Abolitonism and....Detergents?
This world of literary contrasts seems to be a regular pattern for me. I thing that's why I'm still indexing and editing books after thirteen years.
Once I got through the battles of the Vietnam War (see last post), I moved back in time to 18th and pre-Civil War 19th-century American and British perspectives on slavery. This book was a literary and socio-cultural analysis of anti-slavery writing, mostly by blacks, but also some material by whites, that started as early as the colonial period. We tend to think of abolitionism as a 19th-century phenomenon, but writings against the slave trade, and the use of the slave's life narrative go back further, actually. Although the author eventually talked a bit about Frederick Douglass, one of the most famous black writers of the later part of this period, most of the writers were less well-educated, and less well-known to us. They used a variety of methods to get the sympathy of their audience, and the use of certain literary techniques in what Slavery and Sentiment calls the era of sentimental literature is the focus of the book. To me, the interesting bit was the making visible formerly silenced voices of history.
The book on detergents was surprisingly interesting in places, actually. It's a multi-authored explanation of detergent chemistry and production for chemists, so it was a bit of a challenge. Fortunately, I wasn't expected to index this material to a detailed level, so my general knowledge along with the detailed hierarchy of subjects was enough (I hope) to get most of the most important keywords into the index correctly. I did learn a bit about what goes into the tricky business of making chemicals that can handle being in water and still bond with mostly oil-based dirt and stains in order to remove them. In addition, I learned about some of those gobbledygook words on your bottle of shampoo or shower gel and how much of a chemical challenge it is to combine substances to clean the dirt and oil from your hair, for instance, and yet still leave it soft and manageable. Lots of stuff going on in those suds! The latest challenges include making anti-foam chemicals for these high-efficiency, low-water-usage washing machines, and going back to plant-based oils to make detergents more environmentally friendly (we got very dependent on petroleum products over the years since we moved away from soap for clothes cleaning).
This week I've returned to history, this time a diary of a young Texas woman who lived on a wealthy plantation and had to deal with the challenges of the Civil War. One of those "ordinary folk in history" stories that are very "in" among historians these days. So far in my reading, the war has not intruded, and Sallie McNeill's life is pretty sheltered and predictable, except that she is college educated and refusing to marry, both most unusual for this time frame and rural area (we're not talking about the height of the suffrage era here, but the 1850s).
I'll keep you posted on how the Civil War affects her life.
Joanne
Once I got through the battles of the Vietnam War (see last post), I moved back in time to 18th and pre-Civil War 19th-century American and British perspectives on slavery. This book was a literary and socio-cultural analysis of anti-slavery writing, mostly by blacks, but also some material by whites, that started as early as the colonial period. We tend to think of abolitionism as a 19th-century phenomenon, but writings against the slave trade, and the use of the slave's life narrative go back further, actually. Although the author eventually talked a bit about Frederick Douglass, one of the most famous black writers of the later part of this period, most of the writers were less well-educated, and less well-known to us. They used a variety of methods to get the sympathy of their audience, and the use of certain literary techniques in what Slavery and Sentiment calls the era of sentimental literature is the focus of the book. To me, the interesting bit was the making visible formerly silenced voices of history.
The book on detergents was surprisingly interesting in places, actually. It's a multi-authored explanation of detergent chemistry and production for chemists, so it was a bit of a challenge. Fortunately, I wasn't expected to index this material to a detailed level, so my general knowledge along with the detailed hierarchy of subjects was enough (I hope) to get most of the most important keywords into the index correctly. I did learn a bit about what goes into the tricky business of making chemicals that can handle being in water and still bond with mostly oil-based dirt and stains in order to remove them. In addition, I learned about some of those gobbledygook words on your bottle of shampoo or shower gel and how much of a chemical challenge it is to combine substances to clean the dirt and oil from your hair, for instance, and yet still leave it soft and manageable. Lots of stuff going on in those suds! The latest challenges include making anti-foam chemicals for these high-efficiency, low-water-usage washing machines, and going back to plant-based oils to make detergents more environmentally friendly (we got very dependent on petroleum products over the years since we moved away from soap for clothes cleaning).
This week I've returned to history, this time a diary of a young Texas woman who lived on a wealthy plantation and had to deal with the challenges of the Civil War. One of those "ordinary folk in history" stories that are very "in" among historians these days. So far in my reading, the war has not intruded, and Sallie McNeill's life is pretty sheltered and predictable, except that she is college educated and refusing to marry, both most unusual for this time frame and rural area (we're not talking about the height of the suffrage era here, but the 1850s).
I'll keep you posted on how the Civil War affects her life.
Joanne
posted by Joanne | 10:16 PM
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