Learning About the Lenape

I tell you what, New York City, as I've said before and as I'll undoubtedly say again, is a wonderful place to be if you're a history buff! I've already done an entry on here about the Dutch, the first Europeans to colonise New York, but today we're going back even further, to the pre-contact days.

Because recently, I attended a historical lecture/demonstration about the Lenape, the Algonquian tribe that once inhabited the forests that are now New York City.

It's hard to imagine forests in NYC, but Fort Greene Park is atmospheric enough!

Unfortunately, the lecture was purely historic. I say 'unfortunately' because while there are still Lenape descendants around, the tribe left New York a long time ago, and no Lenape were present at the event. It was lead by two park rangers instead. But still, I learned a lot!

Happy Thanksgiving!

 
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

I haven't posted much lately. November has been... a Month, to say the least. I hope to have a more frequent posting schedule in December when I am done with my current writing project, but lately that's been consuming a lot of my time, between the writing itself and all the research I've been doing!

However, today (in America at least) is a holiday, and despite the fact that back home it was never one of my favourites, and despite the fact that the story of the first Thanksgiving is largely a myth, I was really excited and, well, thankful when my roommate asked if I wanted to have Thanksgiving with her this year.

I am...

 I used to love the Animaniacs. I used to watch it with my father. Most of the jokes flew over my head, but I still used to love the hell out of this show.

I don't anymore.

A Victorian Seance

New York is weird, okay? New York is really weird. Where else in the world could I have had my hand kissed by George Washington, befriended a monk, seen a barbershop quartet on the subway, tried durian ice cream that smelled kind of like a corpse (it was as nasty as you're probably imagining), seen a bunch of sculpted Christopher Walken heads just sticking up out of the grass like flowers, and attended a Victorian-style Séance at a place devoted to all things death-like?

Yes, you read that right. On Sunday, the Morbid Anatomy Museum in Brooklyn held an event advertised as "a traditional Spiritualist message service, a ritual that dates back to the Victorian era."

Obviously I had to go.