Curio Cabinet

Anyone who was raised off-the-grid and goes on to obtain a PhD from Cambridge University surely has an amazing story to tell. American author Tara Westover did just that. In her 2018 memoir Educated, Westover recalls an early life without access to public school, vaccinations, or her own birth certificate. In the years since Educated debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list, Westover has pointed out that her experiences are indicative of the divide between rural and urban America, and could help explain the country's shifting political landscape.

 
On September 27, 1986, Westover was born at her rural childhood home in Clifton Idaho, with no doctor present. Her parents, who already had 6 other children, were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Her father, Gene, believed himself to be a prophet. Their specific church sect encouraged distrust in the federal government, education, and modern medicine, so Westover's family lived as survivalists or "preppers". The family grew their own food and stockpiled fuel and other resources for an upcoming apocalypse. Westover and her siblings were denied medical care, even when seriously ill or injured. Westover's mother, Faye, served as their only "doctor" and "teacher", treating them with alternative medicine and providing loose homeschooling, although Westover relied on an older brother to teach her how to read. Her home did not have a television, but did have a few textbooks, which she read by the time she was a teenager. Desperate to become educated, Westover obtained her freedom one piece at a time, saving up money to buy textbooks which she studied thoroughly enough to get a good score on her ACT exam. Even without a highschool diploma, Westover managed to gain admission to Brigham Young University, in Utah.

 
Adjusting to college life and the modern world was difficult. "One of my first lectures, I raised my hand and asked what the Holocaust was because I had never heard of it," Westover said, during an interview with NPR. Despite the rough start, Westover managed to get good grades, and graduated with honors in 2008. The following year, she traveled to the UK, became a graduate student at Trinity College Cambridge, and began writing what would eventually become her memoir. During her time as a graduate student, Westover became estranged from her family, since her manuscript detailed her abuse at the hands of one of her brothers, which her parents denied. Westover went on to earn both a Masters Degree and PhD in intellectual theory from Cambridge. In 2018, Educated was published to instant acclaim.

 
Unlike many memoirs detailing an author's escape from a fundamentalist upbringing, Educated focuses on Westover's tenacious pursuit of an education as the thing which changed her life. That a woman raised by survivalists in rural Idaho could end up living as a bestselling author in London may seem unbelievable, to some. But according to Westover, her story has more to teach readers than just the ins and outs of her own life. In a 2019 interview with The Atlantic, Westover stated that the U.S.'s quality-of-life divide between rural areas and cities, which she has experienced firsthand, has led to the country's current political schism. People in rural areas, she explained, distrust the government due to the economic hardship they endure. Moreover, people in cities look down on those in rural communities. Westover refers to this state as "poor political hygiene," and cautions against making "caricatures" of people across the political aisle. "We think that because we know someone is pro-choice or pro-life, or that they drive a truck or a Prius, we know everything we need to know about them. Human detail gets lost in the algorithm. Thus humanity gives way to ideology," she explained. The only solution, as far as she is concerned? Empathy—especially for those living in places hit hardest by economic strife. "You look at where the holes are in Obamacare—they’re in rural areas. You look at where the opioid epidemic hit hard—it’s in rural areas. You look at educational outcomes for rural kids—they’re troubling, every report. These facts should be the foundation of our empathy, not of our contempt." Of course, only time will tell if the U.S. is interested in "cleaning up" its political discourse and achieving some level of unity.

 
[Image description: American author Tara Westover, wearing a black jacket and grey shirt, sits in front of a grey background.] Credit & copyright: Lauren Margit Jones.

 
Written by: Maria C.

It's Flashback Friday! Enjoy this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives.
 

Now these are a group of Amazons who can really get down and loud with International Women's Day. That's right, the Working Women's Union or the "Shouting Amazons" as they were dubbed by The Chicago Tribune, championed an eight-hour workday, the abolition of child labor, equal pay for equal work, and scaled income tax. On May 3, 1886, the women led a peaceful march through downtown Chicago as part of a larger labor rally. Several hundred women and girls, mostly seamstresses from a local cloak factory, jubilantly marched down the streets singing, "Eight Hours," a song with lyrics like, "We mean to make things over, we are tired of toil for naught / With but bare enough to live upon, and never an hour for thought." Like many in the working-class, the women toiled in hazardous conditions for 10 to 12 hours a day and paltry pay. The protestors' ebullience quickly dampened that evening when police attacked demonstrators at the nearby McCormick Reaping company. The next morning, May 4, 1886, laborers gathered in Haymarket Square to protest the police brutality. During the rally, someone threw a bomb, killing seven officers and four protestors. These events, known as the "Haymarket affair," invigorated labor reformers around the world. In 1889, the Marxist International Social Congress established International Workers' Day on May 1 in honor of the Chicago laborers. President Cleveland signed the federal holiday into law in 1894, but selected the first Monday in September to avoid the movement's socialist, communist, and anarchist roots. So today, as you're enjoying respite from a 40-hour workweek, raise a glass to the Shouting Amazons.
 

Image credit & copyright: Women delegates to the 1886 Convention of the Knights of Labor, Library of Congress, 1886

The lack of presidential pets in the White House over the last four years was pretty unusual. President Joe Biden's inauguration was also a celebration for animal lovers who welcomed his two German Shepherds, Champ and Major, and the presence of pets back in the White House. Major is also the first shelter-adopted dog to live on the grounds, an event marked by his former caretakers at the Delaware Humane Association with an "Indoguration" ceremony and fundraiser on Zoom. The event had over 7,500 virtual attendees, and raised $200,000. The two shepherds have even earned the Twitter hashtag #DOTUS, and have a fan account called The Oval Pawffice to track their activities on social media.
 

So what does the average day for a White House pet look like? The Washington Post recently uncovered the "day-to-day doggie logistics". The pet care responsibilities are generally decided by the First Family with the Executive Residence staff (responsible for all living quarters duties) offering support when required. George H.W. and Barbara Bush were known to take on all of the responsibilities of dog ownership, even bathing their Springer Spaniels Millie and her pup Ranger by themselves. Gerald Ford's pregnant Golden Retriever Liberty was once the cause of a Secret Service emergency when the residence doors were bolted shut and the elevators had been shut down after the president took her out for a 3am potty walk. For more serious issues, veterinarians will make house calls, and the Chief groundskeeper Dale Hanley serves as a volunteer dog trainer. Hanley has worked with Presidential pets for decades, beginning with Richard Nixon's Irish Setter King Timahoe in the 1970s, and he's already been spotted out and about with Champ and Major. The training is welcomed, as most pet interactions are pleasant, but every once and a while a Chocolate Labrador Buddy Clinton can nearly cause a messy catastrophe by running full speed towards a holiday dessert display in the Grand Foyer. Otherwise White House pets are allowed to roam the grounds as they please, often adding levity and fuzzy fun to the serious work performed at the executive branch. Now who's up for a game of fetch on the South Lawn?

 
Credit and copyright: Delaware Humane Association / Pumpkin Petcare, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library / NARA, David Hume Kennerly / Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, White House / Michael Sargent

Below: former Presidents and their furry companions, including President Ronald Reagan with Lucky the sheep dog and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the Rose Garden; President Gerald Ford seated in the Oval Office and offering his golden retriever Liberty some good ear scrichies; and President George H. W. Bush with his Springer Spaniel, Millie, and her five puppies on the White House South Lawn.

Written by: Esther P.

Sometimes mysteries are hidden in plain sight! Australian researchers recently discovered that a mummy, which has been on display at the Chau Chak Wing Museum in Sydney for over 150 years, was extremely unique. The 3,000-year-old mummy, first unearthed in Egypt in the 1850s, is cocooned in a mud shell. Researchers have never seen a mummy prepared this way. Thought to be a woman between the ages of 26-35, analysis shows that the mud was applied to the woman's body after it had been buried for some, and after post-mortem damage was done (possibly by ancient tomb-raiders). Some archaeologists suggest that the mud was applied for appearance's sake, to hide damage. Others believe that the mud shell was added to the body to mimic the resin shells that rich Egyptians were encased in. There could also be a spiritual explanation. Ancient Egyptians believed that their dead journeyed to the realm of Osiris, God of the Underworld. In Egyptian mythology, Osiris's own body was once reassembled, so re-assembling a person's body after it was harmed could be an effort to stay in the god's good graces. Osiris was also associated with fertile soil, so mud may have been perfect for repairing a body to his liking. Adding more mystery is the fact that the mummy has been found to be much older than its ornate coffin, which is inscribed with the name "Meruah". This "body swap" was likely done by artifact dealers in the 19th Century, seeking to sell the mummy for a high price. One can only guess what other secrets and mysteries the "mud mummy" may reveal in years to come!

[Image description: A mud-covered mummy from the front, back, and sides.] Credit & copyright: Chau Chak Wing Museum/Macquarie Medical Imaging/CC BY 4.0
 

Written by: Maria C.

Happy March! Our selections for the Books of the Month follow this Curio.  

Post-World War II, American babies born prematurely were given excessively high concentrations of oxygen in incubators. This unknowingly caused a blindness epidemic. Because babies' eyes rapidly develop in the last 12 weeks of pregnancy, babies born prematurely may not have fully formed retinas. Too much oxygen can inhibit eye development and lead to retrolental fibroplasia, abnormal and fragile blood vessels growing throughout the retina. Renamed retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), retrolental fibroplasia can cause scarring and retinal detachment, leaving babies visually impaired or blind. Between the 1940s and 1950s, an estimated 10,000 babies lost their vision due to ROP.
 

The blindness epidemic led to an influx of visually impaired students in the public school system. Schools for the blind, like the Perkins School in Massachusetts, sought ways to serve this population by modernizing assistive technology. 70 years ago, they consulted with David Abraham, a British carpenter and machinist, to reinvent the braillewriter, a mechanical machine for writing braille.
 

Whereas the modern typewriter was invented in 1868, the first modern braillewriter was not invented until 1892. The original design had six keys, one for each of the dots in a braille cell. In Braille, each braille letter or cell is made up of six numbered dots (i.e. dot 1, dot 2, dot 3, etc.). Unique combinations of dots represent different letters and numbers. The idea for the writing system came from the Napoleonic army—Charles Barbier, an artillery officer, invented an embossed note-taking system that allowed militia to read notes without needing to strike a match and potentially alert the enemy to their location. Louis Braille spent years standardizing this system. When the Perkins school commissioned Abraham to redesign the braillewriter, they had several goals. They wanted to design a machine that was lightweight, easy to transport, durable, and quieter. Abraham's design may look deceptively simple, but it revolutionized braille writing. Today, the reading and writing system has numerous variants, many of which the Perkins Brailler can accommodate.

 
[Image description: The Perkins Brailler, a blue-green colored machine with six black keys, a space key, and a line space key, as well as two side knobs for advancing paper.] Copyright by the Perkins School for the Blind.
 

Below, the Braille alphabet, and a demonstration of how the Perkins Brailler works.