The Sleeping Dragon – Hadrian’s Wall

Click on the Illustration Above for the Full Picture

I had no trouble locating the time travelers portal, that would carry me back to the era when Roman Legions patrolled the North Country.

Traveling Through Time into the Commyne Place

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person out there who's running on sensory overload when it comes to hoarding digital photos, recipes, great quotes, patterns and lists of library books I'm definitely going to read within the next year. Too much technology makes it kind of easy to hold onto too much.

So I was glad to read that even 400 years ago, Elizabethans were overdoing things when it came to collecting the wisdom of the ages too. Apparently  Common Place books , a repository for all the things you mean to get around to, memorize, read and pass onto your friends were the latest thing. Gee.... this sure reminds me of something I do on my computer. Now gee, what could it be?

Isn't old Will the best playwright ever? Quick before you forget, go ahead and write down those quips about asses and wise fathers, that made you laugh so hard you almost bust your stay laces. What better place then your new Common Place book to keep them from getting lost.

Did you finally score the world's best receipt for grouse pastry puffs? Into the Common Place book it goes.

Managed to sneak in a detailed description of the perfect knot garden when your hosts weren't looking? Slip that drawing in your Common Place book.

Found a wonderful new method for poisoning rats? Tuck it in.

The idea, of course, is that you'll know right where to go when you next  tie on your pastry apron or slip on your rat-taming, gardening gloves. Oh you bet.

Now we know why somebody invented the search key.

A fun blog entry with great detailed info about common place books (and other fun reads as well).

Sewing Chronicles of Lady Lizbeth Secret Diary of a Time Traveling Maid - Meet That Rascal William Sainsbury

 Oh William Sainsbury, you rascal you!


It's all Sweet Will's fault that Liz ended up temporarily trapped in Tudor times.


He seemed so cute when she'd first met him back at the local Elizabethan Springe Flinge. And then, when he suggested a meet-up on her trip to London, well.... after all they'd been Facebook friends for over a year. It wasn't like she didn't know anything about him.


Wrong!


Will had plans for Liz, and they didn't just involve a quick kiss at the pub door. You see, Will's got needs - no not THOSE kinds of needs. His involved getting back home, and the pathway home just isn't as easy to follow as you might think. He needed a little help. And Liz was just the kind of help he needed.


So now Liz has got her needle buried in more blackwork embroidery than she ever dreamed about. 


And she's blogging the old-fashioned way.


(Co-Published with A Stitche In Time)

Sewing: Blackwork Back in Tudor Times

 
I know my friend Lizbeth must be having a blast back in the Tudor Era, despite her complaints about being tricked into making that little foray back in time. 


Liz loves hand sewing and embroidery. She's always got a handwork project going. Her favorite is blackwork embroidery. You've seen it peeking out of the edges of sleeves and necklines in all the old portraits, right?


I strongly doubt that most women would have taken the time to embroider their smock or undergown to the all over degree in my illustration, though I'm sure Liz might go for it while she's there. 


Usually you saw this type of stitchery on sleeves, stomachers and the perpetual coifs with which respectable women covered their hair in informal situations. Your mama would have said that covering your hair kept you from getting a chill. But of course she also probably thought that loose hair looked a little too sexy. And back in those times, most people's hair was kind of dirty, so you'd really rather people covered it.


Blackwork embroidery was a very popular style of needlework in England, in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. According to the Victoria and Albert Museum, "It was worked with a single colour of silk, usually black, but also blue, green or red, on linen. (It might be) embroidered with running stitch. This may be a transition from the repeating geometrical stitches of the 16th century to the subtle speckling stitch of the 17th century, imitating the shading of woodblock prints."

Have Needle Will Time Travel (Co-Published)

     Looks like my friend Lizbeth, over at A Stitche in Time,  will be lost in Tudor Tymes for some tyme to come.

     You can listen in on her time travel adventures "The Sewing Chronicles of Lady Lizbeth: The Secret Diary of a Time Traveling Maide" via my podcasts: Unpolished Performances from The Simple Romantic. The Simple Romantic has, currently, recorded three episodes about Liz. Look for them in the June, July and August edition of "Unpolished Performances"

Download these free audio shows directly from the iTunes store with this link (or search the iTunes store using the search term 'unpolished performances') 

     You can also listen to this show from your computer by following this link http://web.me.com/simpleromantic/Simple_Romantic/Podcast/Podcast.html

* * *

Show Scoop: Our American blogger, Liz, is looking forward to a summer in London, sewing, sightseeing, practicing Bartok on the piano, and developing some great new historical and modern fashion content for her sewing blog.

It’s always a challenge keeping your online journal going when you’re on a trip, but Liz hadn’t counted on that trip extending back to the England of Queen Elzabeth the First.

Does anybody know if there’s a widget for blogging access that remote?

Those Tudors Keep Me in Stitches (Co-Published)

These blog entries come from an iPad that my cousin Lizbeth left at my house when she went off to London for the summer. She asked me to post them for her in her blog, A Stitche in Time, if she ended up doing any traveling in areas where she might have difficulty accessing wifi. I’d say that being trapped in Tudor times, fills that bill.

So while Liz is otherwise engaged I’ll help out by cleaning up her notes and posting them on both our blogs, whenever I get a chance.

Laurel Shimer

I hope you've been enjoying Liz's story, The Sewing Chronicles of Lady Liz: Secret Diary of a Time Traveling Maide, in this journal.  There's plenty more to come!

~ ~ ~

In the time of England’s Elizabeth I, the merchant class was enjoying new opportunities to travel and make a buck (ok let’s say a pound or a piece of eight) in the export/import business. That’s right, that means that if you were a white male, you might be enjoying new financial opportunities. These men and their families was beginning to rise in society by buying a place in the upper echelons. Sometimes their gold paved the way to marriages that united them with the titled classes. Their upper middle class wives and daughters, who might some day marry a lord, were enjoying some of the new prosperity as well.

It was becoming quite the thing now for women in such households to be educated. The well-read English woman was reading more than her book of Commoyne Prayer and hot-off-the-press Englishe Bible. She was also following artistic movements in Italy, Germany and France. Pattern-books for embroidery were becoming available and new designs emerged from her needle. Naturalistic styalized designs were hot. Flowers, as always, were big. With more freedom of movement, European designs were also influenced by interlaced Islamic arabesque designs.

With pattern books in her hands and money in her pockets, our Elizabethan-era sister also created a demand for new styles of embroidery from the professional workshops that provided the sumptuous hangings, that turned her brand new half-timbered house or stately brick manor into a right cozy nest.

Some of her needlework survives. The lovely linen piece above(*) is embroidered in deep pink silk thread, and features an interlaced trellis-work design (think Islamic motif) of carnations and roses worked in outline stitch.

~ ~ ~

I highly recommend the book 5,000 years of Textiles, ed. by Harris. Check your library or, mebbe even break down and buy it.

* This gorgeous piece of work is housed at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London

Part 6: Sewing Chronicles of Lady Lizbeth, Secret Diary of a Time Traveling Maid

Part 6: A Tale of Tudor Time

Not only did I win a rather spontaneous, trip back to Tudor Times, it seems I get a husband in the bargain. Kidding, kidding! I won’t actually be around long enough to cut the big white cake (make that free four and twenty black birds trapped in a pie these days). You see there is a real Lady Elizabeth Chumley and I’m just her stand in back here in the year 1581, until the new moon rolls around. (William Sainsbury swears he can get me back through the time portal, on the next neaps tide. That boy better know what he’s talking about!)  Lady Elizabeth, it turns out, is from one of the new upwardly mobile merchant class, and she’s just rollin' in the shillings. Lucky Liz is apparently looking for the guy of her dreams, and I get to be her proxy.

If I’ve got it right, my hostess will be lining up the suitors and I more or less take my pick. Won’t the other Liz be surprised when she does eventually make it on over to Northumberland, and finds out the papers have been all drawn up? All she’ll need to do is sign on the dotted line!

My hostess is Lady Margaret Hoby, she of the time-portal-connecting claviorgan. (Did you miss the lead-in to this story? You can catch up by following this link and listening in to the June podcast. That podcast extends the introduction of this story beyond what is published in this art journal.)  Lady Madge has her own little flock of unmarried women living in the house right now, and I fit right in with the crowd. Thomas Hoby’s lady seems to be in the business of marrying off girls who need husbands, and from what I can tell that’s anybody who’s single, has her eyesight, and is more or less in possession of her right mind.

One good thing about my little time-away jaunt is that this group of unmarried gals, or Lady Margaret’s Maides as we’re called collectively, spend a good part of each afternoon and evening doing needlework and making music. And as you well know both are pretty high up on my list of priorities. It’s also late spring back in these times, just like it was when I left London in 2011. Up here in Northumberland the wildflowers are thick, the birds are singing, and the fuzzy lambs are gamboling their little hearts out. I’ve seen a bit of  English countryside in my own time and I must say, the rural scene, if you overlook manure piles, is even prettier back in the days of 1581.

The bad thing is that I have to share not only a room (yeah, yeah they call it a chamber) with the other Maides, but also a bed.  Cecily’ has adenoids and Lettice gets up several times during the night to pray out loud. The snoring I can live with and even the oratory has a kind of cadence that puts me back to sleep about as well as an old-movie on t.v. It’s more the lack of, (how can I put this delicately?), well let’s just say hygiene. Not only are these gals not at all big on bathing, they don’t go in for any kind of deodorant that I’ve been able to locate. And don’t let anybody tell you that gillyflower water will do the trick. It doesn’t. Believe me.

I didn’t have much choice about my new persona. William had it all fixed up. (You probably guessed that ole Will was up to something back in the introduction didn’t you? I must have been taking my gormless pills that day.) My options were pretty limited and he knew it, the bozo. Either I said I was Lady Liz or I’d be lucky if they put me to work shoveling horse pucky or scrubbing pots in the Hoby’s kitchen. OK, call me elitist, but I got a whiff of my potential colleagues in the stable and the kitchen. At least Cecily and Lettice wipe themselves down once or twice a day, and dot on a little eau-de-gillyflower in the more offensive areas. I’ll take the less-crowded zone upstairs. Besides, given that I’ll be back in my own time in less than two weeks, I might as well make the most of the opportunity.

It’s all about culture isn’t it? Here I’ve got a change to sink my needle into a piece of blackwork embroidery that might just turn up at the V&A in my time, and blend my soprano with Cecily’s alto, while Lettice plays Crecquillon latest hot little chanson on her lute. I can think of at least three reenactors at our Elizabethan Springtyme Feste, who’d consider bumping off a fellow player with digitalis for this chance.

Travel’s like that, isn’t it? It’s the unexpected stuff that really hits me over the head. There was that time I came across three spring hares cavorting like total nuts around the meadows in Yorkshire. They made me feel like I’d taken a quick broomstick to OZ. Then there was the  cab-driver veteran of World War II, who told me about his life during the blitz, and how it impacted his attitude when he was part of the bombing raid to Dresden. That’s when it hit me, that the war had been real and not just something from books and the movies.

You gotta open your eyes and ears to the moment you land in. Then again, sometimes you just stumble on a real dissembling jolthead like William Sainsbury who finagles the moment for you. Should I even speak to a man who’s sent me spinning back to Tudor times unasked, just because he couldn’t get back there himself without an assist?

At the very least I ought to get some kind of free miles for this. I wonder what I could cash them in for…

* * *

Time Portal: Stopping in for a brew at The Time & Time Again

Just another British pub?

Maybe.

But have you got the nerve to open the door?

Could be a special locally brewed ale, a piece of Cheshire cheddar, and the most delicious meat pie you ever tasted.

And if you're really lucky, you might just happen by on a day when we specialize in Victorian Values, Cromwellian Conundrums or Tudor Time Travel.

Part 1: Sewing Chronicles of Lady Lizbeth, Secret Diary of a Time Traveling Maid: The Bloggers apologia

The Sewing Chronicles of Lady Lizbeth
Secret Diary of a Time Traveling Maid

Part 1: The Bloggers Apologia

Though clever with your needle ye may be,

Keep always humble in regards to your skills

And the service thou do’est for mankind.

For tis not admired in maid or matron 

to place herself above others...

Unless she be well favored by fortune or birth

Pithy Sayings of Lady Margaret Hoby

May 14,  2011/1581

In historically interesting times, authors often started off their books with a long epistle concerning how EXTREMELY unable they were to engage on such a project as the book, that their reader has just picked up. This requisite apologia, an apology for daring to consider themselves worthy of such a project, might go on for paragrqphs or even pages!  It probably also served as a ready defense for any scholars who came along and disagreed with them. The author has already publicly stated,  I TOLD you I didn't know what I was talking about!

In this same way the modern day blogger prepares her defense against irregular digital production. My online vindication goes something like this.

I certainly MEANT to keep up my regular blog postings as soon as I got here to London. But I'm sure you'll all forgive me when you hear what's gone on since I arrived....

As those of you who faithfully read this blog, and listen to it's companion podcast, “Unpolished Performances” already know, I'm taking a few months off between leaving my last job (Miss you folks. Let's do lunch, I mean it!) and starting my new contract in the fall. I was last in London five years ago, and wanted to see how things have changed. Also my facebook friend Gwen, was  looking for someone she could sublet her London  flat to, for the summer (though don’t mention it to her landlord will you? I'm not sure the deal is strictly legit.)

What a great chance to get some sewing in! You might have noticed that this blog has been a little less than fashion-forward since January, but I mean to make up for that over the next four months. Gwen told me to make myself free with her machine and I fully intend to, just as soon as I stock up on a few metres of fabric from Liberty and visit that cool sewing store, Stitch and Beads , in Portabello Market. I’m hoping the market will turn up some delicious retro fabric to go with the beads, and maybe a vintage pin. Won’t I just have a wonderful bag when I’m done? And, I’ve already made a muslin of a breezy, shirred Burda magazine blouse pattern. It’s crying out for a mixture of Tanna Lawn from Liberty, maybe that gorgeous William Morris “Strawberry” print for one.

I was already writing blog entries in my head about my trials and tribulations when it came to fitting and finding the right buttons. And it’s always fun to share what the gals are wearing who walk by on the street below the flat window (Color and lots of it, mustard and turquoise, and yes those same ruffles we’re seeing on the shirts and tops back home. I saw a lot of zouave pants too.)

But it was that trip to the Victoria and Albert Museum that really put regular blogging on the back burner.

* * *
To Be Continued

Romancing England: Reflections on Kensington Gardens

Please click on the illustration above to enjoy the full reflection

My guess is that this heron is contemplating a spot of time travel back to the nineteenth or eighteenth century. Perhaps she's reflecting that Lady Fiona Garden,  one of  Queen Caroline's* ladies, is always a good mark when it comes to feeding the wildfowl. Of course there's always danger for a bird of her ilk, the court being rather fond of heron-in-a-pasty. Then again a little danger adds some spice to the trip.

In three out of our four trips to England we've visited Kensington Gardens along with as many of the other big parks as we can. As exciting as London's mega-cityness is, we start to suffer from nature-deficit disorder if we don't hit some green every day or so. 

When we look for a flat to rent for the week, we look at the different neighborhoods on the map and try for one that's within walking distance of one or more big green areas. I was glad I'd learned this travel-planning skill visiting London, when I went to Madrid last summer (please click on Pensamientos Finales for thoughts on that visit).

*You remember Q.Caroline, she was George II's wife 

Part 6: Cradle Songs and Distant Melodies, The Highwayman's Daughter

 Part 6: Cradle Songs and Distant Melodies, 

* * * The High Toby * * *
Listen to this entire story in the April Edition of "Unpolished Performances", a free podcast in the iTunes Store. Download it by clicking on this link.

Somehow Da had acquired a horse for Dolly and her brother to ride into the country. She hadn’t known, at the time, how they could afford a horse of their own, and such a magnificent beast as well. 

She knew now. 

The two children had called the animal, Shrugu, because of the patches of white that appeared mysteriously on it’s dark coat. Eventually her father had taught her to apply the dark brown dye that helped to turn Shrugu into a shiny black horse instead of a gray. The coloring had served to protect the horses’s identity when her father had first taken him from among his fellows. It also made Shrugu nearly invisible, when it came to hiding beneath a tree on the toby.

Fion well remembered the promise he’d made to his wife. He’s sworn that he’d leave his old lay behind him in Ireland. Never again would he order the hapless carter or coach driver to ‘stand and deliver’. But he’d promised to care for their children as well, and some vows have more power than others.

With those children well hidden beneath a screen of bushes or trees, he would approach a lone vehicle on Shrugu’s back, his pistol at the ready. Excitement and fear pulsed as one, for this could be the moment when a hidden pistol would emerge, and take him down with a lucky shot. Then there was the bully, well-beloved moment of excitement when, with pockets heavy with coin and a still racing heart, he and the horse lit off with a great woop and a yell, well in advance of the mark. What that mark didn’t know was how shortly Fion and Shrugu would pull up beneath another tree, only a few yards away.

Soon his well-born victims would struggle off down the road to resume their interrupted travels, fuming and wailing over the loss of watches, rings and money. The children, as Da had taught them, waited quietly in their secret abode. For they knew that Fion would soon double back to put them up on Shrugu. Then, once more, they traveled masquerading as itinerant tinkers with a box of ribbons and a few spools of thread to give them a reason to always be moving onwards along the hard high road.

Fion had chosen his marks carefully, never too many on the same stretch of road. He’d taken only enough to feed himself and his children and to pay for shelter during the cold months. The MacLiams had been tobeymen for generations, and he knew well that a highwayman didn’t have much chance of a long life. Yet, with care, he could provide for his children until they were old enough to fend for themselves. He’d heard there was farmland to be had out west. Owen and Dolly were old enough, now, to set to work ploughing and planting.

* *

The highwayman’s daughter patted the horses muzzle softly and murmured into the great flickering ear. “Hsst, Shrugu,” she whispered. “Do you want them to hear us? Dinna gie us away.”

The carriage jingling down the road was pulled by a pair of fine plump grays. The coachman was well togged out in fine livery. Should she take a chance? Da would have said ‘no’, but Da was gone now. He’d been taken and hanged when he tried to rob the mail, thinking it a worthwhile risk for two men. So, Owen had gone with him. Luckily for her brother they needed young soldiers in Ameriky more than they needed corpses. Owen was stationed now, not so far away, in the Allegany mountains. 

Jenny had taken up with Johnny Hodges, the butcher’s son. But town life for an unmarried tinker’s daughter was no sinecure. She was wise enough to know that life with Johnny would continue only as long as his head wasn’t turned by a trimmer ankle or waist. And she was skilled enough to know what she had to do to make the money she needed to build that farm that they'd always dreamed of.

Dolly fumbled for the pistol at her belt. That belt held up a pair of Owen’s old trousers. Clad in men's clothes and with her hair stuffed beneath her brother's old hat, no one would ever suspect that Dolly MacLiam had been the tobeyman this night.

She thought back to the last time she’d lain in wait for Fion. Just that once, he’d decided to take his son along . “Just this once so we can get enough money to build that farm.” Da had never meant for Owen to take to the family lay. And he’d certainly never meant for his daughter to find herself pointing a pistol down the road and calling out, ‘stand-and-deliver’.

But the coach was clearly a rich one, a noble family’s(*) vehicle perhaps. Just this once, she’d take the chance. For Owen wouldn’t be a soldier forever, and there was still a farm to build. 

She lifted the bridle rein and a song, that seemed to come from very far away, rose unbidden in her throat.

As I was going over the Appilachin’ mountains


I met with captain Farrell

and his money he was counting. 


I first produced me pistol,

and I then produced my rapier.


Said stand and deliver!

For yeh ‘air a bold deceiver,

musha ring dumma do

whack for the daddy 'ol


whack for the daddy 'ol


there's whiskey in the jar

I counted out his money,

and it made a pretty penny.


I put it in my pocket and I took it home to Johnny.


He sighed and he swore,

But said he never would deceive me,


Oh the devil take such menfolk,

for they never can be aisy.


Listen to this entire story in the April Edition of "Unpolished Performances", a free podcast in the iTunes Store. Download it by clicking on this link.

* Dolly MacLiam's victims were English aristocracy before the American revolution 

What am I seeing here? - Nevada, Mining History

Photo: D.A.John
Click on the photo for  more detail

What am I seeing here? 

Nevada, Mining History

This is one of the areas that Mark Twain refers to in Roughing It, the vicinity were he and his comrades put off filing their claim just a tad too long to become millionaires. 

Bodie Hills, Nevada: Altered andocite with a vein of iron-stained quartz running through it. 

Prospectus Vein-- Aurora mining district--discovered in 1859?

This particular vein, just on the edge of the town site, was an early vein found here. The Old Esmerelda vein was the one that caused people to start mining gold and silver here.  

Mining Activity: 

Two Major Periods, with sporadic mining attempts between

1860 - 1870's - underground

Renewed mining mid 1980's, 1990's  - Open pit

Last mined around 2,000.

¿Por qué no a little culture right where we live?

. . .

This little girl and her chihuahua live close by. 

I didn't have to travel to distant lands to meet them.

. . .

Oh -Yeahhhhh.... Listen In on   

My Pick-of-the-Month,

The Simple Romantic singing the  traditional American spiritual , Train is a-Comin' 

My Pick-of-the-Month  is Better than a Starbucks Pick-of-the-Week, cuz I brew it myself

. . .

I needed a break from my self-guided review of everything I’ve learned about Objective C (my apps writing class starts next week). So I walked over to the Menlo Park Farmer’s Market. The lovely-smelling narcissus from Bert’s Bulbs were all sold out by the time I got there.  Good for Bert! I wandered on to a vegetable stand that had a few daises and chrysanthemums left. While I was waiting in line with my two bunches, yellow and red always make a nice combination, an elderly man passed by on the other side of a table full of red and white carrots. He was clearly one of the vendors at the market and was carrying large plastic pails back to one of the trucks parked behind the stall I was visiting. The pail-carrying man’s skin was a similar pasty-color to my own – a hue that is typically called ‘white’ or, around here, ‘anglo’. His first language is likely English, as is mine.

The man accepting money from the market goers called out to him in Spanish and pasty-face nodded his head in agreement. I wasn’t paying much attention, I can’t always follow quickly paced Spanish phrases, but I think he said something about checking for more of a certain type of produce in the truck.

Another elderly man, also pasty-faced and wearing a blue jacket, was standing nearby  as the pail-carrying fellow walked past. “Did you understand any of that stuff he was saying”, this man called out loudly in a voice absolutely dripping with sarcasm. The elderly man heading towards the truck simply gave him a long look and continued on with his pails.

I turned my own head in the direction of the speaker. “¿Por qué no? (Why not?) ” I asked. Yes, it is pleasant when the right riposte comes to mind at the right moment! Especially when it comes to mind in a second language.

It was my turn to pay. The money-accepting man and I spoke only in Spanish. It isn’t that hard to remember how to say: How are you? Two (bunches of) flowers, thank you. Yes, that’s all, and finally, hasta luego (see you soon). The guy works at the farmer’s market. We both knew that he could have communicated with me quite easily in English. We just both wanted to make our point.

Here’s what I wonder about Señor Blue Jacket. Has the guy ever traveled out of the U.S.? Menlo Park is a wealthy area, and he looked pretty well off. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if he’s gone more than once to another country. And I would bet you dollars to dinero, he’s gone to some place where people spoke a language other than English. What do you bet that he went because he wanted to have a cultural experience? Maybe he wanted to see something different and go where people didn’t act, dress and talk EXACTLY like they do in Menlo Park.

Hey, here’s a novel thought. He could have a cultural experience right here where he lives, if he had enough culture to try. He could listen in on the islander kids at the library. They like to put Tongan and Samoan words into Rap music. How many places do you hear that happening? He could go to Nak’s Market and ask about how the owner cooks up his supper. Maybe he could even learn a little Spanish and have a discussion with the produce seller at the farmer’s market about farming methods in the Salinas Valley, compared to those in Senora where the other man comes from. Those talks lead to other culturally-enriching discussions. Plus it’s just fun to learn to be friendly. And he wouldn’t even have to plunk down any money for a ticket out of here. Because we’ve got quite a lot of culture right here where we live, if he just opens his eyes and ears and appreciates it.

I suggest that we create a new day to add to those lists of things to celebrate like: Dolls Day, Teacher’s Day, Administrative Specialist Day and National Pie for Breakfast Day (that’s the day after Thanksgiving, my sister-in-law created it). Let’s make January 16’th “Speak Some Other Language Day”.

Let’s show a little culture.

Time Out for Time Travel - Unpolished Performances Episode 2

On Youtube

Part 1: Time Out for Time Travel

Part 2: Time Out for Time Travel

* * *

Part 1: Time Out for Time Travel The Simple Romantic interviews Captain BidingMyTime, senior staff member for The well known Time Travel service, “Period Pilots”.

Captain BMTime "My parents got along pretty well with everybody ‘round there, cuz my mama was one of the N`dee, you’ve probably heard them referred to as the Apache. My daddy was a retired cavalry officer who came west after the war

S.Rom. So your mother was a Chiricahua? Did you spend much time with her family?

Captain BMTime You see hon, that’s how I got involved in the business at such a young age. About 16 I was when I went to help out one of my aunties one summer. She was my mother’s oldest sister. I was always a little bit of rebel at home, you know capable girls with ideas of their own, weren’t real popular in white settlements in those times. But strong-minded women were nothing new to th T’Inde. And that’s when I started off on my career.

S.Rom. So you learned about time travel with the Apache – I mean the N’dee?" .... Click here to listen to the remainder of this Podcast Preview on Youtube

Part 2: Time Out for Time Travel The Simple Romantic reads recent short, light pieces from her art journal. Click here to listen to Time Portal Identification Made Easy, A Milk Can Remembers, The Dasher or Playing at Past Times, the Assemblage – Dawning of the Music

My first podcasts are not out as 'casts, yet. Instead, as I build my podcasting skills, I'm doing the first couple of months as youtube audio- slideshows. Please click to see and listen. And let me know what you think. I’d love to find your comments here, or out at youtube.