Historical Bits and Pieces

We have been spending a lot of time immersed in the Colonial period: visiting a variety of living history parks/ national historic sites; reading journals, texts, and historical fiction; and working our way through the fabulous PBS "reality show", Colonial House. I have always been a voyeur and this recent historical immersion process has really been fascinating.
Our visit to Yorktown, Virginia last month was filled with nitty gritty details, artifacts, and ephemera. A haunting little cradle with hand-made dollies, a green mug left on a bench by a Colonial farmer who had probably been resting between chores, maps and navigational tools inside an officer's tent, disturbing medical tools and Colonial era treatments, flax and hops plants growing in the garden, and hand-hewn tools. Sometimes the folks working in these historical re-creations are excellent, sometimes they are weird, but regardless of the staffing, the physical items from daily life always catch my eye and plunge me back into day dreaming about what it must have been like to struggle and hope during that stage in our country's history. ***All of the staff at York Town were great! and I highly recommend a visit, especially in Spring of 2017 when the new museum will be open and the expansion of the living history park will be complete.