Having finished with Henry James, I thought we needed a REAL woman to freshen our palette…Calamity Jane.

Not so much Doris.

Don’t know if you’ve watched Deadwood (NOT for sensitive ears!), but it at least started out close to accurate as far as I can tell. My son and I got to see Wild Bill and Jane’s graves

when we drove through there in early August. We ate where Bill was killed by Jack McCall–which sounds more morbid than it is…he was killed in the poker room of a saloon. They stage reenactments of his murder every night, I think.

Jane was quite something.

CHEERS!

And here in the “costume” of her sex.

I’m sorry it’s a guy reading the autobiography, but it’s still amazing to hear her own words. She was one tough cookie. And while she has the reputation for being, um…not the most attractive woman of her time, I think she was actually a rather handsome woman–far less…weathered than I would have imagined for one of Custer’s scouts.

And then a little Bret Harte

For some more local color and American Realism. Let’s bring ourselves back from the mannered Victorian brink into a little good old American…Puritanism? Victorianism?
Ah…
When everyone knew their place…

And then some really cool links sent by really cool listeners like Spider_Knit who sent me the Library Thing and Dawn who sent the Purlescence Storytellers Challenge and PeaceFleece! Whoo hoo!

NOTICE–Calamity PODCAST! Don’t know what happened, but I’m re-recording part of the cast and uploading, 1:13pm AZ Time, 2/2/07 (Happy Groundhogs!).