A New Old Adventure

At the age of thirty-two, after several massive life changes, I've decided it's time to start documenting my historical adventures more intentionally. I had a blog long, long ago, and I think I may have made all of three posts on it. Blogging isn't the ubiquitous internet experience it was a decade ago. Maybe it's due to the push for platform monetization, or a collectively shortened attention span. Regardless, I find myself always drawn back to blogs. I love a good written tutorial. I love progress pictures, and a window into the progress a person makes over the course of weeks and months and years of pursuing a craft. 

So here's me, throwing my hat (belatedly!) into the ring. Maybe this will prove useful to someone. Maybe this is just going to be a way to store my projects and progress in an online portfolio for myself alone. But I'm happy to be here, as a public historian, a dress historian, a costumer, a reenactor, a SCAdian, and as an artist. 

My name is Lindsey. I grew up in the United States, though I now live in Aotearoa New Zealand. In the States, I worked for over eight years in public history, the majority of which at the best-known living history museum on the planet. I am passionate about the lived experience of historical peoples, with a particular focus on intersectional gender and racial power dynamics in the early modern world. I specialize in the formation and codification of  American Heritage Chattel Slavery, British loyalists in the Tidewater region of  Virginia, and the paradox of liberty in the long eighteenth century. I have developed several first-person portrayals of eighteenth and nineteenth century women, researching, writing, and delivering theatrical programs, walking tours, and various other first person interactions. 

In short: I want to understand what it was to be a person of the past. Understand, that is, without excusing. I don't want to shy away from the either the problematic perspectives or damaging, genocidal cruelty of our forebears. I want to use historical narrative to inform the present about who came before, what they did, and how we can choose differently in the future. I'm not a worshipper of history; people don't live on a pedestal. I am, however, endlessly fascinated with the historical past. 

I've lived in turbulent (historical) times for the past ten years, be that the Seven Years' War and its fallout, the American War for Independence (AWI), or the American Civil War (ACW). I still have a love for these eras, but they're my research and knowledge "comfort zone." I'm stepping out (and back!) to the medieval and early modern eras. But I'll also make forays into the more recent historical past because I cannot and will not leave it behind entirely :)

My plan for this blog is to share research, book recommendations, clothing projects, and other aspects of experimental archaeology that I find useful. I hope you like it, and I hope it helps you- whether you try your hand at historical recreation yourself, or if you have your appetite for further knowledge whetted. Regardless of what becomes of this all, welcome. Let's give this thing a shot.