Ramblings and webcomics from LeEMS
I drew a comic about Ursula Southeil, aka Mother Shipton, for my contribution to the Four Corners Halloween zine. Aren’t you lucky, you get to see it here!
Four Corners
The Four Corners Halloween zine is still available for purchase in both print and digital edition. In addition to my comic it has recipes, costumes, crafting, tarot, crystals and more.
Black Maria (pronounced like Mariah or muh-rye-uh) is a bit of old slang for a police van that might be familiar to those who indulge in British period mysteries, though it has been out of use for many years. Many people over hundreds of years have pondered the origination of the slang and many have landed upon the same old story of Maria Lee.
Maria Lee
Maria Lee was an African American proprietress of a boardinghouse for sailors in colonial Boston, though at least one account places her in the early 1800s. She was described as being very large, strong, and energetic. She became indispensable to the Boston police force of the time for her help handling especially rowdy individuals. An oft repeated anecdote describes Maria Lee single-handedly hauling three boisterous sailors into the police station when they were causing a disturbance at her boardinghouse. For the police at the time, calling for Black Maria meant bringing in back up to take a law-breaker to jail. When police vans came about, originally large boxy horse drawn wagons, they were painted black and christened with the name Black Maria in honor of the lady who first was called to carry in the prisoners.
This story has been repeated in several periodical and newspaper publications as a bit of interesting trivia on the origination of the slang. One 1937 article added the embellishment that Maria Lee was knifed in the back by a Chinese sailor during a fight and would subsequently be carried to the morgue in the van that bore her name (The Midland Journal).
Before moving into my own investigations on this particular story of Black Maria, I wanted to give some consideration for the primary dissenting opinion I found, given by Reverend H. Harbaugh in 1859. Harbaugh rejected the idea that the police Black Maria was named after an African American woman. Instead he postulated that the name Maria was adopted due to the Hebrew meaning for Mary/Maria, bitterness, and how criminals, conveyed in such a manner, would be set upon by a black cloud of bitterness (Historically Speaking). I find this theory to be much more far fetched than the idea that the van would have been named after a person. I am no scholar of slang, but I have encountered little to no slang based on something as scholarly as the Hebrew meaning behind naming conventions. Slang often erupts from the average Joe, for communicating with the average Joe. I could be wrong, but I don’t imagine the average Joe police officer of either colonial or 1800s Boston was communicating with his fellows using Hebrew meanings behind common names.
Returning to the story of the colonial boarding house proprietress, I could not find any mention of her any further back than 1849 which talked of same legend that was later repeated (Notes and Queries). Instead, I looked for plausibility that 1. a free African American woman was running a business in colonial Boston, 2. the police force and subsequent vans would’ve occurred at similar time, and 3. there was any possibility of a Chinese sailor during the same time.
Continue reading The Legend of Black Maria
I was recently recommended an article by a colleague, “Information Literacy in the Age of Algorithms” (Head, et al, 2020). The article reviews survey information to ascertain how aware students are of the effect algorithms have on their research activities and socializing online. I was actually surprised to read that the students surveyed were well informed, but felt relatively helpless in changing the situation. Then I got ruminating over my own experiences. I also feel well informed about this topic. I take precautions: I have my browser clear all cookies, history, and cache upon closing the program; I don’t interact much with social media; I use alternative search engines to Google. However, I know that I am still being shown a tiny bubble designed to my tastes. I don’t think about it all of the time, but every now and then it rankles me, as it did in a previous post about Big Data Insults and Failures.
I was surprised that the article reported a high level of student awareness because I don’t quite believe they are at all times cognizant of how their online activities are feeding into search engine and social media algorithms that, in turn, are used to manipulate them into online activities that fit the algorithms. I don’t really believe any one of us is aware, all the time, of how online services have been built to manipulate our behavior. The stated purpose of these algorithms may be to show us what we want to see, and, maybe, to sell us items we want to buy. A helpful purpose; a purpose that helps the hapless searcher wade through an infinitude of search results. What the algorithms are doing, however, is giving me an echo chamber that consistently tells me my views, my experiences, my values, and my desires are right, and normal, and common among my colleagues, friends, neighbors, family, and community.
Echo chambers can be comforting, like talking out a day’s frustration with a friend who sees your point. But, in this age of aggressive partisanship, protest, and ‘fake news,’ echo chambers are dangerous. My tiny bubble, my echo chamber, does not give me truth. It does not give me objectivity or the benefit of a wider viewpoint. The algorithms that build my echo chamber bubble are only attempting to manipulate me into thoughts and actions that fit the bubble. I’m not sure if it matters who wrote the algorithms, or why I am being manipulated. What matters is that I am trapped.
You reside in your own tiny echo chamber bubble no matter how carefully you go about your online activities. Your search results do not show you everything. They do not bring you truth. We each must seek truth and objectivity for ourselves. We must question the answers we find and look for dissenting opinions. Most of all, we must realize that everyone we speak and connect with is equally blinded by their own bubbles. It’s not that your neighbor stubbornly refuses to see the truth of the matter, it’s that your neighbor is incapable of seeing the same truth that you have been fed and vice versa. In this world of manipulated information, how is it possible for anyone of us to say with certainty that we are correct and that they are incorrect.
I’m not going to go all out and say believe nothing and trust no one. But I do think that once we realize how our experiences are being manipulated, it behooves us to work a little harder to verify the information we are given before we adopt it as our own truth. We have to work a little harder to give each other the benefit of the doubt.
Are you already registered to vote by mail? ‘Cause if you aren’t, physical distancing, stay-at-home orders, and general COVID-19 silliness may get in the way of you doing your part to shape our country. Check out this handy guide on how to vote by mail: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/how-to-vote-2020/. Clicking on your state will provide you with information and links you’ll need to get started.
update: The USPS has also created a helpful site to guide voters casting their ballot by mail: https://about.usps.com/what/government-services/election-mail/.
I have been somewhat covetous of the portraits people have made of their beloved pets with the pets dressed in past fashions. Upon voicing my desires I have been told “but you can make that.” So…
This is far from a painting or original art. I am brainstorming ideas and playing around with some photos. There could be more to come, you never know. Here is a portrait of Crisco and Sparkles from around 1900. I miss them terribly.
When I tried out for band at the end of my fourth grade year, I wanted to play the trumpet or the flute, but the highschool band counselor they had brought in to help us choose our instruments said my mouth was all wrong for those. They recommended the clarinet, and, after a short period of normal child disappointment, I embraced my instrument. Through learning the clarinet I found Swing, Big Band, and the ‘Hot’ Jazz of the early 1900s. I wanted to play like Benny Goodman or Artie Shaw. The lingering feelings of my youth still lead me down roads of early jazz history. Recently, I had the opportunity to explore my library’s African American Sheet Music collection while creating an exhibit called Swing Along! But, other than the torch singers whose music I collected, I didn’t see many women. I am looking for them now, and want to …
Blanche Calloway was a flamboyant performer, singer, dancer, business woman, and the first woman to lead an all male orchestra. She is relentlessly written about as residing in the shadow of her younger brother Cab Calloway. However, scholars and researchers have pointed out that, at one point, Blanche Calloway had attained more fame and renown, helping her brother in his show business breakthrough and inspiring his famous style (Wikipedia; Handy, 1998)
Continue reading Blanche Calloway, the Queen of SyncopationAccording to Wikipedia, Christmas in July can trace its roots back to 1892 in the release of a translation of the French opera, Werther. A later journal article for the National Recreation Association makes it clear that a type of Christmas in July celebration was a girl’s summer camp activity in 1935 and by 1940 the movie, Christmas in July, had a theatrical release.
The first year we put out the Charlie Brown Christmas tree to albums of holiday tunes had been filled with unemployment, home stresses, job hunting, and cancer. I had known that the Hallmark and ABC Family channels would sometimes roll out some Christmas specials in July, but when my household first embraced the pseudo holiday it felt new and unique and utterly necessary. The years since haven’t all been so eventful, thank heavens, but July still seems like a good time for a reminder to love each other, practice charitable acts, and embrace a spirit of giving that doesn’t really need to happen only once a year.
Resurrection pie – a pie made of scraps or leavings (1891 American Slang Dictionary by James Maitland)
My head has been full of the myriad of terrible stuff in our world; stuff that is not new, but that Covid-19 has placed a magnifying glass over and lit fire to stress and hardships that had been slowly baking under the surface of our everyday USA. And I have been wanting to celebrate something good, because there are still good things out there and good people. We cannot turn away from the terrible stuff, we cannot pretend it is not there, but we can show it something better.
I am not original when declaring that there is something fascinating about the wild west. In my youth, I became obsessed with stories of western pioneers and nere-do-wells after reading Doc Holiday by John Myers Myers. What I didn’t find a lot of in those stories were women or African Americans. Rodger Hardaway, a scholar working in the niche field focusing on African American Women in the west postulates that the small percentage of African Americans out west, and even smaller percentage of women to men leads to a lack of historical treatment. I’d postulate that the prejudices that keep our history books full of white men might have something to do with it as well.
Mary Fields was an independent and powerful woman. Born before the Civil War, she was enslaved to the Warren family in either West Virginia or Arkansas. After emancipation Mary Fields took chamber maid and laundress jobs on steam ships traveling up the Mississippi. It was on the river that she met Judge Dunne, according to one source (Hanshew, 2014). Other sources say Fields first made acquaintance with the Dunne family when one of the Warner family’s daughters married a Dunne (Reindle, 2010). However they met, Fields would take a position among the Dunne family household staff.
When Judge Dunne’s wife died, Mary Fields took his five children to his sister, Mother Mary Amadeus, at the Ursuline convent in Toledo Ohio (Wikipedia). Mother Mary Amadeus asked her to stay and work for the convent. There, Fields earned herself a reputation for being hard working, argumentative, and loyal. She enjoyed a good drink, a cigar, and took to wearing men’s jackets and boots. Field’s employment at the convent in Toledo seems to have been a comfortable arrangement even though the girls at the convent school were reportedly afraid of her wrath should they tread on her freshly cut lawn. Fields only left when Mother Amadeus, who had been sent to Montana to establish a mission, fell ill with pneumonia.
Fields nursed her friend back to health in Montana and then took on many of the same duties at St. Peter’s Mission that she had carried out in Toledo, though possibly without pay. Fields’ happy arrangement with the nuns of St. Peter’s came to an end when Fields and a hired man drew guns on each other in a dispute. This was the last straw for the bishop who had already heard stories of her cussing, drinking, smoking, and wearing men’s clothing. He ordered her to be dismissed from the convent.
Possibly with the help of Mother Amadeus, Fields set herself up in nearby Cascade and opened a restaurant that quickly folded due to her not charging cash strapped patrons. After doing sundry odd jobs Mary Fields won a Star Route contract with the US Post Office because she was the fastest applicant to hitch a team of six horses (Wikipedia). She was only the second woman to be employed as a carrier by the postal service and the first African American woman.
Already in her sixties, Fields would carry the mail between the Cascade train depot and St. Peter’s Mission for two four-year contracts. She acquired the nickname “Stagecoach” Mary for her reliability. She never missed a day. When the snow was too deep to pull the stagecoach through, she donned snow shoes and carried the mail herself. When the coach was overturned she paced in the cold to keep from freezing, and protected her cargo, horses, and mule from roaming wolves. Fields embodied the mission of the post office. She traveled through rain, sleet, and snow to deliver precious supplies and communication. The internet has made it easy today to overlook the great history and service of the US Post Office even as it supplies us in this pandemic and looks toward an uncertain future (Murse, 2020).
While carrying the mail, Fields became so beloved by the people of Cascade that they rebuilt the laundry service she started in retirement after it burned to the ground. She also ate for free at the local restaurant, and was given a special dispensation by the Mayor to drink in the saloons when women were no longer allowed to do so. Gary Cooper, also of Cascade, remembered her fondly in a piece he related for Ebony magazine in 1959. Cooper told of how she babysat most of the children in town, spending most of her earnings from childcare on candy and treats for the children. She was made the mascot of the baseball team for her tireless devotion and providing bouquets and boutonnieres to the star players from her own garden.
Stories of her exploits, like punching a man down in the street who had not paid his laundry bill, paint a picture of a woman who was larger than life. She was also six feet tall and, according to some, over 200 pounds. But I wonder if just under the surface is the story of a lonely woman as well. Fields never married, she socialized with men, and was the only African American in Cascade. As pointed out by her autobiographer, a subtle racism could have made her an outsider even as she was embraced by the people of Cascade (Hanshew, 2014). Fields left no written record of her own view point, so we may never know the personal thoughts and feelings of this legendary woman.
The archivist at the Ursuline Convent in Toledo mentioned that most inquiries about Mary Fields happen around Black History Month (Reindl, 2010) and the dates on many of the articles I found corroborated this. It’s sad that we restrict our appreciation of underrepresented citizens to one month a year. I say that this month is African American History Month and every month should be African American History Month; every month should be Women’s History Month; every month LGBTQ+ History Month; every month Native American Heritage Month. After all, our history books have taught us that every month has always been White History Month, yes?
The NAACP was founded in 1909.
In 1952 we had corny PSAs discouraging racism.
Black Lives Matter was founded in 2013.
In 2020 we are living through a global pandemic that is disproportionately killing members of the black community in the U.S. due, at least in part, to inequalities in the way our fellow Americans experience life and freedom.
This is terribly far from a full timeline of the reminders we have had to recognize and support our colleagues, our friends, our family, and our fellow citizens. How many more generations will see these reminders falling on deaf ears? Black Lives Matter.