January 2016/ Early beach fashion;

Sailor suits and boats, sort of beach and fashion come into my mind.

A little history of ladies bathing suits.

in the 18th century, it was considered proper to keep the skin white and untouched by the sun. A 1797 Fashion print shows two ladies protected by face-shading bonnets, shawls and gloves as they approach a group of bathing machines, a sort of cabana on wheels. Ladies were known to sew weights into the hem of their smock-like bathing gowns to prevent the garment from floating up and showing their legs. Modesty ruled over fashion.

Mid-19th Century:

bathing dresses covered most of the female figure. These garments were highlighted in Godey’s Lady’s Book in 1864. The long bloomers exhibit the influence of Amelia Bloomer’s innovative ideas for women’s clothing. The ”turkish” pants and “paletot” dresses are made from a heavy flannel fabric surely weighing  down the swimmer.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, bathing suits were accessorized with long black stockings, lace-up bathing slippers, and fancy caps. Bathing slippers were very necessary, especially on stony beaches to protect from broken glass, oyster shells and pebbles.. These beach shoes were made of soles of twisted straw or felt with embroidered serge or crash tops and laces. They were often available at seaside places. To make a fashion statement, the wearer would add some embellishment such as a piece of scarlet braid turned into rosettes or bows. Ribbon was also added to felt shoes and crossed over the foot and ankle, then tied above it in a bow with short ends. The bathing shoes shown to the left are tied up with pink laces. Below are 1870s bathing slippers (shown right) made of white canvas trimmed with red braiding and bathing shoes (shown left) made of Turkish toweling bound with blue braid.

1920s:

By the early 1920s women’s bathing suits were reduced to a one piece garment with a long top that covered shorts. Though matching stockings were still worn, vintage swimwear began to shrink and more and more flesh was exposed from the bottom of the trunks to the tops of the stockings. By the mid-1920s Vogue magazine was telling its readers that “the newest thing for the sea is a jersey bathing suit as near a maillot as the unwritten law will permit.”

Courtesy; Victoriana Magazin.

...and in the late 1950s  Italy/Marina di Massa;

La Signora Olga, il Dottore; Rosanna, Silvia, I, and Romeo di  Roma.


Photo Text Ts

Summer;

"Summer's lease hath all too short a date." 

 Shakespeare's Sonnets

..sea and sand...

..fragrance of Abelia....

...flowering Neoregelia...

..thunder storms and rain...

..summer capriccio...wet or dry...

..Eucomis...

..abutilon..

hot and humid...Summer

©Photos  Text Ts

Little children.

My dad born 1903; this must be probably 1905; he was one of the lucky ones, he did not have to work as a child. He went to school and was an excellent student.

 Shocking Photos Of Child Labor Between 1908 And 1916

 February 1911. Port Royal, South Carolina.

Josie (6 years old), Bertha (6 years old), Sophie (10 years old), were all shuckers at the Maggioni Canning Co.

As the United States industrialized, factory owners hired young workers for a variety of tasks. Especially in textile mills, children were often hired together with their parents. Children had a special disposition to working in factories as their small statures were useful to fixing machinery and navigating the small areas that fully grown adults could not. Many families in mill towns depended on the children's labor to make enough money for necessities.

The impact of these images, by photographer Lewis Hine, were instrumental in changing the child labor

laws in the U.S.

Child Labor in U.S. History

Forms of child labor, including indentured servitude and child slavery, have existed throughout American history. As industrialization moved workers from farms and home workshops into urban areas and factory work, children were often preferred, because factory owners viewed them as more manageable, cheaper, and less likely to strike.

Growing opposition to child labor in the North caused many factories to move to the South. By 1900, states varied considerably in whether they had child labor standards and in their content and degree of enforcement. By then, American children worked in large numbers in mines, glass factories, textiles, agriculture, canneries, home industries, and as newsboys, messengers, bootblacks, and peddlers.

In the early decades of the twentieth century, the numbers of child laborers in the U.S. peaked. Child labor began to decline as the labor and reform movements grew and labor standards in general began improving, increasing the political power of working people and other social reformers to demand legislation regulating child labor. which shared goals of challenging child labor, including through anti-sweatshop campaigns and labeling programs. The National Child Labor Committee’s work to end child labor was combined with efforts to provide free, compulsory education for all children, and culminated in the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, which set federal standards for child labor.

1938 Federal regulation of child labor achieved in Fair Labor Standards Act

For the first time, minimum ages of employment and hours of work for children are regulated by federal law.

19th century: Industrialization

Switzerland and as in many other countries, child labour affected among the so-called Kaminfegerkinder ("chimney sweep children") also children working  in spinning mills, factories and in agriculture in 19th-century Switzerland. In the Swiss pre-industrial society, as well in other European countries, the children often were part of the family economy, earlier were integrated into the worker process and often indispensable contributed income.  Because the wages of the parents were so miserable,  and there were not yet  Unions to negotiate a fair wage. The industrialization forced family members to look for an income outside the traditional housekeeping. Work on the machines was often easy and physically not very challenging, what favoured the 'use' of women and children. Thus, the exploitation of the labor of children took new forms and extended dimensions, and spread at the beginning of the 19th century rapidly, particularly in the canton of Zurich and in Eastern Switzerland.

 In the cotton mills, six- to ten-year-old children worked in miserable conditions, up to 16 hours per day and often at night. 

Child labour became a social problem on which the authorities responded with investigations, so in 1812 in the canton of St. Gallen and one year later in the canton of Zürich. Issued in 1815; night - and factory work before the finished ninth birthday was prohibited and the daily working time limited on 12 to 14 hours. These rules were not to enforce in practice, but marked the beginning of the child protection legislation, followed by laws in Zürich (1837) and in the other cantons.

What a miserable life many children had to endure. If we would not have social reforms, children would still live in these dark ages.

 Many countries in the world still do not have children protection laws, so children still can be exploited in any way. 

...and on a happier note 1967, my three, smiling daughters enjoying their new seesaw.








(original picture, building a new home in the countryside,)

Wednesday; simples...

No need for expensive stain removers;

Are you annoyed when wearing a t-shirt and getting grease stains on it, which are so hard to get out.

Simple dish washing detergent does the trick. Rub the grease stains and let sit for a little while before washing.  Even old grease stains can be removed like this.  I think it is the grease busting properties of dish washing detergent that does the trick.

enjoy a fun day.

2016 A New Year;

Hopefully it will be a sparkling  New Year for all and this New Year's whispers are happy whispers.

2015 through the year

January; I made an orange themed sitting place;

February; I bought a Thermomix;




March; a few clouds some with a silver lining;




April; every day chores;




May; doodling;




June; new car;




July; my lovely hens got even a bigger yard and a new fence.




August; Billy got a new toy;




September; in the bush garden, new life, ferns are growing;




October; spring wakes up;






November;  the B&B* Garden is flourishing; (bird-&butterfly garden*)





December; Christmas;




Yesterday, we know the past, tomorrow is always hope. Ts

Happy New Year.

Photos Text Ts

19/12/2015; Christmas;

A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all;

after a long rest and absence I am back again. 

I do love the old sepia tags, a smiling Santa takes center stage.

and here not so old; from 2006 my granddaughters decorating the Christmas tree.

Impressions at Christmastime in my garden;

Odd playful shapes of the soft, silky flowers of a tall fountain grass.

Eucalyptus trees are shedding their bark at Christmas time revealing beautiful, new colours. 

Beautifully coloured leaves on Cordylines.





Evening sun is gilding the leaves of  a Palm tree.  At the front the prominent christmas colours red/green of Mussaenda/Ashanti blood.




©Photos/Text Ts

The hidden power of plants;

A most beautiful tree; 

When you see a tree and its awesomeness takes your breath away then you may feel,

the most beautiful in the world is a tree  in full flower, holding on to its place with an intrinsic stubbornness, displaying innocence and fragrance in an abundance of beauty. Colour, layer upon layer, humming and trembling with life. Ts

Brachychiton acerifolius, commonly known as the Illawarra Flame Tree. A large tree of the family Malvaceae native to subtropical regions on the east coast of Australia. It is famous for the bright red bell-shaped flowers that often cover the whole tree when it is leafless. Along with other members of the genus Brachychiton, it is commonly referred to as a Kurrajong.

 Brachychiton is derived from the Greek brachys, meaning short, and chiton, a type of tunic, as a reference to the coating on the seed. The specific epithet acerifolius suggests the appearance of the foliage is similar to that of the genus Acer, the maples.

How plants communicate; interesting reading, most of it makes sense.

http://zazenlife.com/2015/08/09/the-incredible-similarities-between-human-plant-consciousness/

The parasitic vine called dodder is the sniffer dog of the vegetable world. It contains almost no chlorophyll – the pigment that most plants use to make food – so to eat it must suck the sugary sap from other plants. Dodder uses olfaction to hunt down its quarry. It can distinguish potential victims from their smell, homing in on its favorites and also using scents emitted by unhealthy specimens to avoid them (Science, vol 313, p 1964).

© Photos/some Text/ Ts  

Summer...

In Australia, the seasons are defined by grouping the calendar months in the following way: Spring - the three transition months September, October and November. Summer - the three hottest months December, January and February. Autumn - the transition months March, April and May. 

Summer may arrive with hot and humid days. Thunder, clouds and torrential rain.

Song of Summer;

The subtropics are  hot and dry; 

soil and plants are thirsty and get thirstier every day. 

Then the clouds roll in black and heavy with moisture. 

The first drops bless the soil; 

then the heavens open up in earnest. 

sheets of driving rain obscure any view. 

Earth  is caught in this wonderful dance of water, 

 soaked up quickly by a greedy dry soil, 

leaving no puddles.

When the rains come,

life is beginning again,

 this is summer. Ts

Roses and summer, petals burned, falling falling;  strong fragrance emphasized by heat and sun. No regrets, summer means summer..

©Photos/Text/ Ts

Psst...I am reading...Endurance; This Australian novel tells the story of Australian Photographer. Explorer and adventurer Frank Hurley.

It is advised to read the following book in a warm and cozy environment...

Endurance by Tim Griffith

I quote; 

Hurley's photographs and documentaries of Douglas Mawson's and Ernest Shackleton's Antarctic expeditions, and his astounding images of World War I have been so widely exhibited and reproduced that in many cases they are the principal means by which we have come to see those world-shattering events. His iconic images of the ship Endurance trapped in an ocean of ice, of men battling the most extreme elements in the Antarctic, and suffering under unthinkable conditions in ice and war are imprinted on the Australian consciousness. 

Here now is the man, Hurley, telling us of his part in the two ill-fated Antarctic expeditions and recounting tales of great heroism and suffering as he fights for his life among the ice and the elements, and witnesses as photographer the worst ravages of war on the Western Front. 

 A few lines from the book…It is the better part of a year since we abandoned ship and it is four month we have been marooned on this piece of rock. Our stores are virtually gone…

My path is blocked by a fresh catch, a large blue whale…

Unimaginable that the blasted Norwegians could choose to sail to the opposite of the world to slaughter such extraordinary creatures and do so in such a barbarous fashion. They have turned this pristine harbour into a bloodbath…

…The image endures beyond the events we witness and the lives of all witnesses.

Ice Mask

The James Caird departing Elephant Island to seek rescue, Frank Hurley

Frank Hurley's  photos can be seen in the Australian Museum.

Well worth reading; the cold and hardships make you shudder and wonder what people can endure. Ts