I don't usually make plugs for specific businesses, but today I make an exception.

I just attended the Costume College, and there I found a frock coat of proper cut, a tail coat of proper cut, a pull over shirt with a soft standing collar (perfect for the 1850s & 60s) a summer weight vest and my wife found some very nice lace up boots.

Continue reading "Recommendation: a Place for Victorian Men's Stuff" »

Posted by Walter at 06:27 PM | Comments (0)

I was hired as dance caller and general consultant by the folks putting on the Fawnskin Victorian Festival. At the time, it seemed like not too bad an idea, since they seemed to have a decent track record with several years of Renaissance festivals and Pirate festivals.

They were determined to put on a "Victorian Ball" in the model of the SDI balls, thinking that by hiring the band and some of the management of the SDI ball, they would inherit its success. My first, and repeated advice, was to warn them that this was a huge risk and that they were unlikely to get many people coming up from the flatlands to attend--but that advice wasn't heeded, and the event crashed and burned, and was canceled at the last minute.

They are not the first however, to succumb to the siren call of the big vintage dance event, and not the first to fail. Here are a few thoughts on that topic.

Continue reading "Fawnskin Victorian Festival - a Cautionary Tale" »

Posted by Walter at 09:15 AM | Comments (1)

In the business of putting on historical events, with appropriate music, one frequently encounters the need to find appropriate sheet music. Further, when one has been doing historical events for many years, one can get a bit tired of the same tunes all the time, and want to dig up something new--that everyone hasn't heard yet.

Fortunately, there seem to be a growing collection of sites on the web that can be tapped for historical sheet music. Of course, with copyright laws being what they are, you aren't going to find much past 1920, but if your interests lie in the Victorian or Ragtime eras (and occasionally earlier) there's some good stuff out there free of charge.

Here are the ones I know about. If you know some more, please add them via "comments".

Continue reading "Web Sources for Historical Sheet Music" »

Posted by Walter at 05:21 PM

On Friday, June 27th, I have been asked to speak at a conference of Library technicians on the topic of Library applications of "Web 2.0" technologies, by which is meant such "social networking" tools as Facebook and YouTube.

Here is what I have to say. It is posted here so those who might have attended the presentation can get the slides, or perhaps someone else might find it useful or interesting. It is a general overview with some noted as useful and others as useless.

View Presentation

Cheers,

Walter

Posted by Walter at 12:55 PM

It isn't a compelling point, since I have not been very active in keeping my blog up to date lately, but I would like to let folks know that I will be disabling comments on most of my future posts. The reason is the pervasiveness of robotic spam machines that insert the same sort of crap in the comments fields in blogs and "guest books" that you get in your email.

Continue reading "Blog Comments: a Dying Breed" »

Posted by Walter at 09:20 AM

There is a bill before the State Legislature that would declare 48 State Parks "excess property", which would release them for sale and development.

While we may all be angry about the proposed state park closures, just being angry will do no good. The only way we can make an impact is by making ourselves heard.

Here are a few ways:

Continue reading "Things You Can Do to Fight State Park Closures" »

Posted by Walter at 09:53 AM

If someone wants to get dressed up in a uniform, and march around playing "bang you're dead", it is generally not too difficult to find some kindred spirits to play with.

However, for those who are more interested in the more peaceful aspects of history, it is sometimes a bit harder.

Continue reading "Civilian Re-Enacting" »

Posted by Walter at 10:21 AM