seemed to have had all the fun and excitement but that there was a little left for us; they would kindly sell us blotter acid, and we could still go see them in concert.
I thought less about California in the 90s while reading this book and more about Austin in the 80s. I lived in or hung out at various co-ops (and yes it was pretty much exactly like the movie Slacker which captured the vibe perfectly (ofc I knew half the people in there) in that it was possible to live on your part time minimum wage job and go to school and fuck around doing art and music or whatever. ) So tempting to keep nesting parentheses, but no.
Here’s me with a guy I briefly “dated” (if you can call it that) from Arrakis Co-op and then a little after I moved into 21st Street Co-op in late 1986 or early 1987. He was a Deadhead and very nice, and had cases and cases of taped Dead concerts carefully labelled & often with very lovely art and handwritten liner notes. (I remember being impressed with this and also with how he would diligently do all his engineering homework, then hit the bong with equal diligence afterward.) But my point is that hippie culture was not at all dead in 1987, or 1990. It was alive and kicking. I was so relieved that I hadn’t missed my chance after all to experience it.
There was a guy who would come by the Loud Suite (where I lived at first in 21st St) named Motorcycle Michael, who had long white guy dreads done up in a crocheted hat, drove a van, and always wore pretty much the same outfit made of that gorgeous oaxacan or guatemalan woven cloth and a tie died tshirt. He seemed to be the most obvious dealer hanging out there and I don’t think I bought anything from him (I did not need to ; see above photo of me; do you think I got free bong hits or??! It didn’t even occur to me, and besides, I had no money) It did not have any sort of creepy feel (Drug dealer or pusher hanging out with teenage students) but rather, a sort of benevolent uncle and friend vibe. (Trust me I have seen the creepy, gross, skeevy ones and know; or maybe i just am overly impressed with any older guy who was decent enough not to hit on me) Like, his life was bopping around between Mexico and all over Texas maybe, living in his van, hanging out with people who were pretty chill, listening to good music, being super generous with his time and energy, telling funny stories, helping people out, going to Dead concerts. He was part of the culture! I heard a while back through a co-op FB group that he died, and then I just looked him up again and found this interesting memoriam.
Pic below of Loud Suite life:
Lest you all think of me as a drug addled fool, I can reassure you I was not much into excess, was a complete lightweight, would cut blotter acid into quarters, etc. etc. (We won’t even talk about where the other drugs like X came from, *cough* *Rice chemistry students*) It was occasional! And social! I swear! Anyway, I still graduated and I appear to have a reasonable amount of brain cells left.
A more wholesome photo, of a bunch of us cooking in the industrial kitchen – I learned to cook here, and was dinner cook (for 100 people) and menu planner for many years. Here, Ethan, Paul Macafee, Karen, Mike LeFebre, and I are drinking Old Milwaukee and cooking dinner. Ok, mostly wholesome. I blame Paul for the cheap gross beer choice.
ANYWAY. Because of prepping to go see The Way to Eden in Star Trek Live tonight we watched the original episode yesterday and laughed our asses off at the space hippie children! (Their drug use is implied only, but their vibe is impeccable!) Star Trek tried hard to come to grips with how the future might see hippies. Were they wrong?!
There were really lovely hippietastic moments I remember, like about 40 people from the co-op all tripping and going to see Koyaanisqatsi together. It was fine! We were a lovely social amoeba moving across the town and into the movie theater! The point was not the drugs so much as it was being gorgeously social and also experiencing and creating music and culture together!
I have forgotten my point. I have more to say about hippies, drugs, and the internet, which we all talked about at DWeb Camp and which I kind of go into in my long poem “Whole Earth Catalog”. But here, I think my point was that I have found it funny and a little sad sometimes to see people now worrying that they missed raves, or grunge, or riot grrrl, or zines, or whatever, and then I absolutely fucking love it when they realize they can JUST DO THOSE THINGS. Nothing is stopping you! You are in history, too! You can make an entire scene happen, and also, whatever else you are doing now, someone is going to look back on with fondness and longing, in some way that you are not even aware of as a Thing! You are in your own Thing right now!!!!!
In what may have been the heyday of independent blogging, just as it turned to eyeball grabbing ad fodder, I remember my blog being reviewed by someone who described me as “generous with her links”.
This struck me as shocking on a couple of levels.
I realized they thought of my linking out as generous because I’m referring traffic outside of my own domain; the SEO strategies of the time probably recommended that you link only to your own site, directing readers to hit more of your pages, making you look more important to paying advertisers.
Needless to say (as you can tell from my own lack of fame, fortune, and ambition) I was not “optimizing” anything. Mostly I was just flinging posts into the public void out of being a compulsive diarist and having some ideals around women’s writing being mostly private, in diaries and letters, for most of history & wondering what would happen if we all split the world open by writing about our lives as part of public discourse.
Monetization aside, the good angle on the generous nature of linking would be the sense of taking the time and energy to add depth, to help the reader discover interesting things, like footnotes and appendices that knit information together and expand our minds – but that isn’t what the reviewer meant.
The whole point of the web is links! Creating a meaningfully interlinked body of knowledge and text! Consider Ted Nelson! And Vannevar Bush! Bring back the thinkertoys! But also just consult your own common sense and conscience!
If I remembered where that review appeared, I’d link to it!
My sister and I went to see Kathleen Hanna talk about her autobiography, Rebel Girl, last week. I recommend it! She was interviewed by poet, musician, and zinester Brontez Purnell and that was a joy because they had such lovely friendly chemistry and were able to laugh and enjoy themselves.
What a story – that Brontez was one of, as he describes it, “the 5 total riot boyzz in the world” who were writing letters to Bikini Kill and getting answers back from Kathleen. She described his 1993-ish letter, accompanied by a selfie he took of himself on the school bus, and how she had it taped up over her desk for the next 10 years. Write to your heroes everyone! They may like it! Then years later his band was opening for her band and now they are friends! A fairy tale that I love so much. I will likely review his recent book Ten Bridges I Have Burnt in a different post, since I bought it at the talk but have not read it yet.
It shouldn’t have been surprising to find Kathleen is tremendously funny. I had this reaction seeing her age up into a mid 50s person who is happy and has a secure life who deals with the intense trauma of their past with wry humor and is hard as nails but also soft as fuck and able to let it hang out and tell her stories and have a different kind of creative freedom where you get to explore your art while also — shocker — impossible — being supported. Maybe it sounds a little arrogant but that is how I feel about my life trajectory and it was so good and moving to know she is in a good place with her bands and singing and writing and her Beastie Boys husband and their loved and cherished child.
I did not know but also probably should have if I thought for 5 seconds that she has some also similar experiences being a person who other people report their trauma TO. By talking about rape and harassment you become kind of a magnet, you have freed others to talk about their traumatizing experiences and they want to tell you about it. Like the boxes of riot grrrl zine mail I was getting (and still have in the basement unsorted, unarchived) while still super fucked up in my early 20s from girls just a bit younger than me – it can be hard to take and she had to do that in person while having that level of indy fame where people make a lot of assumptions but you are desperately trying to scrape $40 together for medical care and eating dry ramen noodles and working at a strip club while you are ill as hell. My point was that when you talk about fighting rape & harassment you become the respository of everyone’s worst and hardest stories, and that is a hard load to carry no matter how much you feel honored and are willing to do the work of it. I vibed with all of this.
Of course I could talk about riot grrrl shit for fucking ever but that can wait.
Loved her joy in figuring out recording and mixing stuff (much of that, later on, in Julie Ruin era).
Loved the Kathy Acker stories both about being told no one listens to poets – better to be in a band — and about being smacked with a challenge to feminist essentialism (which I don’t 100% agree with actually, but it sounds like it was good for Hanna to be taken seriously & challenged by Acker.)
You can think, well what if Kathleen Hanna and so many more of us could have made our art without all this abuse and trauma and constant harassment? What if we could have support and love from family and have friends who don’t rape us and people who support our artistic careers without grossly hitting on us every fucking 5 seconds ? WHAT IF. But you cannot eat your heart out over it. & just hope for the youth to be MORE OK or at least to have that love and support and freedom.
Instead of eating my heart out I just feel tremendous respect for all the punk rock women making their music and expressing their feminism against all the things that made it difficult – poverty – racism – family – gross men – addiction & alcohol’s pull – hostile media – And so on. They did it and they survived (or didn’t) and it gives me immense strength just to think of them.
(I still miss you, Johanna Lee.)
I’m also 100% ok with her telling her own story about herself. This isn’t a collective story written by everyone who was involved and it isn’t trying to encompass everything that happened. It’s quite hard to make a coherent narrative out of a life, even one’s own life! I also liked the style of the short vignettes (which I have also been trying out.)
I hope it is immensely (further) healing for Kathleen to talk about her book and her life on stage in venues where she is respected and listened to and celebrated as an artist and for her whole self.
I enjoyed her stories and the book. She left out countless assaults and rapes I’m sure (which she joked about on stage) And I read with some sadness but also interest, about “Susan” who I instantly knew who it was, and I’d link but, What the actual Fuck, apparently there is still shit you can’t talk about? Of course it is fraught but it was interesting to see Hanna frame that interaction as encountering someone who she could not deal with because of their intensity and over-familiarity and having repeated mental health meltdowns on the bedroom floor of someone who didn’t actually want to let you into their house. However I was kinda sad to see her throw shade on “Susan”‘s writing and zine output, which I thought at the time was great and still love for its raw energy and realness because it spoke to me. I always appreciated “Susan’s” zines, mail, and mutual distro activity. At the time I did not know about the ridiculous and horrible problematicness of their behavior and their claims. The information about how it went down was not super visible to me either at the time – a little bit thru zines but I only really got it a few years later once we had web pages and then i forget who explained it to me (pre-blog.)
As gossip comes to me over the years I continue trying to unlock levels of understanding about things that affected me and my art and friendships even tho I was incredibly peripheral to those things. Why must it be so mysterious. But then I can SO easily imagine the queer anarchist collective meetings, or the personal arguments and angst, or whatever, that probably went into the non-links in this non-entry: https://zinewiki.com/wiki/Riot_Grrrl_Press Though you can get closer with this thoughtful post by ciarra.
there was also a lot of really interesting stuff about REDACTED & her crew. the book didn’t get into all the race controversy that happened after REDACTED wrote in her zine about the racist antebellum “one-drop rule” & how it is possible that she may have a black ancestor & so she can speak on behalf of all people of color everywhere–basically turning into a denier of privilege & positioning her identity in a big sick game of oppression olympics in which she can do no wrong. but it did kind of edge in that direction & shared a bunch of other ridiculous shit REDACTED did that was pretty similar.
it made me think about all the ridiculous arguments i have had with people over political things–things that sometimes seem like pointless internecine in-fighting, especially in retrospect. it made me think about how imperfect riot grrrl was, but in a way that didn’t really make me feel sad. it made me think more about how these girls were just muddling along, trying to make something out of nothing, doing what girls do, & because they managed to concoct this historical movement that has created such an intense feminist legacy, all the fights & snap decisions that didn’t seem so huge at the time, are being documented, & then they become evidence of the fractiousness that has plagued feminist movements since the inception of feminism.
WHY MUST OUR HISTORY CONTINUALLY DISAPPEAR. AAAAAAAAUGHHHHHH.
(It is because, the more marginalized your group is, the more vulnerable/more precarious everyone’s situation is so there is more at stake if you reveal the problems you will all be attacked personally in the worst ways and your internal / personal problems used to represent your entire category of people.)
Once I tried to trace what “actually happened” (as if that is possible) with the ending throes of the Combahee River Collective and whoooo. It’s none of my business on most levels. But it is interesting because of the way the dynamics are so similar to other groups who do amazing things and how they do not always last for a long time because Reasons.
It is so fraught to realize that sometimes the people you are THIS close to ideologically and personally are also the ones you cannot stand to be near, maybe they are just that bit of extra fucked up or chaotic that means they will drag you into their worldview or their own mess. Or you realize (like I did with “Susan”) that their racism is real and super harmful. I mean, we all want to “fix this mess”. Sometimes we can’t do it together I guess! I’m glad that “Susan” seems to have a more stable life now too. I am also extremely glad I was not close enough to any of that to be anywhere near the actual drama. WHEW.
In comparison, Hanna makes an attempt to talk about her own and white punks’ racism and the harm it did. Her big example is when she co-hosted a forum about undoing racism without realizing at all what was about to happen, which was white women’s tears to the max to the point where all the women of color left the event by the end except her very upset black co-host. There are many lessons there and one is probably, know how to just stop an event like that in its tracks. Like disrupt it or tell off your own audience or just full out end the event in the middle. As I get older that is part of what I think I may have learned or am learning. Sometimes things that seem good or well intentioned need to be stopped or destroyed, because they are so full of shit that allowing them to continue under your watch, is harmful and you’re complicit. “BURN IT DOWN.”
ANNNNNNNYWAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY
I promised some Human League commentary in this blog post. I was randomly listening to their first (?) album this morning in the shower after reading all the way through Rebel Girl in my pajamas, and I realized how much I appreciated their most famous song when it was new, because of how it wasn’t the usual fucking thing of a man complaining about a girlfriend who broke up with him and doesn’t appreciate him with an extra helping of “veiled” threat. Here is my freshmen composition essay about it! (I taught freshman comp briefly and read many a hastily tossed out song analysis! Why not.)
In Don’t You Want Me, which honestly is a bit insipid, but whatever, we all know the song — the dude has his say – he claims he discovered and “made” her in some way (assuming a musical career or something similar) – Then the threat. “I can put you back down too” and “we will both be sorry”, disturbing! He doesn’t accept that she is breaking up with him, and even tells her she doesn’t know what she wants, a total denial of her agency. So far, par for the course in pop songs and movies and books and like, everything. (This is why I hate most movies by the way, along with all the rapey fear bullshit and more general hetero/sexism/gender essentialism. I don’t need to consume any more of that toxic shit!)
But then the song totally redeems itself by Susan Ann Sulley giving our former waitress and now successful (artist) a voice in this!
I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar
That much is true
Already, I’m happy because she instantly makes it clear she has a different version of this story! He doesn’t have a lock on the truth!
But even then I knew I’d find a life on my own
Either with or without you
Yes! Tell it! She also wasn’t pathetically waiting around for a man to come “discover” and “make” her! She had ambitions and plans and knew what she was doing! Thank you Susan Ann!!!!!!!
She acknowledges they had some good times together and she still has feelings towards Mr. ExBoyfriend, but…
But now I think it’s time I lived my life on my own
I guess it’s just what I must do
No argument, not a lot of explanation, no room for argument, just a clear message that it’s over and she is moving on.
I found this heartening and refreshing in the 80s. A woman could just break up a relationship and move on because it’s what she wanted to do. Duh! The end! (We hope, despite Mr “I made you, I can destroy you” making his gross threats.) It seems like a low fucking bar to set for one’s basic humanity.
I did a lot of trying to say no to things and step down from things I wasn’t doing (well enough, or in some cases, at all) which was kind of my therapy homework and which was very difficult. Why is focusing so difficult? Why can’t we live 6 lives at once??? Why am I getting older and more tired? It just has to be.
More centrally (the therapy part I suppose) What if I didn’t feel like I was somehow failing all the time and disappointing people? I think last time I said this in semi-public a little group of my friends stared at me silently, looked around the table at each other and then one of them as spokesperson explained that when I said things like that with all the things I actually do manage to accomplish, I was insulting them. Like if I thought that harshly of myself, when I had a job, was in grad school, had a toddler, and was still also doing extra projects, then… how was I judging them? Years later I still think of this (thanks elaine) and how helpful it was at giving me a kick in the ass. (Not an instant fix obviously, but a useful insight)
Dealing lots with architects/contractors. There is some little thing every day and a bigger meeting once a week. Construction continues under our house. Someday, someday! we will live in that bit of house, it will all have wheelchair access, I will have a REAL BATH and soak and read in the tub, without the noise of power tools, and I will get to fix up the garden again to enjoy it.
Last week and this week, I’m focusing in on work for DIFxTech and on GOAT. I even got a little help from M. in discussing how to catalogue and tag some of the GOAT archive – how useful to have another librarian in the family! And both kids were here last week and are now back at school while Danny is in Europe till the end of the week.
Annoyingly I not only got a cold (not Covid thankfully) but also got my period for the 2nd time in the past year, resetting my menopause clock so I will still be officially “perimenopause” till at least next January. Mother of God, I was so fucking pissed, it was so great to have it over with, but no. Fuck!!
I took a sewing lesson in the Mission, making a striped velvet zippered throw pillow with fabric that reminded me of one of my grandmother’s couches that had similar colors and how I would lie on it and pet the velvet one way & then the other. Got my sewing machine out resolving to practice on it on some scraps but then realized the pedal was missing which led me to clean out the entire row of cabinets.
Will I actually learn to sew and finally complete the blue jean blanket of my dreams – modeled after that crazy quilt bed cover I slept under once in the 90s at Harry and Daffodil’s house, made of I think Daff’s former lover’s favorite jeans, with all the pockets and rips on top and the underneath soft with the texture of the inside-out frayed bits. It was comfy and comforting and so bittersweet to think of his love for this dead young man and all the ways the radical faerie & other community had come together & was grieving so hard. I have forgotten his name but not the love that whoever made the quilt had for him. I think he must have been an amazing person.
In reading this week and last:
Loved the Christopher Rowe books and short stories, tons of Weird Kentucky, the wonderful Navigating Fox, and I hope maybe there could be more about the detective dog. (Maybe a prequel so we also get the crow friend?)
I also loved Tuf Voyaging, which somehow I have never read. It’s a great read that comes off like light space opera, but which is actually kind of a complicated moral fable. The Portmaster was so interesting – like Martin trying to write in a super valid critique of his too powerful main character and what power does to him – I am always saying this so I warmed to it. It was like seeing him in dialogue with the ghostly hand of feminist science fiction, so I enjoyed that. Plus of course I warmed to the (too powerful) nerd hero and his cats and his (too powerful) spacecraft (as the youth say, he is “a bit acoustic” in a charming way.) Having the down to earth feministsf Portmaster tell him off repeatedly did not stop the OP MC one bit. But she wasn’t treated badly in the story, and she gets some kittens, and she had her own problematic behaviors; I liked how Martin treated her as a character.
Damiano by R.A. MacAvoy. Readble but not my favorite, a little too fetishy of a certain type of anguished christian man that just annoys me. I did like the witch Sara from Fennland for a moment, and then didn’t again (bad boyfriend, whinges too much about age) I also don’t think much of Damiano. Oops I accidentally slaughtered more people with my magic ™ waah waah oh my little doggie is so pure oh also my literal angel who i definitely don’t lust after, wahh wahh but also women are purty. Goth cosplay and a broken lute! The end. (Sorry everyone.)
Very, very, very annoyed by Rome of One’s Own, which I feared was going to annoy me. I had some hope it might be a nice overview, since “forgotten” women of history of basically anywhere and when is one of my very favorite things to read. Maybe I would learn something about women of ancient Rome. BUT NO. It’s so, so bad y’all. The most annoying kind of “history” book.
I want to just blast it with my scorn for a moment but let me set a background first. At best, the book is trying to explain that historical interpretation can change over time. But it fails to make that clear and usually ignores the historical context of it sources. Instead it messily conflates truth, what the authors of those sources (Livy, Ovid, or whoever) thought was true, what later generations thought, or may have thought, was true and how they interpreted a story about a particular woman, and then what the book’s author and apparently, her (British, women) readers will read into that story. Often kind of (and only kind of!) attributing agency, empowerment, or historical importance to the woman in the story.
If you want an example of this done incredibly well, I love how Margaret Reynolds approaches it in The Sappho Companion.
Rome of One’s Own did not do it well. It was like I was nonconsensually shunted into a wine o’clock mumsnet party who were all incoherently yelling “You go, girl!”
Please just go read some primary sources! OMFG!
There could have been a fine book here that clearly outlined, here’s some things that particular writers said about particular women who may or may not have been semi-mythical, and exactly when that was, and what else was going on, and then, what other people in England/Great Britain then said about those women in subsequent centuries and how they reinterpreted things in their own context! And then you could add your own Liberated Ladies perspective onto that but make it clear what you are DOING. you could write a popular audience history book that lays some coherent groundwork and is still readable!
And, only talking about what Livy and Ovid and like 3 other dudes said about some mythical women of Rome’s founding, does a huge disservice to all the cool history of regular people and women’s daily lives that we can look at from the past… century that puts it into actual context including with archeological sources!
Here is where I should recommend something better as an antidote and I do have examples but the first thing that comes to mind is Elizabeth Wayland Barber’s “Women’s Work” and of course Prehistoric Textiles. (Way too broad in scope, not actually Rome, but gives you actual information! that! is! organized!)
I then bounced hard off a detective thriller, Zero Day. It started OK promising a married pen testing duo and a competent hacker heroine and then went quickly to some places I did not want to go: a background of what sounds like violent/life threatening/maybe rapey abuse by her cop ex boyfriend, and her nice hacker husband murdered by chapter 2. I can’t read that shit while D. is out of town! Fuck no!
Not to mention, after the murder, she gets a mysterious email saying that there is a mysterious 1 million dollar life insurance policy and she CLICKS THE PDF IN THE EMAIL.
Nope nope nope! Must we?! NOT going to finish that one. If there is a less violent novel by Ruth Ware, with less dwelling on women’s fear, trauma, and fucking up, please let me know.
To clear my mind of all that, I went on a Project Gutenberg spree and downloaded a lot of dumb Angela Brazil books (The Jolliest Term on Record; Madcap of the School), an equally ridiculous Cherry Ames book, and Clematis by Bertha Browning Cobb which is a lovely book about a neglected orphan and her beloved kitten. And some things off the 19th century list of classic kids’ books. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_children%27s_classic_books that I haven’t read.
So in short, BRB, gonna play some jolly field hockey with my chums and then go back to my digs for tea and spiffing rock cake (wtf is that, i’m still not sure but it does not sound nice). Why is diggings, or digs, school slang for where you live? mining and miners? archaeology? something else?)
People come to San Francisco, still, in pursuit of the technoutopian dream, but also they like to pay homage to an idea of “Silicon Valley”. Now that the Mozilla monument has gone to storage, there aren’t a lot of public monuments out there to visit. We really need enormous, beautiful public monumental art to celebrate Internet and computer history!!
But we don’t have that. So, where to go on your nerd pilgrimage? I have a list of recommendations for the computer nerds with a romantic soul!
The Computer History Museum heads the geek tour list of course! It is in Mountainview and the public transit options aren’t ideal, but are doable. You can take Caltrain to Mountainview and look for a city bus or a shuttle bus, or just take a cab/rideshare for the last leg of your trip.
The MADE – The Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment – is a hands-on video game history museum where the retro games are all playable, often on incredible and well maintained old hardware! It’s in downtown Oakland, a few easily walkable blocks from the 12th Street BART station.
The Exploratorium, while a broad tech and science museum, is gorgeously hands on and participatory. There are actual experiments you can do (not like so many science museums where interactivity means pushing a button or watching a video). And the techy things are elevated to really beautiful art in many cases (look for the creations of Ned Kahn, for example!)
Noisebridge hacker and maker space is open daily in the afternoons and evenings, and it’s basically a long running, large, donation supported and volunteer run, workshop. It is free, but cash or online donations are very much appreciated and needed! It’s a bit like going into a giant, messy, anarchic, collaborative garage. People are generally friendly, you can show up any time, and someone will give you a tour. If you feel like soldering something, or using the 3D printers, or learning a new skill, or just want a co-working space for an afternoon, this is a great spot to meet new people and hang out. Check the meetup page for classes and workshops!
San Francisco Railway Museum – this is a tiny but fabulous museum near the Ferry Building along the Embarcadero in SF. It tends to appeal to computer geeks!
Historic Ships at Hyde Street Pier – Now, this has nothing to do with computers but if you are the sort of nerd who like me, enjoys transit and infrastructure and history, you might like this very quiet park on the waterfront at Aquatic Park (avoid the Fisherman’s Wharf maelstrom). Seriously you will be the only person on some of these ships. Giant pulleys and block and tackle arrangements! Lie down in an actual ship’s bunk! You can walk onto the sailing ship Balaclutha and onto a huge paddlewheel steamship and a couple more interesting ships. Notably — the Balaclutha is wheelchair accessible, with a (very steep) ramp onto the ship, and a scary-fun lift down into the cargo hold!!!
The US Army Corps of Engineers Bay Model in Sausalito. Nerd heaven if you like this sort of thing. It’s a giant relief map of the entire Bay Area with its waterways, the size of two football fields, and you can walk around it to learn geography and history. Sadly there is no longer water flowing in it because it is now cheaper to run computer simulations of the water flow in the Bay. You can take the ferry there and walk (a fairly long walk but doable) to the Model!
Google! If you’re walking along the Embarcadero in San Francisco, the Hills Brothers Building plaza is a nice place to sit, and you can take a picture with the Google sign if that appeals to you. Coming up soon in October 2023, the Google Visitor Center will be opening up in Mountainview – maybe good to combine with a visit to the Computer History Museum!
Apple Park Visitor Center in Cupertino is an hour or so away from San Francisco by car. If you’re already down there or in San Jose and you’re a huge Apple fan then maybe it’s worth going to see. I’ve never been to it, but I see people asking about it often in the bay area subreddits.
The Intel museum in Santa Clara! If you want to read some corporate stuff about how chips are made, this is for you, but I am not sure if I actually recommend it since I’ve never been there and it seems to be mostly for school kids.
Hiller Museum of Aviation in San Carlos. If you love planes, or you kind of like them and you’re already on the Peninsula south of SF, this is a fun and cool little museum. Also great for little kids as they can run around very freely, and there’s entire sections of planes they can go into and climb around in.
More transit! Historic aircraft! Moffett Field (ie, the Bay’s own little part of NASA!) offers tours led by a docent and they have a small visitor center.
If the Mare Island shipyard museum ever opens up again, i highly recommend it because it is HUGE and super old fashioned and sort of clearly beloved by the people who used to work there and created a lot of the exhibits. They used to build nuclear submarines ! There’s a little periscope in the cockpit of an old nuclear submarine (or whatever you call the spot in a sub where there’s a periscope) that you can look up into Vallejo from!
There must be more. And there should be more! Add suggestions to the comments and I’ll add them to the post!
In high school in Texas the 80s (Cypress Creek) I wrote two articles for the school newspaper that were banned.
I was just thinking about this as I looked at the totally bonkers list of books banned recently from the Katy and Cy-Fair school districts on the outskirts of Houston. Wacky Wednesday??! Yes, the Dr. Seuss book! Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret at least has a long history of being banned, though it was pretty bland, mostly about getting your period, not even anything spicy. I’m trying to imagine why Wacky Wednesday would be banned as “inappropriate for children” and failing. (Secretly about drugs?)
My first banned school newspaper article was written from interviews with kids I knew about how what drugs people were doing and how they obtained them. It’s been a while, but my memory is that most kids stole them from their parents (coke from briefcases, or for the less rich kids, weed) and others hung out with older kids and did weed or X. (Which is what we called ecstasy before it was “molly” I guess. Why is it molly?)
Since at that time I was getting in-school suspension a lot, for being kind of fucked up but also just for dumb shit like — not even making this up — “satanic symbols on my folder” – which were anarchy signs and runes that said “Ph’nglui mglw’nfah Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn! or “Cthulu lies dreaming in the ancient city of R’lyeh”. ANYWAY. I was in the nice, peaceful, quiet in-school suspension room doing my homework packets, reading, and not being bullied, and at lunch the druggie kids would tell me how they bought weed, so I wrote about it.
I got an A on the assignment and it was set to go in the student newspaper. None of us realized that the student newspaper was read over by the administration. But I found out! The extremely nice teacher let me know that I could keep my good grade but the administration would not let it go in the paper. I was so pissed.
So I wrote another article about censorship. I called various school libraries in our district, Cypress-Fairbanks, and called the superintendent of schools office and found that there were lots of banned books. They usually were banned because of something called the Committee of Concerned Citizens, which I had never heard of!
In our school library I found a lot of examples of incredibly pornographic gross romance novels, which I knew about because my super conservative friend’s super Christian mom used to read them and my friend let me borrow them. So many rape and Civil War scenes y’all, I can’t even. The books they banned included James Joyce’s Ulysses, and Lady Chatterly’s Lover. Yes, 1908s Houston, I’m sure all of us were just raring to read Ulysses and DH Lawrence.
So I wrote my article, it got an A, and then it was not allowed in the paper.
So I made an underground newspaper with both of my dumb articles in them, and some other writing I don’t remember that might not have been from me, and some badly drawn cartoons, featuring, a dead rat dead from “cafeteria food” as the assistant principal peed in a filthy school bathroom, missing the urinal (why? i don’t know, but someone drew it and it seemed edgy). This girl I knew vaguely took it and made free copies at her dad’s office and we spread the paper around and a few days later were busted. I wonder who told!
We were both actually suspended for this, but I was allowed back because if I missed my final exams I woudl flunk. I remember a tense meeting with the principal, a counselor, and someone from the superintendent’s office, and them saying, “We just want you gone. We’re letting you back so you can graduate and get out.”
Thanks y’all! Fuck you very much!!
I don’t know what happened to Elise or what her last name was or whether she got to take her finals but I hope she did!
I also wish I had a copy of that newspaper but it is long gone.
Also, check out this kid Cameron Samuels’ great speech to the Senate! https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2023-09-12_-_testimony_-_samuels.pdf “It should not have been my responsibility as a 17-year-old to defend my rights and challenge bigotry. Protecting children requires empowering us students, not allowing one or two parents to dictate the policies of an entire community.” Fantastic!
There’s worse shit to be mad at Texas about including their extreme anti choice laws and anti trans laws and trying to take kids away from their parents and not allowing trans kids to use school bathrooms but I’m also still mad about the books and the censorship! It’s all part of the same damn thing!
Fuck you very much AGAIN, you edge of Houston, kicker scum, fat faced, child molesting, golf playing, homo-hating, hick-ass Jesus lickers! I’m sure your nonsense is no better today than it was then! And I hope Wacky Wednesday bites you right on the ass.
San Francisco’s original City Hall was built (on top of a cemetery!) starting in 1872 and finally opened in 1879, to be actually completed in 1899. (You can see some interesting photos and more history of the old City Hall on FoundSF.) Just a few years later, City Hall was destroyed in the 1906 Earthquake and Fire, collapsing in a huge pile of stone, iron, glass, wood, and brick.
My house was built in the late 1880s or early 1890s – though I have not pinned down the exact date, it was definitely here by 1892, built with a few other similar Italianate houses on land next to the original farmhouse on Mission Street. We’re doing some excavating under part of the house, and found some bricks marked with the letters C H in a fancy serif font:
We looked this up hoping to find a magical database of historical brickmarker marks and YES. That exists! At least for California bricks.
Our C H brick was made in the 1870s for San Francisco’s original City Hall! It was probably in that pile of rubble in 1906 (cleaned up by 1909 according to some sources). These bricks were clearly part of a retaining wall which got covered over by some dirt, gravel, and a cobblestone patio (“Belgian brick”) at a later date.
Our bricks database lists them thusly:
Remillard Brick Company
San Rafael, Marin County, CA
1872-1878 for San Francisco City Hall
We found other bricks, stamped CALIFORNIA and with round rivet-like raised dots in the corners, that were part of another layer of patio and wall that is now under the back of our house. The California Bricks database identifies them as California Brick Company and W. S. Dickey Clay Manufacturing Company, Niles and Decoto districts, Fremont and Union City, County, CA, 1913-1926.
Around that time, in 1920 or so, a future mayor of San Francisco, John F. Shelley, lived in our house with his parents and siblings. As a young man he drove a bakery delivery wagon, then went to law school, then became head of the bakery delivery wagon drivers’ union, then served in the California Senate and US House of Representatives, then became Mayor of SF.
Danny found us a quote about the C H bricks, which looks like it may be about SF City Hall. I will need to find the book to be sure of the context of the quote, but it’s from Bricks and Brickmaking: A Handbook for Historical Archaeology, by Karl Gurcke:
The initials ‘C. H.,’ impressed in the brick of which our new City Hall is built, put there to denote that they were intended for that edifice, may (should they prove to possess the lasting properties claimed for them) become to the antiquar[ians] of the remote future a source of much worriment as they labor to decipher their probable meaning.
Here we are, the antiquarians of the remote future!
Really it’s hard to express how much I love our 150 year old, C H bricks! I’ll figure out how to work them into our garden somehow after the construction project is done! For now, our back yard is turning into a sort of brick museum.
In my last geneology post I wrote about Jenny Cumpsty and her daughter Jennet Dobson. Jennet married William Crane, a tailor in the town of Garstang, in 1863.
First, a quick summary of William’s life since he is central to our story.
William was born in 1841 in Pilling in a family of farmers. He was an apprentice tailor by age 17, married at age 21 in Garstang and set up his own business as a tailor there and then in Barrow-in-Furness. He and his wife Jenny had three children. After his wife died of smallpox in 1871, he lost his business as a tailor and worked in brickyards and coal mines for the rest of his life. He remarried in 1872 in Farnworth, near Bolton, and had two more children, living and working at Top o’th’ Meadows in Darcy Lever. His second wife died in 1890. He married a neighbor in 1895. He was still working as a navvy in 1911 at age 70. In 1917 William died, a widower for the 3rd time, at age 76.
The Cranes north of the Wyre
Now let’s pull back in time a bit, and look at William’s side of the family.
William’s parents were John Crane, or Craven (b. 1812) and Ellen Parker.
John Crane’s parents were John Crane (b. 1775) and Cathrine Lewtas.
Ellen Parker’s parents were William Parker and Betty Hoole. It is a bit confusing so here is a tree view:
tree view of william crane and jennet dobson’s parents and grandparents
Maps
As a refresher, here are two maps of the area over the river Wyre. The Pilling Moss was part of a larger area of peat bogs north of the Wyre and south of Morecambe Bay. All the villages I mentioned in the last post are within about 5 miles of each other, in case that wasn’t clear. That also holds true for this post!
Overview of the area near Garstang
Detail from 1829 map showing Pilling, Stalmine, Hambleton, Out Rawcliffe, Kirkland, Garstang, Calder Vale
Preesall and Stalmine, 1775-1792
My 5th great-grandfather, John Craven, was a farmer in Stalmine, Out Rawcliffe, and Pilling. He was born in 1775 in Preesall, around the time of the Pilling Moss Bog Burst.
In 1792, at age 17, he married Catherine Lewtas in St. James Church, Stalmine. John and Catherine could both sign their own names, which surprised me!
The Crane family in Out Rawcliffe
Some time in the 1790s, the family moved from Stalmine to Out Rawcliffe.
Their first child, Alice, was born in 1793. Their children were Betty, b. 1794; Ann, b. 1797; Richard Lewtas, b. 1798; William, b. 1800; Robert, b. 1803; Thomas Lewtas, b. 1805; Catherine, b. 1807; Matthew, b. 1809. Their son John Crane who was my direct ancestor was born in 1812, and his younger brother Henry in 1814. So, John and Henry grew up as the youngest sons in a large family of farmers and agricultural laborers.
Here’s a summary of what happened to John’s older siblings. Alice married Thomas Bimson, a tailor in Pilling and then a licensed victualler in Liverpool; after his death, she married Thomas Higginson, a farmer of 60 acres, and lived in Bradshaw Lane, Pilling. Her oldest children took Higginson’s name, married, and lived on farms next to her in Pilling. Richard Lewtas Crane ended up as a laborer in Liverpool. William became a farmer in St. Michaels on Wyre; he could not write his name. Robert became a carter, and lived with his sister Catherine and her family for most of his life. Catherine married a local farmer, Thomas Fox; she couldn’t write her name. Thomas Lewtas Crane married and was an agricultural laborer – unlike his older brothers and sisters, he was literate, signing his name to his marriage certificate.
Their mother Catherine died at age 60, in 1835.
The Crane families move to Pilling
Back to our person of concern, John Crane, William’s dad, born in 1812.
In 1841, John Crane senior is listed in the Pilling census as John Crane, age 65, farmer, living with his children Thomas, 35; Robert, 35; Henry, 24, and two young servants.
Next door to him in Pilling is John Crane, 25, agricultural laborer, with his wife Ellen and their children Matthew, Henry, and William, 3 weeks old. That’s our John Crane & his son William Crane!
Ellen Parker’s parents were William Parker and Betty Hoole. She was born in Nateby in 1814.
Ellen’s father was an agricultural laborer; both parents were from Out Rawcliffe. William’s parents were from the same area. Betty Hoole was born in Barnacre and Upper Rawcliffe in 1795. She married William when she was 15.
John married Ellen Parker in 1835 when he was 22 and she was 20. So, when we see them in the 1841 census, they have been married for 6 years, are still under 30, and have three children. John may be working on his father’s farm alongside his brothers.
In 1847, John’s father John Crane senior died.
John Crane junior moves back to Out Rawcliffe
In 1851, John and Ellen Crane are living in Out Rawcliffe with thir children Matthew, 14, agricultural laborer; Henry, 12, ditto; William, 9, ditto; John, 8, and Richard, 6 are both in school; Robert, age 1, is the youngest. William, John, and Richard were born in Pilling, while Robert was born in Out Rawcliffe, so that gives us a likely date for the family’s move, between 1845 and 1850. It would make sense that they moved after John Crane senior died, in 1847.
In 1861, John and Ellen are still in Out Rawcliffe living with Matthew, 24; Richard, 16; Robert, 11, all agricultural laborers. Their daughter Catherine, 7, is in school.
William the Tailor
Meanwhile, William Crane became an apprentice tailor with Thomas Wilkinson in Kirkland, a village or town that looks a bit larger than Out Rawcliffe, more or less a satellite town of Garstang — certainly larger than Pilling. We see him in the 1861 Census, age 19, living in the household of Thomas and Ann Wilkinson.
Unlike his older brothers and his younger brother Robert, he isn’t stuck on the farm. It would likely have cost money to buy him a place as an apprentice.
In 1863, on Feb. 4th, William married Jennet Dobson. In 1861, Jennet was a servant for the Hesketh family in Tarnacre Lane, Upper Rawcliffe — less than a mile by the road to Kirkland. Perhaps they met in Kirkland; we can imagine that he did some tailoring for the Hesketh family, but there’s no way to know. I don’t have an image for their marriage record but would love to see it to see who was literate and who witnessed.
Caroline Crane was born in Garstang, 24 November 1863. Their son John James was born in 1866 in Kirkland, (also called Churchtown). By 1869, the family had moved north across Morecambe Bay to 74 Scott St., Barrow-in-Furness, where Jane Elizabeth was born.
By 1871, from the census, William and Jennet, Tailor and Tailoress, ages 29 and 32, were living in Barrow-in-Furness at 183 Dalton Street. Caroline, 7 and John J., 5, are in school. Jane is one year old. They have two lodgers, ages 19 and 20. I get the impression that Barrow-in-Furness, then nicknamed “The English Chicago”, was a not-too-horrible industrial and port town, with a shipyard and a railroad, happily NOT located in a giant peat bog surrounded by miles of treacherous tidal sands, so it sounds like another step up in life for the Cranes. I hope their little family was happy and that Caroline had a good early life.
Later that year, 21 August 1871, Jennet died. The family was living at 305 Dalton Street.
William the Brickmaker
First, let’s follow William after his wife’s death. He was not able to stay in Barrow-in-Furness and he lost his tailoring business. Perhaps there were crushing doctor bills. I also imagine the children were brought to live with relatives until their father found a stable situation.
In September 1872 he married Frances Ann Hardman, in Farnworth with Kearsley. William was 31. On the marriage record, he signed his own name though his wife signed with an X. His father John Crane (junior) witnessed the marriage, signing with an X, listing his occupation as a furnaceman. Frances Ann’s father was a collier, and her mother witnessed the marriage (X, her mark). William was working as a brickmaker.
William and his father John are still close physically to Pilling and Out Rawcliffe, but in time and modernity they have leapt from generations of peasantry to an urban area in the thick of the industrial revolution. Farnworth, now basically part of Bolton ie Greater Manchester, was a huge coal mining center and also the home of paper mills, iron foundries, cotton mills, and brick and tile factories. Its population more than doubled from 1851 to 1871 when it was a town of 20,000.
In 1881, William, 39, is an excavator (navvy) at 127 Ellesmere St in Farnworth. He may have worked on rail lines into the mines, dug canals, or ditched and drained the remaining peat mosses in the Farnworth area – the census doesn’t have that level of detail. He lives with his second wife Francis Ann, 33; his son John J, 15, labor in the brickworks; Jane E, 11, scholar; and Ann, 4, his daughter with Frances Ann. They have two lodgers, Thomas Fletcher, a blacksmith, and his wife Mary E. Fletcher, 29. Note those lodgers for later! And, I notice also that Jane Elizabeth is able to stay in school at the late age of 11, probably the first “scholar” over age 10 in of her ancestral tree.
Looking at this I can’t help but admire William. From a horrible tragedy, and a downward step from having a profession to doing hard physical labor in a brickworks and then a navvy around the mines and mills, he pulled his family through. He found another wife who is caring for his children, and he is able to support them. Though we don’t know anything about his personality, we can see evidence of his values and his skill in survival.
William and Frances Ann had a second child together, Henry, born in 1884. William’s father John Crane died that same year. Frances Ann died in 1890 in Bolton leaving William, at 49, once again a widower with young children.
John Crane and Ellen Parker have a marker to their memory in the Out Rawcliffe churchyard. It mentions that he was a deacon for the church for many years and it also lists Elizabeth Ellen Gardner (b. 1848 d. 1931). Maybe Elizabeth Ellen was a niece or other relative (or someone who survived her was a relative of John and Ellen, and put up the stone for them all at once.) John Crane was a farmer in Out Rawcliffe for 10 or 20 years before his children scattered and he became a furnaceman in Farnworth/Bolton.
Map of Farnworth, turn of the century
For context, here is a 1908 map of Farnworth. You can click through on it to download it & get a higher resolution for zooming in.
Caroline in the mills
We’ve seen William Crane move from Barrow-in-Furness to Farnworth & remarry in 1871-1872. By 1881 his younger children are with him. But where is his oldest daughter, Caroline, in 1881?
I found her in Great Lever, living with her uncle Henry Crane’s widow, Alice (Lowe) Crane. Alice, head of the household, age 38, is a charwoman. Her sons William 18; James, 16; John, 14; Richard, 12, are coal miners. Henry Junior, the baby, is 3 years old and god knows who takes care of him while everyone is at work. Alice’s brother William Lowe, 36, is an excavator, along with a lodger, John Hazler. Finally we come to 17 year old Caroline, Alice’s niece, Comber Tenter in a cotton mill.
Much respect to Alice who had to keep house for all these people while working outside the home herself. I like to keep in mind they were not likely to have running water so someone would have had to fetch water in buckets daily – and imagine doing the laundry for four coal mining teenage boys!
I found this definition of a comber tenter from the online version of A Dictionary of Occupational Terms Based on the Classification of Occupations used in the Census of Population, 1921. (ah,those females and their e-textiles!!)
comber (cotton) ; comb minder, comber tenter. Operates combing machine, which combs out short fibres in preparation of fine cotton yarns; guides cotton laps on to rollers, starts machine, receives combed cotton, in form of slivers, in boxes or cans, and removes cans as they are filled.
I ended up reading some stuff about the history of cotton mills, which first developed in Lancashire, and about the various roles in a mill. The combing/carding machine, basically a giant toothed roller, was invented in 1760.
Carding: the fibres are separated and then assembled into a loose strand (sliver or tow) at the conclusion of this stage.
The cotton comes off of the picking machine in laps, and is then taken to carding machines. The carders line up the fibres nicely to make them easier to spin. The carding machine consists mainly of one big roller with smaller ones surrounding it. All of the rollers are covered with small teeth, and as the cotton progresses further on the teeth get finer (i.e. closer together). The cotton leaves the carding machine in the form of a sliver; a large rope of fibres.[11]
In a wider sense carding can refer to the four processes of willowing, lapping, carding and drawing. In willowing the fibres are loosened. In lapping the dust is removed to create a flat sheet or lap of fibres; Carding itself is the combing of the tangled lap into a thick rope or sliver of 1/2 inch in diameter, it can then be optionally combed, is used to remove the shorter fibres, creating a stronger yarn.
A carding room in a mill would have been full of dangerous machinery and very fine airborne particles of cotton which caused breathing problems for many workers. Children – if Caroline worked in the mill from a younger age onward — would scuttle around under and inside the working machinery to pick up bits of lint and help keep everything running. I think that role is what “tenter” implies. I don’t have a good source for this photo but it shows a young girl taking a spool of combed cotton from a machine, I think maybe after it is drawn:
Being in the mills and mines of Lancashire in the mid 1800s meant some of the family were likely to have been in trade unions. It may be possible to find them in specific unions if I had access to those records! Rochdale (where Caroline’s future husband had roots) was an early example but by the 1850s there were huge union and mill vs. worker fights.
In Preston in 1853 mill owners locked out 20,000 workers for 36 weeks and the workers’ families began to starve. The center of industrialization was also a center for worker organizing! Perhaps Caroline Crane was able to join the Amalgamated Association of Card and Blowing Room Operatives that formed in 1886!
Caroline married Ralph Hutchinson in 1884 in Great Lever.
The Hutchinsons and Doodsons
Let’s look at Ralph Hutchinson and his ancestry. Ralph was my great-great-grandfather!
Ralph Hutchinson was born in 1866 in Kearsley. His parents were James Hutchinson and Ellen Doodson.
James Hutchinson was born in 1843 in Kearsley. His parents were Adam Hutchinson and Ann Allen, both born in Lancashire around 1800. Most of the men and boys in the family (in 1841) worked in coal mines.
Adam Hutchinson’s parents were John Hutchinson and Margaret Tonge, both born in Kearsley in the mid 1700s. My research isn’t solid enough to go further back with any certainty.
Ralph Hutchinson’s mother Ellen Doodson was born in 1842 in Kearsley. Her parents were Joseph Doodson and Mary Rawlinson.
Joseph was born in 1805 in Kearsley; Mary Rawlinson in 1801 in Rumworth. What a weirdo, not even from Kearsley!
The family may have been affected by the Preston riots of 1843, when thousands of cotton mill workers went on strike.
In 1851 Joseph was in the mines and Mary was a weaver in a cotton mill; they lived in Rayley Row with two children and a 73 year old aunt who kept the house.
In 1861, still living in Riley Row, Joseph Doodson is still in the mines at age 56, but Mary has stopped working in the mills. Their son is in the mines and they have three daughters, including 19 year old Ellen, in the cotton mills.
The American Civil War would likely have affected the family as it contributed to the Lancashire Cotton Famine from 1861-1865.
Ellen married James Hutchinson in 1864, in Farnworth with Kearsley. They were both able to sign their names. James lists his father Adam’s occupation as a carder, and Ellen’s father Joseph was a collier.
I can’t find Ellen and James in 1871! They would have been 29 and 28, with their son Ralph around 5 and son James either not quite born or in his first year. They may have lived in Little Hulton, where James was born.
In 1881, Ellen and James are 39 and 38. They have four sons, Ralph, James, Joseph, and William, all living at 75 Primrose Lane in Kearsley. James is a coal miner, as is his 15 year old son Ralph. James, 10, and Joseph, 7, are still scholars. Ellen is notably not in the mills.
Ralph and Caroline
I am now looking at maps to think about how close Ralph Hutchinson and Caroline Crane lived and how they may have met. In 1881, Ralph was in the mines at 15, living at 75 Primrose Lane in Kearsley. His family church was St. John the Evangelist, quite close by. Caroline, in the cotton mills at 17, lived a few miles away at 22 Hall St in Great Lever. I think they may have met when Caroline’s father moved to Great Lever between 1881 and 1884.
Ralph and Caroline were married in 1884 in St. Michaels church in Great Lever. They both claim to be 20 years old, though surely Ralph was certainly lying since his birth date of 1866 is well documented. And they both list their residence as Annie Street in Great Lever, so either that’s where they were going to live when married or they may have both lived on that street and been neighbors. This seems plausible to me since other couples married on the same day have separate addresses. Ralph’s father James is listed as a collier, and Caroline’s father William Crane as a tailor — though at this point he hasn’t been a tailor since 1871; he’s been a brickmaker, an excavator, and a navvy for years. I wonder if this is a sign of his pride (or his daughter’s) in his original profession. And, I’m happy to report that both Ralph and Caroline were literate.
Ralph and Caroline’s life in Darcy Lever
In 1891, Caroline and Ralph lived at Top o’th’ Meadow in Darcy Lever.
In 1891, Ralph Hutchinson, 25, is a coal miner. Caroline (Crane) Hutchinson, 28, is a housekeeper (likely of her own house). Ellen, 5, is a scholar while Jennet, 3, and James, 11 months, are the youngest in the household. Caroline’s father William Crane, 49, widower and farm laborer, lives with them along with his son Henry Crane, 7, scholar, and Ann Ellen Crane, 3. Baby James is my great-grandfather.
Notably, they live next to several houses full of Fletchers, and a household of Norrises which included Martha Fletcher, age 49, sister in law of John Norris, a widow “living on her means”. It looks like Martha came to Darcy Lever to live with her married sister after she was widowed. You can guess why I mention her — William Crane (with his two young children, who need looking after) is on the prowl.
Caroline and Ralph in Farnworth
In 1901, Caroline, Ralph, and thir children are in Farnworth living at 12 Princess Street. Ralph, 35, is a chemical laborer. Ellen, 15, and Jane, 13, were both knotters (Knitters?) in a cotton mill; the initials G.O.P. or C.O.P were written over the entries – maybe an abbreviation for the name of the mill? James, my great-grandfather, is 10; Mary Ann, 8; Sarah, 6; John, 4.
As much as I make fun of growing up in the middle of Pilling Moss, growing up in the middle of the Farnworth gas and chemical works, cotton and steel mills, and coal mines may also have had its down sides, espeically as they were industrial works in the middle of yet another Moss — the whole area is a ginormous peat bog. (“Moses Gate”; Moses = Moss). The younger children seem to be at home or maybe in school, a bit longer, and more of the children grow up to be literate. The ones who aren’t blown up in a coal mine or dead of inhaling cotton fluff in the mills, that is.
Ralph’s father James Hutchinson is 57 and a laborer (plasterer) in 1901. His mother Ellen is 59. William, 24, is a coal hewer. They live at 105 Brackley Street in Farnworth.
William remarries
In 1901, William, age 57, with his wife Martha (Fletcher) Crane, 59, is living in Darcy Lever, Bolton, at the same address (Top o’th’ Meadows, near Radcliffe Road and Crows Nest Road.)
He is on the same road also as James G Hardman (29) and his wife Clara, likely relatives of his late wife Frances Ann.
William is working as a carter on a farm. His son Henry, 17, is a general laborer while Ann E, 13, has no occupation listed.
James Fletcher, 24, listed as “son” is Martha’s son and William Crane’s stepson, a colliery laborer, along with their boarder William Hallows, age 50.
Next door at 407 Radcliffe Road, William’s son John J Crane, 35, a colliery engineer, lives with his wife Sarah E, 32 and their daughter Janet, 13. (Named after William’s mother, who was named after her mother and grandmother!)
About Top o’th’ Meadows
About Darcy Lever: https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/lancs/vol5/pp262-266
“The township abounded with coal, but it has practically been worked out. Several mines were worked till recently; one is still in operation. There is a cotton mill at the village.”
This 1860 description of Top o’th’ Meadows is online at http://www.tongefamily.info/resources/top_oth_meadows.htm
Valuable freehold estate called “BARLOWS,” or “TOP O’TH’ MEADOWS,” Situate in Darcy Lever, near Bolton. To be sold by auction by Mr. William Lomax, junr., at the house of Mr. Gillibrand, the Horse Shoe Inn, in Little Bolton, on Wednesday, the 14th day of October next, at six o’clock in the evening, subject to such conditions as will be then produced.
Lot 1. All that valuable freeshold estate called “BARLOWS” or “TOP O’TH’ MEADOWS,”, situate in Darcy Lever aforesaid, on the Highway leading from Bolton to Radcliffe, containing 14A. 3R. 30P. or thereabouts, statute measure, and comprising a good Farm House, with Two Dwelling-houses, Barns, Stables, Shippons and Gardens, adjoining or near thereto, now in the occupation of Thomas Fishwick and sub-tenants. And also FOUR COTTAGES, in the occupation of George Pickup and others, and the Mines, Minerals, and Appurtenances belonging thereto respectively. Also a ground rent of £3 a year secured on Cottages Coloured blue on the plan.
The Estate is situate within two miles from Bolton, and is connected therewith by excellent roads, and lies contiguous to the Railway from Bolton to Bury, and is half a mile from Bradley Fold Station.
There are valuable Coal Mines under and belonging to this Estate, which are let under an arrangement for a lease of ten years from 1860, at a minimum rent of £50 per annum, the Produce Rent being after the rate of £60 per foot per Cheshire acre.
I figured A is acres and R is roods, but had to look up what “P” stands for in measuring land. It is “perches” and 40 perches = 1 rood; a perch is a square rod.
Setting the scene in early 1911
In the early 1900s, Ralph’s father and mother James and Ellen died.
William Crane, Caroline’s father, wass a 69 year old widower working as a navvy laborer in Bolton, living at 551 Radcliffe Road (this is actually still Darcy Lever and I think may be either Top o’th’ Meadows or very near it.) Living with him were his son Henry Crane, 26, also a navvy; his daughter Ann Ellen Crane, 23, a charwoman; and a grandson, William Crane, age 2. They have a boarder, James Hurst, 25. James Fletcher, William’s stepson, lives two houses down on the same road.
Caroline and Ralph lived a mile or two away, at 130 Hall Lane in Farnworth. If you look on older or present day maps, Hall Lane is a main road running from Moses Gate on the north side of Farnworth, to Little Lever a mile to the east. Early in 1911, Ralph is 45, an “out of work coal miner”. Caroline is at home. Their daughter Janet, 23, is a quilt machinist in a weaving mill. James, 20, is a “side piecer for cotton spinner” in a spinning mill. Mary Ann, 18, has the occupation of “colored weaver (cotton)”. Sarah, 16, is a quilt weaver. John, 14, is a plater in the bleachworks.
Ralph and Caroline’s oldest daughter Ellen, age 25, had just married Walter Bibby, a blacksmith in December 1910. In early 1911, they are living with Walter’s widowed mother and his two younger brothers at 10 Algernon Street in Farnworth. Later, in May 1911, Ellen’s daughter Lily was born.
I’ll write more about Caroline, Ralph, and their 6 children emigrating to Rhode Island in my next post.
William Crane died in August 1917 in Bolton. His brother John Crain died in November 1917.
To sum up Caroline’s life so far:
Caroline Crane was born the oldest child of her tailor parents, in Garstang, 1863 — in the middle of the Lancashire Cotton Famine. She spent some years of her early childhood in Barrow-in-Furness north of Morecambe Bay. Her mother died of smallpox when Caroline was 7. Caroline likely went to live with her father’s brother Henry; at age 17 she was a comber in a cotton mill in Great Lever outside of Bolton. Her father had remarried and had more children — no longer a tailor, he had lost his profession and had to turn to rougher work as an excavator and navvy in the Bolton area brickworks and mines. Caroline married at age 20 to Ralph Hutchinson, a coal miner, and had 6 children with him. Her children went into the mills as teenagers, and the family lived in various locations in the Farnworth area. In 1911, at age 45 her husband lost his job as a coal miner and the family emigrated to Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in the Blackstone Valley where the U.S.’s first cotton mill was built.
