Monday Reads (and now for something completely different)

Good Morning!

My mother used to complain that I was born never needing a nap.  My restlessness was an issue during kindergarten rug time and preschool rest time too.  By the time I was reading and could find a flashlight, I was under the covers with said light and a book.  Mother had to check me several times a night and many a night I lost one or both of the tools of my craft.  I got stitches in my forehead one night because I was peaking around the corner watching Emma Peel on “The Avengers” rather than being snug in my bed. I also used to do this so I could see “The Prisoner”. I had a real thing for 1960s spy shows as a kid. I slit my forehead on the door hardware trying to rush back before getting caught.  That was my second set of stitches that year.  I also had them on my chin because I was proving that I really could fly with PF flyers on my feet. Yes, I could run on very little sleep and run I did.  It must run in the family though since years later Dr. Daughter was known as the kid who spent nap time giving the other children backrubs at her Montessori Preschool.

Needing lots of sleep seems to be the revenge of old age on me.  Not only do I love a luxurious nap in the afternoon, I’m a late riser.  I love to lounge around in the morning in jammies with cups of coffee organizing my day.  The good thing about being able to teach graduate school is that MBA classes are always in the evening and academic graduate classes are generally in the afternoon.  So, it’s with great relief that I find out that I’m just a traditional kinda person when it comes to my fondness for two periods of sleep.  I like siestas found in the southern cultures that  nap away the heat of the day then rise and shine for the cooler night. But, there’s more in history to multiple sleep periods than just heat avoiding Latins.  It’s seems our pre-electric age ancestors usually had two sleep periods a day. (Thanks to Delphyne for finding this!)

Wow !!! BB!  We’re just sleep traditionalists!  Take heart!!

The existence of our sleeping twice per night was first uncovered by Roger Ekirch, professor of History at Virginia Tech.

His research found that we didn’t always sleep in one eight hour chunk. We used to sleep in two shorter periods, over a longer range of night. This range was about 12 hours long, and began with a sleep of three to four hours, wakefulness of two to three hours, then sleep again until morning.

References are scattered throughout literature, court documents, personal papers, and the ephemera of the past. What is surprising is not that people slept in two sessions, but that the concept was so incredibly common. Two-piece sleeping was the standard, accepted way to sleep.

“It’s not just the number of references – it is the way they refer to it, as if it was common knowledge,” Ekirch says.

An English doctor wrote, for example, that the ideal time for study and contemplation was between “first sleep” and “second sleep.” Chaucer tells of a character in the Canterbury Tales that goes to bed following her “firste sleep.” And, explaining the reason why working class conceived more children, a doctor from the 1500s reported that they typically had sex after their first sleep.

Ekirch’s book At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past is replete with such examples.

But just what did people do with these extra twilight hours? Pretty much what you might expect.

Most stayed in their beds and bedrooms, sometimes reading, and often they would use the time to pray. Religious manuals included special prayers to be said in the mid-sleep hours.

Others might smoke, talk with co-sleepers, or have sex. Some were more active and would leave to visit with neighbours.

As we know, this practice eventually died out. Ekirch attributes the change to the advent of street lighting and eventually electric indoor light, as well as the popularity of coffee houses.

Many folks long for ways of doing things based more on the rhythms of humanity than the needs of the greed-driven.  A few years ago, I became fascinated with the Irish Traveler culture in the UK based on a show that documented their outrageous and huge weddings.  There are many young people  adopting a similar life style but it’s more in a rebirth of hippie or bohemian culture than being an Irish Gypsy.

Photographer Iain McKell, who has followed a small group of travellers for over 10 years, has published a stunning new photo book called ‘The New Gypsies’, published by Prestel Publishing, charting the changes in their life-style.

Taking the traditional gypsy lifestyle as their template many have now ditched their motor vehicles in favour of horse drawn caravans.

Mr McKell told anothermag.com: ‘It began in 1986 with the New Age motor vehicle travellers called The Peace Convoy and then when I returned to Stonehenge Summer Solstice in 2001.

‘To my surprise I found this new renegade tribe that had evolved to horse-drawn wagon but had all the modern technology as well – solar power, mobiles phones, laptop computers and off course facebook.

‘I loved this idea of the old and the new working well together and the open road.

Check out some of the terrific pictures and get a taste for McKell’s book.

Another fascinating read that you may want to check out is Gwen Roland’s “Atchafalaya Houseboat: My Years in the Louisiana Swamp“. I came across Roland’s life in an NPTV program that followed Roland back to review her hippy life in the Atchafalaya basin that was partially documented in a National Geographic magazine in the 1970s .  Both the Traveler wedding show and the Atachafalaya Houseboat show were part of my 2:00 am in the morning channel wanderings.  I’ve grown a bit away from sneaking down to the rec room door in my footie pajamas to catch a glimpse of Patrick McGoohan.  I don’t always head out to the local haunts!

Here’s some NPR excerpts from the book, the National Geographic spread, and the program.

The biggest inconvenience to living so far out is going in. The impending trip casts its gloomy shadow over our normally unstructured days. The list, an innocent-looking sheet of typing paper, appears on the kitchen table where it assumes temporary control over our lives. It is divided into categories such as mail, camera store, feed store, welding supply store, hardware store, garden supply store, supermarket, library, people to see, eggs to deliver.

For the next several days our activities revolve around that silent taskmaster. We hunt up the ice chest for transporting cold foods on the long journey home. A crate is readied for a sick chicken headed for LSU’s poultry science department. A broken pump part is placed on top of the list so it won’t be forgotten. Mail that was picked up during the last trip must be answered before we leave home. Despite our good intentions mail is always neglected until the night before the trip. By lamplight we struggle to write legible letters, and we search with candles for lost addresses.

The dreaded day creeps over the horizon in a drizzle. What a waste of a fine rainy day! We usually greet such a morning with a second pot of coffee and a stack of old National Geographic magazines.

My new late time weirdness is a TLC reality show called ‘Breaking the Faith’. We’ve talked about the horrible treatment of women, young girls, and young men at FLDS compounds.  It’s an amazing thing to watch and hear the young women who escaped–some more successfully than others at this point in the series–to a safe house with Carolyn Jessop who testified in the conviction of child rapist Warren Jeffs.  One of the amazing scenes is when Jessop explains to the young women that having sex with a 12 year old ‘wife’ and participating in the process is a crime.

The women may have wanted to leave the compound, but were they ready? For one thing, they were scared of Carolyn, having been taught that she was a bad woman for leaving the church. Further, they didn’t believe her when she told them why Jeffs was in prison.

“When Carolyn starts telling me about Warren Jeffs and everything, I want to slap her, because she doesn’t know him,” one of the women, Angie, says. “She left 10 years ago.” Another woman, Connie, was struggling as well. “Carolyn Jessop is one of the worst apostates that there are. She is against everything that they teach us,” she said. “I don’t know what to think.” Carolyn told the girls that if they doubted her words — which they did — they were probably destined to return to the FLDS. They still believed that Warren Jeffs is the prophet.

While the show appears to be at least somewhat staged, the Christian Post calls it “groundbreaking” — most FLDS members who flee the church choose to live in hidingto avoid retaliation.

TLC is usually one of those channels that only captures my attention in the manner of 12 fire engines screaming down the street.  Although, the Gypsy wedding program from the UK took me in, I usually surf by it before I lose more faith in humanity.  Sister wives and Honey Boo B00 seriously alarm me.  But, I actually think this particular series lets people know more about religious cults and the process of watching the various girls deal with being outside the compound is fascinating.  Children go through a similar–albeit more subtle–process of cultural brainwashing daily.  It’s interesting to see the ones with the gumption to question it.

You can read more about the process because Carolyn Jessop is the author of two book on growing up in the FLDS.  Her first book is titled “Escape”.  It’s been out for about 6 years.

In a favorite children’s game, called Apocalypse, kids act out the FLDS vision of the end of the world. According to FLDS lore, Native Americans who were mistreated and killed in pioneer days will be resurrected in the end times, when God will allow them to wreak vengeance on those who wronged them (the presumably also-resurrected settlers). In return for this indulgence, “resurrected Indians” will also be “required to take on the job of protecting God’s chosen people”—FLDS members—by killing FLDS enemies with invisible tomahawks that can sever a person’s heart in half. Very cowboys and Indians!

Maybe the Republican party can talk to Warren Jeffs about how to talk to women!!!  They seem to want us all brainwashed!

So, I know this wasn’t exactly what you usually get from me, but I just felt I needed to go beyond politics for awhile.  Hopefully, you can let us know what’s on your reading and blogging list and make up for my odd little trip into other things!!!