I had a post I had been working on for a few days ready to go on Friday when we lost power. As some of you may know here on the East Coast, we were hit by a rather major snowstorm.
It was almost a forced example of my 1913 life thrust upon me. We were suddenly forced to use oil lamps, heat with our fireplace and cook on the old stove in the cottage out back. Thank goodness it is a propane stove as we were able to use it to heat food and water. Our fireplace burned non-stop and my husbands recently gained expertise at getting the coal fire to burn all night paid of quite well.
It’s odd how much we take electricity and our modern life for granted. I can’t tell you how many times we continued to hit the light switch and then realized, “no power”. And with just two and a half days without it how quickly we become accustomed.
We found ourselves doing more with the sun and then all hunkering down in the living room huddled about the glow of the fire playing games, reading by gas light, and roasting toast on the open flame. It was a fun little camp out. But, as the time went along I realized how, now matter what life throws at you, we adjust. It made me consider the war-time families and how after years of less of everything, the sudden return to plenty must have almost been anti-climatic. Certainly one is happy to have more and ease, that’s just human nature, but there is definitely more togetherness and community as we lessen what we have. I mean, here we just have power back and all of us have slowly drifted back to our respective rooms doing our own thing. While we thought nothing of working together when we needed to, when the ease of machine returns, without any discussion we return to solitude.
Although, I must admit as I type away at my computer, my hubby is still in the living room by the fire, using one of his many vintage typewriters. We do try and live as much vintage as we can because of the joy and simplicity it gives us. And so, with that, I am going to post a simple one today with a few videos. The snow is calling and I promised Gussie I would go sledding today, a day of New England “coastin’” is hard to pass up, especially when the light is so sharp and blue on the new fallen snow and the icicles beckon us with their finger like points.
I hope all fair well and I know many of my New England readers will not be reading this as even my own downtown is still without power. We may yet lose ours again, as it has flashed off and on today, so if I am gone a bit it may be due to both the power and the actual return to 1913 living of gas fired cooking, fireplace heating and entertainment found on wooden sleds in the snow.
Here is a fun little look at ‘last year’ 1912.
And here is a popular rag time song played on a period machine using Edison Wax cylinders. Rag time was the new fast paced popular music of the time. It created dance crazes and fashion statements.
Enjoy your day all and maybe shut off your power for a few hours in solidarity of your East Coast neighbors. Get that fire going, gather together and have a good ole fashioned sing along or a game of cards. Have a conversation with your voices and not your Tweets and see how different it can feel. Have a lovely day.
