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Ignoregon.com - Blog Posts From Oregon City http://ignoregon.com/rss/oregon city Aggregated Blog Posts From Oregon City Tue, 7 Feb 2012 07:54:50 +0000 en So when exactly are you doing your Kickstarter? http://mkhobson.livejournal.com/795360.html http://mkhobson.livejournal.com/795360.html Sun, 5 Feb 2012 20:22:00 +0000 OMG is that synchronicity or what? I’ve had a few people email me to ask when they can expect to see my Kickstarter up and running. Tomorrow? No, not tomorrow. Jeez, I don’t even know what I’m going to do for a video yet. But the exciting news is that I have decided on an actual date! See, I knew I wanted to launch the campaign sometime in mid-April, but I also really wanted to avoid April 15th (because that is just such an unlucky day.) So I was idly examining the calendar for alternatives and I noticed something that I hadn’t before … There is a Friday the 13th in April! So of course, I’m all over that. I write about witches and warlocks and ancient family curses and crap. How could I NOT make Friday the 13th my kick-off date? Sure, it may cost me the support of a few friggatriskaidekaphobics, but I’m willing to take that chance. And so, with that milestone satisfactorily plugged into my project plan, I happily return to writing. I have such had a wonderful peaceful productive day so far. Everything’s so quiet on the Internet. It’s almost like there’s some kind of big event going on or something. Huh.   Mirrored from M.K. Hobson | Necrophilatelist. Please leave comments there. Lips, Part Deux http://mkhobson.livejournal.com/794920.html http://mkhobson.livejournal.com/794920.html Sat, 4 Feb 2012 22:44:00 +0000 So last night when I got home, I was so fired up with enthusiasm over the idea of making my own secret special lip balm which would obviate the need to carry around vagina anti-itch cream in my purse (a difficulty detailed in my blog post about my personal lip woes) that I actually put a double-boiler on the stove, melted 2 tubes of Burt’s Bees, added a bit of kokum butter, then squeezed in a heaping squirt of vagina anti-itch cream. Then I poured the melted stuff back into the Burt’s Bees tubes and set them in the fridge to harden. And now I HAVE TWO TUBES OF MIRACLE LIP CURE! It totally works and I love it! OMG I WILL MAKE MILLIONS! And best of all, Bruce Williams, Portland writer & swell guy I met at the Nebulas, has already designed me a lip balm pot! Watch out Etsy, here I come! (Well, maybe after I finish the book) Mirrored from M.K. Hobson | Necrophilatelist. Please leave comments there. The State of My Lips http://mkhobson.livejournal.com/794813.html http://mkhobson.livejournal.com/794813.html Fri, 3 Feb 2012 14:31:00 +0000 See these gorgeous lips? These are not my lips. I know I usually complain about my butt, but over the past several months (really, now that I think about it, this has been going on for a whole year) I have been struggling with chronic and severe chapped lips. And not just your garden variety dry & flakies, but full on lip-hives, the kind which embarrass you in public and make you cover your mouth with your hand when you’re speaking to people. I have not been able to determine exactly what causes the flare-ups … tomatoes, lemon juice, salt, wheat and stress have all been implicated, but not definitively proven. When I have a flareup, the only way I can get the lip-insanity under control is by taking a couple tabs of my ol’ pal benadryl and heading immediately to bed (ice also helps.) If only it were as easy as taking care of the immediate swelling, though! Things actually get worse once the swelling goes away, as I’m left with excruciatingly painful cracks and splits that just won’t. go. away. So of course, my family keeps asking me why I don’t go see a dermatologist or an allergist. Like, actually go see a professional about this problem that’s been plaguing me for the better part of a year? Never! I’m a cankerous, lazy, self-sufficient old cuss and if I can’t fix it myself then I don’t want it fixed. I’m also a bit old-school when it comes to doctors�"unless it’s cancer or kidney failure, I figure they don’t know anything more than I can find out by myself on the Intranets. As a result, I’ve self-diagnosed (and attempted treatments for) perleche, cat allergies, allergy to petroleum jelly, excessive dryness in my bedroom, bacterial infection, vitamin B deficiency, vitamin D deficiency, and full-on demonic possession. Nothing has worked. The biggest problem is that I keep running into a Catch-22: my lips need to be moisturized, but anything I put on them to moisturize them seems to irritate & inflame them. There ARE are some all-natural moisturizers that I don’t react to (coconut or olive oil) but they all just slide off my lips in a greasy mess. So I just don’t moisturize. But if I don’t moisturize, the problem gets worse! But now, I believe I have discovered the cure. And what a cure it is! It’s … Vagisil. Not the antifungal kind, just the plain ol’ anti-itch kind. The kind you use to relieve itching and burning … down there. It’s stuffed with benzocaine, which completely knocks out the itching and pain. And it has just enough emollients that my lips get some moisture. And best of all the emollients do not include petroleum jelly (aka petrolatum) which I really do think I’ve developed quite a sensitivity to, and which is in most lip-balms. So the upshot of this whole post is that I now have to walk around with a tube of vagina anti-itch cream in my purse, and I have to find ways to covertly apply it to my (ahem) upstairs lips when necessary. Of course now, having figured out what I believe to be an effective solution, I am thinking about getting out my pots and pans and mixing up some custom lip balm, using the vagina anti-itch cream and maybe some kokum butter or something. I could put it in nice little pots and call it “Mary’s Special Lip Balm” and no one would be the wiser. Thus is the State of My Lips. I’m sure you were all dying to know. Mirrored from M.K. Hobson | Necrophilatelist. Please leave comments there. Welcome to 1910 http://mkhobson.livejournal.com/794462.html http://mkhobson.livejournal.com/794462.html Wed, 1 Feb 2012 10:03:00 +0000 So in case anyone who reads this blog is insufficiently schooled in the extent and specifics of my ongoing insanity, I shall lay it all out in the simplest of terms: I am writing a series. And not just any series, but a fantasy series. And not just any fantasy series, but a historical fantasy series. (And a partially self-published historical fantasy series at that. Go sign up for my mailing list whydoncha?) The series as a whole is made up of component duologies. Each duology follows different characters and is set in a different era of United States history. Concurrent to the writing and promotion of these books, I am posting my historical research, interesting factoids, et cetera. The first duology was set in 1876�"and for it, I did an overview post about 1876. The second duology is set in 1910. So here, without further ado, are my thoughts about why 1910 was so flippin’ awesome and why I decided to set two books in it. OK. So. 1910. Fifty years after the Civil War, and the United States looks a whole lot different than it did. Mr. Bell’s telephone (which was first demonstrated in 1876, at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition) is in widespread use, with millions of American homes already connected by manual switchboard. This is the era of telephone operators�"”hello-girls”�"who do the actual grunt-work of connecting calls. Not that there is probably much actual grunting involved, but my point is a long distance call isn’t just a matter of dialing a 1 before the area code. It means calling your local operator at your local switchboard, who jams a plug into a board to complete a circuit between you and another operator, who plugs in another plug to connect you to another operator somewhere further along, and so on, and so on, and so on. Oh, that crazy Tesla! Electricity is hot, gas is not. Not for lighting the home and street, anyway. By 1910, literally thousands of homes have “made the switch” to electric lighting instead of gas or kerosene. (Of course, true historians of electricity will see the funny joke I just made there, because in 1910, the “light switch” as we know it today was not yet in evidence. Neither was the wall outlet. Check out this fascinating blog post for all the deets. Fun fact�"the light turny-dial things (and push-buttons) shown are just like the ones in the house I live in, which was built in 1916!) A different kind of gas�"petroleum gasoline�"is gaining popularity, as it is one means by which the ever-increasing numbers of automobiles are being fueled. But gasoline-fueled cars are by no means standard. The war for America’s Automotive Future will not be won until the major drawback of gasoline automobiles�"the fact that they are really hard to start and can, like, break your arm with their kickback�"is conquered by the self-starter, first installed by Cadillac on production models in 1912. Thus, in 1910 the gasoline auto is still in the process of duking it out for supremacy with other serious (electric) and less serious (steam) contenders. What else is going on? Oh gee, all sorts of stuff. Aliens crash land in Russia. Teddy Roosevelt invents 1337 speak. Max Planck formulates quantum theory. It's a time of dogs wearing top hats. You can't beat that. Money in 1910 comes in a staggering variety of colors, shapes and sizes, and is issued by all sorts of people. In 1910, everybody apparently has the right to issue currency. Good times. This is probably why the 1900s will come to be called the “Progressive Era”�"well, that, and because they are also a period of intense social activism and reform. When I think of the 1870s, I think of corruption�"they were a time of political bosses, gladhanding, commodity-market cornering, trusts, and kickbacks. When I think of the 1900s, I think of idealism. Paternalistic idealism, to be sure�"but it was an era of trust-busting, organized labor, and the City Beautiful movement. In the 1900s, we were playing on a bigger stage and we had to clean ourselves up and look like civilized human beings. We did not always succeed. But by cracky, it was a fun ride! Mirrored from M.K. Hobson | Necrophilatelist. Please leave comments there. From the book research folder http://mkhobson.livejournal.com/794314.html http://mkhobson.livejournal.com/794314.html Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:40:00 +0000 Ladies' hats, 1910 Mirrored from M.K. Hobson | Necrophilatelist. Please leave comments there. Gold Certificates, United States Notes, and Federal Reserve Notes http://mkhobson.livejournal.com/794041.html http://mkhobson.livejournal.com/794041.html Thu, 26 Jan 2012 22:35:00 +0000 Gold Certificates One fun thing about writing historical fiction is that you never know what interesting little research rabbit holes you’re going fall down. One that I’ve ended up spending quite a bit of time on over the past couple of days is what kind of money my characters (in 1910) would use. You’d think it would be pretty straightforward, but that’s because you live in 2012, when there is only ONE kind of paper currency. But in 1910 there were four. Count ‘em! Four! And the one kind of paper currency we are familiar with today�"Federal Reserve Notes�"was not one of them. Federal Reserve Notes did not exist until after the passage of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913. So, what would they have used? Well, for day-to-day purchases they would probably have used coins, given that in 1910 a pocketful of quarters could keep you going comfortably for a week or more (depending on your particular standard of living, of course). These coins would also be substantially different from the coins we know today. In 1910, America was still on a “hard money” standard�"which meant the value of currency was backed by a precious metal�"that precious metal being gold. Silver wasn’t technically a reserve metal, but there were a lot of people who wanted it to be, and they caused all sorts of silly little headaches and hassles. And so it ultimately kind of ended up getting treated like one but not really. Anyway. Moving on. My point is, coins were not the cheap crappy debased trinkets we use today, but were actually silver, bronze, and gold. Among the silver coins were the Barber dime, quarter & half dollar. There was also the Liberty Head nickel, and apparently the 1910 mintage of the Liberty Head nickel was so low that it’s now next-to-impossible to find them. And as far as gold was concerned, this was the era for it�"have a look at the beautiful $20 gold Liberty coin, the quarter eagle ($2.50), the half eagle ($5.00), the eagle ($10) and the double eagle (you guessed it … $20) if you doubt me. 1910 Quarter Eagle gold coin. I love how it says "2 1/2 dollars" But what if my intrepid characters had to carry, let’s say, ten thousand dollars. That would have been a lot of damn change to lug around, no matter how beautiful. Well, they didn’t have to actually lug around the physical metal. They could carry gold certificates or silver certificates. The gold certificate was used as US currency from 1882 to 1933. When the U.S. was taken off the gold standard in 1933 (which is a whole ‘nother post … and a matter of fact, a whole ‘nother BOOK), gold certificates were withdrawn from circulation and it was illegal to own them�"oh, and also GOLD�"until the 1960s. Silver certificates, interestingly enough, actually stuck around in constant use until 1968 (take THAT, Cross of Gold!) One thing I didn’t know, and is completely useless to me at the moment but is interesting nonetheless: all small $1 bills until 1963 were Silver Certificates. Starting in 1934, these simply said they were redeemable “in silver” instead of “in silver dollars” and they could be redeemed in silver (small bars) at the United States Treasury all the way until 1968�"the last hard money activity of the United States government.* Our characters might also have opted for United States Notes. These were available in denominations up to $1,000 (the $5,000 and $10,000 bills having been discontinued after 1878). These were produced in a larger size (7.5 x 3.25 inches, often referred to as “horseblanket” or “saddleblanket” format) than today’s currency, and were printed from 1861 through 1923. The United States Note represented a demand draft drawn directly on the US Treasury. It was released directly into circulation free of interest�"so no private corporation was in the middle of the transaction making a profit on it, as they would with National Bank Notes, and later, Federal Reserve Notes. United States Notes from the 1880s National Bank Notes were currency issued by private, federally chartered banks (many of which would eventually become the component banks of the Federal Reserve System.) These federally-chartered banks would deposit government bonds in the U.S. Treasury, then issue their own private currency against the value of those bonds. The advantage to this for the US Government was that National Bank Notes didn’t represent a direct draw on the funds in the Treasury. They didn’t “hit the bank account”, so to speak. They were more like a cash advance. The government could issue treasury bonds all day long, and the banks made a tidy little income on something called seigniorage, which I don’t want to even get into. All in all, it was a neat system, and one which would be replicated on a grander scale when the Federal Reserve came along in 1913 and basically replaced all those messy little privately-owned National Banks with one nice big huge tidy privately-owned Central Bank. Except the National Bank Notes didn’t actually go away until the 1930s. And then, in 1913, came the Federal Reserve Notes that we all know and love. Actually, there were also Federal Reserve BANK notes, which were identical to National Bank Notes in form and function but issued by Federal Reserve Banks, but these notes were retired in 1945 and by God I’m tired of typing about currency at the moment. If you want to learn more, go here. You will find everything you ever wanted to know and even more that you didn’t. Mirrored from M.K. Hobson | Necrophilatelist. Please leave comments there. From the book research folder http://mkhobson.livejournal.com/763260.html http://mkhobson.livejournal.com/763260.html Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:51:00 +0000 Hotel Stockton, Stockton California, 1910 Mirrored from M.K. Hobson | Necrophilatelist. Please leave comments there.