Hark! A Vagrant:

Archibald McIndoe

This BBC site is a good portal into information on plastic surgery as it was improved on in the First World War. Plastic surgery during WWI and WWII is a very interesting topic, to me. I first came across the work and history of Archibald McIndoe and his Guinea Pig Club when I was flipping though a book about pilots at the Shearwater archives. A disfigured face looked out from the page, and it was jarring. Next to it, a reconstructed one. I’ve blogged about McIndoe before, but I can’t help it, I’m so touched by what I read.

So, it’s WWI, and you’ve been hit by shrapnel. It’s WWII and your plane went down, and the engine explodes in your face. That’s where it is, it’s right in front of the cockpit. And they can save you, they know how to do that by this point. But, you’ve lost your face. Your face. And people are used to seeing vets missing an arm or leg, but your face is disfigured, and people react badly, and it doesn’t matter that you offered your life for your country like everyone else.

And then a surgeon comes along, and gives it back. In WWI that might have been Harold Gillies, who developed a new way to do it, as you’ll see on that BBC portal. Or in WWII, it might have been his cousin, Archibald McIndoe, who came in on his heels. And the thing about McIndoe is, he didn’t just put people back together, he didn’t just improve on existing plastic surgery techniques, he reminded them that they were still themselves, that they should be proud of their service, that they had a real life to live. He understood that friendship was important, and support, and he fostered camaraderie among the men. He let them wear their uniforms instead of hospital convalescent garb. He got locals in on it, so the men could come into town and not be met with gasps and stares. And this is huge.

The Guinea Pig Club met up annually until they were old men, and their bonds were strong. And I just think it’s one of the great stories of the heights of science combined with human decency. I will probably talk about it again at some point, who knows.

Go to the BBC site here

One more museum

You know, in yesterday’s post about working in museums, I forgot one!

For a few months in 2009, I took a part time position at Pier 21, Canada’s immigration museum in Halifax. I was a full time cartoonist by then, but I missed having regular work, and I missed museums. I was an admin assistant, and impressed at least one person with my mad Excel spreadsheet skills.

It was a bigger museum, and as admin assistant I was much less involved in the “cool” museum business the way I was at the MMBC. More like a regular admin position. In the end, I didn’t have time to stay on anyway, but that was the last job I had outside of art. It doesn’t loom as large as the others, but I enjoyed it all the same.

The museum had an amazing view of George’s Island in Halifax harbour, which would get you feeling pretty romantic, but then a gigantic cruise ship would pull up and block everything like the jerks they are.

Museums

I was feeling pretty nostalgic for museums after going through some digital archives today. I worked in a few places in the 2000s, and I used to think that’s where I was headed too, but it’s a hard knock museum life and everyone knows cartoonists wear entire outfits made of gems and eat money for breakfast.

But here are *my* museums, because I love them so, and I hope you’ll drop by one if you get the chance. And maybe you’re thinking of working in museums yourself. And maybe you do already, and can relate.

An Drochaid, Mabou, Nova Scotia

Every little village has one, the building that services as a museum, local records depository, meeting place, fundraising area, etc. An Drochaid (gaelic for “the Bridge”) is in my hometown of Mabou, Cape Breton Island. For two summers I was one of those teenagers these places get grants to hire. I would talk to people about local history, teach them a bit of gaelic, and help them trace their family trees. I taught myself some gaelic too by going through their books and comparing the gaelic to the english translation.

I remember going through the burial records they had, which were written on those index cards you write recipes on, and looking at the computer, which took 10 minutes to boot up and three hours of beeping and choking to start a program, and realizing that maybe museums don’t ever get much money. One time I found in the attic a suitcase full of old letters from the early 1900s and it is still maybe the most exciting thing that has ever happened, like finding buried treasure. The letters were completely boring but that doesn’t matter. Someone once tried to steal music awards that we had on display, and it was very bizarre. Why would you even want those? Sometimes, the retired high school history teacher would drop in, and tell me about something he had been reading.

Green Apple Mister Clean makes me think of this place, because I mopped it with that and thought it was pretty dandy. Somehow that detail remains important, because when you’re a summer student at a place like this, it’s really like you have your own museum for a little while, because you’re the only one there all day and you open and close it. Your little baby. One more neat thing about it, the building itself was partly constructed from an old ships hull, and you can tell when you’re inside, and there are parts where there are no nails, but wooden pegs instead. Anyway.

Shearwater Aviation Museum, Halifax, Nova Scotia

I guess technically, it’s not in Halifax, it’s in Shearwater. But I lived in Halifax. Here I was an archivist assistant, which meant that I spent a lot of time doing the very, very boring work of data entry. Not that the stuff wasn’t interesting, but plugging information into a computer is ohhh so tedious, which is why when I now see a well done online archive, I am very impressed. The program that we were entering the data into was surely to be outdated in no time, if it wasn’t already, and it didn’t seem like easily transferable stuff. Shearwater’s website hasn’t changed much (at all?) since I was there either. But the librarian was sharp, she did keep everything that was analog in order.

That said, we had cool things. We had planes! A Fairey Swordfish! Planes are awesome. Google “Grumman FF,” it’s the cutest, fattest little biplane you ever saw. Too bad for the kids who visited, all they wanted to do was get in the planes, touch the planes, play on the planes (duh), but, alas for them, it is not allowed (duh). I could tell them the library was full of interesting books, but hey, kids. They could get pretty bored. Now when I see museums that put a lot of work into kids’ learning areas, I am really interested. Things they can touch! All they want to do is touch all the things. Maybe learn something, but mostly touch all the things.

We were a little far out of the way, as far as visiting Halifax goes, and we didn’t see the traffic other places did. I hope that Pixar movie did something about that.

The Maritime Museum of British Columbia, Victoria, BC

I was an administrative assistant here. I was so sure I was going to get this job that I applied first, and then moved to Victoria. I just wanted to work in a museum, it didn’t matter that they couldn’t give me full time or that I was poor or anything like that, and I had stacked my resume for this job. Me and my fancy History/Anthro BA, and through university I had also worked as a research assistant with the Sociology Department. In hindsight I was actually really lucky to get this job, because museum jobs are hard to get. And I loved the Maritime Museum.

The MMBC is in Victoria’s most historic district, it’s located in an old courthouse. One place I had to go for old boxes of files was a hidden room that used to be a jail cell, and it felt like it. The building is hella haunted, which, you know, even if you don’t believe in that stuff, is still cool. If you ask about ghosts, people rhyme off a good half dozen at least. It’s like Ghost Club in there. It has the oldest birdcage elevator in North America, and some people came just to see that. We were big enough to be a big deal within the city, and small enough to have just a handful of staff. As admin assistant, I was put wherever I was needed, so I got to have a finger in all the pies.

If you’ve never gotten to wander a museum’s back rooms where they keep all the stuff that’s not on display, boy, you haven’t lived. They had great things. Shipwreck pieces, diving suits, WWII items, personal items, model ships, figureheads, naval art, an endless list. Things so precious it would make you emotional to hold them. And yet, the museum, like all museums, struggled with funding and public interest. The dedicated staff worked to bail it out every time something else broke, which was all the time. I helped piece together a lot of grant applications, took minutes at a lot of meetings where they wondered what the solutions were going to be, this year. Still, if everyone was under the hammer every year, it was because they wanted to be. People who work in museums really love what they fight for. History dorks are a special breed. I didn’t make much money, and I had to leave this job to pay my student loans elsewhere, but I miss this place.

And I miss the volunteers, mostly old retirees, the lifeblood of a museum like this. You go into a museum, thank a volunteer.

I also met Emily Horne here, and the rest is comics history. She was the programs director, and I doodled in my downtime, and she said “you should put those online, like I do. I think you’d do well.”

Sent along by a reader, this French Revolution Digital Archive by Stanford University Libraries is impressive and well organized. We are so spoiled these days, I don’t even know what I would have done with myself if I had access to this kind of thing growing up. Sure beats the stack of encyclopedias from 1993 in the school library.

Cao Cao on the Yangtze River looking at the rising moon over Mount Nanping

Fujiwara no Yasumasa playing the flute to ward off a bandit

Emperor Kazan fleeing to a Buddhist temple

Chang'e, a figure from Chinese mythology, flees to the moon

Ariko no Naishi weeps as her boat drifts in the moonlight

the monk In’ei with the moon's reflection

unhistorical:

_{One Hundred Aspects of the Moon (1885-1892) ukiyo-e series, Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (click through for descriptions)}
_{more in this series}

It’s midnight and I suddenly feel like… looking out the window

diasporadash:

William Blake, Europe Supported By Africa and America, 1796. Engraving. Illustration from John Gabriel Stedman, Narrative of a Five Years’ Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam in Guiana on the Wild Coast of South America; from the Year 1772 to 1777… 2 vols.

Remember in the olden days when your hair would cover your vagina because it was embarrassed for you? At least when there wasn’t enough garland to go around (your vaginas).

Anyway this picture looks like an early prototype for a modern yogurt commercial. Just three gals hanging out! With yogurt!

(via buriedthings)

wahnwitzig:

WWI period Russian imperial postcard. There is a soldier returned alive after war and meeting his bride on a field and she didn’t recognize him. It has a text - “afraid and escaped just didn’t recognize her dear - surprisingly”. (x)

the height of Russian hijinx

(Source: ebay.com)

A pretty interesting little video, rare footage, click through to see.

And click through to this page by John Franch of the University of Illinois, where I found it. It’s about the Crocker Land Expedition, a very sort of strange and tragic (Piugaattoq! Aleqasina!) expedition, stuck for four years before being rescued by famed Newfoundlander, Captain Robert Bartlett.

I did like this bit, good ol’ Bartlett:

The third rescue attempt proved to be a charm. On July 31, 1917, the battered Neptune steamed into the harbor at Etah.

“Is that you, Bob?” an excited MacMillan cried out to the sturdy figure on the Neptune’s bridge.

“Of course!” Bartlett responded. “Who in hell do you think it is?”

Anyway, you’ll probably find yourself googling Donald Baxter MacMillan, Minik Wallace, Robert Bartlett, and others, it’s just one of those things.

Best video quote: “we have no idea what’s going on here.”

haha I like that you can’t tell if she’s into it or not into it

(Source: neo-rama)

No, I don’t think you can write like anybody else. Nobody has your literary fingerprints. No, I didn’t try and write like them, but what I liked about them is that those novels at that time couldn’t come from anywhere else in the country. Wuthering Heights couldn’t be set in London.

— Alistair MacLeod on literary influences, from this interview

(Source: The Globe and Mail)

Make Your Thing is a really exciting idea hatched by Jesse Thorn and friends. I’m excited to be involved. You can be involved too!

Visit the Kickstarter page for more info.

cauda-pavonis:

divaneee:
Kazakh
Always reblog eagle hunters

SPEAKING of great clothes

Be sure to hit that “Kazakh” link for the original site!

(via buriedthings)

buriedthings:

beatonna:
Iroquois Woman from Kahnawà:ke
I love Cornelius Krieghoff’s paintings. His portraits of Habitants make my day. So does this lady! You WEAR that top hat, lady! Hell yeah!
Edit: i’m still thinking about this woman! Where did she get the hat? It looks like she’s into it, it’s the only piece of western clothing she has, far as I can see. Like she saw it and was like “yeah I’ll take one of those.” It is probably a man’s hat because it’s around 1850 and doesn’t look like a riding hat? If someone told her it was a man’s hat, did she say, that’s stupid, you’re stupid, it’s a great hat and it’s mine so jump in a lake? Top hats for everyone.
Top hats were definitely part of 19th century Native fashion! Trade materials like silver and cloth had long been prized, and clothing items like top hats and military coats were considered particularly FABULOUS.

I’ve heard that delegations to DC were given top hats, but they were also probably easily bought around white settlements as well. Earlier in the 19th century, you’d usually see Chiefs wearing them with silver bands, beading, or feathers, and it was a mark of their diplomatic importance. Men in the mid-19th century Quebec, where the Krieghoff painting is, were adopting French-y dress increasingly, while women usually stuck to native-style dress (see below), though they sometimes wore a fancy western hat! This woman probably trades her baskets to settlers for a living, and doesn’t mind playing the artiste. You still see people wearing top hats at powwows today. Total dandies, us.
Here’s an engraving by M. Elias Regnault in 1849 (via the fabulous Iroquois Beadwork), showing Native men from Quebec wearing some top hats with ostrich feather and possibly a silver band, as well as habitant dress.
And a photo of an Anishinaabe man from the western Great Lakes taken in Washington DC in 1862, with his top hat enhanced with the feathers he might have worn in a traditional headdress. The sash around the coat is also very fashionable. Photo is from the Massachusetts Historical Society, via the fabulous Beyond Buckskin.
And finally, a top hat embellished with Plains-style porcupine quills and beadwork. (Via some auction site that didn’t list provenance!).

Aaah yesss beautiful!! Thanks for all that info and also great links!

(via buriedthings)