Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor....

As we set about planning our barbecues and stocking our Styrofoam coolers with beer, let us take a moment to remember Independence Day's meaning.  It is also known as The Fourth of July or Patriot's Day. It is the anniversary of America's Declaration of Independence from England, on July 4th, 1776 and this year marks its 239th anniversary.

 "In 1775, people in New England began fighting the British for their independence. On July 2, 1776, the Congress secretly voted for independence from Great Britain. The Declaration of Independence was first published two days later on July 4, 1776. The first public reading of the Declaration of Independence was on July 8, 1776. Delegates began to sign the Declaration of Independence on August 2, 1776." -timeanddate.com

But for many of our State's Veteran's it's not all sparklers, flags and fireworks.

"VERMONT HAS THE HIGHEST RATE OF HOMELESSNESS IN NEW ENGLAND; AT LEAST 66% OF VERMONT HOUSEHOLDS DO NOT EARN ENOUGH TO AFFORD THE AVERAGE FAIR MARKET RENT.  In Vermont, an estimated 125 veterans are homeless on any given night.  Studies demonstrate that veterans are particularly vulnerable to becoming chronically homeless when support services and stable housing are lacking in a community." - Committee on Temporary Shelter, Burlington, Vermont

DEMOGRAPHICS

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) says the nation's homeless veterans are mostly males (four percent are females). The vast majority is single, most come from poor, disadvantaged communities, 45 percent suffer from mental illness, and half have substance abuse problems. America’s homeless veterans have served in World War II, Korean War, Cold War, Vietnam War, Grenada, Panama, Lebanon.  Source:  National Coalition for homeless veterans: http://www.nchv.org/background.cfm

Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), Operation Iraqi Freedom, or the military’s anti-drug cultivation efforts in South America. 47 per cent of homeless veterans served during the Vietnam Era.

More than 67 per cent served our country for at least three years and 33 per cent were stationed in a war zone.

Here are some statistics concerning the veterans homeless from the National Coalition for the Homeless (http://www.nationalhomeless.org):

23% of homeless population are veterans
33% of male homeless population are veterans
47% Vietnam Era
17% post-Vietnam
15% pre-Vietnam
67% served three or more years
33% stationed in war zone
25% have used VA Homeless Services
85% completed high school/GED, compared to 56% of non-veterans
89% received Honorable Discharge
79% reside in central cities
16% reside in suburban areas
5% reside in rural areas
76% experience alcohol, drug, or mental health problems
46% white males compared to 34% non-veterans
46% age 45 or older compared to 20% non-veterans

Female homeless veterans represent an estimated 3% of homeless veterans. They are more likely than male homeless veterans to be married and to suffer serious psychiatric illness, but less likely to be employed and to suffer from addiction disorders. Comparisons of homeless female veterans and other homeless women have found no differences in rates of mental illness or addictions.

WHERE TO FIND ASSISTANCE for Homeless Veterans in Vermont and surrounding borders: (Links will open in a different window)

Vermont Veteran Services

VVS Home Page

New Colossus 

(also known as the Statue of Liberty Poem)

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" 

"The Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World; French: La Liberté éclairant le monde) is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in the middle of New York Harbor, in Manhattan, New York City.

The statue, designed by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and dedicated on October 28, 1886, was a gift to the United States from the people of France. The statue is of a robed female figure representing Libertas, the Roman goddess of freedom, who bears a torch and a tabula ansata (a tablet evoking the law) upon which is inscribed the date of the American Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.

A broken chain lies at her feet. The statue is an icon of freedom and of the United States: a welcoming signal to immigrants arriving from abroad." - wiki

Have a safe and blessed Fourth!

"HAINT" Talkin' 'bout Love

Haint Blue

If you have traveled through the deep south, or, have been fortunate enough to relax on a sleepy, grand columned veranda on a warm Savannah afternoon, to sip a mint julep or a glass of sweet tea, you may have noticed the ceiling of the porch is painted blue.  This blue, called Haint Blue, is mostly prevalent in the American South.

Source: pinterest

Interestingly enough, "haint blue" can be found in a broad array of colors and you can't quite label it "haint" because it "ain't" just one color!  "Haint Blue" is used widely, but it's actual description is murky, as it can be found in a shades of periwinkle to blue violet to sky-blue (to mirror the sky); to sea-foam green (to mirror the sea).  It has been used as ceiling paint for porches, and in some cases, doors, shutters and trim-work.  Here is the best description I could find:

"Haint blue is not a specific tint or shade, but rather refers to any kind of blue paint used for the purposes of warding the house against harm." - wiki

Random Thought:

The band Type O Negative's song Entitled "Black No. 1",  makes a suggestion to "Little Miss Scare All",

Yeah you wanna go out

'cause it's raining and blowing.

You can't go out

'cause your roots are showing.

♫ ♪ Dye 'em black ♪ ♫

Perhaps a similar notion was initially employed in the southern United States, to ward off evil from their homes?  I digress....

Photo: willowbeeinspired.blogspot

Photo: apartment therapy

Origins

"Haint" is a Southern colloquialism which means "ghost" or "spirit", and is a variation of the word "haunt"; and, by employing haint blue by means of painting porch ceilings and such, is used in an effort to "confuse" spirits  or to discourage them from crossing into one's home.  In theory, it is a form of magic!

Haint Blue was created by the descendants of African Slaves known as the Geechee.  Historically, the tribe was known as the Gullah.  Speculatively, since they settled in the region near the Ogeechee River near Savannah (Georgia), they were/are often referred to as The Geechee. At one time the Gullah region encompassed a region from Cape Fear, North Carolina to the Jacksonville area of Florida. Today, it is generally South Carolina to Georgia's Low-Country. The Geechee used their tradition of painting sections of their shacks/homes shades of blue, by mixing milk, lime and indigo dyes. Ironically, lime is a natural repellent of insects, which is why - even today - the color is often believed to keep wasps, mosquitoes and other bugs from nesting in corners of porches!

Indigo dye is made from a plant extraction obtained from those in the genus Indigofera, which are native to the tropics. 

Lime (material) photo courtesy of castleheritage.co.uk

The Geechee believed that Haints were evil spirits, those that were not kind, but angry entities who thrived on creating harm, hardship and heartbreak of humans.

These spirits were thought to strongly dislike water, so in an effort to fool the spirits, the Geechee painted any possible crossings (doors, windows, thresholds, and so on) blue or blue green to look like a source of water, thereby confusing the spirits and sending them elsewhere. This tradition won the hearts of their owners who began the practice of painting their respective porch ceilings, shutters and trim work Haint Blue.

"Haints, or haunts, are spirits trapped between the world of the living and the world of the dead. These are not your quiet, floaty, sorrowful ghosts, they are the kind you don’t want to mess with, and the kind you certainly don’t want invading into your humble abode looking for revenge. 

Luckily, the Gullah people remembered an important footnote to the haint legend. These angry spirits have a kryptonite: they cannot cross water. The safest place would be in an underwater bubble, or perhaps to surround your house with a moat. But the Gullah people had a much more elegant solution. They would dig a pit in the ground, fill it with lime, milk, and whatever pigments they could find, stir it all together, and paint the mixture around every opening into their homes. The haints, confused by these watery pigments, are tricked into thinking they can’t enter." -http://historiesofthingstocome.blogspot.com/2011/09/history-of-colour-haint-blue.html

art found on tumblr

Snake Oil For Sale

Miracle Cures and more....

Photo: archives.gov

Picture yourself in the Wild West of America, a family traveling across the dusty prairies to discover Frontier towns, or to perhaps settle your own farmland.  While riding in your covered wagon, you greet another wagon toting medicines and cures for sale.  This wagon is made of wood and advertising is painted on it that promotes products that promised renewed health, miracle cures, herbal concoctions, and various remedies.  

In my mind's eye -the Snake Oil Salesman

Meet the Medicine Man.  He is most certainly impeccably dressed in a dark suit, albeit wearing a dusty, but tidy white shirt, his bow-tie is neatly knotted, and on his head is a black top hat.  Perhaps he dons a Dali-esque curling mustache with a smile that you immediately distrust, but are drawn to listen to his sales pitch, for he is charismatic and sales are his business. He is a one-man circus, a snake oil salesman, a traveling apothecary and a charlatan.

This man was a master of promoting "patent medicines" which were actually the gateway to the advertising industry.  Successful salesman carried a variety of so-called medicines from the basic to the exotic.  They were also crafty, knowing some of their cure-alls were addictive because many of the remedies of that time were not only opium based, but they contained alcohol, or morphine or cocaine, which made their return trips to town not only frequent, but profitable.  They knowingly preyed upon addiction, and probably hypochondriacs. 

"Patent Medicine" is mostly associated with drug compounds which were produced and sold during the 18th and 19th centuries.  Another word for patent medicines was nostrum remedium - which means "our remedy" in Latin.  Originating from England, and later shipped to America, they were given trademarks, but never really patented!  

Nostrums were mostly like called such because they were manufactured at home, and if the remedy was successful, then it would be bottled and sold in fancier packaging.  Herbs and/or roots were boiled, or infused into vegetable oils, sugar was frequently added and most frequently,  copious amounts of alcohol.   Family recipes were kept secret and the contents of their concoctions were often kept secret. Remember during this time,the FDA did not exist, so whatever was manufactured there was often little or no regard for their toxicity.  Sometimes the remedy was lethal.  

Laudanum would be one example of this, as no prescription was necessary, and this did not change until the early 20th century. This russet colored, bitter drink first sold as a remedy to help a cough and sooth a sore throat. After which, it was commonly prescribed by well-meaning physicians, to calm nerves.  The reason for it's addiction and abuse (whether concealed or openly used) was that it's base contained a high content of morphine, and also contained codeine - all infused in alcohol.  I am not sure where I read or heard this, but I think this particular drug was one commonly used discretely by wealthier women.

Lacking affordable mass transportation and often being geographically challenged, homesteaders and families were often cared for by the mother of families.  Without having access to a town or market, many Moms had no choice but to care for illnesses at home, using their own family cures or even cookbook recipes to aid the sick.

To the delight of the new found traveling salesman, and the success of some remedies, the quack would load his wagon with medicines to prey upon those who now lived with the fear of major diseases such as typhoid, yellow fever, and cholera.   Mom's lack of skill to counter such terrible illnesses, were a direct success of the traveling salesman.  They fed upon the family's fear of disease to sell their products, and it worked.  

As patented medicines became more profitable, it was only natural that clever advertising began to appear everywhere.  Shrewd business owners bought advertisements in printed newspapers, which helped vastly with the success of sales.  Glass bottles were manufactured with the company or doctors name imprinted in the glass, or labels were affixed to them.  

Photo: liveauction.com

This introduced trademarks that sold their product under comforting, colorful titles and names. The more profitable the company, the more colorful the label. Some remedies also came in boxes which matched the inner label on the bottles. Later, remedies appeared in tins.  The manufacturing of patent medicines was born.   

Any ailment under the sun was fair game for treatment.  And anything that you can think of was used in the manufacturing of cures - and the claims of cures and remedies that were made were astonishing.  

"Chlorodyne was the name for one of the most famous patent medicines sold in the British Isles. It was invented in the 19th century by a Dr. John Collis Browne, a doctor in the British Indian Army; its original purpose was in the treatment of cholera. Browne sold his formula to the pharmacist John Thistlewood Davenport, who advertised it widely, as a treatment for cholera, diarrhea, insomnia, neuralgia, migraines, etc. As its principal ingredients were a mixture of laudanum (an alcoholic solution of opium), tincture of cannabis, and chloroform, it readily lived up to its claims of relieving pain, as a sedative, and for the treatment of diarrhea." - Source: wikipedia

"Dr. Kilmer's Swamp Root Kidney, Liver & Bladder Cure was aimed at people suffering from Bright's disease, bloating limbs,
lame back, rheumatism, diabetes, dropsy, malaria, dyspepsia, gall stone, fever, ague, gout, pimples, ulcers, syphilis, poor

appetite, bad breath, and a previously unknown disease - "internal slime fever." " ~ Source: pilgrimhallmuseum.org

For the discrete cheater....
Not much left to the imagination on this remedy (above)...

There is an old tale that a shepard was out in his field, tending his flock when his staff stuck to a black stone, (and because the end of his staff was made of iron, to which the rock was attracted) it was then believed that the rock possessed magic.  Time passed and scientific studies became the basis on which recoveries and cures were manufactured.  

              

 

In addition to bottled water treated with electro-magnetism, a magnitude of other products were developed such as machines that used belts; as well as producing balms, liniments, ointments, oils and so on, all claiming to have healing powers infused with electro-magnetic cures.  Of the use of electro-magnetic water, one doctor wrote, 


"Water is valuable as a medical agent, but its efficiency consists, not in the element itself, but in its subservience as a handmaid of electricity. Electricity is the queen of medicine: water merely a pool in which she bathes her feet." - Unknown

Here is a whole boat load of bizarre remedies, cures and other strange medical inventions... along with my comments....who couldn't resist? 

"Never Known to Fail"

Oh, what a delightful secret, indeed as "Rich, red blood will be sent coursing through your veins..."

Chocolate coated STRYCHNINE?

"During the turn of the century, consuming small amounts of strychnine was believed to be a good way to enhance the senses, promote saliva flow, and built a good apatite."  -poisonbottlecollecting.wordpress.com 

I love the last line - "Resist the devil and he will flee from you" - This is a warning for anyone attempting to copy Samuel Thompson's patent medicine. 

In other words, a generous, christian doctor will sell you drugs. 

From Our Toilet, to yours!  

Hey, a little booze never hurt anyone, right?  Quickly heal after having the flu - even his Holiness was brought into the racket. 

Huh?  

Hell, if you've got it, we'll fix it.

Men!  Like they needed any help...Just sayin'...

A little infused weed for your female woes.

This supposedly cured your heart, and make it pump better. 

                          

 

I'm thinking there must have been a lot of infidelity or many trips to the local Saloon....

"and one day his woman ran off with another guy, hit young Rocky in the eye.  Rocky didn't like that 'said I'm gonna get that boy..." -The Beatles

I guess this would beat being stretched out on some mechanical Medieval devise.

Purify your blood - with Chloroform

Add caption

Aunt Martha: "For a gallon of elderberry wine, I take one teaspoon full of arsenic, then add half a teaspoon full of strychnine, and then just a pinch of cyanide.'

Mortimer Brewster: "Hmm. Should have quite a kick."
-From the movie, "Arsenic and Old Lace", 1944

"The Star of Hope"

Cocaine induced tonic.... not sure what it did other than the obvious.

Here's something for those poor, small busted gals....

  

One for Old Rusty....

Just "Pull the cords"!  Though this may have worked, it would only be temporary.

I think the American Lung Association would disagree with this advertising.

Hell, ya!

I think the word they were looking for was anemic, or albino... it's a coin toss.

"Cure?"  I researched this product, and though I learned a lot about why it was touted as a cure (it's instructions stated to avoid sugar, and eventually tested urine showed that there was a lack of glucose.  Well, that was easy.)  Also, I could not find a single ingredient for this product, but I believe some type of diuretic herb was used in the making of this product.  It's ingredients are still unknown - to my knowledge.   If you have an answer, I'd love to know!  Unfortunately, we all are aware that even up to today there has been no cure for diabetes.  This product contained:
PURE HOGWASH.  

Oh, Baby....

This was not only made w/ infused electricity - "but it causes no sores like certain OTHER plasters".... Hmmm... a little competition, I suspect.

A little turpentine straight from your paint brush and on to your skin!  No wonder Van Gogh cut off his ear.

"As a FLESH PRODUCER... there can be no question that Scott's Emulsion of Pure Cod Liver Oil and Hypophosphites [of lime and soda] is without a rival.  Many have gained a pound a day by the use of it....."   Good Lord!

"Syrup of Hypophosphites was widely marketed to physicians, not consumers, as a remedy for many illnesses.  It was a commercial success, even though it contained strychnine, a potent poison, and likely made its customers sicker." -old marinartifacts.wordpress.com

WHAT did they put in the coffee?  

Sounds kind of yummy, eh?  The word Senna popped out at me - so I could figure this out pretty quickly.  Better keep the door to the outhouse opened. 

Early drugs for diet aids. 

Autumn Leaf Extract?  WHAT Autumn leaf?  Sure to cure any menstrual cramps, AND purify your blood!  I think I'd rather eat spinach, thank you.

"George Goodwin and Company"  ....Looks like my husband's family was in on the racket.  hee hee....

I don' know about you, but if the label says "JACKASS" I don't think I'd try it.   Kind of an oxymoron, all around. 

Send those tapeworms back to the ground! 

Glad?  Of course they were glad, they've shut the baby up with an opiate. 

Easy choice - smoke cigarettes or take this Oil of Tar! 

Say Aaahhh... and don't worry - the ambulance is on it's way.

Even animals were treated with manufactured home remedies!