[Steppes] Living in the Past....Could you really do it??

[Susan Hill]

Have had a little food for thought this afternoon. Sometimes there are 
advantages to being at home during the day. Today's Oprah Winfrey show 
showed how Oprah and her friend Gail joining the 'colonists' at the Colonial 
House settlement in Northern Maine. The time period that they are reinacting 
is 1628, just on the edges of 'period' for us.

We like to play our little game, but could we really survive as denizens of 
that time period. Some of the situations were really funny, like the 'girls' 
discovering that they had to give up wearing underpants. Not period, ladies, 
tsk, tsk. Gail's face at discovering that the neighbor had found mouse 
droppings on the butter dish three mornings in a row was beyond priceless, 
but some of the realities were really rough. Flies on everything and 
everywhere. Not just a few, but all over everything. Before anything was 
eaten, it had been sampled thoroughly by the flies. One lady mentioned that 
there had been antecdotes somewhere about people going mad from the insects.

It was starting to get cold so the mice were looking for warm places to 
sleep, too. They were in the beds of the people, and in lots of places in 
the cabins.

One of the more disturbing scenes for me was when they opened a barrel of 
salted meat. I don't have a problem with the idea of eating the stuff, but 
the reality of the grey, colorless, dead, spoiled-looking meat was a bit 
disconcerting. I have gotten way too used to pink, nitrate cured meats.

The people that Gail and Oprah visited had been in that settlement for 4 
months. We all enjoy 'roughing it' at a long event, but do you really think 
that you could live as our alternate persona's would have? Something to 
think about this early September evening.

Linet