I'm cranky and creative today
Cranky from the overload of work and my blood sugar just crashed back out so let's see if I even make any sense.
So let's leave cranky behind and go with creative. spikesgirl58 had a writing challenge to use the following six words and write a 100 word drabble
Thumb
Pan
Serve
Noise
Tolerant
Minister
He was anything but noise tolerant and his home at the end of a country lane should have been proof against that: until the minister moved in down the road with his herd of unruly children. He had reasons for wanting his privacy. His hobbies needed to be done in secret though they made him perfectly suited for dealing with his little problem.
He took the minister some freshly baked meat pies and served them with a flourish. He watched in delight as the minister tested the crust with his thumb before digging in, never suspecting his children were missing.
And here have one of the two writerly ways I've been meaning to write up for weeks
I've one more character study for the 1920s monster hunter thing for Bentley and Concetta. I might get to Lillian, ALma and Milton if I need a short fill for a bingo. I need to turn my attention back to the novella and editing the novel. I need to do my research before I actually get into the story telling.
One thing I know that is going to be very hard to balance things. It's 1923 at the opening, 3 years past women getting the vote (and most were still barred from doing so by poll taxes and literacy requirements. For example my great grandmother who would have been in her 40s at this time period was illiterate because why waste resources on a woman?) and only 2 years from the Tulsa race riots and decades before segregation ended. This is a time period where Blacks were considered inferior intellectually (granted some people still think that but you know what I mean. It was much more a general consensus sadly)
I was thinking of two of my favorite historical shows currently, Miss Fisher Mysteries and Murdoch Mysteries. Miss Fisher is an entirely White show. Yes there have been some Black/Asian/Aboriginal story lines but the main characters are all white, Phyrne being rags to riches white, Dot being moral conservative but sweet and Mac being progressive lesbian woman in a man's job (well Phyrne is in a man's job too) It rarely touches on issues keeping a very tight focus on the plot, i.e. mystery.
Murdoch started out very white with a female doctor (medical examiner) as it's gone on (to what 13 seasons at this point?) it has picked up two Black lady medical examiners, a Black Pinkerton and a gay detective. It is mostly like Miss Fisher, choosing murder over the social justice issues which fair enough those are why we're there but it did in the last couple years started taking on LGBT and racism.
That is more of what I want to do. Lillian and Bentley are the only two White members, and Concetta today but NOT in the 1920s. She would have been Brown (the KKK still sees us as Brown and yes I have personally run up against them more than once). Italians were inferior, dumb and weak in the eyes of the 1920s general populace. (Pick up an Agatha Christie novel and see how many times she talks about the swarthy untrustworthy Italians) Alma and Milton are Black (Milton took long enough to tell me that). Alma and Lillian are partners.
Pittsburgh wasn't as segregated as the South by any means but still there would be places Alma, Milton and Concetta could not go (ask me some day about getting my Italian ass thrown out of a yacht club for being Italian) Some of it will have to fall on Bentley and Lillian. The Ver-Sui, their monster hunting group for the most part doesn't care about skin color, gender or orientation because there aren't enough monster hunters to make that matter (oh I'm sure there are a few in the group but as a policy they're all equal to them).
But is a local cop going to want to have a Black man he has to answer to? Is the CEO of a company going to want to take orders from a woman (I mean as I'm typing this the leader of the Philippines is trending because he just said women are unsuited for leadership in 2021, 100 years later). So I'm going to have to balance this out. I don't want it to be the main part of my story. I also don't want to entirely ignore the roadblocks they would face. I mean this is still a time period when all it took to commit a woman to a psych hospital for life was the word of her husband/father that she was insane. It was possible to arrest a Black man for fighting back to protect himself. As much as you don't want the white savior trope in play Lillian and Bentley might end up toeing that line if I'm not careful.
Also I wanted this little group to reflect Pittsburgh of the 1920s. It was rather ghettoized at that time. Squirrel Hill was where the Jewish people were (and still are), North side Germans and Polish people, the Hill was African American, Bloomfield Italian and those were the biggest groups of the time (and that cultural identity is still seen in Pittsburgh). Lillian is Polish. Milton and Alma are PoC, Concetta is from Bloomfield, Bentley is an outsider who grew up in Wales, then London and into Canada during WWI.
Also thanks to those of you who gave me some links to look at. Here are a couple of my own. Italians in America.
Black history timeline of the 1920s
So let's leave cranky behind and go with creative. spikesgirl58 had a writing challenge to use the following six words and write a 100 word drabble
Thumb
Pan
Serve
Noise
Tolerant
Minister
He was anything but noise tolerant and his home at the end of a country lane should have been proof against that: until the minister moved in down the road with his herd of unruly children. He had reasons for wanting his privacy. His hobbies needed to be done in secret though they made him perfectly suited for dealing with his little problem.
He took the minister some freshly baked meat pies and served them with a flourish. He watched in delight as the minister tested the crust with his thumb before digging in, never suspecting his children were missing.
And here have one of the two writerly ways I've been meaning to write up for weeks
I've one more character study for the 1920s monster hunter thing for Bentley and Concetta. I might get to Lillian, ALma and Milton if I need a short fill for a bingo. I need to turn my attention back to the novella and editing the novel. I need to do my research before I actually get into the story telling.
One thing I know that is going to be very hard to balance things. It's 1923 at the opening, 3 years past women getting the vote (and most were still barred from doing so by poll taxes and literacy requirements. For example my great grandmother who would have been in her 40s at this time period was illiterate because why waste resources on a woman?) and only 2 years from the Tulsa race riots and decades before segregation ended. This is a time period where Blacks were considered inferior intellectually (granted some people still think that but you know what I mean. It was much more a general consensus sadly)
I was thinking of two of my favorite historical shows currently, Miss Fisher Mysteries and Murdoch Mysteries. Miss Fisher is an entirely White show. Yes there have been some Black/Asian/Aboriginal story lines but the main characters are all white, Phyrne being rags to riches white, Dot being moral conservative but sweet and Mac being progressive lesbian woman in a man's job (well Phyrne is in a man's job too) It rarely touches on issues keeping a very tight focus on the plot, i.e. mystery.
Murdoch started out very white with a female doctor (medical examiner) as it's gone on (to what 13 seasons at this point?) it has picked up two Black lady medical examiners, a Black Pinkerton and a gay detective. It is mostly like Miss Fisher, choosing murder over the social justice issues which fair enough those are why we're there but it did in the last couple years started taking on LGBT and racism.
That is more of what I want to do. Lillian and Bentley are the only two White members, and Concetta today but NOT in the 1920s. She would have been Brown (the KKK still sees us as Brown and yes I have personally run up against them more than once). Italians were inferior, dumb and weak in the eyes of the 1920s general populace. (Pick up an Agatha Christie novel and see how many times she talks about the swarthy untrustworthy Italians) Alma and Milton are Black (Milton took long enough to tell me that). Alma and Lillian are partners.
Pittsburgh wasn't as segregated as the South by any means but still there would be places Alma, Milton and Concetta could not go (ask me some day about getting my Italian ass thrown out of a yacht club for being Italian) Some of it will have to fall on Bentley and Lillian. The Ver-Sui, their monster hunting group for the most part doesn't care about skin color, gender or orientation because there aren't enough monster hunters to make that matter (oh I'm sure there are a few in the group but as a policy they're all equal to them).
But is a local cop going to want to have a Black man he has to answer to? Is the CEO of a company going to want to take orders from a woman (I mean as I'm typing this the leader of the Philippines is trending because he just said women are unsuited for leadership in 2021, 100 years later). So I'm going to have to balance this out. I don't want it to be the main part of my story. I also don't want to entirely ignore the roadblocks they would face. I mean this is still a time period when all it took to commit a woman to a psych hospital for life was the word of her husband/father that she was insane. It was possible to arrest a Black man for fighting back to protect himself. As much as you don't want the white savior trope in play Lillian and Bentley might end up toeing that line if I'm not careful.
Also I wanted this little group to reflect Pittsburgh of the 1920s. It was rather ghettoized at that time. Squirrel Hill was where the Jewish people were (and still are), North side Germans and Polish people, the Hill was African American, Bloomfield Italian and those were the biggest groups of the time (and that cultural identity is still seen in Pittsburgh). Lillian is Polish. Milton and Alma are PoC, Concetta is from Bloomfield, Bentley is an outsider who grew up in Wales, then London and into Canada during WWI.
Also thanks to those of you who gave me some links to look at. Here are a couple of my own. Italians in America.
Black history timeline of the 1920s