Logistics

view of Halifax, Dominic Serres, 1765, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia

Logistics: As a military spouse, it is often up to me to make sure the family home runs smoothly so that Pierre can go and do his job. When he is deployed, it means looking after everything, not just what I'm expected to do in my traditional role as wife. Sometimes, this has also meant moving house mostly on my own. Over the years, we have gotten really good at communicating what needs to happen, when, by whom, and what we need to be wearing/bringing/doing. We run like a finely tuned machine most times. There is comfort in the logistics.

And it's much easier now that there is just two of us working in this machine.

We used to joke that by adding one person to a living history event, we ended up packing twice as much kit. And this was true. Not just kit, but also emotional kit. We were so used to working as a team, that together we act like one person, but add another person to that mix, we needed to consider that person. No matter how close they were to us, they were still a separate person. With their own needs, desires, expectations.

Now think of adding a couple hundred people to your mix. This is what running a living history event is like. You can't simply go about your day, situation normal. You can't get up with your own schedule, pour your own coffee, and go do your job for the day. You have to take into consideration all the people who are coming out for your event.

It's really important for the people attending your event to know the history behind the scenario you are trying to interpret for the day, but it is also important for people to understand the logistics. This really hit home a couple of times this year when attending events for the first time, in places I had never been before, with people I had never met. Because the majority of the event attendees had done these events multiple times before, they knew what to expect. I didn't even know what kinds of questions to ask, since there was so much I didn't know, I didn't know where to start to ask.

When we moved here to Montreal. I knew a few things about military moves. Now that I have done one, I know more, so the next time should run a bit more smoothly...one can hope. The same applies to living history events. With the move, there are logistics that I will expect and ask for. Timelines I will know to also expect. We should be asking ourselves these types of questions about the living history events we plan as well...especially when we know the event better than anyone else.

For future living history events, I would like to see a brief synapsis of the event itself. I don't really need to be writing a 30 page academic paper on it, so a brief overview of the history is really all I need. I need to know what event staff want from me. Am I Loyalist? Patriot? Undecided? Who am I working for? What jobs do I need to be doing during the interpretation? What material culture do I need to bring with me? Am I expected to be doing full-on interpretation? Or am I also expected to do security and crowd control? Will I be indoors, or outside most of the day? Walking long distances? I wear high heels most of the time, so this is important. What time am I expected to be on site, ready for business, and when am I expecting to be able to leave and go home? If everyone knows what they are supposed to be doing before they arrive on-site, then the interpretation runs much more smoothly overall, and there's less frantic, last minute rushing around, trying to make things work.

There are other things that are important to know. Is this event just a single day, or is it only part of a day? We went to an event this year, driving five hours, to find out that the interpretation was only an hour. We were lost for the rest of the weekend, not knowing what to do with ourselves, and to be honest, disappointed. We should be telling our interpreters this. But also, what sort of sleeping accommodation is available, and what sort of meal arrangements are available. We don't always need to be putting on big, catered spreads of food, like Parks Canada has done in the past, but knowing that the site restaurant will be open later or earlier so we can eat is fantastic information. I honestly don't mind paying for my meals, but I need to know where I can get them. I also need to know where the closest hotels are, if I need some sort of modern sleeping accommodation at the last minute (post tropical storm hypothermia, anyone?). Knowing there aren't any hotels nearby, is also helpful.

You may not think that a little tid-bit of information is all that important, but it could be important to someone. Together, let's plan events a bit better. Let's be sharing information a bit more widely. And not expecting because we have always done it this way, that everyone knows what 'that way' is.

the social life of things: a year in the life of an object and a living historian

I have to admit, the type of interpretation programming that really rocks my socks is the year in the life type of interpretation programing. Situations like Tales from the Green Valley or Victorian Farm, where the gang gets together and 'lives' as they would for a full calendar year.

This year I got to come about as close as I currently can to feeling all the seasonal feels. We spent three weekends at Ticonderoga this year, in the Spring, Summer, and Fall. We would have rounded out the winter with another weekend this coming weekend, if it weren't for coming down with strep throat this week. Each of those weekends we worked on similar interpretation, but with a varying climate and happenings of history going on. For this weekend, I was working through Christmas season thoughts on what they would have had during the Christmas of 1776. How I could reproduce the creature comforts for officers to eat while having a limited cooking set up, in the frontier of New York state. I was enjoying other historic sites setting up their own Christmas programs and the photos that they were sharing. I may not have been able to produce all the fancy things the finer house museums would have had, but I think I would have been able to make a fine Christmas out of not much. Items like a Christmas stolen and a fine fruit pudding would have made use of dried fruits and could be made in a bake kettle or a soup kettle over the fire. Pies of custard, pork (tortiere), or mince could also be made along a similar fashion. My planned menu was all of items that I could have made in the few days prior to Christmas day, and kept with very little problem.
I was also thinking of our clothing, what we would wear, what we would need. What would we look like, two servants to the officers, within their space, but not of it. Pierre was going to wear his black wool suit, nice enough to serve in; black, and would hide any dirt from cooking. I have a serviceable blue wool gown under construction; again, nice enough to serve in, dark enough to disguise any dirt.

Through this year, I have been producing all the clothing items that we would need to live our lives as eighteenth-century people. There's very little left now that I think we would need. The final items are things I will need to buy to round out our impressions of working class people. Shoes are next on the list, as I really miss being on heels when we've been in the eighteenth-century, my work shoes are flats and quite honestly, fugly. I live in heels in my modern life. Women in the era lived in high heels too. The extant women's shoes are predominantly heeled, not flats.
The other items are for serving, so platters, another big cooking kettle, and I'm still on the hunt for a couple of table spoons.

Someday, I might get to actually run a year of interpretation programming somewhere, or maybe multiple years... Then I can truly get my nerd on and study the wear patterns of our clothing more fully, and get further into character than I have ever had the chance to before.

Until then, I will live vicariously through social media and photographs, and maybe make a syllabub and some custard tarts for Pierre and I to indulge in this weekend, while we sit home and recover from the dreaded pox of the throat.

waiting to serve, Saturday July 21st 2018, Ticonderoga