Era Immersion Living

HudsonHawk said:

Oh I'm not suggesting the people in the article are this way at all. Just making a general point in response to Lizzie's comment about "vintage" consumerism.

Click to expand...

Got it. And yeah, I agree that there are many like the ones you're talking about. Unfortunate.

The Walker Sisters were 5 spinster sisters (never married) that refused to leave the Smoky Mountains National Park when it was created in the 1930's. They were allowed to stay and continued to live a late 1800's lifestyle until the last one died in 1964. The Wikipedia link is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walker_Sisters_Place

I knew two families who lived a Victorian lifestyle.

One was a mother, father, and daughter whom I met when I was a kid at our village's bicentennial. I was historic demonstrating there (in historic dress) and so were they. The daughter was a bit younger than me, perhaps 11 or 12. I spoke to the mother and daughter, who said that they always dressed like they were (I would say 1860s/1870s) and lived in a house with no electric. What I remember most acutely is the girls boots which were highly authentic and she needed to use a button hook on. (I had a pair of kmart boots that I made due with.) The family also sat down to a picnic lunch and took out *actual Victorian blue and white china and silver-plate silverware* including teacups and saucers to eat and drink from. I've never seen anyone take a picnic lunch with teacups and saucers before or since.

I also knew a couple who lived the victorian lifestyle in an old farmhouse. They fell on really hard times, losing both their jobs in the 1980s. They were able to keep their house and acreage, but anything extra- telephone, electric, even a car at one point- had to go. They slowly reverted backwards in time... they fixed up an old treadle sewing machine and as their clothes wore out, they made victorian ones. They got a horse and buggy when they could no longer afford gas, and used the horse with a plow, cultivator, etc. When things got desperate, they ripped the copper wire and plumbing out of their house and sold their fixtures.

I think there's more people like this than we know about, particularly in rural areas. The Amazon Drygoods Catalog is filled with mainly Victorian and turn-of-the-century patterns... I doubt that just demonstrators and costumers wear those.

LizzieMaine said:

Some of the most "vintage" people I've ever known have no idea that there even is such a thing as a "vintage scene," and would gape with amazement at the sight of well-to-do white-collar folks spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars in order to dress up as a CIO factory hand c. 1937.

Click to expand...

I was in Brooklyn two weekends ago and, holy cow, these people really do exist. From the beard down through the very expensive jeans work shirt, work pants and to the out-of-the-thirties boots. Yes, I've seen them before and in Manhattan regularly, but Brooklyn has quite a concentration of this trying-very-hard-to-look-vintage population. And my unscientific observation is that it is much more a guy thing a woman thing. I would assume, since it is so popular and well-known, that its time of being hip is probably about over (but what I know about being hip could be captured on the back of a postage stamp with room left over).

Fading Fast said:

I was in Brooklyn two weekends ago and, holy cow, these people really do exist. From the beard down through the very expensive jeans work shirt, work pants and to the out-of-the-thirties boots. Yes, I've seen them before and in Manhattan regularly, but Brooklyn has quite a concentration of this trying-very-hard-to-look-vintage population. And my unscientific observation is that it is much more a guy thing a woman thing. I would assume, since it is so popular and well-known, that its time of being hip is probably about over (but what I know about being hip could be captured on the back of a postage stamp with room left over).

Click to expand...

Yup. What gets me is that that particular look -- distressed leather jacket, work pants, work boots -- was, in the actual thirties, a look most commonly associated with members of the Communist Party USA, to the point where party leaders had to convince the men to dress a bit more bourgeois when speaking in public. Something tells me the modern habitues of that look would not fit in at all at an actual YCL meeting.

Just from the way the wind blows in the Powder Room, I'd agree that there are far more men obsessed over the stitch-counting, zipper-measuring details of "vintage" than women. Most of the gals in the PR seem to be far more interested in the practical aspects of the Era itself, and while they might wear the clothes, they don't fetishize them.

emigran said:

Recently I visited a friend whose dad is now 97 and quite lucid and active. He was sitting in the living room kind of vacantly staring at the TV... My friend said "Hey Pop, you alright??" He replied, "Why they talk so fast... everything too fast... I can't understand why they go so fast... !?!?"

Click to expand...

Reminds me of one of my wife's relations. I met her when she was 103 years old. Very bright, well read (first female grad of Baylor University, and her long gone husband had been the first Rhodes Scholar from Texas) and a great conversationalist. She apologized for not being as up on current events as she would have liked: "Only U.S. News and World Report has a large print edition, and I don't think that they do such a great job of covering the news in depth."

Had she not been a devout Baptist lady, she's the kind of person I would have brought a bottle of whatever single malt Scotch she drinks to and told her: "You talk, I'll pour." People like that are such a great source of information, wisdom, and inspiration.

Here's another piece in reply to the original article written by Sarah Chrisman
Vox's Victorians

That's an interesting article. While I don't agree with every point she expresses -- I'm closer to Chrisman's point of view on the importance of primary sources than the "let the PHDs interpret history" end of things, because I've run into so many cases in my own area of expertise where "professional historians" have either completely garbled the primary sources or not consulted them at all -- she does make a good point about the context of experience: you can only go so far deliberately "recreating" an era before you run into the rest of the world. For them it might be 1889, but as soon as they step out the front door, it's 2015, and they're going to either have to be able make some sort of internal accomodation to that or end up in the nut house.

On the other hand, I can see why some people are questioning their actual committment to what they're saying they're trying to do if they're appearing on "The View" to publicize their book and blog and such. It always pains me to see articles and books and TV interviews about "people who live in the past," because usually the people are wide-eyed and naive souls who are exploited and made to look like complete and utter fools by the media. But if they're *actually seeking out media attention* to promote their various ventures, well, you don't jump in a pool full of sharks unlesss you're either asking to get bit, or have a very comprehensive understanding of the habits of sharks. Given the sophisticated and highly effective ways in which they've used 21st Century media to call attention to themselves, I'd suspect the latter.

ChiTownScion said:

Reminds me of one of my wife's relations. I met her when she was 103 years old. Very bright, well read (first female grad of Baylor University, and her long gone husband had been the first Rhodes Scholar from Texas) and a great conversationalist. She apologized for not being as up on current events as she would have liked: "Only U.S. News and World Report has a large print edition, and I don't think that they do such a great job of covering the news in depth."

Had she not been a devout Baptist lady, she's the kind of person I would have brought a bottle of whatever single malt Scotch she drinks to and told her: "You talk, I'll pour." People like that are such a great source of information, wisdom, and inspiration.

Click to expand...

With a devout Baptist, you have just had to convince her it was "medicine".

BTW, the first female grad of Baylor, and of any college in Texas, was Mary Gentry Kavanaugh in 1855. She would have been 103 sometime around 1935. You're not THAT old, are you?

I snorted when I read Onion's sentence "Chrisman writes that she and her husband have retreated from the present in part to escape the incomprehensible technologies that now govern our lives, and to avoid the disconnection from the natural world that comes with modernity."

People have been concerned about that as long as technology has existed. Not only that, people who feel this way feel a connection with previous generations who lamented the same thing, *despite* having different technological backgrounds and different technologies available. And these people, gasp, realize and can articulate this. And yet many of these people, even with a strong concern about the impacts of technology on society, use the modern technologies they lament so strongly.

For Onion to take such a "superior view" on how the Chrisman's view and use technology without even a basic understand of some of the fundamentals of socio-technical theory is kind of laughable. One probably shouldn't make such a big deal out of not having read "so and so" (as Onion makes a big deal out of Chrisman's not having read Lears) when you're making comments on an area in which you have obviously read... nothing. If Onion feels that running around in Victorian clothes doesn't really give you a sense of how Victorians actually lived then perhaps she ought to examine her own life and realize that running around with a smartphone doesn't really give you a sense of how all people approach using modern technology.

In fact, if Onion had read any socio-technical theory, she'd realize that Chrisman is using technology exactly in a way that many people who are concerned about modern technologies do. These "types" use modern technologies in a subversive way- because they believe there is not evil in the actual technology BUT in the way it is misused. Therefore, Chrisman by using a blog, writing books, appearing on TV; is using these technologies in a way that she see's as the "proper" use of such media. In this way Chrisman is being subversive in using the technology to spread her message of anti-modernity.

LizzieMaine said:

I think for someone born in 1875, before the telephone and the electric light, who was an adult when powered flight and automobiles became a reality, who was moving into middle age when broadcasting was invented, and who lived long enough to look into a glowing box in their living room and see a human being set foot on the moon, the course of the world over their lifetime must've seemed absolutely inconceivable.

Click to expand...

I agree! That roughly 100 years, probably brought more change, for better or worse then any other 100 year span in all of recorded history.

I do believe I underestimated the degree to which digital technologies would change our world, and our ways of knowing it and making our way through it.

Things we take for granted today (how many people are accessing this conversation via a pocketable device while recreating at some lakeside campsite?) were wildest science fiction not so long ago. I suspect we'll soon adopt other fantastic technologies and come to regard them as ordinary as buttons on a shirt.

I didn't bother reading about the "Victorian" couple, so I'm assuming nothing about their particular case. But surely they are of the times in which they live. They may have a fascination for an earlier era, and a preference for certain aspects of its material culture, and its social mores. I got no problem with that, and I don't understand why anyone else would.

sheeplady said:

In fact, if Onion had read any socio-technical theory, she'd realize that Chrisman is using technology exactly in a way that many people who are concerned about modern technologies do. These "types" use modern technologies in a subversive way- because they believe there is not evil in the actual technology BUT in the way it is misused. Therefore, Chrisman by using a blog, writing books, appearing on TV; is using these technologies in a way that she see's as the "proper" use of such media. In this way Chrisman is being subversive in using the technology to spread her message of anti-modernity.

Click to expand...

We had a thread here on exactly that topic several years ago. Our anti-modernity is nothing if not cutting-edge.

Meanwhile, the Chrismans, whether they like it or not, have become the personal punching bags for every would-be snarking comedian on the Internet, and unlike Onion's piece, which at least tries to approach the question in a mild-tempered way, most of what's been written has a level of viciousness and violent hatred that far surpasses the "offensiveness" of anything the Chrismans have written, said, or done. I've seen several comments urging Mrs. Chrisman to die in childbirth "for the real Victorian experience," and anyone who thinks they're scoring points with filth like that is in no position to criticize anything anyone else says, writes, or does. As I said before, it really does seem to be a matter of people feeling personally threatened by what they're doing.

tonyb said:

Things we take for granted today (how many people are accessing this conversation via a pocketable device while recreating at some lakeside campsite?) were wildest science fiction not so long ago. I suspect we'll soon adopt other fantastic technologies and come to regard them as ordinary as buttons on a shirt.

Click to expand...

I heard a 1937 radio broadcast recently from a series called "The World Is Yours," produced by the Smithsonian Institution as part of an educational outreach dealing with future developments in science and research. This particular broadcast dealt with communications technology, and featured a skit about two teenage boys camping in the woods and using pocket-sized "radiophones" to communicate with friends and relatives around the world. They got that right, but they also predicted that these phones would largely be home-built from plans published in magazines, not purchased from giant technology companies. And they didn't anticipate direct-distance dialing at all: you still had to talk to a live operator and give her the number you were calling to get a connection!

It wasn't the technology that was inconceivable to thinking people in the thirties. It was the utter dehumanization of it that they didn't anticipate.

I posted an abridged version of this in response to the same topic over on the Facebook group for the Fedora Lounge, and I believe it's appropriate here as well.

Nowadays, people think we're living in the most tolerant, most morally advanced time in history, and any given point more than twenty-five years or so in the past was nothing but oppression and misery for everyone but the ones doing the oppressing. They, in their own words, see what these people are doing as "indefensible", just as any fondness for any particular time or era in history before say 1990 is, and they feel the vitriol they spew needs to be as vicious as possible in hopes that these truly reprehensible beings might see the error of their "evil" ways of seeing anything good in the past. Because obviously, there was nothing good in the past, only famine, disease, discrimination, institutionalized oppression, and so on. (Thankfully today we live in a time when all evil in the world has been eradicated.*) In their eyes, if one were to favor certain aspects of such an era, they are by extension promoting all those evils. Therefore, anyone who finds anything appealing about any of those periods in history simply must be a morally bankrupt bigot, and should be routinely chastised and berated for their backwards lifestyle with at least as much intolerance as in their perceived version of the past.

If only they could see the irony.



*This is sarcasm, of course.

HudsonHawk said:

There's a whole group of people who like to wear their "vintageness" on their sleeves for the whole world to see, while they bang their chests and say "look at me!...see, I'm into the 'X-era' lifestyle..." But what they're really doing is showing off the fact that they can afford a Victorian house stuffed with antique and reproduction knick knacks and shiny baubles, antique cars and vacations at the lake where they can wear their seersucker suits and boater hats. They look down their noses at regular "modern" working-class stiffs as the gullible and unenlightened. The working class of the Golden Era, or any other era, weren't living that way out some whacked sense of superiority, they lived that way because that's just the way it was. They weren't making a statement, they were simply trying to get by and live their lives the best they could.

Click to expand...

I think the majority of people in the vintage "scene" are just ordinary people who like old stuff and are into it for their own enjoyment, much like the couple in the article (albeit typically to a lesser extent). No doubt there are some with a superiority complex like you note, but from my observation it doesn't seem to be the dominant mindset.

CONELRAD said:

Therefore, anyone who finds anything appealing about any of those periods in history simply must be a morally bankrupt bigot, and should be routinely chastised and berated for their backwards lifestyle with at least as much intolerance as in their perceived version of the past.

If only they could see the irony.



*This is sarcasm, of course.

Click to expand...

I wonder what they'd think of someone who is most drawn to the radical, rock-throwing revolutionary aspects of the past, in contrast to the saggy-bottomed internet slactivism of today? Takes a lot of guts to tell off The Man by posting a snarky comment on a blog.

LizzieMaine said:

We had a thread here on exactly that topic several years ago. Our anti-modernity is nothing if not cutting-edge.

Meanwhile, the Chrismans, whether they like it or not, have become the personal punching bags for every would-be snarking comedian on the Internet, and unlike Onion's piece, which at least tries to approach the question in a mild-tempered way, most of what's been written has a level of viciousness and violent hatred that far surpasses the "offensiveness" of anything the Chrismans have written, said, or done. I've seen several comments urging Mrs. Chrisman to die in childbirth "for the real Victorian experience," and anyone who thinks they're scoring points with filth like that is in no position to criticize anything anyone else says, writes, or does. As I said before, it really does seem to be a matter of people feeling personally threatened by what they're doing.

Click to expand...

I wonder how many of these people who get a rush from showing off their hatred hidden from the safety of their computer screen would be inclined to show off their hatred, hide their identity under a white sheet, while wearing a pointy white hat.

LizzieMaine said:

It was the utter dehumanization of it that they didn't anticipate.

Click to expand...

I would not go that far! While I do not like texting, it is still a human being, and most likely a loved one, who typed all that gibberish, hash tag, I don't understand what you just sent me! What does a semicolon and a exclamation mark mean? :eusa_doh:

CONELRAD said:

I posted an abridged version of this in response to the same topic over on the Facebook group for the Fedora Lounge, and I believe it's appropriate here as well.

Nowadays, people think we're living in the most tolerant, most morally advanced time in history, and any given point more than twenty-five years or so in the past was nothing but oppression and misery for everyone but the ones doing the oppressing. They, in their own words, see what these people are doing as "indefensible", just as any fondness for any particular time or era in history before say 1990 is, and they feel the vitriol they spew needs to be as vicious as possible in hopes that these truly reprehensible beings might see the error of their "evil" ways of seeing anything good in the past. Because obviously, there was nothing good in the past, only famine, disease, discrimination, institutionalized oppression, and so on. (Thankfully today we live in a time when all evil in the world has been eradicated.*) In their eyes, if one were to favor certain aspects of such an era, they are by extension promoting all those evils. Therefore, anyone who finds anything appealing about any of those periods in history simply must be a morally bankrupt bigot, and should be routinely chastised and berated for their backwards lifestyle with at least as much intolerance as in their perceived version of the past.

If only they could see the irony.



*This is sarcasm, of course.

Click to expand...

Makes me wonder what some of these same people will say about our present time twenty-five years from now.