When Would You Like to Have Lived?

This is a great topic to explore. It was posed on my Writers' Forum a while ago. I've also joined a History Forum and it is a question there, as well.

What would have been your ideal place in history? We look at history books and decide when it would have been a great time to live.

Well, first of all, I'm female. So unless I only step back less than a hundred years, I have to give up my first class citizenship and become an automatic second class citizen just by virtue of my gender. I won't have the rights and freedoms I currently enjoy. Sorry, that's the reality of history.

If I were male or willing to give up my autonomy, I could travel back in time and perhaps be … well, a serf. Most people were not free no matter where they lived until democratic practices came into fashion. Feudal or aristocratic societies did not favor the common man, let alone the common woman. So kiss your autonomy goodbye.

But let's say you are somehow going to go from one of the hoi polloi today to one of the rich and semi-famous of yesteryear. Okay, you are a titled or landed person with control over your own life and have a lifestyle beyond the common drudge who serves you, willingly or unwillingly. You aren't the servant who is bowing and scraping or even the butler who only needs to bow, but you are the Master of the House. How are you with a sword? Or a mace? How well do you sit a horse? While wielding a sword?

You are in Europe and have a castle at your disposal. How great is that? But it's winter. Oh my. You are cold. You are rich and cold. There is no central heat and castles were at best, drafty. Your beautiful tapestries are hung in order to keep out most of the wind and you have servants to light fires all over the castle. Of course, this creates a lot of smoke and smudge, but at least you are warmer than the serfs who support you.

And you would like to read something. Even the aristocracy was often illiterate, but you are one of the lucky few who aren't. And, you have something new to read. Some hand copied Bible probably; they were the most frequent type of book produced. So, it's six PM and you have some time to read. But it's winter, in England. It's already dark and gloomy. You can't switch on a light, they haven't been invented yet. So your servant lights an oil lamp. They don't make much light, but what they lack in light they make up in smoke and more smudge.

If you happened to go back in time and be one of the masses, how in the world would you cope? How do even light the dang oil lamp, if you happened to get hold of one? There aren't matches yet, so you can't do that. And you certainly can't flick your Bic.

But you are Lord of the Manor and you would like a little late night snack. So you go to the larder and pour yourself some … well, it can't be much. There was no refrigerator, there is a larder. There is room temperature milk and since this is winter, it's cold. Now, if it were a bright summer evening, it wouldn't be cold milk, because of the whole room temperature thing. And you can't get most of the liquid refreshment we have today. Let me tell, I've tasted mead and it isn't all that great.

If you go back as just a regular Joe, there are other problems. You are cold and so need to stoke up the fire in the fireplace. If THAT went out, same problem with the whole start up the lamp. But, let's pretend you could get it started. Now you are hungry. How do you even bake bread without an oven? What exactly are you going to eat? How many ways can you make soup? No chips or pretzels, no soda, no fast food of any sort. You will be lucky to see any meat for special occasions, so I hope you like a subsistence vegetarian diet.

How will you support yourself? You know no useful skills. Being able to format text in Microsoft Word isn't going to be very useful. Even being literate is fairly useless, because books are VERY expensive. Knowing how to write is useless unless you also learned how to write with a quill. Paper is also VERY expensive.

Almost everything we know and use today wasn't around in the current fashion a few hundred years ago. And many people choose to go back even farther in time.

There was no treatment for many of the diseases that are slight annoyances today. Diabetics died young. Hemophiliacs died young. Appendicitis killed. High blood pressure killed. Accidents killed. Childbirth killed. Life was short and mean. The average age of death came decades faster than today. Someone my age would be old, today I'm "middle aged" and can count on about another thirty years alive.

When we read the history books, we think of the glory or beauty depicted. Some people mentioned the gorgeous art works or elevated societies. Well, yes. But we have that today for the lucky who have the money to enjoy it. Unless you are insisting your time travel is going to let you go back in time and enter a different economic class, you better be prepared to simply starve or freeze to death. And that doesn't seem like much fun. 

Back to Work

When you are your own boss, how do you complain about management? I haven't had an outside boss in quite a while. I am the boss. Of me. I get to determine what I will do and when I will do it. It's heady stuff. Until you need to blame someone and there is no one to blame.

So I decided I needed a break. I had "things to do" and "places to go." So I took some time off. In fact, since my bibliography has time stamped items in it, I know I took 20 days off. I'm not sure what I really did in three weeks time, but I know what I didn't do. I didn't write.

Oh, I wrote a blog entry or maybe even two. I wrote some flash fiction. I wrote a few lead articles for my Wednesday RGQ issue, since I volunteered to take on another free writing assignment. What I didn't write was any history essays.

I baked eight types of cookies. I went to visit family in Florida along with the regular visits to Hilton Head. I decorated the house for Christmas. I continued with my hospital volunteer stint. I did lots of stuff.

My old laptop was trying to die. And rather than wait until everything was lost and computers were once again full price, I got a new laptop. That meant I had two days of setting up a new laptop to get it to where it was once again functional for me. I had to install the programs I wanted. I had to update the things I needed to update. I had to delete the preinstalled stuff I didn't want. It took two days.

Much of that time was spent downloading the games I play on the computer. I had many, many games. I have some games once again installed. I really didn't play all the games I had on the other computer, but I played lots. I have been doing that as well. Playing games.

I find it relaxing to play games but I always look back and think what I could have been doing instead that would have been far more productive. I know I could have January completely finished instead of only one-quarter done if only I had been writing instead of playing games.

The trouble is the boss didn't make me. The boss let me slack off for a while. I gave myself a free pass. And now I feel like I'm behind. I'm not really behind, but I'm not as far ahead as I like to be.

So today I got on the Wii and then the elliptical. I got showered and dressed and sat down to write. I know all about an ice storm that hit Canada and the northeast US in 1998. I know about Prague Spring and Alexander Dubcak's efforts to bring freedom to Czechoslovakia. I learned about Marie Montessori and a horrible fire at Mercy Hospital in Davenport, Iowa.

And I remembered why I enjoy doing this. I love learning. I knew about Montessori schools, but not as much as I know now. And I had never heard about any of the other stuff. I suppose I knew about the ice storm, but it didn't really register. I was in Ohio and unaffected.

Now I know things. They aren't Earth shattering things and I lived quite well before today in spite of not knowing them. But my life is now richer; my experience of history is broader. And if I'm going to broaden something, I would much rather it be my horizons.

Ah, the glory of being back to work.