Poem: "A Peaceful Air of Reflection"
Dec. 23rd, 2024 11:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithThis poem is spillover from the November 5, 2024 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt fromsee_also_friend. It also fills the "Easy Chair / Rocker" square in my 11-1-24 card for the Sleepytime Bear Bingo fest. This poem has been sponsored by a pool with fuzzyred. It belongs to the series Peculiar Obligations.
"A Peaceful Air of Reflection"
[1660]
Mary Dyer was furious.
It was the first time
that she'd actually felt
anything in longer than
she wanted to remember.
Most of her days went by
in a gray haze of exhaustion,
punctuated by occasional spits
of stubbornness and activism.
She had long been plagued with
bouts of melancholia, made worse
by a stillbirth back in Boston.
People wondered why she
kept going back. She didn't
care to enlighten them, not
even after the awful truth about
her baby's deformities came out.
She wasn't melancholic now,
though. She was furious.
"Thou hadst no right!"
Mary snarled, for
the hundredth time.
"Pirate," Kate Danger said
with a shrug. "At least in
Tortuga you're alive, which
you wouldn't be if we had
let you stay in there Boston.
They were gonna kill you!"
"So?" Mary said. "Dying
a martyr for my faith would
be for a worthy cause."
"That's just bullshit,"
said Jacquotte Delahaie.
She turned from the mirror
where she was removing
the bits of her disguise as
Jacques de la Mare, half
her red "beard" still glued
along the line of her chin.
"I don't know why you have
a death wish, and I don't care,
you're not getting that wish."
"It's my life, and my death,"
Mary said. "Nobody asked thee
to interfere. Thou hadst no right!"
"Too bad," said Jacquotte. "You
gave us the right when you made
friends with pirate women."
"She's got a point there,"
Kate said, lazily flipping
a knife. "You did know
we got our own ways
of solving problems."
"I didn't mean like this!"
Mary snapped at her.
"We need you -- haven't
you told us that before?"
Jacquotte argued. "So we
brought you to somewhere
that you can do some good.
The motherhouse needs help
and you need a new cause."
"I don't want a new cause,"
Mary groaned. "I want --"
-- a thousand things, and
nothing, and she couldn't
put any of that into words.
"Oh, I hate you all," she said.
"You wanna hate us for saving you?"
Kate snapped. "Fine, we don't care.
You're too valuable for us to lose to
some dumbfuck religious bastards."
Mary started at Kate. The girl didn't
usually get riled up quite so much.
"Now pick up a kid, or pick up some
of the work around here," Kate went on.
"You don't get to die while we still need you
and especially while the kids still need you."
"Ah, Kate ..." Jacquotte scratched the edge
of her beard, peeling off another piece. "You
might not want to tack that exact course."
She turned to Mary. "I'm sorry about
that," she continued. "I heard the news
out of Boston about your ... loss."
Mary looked down at her hands,
picking at the plain drawstring of
her brown skirt. Salt crystals still
sparkled on it from the voyage.
Kate sighed. "Crap," she said.
"I didn't mean to put my foot in
the mickey bin. If you don't want
to help with the babies, maybe
you could hold a cat or something?"
She dashed out of the room with
her long black hair flying behind her.
"That girl has too much energy,"
Jacquotte said, rolling her eyes.
"Listen, you have every right to be
angry with us, but we're not letting
you run back to Boston to die. So
what else could we do here?"
"I don't know," Mary said.
"I don't care. It's thine idea."
"It's your life," said Jacquotte.
"What would your Friends do?"
Mary barked a laugh. "Thou art
nowhere near ready to handle
a Clearness Committee," she said,
"and I'm in no shape for one either."
"Well ..." Jacquotte looked around
somewhat desperately. "Why don't
we just sit in Silence then? Here's
a nice rocking chair. Put your feet up."
A rocking chair was not really suited
to Silence, but Mary was tired and
that rocker really did look inviting.
It had a braided rag cushion on
the seat, like a tiny colorful rug, and
a crocheted afghan over the back.
Mary sat down, and the rocker didn't
creak like she expected. It was quiet
and comfortable and she loved it.
"There is a peaceful air of reflection
about a rocking-chair that attaches
to no other moving object," she mused.
"I suppose that Silence couldn't hurt."
Then Kate came back into the room
carrying a small, sand-colored cat.
Jacquotte covered her mouth in
the sign for Silence, so Kate didn't
say anything, just deposited the cat
on Mary's lap and found another chair.
Mary still felt angry, but the rocker
was soothing, the cat was warm
and starting to purr, and she
couldn't muster the energy
to keep arguing any more.
Maybe the pirate women
were right, and she should
find some good that she
could do here instead.
Maybe she could bring
herself to hold a baby again.
Maybe if they sat here in Silence
long enough, God would take pity
on her and offer another idea.
... or failing that, she could
just keep petting the cat.
* * *
Notes:
Jacquotte Delahaie / Jacques de la Mare -- She has light brown skin, sea-green eyes, and wildly curly red hair. She switches between presenting as a woman or as a man to elude pursuers. When passing as a man, she trims her pubic hair and glues it onto her face as a credible beard. Her heritage is French (father) and Haitian (mother). She speaks English, French, and Haitian Creole. She is 30 years old in 1660.
When Jacquotte was a little girl, her mother died in childbirth while bearing her younger brother Jean-Marc, who has Down's syndrome. After that, the children were raised by their father. When their father was murdered, Jacquotte became a pirate to seek revenge. Currently she pays an older woman to take care of Jean-Marc, who works as a sandfarmer gathering turtle eggs and other beach goods. They live in the pirate haven of Tortuga.
Jacquotte captains a sloop called La Crécerelle (The Kestrel). The ship is fast and agile with a shallow draft, yielding a speed around 12 knots. It can hold a fighting crew up to 75 pirates and 10 cannons, although a sailing crew for a nonviolent trip might be only a third to half that many people.
Jacquotte Delahaye (fl. 1656) was a purported pirate of legend in the Caribbean Sea. She has been depicted as operating alongside Anne Dieu-le-Veut as one of very few 17th-century female pirates. There is no evidence from period sources that Delahaye was a real person. Stories of her exploits are attributed to oral storytelling and Leon Treich, a French fiction writer of the 1940s.
Delahaye reportedly came from Saint-Domingue in modern Haiti, and was the daughter of a French father and a Haitian mother, who spoke French.[1] Her mother is said to have died while giving birth to her brother, who suffered a mild mental disability, and was left in her care after her father's death. According to legend and tradition, she became a pirate after the murder of her father.
Jacquotte was a war hero, and to escape her pursuers she faked her own death and took on a nom de guerre in the form of a male alias, living as a man for many years. Upon her return, she became known as "Back From the Dead Red" because of her striking red hair.
She led a gang of hundreds of pirates, and with their help took over Tortuga, a small Caribbean island off the northwest coast of Hispaniola, in the year of 1656, which was called a "freebooter republic". Several years later, she died in a shoot-out while defending it.
Sandfarmers follow the native tradition of taking half, and only half, of the eggs from each nest of wild turtles. The nest is then marked and guarded by children, elders, or people with disabilities. When the hatchlings emerge, they are all quickly scooped into buckets so they can be taken out to sea for release. This protection from beach predators raises the rate of successful emergence far above that of unattended nests, because it's not rare for a predator to eat most or all the eggs before hatching, and more than 90% of hatchlings get eaten as they emerge before reaching the sea. The humans get an excellent source of food from the eggs and from hunting turtles (ordinary or giant), while the turtles benefit from higher reproductive success that favors those nesting on tribally protected beaches. Sandfarmers may also harvest crabs, clams, seaweed, driftwood, seaglass, seashells, treasure washed ashore, and other beach goods.
The single-masted sloop had a bowsprit almost as long as her hull making her perhaps one of the swiftest vessels of her day. If the wind was favorable, a square topsail could be hoisted to give her a top speed that could on occasion exceed eleven knots. The Sloop was a favourable ship for pirates and smugglers alike. This relatively small vessel could carry around 75 pirates and around ten cannons. The Sloop was often the ship of choice for hunting in the shallower channels and sounds.
[---8<---]
The Sloop was fast, agile, and had a shallow draft. They usually had a speed of around 12 knots. Her size could be as large as 100 tons. She was generally rigged with a large mainsail which was attached to a spar above the mast on its foremost edge, and to a long boom below. She could sport additional sails both square and lateen-rigged. She was used mainly in the Caribbean and Atlantic. Since piracy was a significant threat in Caribbean waters, merchants sought ships that could outrun pursuers. Ironically, that same speed and maneuverability made them highly prized and even more targeted by the pirates they were designed to avoid.
la crécerelle
noun
kestrel
Kate Danger -- She has pale skin, sharp blue eyes, and long straight black hair. Her heritage is British; she speaks English and French. She is 17 years old in 1660. She ran away from an arranged marriage to become a pirate. Kate typically wears a pirate coat over a low-cut blouse, with a knee-length skirt over breeches. She contains her large breasts with a bodice, but it only covers the lower half, leaving the nipples with their large gold rings peeking out. She wants every man she beats to know that he was beaten by a woman. Kate lives in the pirate haven of Tortuga.
* * *
"There is a peacefulness, an air of reflection, about a rocking-chair that attaches to no other moving object."
-- Wallis Simpson
mid-1600s to 1670s
Tortuga village on Tortuga Island, part of Hispaniola (modern Haiti and the Dominican Republic) was a pirate haven around the mid-1600s to 1670s when attacks by French and Spanish forces drove many pirates to Petit Goâve; piracy was banned in Tortuga by the French authorities in 1713.
In P-Caribbean, the island of Hispaniola (previously divided as French Saint-Domingue and Spanish Santo Domingo) became a free pirate island, Haiti, and banned slavery.
1791 – An uprising by the enslaved in Saint-Domingue triggers the Haitian Revolution, led by ex-slave and military tactician/general, Toussaint Louverture, and strikes fear in all slave societies through the Western Hemisphere.
Port of Boston to Port of Cap Haitien: 1512 nautical miles
ISTANCE:1512 nm
SPEED: 10 knots
DAYS AT SEA:6.3
Biography of Mary Dyer
Letter from Mary Dyer to the General Court and Testimony (1659)
Mary Dyer's Letter (Two Versions) to the General Court After Sentence of Death
Quaker Mary Dyer is Taken to the Gallows
A statue of Quaker religious martyr Mary Dyer by Sylvia Shaw Judson is installed outside the Massachusetts State House, in Boston, Massachusetts, United States.
The seminal scholarly work of the 17th century was English scholar Robert Burton's book, The Anatomy of Melancholy, drawing on numerous theories and the author's own experiences. Burton suggested that melancholy could be combatted with a healthy diet, sufficient sleep, music, and "meaningful work", along with talking about the problem with a friend.[9][10]
[---8<---]
Eventually, various authors proposed up to 30 different sub-types of melancholia, and alternative terms were suggested and discarded. Hypochondria came to be seen as a separate disorder. Melancholia and melancholy had been used interchangeably until the 19th century, but the former came to refer to a pathological condition and the latter to a temperament.
Before leaving Boston, Mary had given birth to a severely deformed infant that was stillborn. Because of the religious superstitions of the time regarding such a birth, the baby was buried secretly. When the Massachusetts authorities learned of this birth, the ordeal became public, and in the minds of the colony's ministers and magistrates, the monstrous birth was clearly a result of Mary's "monstrous" religious opinions.
mickey bin -- slang for a slop bucket (e.g. a mop bucket or chamber pot)
A Clearness Committee gathers several Quakers to assist a Friend in figuring out a difficult situation. The process requires a great deal of humility and self-awareness.
The rocking chair has its roots in Europe. The earliest examples of rocking rails have been found in ancient Roman ruins, employed in cradles to sooth young infants. Other examples were found in Germany and England, likely later brought to America by early settlers like the Shakers, Quakers and Amish.
The first record of an American rocker can be found in a bill of sale dating from 1742, from a cabinet maker in colonial Philadelphia. Sold for just six shillings, or what would be the equivalent of 40 dollars in present day, it was described as "one Nurse chair with rockers."
These instructions explain how to make a braided rag rug. For a chair cushion, just make a round or squarish one the size of the seat, then attach ties to secure it to the chair back and/or legs. Braided rugs date back to the late 1500s to early 1600s in the American colonies.
In early America, crochet offered a way to use or reuse scarce resources, such as unraveling a torn sweater for yarn to make an afghan.
Plain speech has been a custom of Quakers. It shifted over time, but this is very close to the beginning. Here's a look at the pronouns.
Quakers also tend to practice plain dress. Here's a general guide to it. See traditional plain dress, plain modern, and plain dress today. Women often wear head coverings such as a cap or bonnet. Wealthy urban Quakers sometimes indulged in fine fabrics and somewhat more current fashions, but rarely close to mainstream fashions. Those of modest means, and especially if they traveled or worked a manual trade such as farming, needed practical clothes. For women, a basic dress with long sleeves and skirt, or a blouse and skirt that looked like a dress, sometimes with a bodice or apron or overdress, would be fairly typical. Among the key reasons for plain dress is simplicity, which would greatly appeal to someone like Mary Dyer with a tendency toward depression. If all your clothes are solid fabric in shades of brown, gray, unbleached ivory, and maybe a nicer white for Meeting, then you never have to worry about anything clashing.
Among these examples of Quaker clothes is this plain brown dress from 1840s-1850s, which is about what I imagine Mary wearing. Despite its timeframe, that kind of basic dress has been in use, with minor variations, across several centuries and many cultures -- and remains in use in Amish territory just north of me today. Prior to the invention of elastic (1800-1820) and zippers (1892), skirts were fastened with drawstrings, ties, laces, or buttons. Advantages of the drawstring include being cheap, simple, and adjustable so you don't need to make a new skirt if your body changes size or shape. You can even hide a drawstring inside a dress at the waist to make it more forgiving that a precisely fitted dress.
see_also_friend. It also fills the "Easy Chair / Rocker" square in my 11-1-24 card for the Sleepytime Bear Bingo fest. This poem has been sponsored by a pool with fuzzyred. It belongs to the series Peculiar Obligations."A Peaceful Air of Reflection"
[1660]
Mary Dyer was furious.
It was the first time
that she'd actually felt
anything in longer than
she wanted to remember.
Most of her days went by
in a gray haze of exhaustion,
punctuated by occasional spits
of stubbornness and activism.
She had long been plagued with
bouts of melancholia, made worse
by a stillbirth back in Boston.
People wondered why she
kept going back. She didn't
care to enlighten them, not
even after the awful truth about
her baby's deformities came out.
She wasn't melancholic now,
though. She was furious.
"Thou hadst no right!"
Mary snarled, for
the hundredth time.
"Pirate," Kate Danger said
with a shrug. "At least in
Tortuga you're alive, which
you wouldn't be if we had
let you stay in there Boston.
They were gonna kill you!"
"So?" Mary said. "Dying
a martyr for my faith would
be for a worthy cause."
"That's just bullshit,"
said Jacquotte Delahaie.
She turned from the mirror
where she was removing
the bits of her disguise as
Jacques de la Mare, half
her red "beard" still glued
along the line of her chin.
"I don't know why you have
a death wish, and I don't care,
you're not getting that wish."
"It's my life, and my death,"
Mary said. "Nobody asked thee
to interfere. Thou hadst no right!"
"Too bad," said Jacquotte. "You
gave us the right when you made
friends with pirate women."
"She's got a point there,"
Kate said, lazily flipping
a knife. "You did know
we got our own ways
of solving problems."
"I didn't mean like this!"
Mary snapped at her.
"We need you -- haven't
you told us that before?"
Jacquotte argued. "So we
brought you to somewhere
that you can do some good.
The motherhouse needs help
and you need a new cause."
"I don't want a new cause,"
Mary groaned. "I want --"
-- a thousand things, and
nothing, and she couldn't
put any of that into words.
"Oh, I hate you all," she said.
"You wanna hate us for saving you?"
Kate snapped. "Fine, we don't care.
You're too valuable for us to lose to
some dumbfuck religious bastards."
Mary started at Kate. The girl didn't
usually get riled up quite so much.
"Now pick up a kid, or pick up some
of the work around here," Kate went on.
"You don't get to die while we still need you
and especially while the kids still need you."
"Ah, Kate ..." Jacquotte scratched the edge
of her beard, peeling off another piece. "You
might not want to tack that exact course."
She turned to Mary. "I'm sorry about
that," she continued. "I heard the news
out of Boston about your ... loss."
Mary looked down at her hands,
picking at the plain drawstring of
her brown skirt. Salt crystals still
sparkled on it from the voyage.
Kate sighed. "Crap," she said.
"I didn't mean to put my foot in
the mickey bin. If you don't want
to help with the babies, maybe
you could hold a cat or something?"
She dashed out of the room with
her long black hair flying behind her.
"That girl has too much energy,"
Jacquotte said, rolling her eyes.
"Listen, you have every right to be
angry with us, but we're not letting
you run back to Boston to die. So
what else could we do here?"
"I don't know," Mary said.
"I don't care. It's thine idea."
"It's your life," said Jacquotte.
"What would your Friends do?"
Mary barked a laugh. "Thou art
nowhere near ready to handle
a Clearness Committee," she said,
"and I'm in no shape for one either."
"Well ..." Jacquotte looked around
somewhat desperately. "Why don't
we just sit in Silence then? Here's
a nice rocking chair. Put your feet up."
A rocking chair was not really suited
to Silence, but Mary was tired and
that rocker really did look inviting.
It had a braided rag cushion on
the seat, like a tiny colorful rug, and
a crocheted afghan over the back.
Mary sat down, and the rocker didn't
creak like she expected. It was quiet
and comfortable and she loved it.
"There is a peaceful air of reflection
about a rocking-chair that attaches
to no other moving object," she mused.
"I suppose that Silence couldn't hurt."
Then Kate came back into the room
carrying a small, sand-colored cat.
Jacquotte covered her mouth in
the sign for Silence, so Kate didn't
say anything, just deposited the cat
on Mary's lap and found another chair.
Mary still felt angry, but the rocker
was soothing, the cat was warm
and starting to purr, and she
couldn't muster the energy
to keep arguing any more.
Maybe the pirate women
were right, and she should
find some good that she
could do here instead.
Maybe she could bring
herself to hold a baby again.
Maybe if they sat here in Silence
long enough, God would take pity
on her and offer another idea.
... or failing that, she could
just keep petting the cat.
* * *
Notes:
Jacquotte Delahaie / Jacques de la Mare -- She has light brown skin, sea-green eyes, and wildly curly red hair. She switches between presenting as a woman or as a man to elude pursuers. When passing as a man, she trims her pubic hair and glues it onto her face as a credible beard. Her heritage is French (father) and Haitian (mother). She speaks English, French, and Haitian Creole. She is 30 years old in 1660.
When Jacquotte was a little girl, her mother died in childbirth while bearing her younger brother Jean-Marc, who has Down's syndrome. After that, the children were raised by their father. When their father was murdered, Jacquotte became a pirate to seek revenge. Currently she pays an older woman to take care of Jean-Marc, who works as a sandfarmer gathering turtle eggs and other beach goods. They live in the pirate haven of Tortuga.
Jacquotte captains a sloop called La Crécerelle (The Kestrel). The ship is fast and agile with a shallow draft, yielding a speed around 12 knots. It can hold a fighting crew up to 75 pirates and 10 cannons, although a sailing crew for a nonviolent trip might be only a third to half that many people.
Jacquotte Delahaye (fl. 1656) was a purported pirate of legend in the Caribbean Sea. She has been depicted as operating alongside Anne Dieu-le-Veut as one of very few 17th-century female pirates. There is no evidence from period sources that Delahaye was a real person. Stories of her exploits are attributed to oral storytelling and Leon Treich, a French fiction writer of the 1940s.
Delahaye reportedly came from Saint-Domingue in modern Haiti, and was the daughter of a French father and a Haitian mother, who spoke French.[1] Her mother is said to have died while giving birth to her brother, who suffered a mild mental disability, and was left in her care after her father's death. According to legend and tradition, she became a pirate after the murder of her father.
Jacquotte was a war hero, and to escape her pursuers she faked her own death and took on a nom de guerre in the form of a male alias, living as a man for many years. Upon her return, she became known as "Back From the Dead Red" because of her striking red hair.
She led a gang of hundreds of pirates, and with their help took over Tortuga, a small Caribbean island off the northwest coast of Hispaniola, in the year of 1656, which was called a "freebooter republic". Several years later, she died in a shoot-out while defending it.
Sandfarmers follow the native tradition of taking half, and only half, of the eggs from each nest of wild turtles. The nest is then marked and guarded by children, elders, or people with disabilities. When the hatchlings emerge, they are all quickly scooped into buckets so they can be taken out to sea for release. This protection from beach predators raises the rate of successful emergence far above that of unattended nests, because it's not rare for a predator to eat most or all the eggs before hatching, and more than 90% of hatchlings get eaten as they emerge before reaching the sea. The humans get an excellent source of food from the eggs and from hunting turtles (ordinary or giant), while the turtles benefit from higher reproductive success that favors those nesting on tribally protected beaches. Sandfarmers may also harvest crabs, clams, seaweed, driftwood, seaglass, seashells, treasure washed ashore, and other beach goods.
The single-masted sloop had a bowsprit almost as long as her hull making her perhaps one of the swiftest vessels of her day. If the wind was favorable, a square topsail could be hoisted to give her a top speed that could on occasion exceed eleven knots. The Sloop was a favourable ship for pirates and smugglers alike. This relatively small vessel could carry around 75 pirates and around ten cannons. The Sloop was often the ship of choice for hunting in the shallower channels and sounds.
[---8<---]
The Sloop was fast, agile, and had a shallow draft. They usually had a speed of around 12 knots. Her size could be as large as 100 tons. She was generally rigged with a large mainsail which was attached to a spar above the mast on its foremost edge, and to a long boom below. She could sport additional sails both square and lateen-rigged. She was used mainly in the Caribbean and Atlantic. Since piracy was a significant threat in Caribbean waters, merchants sought ships that could outrun pursuers. Ironically, that same speed and maneuverability made them highly prized and even more targeted by the pirates they were designed to avoid.
la crécerelle
noun
kestrel
Kate Danger -- She has pale skin, sharp blue eyes, and long straight black hair. Her heritage is British; she speaks English and French. She is 17 years old in 1660. She ran away from an arranged marriage to become a pirate. Kate typically wears a pirate coat over a low-cut blouse, with a knee-length skirt over breeches. She contains her large breasts with a bodice, but it only covers the lower half, leaving the nipples with their large gold rings peeking out. She wants every man she beats to know that he was beaten by a woman. Kate lives in the pirate haven of Tortuga.
* * *
"There is a peacefulness, an air of reflection, about a rocking-chair that attaches to no other moving object."
-- Wallis Simpson
mid-1600s to 1670s
Tortuga village on Tortuga Island, part of Hispaniola (modern Haiti and the Dominican Republic) was a pirate haven around the mid-1600s to 1670s when attacks by French and Spanish forces drove many pirates to Petit Goâve; piracy was banned in Tortuga by the French authorities in 1713.
In P-Caribbean, the island of Hispaniola (previously divided as French Saint-Domingue and Spanish Santo Domingo) became a free pirate island, Haiti, and banned slavery.
1791 – An uprising by the enslaved in Saint-Domingue triggers the Haitian Revolution, led by ex-slave and military tactician/general, Toussaint Louverture, and strikes fear in all slave societies through the Western Hemisphere.
Port of Boston to Port of Cap Haitien: 1512 nautical miles
ISTANCE:1512 nm
SPEED: 10 knots
DAYS AT SEA:6.3
Biography of Mary Dyer
Letter from Mary Dyer to the General Court and Testimony (1659)
Mary Dyer's Letter (Two Versions) to the General Court After Sentence of Death
Quaker Mary Dyer is Taken to the Gallows
A statue of Quaker religious martyr Mary Dyer by Sylvia Shaw Judson is installed outside the Massachusetts State House, in Boston, Massachusetts, United States.
The seminal scholarly work of the 17th century was English scholar Robert Burton's book, The Anatomy of Melancholy, drawing on numerous theories and the author's own experiences. Burton suggested that melancholy could be combatted with a healthy diet, sufficient sleep, music, and "meaningful work", along with talking about the problem with a friend.[9][10]
[---8<---]
Eventually, various authors proposed up to 30 different sub-types of melancholia, and alternative terms were suggested and discarded. Hypochondria came to be seen as a separate disorder. Melancholia and melancholy had been used interchangeably until the 19th century, but the former came to refer to a pathological condition and the latter to a temperament.
Before leaving Boston, Mary had given birth to a severely deformed infant that was stillborn. Because of the religious superstitions of the time regarding such a birth, the baby was buried secretly. When the Massachusetts authorities learned of this birth, the ordeal became public, and in the minds of the colony's ministers and magistrates, the monstrous birth was clearly a result of Mary's "monstrous" religious opinions.
mickey bin -- slang for a slop bucket (e.g. a mop bucket or chamber pot)
A Clearness Committee gathers several Quakers to assist a Friend in figuring out a difficult situation. The process requires a great deal of humility and self-awareness.
The rocking chair has its roots in Europe. The earliest examples of rocking rails have been found in ancient Roman ruins, employed in cradles to sooth young infants. Other examples were found in Germany and England, likely later brought to America by early settlers like the Shakers, Quakers and Amish.
The first record of an American rocker can be found in a bill of sale dating from 1742, from a cabinet maker in colonial Philadelphia. Sold for just six shillings, or what would be the equivalent of 40 dollars in present day, it was described as "one Nurse chair with rockers."
These instructions explain how to make a braided rag rug. For a chair cushion, just make a round or squarish one the size of the seat, then attach ties to secure it to the chair back and/or legs. Braided rugs date back to the late 1500s to early 1600s in the American colonies.
In early America, crochet offered a way to use or reuse scarce resources, such as unraveling a torn sweater for yarn to make an afghan.
Plain speech has been a custom of Quakers. It shifted over time, but this is very close to the beginning. Here's a look at the pronouns.
Quakers also tend to practice plain dress. Here's a general guide to it. See traditional plain dress, plain modern, and plain dress today. Women often wear head coverings such as a cap or bonnet. Wealthy urban Quakers sometimes indulged in fine fabrics and somewhat more current fashions, but rarely close to mainstream fashions. Those of modest means, and especially if they traveled or worked a manual trade such as farming, needed practical clothes. For women, a basic dress with long sleeves and skirt, or a blouse and skirt that looked like a dress, sometimes with a bodice or apron or overdress, would be fairly typical. Among the key reasons for plain dress is simplicity, which would greatly appeal to someone like Mary Dyer with a tendency toward depression. If all your clothes are solid fabric in shades of brown, gray, unbleached ivory, and maybe a nicer white for Meeting, then you never have to worry about anything clashing.
Among these examples of Quaker clothes is this plain brown dress from 1840s-1850s, which is about what I imagine Mary wearing. Despite its timeframe, that kind of basic dress has been in use, with minor variations, across several centuries and many cultures -- and remains in use in Amish territory just north of me today. Prior to the invention of elastic (1800-1820) and zippers (1892), skirts were fastened with drawstrings, ties, laces, or buttons. Advantages of the drawstring include being cheap, simple, and adjustable so you don't need to make a new skirt if your body changes size or shape. You can even hide a drawstring inside a dress at the waist to make it more forgiving that a precisely fitted dress.
