Macassar

Note: blog name change as I embrace 80 and french kiss it to the ground. I meant to do it when I turned 70 but I was damn busy then, mayor of a town, host in my wee inn, running a business consulting service and building an off the grid cabin.

"You're a baby," said a fellow tenant to me today in the laundry room as we introduced ourselves. She's 85. It was a luscious feeling if only for a second when my knees, back and wrist reminded me you are no baby, lady.

Anyway to draw your attention back to the title of today's entry.

I saw this word in a book I just finished and I knew what it was but here for your edification is the definition:

Ma·cas·sar

noun

1. 1.

   a kind of oil formerly used, especially by men, to make one's hair shine and lie flat.
2. 2.

   variant spelling of Makassar.

So male readers, if you're missing out on that desired shine, you know what to get.

 

So I thought of my mother and grandmother washing the antimacassars back in the day and hanging them on the line. 

And I haven't heard that word in years, though it was used a lot as the antimacassars had to be washed, starched and ironed quite frequently.

You are puzzled.

Here's the definition:

an·ti·ma·cas·sar

noun

1. a piece of cloth put over the back of a chair to protect it from grease and dirt or as an ornament.

But also note the grease and dirt belonged to men's heads, their easy chairs, the rarity of washing their hair. I often speculated as a youngster that their hair was glued to their heads by all that oil. You could use their heads as a mirror and see yourself when you looked down on it, as I did frequently, sitting on the arms of their armchairs, one of those kids that wanted to share the newspapers, books or crosswords.

But, I am really, really happy the antimacassar days are over. Along with those filthy hankies men used often in great trumpeting nose-blowings that women had to boil, blue and dry and then iron into perfect folds for Da Man.

The hidden and unacknowledged work of women. 

Never ending.

Blog Jam

We had a bad storm on Tuesday night. Winds howling at over 120kmh in this little outport, even higher elsewhere. Buckets full of snow were blasted at the windows, clinging briefly to the panes and then falling in a puddle on the ground and disappearing. Phones blew out, dialup was a dim memory, dinner was cooked on the fire and gratitude was in the heart for being safe indoors as plans were deferred.

The sun came out yesterday bathing all in its path with that special light that only the aftermath of a storm can bring. A wondrous golden hue to everything. Like the child who shrugs after doing something really bad. "Who, me?"

I wore my aran sweater yesterday. I wear it, oh, once a year. It is too bulky to go under a coat and far too warm for spring and early fall. But yesterday was perfect for it. It will last a couple of hundred years at this rate.

We caught up on one of the deferred plans and went to the fishers' museum in St. Vincent's. Fishermen's Museum really. But I do prefer the more PC term. Because it wasn't only the fishermen. It was the women who toiled and slaved and worked so hard in the houses on the shore.

I was completely bewitched with the quilt shown above. Utterly and completely. I don't think I've ever seen women's work more honoured in one outstanding piece of work like this. In stark black and white.

Profound and gorgeous. I had to be pried away. I wanted to spend all day with it.