Beach scenes

I never tire of the beauty of the beach. The eternal expanse of the sea humbles and awes. White bubbles glisten and play. The surf’s rhythm soothingly massages. Reflecting what’s below and above, the water’s colors shift from browns to greens to grays to blues, moment by moment, as if alive. What the waves wash ashore are nothing short of treasures. And the beach is different every day.

On our most recent vacation, we visited two favorite beaches, one in North Carolina and one in Florida. These beach visits were in some ways similar to previous ones and in some ways quite different. The first major difference was this January was unbelievably cold.

Seeing a snowman on a beach was a new experience, and most everyone was pretty bundled up, even this lady who was determined to wade barefoot in the surf, no matter how cold.

A second difference, of which I purposely took no picture, was the amount of human flotsam on the Florida beach. The volume of litter—more plastic detritus than seashells— was very disheartening. The lacy edges of surf laps looked like mosaics of tiny triangular seashell shards and bright blue and orange plastic triangles and squares. Appalling number of twist-off bottle caps, all sizes. Whole bottles, smashed. Balloon ribbons poking through the sand. Part of a car engine, about two feet square. Alarming and unbelievable. Whether cruise ships dumped these, or previous beachgoers left them, I don’t know, but it was awful. After two days, the beach returned to its natural beauty, but that just meant all that garbage is now back in the ocean. Distressing.

The most natural ocean detritus was Portuguese man o’ wars, some as tiny as iridescent caterpillars, some as large as upright, translucent calzones. When the tide ebbed, these beautiful, shimmering creatures were left high and dry, abandoned to gnat swarms. :-( Seems such a cruel fate. The venom in their tails has earned them the nickname “floating terror,” so I was careful not to step near one. When I saw a pink and purple man o’ war, its pinched top ridge reminded me of a piecrust edge or triangular spikes on the rounded back of a stegosaurus. I wondered if sci-fi story creators sometimes get their inspiration for fantastical creatures from the natural world.
The squawking of seagulls at the beach is common, but on this trip the sound I heard most was the peeping of peeps and sandpipers. Peep, peep, peep, peep as they scurried on stick-legs to find little shrimps. So cute.

Nothing promises a new day of God’s mercies quite as beautifully as sunrise over the ocean.

And nothing quiets the spirit like pastel reflections of sunset.

Getting the Word Out: Printing Office and Bindery

Dateline: Williamsburg 1750. Let’s say you want your fellow Virginians to benefit from your list of native plants and how to care for them. Or the House of Burgesses wants to disseminate a new law they’ve enacted. Or you’re Benjamin Franklin and you’ve written down your scientific experiments on lightning rods for posterity. Telling neighbors in the tavern or barbershop is okay, but you want wider distribution. What do you do?

You go to the printing office and bindery. This shop also served as post office and printing press for a succession of newspapers called Virginia Gazette. On the day we visited, postal and printing operations were closed, so we didn’t get to see any type being set or broadsheets being rolled out, but we learned a lot about colonial communications in the bindery.

The bindery shop interpreter showed us how books and pamphlets were put together. Glue was a mixture of flour and water. Carmine dye was made from cochineal insects. Printed papers sat under weights until ready to be sewn together with linen thread. Some books were bound with cardboard covers, sometimes decorated by running a brass comb through carmine dye to create a moiré pattern. This was called marbling, and a person had to apprentice seven to eight years to become a marbler. Some endpapers of books were marbled. Other books were bound with leather, tooled, and stamped with various designs.

In this photo, you can see stacks of paper toward the left. On the far right is an apparatus used for stitching the binding. Over the fireplace are leatherworking tools to roll different designs into leather binding.

More Gathering Places—wigmaker, barber, milliner, tailor

In Colonial Williamsburg, the wigmaker, who was also the barber, performed important functions for the townspeople. A colonist could go to his or her shop to get a trim or a bath, hear the latest news, discuss politics, and buy soaps, powders, and lice treatments.

Only about five percent of the population could afford wigs. The wigmaker shaved men’s and women’s heads (or cut their hair really short) so that their wigs would fit more snugly. I have read that shaving the head in those days was also a method of preventing lice, or at any rate, lice were easier to wash out of a wig than out of one’s own hair. But our peruke maker did not mention this hazard of 18^th century hygiene. Instead, she spoke of perukes as indications of a person’s social status. I’ve also read that young legislators might opt for a white powdered wig in order to be thought older and wiser by their peers. Williamsburg was the capital of Virginia for a time, and even Thomas Jefferson frequented this peruke maker’s shop.

A peruke maker knotted goat, yak, horse, or human hair to a net base and wove the strands into a wig. S/he might powder a peruke, curl it, dye it, and later reshape and redye it. A gentleman’s peruke, powdered or not, was often gathered at the back of the neck with a ribbon. He might ask the wigmaker to “club” it for him, which meant wrapping the tail in cloth so that the dangling hair resembled a club. Ladies’ perukes were often fancy, tall piles of curls and ringlets. Note the masted ship model on top of one wig in the photo. Our peruke maker said the most elaborate order she had fulfilled for a lady going to a ball was a peruke topped with a sparrow in a birdcage.

Like the peruke maker’s shop, in Colonial Williamsburg the milliner’s shop served as a gathering place to hear the latest news. In addition to making and tailoring just about every item of clothing, the milliner made nightcaps and other caps to warm all the bald and close-shaven heads of peruke wearers.

Silversmiths in Colonial Williamsburg

On this frigid day in Colonial Williamsburg we watched silversmiths fashioning bowls by hammering sheets of silver over round molds. There was a forge in the back room of the shop, but I suppose today the women preferred to be by the steady warmth of the toasty fireplace up front. We shivering visitors certainly preferred standing by that roaring fire.

Here are some spoons they had already made and a display of the making of a spoon—start to finish. The silversmith began with a small bar of silver, shown at the top, and two hours of pounding later, ended up with a spoon like the one at the bottom.

Polishing to a high gloss was done with pumice (volcanic rock), tripoli (silica), and jeweler’s rouge (fine abrasive powders). One silversmith demonstrated making intricate designs in silver by using a punch, drill, and jeweler’s saw. In more complicated artistic creations, such as jewelry, and utilitarian pieces, such as teapots, s/he would solder pieces together. In colonial times a silversmith was considered somewhat of a sculptor.