Fast Eddie, Flyer

August 3, 1944

Dear Edward Henry

If any one is in this war, I would say it is you.

There would be a score of fliers who might go over-seas, to one flying instructor who could put them in readiness to go; and if some of your boys are now majors, the glory is to no small degree yours.

What you say about the Frenchmen interests and depresses me. How do you account for such a state of mind among them? We have a Frenchman at the University who is a fine and likeable fellow, but when I hear him belittling the efforts of the British and American armies in France I get somewhat annoyed. I conclude we can expect no gratitude from the French. The reason we are fighting this war is our own interest and the liberation of France is only incidental to winning it. The wreck of France is part of the process. The French will be happy to have the Germans driven out; but I doubt they will love us for doing it. May be some sort of thing like that is in the minds of your young Frenchmen. Be that as it may, I hope you give them a good jolt and toughen them up into good fliers as you will. As for me, I am afraid my attitude toward the French in general has always been like that of the old Bishop of London in the XVth century - "When met we there peacocks in battle that they went not weeping away? The French eat salads - we English eat beef - God is English!" How's that for a frank confession of prejudice?"

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Fast Eddie was also known as Bud, Buddy, Glenn, Ed and Edward, depending on the period in his life and the people he was with.

His mother had begun both the "Glenn" and the "Buddy," though his given name was Edward. His middle name being Glenn, she used it to distinguish him from his father, who bore the same name. But since she dotingly called him her "Buddy," the name stuck, at least until the Sisters of St. Joseph began to fill out his report cards with "Glenn" - who did quite well in Reading, Art, Religion and History, but shamefully poorly in Arithmetic.  

He became officially "Bud" when he entered high school, in 1932, where he excelled in swimming and became a football star. Bud probably sounded more manly, and probably lent an air of devilishness to his reputation as the one who got the girls. He started out as Bud in college, and those who knew him well continued to call him that well into middle age, but he was formally Ed, Eddie and Edward as he married, entered the Army Air Corps and began to teach flying.

But the curious thing about Eddie was - at one time or another, be it day to day, occupation to avocation, mood to mood, he was one or the other of those names as the occasion demanded. For purposes of this story, he's Eddie. Fast Eddie.

He was a baby of the first world war, born in November of 1918, just days before the Armistice. He was an imp and a charmer, with his auburn locks and his light blue eyes. Somehow, perhaps luck, perhaps survival, perhaps just because it was that way, he developed a sense of humor that saw him from his youth to his old age able to laugh and tease his way out of most difficulties. 

Fast Eddie, then "Glenn," even charmed the Sisters of St. Joseph, not a notably giggly bunch, and found an alternate name for each of them - so Sister William Anne was "Billy Anne," and Sister Josephina was "Sister Joe." He called them his chosen nick-names to their faces, which amazed even them so much they'd have to laugh and blush and then run to the church to say penance for being just girls again.

To say that Fast Eddie was audacious was probably an understatement. He would take a dare or do the outrageous and made lifelong friends who admired his swashbuckling. He stood outside the house of a girl he was sweet on calling "Viola! Viola, come to the window!" even when her parents pulled aside the curtains to find out who the scamp was and race out to the porch to chase him away. He was back the next night. 

He swam across the Niagara River - granted, downstream of the falls - as a test of his endurance. 

He started smoking at 13, and cut his one cigarette a day allowance in half, one half for the morning and one for the night, when he was in training for high school football - and quit his pack-a-day habit cold turkey on a single day, in his 40s, when he learned his good friend had developed throat cancer, likely from smoking. One day, after he visited his friend in the hospital, he went home, dumped his beloved Pall Malls in the trash, and never picked one up again. 

Maybe if Fast Eddie hadn't been as cute and clever, he would have been a better scholar, and his whole story would have taken a different turn. Maybe his problem was he was too clever by half - and had far too many talents. He was a skilled artist who could sketch and whittle and carve and create - and he never lacked for some idea, however silly it might have seemed. When his daughters were young, he fashioned Japanese geta for them out of scrap two-by-fours the girls wheedled from builders working on a house around the corner. They wore them with tabi they had been gifted for Christmas one year, which got him curious about Japanese footwear. 

He created tiny stools and ox yokes and hay bundles and added them to the Christmas creches he built - again out of scraps of this and that, working for hours at his basement workbench. The creches were perfect down to the smallest detail - a sandy floor made of papier mâché layered over wood, and the sand brushed onto the wet mâché. Another layer of straw kept everything in place. Sometimes the walls were made of small stones representing rock walls; others had wooden "timbers" making up the walls with slanted roofs of thin wood. Bitty ladders stood in corners, and a few scattered rocks hid small clumps of brush. The manger might be a small wooden crib, or a corner stall separated out to hold the baby Jesus. But every little detail was considered - right down to an electric plug, cleverly hidden in the construction, so that a blue light could illuminate the holy scene. It was easy to get lost in the details of them, and each one had a unique style, sometimes with humorous touches you had to look carefully to find.

He made them as gifts for friends, and for his daughters' teachers at school. And one night, he tossed his best creation down the cellar stairs following a fight with his wife. 

Fast Eddie liked a Rob Roy or an Old Fashioned, and his wife, Faith, was a woman of decided opinions and organization - and sometimes the two didn't meld. While normally they were a happy enough couple - he spent most of the week on the road, and she ruled her domain with expert care, a firm set of rules, and nobody to question her decisions. When he would return home at the end of a long week of motels and sales calls and lonely dinners in a diner, he wanted nothing more than to relax, play in his basement, entertain some friends and enjoy a drink. But there were chores to do, children to take care of, a wife to chat with and a small boy with a serious mental deficit who needed his attention. 

But all of this is out of order, doesn't lead to the point, and is perhaps just the way Eddie would have told his own story - except that in fact, he was an extremely orderly person. His wife used to say even his feet were "neat." And so they were: his socks were held up by garters so that when a man crossed his legs at a business meeting, not a wrinkle would show. His shoes were polished, with almost religious attention, every single evening without fail. His hair was parted to hair by hair perfection, and when he cooked - which was as often on the weekends as his wife would allow - the bits and pieces of the dish were chopped with perfect symmetry and careful attention.

His basement workshop was a thing of wonder for the messy to marvel at: jars, the tops nailed to the overhead floor beams, contained carefully sorted nails, screws, bolts, washers - each labeled in his perfect and artistic hand, and returned to its correct space (probably in alphabetical order) when put away. His tools were neatly ordered, scraps of wood sorted and saved. He never met a wood-working project he couldn't handle, or a mechanical fix he couldn't make. But then there was a time when the back yard needed plowing - and, no money to be had, and little interest in shoveling, Eddie strapped an old wooden door to the rear bumper of the family car, and held it from his seat atop the trunk, shouting orders at his wife, who backed the car around the three-car-drive, moving the huge piles of Buffalo snow to the edges of the paved yard. 

That same paved back yard served as a sample of his Tom Sawyeresque talent for invention. When newly tarred, the men who laid the stuff told him that sand had to be swept into the new pavement to cure it and dry it. Eddie wasn't feeling in the mood. Equipped with two broad shop brooms and a handful of small kitchen brooms, he got a round rubber ball, drew a line of sand down the middle of the drive, and convinced the neighborhood children that a great game was to be played using the brooms to "sweep" the ball toward the goal of the opposite end of the drive against your opposing team, whose object was to sweep it the other way. And just like that, the "fence" had a new coat of whitewash - so to speak - and the children thought it was the best game ever invented.

Fast Eddie had a talent for tall tales, as well. His younger daughter was the boy he didn't get to enjoy - at least, while she was young and a decided tomboy who refused to wear dresses (except when she insisted upon wearing nothing but dresses in her mermaid period), and they bonded over tossing a ball back and forth, building things, and his ongoing stories-while-he-shaved. Each morning when he was at home, he made a small ceremony of shaving - meticulously, as he did most things. His implements laid out just so, his razor blade changed, his shaving cream applied with precision. 

And as he shaved - up, down, across, under the nose, beneath the chin - his eyes would sparkle and he'd tell his small girl stories.

One of them was the story of the floating island. In this story, a group of kids lived in a town by the ocean, and had access to a small fishing dinghy. They liked to row out to a miniature island just off the coast, where they would dig for treasure. But what fascinated them the most was that though they were rowing against the waves getting to their treasure island, it took much longer to get back in to shore each evening that it had taken to get out to their island in the mornings. One day, in their diggings, they found not only the treasure, but the secret of the island. It wasn't an island at all, but a sunken ship - now filled with sand and dirt, some stones and bird's nests and a few hardy bushes completing the island disguise. And deep in their excavations, the children found hidden rooms, some trinkets, and a story to delight other children with.

But her unqualified favorite story was his Tale of the Old West, in which he was a cowboy who rode a beautiful paint stallion name Ol' Smokey, and she was his pint-sized sidekick who rode a small pony named Small Smoke. When they were adopted by a friendly Native tribe, he was named Son of the Ol' West, and she was named Big Chief Rain in the Face, for her noted talent of being able to cry - copiously - almost on demand. 

For all his charm, and his games and jokes and love of a laugh, Fast Eddie bore a number of miseries deep in his heart - and never spoke of them, though some of his best friends, who liked to share a drink or two, knew about them.

Was it easy for any of his generation, born at the tail end of one war, to enjoy a few magical years of childhood and then be plunged into a depression just as you realized you were an individual? To live poor and uncertain - and in Eddie's case, without a dad - and only your wits and hopes to sustain you?

Eddie was blessed with bright blue eyes, chiseled Irish good looks, and athletic talent, along with a decided way with women. He could charm the birds from the trees, as the saying went, and learned early how to talk a girl into whatever it was he wanted. 

His dead father's family boasted a Vice Provost at a noted university, and his skill on the football field vetted him as a possible recruit for his Uncle's school. Eddie saw the future in 1935 as he prepared to graduate high school and hoped for a scholarship to college. In fact, two were forthcoming at schools that looked at his tall, lean build, speed, and love of football as a promise for their running back slot. A college scholarship in the Depression Years was no small accomplishment, and Fast Eddie was thrilled. But he wanted his Uncle's school - and held out for a scholarship there.

***************************

1935
University of Pennsylvania
Wharton School of Finance and Commerce
Dear Buddy,
I received your letter this morning and was delighted to hear from you.  You are an astonishingly good writer, much better than your Uncle.

We have a new coach this year as well as a new Director of Athletics. However, I will look into the situation immediately, and if it is possible to find what you want, it will be sent promptly. I am glad you enjoy football, although I can imagine your mother isn't so well pleased?? It is always better to wear your head-gear when scrimmaging. No one's head is as hard as an opponent's foot. Are you a "back" or a "lineman?" When you write to me, let me know what you are thinking regarding college. You must go, and if I am alive and out of the alms house, I will help you.

Give my love to your mother, Jeanne, Uncle Milt and Aunt Mary and Glenna. Don't neglect your studies.

Sincerely,
Uncle "Jim"
I will write to you soon about the equipment.

***************************

But Eddie, as noted, was not good at math. It was difficult to understand his failure to comprehend something so orderly, logical, and predictable. But Eddie's talents were simply not to be categorized. They happened as they did, and while he spent hours perfecting how to draw a nose or carve a wooden cow; to build a shed, shelf, or sled; to organize his tools, work papers, and personal effects, he simply couldn't demand that his brain spend any time on math.

His bad grades in math required that he spend a gap year before trying for a much needed scholarship, if he was to get into the school of his choice - naturally, the best football option of the schools in which he was interested. 

But it was now 1936. The United States, and the world, were recovering from the Great Depression, and Europe wasn't looking very stable. Hitler was Fuhrer in Germany, there had been a build-up of the German air force, and Japan has renounced its treaties with both the United States and the UK. Even happy-go-lucky Eddie was looking into the crystal ball of world politics, and couldn't see a good future for a young guy who hadn't yet been accepted to college, and who needed a scholarship if he were.

But while, as noted, Fast Eddie wasn't the best in math, he did know how to read the odds - and he began to think through a strategy. He'd spend a gap year in military school, if he could get accepted, meanwhile working with his Uncle Arnold - but in family tradition and for no reason anyone could discern, was known as Jim - on a scholarship. 

His gap year in progress, Eddie was hoping that, his grades in math somewhat improved, he could qualify for the Buffalo Alumni scholarship to his coveted university. His Uncle shared with him the bad news that "they have neglected to name their nominee," and meanwhile, Fast Eddie had been offered a football scholarship to Syracuse University, which his uncle urged him to take. "I'm praying for the first but if they should choose someone other than you, you are safe with the other scholarship."

With a safety admission to his home-town University of Buffalo, and a scholarship to another, Fast Eddie found it hard to believe, in his cocksure way, that between his Uncle, and his own charm and talent, his chosen university wouldn't eventually understand what a prize they had. But it was not to be. However, as his Uncle assured him, as he began his Freshman year at UB, "...keep your chin up. I am sure everything will come out all right in the long run."

And when Eddie debuted on the football field at Buffalo, anything that might have been lacking in his grades or college prep was soon eclipsed by his speed and devotion to his sport - along with his All American Boy good looks. 

While stringing along a number of young ladies, he met and was captured by his eventual wife-to-be, Faith, who hailed from an entrepreneurial family in a small town, and who herself had known more than a little heartache. Her handsome young father had died suddenly when she, the middle daughter of three, was only 10, leaving behind a widow and his parents to raise the girls, and try to comfort them in the loss of their Father. 

Faith was smart, an actress, and a beauty, and had her share of beaux, so Eddie's typical love-'em-and-leave-'em style didn't phase her. Each time they had a spat, or she found him in the Canteen with another girl, she'd simply crook her little finger and another young man would come eagerly running to escort her to a dance, or a film, or out for an evening at Coleman's. 

But by 1939, in addition to being a football star, Eddie had started flying lessons. It wasn't love of the wild blue yonder, but one of the smarter things he did in his life: if the world was going to go to war, and it certainly seemed as though it might, he reckoned he might have a better view of it from up high. He was regularly training through the Lockport Aeronautical Corporation, intent on getting his pilot's license and becoming a member of the Civil Service Pilot School, with hopes that if he were drafted, he might qualify for the Army Air Corps. And not any too soon - a simple note in Faith's diary on September 3, 1939, though a couple of days late, made it clear: "War is declared in Europe."

But one lingering sadness must have haunted the pair as they eventually realized they were meant for one another, and began making plans for an uncertain future: the girl who tried to kill herself over the loss of Eddie. He never understood that a girl could take it all so seriously - and serious indeed, she was. Her cap was set, and Eddie was her target. Betty G, in spite of making very public shows of her affection, showing up at evening spots and in the library when Eddie and Faith were studying together, finally realized it wasn't going to be, and she attempted suicide. 

Before Faith finally graduated in 1941, the War Department, Office of the Chief of the Air Corps in Washington had contacted Fast Eddie for the draft. 

And here, his second "father" stepped in.

Attorney Patrick Keeler, Eddie's best friend's father and an influential man, took a personal interest in the young man's fate. His letters flew, as high up as they needed to go - a Congressman in 1941 read:

"I know that you will believe me when I say that I think as much of this boy as I do of my own sons. His father was a Captain, and lost his life in the first World War overseas with the A.E.F. This boy was born two days before his father's death. He is the only child of a widowed mother and in very straightened circumstances.

"He is a graduate of Bennet High School, Buffalo, and has just graduated from the University of Buffalo, after working his way through. He had a splendid record at the university in athletics and on the football team and won several scholarships, but was unable to take advantage of these because of lack of funds.

"During his last years in the University of Buffalo, he took up and completed a government course in aviation. Some few weeks ago, he successfully passed the almost impossible examination for Flying Cadets in the United States Service, and is now awaiting appointment thereto. This, as you know, will pay him a substantial salary, and opens the way to a commission in the United States Army Flying Corps. This is his ambition, and it will be a matter of but a few weeks until he will get this appointment."

In other words, please give the kid a deferment from the draft so that he can become a flight instructor.

And in the quixotic way fate had of handing favors to Fast Eddie, he got the deferment. He was sent to Gunter Field in Lakeland, Florida, where he was to report for five weeks training, with a minimum of "civilian clothing."  

Fast Eddie was saved on the very brink. But not from Faith - her graduation announcement in the local paper shared that she would be traveling to Lakeland following her graduation ceremony with Fast Eddie's mother, and his request for a furlough - granted - covered the time the two women would be visiting. Now an instructor, though eventually with the Army Air Corps, Eddie and Faith were married in December of the following year, and he began to hopscotch around air bases - Tuscaloosa, Lackland, Arizona, and wherever he was needed, especially for the training of young French cadets. 

The rest, as they say, is history. Actually, it's letters - letter, after letter, after letter. From Paris, Gunter Field, Turner Field, Jacksonville, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas, Canada, Alaska...

"Cher monsieur,"
"Monsieur Henry,"
"Hi Pop -"
"Hi Sport," "Dear Ed," "Dear Mr. Henry," "My dear Edward Henry," "Dear Mr. Lucky,"

"Je suis vraiment honoré de vous dire que vous m'avez appris à voler avec succès."
"This goddam BT is like a four story house with wings. The biggest trouble seems t be the cockpit procedure, but you know me, I don't have much trouble with the mechanical parts of flying, just the flying itself."
"Being in this place is a like a dream or a nightmare."
"Hi there, any chance you still remember this lazy pupil, yours?"
"I was eliminated the other day. At the present time I am waiting to receive orders transferring me to Meadville for reclassification. What I'll do from here, I don't quite know. This this has really gotten me down. I guess I can easily say that this has been the biggest disappointment of my life." 
"Some of the lads you may one day be teaching are now passing beneath my window, marching in close order and singing, "I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy." As they got by and their song fades, another column comes up. Their song is "Wait Til the Sun Shines Nellie;" while a third song from yet another column sounds like "Mademoiselle From  Armentières." 

They flew; the fought; they were hit; they lived, loved, returned home. They died. 

And for all his efforts to evade the war, Fast Eddie did end up fighting it. With every airman that returned to France, or moved from his flight school into the air over Europe or the far east, Eddie was there. 

For that reason, Eddie was willing to hold his friends up when they needed it.

Uncle George was a flyer in the Air Corps,  

1918: born
1935: graduates HS
1935-36 - gap year spent at military school
1936: enters college (tries for scholarship at U Penn but does not get it; did get scholarship at SU which he turns down; ends up going to Buffalo)
1939: war is declared
1939? enters pilot training program (to get Civil Service pilot school/flight instructor program in Army Air Corps)
1941: drafted, gets deferment with aid of Keeler, he enters 41-I group in FLA (Gunter Field)
1942: goes to Lackland, FLA, eventually Tuscaloosa (married in 1942 or 1943? - Faith graduates in 1941?)

My Grandmother's Letters

My mom never liked her. Barbara Irene Snyder Dennis McInery. And my recollections of her, fragmented as a child's memories are, weren't pretty. Nor, by the time I knew her, was she.

Life had etched itself deeply into her face, and her fondness for a drink and too much dessert had done her no favors. If she laughed, I don't recall it, and she had deep, discolored bags under her eyes that dragged her expression down into that of the perpetually aggrieved.

And she cheated at cards - even Solitaire. My father, her son, made a board for her to lay across the arms of the upholstered chair she claimed as hers when she visited, and she'd play endless hands of Solitaire while seated there. Now I would guess it was because when he was at work, she was largely ignored, and found a means to amuse herself until it was time to go up to her room on the third floor and "say her beads," which really meant have a few shots from the bottles she'd order from the liquor store - always trying to meet the delivery boy at the door so my mother wouldn't know how many she went through in her two-week stays.

Sometimes she was able to talk me into playing cards with her - Gin, or Hearts, or even Go Fish. But she cheated, somehow taking pleasure in beating a 6 year old at a silly card game, until one day, in a fit of anger, I kicked her in the shin of one long, elegant leg. It left a bruise, a big ugly one. Because as I know now, she was dying, even then.

Barbara, from photos I have seen, faded early, but had, in her youth, been stunning. She was tall for a young woman in the early 1900s, and the time-bleached black and white photos didn't disguise her upright posture, her imperious look, or her lovely figure. The grey hair she wore close-cropped and curled when she had been my grandmother was luxurious and, in early photos, stylishly worn in a chignon at the back of her neck - though it was hard to get a sense of the color, and of course ladies always wore hats.

My mother told me once that she had kept my father in her room until he was seventeen, leaving the other bedroom in the small flat she lived in to her daughter, my father's half sister, Jeanne - the pampered, attractive, chatty daughter seven years my dad's senior, who always wore too much perfume and dressed so that it was clear to us all how much wealth she had married. I was repelled by my mother's report of my dad's having to sleep in his mother's room, and my sister's later clarification that it was actually in her bed, until one day it dawned on me that she was simply trying to make sure her daughter married well - very well - and would never also be a lonely widow with two children living in her cousin's house and getting old far too early and too quickly.

That's when I decided to look for some trace of her - and found my grandmother's letters.

* * * * *

Barbara wasn't the most prolific saver I've ever seen, but she was a careful librarian. Things were in order, pictures were labeled and dated, and she'd kept her treasures in dry and sturdy boxes. It must have been my father who saw to it that her mementos were preserved - I'm sure had it been up to my mom they would have been "lost" in one move or another. But, like most things to do with Barbara or her husband, I inherited her things when my parents downsized the last time.

I suppose it was the piano and the mantle clock that made that happen. I was the musician in the family, and from the time I could climb up on the mahogany bench, I'd spent a good deal of my play time sitting at it, making noise, picking out melodies, and learning to read music.

The piano was a parlor grand - about 6 feet long. Not a big concert grand, and not as small as a "baby," it had a simple elegance, and I learned later from playing other pianos, a delightful springy "touch," that was probably partly the careful craftsmanship, and partly the fact that it had real ivory keys, something piano manufacturers in later years couldn't provide. But in 1911, the Knabe piano company in New York City, who made the piano for my grandmother and her first husband, had used all of the finest materials - and 80 years later when the piano became mine, though the keys were a little yellow and worn, and the finish on the sides slightly bleached where the sun had shone on it, it was probably much the same as it had been when it was delivered to the newlyweds.

When I got the boxes from my parents, I stored them away in the basement, barely glancing into them, so I had little idea what was there. But now I was on a quest for my grandmother, so I dragged them out, stacked them in the living room, and set to work. I opened the first large box, a plastic tub, so it must have been my dad's hands which had buried Barbara's treasures deep in the safety of bug-proof, water-proof containers. And right on top was a photo, from 1931, posed and painted and looking for all the world like F. Scott Fitzgerald and a flirty fan - my dad and his half sister, Jeanne. His eyes had been painted the same faded denim blue I remembered, a twinkle in them even at 13. But his cheeks still had the roundness of boyhood, though I could see - remembering the photo of his own father he kept on his dresser - the man he would become. He was the image of his dad later in life, which must, I realized, have been both a joy and a wound to my grandmother.

Below the photo, an 8x10 in the photographer's cardboard envelop that used to be the hallmark of a portrait photograph, was the first album.

I opened it, and in a plastic liner, addressed to a location in Germany, was the first letter. It had been written by Barbara's sister, Justina - a woman I had always heard spoken of as "Aunt Teeny."

The ink was faded almost brown, the paper thin and delicate, and every inch of it was covered with the self-conscious, carefully scripted handwriting of another era. Both sides of the paper were written on, and the writer had even turned the paper and written in the margins, no doubt to save postage rather than add another page for what started out as a few words and eventually curled around the entire paper's margins.

"July 12, 1909

Dear Barba (did I know my tall and crabby grandmother had ever been called a pet name?),
I hope you are well and enjoying your studies! How I envy you and Mary, traveling and pursuing your musical careers! I have found all the reviews of your performance at The Met that I could locate, and have saved them for you. I think you must have impressed the school, and would be welcomed back on the stage there should you choose.

Neuschwanstein as you have described it is something I would delight to see! I cannot imagine such a place, and your postcard appears more as a child's fairy tale illustration than a real castle. (The Fairy Tale King, Ludwig of Bavaria, had built this mountain palace - I have a tin box decorated with its image and had dreamed as a child of going to see it. Why did my grandmother never tell us about her visit, I wonder?) I hope that your German is more polished than my own - I am not certain I could hold a proper conversation, let alone study in Berlin.

Have you found any further information about Mama's home in Bavaria or the Schwabenbauer family? What you have shared with us about the Schneider family and Father's history is quite fascinating. Such a different life to our own. I wonder how he managed to leave his homeland and start a new life here, ending up in little Oil City, Pa. Your description of the clothing and festivals set us all laughing. It is hard to think of Father in leiderhosen dancing in the streets!

Things here are as ever. That young man, Harry Waslohn, I believe you met him, continues to court me, and I do admit to finding him most agreeable company. He escorted me to a church picnic, for which I prepared far too much food! But I was uncertain about his preferences, though it appears my meatloaf sandwiches were a favorite. He brought a large bottle of beer, which we shared. I suppose my fondness for the stuff is a result of our Bavarian roots?

And do tell us more about your young man, Dr. Dennis? What a glamorous couple you must make, he a surgeon, and you an opera star!

Please write to us as often as may be, we do enjoy your letters and picture postal cards.

With much love - your sister,
Justina"

I wandered over to the piano after reading the letter, and rummaged around in the mahogany music stand that was its match. Pulling out of folder marked "Voice," I found selection after selection of yellowing sheet music, some of it marked with notes - sometimes dated - of improvements to be made or when it was performed.

I remember sitting with my grandmother at the piano, in our big old Edwardian house in Buffalo. The piano was in the second area of the parlor, between the front section with its fireplace and bow window, and the dining room, which could be shut away with a pocket door with its mysterious latch that when pressed sprang out to release a handle.

She didn't play much, though she did sometimes watch over my playing. It was the one thing I did she seemed to approve of, and she would sometimes hum along. Once, when I played a march, she got up from the bench and marched back and forth across the room. She raised her hand to her forehead in a military salute, and eventually, began to cry, though never taking her hand down to wipe away the tears. I didn't understand why, but I felt I had to keep playing it until she finally tired and sat back down.

"I'm a military widow, you know," she said to me. I had no idea what that meant.

"A war widow," she explained, making me even more confused. The odd thing was that as curious a child as I was, I didn't ask her, nor did I ask my parents. I knew that my dad had never known his father, that nobody talked much about him, and that my grandmother liked to march and tell us she was a War Widow. It seemed, somehow, to be some sort of forbidden topic.

*******

The next pages of the book contained programs from The Metropolitan Opera, and a program from the Institute of Musical Art. I opened this last one first. The program was for a recital of the first class at the Institute in 1907, performed at The Met. My grandmother would have been 21. She was featured prominently as a mezzo soprano playing Carmen. I know next to nothing about opera - I think I had seen two, being forced to go in high school. They weren't bad, but didn't excite me the way the piano did. Still, I had to find out more.

I found and played a clip from Carmen on YouTube - The Habanera. And suddenly, there she was in my imagination: Barbara standing in the parlor by the carved newel post of the staircase in the Buffalo house. I wondered now if she didn't choose the spot to frame herself against the two-story stained glass window - it was the kind of dramatic gesture she liked. Her speaking voice was nothing special, if anything a little waspish. But when she sang her entire personality seemed to alter. Head up, eyes fixed, hands moving with the music. I could hear her singing the famous song, and at the same time I wanted to giggle, as I probably did when I was little. Opera was Mighty Mouse, not high drama.

Next I looked up The Institute. It turns out it was the predecessor school to Julliard - and suddenly my admiration for Barbara shot up a few points. "...on the premise that the United States did not have a premier music school and too many students were going to Europe to study music..." the Institute opened in the former Lenox Mansion, Fifth Avenue and 12th Street in New York City.

Now I was sidetracked yet again: I'd not spent a lot of time in Manhattan, but 5th Avenue wasn't a bad address, though more or less commercial in my recollection. Back in the Revolutionary War era, this part of the city was still farmland - and the property had been bought by a Scot from Kirkcudbright, Robert Lenox, who emigrated in 1783 and made a nice fortune in the East India Trade. His son James became one of the wealthiest of New Yorkers, and a bit of an eccentric collector. He built the mansion, and in his library was the first copy of the Guttenberg Bible in North America, all the known editions of Milton's Areopagitica and Paradise Lost, and first editions of Shakespeare's plays. The place must have fairly reeked of ghosts and the arts. It went through several hands before it was bought for the music school. What I didn't have was any idea of how my grandmother had ended up going there. I tried to conjure up a 20 room Gothic revival building with Italian marble fireplaces, frescoed ceilings, and gracious rooms - but all I could see was Barbara singing at the staircase.

And then I heard my mother sneering: "You're just like your grandmother McInerey. Always the drama."

And then this bit caught my eye: "The Institute moved in 1910 to 120 Claremont Avenue in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, onto a property purchased from Bloomingdale Insane Asylum," and I dissolved into laughter.

*****************************

In the next plastic sleeve was a card, carefully written, announcing the marriage of Barbara to Bernard Dennis in St. Ludwig's Church in Berlin, March 12, 1910. Pressed flowers tied with a ribbon, a picture postcard of the red brick Gothic church. Beneath that was an announcement in the Oil City paper indicating that the young couple would be honeymooning on a tour of "the continent." And in a cardboard photographer's presentation folder was a formal portrait of the pair: both looked a bit glum by today's giddy wedding photo standards, but then I suppose standing for a long time while a photographer fiddled with equipment and your feet hurt from too-small rented shoes wasn't a lot of fun. Her gown was high-waisted with a dropped over-skirt trimmed in a wide panel of lace, a squared neckline, and a bouquet of long-stemmed white flowers were held as if dropping from her hand by her side. He stood next to her in a suit too short for his long arms, his dark hair slicked back from his forehead. Oddly, they seemed to be gazing in different directions. Beneath that a treasure: notes from Barbara herself she wrote on her travels.

To trace their travels I had to look up a map of Germany, but Germany wasn't just "Germany" in 1910 - it was big, and powerful, and known more commonly as "The Imperial State of Germany." It was sort of divided into smaller states, along the lines of the US, which had been the holdings of German princes, and had a unique way of speaking German. My grandmother's objective, after enjoying the cultural life of Berlin (in the state of Brandenberg - I immediately thought of The Brandenberg Concerto) was to see Bavaria, where her family was from, and then on to any young person's paradises at the time: Vienna, Paris, Rome, and the Riviera.

From her not-very-precise, somewhat breathless, handwritten notes, mostly written on scraps of hotel paper, or the margins of musical programs (she evidently didn't have a diary), the only thing Bernard appreciated about Germany was its excellent medical education. Studying advanced surgical techniques there, the young doctor liked their precision but otherwise found the Germans harsh and superior, especially to an Irishman like himself. Barbara's absorbed fascination with Bavaria's Fairy Tale castles and leiderhosen left him cold, though he did enjoy the beer, and while he wasn't the amorous, romantic husband I think Barbara had hoped for, by the time they reached Rome in the late fall of 1910, she was pregnant.

Another letter from Teeny.

"Dearest Barba,
How thrilling to hear of your news! Please don't carry on about your singing career - how much more exciting that you and Bernard will be starting your family. Your music will always be with you, to bring you happiness, and perhaps one day you can resume it professionally. Mary's studies continue, so she will remain in Germany for another year. However, we are looking forward to your return and the birth of your sweet baby.

In other news, my Mr. Waslohn has asked for my hand, and father and mother approve. We eagerly await your return so that our small ceremony can be held with you as my matron of honor! The exact date is to be determined, but be assured it will be as soon as ever you are with us again. (Of course my grandmother wouldn't have waited for her parents' permission or approval before marrying! Neither would I, and as my mom reminded me so often, I was just like her.)

Please take good care of yourself as you enjoy your final days in Europe. I have been collecting all your postcards and visiting these stunning venues in my heart as I study them.

Much love from your sister,
Justina

************************************************

The next pages were some menus from the ship home, and a newspaper clipping of her arrival in the Oil City paper's society column. By then her father and brother-in-law had made some money wild-catting oil, and were established in the community. And she had been to Europe, after all. It was all so fussy and formal, but I considered her imperiousness when we were children - though she also played the "poor war widow" card, and it started to make sense. She'd been a talented young singer when women could finally perform as artists on stage. Her family was new to comfort if not wealth and she had been sent to Europe to develop her talent. She'd met the man all young women want to marry - a doctor - and was returning home, triumphant. For a woman of her era, she mattered, and all on her own. She must have hated it that we didn't know. But the odd thing is, she never really told us, either.

************************************************

The next few sleeves were an unsorted collection of birth announcements, cards and notes to the new parents, a formal photo of the mother and newborn, and a baptismal announcement. The baby was Jeanne, named, my sister told me years later, for Jean d'Arc, with whose grand and romantic story my grandmother must have romantically identified. The young couple moved to Buffalo and into a house on what I recall from childhood as being a fairly nice, wide, tree-lined street near Delaware Park. Buffalo at that time was a thriving, beautiful city with old money, new money, industry, parks, museums and must have been a welcome step up from Oil City, though there she was somebody, and in Buffalo, she was simply the wife of a doctor, even though that was at least somewhat respectable for the Lady Barbara.

Another letter from Teeny sits in its own sleeve, evidently much read, and with what appear to be water or perhaps tear drops on it.

"April 21, 1913
Dear, dear Barba,
Do not take on so! I know that Bernard is not the most kindly of husbands, but then, which men are? I often think when my lady friends swoon over their men it is merely to show-off and make themselves look grand and enviable. My own Harry, a German temperament if ever there was one, is a good man, but not affectionate, and can be quite harsh. In fact, the only time he was ever quite doting was when our little Robert passed away so quickly. He cried on my shoulder every night for a week. Do try to find it in your heart to forgive the doctor; his burdens from the surgery must be great.

But enough about that! Barba, I have some good news - Harry has found work in Buffalo, and we shall be moving soon. We are expecting again, as I believe I told you, and we would like to be settled as soon as may be. We will, if we can afford to, look to find a home as near to you as we can. I will so much enjoy seeing little Jeanne, and you of course. And when our little one comes, the cousins will be the best of chums! Though of course I will miss our sister. Mary is such good company, and while she has many music students I do believe she would rather be married with a family of her own. She has a beau, though there has been no talk of marriage yet. Mother does well and stays busy. A sturdy Deutsche frau!

Please do write to me and tell me that all is well with you and Bernard. He may be stern, but I am sure he loves you and Jeanne dearly.

Much love from your sister,
Teeny"

So, this letter, as it turns out, told a bigger story. My mom told my sister - which sounds like the beginning of a bad joke - that Barbara and Bernard were not exactly a match made in heaven. Big egos both, she was dramatic and he was cool, and I can only imagine how they must have infuriated one another. Evidently things reached a terrible moment one evening after Jeanne had been undisciplined (she was only 2, after all), dinner wasn't ready on time, Bernard was tired and feverish, and Barbara was in a snit. She pulled out her rosary in her typical gesture of holier-than-thou piety. Bernard did the unthinkable: he pushed her to her knees in a fit of anger and shouted "You better pray for me! I'm going to die!"

I don't know what would have gone through the young mother's head. Of course, had I been Barbara, probably she tossed it off as a dramatic remark she'd make when she was angry. In later years, she would call my father or my aunt and threaten to bite her wrists if they didn't come and attend to her immediately - she wanted to die and evidently biting her wrists was the only method available to her, or at least, the only one that would make a sufficient impression.

The next sleeve contained the sad end to this chapter. Bernard Dennis was, indeed, dying. He had cut his hand during surgery, infecting it, and the infection had spread to his blood resulting in an incurable sepsis. He had known for quite some time that he was going to die, as there was no cure for blood poisoning at the time, though he must certainly have tried every method available. How could she not have noted his deteriorating condition? He might have felt unusually tired, or seen inflammation at the site of the wound. Certainly he'd have known he'd cut himself during the surgery, and depending on the nature of the surgery being performed - it might have been a death sentence from that moment on. Over time, he might have developed a fever, or felt cold. And gradually he'd have gone downhill with strange symptoms and an increasing knowledge that he was not going to live to see his daughter grow up, himself and his wife grow old and see their grandchildren. He returned to Oil City, where he died on July 31, 1913 and then was buried in Rochester at the Holy Sepulchre Cemetery. He was 36 years old. My grandmother was now 27.

I read the clipping again and again, and wondered how she felt. She was so young. But no, in 1913, she was verging on her sell-by date, if not beyond. She was almost 30, and had a child, and was not rich. It was a blow hard for me to wrap my mind around. Times are so different today. Then I began to wonder - maybe Barbara's threat's to bite her wrists weren't just a scene she was playing out for attention? How would she have felt, even if Bernard wasn't her soulmate, facing a life alone with a baby daughter and a lost career in opera?

I remember when the daughter of my parents' neighbor divorced, at 27, with two small children. A young woman with a college education, she had little to fear. But my father had darkly hinted that she had better hurry and find a husband "before it was too late." He seemed more angry than concerned, and his remark took me by surprise. 

I turned to the next sleeve.

*********************************************
It was a muddle of scraps and photos, cuttings and notes. Barbara had evidently lived for a time in Buffalo, eking out a living on what remained of Bernard's estate. It apparently wasn't large enough to support her and Jeanne long, or she wasn't good at managing her money, so by spring 1914 there was a clipping from the newspaper with an ad for surgical equipment to be sold by the widow of a "renowned surgeon in Buffalo." There was a card from a "Dr. Edward Glenn McInery" of Buffalo, a photo of a slightly haggard but still lovely Barbara holding a toddler by the hand, and a photo of the little girl holding a doll and smiling a practiced but lovely child's smile. There was a small appointment book with singing engagements and lessons noted in it - Barbara sang in churches and for social engagements, and taught singing to young ladies, no doubt augmenting her money from Bernard, but in the most dignified of ways. There were also menus from three or four Buffalo night spots - evidently Barbara got out once in a while - and household notes from Teeny. It appears Barbara and Jeanne moved in with Teeny and her husband and kept house with them while they awaited their child. A birth announcement was in the pile - Teeny had had a girl they named Marion.

Amid the cuttings from the Buffalo papers was an announcement that on May 7th, 1915, the RMS Lusitania was sunk, and 128 Americans aboard had died.  

******************************************

There was a gap in the record. Oh, sleeves were filled, but mostly with menus and programs, greeting cards and an occasional letter, and evidence of Barbara having lived something of a social life, until I uncovered a letter that indicated Barbara had returned to Oil City, apparently to take up residence with her mother, Theresa.

August 23, 1916
Dearest,
I am so sorry that you are no longer with us, and even more greatly distressed if Harry caused any turmoil in your leaving. He is not a patient man, and the apartment is small - and with little Marion so active and now walking, it was too much for him. I hope you understand. And of course, Mama needs you, too. With Mary to wed, she has much on her mind and needs you so.

I have no doubt but that your young man, Glenn McInery, will continue to court you. I know that you worry about your age difference, but Barba, you look so young and elegant, and he is obviously quite smitten! And your fussing about Jeanne - she is an adorable child, so well-behaved and charming. How he could not love her as well is beyond anything!

Now I must hurry. Marion is stirring from her nap, and will want to be off to play in the park. I will write again as soon as may be. And if your young man asks after you - as he always seems to do when we pass by him on the way by his offices - I will let you know immediately.

Much love to you, Mary, and Mama,
Teeny

Around the edges of the letter, in what I now knew as Barbara's hand, was the word "War. War. War." repeated over and over again. Of course - Glenn McInery was a young man, in his 20s, and World War I was raging. The United States wasn't in it, but 1916 was an election year, and Roosevelt had called the Lusitania sinking an act of piracy. 

War. War. War.

*****************************************
In the next sleeve were several cards and letters, carefully folded and organized in order by date. Nothing else in the book were so carefully tended. So I knew before I looked that they were from Glenn. Or Edward. Edward Glenn.

A card, in early September, 2016
Missing YOU
A heart carved on a tree with a bird carrying a banner and his name entered into it. In shades of blue and grey.

A note, mid September, 2016 (His handwriting was very precise and neat  - funny, I wondered if my father had inherited this trait from his father. My dad's handwriting was perfect - alignment, letter formation and size. And artist's hand. Curious.)
Dear Barbara,
I am looking forward to visiting with you and your family on the week-end. I think of you often, and miss our enjoyable evenings, and hearing your voice. I intend to motor down Friday, leaving about noon, so you can expect me early evening if all goes well.
Fondly,
Glenn

A Halloween card.
Whoooo misses Yooo?
Me that's Whoooo
With an owl perched in a tree and a little ghost flitting by holding a pumpkin with a smiling face.

A note, mid November, 2016
Dear Barbara,
I am so pleased you have included me in your Thanksgiving holiday, and look forward to spending a nice long weekend with you and your family. I am anxious to see you again and must say that I miss you a great deal. We can celebrate the re-election of President Wilson, and the hopes that our little nation will remain peacefully out of that dreadful war.
Your boy,
Glenn

Another note, December, 2016
Dearest,
I will miss you greatly this Christmas, but I do have some important business to transact out of town immediately after the holiday, as you know, so I will not be at home. I am looking forward, however, to our first New Year's together. Mother is pleased that you and Jeanne will be staying with her, and has planned many outings during your visit - and insists on being the child care while you and I are out on the town! Buffalo's night spots have missed us. I will await your train on December 27th with great anticipation, my dear.

And perhaps there will still remain something for you under the Christmas tree!

Much love from
Your boy, (my mom told me once he called himself "her boy," which might have irked her some, since he was about 3 years her junior - and a woman of her years may not have found that amusing... though later she referred to him sometimes as "the boy")
Glenn
*************************************************

I tried to picture the young man. There were only two images of him that I had ever seen. One was a formal portrait my father kept of him on his highboy dresser. He was dressed in his Army uniform, looking serious, rather handsome and more than a little like my father. The other was a group photo of him and his Army unit, stationed, as the hand-lettered caption read, "somewhere in the United States" (apparently they couldn't divulge their location). He's sitting on the ground, looking relaxed, happy, and with a smirking smile on his face that I recognized from his son's. He looks like laughter in human form. 

Oddly, Barbara kept no other photos of him. I wondered why, since he was a good looking man - not in a classic sense, perhaps, but in a fun, happy-go-lucky way, with a gleam in his eye that told you he was not just a wit but a serious mind. And his choice of careers underscored that.

*************************************************

The next sleeve contained little, but I knew enough to read into the empty space. 

There was a clipping from the newspaper that the United States had declared war on Germany, April 6, 1917. I tried to imagine the conflict in Barbara's heart - her family was German. She had surely loved Germany. Among the things my mother passed along to me were two etchings Barbara had purchased while she was there; a village scene, and a castle high in the mountains. She used to teach me words and phrases in German when she was feeling friendly and grandmotherly. And yet now Germany was the enemy.

Then there was a wedding announcement. Barbara and Edward Glenn married on August 28th, 1917. He was 28, she was 31. They were married in the Grace Methodist Church - which I guess explains the lack of photos and other happy memorabilia. Devout German Catholics, her family would not have been pleased that she was marrying "outside the church." In fact, thinking about it myself, I had to wonder how she brought herself to do it, and why she couldn't persuade him to marry her in the Catholic Church. She was eligible - she was a widow, not a divorcee. I suppose, though, marrying again at all was a prize. Maybe that was the story right there.

I wondered, too, whether their marriage had been one of happy conviction, or the knowledge that he might be soon called to active duty. In that same sleeve was a letter from the State Committee for Council of National Defense for Pennsylvania, Western Division, dated November 28th, 1917, with his commission as a First Lieutenant in the Army. It included a provision that he would not be called to active duty until March, 1918. 

There was a clipping from the paper, and for all that Barbara was known in the Oil City, it was a modest announcement, and simply indicated that the couple had married and would be setting up their home in Buffalo, New York, where he would be practicing medicine and she would be teaching voice. And, looking a bit forlorn, there was a lone pressed white flower, tied with a yellowing silk ribbon, that Barbara must have carried down the aisle.

***********************************************

A letter from Mary, Barbara's next younger sister.

JMJ (here was a clue: as Catholics, especially devout ones, it was common to write "JMJ" at the top of letters, or in school for children to put it at the top of papers. It meant "Jesus Mary Joseph" - the Holy Family. So Barbara had been strong-willed to stand up to that kind of piety and marry the man of her choice, against what must have been objections and worry from her faithful family. Or she really loved Her Boy!)

January 5, 1918

Dear Barbara,

I am happy to share with you the news that Milt (her husband), Glenna and I will be moving to Buffalo within the month as Milt has gotten a very fine job. Mother will join us as soon as we are settled, and we hope to find a home not too far from you and Glenn. We miss having our family close. This terrible war should be warning to us all to love God and our families. I am only grateful to God that Milt is a family man and not likely to be called to fight. I hope that you are saying your beads, and attending Mass. God will understand your marriage, I am sure, for while it is irregular, it is not a sin as long as you remain faithful, and bring your children up as true Catholics. 

I have also shared our good news with Teeny, who tells me that you and Glenn live not too terribly far from her and Harry, and that Jeanne and Marion enjoy one another as cousins do. 

Do give our best to Glenn, and take care of yourself.

With love,

Mary Gertrude

 

************************************************

The next sleeve was another muddle of odd things. I guess when Barbara was emotionally taxed her limited powers of organization went completely out the window. 

There were clippings from the newspaper about the Spanish Influenza, which had first broken out in Kansas among soldiers stationed there, and about its rapid spread. It looked like Glenn might have been keeping some of them with medical interest, as they were paper-clipped together in order by date, with underlined passages about the symptoms and speed of the spread. 

There were household notes, mostly reminders from Glenn to Barbara to order something from the grocer, or change a light bulb, with silly hearts and love messages attached. There was a Valentine's Day card from Glenn, and a hand-drawn one to Momma from Jeanne. It was hard to see Barbara in this light - a woman who could instigate a fight between her son and his wife, my parents, and then sit back and enjoy the fireworks, a fight that escalated to a physical slapping and scratching, while the children, her grandchildren, my sister and I, cried -  as she calmly asked the youngest if she planned to eat her dessert. Could she once have been light-hearted and silly, loving and funny and cheerful? 

Then this: Glenn was required to report for active duty. His deferment, based upon his commission and agreement, had expired, and doctors were needed to treat the growing pandemic, both here and abroad. The notice was dated May 21, 1918. 

And finally, a note, in Barbara's carefully childlike hand, that she had an appointment with an Obstetrician-Gynecologist on June 4, 1918.

************************************************

The next sleeve contained letters from Glenn to Barbara. They were in brief but affectionate, and she had organized them more or less by date, beginning in late May when he had evidently reported for duty. 

They were mostly jolly notes. I think I would have liked the man - and somehow his sense of humor had passed along to the son who never knew him. He would set up an elaborate story to tell her about camp, only to have it be a punch-line ending before he signed off, always with love. 

It seemed he could not tell her where he was, but on their first anniversary, August 28th, 1918, he reported to Chickamauga Park, GA, for Medical Officer's Training. When he first reported in May, he was put to work dealing with the outbreak of the Spanish Influenza, which had begun sometime in February, 1918. By the time Glenn was called into active duty, the flu had run its first deadly wave, and seemed to be tapering off, though he was soon busily treating patients in poor mining towns.

From one of his letters in late spring: "I stepped into a home in this small mining town, Barbie, and the floor of the kitchen was dirt! It was a step up into the parlor, where a single pot-bellied stove was heat for the entire place. Around it, sitting in an assortment of wooden chairs and stools, were men and boys of all ages, one toothless young woman cuddling a tiny infant I knew would not last. Two of the seven or eight men were coughing and feverish, and on a cot toward the front of the parlor was my patient. It was far too late; the young woman was blue and gasping. I could do nothing to help her but urge her family to open the windows from time to time to freshen the air, and wash their hands often, and keep the baby away from the sick girl. I told the two sick men to isolate themselves, drink fluids and try to stay quiet. I watched them passing a bottle, and knew this wouldn't happen. My aides and I washed up as well as could be and left the house, dropping our soiled masks into the contamination sack, and continuing on to the next home.

It frustrates us so, dearest, to be unable to do anything to aid these poor souls. We have no medicine, no magic, no hope, to offer them. 

But I remain healthy and strong, and curiously certain that this very illness will end the war before it kills too many more. Sing to Jeanne, dangle your prayer beads, and dress every day as if it's the day I'm to come home - and perhaps it will be!

With love from your boy,

Glenn"

***********************************

A postcard on October 15, 1918 from Harrisburg, PA, to Mrs. E. G. Henry.

"Tuesday Morning

My dear Family

I arrived here at 6 o'clock, had a fairly good sleep and have just had breakfast. Will leave here at 7:55 and shall then write as soon as possible. Hope you are all well as when I left you.

Love to all

Your Boy, 

EG"

On Oct. 27th 1918 he shipped out from Hoboken, N.Y. on the Leviathan, bound for England, and ultimately, France. Glenn wrote Barbara a jaunty postcard, showing a soldier kissing his sweetheart farewell on the front, and a "C U Soon" with a heart beneath it. Then "And Baby Too!"
I laughed, thinking about how this silly, noble man had anticipated our texting shorthand, and had his spirits high, even after all he had seen before he left for the front. 

The second wave of the influenza had begun, and doctors were desperately needed everywhere. With luck, he would remain at an Army hospital, caring for the sick and wounded, and not have to face the horror of the front with its trenches, mustard gas, whistling bombs, severed limbs and blood drenched fields. 

*******************************

In the next sleeve is a card announcing the birth of a baby boy, Edward Glenn McInery, November 5th, 2018, in Oil City, PA. 

Then, by itself, a letter from the American Red Cross, dated November 19th, 1918.

"My Dear Mrs. McInery,

It is with deep regret that I write you regarding the death of your husband Lieut. Edward G. McInery, which occurred on November 7th 1918 at 9.55 a.m. after transfer from the steamer "Leviathan" to the American Red Cross Military Hospital No, 4, Mossley Hill, Liverpool.

"We are exceedingly sorry to say that he is one of a large number who have succumbed to an epidemic. In its first stages it is a very peculiar form of influenza, but develops very rapidly into a virulent kind of bronco pneumonia. Notwithstanding the skill of our efficient medical officers, and the constant and unremitting care of the nurses, the patients seem to pass away very quickly."

There follow several more letters of a similar kind, but evidently the widow and new mother didn't learn of the death of her husband until nearly two weeks after the event, and he had died 2 days after the birth of his son, and, most sadly of all, four days before the end of the war.

His war record explained: "After leaving Camp Greenleaf Surgical Group No 2. were sent to Allentown and from there were sent to surrounding towns to care for Influenza patients worked day and night then were put on S.S. Leviathan and sent to Europe while on boat also cared for flu patients to prevent epidemic worked up until two days before he landed with temperature of 101. Taken from ship Nov 5 and died Nov 7."

As I closed the last sleeve of the final book, I pictured Barbara: old, grey, but her posture straight; perhaps a little tight from the afternoon's "prayers," marching up and down our living room with her hand to her forehead in a salute, dramatically declaring, "I am a war widow. A war widow."

____________________________________________

Henry - Thomas 1755 Chester County - fought in the American Rev - ended up in Mifflintown, PA. Was a tanner, had a brother John who also settled there. A man named Evans in his company in Rev - he married Dorothy Preston, had several children. 1820 Thomas died, all of kids went to western PA or OH. William Henry was our progenitor, worked in lumber and was a farmer. He married Keister (they had Samuel Custer, Samuel Maze married Emma Kerr, they had Edward Glenn our grandfather, then our dad). Edward (name) came from Kerr's, who were from Ireland (originally from Scotland).

Barbara Schneider (changed to Snyder) were Bavarian, father of the family in Germany was married twice, some came to US - Philip Snyder had a sister Justina who married Linch (a man) - they were teamsters. Came to western PA because Justina's husband started to dabble in oil, drove wagons for oilers. Then the brothers got into oil speculation. Theresa Schwabenbauer was our great grandmother who married Philip Snyder. They had a boy Henry who died, then had Barbara, Mary Gertrude and Justina (Aunt Teeny).

Barbara went to school in NYC - precursor to Julliard - for music. She finished there, went to Germany for further study with Aunt Mary (her sister). The girls were born in Oil City Pa. She went to Berlin, and there she met Bernard Dennis (he was a Catholic too, one of his sisters was a nun). He was studying medicine - he was from Rochester area, Irish, got into police work - to this day there are Dennis's in Rochester, NY. Bernard was named after his grandfather, and was oldest. He did a surgical residency in Berlin. They were married in St. Ludwig's church in Berlin. They toured Europe, visited France, etc. Shortly after they returned they had Aunt Jeanne (who was named after Jean d'Arc). He studied surgery. (Bernard Francis Dennis). Aunt Jean born in 1911, 1913 Dr. Dennis dies. He got sepsis - he cut himself during surgery and got sepsis. He knew he was going to die. (Our mom said they didn't have a good marriage... supposedly they had a fight, and he pushed her down on her knees and said "You better pray for me, because I'm going to die.") He left her with not much - he had set up surgical practice in Buffalo, but returned to Oil city to die. He was buried in Rochester - Holy Sepluchre Cemetery. Died July 31, 1913, 36 years old.

Then she was left with little, she sold off his medical equipment, and in the process met Edward Glenn, he was starting his practice. They met that way and fell in love. Married Edward in Methodist Church (he was not Catholic). Oil City August 28th 1917. (He would have been 28, she would have been 31) November 7 he died, Oct. 27th 1918 he left from Hoboken, NY. West Darby, Lancashire, he died. Ship landed in Liverpool.  He's buried in Brookwood, outside of London. He had been treating patients here - people with flu. He was born Feb. 23, 1889 (29 years old at death)

Barbara and Edward lived in Buffalo. Mary Gertrude married Milton Reynolds, and he takes a job in Buffalo. Rest of the family followed. Eventually even Theresa moved to Buffalo (she had worked in the family restaurants which they owned). Dr. Dennis had also practiced in Buffalo, and they had lived there for a while, too. They had a place nearby the Reynold's. She and dad shared a bed til dad was 16. Gramma always envisioned Dad would never marry, would stay and take care of her. Gramma sang in various churches to make a little money. She gave music lessons (voice). Aunt Mary was pianist. Widow's pension, added with music lessons.

Gramma died of Henry cells. Overabundance of red blood cells - too rich. She'd bruise easily.

George and Marian - Justina (Aunt Teeny was Marian's mother). She married Harry Waslohn. They had Robert and Marian. Robert died young. They lived in Buffalo. George married Marian. Harry Waslohn was born in Germany, died in Buffalo. The little boy who died was born in Oil City.

Aunt Jean said to Missy my mother was a very difficult woman.

BIRTH	11 Apr 1886 Snydersburg, Clarion County, Pennsylvania, USA
DEATH	16 Sep 1961 (aged 75) Buffalo, Erie County, New York, USA
BURIAL	Mount Olivet Cemetery Kenmore, Erie County, New York, USA

Her father:

May 1846 Bad Kissingen, Landkreis Bad Kissingen, Bavaria (Bayern), Germany
DEATH	29 Nov 1906 (aged 60) Cleveland County, Oklahoma, USA
BURIAL	Saint Josephs Cemetery Oil City, Venango County, Pennsylvania, USA

Her mother:

Theresa M Schwabenbauer Snyder

BIRTH	10 Apr 1858 Tylersburg, Clarion County, Pennsylvania, USA
DEATH	24 Dec 1925 (aged 67) Buffalo, Erie County, New York, USA
BURIAL	Saint Josephs Cemetery Oil City, Venango County, Pennsylvania, USA

Edward Glenn

23 Feb 1889 Marienville, Forest County, Pennsylvania, USA
DEATH	7 Nov 1918 (aged 29) Lancashire, England
BURIAL	Brookwood American Military Cemetery Brookwood, Woking Borough, Surrey, England
PLOT	Plt D, Row 5, Grave 3

Shakespeare

(Notes on Shakespeare:
There is no historical record of Shakespeare’s life between 1585 and 1592, after which he became established as a dramatist and playwright. The Bard would have been about 21 years old at the beginning of that period. What was he up to? Nobody really knows, though some theories hypothesize that he was a law clerk, a soldier, a schoolmaster, or an actor.

Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway in 1582, when he was 18 years old and she was 26. They remained together until his death in 1616. Their courtship began with a rather abrupt start, as Hathaway was several months pregnant at the time of their marriage.

Though it is only rarely mentioned in his plays, Shakespeare lived through several outbreaks of the Bubonic plague in England. He was lucky to have survived it, but lost several of his loved ones to it, including three sisters, his brother Edmund, and possibly his son Hamnet (although Hamnet’s precise cause of death is unclear).

Though the time of his passing has been documented, Shakespeare’s cause of death remains a mystery. An anecdote from a clergyman's diary, written decades after, claims that the writer died from a severe fever, possibly related to typhus, but that has never been proven.

It’s perhaps a modest request that a great playwright wished for his remains to be left in peace, but Shakespeare wasn’t taking any chances. His gravestone at the Church of the Holy Trinity in Stratford-upon-Avon reads:

"Good friend for Jesus’ sake forbear, To dig the dust enclosed here. Blessed be the man that spares these stones, And cursed be he that moves my bones."

In 2016, a team of scientists used radar scans to investigate the burial site of William Shakespeare and uncovered signs of disturbances around the remains. The evidence suggests that his skull was likely removed from his grave at some point in history.

To wrap your head around time crystals, imagine snowflakes or rubies—crystals that tantalizingly corrupt spatial symmetry. Unlike the perfectly symmetrical empty space, there are spots on these spatial crystals that look different than other spots, such as their edges. 

In much the same way, then, a time crystal breaks the symmetry of time: their atoms love being in different points in space at different points in time, shifting directions as if a pulsating force flipped them. can move without absorbing energy because they’re created from trapped ions—blends of electric or magnetic fields that can capture charged particles, usually in a system isolated from an external environment, with the capacity to tirelessly gyrate, even at their lowest energy-point (their so-called Vladimir Eltsov, an applied physicist at Aalto University in Finland, who, together with professor Grigori Volovik and doctoral candidate Samuli Autti, took a time quasi-crystal and morphed it into a wholesome and superfluid time crystal in May 2018, is electrified by the virtues of time crystals—even if he doesn’t (yet) believe in their power to turn us all into budding Doc Browns. 

Elstov instead prefers to think about how time crystals can advance us technologically. For example, time crystals can help us make highly sensitive magnetic-field detectors or components of quantum computers. And such is Eltsov’s faith in these fascinating structures that he believes they can be our ally in tackling the most theoretical and highbrow stumpers related to the fundamental laws ruling the universe. Thorne offered explanations for several logical conundrums regarding time travel, including the paradox of going back in time through a wormhole and accidentally killing your grandfather, thereby also killing yourself. (How can you exist if your father doesn’t exist, since the sperm half responsible for his conception was destroyed … by you?)  

In 1991, Thorne did some mathematical calculations and found that such paradoxes couldn’t arise, but were instead replaced by an infinite number of other potential outcomes. (You could go back in time and mess around with your grandfather all you want, but there’s no way you could have killed him, otherwise you wouldn’t exist to kill him in the first place.)

Then there’s the theory of the many worlds hypothesis, which could resolve some of the implications of going back in time and altering the future. This hypothesis suggests we live in a near-infinity of universes that have the same physical laws and values, but exist in different states and are arranged so that no information can pass between them. Essentially, with every decision we make, the universe splits into multiple realities, and we’re completely unaware of the alternative scenarios our exact replicas experience in the other universes. 

“Time travel would, in the theory of multiverses, have us wind up on one of these other universes, so it would not necessarily be a straight linear path forward to back for us, but a crossing between universes,” says Holler. “I’m not completely sold on it, but there are plenty of smart people working on it and seem to believe it’s very, very feasible,” he continues. 

But the incredibly prepossessing theory of multiverses lacks proof in the form of solid calculations, says von Keyserlingk. For him, the problem with the many worlds interpretation and time travel isn’t that they’re necessarily fiction, but that we may currently be missing the mathematical tools and even philosophical ideas to negotiate these things. They’re at the very theoretical end of physics, he says: things that we can really only speculate on, whereas science at its best is just “informed speculation.” >“It can sometimes happen that nature presents us with issues that no one has figured out before,” von Keyserlingk says. “One of the issues is that we have a fairly fixed idea of what space and time is. Resolving the hardest problems in physics requires throwing away a lot of our preconceived notions.” In a more mathematically, philosophically advanced future, then, could we discover more time-traveling properties of time crystals? Don’t hold your breath, Khemani says. While the crystals do hold a few tiny secrets of the universe, the only thing they have in common with time travel is just one word: time. That’s at least for now—but maybe not forever.

/> The Tempest as Shakespeare's farewell:
https://shakespeareandbeyond.folger.edu/2020/03/31/prospero-epilogue-tempest-shakespeare-farewell-emma-smith/</ 

The rules:
You either can or can't time travel - and only back from your existing time.
Most people can travel for a short period of time - up to roughly a year - without suffering any consequences of illness. Some people can make a permanent transition, but generally it's to a place or person they have a connection to - and only when and if they are replacing a person in that time frame (who has died). People who can travel in time recognize one another (not sure exactly how yet) - but that way they can assist one another in preparing, and even in letting someone know they have this gift. The actual mechanism is time crystals can attach to you, if you have the power to attract them - and for as long as they are attached you can move backward through time. It isn't generally known by anyone but those who can attract the crystals.

For people who want to go back and stay for a long period of time, you can either remove the crystals completely (this can happen accidentally as well), or you can "cover" them for extended periods of time by injecting a stabilizer. You can do this until you begin to feel the ill effects. Then  you have to remove them completely, or go back.

(Pregnancy or child in any time period not your own can tie you to that period OR if you are pregnant through a person from that era, you can be permanently attached - this is why Mistress Quickly is stuck in the 1500s, and how Randi gets to stay, and how Wm can finally return to the future - he meets his daughter, she gets pregnant, and his crystals "recover.")
********************************************************88

I don't know why I was so surprised that the past smells bad.

But it really stinks. Body odors, bad breath (omg!), and shit of all kinds - horses, dogs, pigs, people. Old, rotten food and stuff in the streets. Do these people ever wash or pick up stuff? My mom would kill me if my room looked this bad.

So, ok, I'm here. It's May 31, 1613. Crazy, huh? Getting here was TOTALLY un-fun, tho, and I feel like I'm gonna barf. Dr. Lloyd told me it was kinda like a roller coaster - stepping through the hole the crystals let me find. Wrong! It was like drinking a quart of vodka and then going for a ride with Craig Waterman in his stupid jacked-up 2015 Porsche. Ick.

But I'm in the safe house, and there's a woman here - Mrs. Quickly - and she says I should lie down for a while. So...later!

Private Diary. (Private vs personal diary; add that the moon is a time geyser - it it churns space time; more about how time is moved about in, )

June 1, ???
Which is it? Do I say it's now for me (2067), or do I say it's now for the people who live here? (1613?) Anyway, my name is Miranda (Randy) Quilliam, and I'm here cuz I can step - and Dr. Lloyd found me, and said I could travel, if I wanted to. Honest, I thought he was a freak or was trying to get weird with me, but I had to be honest and admit I'd felt the crystals before. I mean, I didn't know what they were. I just felt itchy, and sometimes I found myself somewhere else all of a sudden - mostly some time else - a week ago, or yesterday. Well, anyway. So Dr. Lloyd started to show me how it all worked, and finally said I was ready to go exploring if I wanted to. He said I could go spend a few months, maybe even a year, in some time and place in the past. So, after I thought it over for a while, I chose 1613 because of Shakespeare.

I just love his plays, and most of all, I wanted to be in one of them. Or more than one. But other than some bit parts, I never got cast as anyone like Juliet or Portia or someone. I learned all the lines, and I studied everything I could find about him. Of course, now we know William Shakespeare wasn't who we thought he was - oh, there was definitely a guy named William Shakespeare, but he didn't write all the plays and poems and stuff. He wrote some of them - the tragedies and histories, and a lot of the poems. But then there was this other dude who actually had a thing for Wm.,  his name was Henry deVere, and he has an amazing sense of humor. Or at least that's the story that's been collected about Wm.  - other steppers have been to the 1500s, Wm.'s era , but they're not always focused on him. Maybe it's the plague. Or architecture, or Elizabeth. Who knows. One of the younger guys I met in the program, Darryl, wasn't that impressed with Wm., he says now he wants to go and meet Napoleon. He pulled his crystals before his time was up here and... well, it's actually kind of an amazing process, but right now I'm hungry so - later.

Private Diary
June 1, 1613 (around 8pm)
Dark! Man is it dark here!! How did people stand it! Fortunately, I brought a flash with me, but Mrs. Quickly reminded me I have to be very careful about using it, cuz if anybody sees me, I could literally be assumed to be a witch, and around this time, they f'ing BURN witches!! Seriously, they had a beheading today in the town (oh, btw, I'm in London). It was crazy. I didn't actually watch, I would definitely have puked, but I saw all the people following the cart that was carrying this poor guy - he was a total mess, all filthy and covered with blood and poop and stuff - and he was just crying. And all the people were following along like it was a rock concert or something. WTF. I'm really glad I don't live now. Then. Whatever. In spite of the bug stuff Dr. Lloyd injects into us before we step, I'm still getting bit. At least I won't get any horrible diseases.

Anyway, I said I'd explain about how there's people who can step and people who can't, and if you can, you can recognize other steppers. Some people never find out that they are, but somewhere along the way, one of the brainy types like Dr. Lloyd realized what was going on and managed to actually track the crystals. He says people have been moving in time forever, they just didn't know it, or people thought they were magicians or shamans or just plain crazy, and probably more than a few of them figured out how they could use it to get rich, or just have fun. The crystals are all over the place - like, floating, but they can jump time. Actually, they sort of want to move through space-time. So if you're one of us, they're attracted to you and sometimes they dig into your skin for a little while - and that's when you wake up two days ago. Seriously, it happened to me. Not a lot of time, but I'd be going along and suddenly realize I did all this before.

So, ok, the reason Dr. Lloyd could see me was he said I "sparkled." Sounds like that vampire thing, only it's subtle and we don't drink blood - ha. If you know what to look for you can see it, though I have to admit I'm not really tuned into that yet. Then he decides if he wants to tell you about it. There are a lot of guys like Dr. Lloyd, and they've turned the whole thing into a study, and sort of like a secret society. They don't want to freak anyone out, and they also don't want anybody trying to go back in time and cause trouble. And they definitely don't want it to be some kind of Dr. Evil super weapon. So they kind of test you, at least if you're older, and if you're a kid like me, they'll do some training and let you know that it's serious stuff - and if they don't teach you what to do you'll never get much further than a couple of weeks or maybe months on your own, anyway. And I figure they're really just getting to know you and decide whether or not you'd make a good member of the team. Turns out that there aren't all that many people who can handle this. There are people who attract the the crystals, and who jump around in time, but they hate it and they just think something's wrong. A little downer will shut the crystals up and keep most people stationary. 

So, I'm in honors History (haha, believe it or not!), because you have to do a lot of studying if you want to go anywhere special. Some people with the crystals don't want to go anywhere - it's like you told them they have some disease, and they just don't want to know anything about it. But if you want to really work with it, and you're still a kid, you get a scholarship to a special school that trains you and helps you sort out if you want to go, where you want to go, and basically, where the crystals are pulling you. Out of the whole - seriously!! - whole world, there are only a few of us who get to go anywhere major, at least now that Dr. Lloyd and people like him have figured a lot of it out and kind of became the Time Police.

Dr. Lloyd says they haven't known about the crystals for that long. At some point in the last century - actually the late 1900s - they figured out that there were these crystals that they called time crystals, because the atoms didn't obey time - they flipped around. And some other guys figured out a way to use the energy, and then one thing led to another and pretty soon they realized that some living things sort of attracted the crystals, and once you had enough of them, they could drag you around in time. That's kind of what was happening to me before Dr. Lloyd found me. But he and his Genius Posse figured out a way to direct where you went, and then it was off to the races. They were really careful, though, because they figured it was just a matter of time before the "bad guys" would try to create a black market on crystals, or go back and set themselves up to be rich, or worst of all, go back and change history.  

And the truth is, some people just step without any plan, or even knowing what they're doing. But that's a whole other subject - but it is kind of scary when you think about it. Just imagine, waking up in another when, and not know how you got there, or why - but everything looks different, and you have no idea why you're there. Ugh.

The trick, still, is that you can't leave any fingerprints on the past. That's what they call it - fingerprints. It just means you don't fuck with the timeline. So... we can bring some stuff with us, but we have to bring it back (there's also a cleanup crew that steps just before we go home so they're sure we bring everything back). And, we have to wipe our interactions. Well, we don't, the cleanup crew does. It's really pretty easy. They have an electromagnetic device, and they basically just... what? UNFOLD the brain part that was affected by our visit. So, these poor targets. Every so often, some person from the future drops in on them at some point, we study them, and then they get wiped and we go home and write about our visit. Not that we tell them anything, just we have to be careful that they don't get any inappropriate ideas.

Like, actually, a few guys did - DaVinci, and Sir Francis Bacon. Some Egyptian dude - that was actually a funny one. The first engineer who went back to find out how the Egyptians engineered the pyramids actually ended up leaving the "how-to" that gave the Egyptians the ideas they needed to build the pyramids. It was after that that we started to get really, really careful about wiping the past. I mean, that one ended up being harmless, but it could have caused like a serious anomaly. Well, that's not entirely true - whatever happened in the past happened. Some people have written papers about how paradoxes can't really happen because whatever might have been changed cause you stepped is changed - and if you went back, then you technically can't have erased your great-great-something or you never would have been and that's way over my head and too theoretical. I'm kind of more artistic, right? I just want to go back and act in some Shakespeare plays when they were first happening.

Granted, nothing much new comes of our visits. We haven't seen it all, but Dr. Lloyd made it a priority to have history types go back and they have done their best to be all over the past - I mean, like ALL over it, from the proto-humans all the way up to yesterday. They've met Nero and Jesus and one guy got killed by a big hairy hominid and boy was THAT a mess. I mean, he got his brains beat out in like 7 million B-fucking-C-E!! So his DNA was all over the place, and it took the cleanup crew a solid week to make sure nothing was left, and they had to be so careful not to kill any hominids in the process. (DNA doesn't matter once humans were modern humans, of course.) And who knows - maybe those hominids that saw the cleanup crew are the first ones who decided, shit, there must be a God or something, cuz the cleanup crews have all these amazing tools they use to make things dis-integrate.

Ok, I better finish up for tonight. Nothing much more to do but go to sleep, I guess. I'm serious when I say it's dark. The windows here are really, really small, and all they have for light are these stinky (I mean, they stink!!) candles and dishes of animal fat with a little wick in them. Yuck. I brought my iBrain to talk my notes into (we all do), so I've got books and stuff, but again - same problem - you don't want to get caught with something like that, so we're told to use it just for our notes, then put it back in its hiding place. So, g'night, ttyl.

June 2, 1613
I woke up early today and put on my smelly clothes. Haha. I actually am starting to smell like everybody here, which is probably a good thing, as I don't notice how bad it is so much now. Mrs. Quickly made me something to eat, but I'm SO craving some real food. They eat the most revolting stuff here. They do, thank God, have coffee! In fact, they have these little coffee houses where you can go and get a coffee for a penny (take, that, Starbucks!) and sit around and talk. No 'brains, of course, but all the "educated" folks go there and drink coffee and talk. Boy, do they talk! Of course, we all had to be trained in Elizabethan English before we came, so I've got my thee's and thou's all down to a science, and I can understand them just fine. 

What's funny to me is they sound like old movies about Georgia or Arkansas or someplace, not like what we expect Brits to sound like. I had heard recordings, of course, but for whatever reason, they try to not expose us to a lot of Then before we go. I think it's some sort of Intellectual Purity endeavor. So to my ear, anyway, they sound like people speaking with a German-Southern accent, if you can wrap your head around that!

But back to food. They don't really do breakfast-lunch-dinner the way we do. Pretty much the same food is around for every meal, and a lot of it tastes like its way past its sell-by date. There's always meat, but that's cuz Mrs. Quickly is supposed to be a rich widow (she's actually one of us, but she's been here so long I guess she's one of "them," too!). Poor people don't get to eat a lot of meat, actually. Poor people don't get a lot of anything - but more about that, later. They love pie. Really big pie-eaters. Meat pie, sweet types (these are actually pretty good!), fish pie (gross). I guess anything that you can make and keep for a while without refrigeration (there are no fridges, duh!) is good. And they can carry pies around with them, but honest to God, picking bugs out of my food (which you do end up doing) is just disgusting! So anyway, breakfast could be anything from bread and cheese to meat pie to fruit and milk, and I do get to have coffee. So thank God for that but boy would I like a Vitamin Diet Coke.

Nothing, and I mean nothing is cold. Well, that wouldn't be true if it were winter, but they don't usually send us in the coldest months of the year cuz there's a lot more illness, and in spite of all the shots we get, it's still possible to pick up some germs when so many people are sick. And we'd get to see less just because it's harder to get around. And these people are so gross, like I told you, they pick their noses and wipe them on their clothes and they spit all over the place, and people pee on the street all the time, even women sometimes, and every once in a while you see someone pooping right there on the street, too. Yuck!! They are just so f'ing dirty it's hard to believe. Even the rich people have dirty clothes and hands - and they wear wigs a lot of them, because like Mrs. Quickly told me, they shave off all their body hair so they don't get so many lice. Lice!!

And bedbugs. Even tho Mrs. Quickly is, by this time's standards, a really clean person (she does have a secret store of some modern chemicals that we bring her, like bleach and soap and stuff), it's still impossible to keep all the bugs out. I mean, for one thing, we sleep on straw! No shit! That took some getting used to.

They get a big bunch of straw, and pound on it to make it kind of soft, and then they fill a sack - we have linen, but I would guess that poor people don't even have a sack - and that's your mattress. It makes all kinds of noise when you turn over, and unless you've done a really good job pounding it,  it can be very prickly, but needless to say, it's straw, so there are gonna be bugs in it, and they do escape from the sack. And they're also in the thatch on the roofs of a lot of houses, and they get on your clothes... it's sort of a losing battle.

And of course these people don't have the bug shots that we get, so not only are the bugs not being actively repelled, but they can get all kinds of diseases, like bubonic plague!! - seriously!! - from bug bites.  And of course you walk down the street and everybody's faces and arms have bug bites along with the dirt and totally gross-out teeth.

We bring our toothbrushes, but all these people have are sticks they use to clean their teeth, and there's not a lot of tooth-cleaning going on, anyway, so there are all these crooked and missing and black - I mean it, black! - teeth.

Women Mrs. Quickly's age - about 35 or so - they don't have any teeth at all a lot of them. They say "for every baby, a tooth," cuz I guess that having a baby uses up some calcium or something. But there are women who have little babies in their arms and a toddler hanging on their skirts and then they have three teeth left! Weird.

Ok, time for me to go. They're doing a production of MacBeth at the Globe Theater, and Wm. is supposed to actually be there. It's a command performance - MacBeth isn't a new play, and generally speaking, they like to do new plays over old ones - it makes them more money. And they have plays during the day - I mean, think about it - that would be an amazing number of candles and lanterns and things when you do a play in the dark!, so, I have to get over there by the afternoon. And you can't get from here to there real fast when there aren't any cars or buses or even bicycles, for God's sake! 

If you know where the Globe Theater was, Mrs. Quickly's town home is on the other side of the river. She has an estate in the country outside of town - where a lot of the "posh" people live - but she spends most of her time in London handling the crystal people. To get to the Globe, we walk or take - which is sort of like a box attached to poles that a couple of big guys carry - to the Thames River. Then we hire a boat and we go across and land on a dock not far from the Globe.

See, Mistress Quickly is in an interesting spot. She's from the future, but she came back before Dr. Lloyd started his experiments, and she got stuck here. Nobody's quite sure how or why but she can't move. She can't go back to her time, and she can't come to our time - to Dr. Lloyd's time. But the thing is with Steppers, they know each other. I mean, like I told you, most of us, yeah, well, we sparkle with the crystals. But Mistress Quickly, she was invisible to other Steppers because she lost her crystals. Dr. Lloyd is working on a theory about that, but he hasn't said anything yet. Oh! Speaking of that - we talk back and forth with the future. Well, not really talk-talk, but we leave communications for each other. It's really kind of obvious in a weird way once you think about it. There's a spot we pick where we leave messages for the future, in a box that we put into a spot we know exists in the future. Somebody on the team checks a few times a day at the sites where they have stepper visiting, and then on this side of time, there's a day tripper who comes through with things for Mistress Quickly, or with messages or things like that. 

Anyway, Mistress Quickly recognized some of the steppers and eventually got up the courage to ask one of them "when" they were from. Turns out she's from the 1960s or so - so way before my time. But she didn't know what to do, cause like I said she was stuck here without crystals, and she was running out of options. Women in this time don't have a lot of options, it turns out. If they don't have money, or a husband or father or protector, they can be servants or sell themselves on the street. So the stepper she approached turned out to be one of Dr. Lloyd's team, and when they realized she was from the future but stuck in the past, they figured they had to find all the Stucks. They figured it would be easier for them if they had someone here, so they started a whole program to find people in some of the "nexuses" of time, places they wanted to study or times that were popular with visitors. Needless to say, Elizabethan times, around Shakespeare's life, was a very popular tourist spot! 

And here's the other interesting thing: there are a lot of people lost in time. Dr. Lloyd is working hard to find them, but the team is small because Dr. Lloyd doesn't want to take any chances. Turns out the time paradox theory is probably not correct, like, you can't go back and kill your great-great-great grandfather, because if you could, then you'd never have been alive to go back and kill your ancestor (as if that makes any sense), but says he's not counting on it. Meanwhile, Mistress Quickly was established as a wealthy widow of a planter from the New World who returned home with her brother. Now she receives visitors from the future and helps them navigate the past. She's ok here, all in all, but there's something sad about her. People have tried to help her catch a new batch of crystals, but you can't feed someone yours, and nobody can get them unless the crystals want to be gotten - more or less.

Anyway,  Mistress Quickly doesn't keep many servants - because that would just be a pain, under the circumstances - so she has a few for her town house, and hires temporary help when she goes shopping or to an entertainment or something. She has a story about difficult health that gets her out of a lot of the socializing and servant hiring she'd normally have to do. 

Anyway, to get to the Globe, we have to get down to the river, and then we get a boat to take us over to the landing near the theater. If we had to walk, we'd go down to the river, hang a left, and keep walking til we got to London Bridge. Over the bridge - more about that later - and then take a right and look for the flags over the theaters til we see the Globe's. 

Later!

June 3, 1613
Wow, that was totally different! I mean, we're studying Shakespeare's era, obviously, so I've seen a lot of his plays, and I've seen "the Scottish play" about four times, and this was completely different.

So first, the theater: like I said, it's called The Globe, and it's this big, I don't know, maybe 100 feet? in diameter, more or less circular building the floor space is about 300 feet in circumference. One side is all what looks like box seats, and the other is the stage area - it's got a thrust stage, which is a stage that actually extends out into the audience. The floor of the theater is just this big pit thing where all the poorer people stand. They stand up, the whole time, and this is like four hours or something. OMG. And they eat and talk the whole time, too, which is really bizarre, and a little annoying. Anyway, there's no roof over the pit part. The rich people sit up in the box seat area (where I actually was able to sit, which was quite cool).

I guess it costs a penny to stand in the pit, and I'm not sure what Mrs. Quickly paid for my entrance, all I know is I was sitting in a wooden chair in one of the boxes with her, and there was a family there with us who seemed to know her pretty well. They weren't from our time, though, that's for certain.

So, it was like seeing MacBeth for the first time, totally. For one thing, none of it was cut. I mean, nothing. And this sucker is loooong. And I love the play, I really do, but come on! My butt was so sore by the end, and I totally had to pee but there is NO way I'm going to the outhouses where all those pit-people were going, and then they had these screen and a bucket up in the stalls for us, but again, no way in hell I'm doing that, either. So I just bit my lip and crossed my legs.

But I have to say they had quite the special effects going for them. Not exactly like today, but they did have people - the ghosts - flying in from the ceiling (it's called "the heavens, and it's even painted to look that way). And the scene with the three witches on the moors - that was pretty fucking amazing. Fireworks, and whatever they were doing to make thunder. The whole thing was almost as good as Saw 22.

Ok, then the other thing was, of course, all the actors are men. I mean, I knew that, but it still was kind of surprising. One of the more surprising parts was that I think I'd always envisioned the men-playing-women thing as kind of like Late Trans in our day, but they weren't. Some of them if I hadn't known better I would have sworn they really were women. After a while, I forgot all about it and just went with it. Maybe it would bother me more in a play like, say, Romeo and Juliet? I'm not sure. I'll see that, too, before I leave, if I can.

Oh, in case I haven't told you - I'm scheduled to be here for a couple of months. I mean, we go to all the trouble of getting prepped, so they try to give us as much time as they reasonably can. Trained adults can step for years at a time, but then, they're professionals. It does make you wonder what it would be like to take up that profession, and that's partly why Dr. Lloyd recruits people with crystals. Honestly, there are so many other time periods I'd love to visit - the Civil War, I'd love to meet the real Ghengis Khan. But actually, that's not all that possible. See, one of the limitations of stepping is your looks. That is to say, you have to blend. So, here I am a blue-eyed blond girl, so there are places and times I just can't go. Here is ok cause I'm in the middle of a lot of blue-eyed blonds, and I have a woman who acts like my Aunt or cousin or whatever, so I'm safe. But I couldn't go to pre-Columbian Mexico, for example, cuz I'd stand out like the proverbial sore thumb.

Now, there are a handful of really dedicated steppers who've gotten plastic surgery so they could go and spend time in a particular time period and place - like, they got their eyes done and their skin dyed so they could go live in China in the year 1 or something. But that's pretty radical, and naturally, nobody my age is gonna go there. So, you are limited in your choices of authors to one who lived in a place where you'll not look too odd. Of course, for all the more modern writers, even 19th, 20th, and 21st century writers, it really doesn't matter much cuz people were all mixed up by then, more or less.

And of course, there's the language. If you're really going to step, it's hard enough - even with sleep-learn - to adopt a reasonably good version of English. But if you're talking Egyptian, for God's sake. I can't imagine what it was like for the first people who went there. They were guessing what it sounded like, for sure. Well, actually, there's more to that story: the first few people who went to any of those really remote periods just went with recorders. They had to go grab handfuls of language, costume, any sense input so that they could come back to Real Time and extrapolate. Otherwise, anybody who went to really study the period would be really at risk. There are stories in the dorms about people who got left where they were because somehow they figured out that whatever they did, they had to stay in that time stream. I can't even begin to imagine.

Ok, so back to the theater. The other thing that was really, really different is that they just kept going - there was no mingle/drink/pee break in the middle. And their style of acting was just bizarro. All these postures and I don't know, it seemed so formal somehow.

Nowadays actors try so hard to be natural. To say and do things so that you get no hint that they're acting. Like you're just eavesdropping on their conversations, and like the words are just spilling out of them the way we talk without planning what we're going to say. Back then it was more like, what, like giving a speech. The comedy parts were silly - lots of falling down and farting and rude stuff - but the serious parts were - well, my teacher talked one time about actors "declaiming," and that's really more what they were doing. It was good, don't get me wrong, but it was too long and a little too stagey for me, on the whole.

Anyway, Wm. was there. But man, he doesn't exactly look like I expected. I would maybe have recognized him from his portraits, believe it or not - kinda big nose, balding, longish hair. A little out of shape looking, but then people did all kinds of things to help nature with what they thought they should look like. So they padded their stomachs and shoulders and, yeah... and omg, he really was wearing an earring. Seriously. Cool little hoop in one ear.

Of course, everybody dresses very cool in this time period, even if their clothes are smelly. Well, I should amend that. The rich people wear cool clothes. The poor people wear nasty smelly rags. I mean, rags. Lots of people are barefoot, but some people have their feet wrapped up in rags. And some people just walk around in these sort of sacks of really rough cloth - kind of like a burlap bag - maybe tied in the middle. And that is it. They must f'ing freeze in the winter. (Mrs. Quickly pointed out to me that there actually are a lot of people missing fingers and toes where they got frostbit and rotted off. Gross.)

But the rich people, or richer people wear all these cool fabrics, like lace and brocade. Unless of course you're a Puritan, and then you were very plain, dark clothes with a collar. Lots of collars on everyone, but if you're rich it's more likely to be lace or something. Or ruffs - now, that, I think looks amazingly stupid. These funny starched clown collars. What is that all about? Well, I guess you could say what are our hologram t's all about now? Just fashion, I guess. But like I never got the huge pants from around 2010 - I mean, how uncomfortable to walk around just holding your pants up! - I don't really get the ruff. At least our hologram t's are comfy, even if you do have to charge them now and again.

Anyway. I'm tired, so I'm gonna stop now, even though I haven't gotten to the best part. I'll just give you a hint: his name is James.

May 2, 2010
I saw James again today! (James is related to the deVeres and is an actor)

He was loitering outside Mrs. Quickly's house when we went to the market. He bowed and tipped his hat to us, and then walked with us to the market, but then he had to leave.

Ok, wait, let me back up: James is this truly delicious boy I met at the theater yesterday. I know, I know, no fraternizing is the rule for stepping. But honest to God, he is so cute, and hardly smells at all, and his teeth are even clean and pretty! And he kept looking at me instead of at the play. Now, you gotta understand - in my time I'm only a sort-of good looking girl. I'm not one of the more popular ones. I'm not a loser, but I'm not one of the beautiful set, either.

So, at home I attract the middle-of-the-road boys, too. I mean, they really want the beautiful girls, or the sluts, but they end up dating us "so-sos." What's really funny is that most of the beautiful girls are actually beautiful cuz they've had plastic surgery - nose jobs, boob jobs, chin implants. It's all pretty cheap these days - or, those days! haha, I'm not sure how I should refer to it! - but my mom won't let me or my sister get any until we're legally adults. Jeesh. Every once in a while she goes into this religious rant but, never mind, more about that another time. Doesn't she remember how it felt to be in high school?? And not be one of the cool crowd? I mean, this is my one and only high school experience, and it really, really sux to have to live with small boobs and a just-ordinary face. I think if I got my lips done I'd be more than halfway pretty. My eyes are really blue and big enough, and my nose is pretty ordinary. I've got freckles, but not really ugly big coppery ones like Cheryl's, so that's ok.

My hair is one of my better features, and I wear it very long so I didn't even have to get extensions or anything for coming back here (women pretty much all wore their hair long in this time period, or else totally shaved off and with a wig). Unmarried women (me!) could wear their hair loose unless they were Puritans (who wore it all tied up and hidden under a bonnet). So I get to shake my hair around a lot, just to tease the boys. Haha.

But here, in this time period, I'm one of the pretty ones. Besides my hair - which, due to regular conditioning is in ultra-great shape - I've got excellent teeth (my mom did allow braces, thank God!), very clear skin (other than the freckles), and a very nice shape (other than the smallish boobs, but here in this time period, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Here, you want a small waist, and that I've got!).

But James seemed to like it. My hair, I mean. He was sitting a couple of chairs over, with his family - mom, dad, three kids all somewhere in their teens, I'd guess. Two boys and a girl. The girl, she didn't seem to be all that excited to see me. She kept looking at me too, except she was giving me that "who the fuck are you?" stare. And giving her brother that "don't even think about it" look. She was actually very pretty in an extremely Anglo-Saxon way: red-gold hair, high-bridged, slightly broad nose, full lips, round face. Maybe a little on the big-boned side, but not fat or anything. She was probably used to being the prettiest girl at the prom, so she no-doubt didn't like it that here was another girl right in her territory, and that girl had clear skin, good teeth and really pretty hair. Ha. Well, I'm not used to being one of the prettiest ones, either, so, too bad, chiquita! I was enjoying this!

So, even though I really had to pay attention to the MacBeth, and also keep an eye on Wm. Shakespeare (after all, that's why I was here!) I was stealing glances at James as often as possible, and every single time I did, there he was, looking at me. Cool.

Before we left, Mrs. Quickly (who I am pretty sure picked up on this vibe between me and James) introduced me to the DeVere's. Yes, that DeVere, believe it or not. But a cousin. The dad, Robert, was a cousin of Henry, the bi-guy. Robert, on the other hand, was pure hetero, judging by the way he looked at me and every other woman - Mrs. Quickly, included - who came within 20 feet of him. His eyes went straight to the bust, then to the face, little bit of time on the eyes and then to the mouth, then back to the bust. Talk about obvious! But he was, I gotta admit, a handsome man. It was clear where James got his good looks.

So there was the dad, Robert. I never heard the mom's name because women's names don't get mentioned. Just Mrs. or Mistress or Miss or whatever. Unless you're a girl - like me - in which case your name would be said. So James did get to hear that my name is Miranda.

So, James' brother is Francis, and his sister is Kate.

When you meet someone new in this time period, girls have to curtsy. It's kind of cool in a way. But you have to learn this whole protocol: the depth of the curtsy depends on the significance of the personage you are meeting. Or, that's how my teacher, Professor Cantor, put it. Just by-the-by (that's an old English expression, by-the-by, cute, huh?), we call our teachers Professor now, cuz of the old Harry Potter books series! Even though they're not really Professors, a bunch of kids back in the 2020s started calling their teachers Professor cuz that's what they call them in the Harry Potter books, so some kids though it'd be cool to call their teachers Professor, and it just kind of stuck. So, there you go, a little trivia.

Anyway, back to the curtsy. Now the problem for a stepper is that we don't really know who's who in this era. I mean, we do get schooled quite a bit about the period we're going into, so that we understand the basic manners and all, and we have a "handler, " (that would be Mrs. Quickly for me) who is with us pretty much 24/7 when we're out and about, but there is still quite a bit we don't know - for example, all the ranks of all the nobility. There are so many degrees of importance in this social order that we just don't have in ours. This duke and that duke aren't necessarily the same in terms of importance. So I'd curtsy a little more to this duke than that one, and if it was the king, well, it would be a total drop to the floor curtsy with a head bow.

So, I watched Mrs. Quickly very carefully when she curtsied to get the feel of how far I should go, and then, cuz I'm younger, made it just a teensy bit deeper for Mr. Robert DeVere; about the same as Mrs. Quickly did for Mrs., and even-steven for the kids (who were all within a year or two of my age). James is the younger brother, and Francis is the oldest kid. So it's Francis (about maybe 19?) then his sister, (17 or 18) and then James (who's about 16 or 17). It's a bit hard to tell how old someone is in this time period, too. They seem to grow up a lot faster than we do - and grow old a lot faster, too! I mean, my mom and dad look like kids compared to the DeVere's. Especially her. She looks mad and mean and wrinkled. He has a lot of lines and grey hair, but he's got all his hair and he's not fat - in fact, he's got quite the body. And, as I said, a real handsome face.

The boys, of course, bow, which I have found I really, really like. I'd love to bring that custom home!

Anyway, we all chatted it up a little, and of course it became known that I was visiting Mrs. Quickly from a small town in "the north." And the DeVere's said they wanted us to come and dine with them "on Wednesday next" when they would be having a small gathering, and Mrs. Quickly said that would be "most pleasant," and so we said goodbye (which is, of course, God be with you), and went off, cuz I still hadn't had a chance to listen to Mr. Shakespeare at all.

Now, in those days a lady might go to buy supper in a public house when she was traveling, but she didn't typically go unaccompanied into a "pub" as a matter of course. So fortunately, Mrs. Quickly had a "brother," who was really another operative from the future, Mike (Reginald). They had to be really, really and I do mean really careful about how they behaved in public, because if anybody'd ever heard them talking to one another out of character well, they would have had to step forward in a big hurry.

So, Mike went with us and we went out for a meal.

And that's when I finally got up close to Wm. Shakespeare.


May 3, 1610
So, what can I tell you about a public house? Smelly, noisy, the floor is covered with rushes plus all manner of food and spit and dog shit and other putrid things; there is sometimes music (whether from people singing or sometimes someone playing an instrument); lots of beer and ale drinking (some wine, too, but really that's reserved for the wealthier people). Yes, there are "wenches," which are basically bar-sluts who take a "copper" and go out back with some smelly, toothless guy for a literal roll in the hay (yuck, I hope they change the hay now and then, haha). And there are a lot of drunk people. So, all in all, a lot like your modern bar!

You can buy drinks, you can gamble, you can get a meal (in most of them). So we bought bread, cheese, a "joint" (which is basically a roast something, like beef or pig or mutton), and wine. People drink a lot in this time period, but one of the reasons is nothing more than sanitation. Water isn't really safe - the alcohol kills any bugs in the drinkables, so that's safer to have. People drink cider, too, both sweet and hard.

When you get your cheese, you usually have to cut the mold off the outside. But that's ok, that's just cheese. The meat is usually reasonably fresh, and even though it's not the soft, white Wonder Bread type bread if today, the bread is very tasty and fresh - they bake just about every day in 1610.

In fact, one of the few good smells about this time is the daily bread baking. Mrs. Quickly has a few serving girls - I think among them they have an IQ of 50, but they are big and strong and work hard and don't ask a lot of questions. A couple of them is before we wake up and stokes up the fire and bakes bread and starts breakfast and empties chamber pots and that sort of thing. Another is more of a wash up and clean type, she washes dishes and sweeps. There's a cook, and a girl who dresses us and stands around to run errands. We live in a town house, so there are no real chores other than keeping house. Mrs. Quickly supposedly was left her fortune by a husband who had ships and they lived on one of his estates in the Indies, and then he died and she sold off everything and returned to England. She has a "son" who arrives to visit every so often, and another "brother," who has an estate "on the continent," and he also visits from time to time. B(why mistress Q has chosen to stay)

All of us, Mike (Reginald, Reginald... I have to remember to call him Reginald, even to myself, or I'm going to forget), Mrs. Quickly, and the serving girls, live in the townhouse, and Mike tends to all Mrs. Quickly's business and protection needs, while the girls take care of the maintenance of the home. That leaves Mrs. Quickly to look out for her pupils, and conduct her own study of the period, which is actually focused on the history of medicine. Mike was studying musicology, so when he wasn't busy making contacts and putting on a good show for the town, he was learning all he could for his studies. He stays in this time for six months or a year, goes back to see Dr. Lloyd and check in for a little while, then back he comes. 

Nobody in this time period has much "stuff," at least, not the way we think about stuff. As I mentioned before, the average person is lucky to have a single pair of shoes, let alone the 40 or 50 that I have in my closet back home. Most fine ladies have only a handful of dresses (even if they do have pearls and things sewn into them!), and most of the rooms look downright bare by our standards. Glass is precious, so windows and mirrors and things like that are scarce; tables and chests and so on are heavy and dark and sturdy - but there are usually only a few items in any room.

Furniture isn't upholstered - God what I wouldn't give for a nice recliner or sofa sometimes!! You get serious butt-ache in this time period! - and like I said, floors are either plain wood, or strewn with straw and herbs and stuff to minimize the smells and catch hold of the wet spills.

So, anyway, there we were in the pub, and we'd told the serving man what we wanted, and who walks in but Mr. Wm. Shakespeare himself? He had a whole posse of friends with him - men and boys, no women - and they were all laughing and talking and carrying on the way all those "theater" people do. It's the same now: we've got a bunch of aspiring ac-tors in our school, and they all hang out together and act theatrical. Very self-conscious and posy and all. It's obnoxious.

So, here's Wm., looking, as I said, older and more tired than I'd have pictured (I mean, the guy was only 52 or so when he died, making him about 46 now, but he looked a lot older than my friend's dads, who are about the same age). And he's got all these gay guys and probably-not-gay guys (from the way they were checking out the women) with him, most of them extraordinarily good-looking, well-dressed and sexy.

Mrs. Quickly knew her job: she is acquainted with Wm., and part of her job is to be sure her charges get at least one conversation with the great man. Granted, it's easier when this student is a boy, but Wm. is, from what I can gather from my short conversation with him last night, a very affable man. Mrs. Quickly "spotted" the playwright, and had "her brother" go over to extend our compliments. He, Wm., of course, then had to come over the greet her, which he did. (Mrs. Quickly is a patron of the theater, so she always gets special attention.)

I was introduced, and for one in my mouthy life found it hard to make sentences. I mean for fuck's sake, this is Wm. Shakespeare, in the flesh!! I mumbled something about having seen MacBeth and enjoying it, and he thanked me and there was some witty stuff between him and Mrs. Quickly about my visit and then we were headed back to our table. But not before Mrs. Quickly had arranged for me to be present at a rehearsal for Merry Wives. Wm. had written this play in 1602, so it wasn't new, but it was a favorite. And it featured a character named after Mrs. Quickly.

The truth is, I don't know exactly what their relationship is, but my... whatever she is, guardian?... and Wm. are good friends, and know one another rather better than it's usual to do in this day and age. I'm not suggesting anything funny is going on, Wm. is married, after all but ... he (Wm.) was clearly really happy to see Mrs. Quickly, and she was really happy to see him.

Now here was the really odd thing: when Wm. met me, he acted a little weird. First he acted startled - and let me tell you, I'm not the kind of girl who startles 40-something men because I'm so drop-dead good looking. Like I said, I'm good enough, and a little better than good-enough for this time period, but it's not like I'm driving anyone crazy with lust or anything. But it wasn't that kind of startled, anyway.

When he kissed my hand (he did, how cool is that?), he held it for a long time, and he looked at me as if he was trying to remember where he'd seen me before or something. It was almost creepy.

And he said, "Another protegee, Mistress Quickly?"

And she said, "Indeed, sir," and then she said something about "Having told you about this one," and he said, "Is that so?" And then he stared at me again, and I swear to God it looked as if he was going to cry.

The other interesting news is that at this rehearsal there was also going to be some reading of Wm.'s newest,  which wasn't complete yet, but he was busy working on it. Or... Henry DeVere was!

May 4, 1610
James was at the rehearsal!!! OMG!!! Can I tell you I thought I was going to faint? I mean, it's hard enough not to faint with these crazy corsets women wear - and all the jackets and layers and stuff - but he's so cute I literally lost my breath!

What can I tell you about him? Dark hair, kind of long (sort of like from the 1960s, almost, which period I really love, and I considered going back to meet a Beatle, but eventually settled on Wm.), with these huge dark brown eyes and lashes out to there. Very perfect features: straight nose, just slightly large (just the way I like it!) and he's tall. That's one thing I've got to tell you: men in this time period are not very tall. Well, neither are women. Everybody is small all over compared to us - even these people, many of whom are Danes or Angles or Saxons, so they tend to be on the larger side for the times. But still, a six foot tall man is like a man 6'4" would be now. Most of them are more like 5'8" or so (the men), and about 5'2" for women. At 5'6" I'm very tall, but not a freak.

Anyway, he's clearly handsome, and even more clearly, he's interested in me. Why, I don't know. I can't seem to get out of the way of my own tongue around these people, so I don't say much for fear of saying something stupid. And if one thing is true in this period, it's that people love to show off their wits. They have a very flowery way of talking, and they love puns and word play. Men and women. The wealthier people are reasonably well-educated, and often speak more than one language, frequently including Latin (even though the Protestant Reformation was long since over, and Henry VIII's establishment of the Church of England well-entrenched, the erudite - yeah, I know a few big words! - actually still learned Latin). Of course, Elizabeth I was on the throne right now, which did a lot for women's rights. Haha. No, I'm actually serious. Women in this period were actually expected to be able to talk, read, play music - do something besides make babies. Granted, it's not like they were running businesses or having babies on their own (well, that's not entirely true, either!), but still, if I'd had to do it, I could have lived in this time frame without too much pain (other than the smells, the bugs, and the latrines).

So actually, meeting James again this time, and it being very clear that we were interested in one another, I started to worry about two things: getting caught, and wondering if kissing would be a smelly, disgusting proposition, given  the oral hygiene of 1610.

On that subject, I decided not to worry about it, and if I got the chance, I was going to kiss the boy. On the other subject, I didn't know what to think.

Fraternization was absolutely forbidden to high schools students. It was frowned upon for everybody - grad students, historians, and vacationers - but we were told that on no uncertain terms we were forbidden to go beyond surface friendships with anyone in this historic time period. We were told to avoid situations in which we were might be alone with anyone - even someone of our own age and sex. The notion was that we were too unsophisticated and not well-trained enough to avoid possible mistakes. So we were to keep a handler with us at all times, who could cover for us if we screwed up.

Every time we left our house, Mrs. Quickly did a complete search of me, to be sure that I had nothing incriminating on my person. She even checked to be sure I wasn't doing something like shaving my armpits, for God's sake! (Though if I wanted to shave my entire self, that would have been acceptable - which, needless to say, few of my age group ever decided to do!) She made sure I had no lip gloss or electronic devices, aspirin, even tampons! (I was allowed to use these in the house, but if we were out, just in case of some accident or something, I had to resort to the "clouts" that women used in those days. Yuk and double-yuck!! This is the one thing that made me happy I only had a month in-period, so I could have max two periods.)

James was actually waiting for me when we arrived at the theater. Just pacing back and forth, watching the door, and trying to look nonchalant.

Mrs. Quickly, Mike (I have to remember to call him Reginald)  and I arrived in a flurry of greetings and gloves (gloves were very big in those days among the gentry). Wm., busy watching a silly scene from Merry Wives in which his Mistress Quickly is sitting on a laundry basket with Falstaff hiding inside while she distracts her husband, spotted us and came over and greeted us - greeted Mrs. Quickly - warmly, and led us to a bench in the pit.

So anyway, as I told you, the company is doing another old play tomorrow, Merry Wives, so they just did a quick run through. Actors are expected to have amazing memories - and then they have these guys who give cues. It's actually kind of funny. You can hear them, even see them sometimes, but nobody seems to mind. From what Mrs. Quickly has told me, they don't even finish writing the play sometimes til it's up on stage - so the actors don't even know how it's going to end. Bizarre.

My heart did a little drop and spin when I saw James standing by the bench. He was talking to an older man - who was introduced to me as his uncle, Henry DeVere. He's as handsome as his brother - I guess good looks run in the DeVere family. But he's more, what? Self-consciously good looking?Polished looking?

A little aside about Henry DeVere. There has been so much argument over the years about who wrote Shakespeare's plays and poems. The old argument used to be that an ordinary guy like Wm., an actor, couldn't possibly have the inside knowledge of court, the Latin, the intimate scoop on making war and weaponry, all the stuff that anyone who wrote all those poems and plays would have had to have had.

So scholars started to compare texts and try to see if all the material attributed to Shakespeare sounded like it came from the same guy. A lot of people thought it was at least partly Sir Francis Bacon, and then along came one man who said it was Edward DeVere. It was sort of like all the arguing that went on about who was really Jack the Ripper, or who was the real Franklin Rimbaud, that rock guy from the late 2030s who never showed his face.

Anyway, once we started stepping we found out once and for all that it was Henry, a sort of by-blow cousin of the main branch of the DeVere family (that would be Edward) who worked with Wm., and was in fact Wm.'s part-time boyfriend. They wrote some of the romances, and almost all of the comedies together.

You know, it's funny, but there's something sad about being able to actually go back and find out the truth about a lot of historic mysteries. Leaves you with that much less to talk about!

Speaking of talking - that was awkwardly put, huh? But just a "point of order" as Professor Cantor would say, when I try to repeat conversations I had with people, I'm not going to write them in ye olde Englishe! It's just too much of a pain. For one thing, they use way too many words to say something. For another, there is no one spelling (or, spelyng) or anything. People just sort of made it up as they went along. So trying to report the conversations the way they happened is almost like trying to translate French. So from now on, you're just going to get the jist of what everyone said, and not the poetry. It's kind of a shame, too, cuz they really do speak "prettily." That's what they'd say in this era, "prettily." But a pox on it (haha), I'm just gonna try to remember the basic flow of the conversation.

We had to spend about a year in class learning to speak and understand what's called "early modern English," or Renaissance English.This is another limitation in stepping. Historians can go just about anywhere they're prepared to go, and even they have to have covers - like, being deaf, or whatever, til they can get the accent of, say, 1000 in Spain. Vacationers and High School students and that sort of thing have to limit themselves to periods of time and places where we've got a reasonable sense of the language.

Of course, linguists have the job of recording speech throughout history, so we're getting a bigger and bigger library of languages through time. It's pretty amazing how languages tend to move forward in the mouth over time. You know, like from the grunts and snarls of the protos to us kids, who are sort of back to grunts and snarls, but it's more just very rapid talking without a lot of moving our lips and teeth and stuff. Our parents and teachers are all over us about it, but, hey, language e-f-ing-volves, right?

Speaking of fuck - well, the word, not the action! It's a pretty popular word in 1610, too! In fact, these people are pretty crude in their speech in general. Piss and shit and fuck are all pretty common words. I guess that's part of the reason my own speaking and writing - which were always kinda full of what my mom would call "vulgarities" - is even more so now!

So, ok. There we were at the theater, and Wm. and Henry had just finished fixing up the scene from Merry Wives, and then another bunch of actors who had been swirling around, they got up on the stage, and Wm. started to tell them about this new one - The Tempest.

Huh? There's no Shakespeare play called The Tempest! It has something to do with a magician and a monster and a shipwreck, but he sounds a little vague about the whole thing. But I'm guessing it never gets written, because I had to study all of Wm.'s plays before I came here, and that's not one of them!

May 5, 1610

So, something is going on between Mrs. Quickly and Wm. I woke up late last night and heard them whispering loudly, like your parents do when they think they're hiding an argument. Right. I held very still and tried hard to listen, but I was only making out every fourth word or so. But here's the really weird thing: it sounded like my  English, not Wm.'s. 
So what's the game? They're lovers and Mrs. Q is jealous of Henry? I know, I know, no fraternization. As if the older steppers actually paid attention to that! After all, if you're going to be stuck in the past for years and years, you're going to want a little... entertainment, right? As long as you're cool about it, and don't get into any serious trouble, so what?
Of course, who am I to talk? I'm totally head over heels with Mr. James deVere, and I couldn't do anything about that now if I tried. What I'm gonna do when the time comes to go home... well, that's what they make anti-Venus drugs for, right? I just hope my mom doesn't object to me taking some, cuz I have a feeling I'm gonna need them. 
So anyway, they (Mrs. Q and Wm.) argued, er, whispered for about fifteen minutes or so, and then I turned over to try to hear better, and Mrs. Q heard the straw in my bed and said, "Hush!" and that was that. But I've got to figure out what's going on there.
Other than that, my day was routine today. Here's how it goes, just in case you want to know. We wake up relatively early. Actually, people sleep and wake a lot more with the daylight here than we do - since they don't have lights, and since light is expensive (beeswax candles are really expensive, so we can have some, but most people burn tallow, which is made from animal fat and like everything else in this era, stinks!), they do things by daylight as much as they can. 
One of the things you notice here is how much more of people's life is spent outdoors. That's at least partly because they want to be able to see what they're doing! A lot of shops are really stalls, and a good part of the reason is for light. I always wondered when I'd see ancient paintings with a woman sitting outside her house sewing - what the heck? Why was she doing that? Well, now I know. She was trying to f-ing see!
They sat by fires, and near windows, but I've already pointed out that the windows are pretty small, and don't let in a lot of light. And then the cities are built with overhanging second floors, often, which makes the downstairs even darker. I guess the upside is you can't make out the bugs crawling over somebody's clothing as easily...
Ok, so, we wake up with the sun, and instead of running to a nice clean, modern bathroom, we trot over to a corner of our room and use a chamber pot. Yeah, gick! I still have a hard time letting one of the maid servants empty it, but then, they typically just toss it out the window anyway. There is a cesspit beneath our house, but the servants don't always go down there - and to be honest, who would? It's revolting. But the street isn't a whole lot better! Henry passed a law about sewers, but from where I'm sitting it can't be too well enforced. The law is basically that every home-owner is responsible for the area right in front of the house, pushing all the crap (haha) into the ditch. But there's so much of it, and there's trash and dead dogs and garbage and animal poo and chamber pot contents and what not - even the occasional dead person! - so it doesn't take more than  a couple of heavy rains and this whole bad, bad, bad soup is running all over the street and sometimes even right into houses.

No wonder people don't get to be a lot older than 50, even if they look it.

You'd think I don't have a lot to talk about except disgusting body subjects, but honestly, so much of our day is spent just trying to do things that at home take me fifteen minutes. Imagine just trying to get enough of your clothes adjusted so you can use a chamber pot! Well, not so much when you first get up because we pretty much wear, literally, a night dress to bed. But once you've got on a corset and farthingale...

Well, let me start at the beginning. Mary, my aunt's maid comes in to my room with a warm drink at eight or so. She opens the curtains, sometimes humming a little tune - how she stays so cheerful with all she has to do is beyond me - and once she's sure she's waked me up, she props me up in bed with my tea or coffee - she can't understand why I prefer coffee in the mornings - and then she lays out my clothes.

"Where are you off to today, Mistress?" she'll ask. This will determine what she pulls out of my wardrobe. It's not as if I have the choices I do at home

First, you have this long smock or chemise or whatever. This is just a long linen gown, like a nightgown, with a drawstring top. We've supposedly got some money, so Mrs. Q and I have pretty ones with a little lace trim. You basically don't change this all that often, so they get a little crusty over time. The chemise has big, long, drapey sleeves.

Then you lace up a corset over that, which goes under the boobs and down to the waist. This holds up your chest and cinches in your waist. Well, actually, more like your rib cage, but anyway.

Then the farthingale, which is  sort of a hooped underskirt, or maybe a bum roll (literally, a roll - it kind of made the skirt stick out at the back so that it had a shape). Then a busk to hold the corset in place, and then your dress. Get the picture? I've got way too many clothes on already, and I'm not nearly done.

Then a decorative petticoat, then your bodice, overskirt and sleeves, and then a thing called a stomacher, sort of a triangular vest-front that's all decorated - if you can afford it.

Then shoes, which are sort of like open-backed high heels. And of course you have to wear some sort of headgear - and sometimes a collar, though I usually just went with jewelry. There are all kinds of headdresses - hats and hoods and veils and whatnot, depending on what you're going to be doing. And gloves. And capes. Luckily,  it's getting warm so we don't have the added problem of being cold, and since it's not summer yet I'm not cooking my ass off, but seriously, I can't imagine trying to wear all this stuff in summer!

So you have to do all this - of course, the maids help because otherwise it would be a month before you ever got dressed, let alone went anywhere. And you have to wash up the best you can, and try to brush your teeth (well, we cheat and bring toothbrushes, but we have to be very careful about using them), and all the rest.

Meanwhile, we haven't even had breakfast yet.

Lots of ladies have breakfast in their rooms, but Mrs. Q and I get together in the morning. She usually meets with Reginald, and they go over anything they have to deal with to keep the house running, and then she tells me what our plan is for the day, which usually includes some sort of educational dealio for me, and maybe some research for her, and then whatever social obligations she's gotta fulfill, like calling on some acquaintance, or going to the market.


Because Mrs. Q's research is in medicine, she spends a lot of time messing around in her stillroom, and cultivating some of the medical "professionals" of this time. Most ladies brewed simples, or things like a tea or tisane, say from willow bark - which is basically aspirin. And if it was a more complicated recipe, she'd go to an apothecary. And there are barber surgeons, who could pull teeth and do simple surgery. And bonesetters, who, yup, set bones. They mainly have to be strong, and fast. Physicians are mainly for the rich, and do things like apply leeches and let blood. All in all, I really hope I don't get sick or have anything more serious than a headache.  I mean, I really don't want to be taking anything that has dried toad in it!

And right now I'm dead tired so I'm going to sneak some soap out of Mrs. Q's secret closet and wash my hair and go to bed!

May 6, 1610
I don't even know where to start - and I'm not even sure I can keep this data once I get back home because it might be censored. Although I'm not sure what they'll do to get it out of my head, or why Mrs. Q would have told me about this. I suppose it's possible that I just stumbled on it, and I guess if they make Venus drugs they probably have some kind of general memory drug.

But anyway, Mrs. Q told me today that there are people here who are stuck here, and that there are people in the future who don't belong there! Seriously!

It works like this - and this much I more or less knew:  When you step out of time, there is almost like a hole created, like a template. It's more or less how you find your way back to your own time. And while we're here in the past, we're actually extras. So under normal circumstances we can't stay for more than a few weeks without something getting messed up. The first people who stepped would generally try to find someone who died, and then they'd go forward, and then back and fit in the dead person's template before that space had a chance to fill in. One of the things we learned in the future was how to keep somebody's template hole open. It was kind of the last secret of time travel. Early steppers were taking a huge chance, because we didn't really get how to keep the hole open more than a few days, a week or two at best.

Then once we figured out how to keep a person's template open, they could stay for long periods of time and always get back.

At first, we allowed people to come forward, but after a while we realized that it was going to be a problem because let's face it, who's gonna want to go back to a dirty, nasty, bug-infested, short-life-span era once they've seen the future? Give up vids and soft beds and telewalks? So once people got there, a lot of them did everything they could to stay. They'd run or hide or whatever, and then they had to be hunted down and forcibly returned, and unfortunately usually, euthanized once they were back in era. That's because we couldn't risk them messing the whole thing up because they talked, or tried to find some of us in their own period, and outed us. This could be very dangerous!

Anyway, what Mrs. Q explained to me was that every once in a while, someone would go forward by taking the place of one of us - stranding that person in this time. I mean, sure, that person could go forward for a while, and try to find the person who took their place, but the odds are by the time the future person got back, the past person was long gone.

And then there were people who for one reason or another - usually love! - would let a past person take their place in the future.

This really hit me hard, because it was almost like she'd read my mind. The fact is, James and I are in love, and I don't know what to do.

May 7, 1610
I've never been in love before, but one thing I know for certain: you're not supposed to keep major secrets from your lover. And it's for sure that I'm keeping a big, serious secret from James. But if I told him, wouldn't he just think I'm crazy?

I suppose I should back up and explain how it all happened. I mean, I've made it clear that James and I have certainly noticed one another, and James has definitely been making himself available.

But remember when I told you about being invited to the deVere's for a supper "on Wednesday next?" Well, that was a couple of days ago.

I've got to say this about this time period: people take entertaining a lot more seriously than we do! Yeah, we have dinner parties, and people mill around the kitchen with a drink in their hands, help with the cooking, laugh and chat and all that. Or they gather around the vidscreen and yell at whatever sport or realer or quiz show happens to be on. I guess really wealthy people let indentures do all the work, and they just mingle while the indentures cook up interesting little dishes like baby birds in the egg, roasted and served with a confit of endangered salamander.

But here, it seems like a party is a show: music and dancing and declaiming and joke telling. Often there will be a theme, like masque, where everybody wears some sort of mask or face covering. I guess part of the game is that you're anonymous when you're masked, so people kind of treat it like a license to flirt and carry on.

And people just talk a lot more in general, and sing and play and entertain. I guess that makes sense: there aren't any iBrains, or vidscreens, or other electronic entertainments. Heck, if you want music, you have to play it yourself, or get somebody else to.

So they do the real-life equivalent of all our vidscreen and podmusic and even realers - they tend to really live their lives out loud. I mean seriously, the flirting, and bed-hopping and fights over women. I suppose if you're only going to live 40 or 50 years, you might as well pack as much as you can into that time.

Anyway, a little side note about sounds. I realized that there is plenty of it here, but it's just totally different from what we hear in our time.

Your home tends to be very quiet, relative to our homes with all the hum of HVAC and vidscreens, the click of keyboards, plumbing being used, transports firing up or going by. Well, drones have made things more quiet, that's true - but sometimes nothing but a transport will do. Here, if you go into the kitchen when a meal is being prepared there's plenty of noise, like crockery clattering, and the faint roar of the fire, a cook scolding a scullery maid, that kind of thing. But everywhere else sounds are more discrete than that constant background we hear: a log gets thrown on the fire; a maid walks down an upper hall; a quiet conversation takes place in a corner.

But go out on the street, and it's totally the opposite. Where our street sounds are almost nil - yeah, transports make a quiet sort of hum, basically, the streets are empty of people (I mean, who walks anywhere?), the noise on the streets in this time is just amazing. Yelling, singing, horses and carts, vendors, water being thrown out an upper window, people going by in groups laughing and talking, talking, talking. Dogs barking, a gentleman riding by on his horse. Just life noise, everywhere.

Anyway, we arrived at the dinner party and it turns out it was this whole orchestrated event: dinner alone was course after course of crazy food, most of it on display in the middle of the table - and everybody just grabbing what they want, and eating a lot of it with their fingers! (Three fingers for us, btw, whole hands for the "baser" sorts!) Dogs are running through the hall, and there is a ton of drinking and toasting. People love to toast, and they take any occasion to do it, since it combines two of their favorite activities: talking poetically and drinking! They drink wine, and ale, and sack (sort of a sherry) and cider, hard and regular.

One of the things that bothers me about the food in this era is how much it looks like what it is: I mean, when we eat meat, which isn't all that often since we eat mostly synth, but when we do, you'd never know what animal it came from. For all we know, it comes from a beast that looks like red stuff wrapped in Cling. But here, they serve the critters with their stupid heads on them! I mean... they eat rabbits, for example. Lots of rabbits, which doesn't exactly turn me on to begin with, but then they have their heads on them! They're f'ing looking at you! Fortunately, the ears come off when they skin them, otherwise, there is no way I'm touching them at all, and I'd probably barf.

So dinner is this long, drawn out thing where everybody stuffs themselves and drinks a lot and toasts, and a little band is playing up in what I find out is called a minstrel gallery. Every once in a while someone stands up and sings whatever the minstrels are playing. And some of them are pretty good. James sang a little love song, and he kept looking at me and I know everybody noticed. But he has a beautiful voice.

And then they had a little pageant, sort of a short play, that was kind of dirty and very funny with lots of running around and hiding and mistaken identities.

And finally it was time to dance. And that's when James caught me. I was standing back from the dance floor, largely because I didn't want anyone to ask me to dance, partly because I'm a bit of a klutz, and partly because I hadn't really learned the steps to the dances very well. I had so much else to do to prepare to step, and I guess I never gave credit to how important a little detail like that could be. I finally decided that I could always fake a sore ankle or something. Truth be told, I kind of wanted to join in, it looked like fun.

Needless to say, dancing is totally different from our stand in place and have sex with yourself. Which is not to say it isn't sexy - in an odd sort of way, it's a lot more sexy, because it's graceful and elegant and just hinted at. There's a lot of come together, almost touch, then scoot away - and because all the dances happen in patterns, you switch partners a lot. So you touch hands briefly with a partner who takes your breath away, followed by some fat old dude who smells like four-day-old vomit.

So, I'm standing by the side, and watching, and suddenly a my hand is taken - quickly, decisively, but gently, my palm is kissed, and James whispers in my ear, "You are the most beautiful creature God ever made," or something like that but in Elizabethan English. His breath tickled my ear, and my knees went boneless and my stomach dropped and I couldn't breathe.

I must have looked flustered, at the very least, because he dropped my hand and whispered, "Do I offend?"

"Oh, no!" I said. I held my hand up again, for another kiss. James looked startled, then laughed - such a wonderful, completely abandoned laugh. He took my hand again and commenced kissing it, my wrist, my elbow - my elbow, for God's sake! Can you imagine a boy in Real Time doing that with a straight face?

We were so busy, though, that I didn't realize until we turned to get some wine that Wm. was standing a bit off in the shadows himself, watching us.

May 8
Well, as you've guessed by now, the plot thickeneth. Or whatever. I'm definitely getting some kind of vibe about Wm. Ms. Q has some about me and James. James is calling on us just about every day, or happening on us when we're out running errands. And of course he's always at the parties we're invited to, and boy there are a lot of them. And he's at the theatre a lot, which makes sense because his Uncle is involved.

Speaking of the theater, they're  to do Romeo and Juliet at The Globe. And I want to be Juliet. But I can't, because I'm a girl. I mean, I knew that from all our history and literature classes. All the boys roles were played by boys, and all the girls roles were played by boys. I thought that sounded incredibly dumb and completely backwards, but then, there's a lot of things women and girls don't get to do back in this time. Still, I kind of thought it would be obvious that a boy wasn't a girl. So the first time I saw a boy performing a girl's role I was surprised that he wasn't bad.

But the other day James told me he was going to play Romeo in a special performance of the play. It had been written in 1595, so it wasn't new, but it was still a favorite and some rich noble's daughter wanted it for her birthday. So of course she was going to get it. It's sort of like being a rock star or movie star in our time - you get what you want when you want it and nobody thinks there's anything wrong with it. Unless, of course, you piss off somebody more rich or more noble.

But anyway, I had played Juliet in acting camp a couple of summers ago, and I still remembered a lot of the lines, and... if James was going to be Romeo, I wasn't going to have just anybody being Juliet. But the trick was going to be getting the part. In fact, it was going to be kind of a double trick, because first I had to convince everybody I was a boy, and then I'd have to convince them I was a boy being a girl. So, I had an idea - but I'd have to bring James in on it. And I wasn't totally sure he'd go along with me.

But I didn't have much time to get ready if I was going to pull this off, because, well, ok here's how it went down with James. I keep wanting to call him Jim, or Jimmy, but that wasn't really a nickname for a "James" in this timeframe.  Jamie is ok, though, and I kind of like the sound of that, so I've started calling him that - just every so often. He looks a little startled when I do, so I only call him that when we're alone.

Anyway, James, Jamie, and I were in the small parlor in Ms. Q's house. She was busy in the kitchen, and she more or less trusted us, so she'd let us sit alone once in a while as long as she could hear our voices. If we got too quiet...

So, we're sitting there - the furniture is really uncomfortable, did I mention that? We were in separate chairs, facing each other, so I leaned over to keep it kind of quiet.

"I want to be Juliet so I have to be a boy and you have to introduce me to everybody at the theater so I can audition," I blurted it out just like that. And a minute later I was giggling into my hand. If you could have seen James' face - it was like all eyeballs and open mouth, sort of staring at me like I'd told him I was a unicorn or something.

"Excuse me?"

"I want to be in the play, as Juliet. And I know you can't be an actor unless you're a man or boy, but I know all the lines and I can do it.

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