Masque (Tale Weaver Prompt)
Hello everyone! This is Jen from Blog It Or Lose It, substituting for Oloriel.
For this prompt I decided to dig out one of my antique cabinet cards. (A cabinet card was a type of photograph used after 1870.) All I know about this cabinet card is what’s written on the reverse: “May 2, ’89. “at home”. Masque ball”.
So – you tell me! What is going on in the photo? You can try to tell a very realistic and historically accurate story – or you can venture into the weird and fabulous! Feel free to write either prose or poetry, whatever tickles your fancy.
When you are finished, please TAG your prompt Tale Weaver’s Prompt and MindLoveMisery’s Menagerie. Then add your link to Mister Linky. Also – pingbacks are *great* – in case the tagging system or the widget are temperamental.
Good luck!
Jen
Interesting pic , for sure !!!
Looking familiar, right?
Figured I might as well share them. Does no one any good to have them biodegrading in a shoebox in the closet. The image has made me happy for years now — so why not share the wealth?
I think you’re right 🙂
Yes, I was the annoying kid running around during the museum field trips, yelling, “lookit! cool! lookit!” 😉
LOL 😀 I bet you were. I was the kid being taken back to the bus early for misbehaving. 😀
Hahaha!
You and all the other fun kids, right? LOL
Hahahahaha— I wasn’t fun at all, I don’t think. 😀
Well, not fun on the bus, maybe … o.O
Where did you get your shoe box of photos? Any family connections?
I love old photographs, and the few I have are of complete strangers. Please share more!
Will definitely share more!
I’m a collector. I just love looking at old photos – especially the cabinet-card era — they still have that vintage feel, but photography has been around long enough that people are relaxing and having fun with the photographs. So I collect these images when I can — strange ones, cute kids, ones with stories ….
Here’s a lady holding a book of Shakespeare, for instance:
https://jrosenberry1.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/woman-with-shakespeare-book-cabinet-card.jpg?w=450&h=692
Was she a schoolteacher? A writer? An amateur actress? Or just someone who really loved Shakespeare?
And this one. Perhaps from the repeal of Prohibition? Lots of drinking and music making!
https://jrosenberry1.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/music-and-booze-men.jpg?w=450&h=359
Sadly, I don’t have any old photos of my family — my family have scanned some into a digital album though and I hope to get more involved in looking through family history. Turns out I’m related to some interesting people — like Ma Barker! LOL
Thanks for sharing more of your photos. I like to imagine the reason the photo was taken. No relation to Ma Barker. Related to the 19th century robber baron Carnegie (no money for our side of the family!).
Ah yes …. good ol’ Carnegie! Too bad about the money though 😦
Hope to share more photos — really a fascinating look into different eras. My latest addition is a cabinet card taken inside a mine shaft — you can see dozens of shadowy miners — mysterious, and sad. Perhaps that would be a good prompt here some day too.
Sounds like a fantastic Tale Weaver Prompt
🙂
It would be interesting to see what people say about it. There isn’t much that’s hopeful about the image… it’s very mysterious-looking … as if the miners have become nothing but worker ants. I suppose to the bosses that’s what they *were*. Have to wonder who commissioned the photo then, and why …
Perhaps trying to unionize the miners. I know in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia there were lots of clashes between the miners trying to unionize and the police.
Could be taken by a union organizer, or even a woman photographer — there were a few.
That would make sense — it could very well be a unionizing tool. The conditions in the photo look miserable. Lots of coal mining country where I live in Peeay — also in West Virginia to the south — lots of ugly stories about police having been bought off by the mine owners.
PS: I was the one who got lost at the museum because I didn’t realize the class had moved on! There was the rush by staff to find my bus before it left!
Oh, now THAT is scary!!!! o.O
I loved the dioramas, and the rooms/spaces made to look like periods in history. I just stood there and imagined all sorts of things.
Guess that’s why I ended up teaching history for a time.
Cool! You do need a sense of wonder to be a teacher. (I studied to be an English teacher but it never worked out. Why? I lacked the second ingredient — ability to maintain classroom discipline! Teenagers! Nope!) 😉
I taught history at the university level — I couldn’t handle high schoolers! Though first year students still have some of the high school habits. 🙂
University is the way to go. At least you know they chose to be there.
I was certified for grades 6 to 12 — the middle school (6-8th grade) wasn’t so bad — attitude-y but still reachable — but by high school? Forget it!
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My take on the photograph. Finally a happy ending!
https://phylor.wordpress.com/2015/02/05/no-prince-charming/
Oh, NICELY written! 🙂
Thank you — for some reason, I thought he was some royal prince from some where, and the woman didn’t look too happy about it. 🙂
She does seem to have reservations! 😉
Pingback: Fasching Party – Masque (Tale Weaver Prompt) | ladyleemanila
Hi 🙂 Here’s about Fasching in Bavaria, cheers!
https://ladyleemanila.wordpress.com/2015/02/05/fasching-party-masque-tale-weaver-prompt/
Very nicely done! 🙂
I learned something too 🙂
“I don’t like living this way,” she said, her hand in his.
“I understand, but it’s the best thing for us, my love.”
“It makes me sad.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but it’s truly perfect, just give it a chance.”
“We’ve been here for weeks and my heart is breaking.”
“Where would you like to go?”
“I don’t know,” she sighed.
“What do you want?” he asked softly.
“I want to be big,” she said quickly.
“But we aren’t big,” he said truthfully. “That’s why living in a
dollhouse is where we belong.”
Oh how neat! They DO sort of look like dolls in a doll house!!!
Poor little folks — trapped in a dollhouse — but it’s such a dangerous world out there, right?
Nicely done 🙂
What an interesting interpretation! Jen is right — dollhouses might be safer, though confining.
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