A Summer Script for Relaxation

Posted on July 31, 2023 by nyamhistory

by Anthony Murisco, Public Engagement Librarian

Relaxation is just what the doctor ordered! Specifically, Dr. George S. Stevenson of the National and International Association for Mental Health. In his book, How to Deal with Your Tensions (1957), he says that “anxiety and tension” are essential parts of being alive. If we did not experience these feelings, we wouldn’t be equipped to manage the high or low-intensity situations we experience day to day. It is indeed an anxious time. We face threats such as climate change and the spread of misinformation. Writing in 1957, Dr. Stevenson spoke of real high tensions his society faced, “While it is true that we live today under pressure of intense competition, economic uncertainty, and the possibility of war…” Stevenson continued, “our ancestors faced other perils of equal magnitude.” It is important to realize each generation has its own struggles.

The title page of How To Deal With Your Tensions by George S. Stevenson, MD. It carries the seal of approval from the National Association for Mental Health. The emblem for that is a large bell with MH inscribed on it.

Dr. Stevenson produced eleven tenets for dealing with our feelings. These range from “Talk It Out” to “Shun the ‘Superman’ Urge’ to “Give the Other Fellow A Break.” We know these ideas but hearing them prescribed feels different.

One of Stevenson's tips. This says "7. Shun the "Superman" Urge" and features a balding man with glasses and a pipe wearing a costume similar to Superman. His hands are at his sides in classic Superman fashion.

The two that we want to focus on are #2, “Escape for a While,” and #11, “Schedule Your Recreation.” His ideas of escape are not necessarily jetting off to an island vacation! You can find escape by “[losing] yourself in a movie or a book or a game.” Even a “brief trip or change of scene” can make you feel relaxed. Public parks are beautiful places to go for a stroll.

Scheduling recreation is sometimes hard—especially for an adult. When we are younger, we get scheduled vacation. The summer is ours! As adults, we have more responsibilities. As Dr. Stevenson mentioned, we don’t have to schedule a week-long trip! We can buy tickets in advance to the latest blockbuster or art-house film. We can schedule an hour or two before bed to transport ourselves with the help of a book.

Another of Stevenson's steps is "11. Schedule your recreation." This image features a woman making a ship in a bottle. She stands next to an array of tools while she places a tiny tool into the bottle. It looks as though she has almost finished the project.

This summer we asked, “How are you recharging?” We want to hear what recreation and relaxation you have been taking part in. Dr. Stevenson has spoken of the benefits but so have others.

In 1924, Joseph Ralph, a psychologist and psychoanalyst, declared that he had found the fountain of youth. It was not in some unobtainable secret cave, and he was not going to keep it to himself. The secret to still being young was electronic relaxation, a method of inducing tension.

The title page of "The Man Who Stopped Growing Old." This features a portrait of the subject, Jason Ralph. It identifies him as well as his profession of psychologist and psycho-analyst.

Ralph declared that the secret to eternal youth lived in the cell’s protoplasm. Through wear and tear, the protoplasm becomes weak, causing us to age. The agent responsible was not our physicality but instead our mental conflicts. Our intense emotional reactions cause the protoplasm inside the cells to harden. If hardened, they can no longer provide us with the energy we need. He deduced that this is why we acted “older.” By creating tension, Ralph believed the protoplasm was being stretched and worked out like a muscle.

Even your insurance company wants you to relax! Metropolitan Life Insurance gave advice in their pamphlet “Relax and Revive.” In comparing the body to the mechanical machines, we use daily, they remind us that “extra care avoids shutdowns.”

The title page for Relax and Revive by Met Life. The font is turquoise.

Whether we get a day, a whole weekend, or the entirety of a season, it’s important to carve out time for yourself. As Met Life put it, “How you use your precious hours of leisure is of the greatest importance in keeping yourself fit, and in fighting the good fight on the home front.” To take care of what you need to take care of, you have to start with yourself.

Like Dr. Stevenson, the insurance company wanted you to figure out what works best for you. Besides the typical ways we think of recreation, the pamphlet stated that perhaps just sitting there is what works for you! “Maybe idleness is your recreation. That’s all right too.”

An image of a man showing the fish that he and his son caught to his neighbor. The two adult men are separated by a fence. The boy has climbed the fence to proudly speak with his dad.

While we all may have ideas of what recreation is, it looks different for all. We wanted to share how people have been relaxing so far this summer. We’ve gotten pictures, postcards, and stories from fellow NYAM staff, friends, family, and patrons. We thank everyone for their responses so far.

The staff here at NYAM filled out beautiful New York City—centric postcards. They relayed their goals for the summer, which included personal goals (vacations, exercise, spending time with family and pets, and of course, recovery), as well work goals (planning notable events, organizing office space, and remembering to respond to emails on time).

A colorful illustrated postcard of times square. The iconic yellow taxi rides through the street. Marquees for Broadway productions illuminate the sky. They are Phantom of the Opera, West Side Story, Hair, and South Pacific.

We even got a response from a friend of a famous 100-foot-tall ape…

A response that reads "This summer I am climbing the Empire State Building with a giant gorilla."

Parks are always fun to visit during the summer. This one comes from Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota, one of 63 with that distinction.

A scan of a postcard from Theodore Roosevelt National Park. This shows the Painted Canyon. The canyon appears very yellow.

Indiana seems like a popular destination this summer. Three of our postcards come from different parks there.

Rachel visited Wolf Park and talked about the different wildlife she saw there, including foxes, turtles, and of course, wolves! She mentioned how the park gave her tips on how to help the wildlife there and in the larger environment.

A scan of a postcard from wolf Park. Three wolves are howling to the left. There is another wolf who is howling to the right,.

Megan went on a trip to Turkey Run State Park in Indiana where she went on a hike for her recent birthday. She loved being in nature with her sister and best friends.

A scan of a postcard from Turkey Run State Park. It shows a walking bridge surrounded by green trees.

Our Historical Collections Librarian sent a postcard from a road trip she took. One of her stops brought her to the Indiana Dunes National Park. There she got to walk along the Lake Michigan Shoreline!

A scan of a postcard from Indiana Dunes National Park. It is the shoreline of Lake Michigan. The sun is setting right in the middle.

One of our patrons, Dr. Sharon Packer, sent us these photos from Bearsville, New York. The pictures remind us of the beauty and therapeutic power of relaxing in our natural environment. For those in a big city, it’s nice to get away for a bit. We are lucky to live only a train ride away from such different scenery. There also looks to be delicious home cooking! Both making and eating are perfect relaxation practices.

A photo with a blooming pink flower in frame. Behind it is a small, shy brown dog looking at the camera.

A delicious looking quiche that is set in front of a red barn. The quiche has cut scallions on top.

We don’t want to scare you; the summer is not over yet! With that, we are still collecting postcards and pictures.

Postcards/letters can be sent to:
Attn – NYAM Library
The New York Academy of Medicine
1216 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10029

Or you can always e-mail us at: librarysocial@nyam.org.

We look forward to hearing from you! And more importantly, we hope you are having a relaxing summer.

References:
Harris, Antron. The Man Who Stopped Growing Old : Joseph Ralph, Psychologist and Psycho-analyst, Discoverer of the Electronic Relaxation Method of Mental and Physical Rejuvenation. B.F. Tibby, 1924.

Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. Relax and Revive. Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, 1920?.

Stevenson, George S. How to Deal with Your Tensions. National Association for Mental Health, c1957.

Hello, Summer!

Posted on June 21, 2023 by nyamhistory

By Anthony Murisco, Public Engagement Librarian

As we pass the longest day of the year, we arrive at summer!

We began our celebration of the summer with the annual Museum Mile Festival on Tuesday, June 13th. Each year, all the cultural institutions along 5th Avenue get together to highlight what we have to offer. Think of it as a block party for museums! The stretch starts around 85th Street with The Met and ends at 110th with The Africa Center.

This year the Museum Mile Festival celebrated its 45^th anniversary. It also happened to be the 100^th birthday of our neighboring institution, The Museum of the City of New York! From where we were set up, we could hear the titular song from the new musical “New York, New York” in observance.

NYAM’s table was set up outside 103rd Street right across from Central Park. Our set-up highlighted the treasures from our collection with replicas of assorted pamphlets. This included a photo-op with our new skeletal employee. There were plenty of crayons on hand for visitors to engage in sheets from our Color Our Collections coloring books. Sidewalk chalk was on offer to decorate the closed city streets.

The NYAM Team enjoyed talking with the passers-by. These encounters gave us ideas on how best to invite the community through our doors to engage with our organization. A reminder that throughout the year on the first Monday of every month at 12 pm (holidays excepted), we offer tours of our library highlighting a portion of the collection. While we understand it may not be possible for some to attend, we continue to look for other ways to highlight our rich holdings.

For some, the Museum Mile Festival is their unofficial kick-off to summer. Others wait for the official start on the day of the summer equinox. Students may celebrate on the last day of classes when their summer vacation starts.

While not all of us get that traditional summer vacation, the season brings to mind the need for some real relaxation. Whether it be lying by the beach, going for a run in the park, or seeing your favorite baseball team play, we each have our own ideas of what it means to take it easy. It could be a tropical vacation that’s been on your calendar for months, or a day trip you take with friends out East to a winery. One doesn’t have to spend time lamenting a lost youth!

Some like to relax by swimming. We’ve previously investigated tips and tricks to make your swimming more artful or, the proper scientific form. Others visit different places. Our blog has also shared what happens when the God of love needs some rest and relaxation. It goes to show that if they need it, we do too.

Here at NYAM, we want to hear how you are spending this leisure time. Send us a postcard detailing what you’ve been up to in your downtime or some photos or videos (no faces please!) at librarysocial@nyam.org or the New York Academy of Medicine, 1216 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10029 (Attn: Library). We’re excited to see what you are up to!

Throughout the summer we hope to share with you what others have been doing. We need to recharge once in a while. Your relaxation tips might inspire others! You never know what may lie in your own backyard.

(Enjoyed the colorful, illustrated images? They come from our William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards collection which is available to view online!)

May 2023 NYAM Library Wrap-Up

Posted on June 6, 2023 by nyamhistory

By Anthony Murisco, Public Engagement Librarian

May brought us flowers and a lot to celebrate on social media!

Throughout the month of May we observed Mental Health Awareness Month. This included sharing information and graphics from the National Alliance on Mental Illness. On May 11, we observed National Children’s Mental Health Awareness Day. Kids often imitate adult behavior. Passing down healthy habits, including ones related to mental health, is imperative!

A colorful illustration of a group of kids. They are in front of a door. One boy is tying roller skates. A blonde haired girl is running to another boy who is riding a fake horse with a cowboy hat.

The popularity of Star Wars continues to this day. Just after the movie’s premiere in the late 1970’s, President Carter and the National Immunization Program asked the film’s two droids, R2-D2 and C-3PO, to star in a campaign promoting immunization. A television commercial and a poster were made for this, with the latter in our collection.

The Star Wars droids are asking parents of Earth to immunize their children in this printed PSA.

School nurses are some of the first healthcare workers that children meet. On May 10^th we celebrated them. National School Nurses Day invites us to thank these caregivers. This photograph from Health Work in the Schools by Ernest Bryant Hoag and Lewis M. Terman shows a school nurse in action.

A black and white image. Caption reads "School nurse recording pulse and temperature in an open-air class."

Who better than to help us celebrate Mother’s Day and Women’s Health Week than the Roman goddess of women’s health, Juno. She made her appearance in 1950 at the Cleveland Health Museum, helping to explain how the female body worked.

A photograph of the transparent Juno statue from the side. Juno is a life-size woman.

Do you like foraging for your food? Then you probably celebrated National Mushroom Hunting Day on May 17^th. The Field Book of Common Gilled Mushrooms by William S. Thomas helps you identify which you can eat and which you cannot!

A colorful illustration of various mushrooms.

World Goth Day happened on May 22^nd. The macabre is at the forefront of this often-misunderstood subculture. We showed off some of the many skeletons in our collection, including this from The Last Will and Testament of Basil Valentine by Basil Valentine.

One of New York City’s prominent bridges, The Brooklyn Bridge, celebrated its 140^th birthday on May 24^th.It appears on a card from our William H. Helfand Pharmaceutical Trade Card collection promoting Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound.

The front side of the trading card. A drawing of the "East River Bridge" is front and center with ships sailing around it. Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable compound is a featured banner in the middle of the bridge.

International Plastic Free Day on May 25th seeks to have at least one day without single-use plastics. The day usually falls around Memorial Day, a long weekend often spent enjoying picnics, the beach, or hiking, all occasions tempting us to be wasteful. To keep on enjoying, we need to squash the usage of these products.

An illustration of two beach-goers unable to go to the beach. A sign reads "No Bathing. Polluted."

Throughout the month, artists used the hashtag and prompt #MerMay as a creative inspiration signaling mermaids and mermen. Towards the end of the month, we shared another image from the Helfand Trade Card collection, this one featuring the aquatic folk using Ayer’s Hair Vigor to attract sailors.

Four mermaids are applying hair tonic. In the background a fifth mermaid is approaching a ship.

Finally, we are counting down the days until Museum Mile Festival 2023! On Tuesday, June 13^th, cultural institutions along Museum Mile on 5^th Avenue will be celebrating with extended hours, giveaways, and a look inside the collections. The NYAM Library will be set up at 103^rd and 5^th—come visit us!

The New York Academy of Medicine Library posts updates like this throughout the week. We can be found online over at Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Check back here or on our social media for more chances for a look inside our collection!

A skeleton sits in a chair. They are surrounded by old books.

Speaking For Themselves: Mental Health Memoirs

Posted on May 26, 2023 by nyamhistory

By Anthony Murisco, Public Engagement Librarian

Since 1949, May has been recognized in the United States as Mental Health Awareness Month. The National Association for Mental Health, now Mental Health America, set up the month of educational events to clear up misconceptions about mental health and provide resources to those who need them.

The knowledge of public health is always changing. What may have been taken as fact years ago is not necessarily the truth now. This is true for understanding mental health, or formerly, mental hygiene.

From November 8^th to 15^th in 1912, the National Committee for Mental Hygiene and the Committee on Mental Hygiene of the New York State Charities Aid Association hosted a conference at the College of the City of New York. These two organizations brought together some of the leading minds on the subject. This was a relatively new idea. Modern understanding of psychiatry had begun less than a hundred years earlier.

The goal of this conference was what the public could do regarding their own mental health. They came up with six tenets.

While worded harshly in today’s terms, these suggestions try to offer a compassionate understanding of mental illness. The fourth, “Speak and think of insanity as a disease and not as a crime,” stands out as something we continue to struggle with today.

One of the forefathers of the mental health awareness movement would not be considered a traditional mental health expert. Clifford Whittingham Beers was born in 1896. Mental illness ran in his family. He himself served several stints in mental institutions. Upon the cruel treatment inflicted upon him at these hospitals, he went on to write a memoir on the subject. In A Mind That Found Itself, he writes of the degradation that he and his fellow patients were subject to. This memoir was key to providing a voice for those who were afraid to speak of their own illness. In 1909 Beers founded the organization now called Mental Health America.

From the first edition of A Mind That Found Itself.

Since the publication of Beers’ book, several writers have explored their own experience. These mental health memoirs offer both guidance and companionship to those who also suffer. They provide maps for those who care about those who may be suffering and allows a peek inside minds that many cannot comprehend.

Some of these authors bring humor to their reflections. Two funny people wrote about their own struggles. Kevin Breel is a Canadian comedian. He also suffers from depression. His memoir, Boy Meets Depression, allows readers into the mind of someone who experienced the mental illness early on in life. Sara Benincasa is known for being a comical blogger. Her own memoir Agorafabulous! reveals her fight with depression as well as agoraphobia, the fear of leaving one’s house.

Graphic memoirs allow us to see with the author’s vision. In dealing with mental health, we get to experience dark visions or the physical manifestation of anguish.

The Hospital Suite by John Porcellino starts off with a hospitalization. After his illness, Porcellino‘’s health didn’t get better. His brief stint had taken a toll on his mental health. He writes about the experience of his recovery from an obsessive-compulsive episode. Porcellino is candid about his struggles and his fears of his bouts recurring.

Ellen Forney was diagnosed with bipolar disorder before her thirteenth birthday. Afraid of stunting her creativity, she seeks treatment that will help her fulfill her potential. She begins to look at other artists who have suffered from mental illness. Finding all minds are different, she wonders what’s going to be best for her. Forney takes us on her personal highs and lows in Marbles.

Towards the end of his work on the epidemic of mental fatigue and pressure, People Under Pressure, Albert M. Barrett, MD, offered a sympathetic take on mental health challenges. For fifteen years prior to his 1960 publication, he worked alongside counselors and therapists. Barrett urges us to consider a different point of view. He writes, “For no man is an island, and the relief we provide other human beings will reflect itself in our own peace of mind.” Compassion is vital towards greater public health.

References:

Barrett, Albert M. People under Pressure. College and University Press, 1960.

Benincasa, Sara. Agorafabulous!: Dispatches from My Bedroom. William Morrow Paperbacks, 2013.

Breel, Kevin. Boy Meets Depression: Or Life Sucks and Then You Die Live. Harmony Books, 2015.

Clifford, Beers W. A Mind That Found Itself; an Autobiography. Longmans, Green, and Co., 1908.

Forney, Ellen. Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, & Me: A Graphic Memoir. Gotham Books, 2012.

National Committee for Mental Hygiene, and State Charities Aid Association (N.Y.). Committee on Mental Hygiene. Proceedings of the Mental Hygiene Conference and Exhibit at the College of the City of New York…. Committee on Mental Hygiene of the State Charities Aid Association, 1912.

Porcellino, John. The Hospital Suite. Drawn & Quarterly, 2014.

Cooking Our Collection: Pi Day 2023

Posted on March 30, 2023 by nyamhistory

By Anthony Murisco, Public Engagement Librarian

My name is Anthony Murisco. I am the Public Engagement Librarian here at NYAM. A few weeks back, we celebrated Pi Day by baking a couple of pies. I wanted to share my own experience.

For those who may not know or need a refresher, Pi is a mathematical constant. The symbol π, the Greek letter for P, represents the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. The ratio will always be π. When written out, π is approximately 3.14. π is an irrational number, whose decimal form continues forever, which is why a shorter form is used. Hence March 14, 3/14, is known as Pi Day.

Pi Day is a celebration of all things mathematical as well as that certain baked good. Pi and pie not only share a name but are both circular. While the holiday may have earlier origins, the first recorded celebration was heralded by physicist Larry Shaw in 1988. When discussing the “mysteries of pi” with a colleague, he realized the irrational number has some rationality to it! In an effort to make learning math fun, he conducted the first Pi Day celebration with his class. The event, now celebrated by math enthusiasts all over, includes reciting the value of π to as many decimal places as one can, a real memorization challenge, and of course, pie tasting.

An illustrated image of chef's working in a kitchen in a hotel. — From The encyclopædia of practical cookery (1898) by Theodore Francis Garrett

What better way to celebrate than by baking a pie? This year, this was my task. The New York Academy of Medicine Library has a plethora of recipe books, some more than 200 years old. A selection of these books has been shared before, on social media, in this very blog, and even on our digital exhibition. Here was one of the first attempts of our staff making a dish!

After searching through several books and finding only savory recipes, our Historical Collections Reference Librarian, Arlene Shaner, discovered what I was looking for. In the 1824 edition of The Virginia house-wife lay a recipe for simply “Apple Pie.”

An advertisement payed for by The Apple Growers of America. A blonde woman is holding up an apple. The caption reads "For weight control... a tasty appetite-appeaser."

Mary Randolph first published The Virginia Housewife in 1824. Its popularity led to several editions and reprints. The Virginia housewife, or Methodical Cook was the first of its kind, a published manual of recipes and housekeeping tips that would later surge and create an industry. This was the perfect book to make a pie from.

Title page of the 1824 edition of The Virginia house-wife by Randolph.

The book featured three different recipes. Only one specified that it was a pie. Arlene predicted that the second recipe was for pie filling. She is an experienced baker. She went with that one. I had never baked a pie before. I didn’t want to do anything wrong. I stuck with Randolph’s “Apple Pie.”

I looked at the recipe to make a list of ingredients. Apples. Cloves. It called for “powdered sugar.” And rose water. I stopped by my local pop-up market and got four large red delicious apples. Each looked almost double the size of a single apple. Surely this would be enough! Powdered sugar and whole cloves were easy to get. It wasn’t on my list but, I opted for a pre-made crust. While I know that pre-made is not ideal, I had never made a crust before. I would have needed even further directions! If store-bought is fine for Ina Garten, it would be good enough for me. The rose water ended up being the most elusive ingredient in my neighborhood. After several failed shopping trips, I contemplated looking up replacements. I ended up finding rose water downtown at a hip chain grocery store.

Having never baked like this before, I tried to stick exactly to the recipe. The years of doing mail-in meal services will do that to you! Without the exact measurements, I was left a little confused—how would I know how much to use?

Three recipes from page 152. Apple Pie. Baked Apple Pudding. A Nice Boiled Pudding cuts off at the end. — Two of the pie recipes. Notice how the second is not specifically stated as a pie!

The Virginia House-wife and other older cookbooks are not specific with their instructions. There’s a notion that you have some culinary instinct if you are reading it. The recipes are a supplement to your knowledge. Randolph did not foresee someone like me, a beginner, taking on the challenge.

A picture of a pie crust in process of being filled with apples, cloves, and powdered sugar.

During the filling of the crust, I noticed, two apples in, that I should have gotten more apples. I’ve seen pies filled before with an arrangement of the fruit, a kind of beautiful Busby Berkeley dance. This was not my case. Still, I used what I had! While the apples didn’t fill the pie completely, it wasn’t as empty as I had feared.

The pie completed before it was baked. On top is the pi symbol carved in. — Ready to be baked!

When I discussed my experience with Arlene, she told me that the powdered sugar I used was the wrong ingredient. Powdered sugar today is not the same as it was then. In the past, you would get a loaf of sugar, scrape off what you needed, and “powder” the cake that way. It was more akin to granulated sugar today. Modern-day powdered sugar, or confectioners’ sugar, quickly dissolves and tends to absorb the moisture. Though the pie tasted good, I had given it a different spin. I think that may have been Randolph’s goal. She doesn’t want to tell you exactly how to bake or cook, she just gives you some general directions.

While it may not have looked the best, that didn’t matter. The pie I made was tasty. The powdered sugar dried up some of the apples. I also put too many cloves. This led to quite a spicy taste.

Since 2020, Dr. Rachel Snell, a historian, has been working her way through The Virginia house-wife. Using two editions, 1824 and 1838, she created “The Virginia Housewife Project” to explore the recipes while investigating ideas of domesticity and the history of each recipe. I wish I had seen her blog prior to making the pie, so I could have prepared a little more!

I hope to be able to share more of these recipes in the future. In the meantime, please check out our digital collection of cookbooks. Maybe something will inspire a course for your dinner tonight!

A piece of Arlene's baked apple pudding pie. — A piece of Arlene’s finished baked apple pie.

References:

Berton, Juston. “Any way you slice it, pi’s transcendental,” San Francisco Chronicle (11 March 2009) https://www.sfgate.com/science/article/Any-way-you-slice-it-pi-s-transcendental-3169091.php, accessed 27 March 2023.

Randolph, Mary. The Virginia house-wife. Washington : Davis and Force, 1824.

Snell, Rachel A. “The Virginia House-wife Project” https://virginiahousewifeproject.com/, accessed 27 March 2023.

Sayings As Mad As A March Hare

Posted on March 13, 2023 by nyamhistory

by the NYAM Library Team

Before the written word, we relied on our stories being passed down orally. These tales were meant to explain and justify the mysteries of the world around us. Fables, folksongs, and myths are examples of these. Our common superstitions act as bite-sized versions of this folklore.

While every month has its sayings , March is known specifically for two. “Beware the ides of March,” comes from a line in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Rome’s dictator hears these words from a mysterious oracle on the day that he was assassinated. Through the years the saying has trickled down into our collective lexicon. It warns of caution towards the middle of March; the Ides fall on the 15th.

A bust of Julius Caesar from In Spite of Epilepsy.. (1913) by Matthew Woods.

The other common saying is “March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb.” It’s included in various compendiums of popular superstitions without any specific origin. It makes sense, though, that after the destruction of crops by killing frost, the fresh fertility of the land brings to mind an innocent animal. Lambs have long had religious symbolism for innocence and these animals were also a sign of luck. The first lamb of Spring meant good fortune, specifically if it faced you. If it was caught looking away, that was thought less lucky . After this yearly demise of crops, “luck” was needed. Previously March had been known as “boisterous” month in the Middle Ages, as well as the “windy” month in the revolutionary calendar of the first French republic.

A lion from volume two of George Shaw's General Zoology (c. 1800-1826). — From volume two of George Shaw’s General Zoology (c. 1800-1826)

Academic, teacher, and author Dr. Frank Clyde Brown started to accumulate folklore related to his state of North Carolina. On the advice of the American Folklore Society, he created the North Carolina Folklore Society in the early 1910s. He collected state-specific stories, songs, and tales from about 1910 to 1940. When he died in 1943, the collection became known as the Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore.

Brown’s collection was published almost twenty years after his death as Popular Beliefs and Superstitions from North Carolina. Upon its publication, the work is believed to have been the “first general work along comparative lines” of specifically American proverbs.
Included in this collection is a longer saying, “If March comes in like a lion, it will go out like a lamb. If March comes in like a lamb, it will go out like a lion.” For the most part, we don’t hear the second sentence anymore. Our predecessors believed in explanations for all of life’s occurrences and often arrived at the answer of balance: if a month began with a storm, surely it would end brightly and sunny! Perhaps for snappier flow, lines needed excision.

A lamb and two ewes from Sheep, Swine, and Poultry by Robert Jennings (1864). — From Sheep, Swine, and Poultry… by Robert Jennings (1864).

That’s not to say that these sayings are not around anymore! Nor does it negate their kernels of truth, some based on observed early science. We still circulate many of these whether it be in the water cooler at work or shared on social media. It is important to place these within context. We now know that they are not to be taken as facts but rather as what was once believed to be facts.

The cover of Popular Superstitions by Charles Platt (1925). It features a black cat in the middle of a horseshoe, in the middle of the number 13. — The cover of Popular Superstitions by Charles Platt (1925).

As the dreaded ides of March draw near, we offer up a few more of these sayings from the Brown Collection to celebrate the month:

-A thunderstorm in March indicates an early spring.
-A windy March and a rainy April make a beautiful May (Also, March winds and April showers bring forth May flowers).
-The first thunderstorm in March wakes up the alligators.
-Fog in March; Frost in May.
-The better the hunter you are, and the more you know about wild things, the surer you are that all rabbits turn to “he-ones” in March.
-If you plant seeds on St. Patrick’s Day, they will grow better.
-A dry March never begs bread.
-Frost never kills fruit in March, no matter how full the tree blooms.

And for those hoping for a fruitful March, I leave you with
-To make cabbage seed grow, sow them in your night clothes on March seventeenth.

Purple skunk cabbage from The Vegetable Materia Medica by William P.C. Barton (c.1817-1819).

References

Brewer, Ebenezer Cobham. Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Rev. by Ivor H. Evans. New York: Harper & Row, c1970.

Hand, Wayland D. (ed.). The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore Volume VI: Popular Beliefs and Superstitions from North Carolina. Durham: Duke University Press, 1964.

Hand, Wayland D. (ed.). The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore Volume VII: Popular Beliefs and Superstitions from North Carolina. Durham: Duke University Press, 1964.

Hole, Christina (ed.). Encyclopaedia of Superstitions. London : Hutchinson, 1961.

Platt, Charles. Popular Superstitions. London : H. Jenkins, Ltd., 1925.

Valentine’s Day Cards from NYAM

Posted on February 14, 2023 by nyamhistory

by the NYAM Library Team

On February 14^th we observe Valentine’s Day!

Our previous blog posts on this commercial holiday highlighted both cards created for Valentine’s Day as well as trading cards from our collection. At the close of the 19^th century, improvements in printing allowed for cheaper goods and paper cards for friends, lovers, and families to send written sentiments.

These early cards varied from caricatures of their subjects and beautifully drawn miniscule script, to what we now think of as Valentine’s Day cards – humorous or sentimental acknowledgements.

To celebrate this year, we have created six of our own Valentine’s Day cards featuring images from our collections. One is for the celebration of the popular Galentine’s Day, a celebration of friendship.

Feel free to print out and share with your loved ones!