My man Samuel L Jackson is number 21 on the list…with 2.856922 degrees separation. Be sure to check out the list and see where some of your favorite actors and actresses stack up.

Now, let’s spend a little time on a “word” study.  This year is the 200th anniversary of the publication of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice…so check this out… Historical use of the word “hoyden” as in the book Pride and Prejudice. World Wide Words Newsletter: 4 May 2013

…P D James wrote of Lydia Bennet that “Seen through the eyes of her sister, Elizabeth, she appears to be a vulgar, lusty hoyden.”

Though it’s still to be found, hoyden is a word that feels better suited to Austen’s time than the modern world. These days, we do not regard boisterous or tomboyish girls as a disgrace to their sex, though if we are forced into close association we may wish for a quieter life. Jane Austen would have been much less kind, because for her hoyden had a stronger sense of being ill-bred and rude. She doesn’t call the frivolous and headstrong Lydia a hoyden — she never uses the word in any of her writings — but she does say that Lydia has “high animal spirits”, which closely matches the modern sense.

Hoyden is a curiosity because it once referred to men. We may now look indulgently on hoydenish young women but male hoydens were considered to be rude, ignorant, awkward or boorish. In 1593, Thomas Nashe (on record as its first user) wrote of the hoydens of Trinity Hall at the University of Cambridge. Its members were exclusively male at the time, as they continued to be until 1977, when the college admitted its first female undergraduates. Why hoyden should have shifted to describe women instead of men is unclear, though boorishness and awkwardness are hardly male preserves.

The other oddity is that hoyden is a close relative of heathen, which is much older. Its roots lie in very early Germanic dialects and is related to heath. Heathens were literally heath-dwellers, inhabitants of open country, uncivilised and in particular unacquainted with Christianity. Hoyden is thought to have been borrowed from heiden, the Dutch equivalent of heathen from the same ancient Germanic source.

This serves as a nice segue to the “history” portion of our post…here are a few links to articles that focus on history.

When flappers ruled the Earth: how dance helped women’s liberation

‘The Nefertiti of now’ … Josephine Baker at the Casino of Paris in 1939. Photograph: Lipnitzki/Roger Viollet/Getty.

In 1908, wearing little more than a jewelled breastplate and a transparent skirt, the Canadian dancer Maud Allan stormed the fortress of British proprieties with her solo work, The Vision of Salomé. Allan danced an audacious choreography of desire, her body “swaying like a witch, twisting like a snake, and panting with [a hypnotic] passion”, according to one dazed viewer. But while several theatres outside London barred Allan’s performance as indecent, to her legions of women admirers, she was an inspiration. Margot Asquith, wife of the Liberal PM, was among those who saw Allan’s dancing as a liberating expression of female sexuality.

Moving backwards in time…Could Body Armor Have Saved Millions in World War I?

German trenches on Aisne River, in northeastern France. (Wikimedia Commons)

Unlike ancient bloodlettings lost to memory, World War I lingers in our collective DNA. The image of the trenches is our icon of hell on earth. Ten million soldiers died in mud-ditches and no-mans-land during the Great War, and we remember this dark narrative because they died for nothing. After reaching pinnacles of human achievement, civilization set about to destroy itself out of pride over imagined slights and disrespect.

We let 5,000 of our young men die after 1941 because we did not want them to look like Germans.

In total contrast, the early 1900s’s Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Arms and Armor Collection was a magicalplace. Boys steeped in Howard Pyle’s Champions of the Round Table or Arthur Conan Doyle’s The White Company (and N.C. Wyeth’s illustrations!), would have come here to see the armor … and dream.

But what does the Met armor collection have to do with World War I? We know from war poets like Rupert Brooke that so many of those boys would as men lead their soldiers and themselves to muddy death, still idealizing the knights they once dreamed to be.

But there is another irony, sadder still, now forgotten: Medieval armorers and men-at-arms knew a secret that would have spared perhaps 30 percent of those who died in battle. We have the evidence right at the Metropolitan Museum itself.

And yet…back further still…to another war: ‘Stonewall’ Jackson Death Linked To Moon Position, Phase During Civil War Battle

Union Major General Daniel E. Sickles’ Midnight AttackCredit: From the collection of Donald Olson

By the light of a bright full moon, Union Major General Daniel E. Sickles’s corps launched a midnight attack on May 2-3, 1863. According to a New York Times war correspondent, “This night attack was the most grand and terrific thing of the war. The moon shone bright, and an enemy could be seen at good musket range.” This woodcut appeared in the Official and Illustrated War Record (1898).

Lieutenant General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson was a major figure in the Civil War, second in command to Confederate general Robert E. Lee, when he was shot by friendly fire during the Battle of Chancellorsville on May 2, 1863. Shortly after that battle in northeastern Virginia, Jackson died of his wounds, leaving the Confederate army without one of its boldest military strategists just two months before the pivotal Battle of Gettysburg.

But exactly how Jackson’s own troops could have mistaken him for the enemy has been unexplained until now.

I know that you will find those stories interesting, I just gave you a little taste, please be sure to read them in full. Now I have one last thing to share with you today.

Delphyne sent this video trailer to me the other day. It is a new documentary called “Rebel” which will hopefully air on PBS soon.

Rebel: Loreta Velasquez Civil War soldier and spy // New Orleans Film Society

Rebel is a feature documetary about Loreta Velazquez, a Cuban raised in New Orleans, who disguised herself as a man to fight in the American Civil War. She fought at Bull Run, was wounded at Shiloh, and served as a spy for the Confederacy until becoming a double agent for the Union.
For over a century, critics have dismissed Velazquez as a hoax. But there is plenty of evidence about her. Who was she? Why did she fight? And what made her so dangerous she was erased from history?
Based on Loreta’s 600-page memoir, actors and historians bring her story to life in a documentary weaving drama, animation, historical and recreated archival material to unravel the mystery of Loreta Velazquez. Rebel is a detective story about a woman, a myth, and the politics of national memory.

Writer/Producer/Director: María Agui Carter

You can see more information about the documentary here at the Smithsonian National History Museum Website:

Part I: “Rebel:” Loreta Janeta Velazquez, Civil War soldier and spy – O Say Can You See?

Part II: “Rebel:” Loreta Janeta Velazquez, Civil War soldier and spy – O Say Can You See?

I had not heard of Loreta Velazquez, but when I saw her pictures I did recognize her. The pictures below are from the History Department at the University of North Carolina.  The information is from The Civil War Trust website: Loreta Janeta Velazquez

…was born in Cuba on June 26, 1842 to a wealthy family. In 1849, she was sent to school in New Orleans, where she resided with her aunt. At the age of 14, she eloped with an officer in the Texas army. When Texas seceded from the Union in 1861, her husband joined the Confederate army and Velazquez pleaded with him to allow her to join him. Undeterred by her husband’s refusal, Velazquez had a uniform made and disguised herself as a man, taking the name Harry T. Buford.

Now displaying the self-awarded rank of lieutenant, Velazquez moved to Arkansas, where she proceeded to raise a regiment of volunteers. Locating her husband in Florida, Velazquez brought the regiment to him, presenting herself as their commanding officer. Her husband’s reaction is not recorded in history, as just a few days later he was killed in a shooting accident.

Velazquez headed north, acting as an “independent soldier,” she joined up with a regiment just in time to fight at the Battle of First Manassas (Bull Run) and the Battle of Ball’s Bluff. Shortly afterwards, she once again donned female attire and went to Washington, DC, where she was able to gather intelligence for the Confederacy. Upon her return to the South, Velazquez was made an official member of the detective corps.

Apparently espionage did not hold enough excitement for Velazquez, and she once again sought action on the battlefield. Resuming her disguise as Lieutenant Buford, she traveled to Tennessee, joining up with another regiment to fight at the Battle of Fort Donelson on February 11, 1862. Velazquez was wounded in the foot, and fearing that her true gender would be revealed if she sought medical treatment in camp, she fled back to her home in New Orleans.

Still in her male disguise, Velazquez was arrested in New Orleans for being a possible Union spy. She was cleared of the charges, but was fined for impersonating a man, and released. She immediately headed back to Tennessee, in search of another regiment to join. As luck would have it, she found the regiment she had originally recruited in Arkansas, and fought with them at the Battle of Shiloh on April 6-7, 1862. While on burial detail, she was wounded in the side by an exploding shell, and an army doctor discovered her true gender. Velazquez decided at this point to end her career as a soldier, and she returned to New Orleans.

She did not stay in New Orleans, Velazquez went to Richmond and worked as a Confederate spy, going back and forth between the lines in both women and men’s disguises. She marries again, and becomes a widow again. Then after the war, marries once more and moves to Venezuela. When this third husband dies she comes back to the states and travels throughout the West. At some point she has a child and then to support herself and her son, she writes her memoirs, which were…

…dedicated to her Confederate comrades “who, although they fought in a losing cause, succeeded by their valor in winning the admiration of the world.” The public reaction to the book at the time was mixed—Confederate General Jubal Early denounced it as pure fiction—but modern scholars have found some of it to be quite accurate.

With the release of her book, Velazquez may have married for a fourth time and is last documented as living in Nevada. The date of her death is thought to be 1897, but there is no supporting evidence for this. In response to those who criticized the account of her life, she said that she hoped she would be judged with impartiality, as she only did what she thought to be right.

What a life…I could see her being a character in a Quentin Tarantino movie.

Damn, I didn’t realize just how long this post had gotten. Y’all have a great Sunday…and if you have time, let us know what you are thinking and reading about today!