INFLUENCE

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antiques, civil war, costumes, Galena, history, inspiration, pioneer, research, travel, writing

There are those who long for a fairy godmother. As I’ve mentioned before, I had a fey aunt, Marie Louise Duerrstein, and tagged after her in fascination with how her mind and imagination worked. It wasn’t until a few months before she could no longer speak clearly from a stroke that I realized that whenever she told me her ideas, I saw them exactly as she created them in her mind.

As a girl, it never occurred to me not to do what Aunt Marie said. There were some chores I didn’t like doing, but then there were the times when she told me to audition for a play. The thought of saying no or that I couldn’t do it never entered my head. I was her living mannequin for newspapers, magazines, and in first grade, a documentary I’d forgotten about until my sister, Sarah, saw it in a history class.

Aunt Marie put together parades and pageants, reenactments and Santa Claus Houses. She’d hand me a paint brush and tell me to paint a horse because she wasn’t good at that. She once told me to make an elephant after she erected its frame, which got stuffed with newspaper, covered in burlap, and painted gray. Later, she told me to make a much larger one for a Republican Party event.

She amassed her own museum, The Old General Store, what she called: A Step into the past. And it was, and so convincing Ingmar Bergman used it in his film, The Emigrants. Until becoming a curator, she made a living as a seamstress and selling bits of this and that of her artwork. She got artifacts for the museum with her wily sense of acquiring what she needed for nothing or next to nothing. Her motto was: Never pay for advertising. She didn’t, and yet her museum was known all over the world and in major magazines from National Geographic to Good Housekeeping.

Galena, Illinois was one of the first boomtowns of the West. In the 1820’s, Illinois was considered the edge of the world. By the 1840s, Galena’s Main Street was lined with four and five story brick and stone buildings (still intact) that survived spring floods from the Mississippi backing up the Galena River, filling the first floors with muddy water. Businesses moved merchandise to the top floors. And forgot about a lot of it. Aunt Marie didn’t. She knew the town’s history and went to store owners in the early 1950s. She said she’d clean out their attics if she could keep what she found. The items ended up in her museum, like-new boxes never opened, some from prior to the civil war.

When she opened her museum in 1957, she dressed me in a costume she’d sewn and in high- button shoes seventy years old. I worked in the museum, as did most of my family, after learning local history from Aunt Marie, who learned it directly from old timers. One was a woman in her nineties, who remembered sitting perched on her father’s shoulder to listen to Lincoln speaking from a Desoto Hotel balcony.

To this day, the 1800’s seem more comfortable to me than the present. Nine of my formative years had been spent surrounded by the past. That’s how it became easy to write in the time period. I know how to trim lamp wicks, fill them with kerosene, and clean the chimneys. I still use a coffee mill from that time. My home has antiques from her collection and the maternal side of my family. I know I will never taste anything as exquisite as the crispy lightness of a waffle made on the range with a waffle maker of cast iron. And that’s how I could write a story about a woman moving from Chicago in 1891 to a cabin in Colorado. So maybe there is something to the adage about writing about what you know.

Avenue to Heaven was released 11/01/17. It’s the first book in the Westward Bound series, stories about women who make new lives for themselves on the other side of the Mississippi, women of courage and determination. The ones who actually accomplished this are our past and our heritage.

https://www.amazon.com/Avenue-Heaven-Westward-Bound-Book-ebook/dp/B076HVGS98/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1509530295&sr=1-1&dpID=41zH8uAUeKL&preST=_SX342_QL70_&dpSrc=detail

 

Below is one of the ”living mannequin” moments. I was twelve at the time and can’t remember what it was for, magazine or newspaper. The background is the museum and mannequins she made to “dress” the store.

 

And Aunt Marie as a stand-in for the movie Gaily, Gaily

 

M.L Rigdon (aka Julia Donner)

Follow on Twitter @RigdonML

Blog: https://historyfanforever.wordpress.com/

Website http://www.MLRigdon.com

https://partners.bookbub.com/authors/1163516/edit

 

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REIGN PAIN

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costumes, France, French court, intrigue, Mary Queen of Scots, Protestant, Reign, religious unrest, TV series, Valois

While moseying along the racks at the library, I spied a TV series in the DVD section, one I’d never heard about. History freak that I am, it got snatched before anyone else noticed it sitting there, two seasons worth of what looked like Elizabethan period work. I should have paid more attention to the front cover.

Yeah, yeah, I’m an annoying stickler for historical fact, but this thing caused major jaw-dropping due to the history of Mary Queen of Scots getting twisted into something unrecognizable, a sort of hysterical history. Had the characters been taken over by pod people? Had the writers lost all sense of integrity? About half way through the first season it became clear: Reign, for all the bucks they’ve dumped into a very attractive production, has a target audience of teens, quite simply, a soap opera for the teenage masses.

Costumes for the men are a mish-mash covering a three hundred year span. Let’s face it, teens today would not like to see their heroes in tights, heels and bulbous shorts. And the girls, oye, the female costumes look like prom night on meth. For today’s proms, they’re perfect, but the time period is 1558 with ten layers of clothes and twenty pounds of beads and lace.

Mary Queen of Scots had her ups and downs in history but the real action didn’t start for her until she returned to Scotland after the death of King Francis II, who was probably a foot shorter, sickly and had a speech impediment. He kicked it a year and a half after they married, he fifteen and Mary seventeen at the time. And it was never established if their marriage had been consummated. It was said they liked each other well enough, according to Dad, King Henry II, who had ulterior motives, doncha know. And talk about strangling the facts, pious Francis murdered his father on the jousting field? It boggles the mind that puny Francis donned armor and lanced his father to death. Shame, shame, oh ye purveyors of nonsensical history.

On the positive side, I liked the performances. It takes talent and discipline to walk the fine edge of teen angst and soap opera scenery-chewing. Veteran, Megan Follows, is always a pleasure to watch. She infuses Queen Catherine with a vague, sly humor and this tempers the evil of the woman’s scary-cunning political maneuvers.

Now if the creators of this project wanted to make a twisted tale out of the Valois court, they should’ve written about Francis’s youngest brother, who later became king, the charming—and I must say decidedly prickish—Alexandre Edouard, Henri III. Now we’re talking the dark side of the force. This guy had no problem murdering family members, one of which was the Duke de Guise, Mary’s uncle. Henri Three also massacred Protestants after instigating political unrest, fled Paris like a coward and then later plotted to wage war on the city. Oh but the list goes on and on. One bit of accuracy in Reign is that it shows the real power broker, Mom, Queen Catherine de Medici. She ran the show behind the curtains and continued to do so during the tenures of all of her sons.

So why am I whining and ranting? There’s nothing wrong with fiddling with historical fact when it’s being made obvious that is the case. Heath Ledger in A Knight’s Tale was acceptable because the entire movie was tongue-in-cheek. It didn’t make itself out to be anything but a fun story set in the medieval time period, but Reign has warped the entire time period. My hope is that students will become interested enough to look up the truth, especially since our schools aren’t teaching it longer.

And so ends my rant. In a nutshell, if you don’t care about history and just want to see youngsters in costume playing at court intrigues, you’ll like this production. For a more precise rendition of the period, watch Helen Mirren in Elizabeth I.

As Monty Python was wont to say, and now for something completely different. Critique partner and writing buddy, Judith Post, writing as Judi Lynn, has a cover release for her upcoming digital work from Kensington, Cooking Up Trouble, scheduled to come out next year. Take a look-see:

http://www.pumpupyourbook.com/2015/11/27/pump-up-your-book-presents-cooking-up-trouble-cover-reveal/

M.L Rigdon (aka Julia Donner)

Follow on Twitter @RigdonML

Website http://www.MLRigdon.com

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Julia-Donner

CRIMSON PEAK SQUEAKS

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Chastain, costumes, couture, Crimson Peak, film review, gothic, Hiddleston, horror, movies, Wasikowski

Every once in a while the cinema gets it right, but I agree with one reviewer who judged the production work better than the story in Crimson Peak. Better doesn’t do it justice. The surprising part is that it’s an American company, not known for accuracy in period works, but was partly filmed at Pinewood Studios, which may be the reason for its excellence in this area. The set design and costumes were gorgeous, even if the house itself was more of a caricature of the gothic theme and the creepiness value more fun than scary.

I’m a chicken about horror flicks. Don’t watch them, but I was lured to this one because of the time period and wasn’t disappointed. There were more creaking floorboards than necessary but the fx sounds worked for this film. Expensive homes built back then had master craftsmen doing the work. Those squeaky boards probably didn’t start to protest until at least fifty years later after the house had completely settled and woods began to dry out. And what wonderful woods and woodworking. It was everywhere, all over the walls, in dark, whirling Jacobean furniture and elegant Belter style chairs. I was in late Victorian heaven.

Jessica Chastain knows how to carry off wearing the 1880 bustle—I loved wearing dresses with a bustle—and as always, used her expressive eyes to fascinate. Her clothes were meant to be out of date, a decade behind Gay Ninties Paris-influenced styles.

Wasikowski and Hiddleston performed an exquisite waltz scene, so gracefully done it could be filmed showing footwork as well as an overhead view. OK, so I’m a bit nutty when it comes to period pieces, but this film had actual parquetry work, a real ballroom floor. I notice things like that, and noisy bedsprings.

The coolest thing for me happened in Sir Thomas’s workroom where there were three, wax mannequin heads. Spooky looking things. My aunt had one in her museum and it always gave me the shivers, the fixed smile, weird eyes and ashen-white complexion. And Crimson Peak had three of them on a dusty shelf.

Since the story wasn’t freaking me out, and remember, I’m a chicken, which means diehard horror fans might stifle a few yawns, but it allowed me to check out all the marvelous accuracy. There was only one error to be found (but I might find more when I watch the DVD) and that was the walk in the park. Edith Cushing (Wasikowski) props her parasol on her shoulder. Never done. The parasol was held upright, but I let it pass because it was a gloomy day and much was made of the weather in that scene.

I enjoyed the film for its artistry, but if you’re looking for scary, it wasn’t so much. There’s some slasher type action and yucky ghosts, but I didn’t flinch, if that’s any kind of gauge. I’ll be seeing again because of its artwork and attention to period detail.

M.L Rigdon (aka Julia Donner)

Follow on Twitter @RigdonML

Website http://www.MLRigdon.com

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Julia-Donner

 

Shakespeare and Me

Tags

costumes, crew, embarrassment, humiliation, malfunction, period costumes, stage, theater

Embarrassing moments. We all suffer them. My most excruciating ones get written into a plot. Some poor, schmuck character gets hit upside the head with one of my humiliating life experiences and poof, I forget about it—a sort of emotional enema. Hey, it works, but I have one experience left that is so pathetic and ridiculous and hysterically funny that it’s a keeper for one of my characters. I think kick-butt heroine Phil Hafeldt is getting the honors in her next adventure. She’s quirky and tough enough to get through it. I still can’t think about it without laughing and cringing at the same time.

A less devastating but funny occurrence happened on stage at Racine Theatre Guild—and thanks to all the Powers that be everywhere in the universe—it happened during rehearsal and not during an actual performance. But the discomfort lingers.

Eons ago, I did a lot of comedy, so got somewhat accustomed to unexpected wrenches sabotaging the works. Audiences rarely know the mayhem that happens behind the scenes, horrible accidents, broken bones and sprains, costumes that come apart, props that disappear, sets that collapse, an endless set of catastrophes that marvelous crews save, correct, stitch, and paste back together so the performers can be shoved back out in front of the audience. I can’t imagine the trauma if my calamity had played out in front of patrons. Actors, crew and the director (Norman McPhee) got the brunt of it.

Tech reheasal, two nights before full dress, and our first night on the actual set, Petruccio (Jim Iaquinta) drags me by one arm, a violently resisting shrew, Kate, up the balcony steps. He gets a foot on the balcony and the entire staircase collapses. I’m swinging in the air, worrying about the crew, running with arms outstretched. In period costume, I’m also hoping I haven’t worn skimpy underwear, while praying Petruccio can hold on, so I don’t fall and crush the nice carpenters. (I’ve never been a lightweight.)

Petruccio hauls me up, asks me if I’m OK, takes my numb-brained nod as a yes, and goes on with his lines. His next blocking move is to throw me over his shoulder. Now it’s an even longer drop to the stage floor. He isn’t afraid of heights, so he stands with the tips of his toes off the edge of a balcony with no railing. I screamed so horribly people came running from everywhere in building. Meanwhile, Petruccio’s still delivering his lines and the director is gleefully shouting: Now, that’s how I want you to scream! (To be honest, I did use a rendition of that scream every performance.)

That was the set up for the impending humiliation, but not the first warning. That came when the costume lady takes me into the bathroom—which had me wondering why not the wardrobe room—and tells me all of my costumes have to be altered. The director wants to make use of the rack I downplayed with minimizer bras my entire life. I dutifully get into the wedding costume. She takes a scissors and hacks out a chunk of the bodice. I shriek, horrified and gob-struck. (Think da Vinci’s Lady with an Ermine but much lower.)

Next night is dress rehearsal. The staircase has been tacked back together and now, thankyouthankyou, has a railing. We get up to the balcony, lines and timing are going great, Petruccio slings me over his shoulders. I inhale to scream with appropriate gusto, and my boobs fall out of the gown. Wardrobe malfunction? Uh-no. More like wardrobe catastrophe.

The director can’t see what’s happening beyond my butt in the air and me furiously wriggling to reinsert my bosoms. He knows something is going on because the two actors to one side of the balcony are now rolling on the floor with laughter. There’s just so damn much of me that it takes FOREVER to get them back in place and hold them there. In comparison, it wasn’t quite as humiliating as the debacle I’m saving for Phil, but maybe now I can forget those guys, holding their sides, laughing their heads off.

Solution/moral of the story: Every night I surgical-glued my tatas into a cut down bra and ripped it off after performances. I lost a lot of skin but saved a lot of face.

I could caption this What We Do For Our Art or Was I Ever That Young?