Posting again after a year ...

Image from http.clipart.edigg.com

I haven't entirely forgotten this blog ... really ....

So many things have changed since I last posted -- on December 31st of 2018!  Most important among the changes is another new place to live.  I moved in about 6 weeks ago, but I'm still unpacking things; I have almost all of my possessions out of my storage unit, however, and I need to get another bookcase or cabinet to hold my antique books and the dishes and silver that I inherited from my grandparents.

I am still working in the library at the school, and I'm also in charge of running the Rancho Day event for 4th grade, and assisting with the Tea Party section of the Colonial Day event for 5th grade, for both of which I wear historical dress, of course!  Rancho Day for 2020 will be at the end of next month, and Colonial Day will be a few weeks later, in early to mid February.  I need to get my costume in order for both events!

I walked in the Rose, White & Blue Parade in San Jose again, with

Photo: Deborah Borlase.

the Greater Bay Area Costumers' Guild, and our theme was Prohibiton: Pro and Con.  I made a ca. 1918 skirt out of blue linen (not quite finished, but it was wearable) and wore it with my vintage embroidered blouse and my "Votes for Women" sash, to illustrate that the people opposing prohibition were also opposing women's voting and other legal rights.  The two issues (prohibition and women's suffrage) were so intertwined that most of the women's organizations campaigned for both issues simultaneously; the amount of control that "Big Alcohol" had over the national, state, and local governments was one of the biggest obstacles, if not the biggest one, to women getting the right to vote, which is a fact that people have largely forgotten and which, even the historians in my costume group wanted to dismiss, as "clouding the issue."