I have heard it said that a kitchen is the heart of a house. I believe it. My kitchen is not only the heart metaphorically but also by location. Man, is it hard to live. The pantry where all our canned food is now stuffed and the slop sink (yes, the same slop sink I use for washing out dyes and other crafty things) is on the other side. The first day I did not realize I wouldn’t be able to get there. I had thought ahead somewhat; I had food, milk, juice etc for the babies. But I couldn’t get to my coffee pot Now we are talking a sacrifice. And there was no way to get a can of soup. So, after I fed the babies, I ate two handfuls of cocoa puffs. I hate cocoa puffs. To me they taste like chocolate flavored vitamins. I now have only a stove and a refrigerator.

Plus, we of course hit a surprise. We’d hoped to reuse the floor. Do you see? They went around the cabinets. So now we have to choose and pay for flooring and it sets the project back a week.

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Before we humans made paint with oil (or our modern latex), paint was made with a variety of ingredients. Paint has to have something that provides color like ochre or, during colonial times in the USA, brick dust, and a medium for the color that provides stability and hopefully durability. Egg yolks was at one time used for paint. Anyone who has tried to scrub hardened egg yolks off a plate knows that egg hardens to something like cement. But it does wash off in water.

Another substance used in paint was milk. Since most people lived on farms up until the present, milk was something readily obtainable. We know that milk paint was used. Occasionally antique furniture and old houses in this country are discovered to have been painted with milk paint.

However, the recipe for milk paint is very important. In 1801 a French artist described painting with a milk paint and wrote that it was not durable. Among other things, it came off with the slightest friction (Don’t ever brush against it or it would come off on one’s clothing, and would dissolve in wet weather.) And milk paint must be used right away. It has a short shelf life.

The important ingredient is the protein casein. Sometimes borax is used to the lime to help dissolve the casein. Different recipes have been tried to make milk paint durable. We know that at least some of them were successful; surfaces painted with milk have been discovered in some old houses. It has a hard very smooth finish and was usually in pale pastel colors. It is impervious to paint strippers and is difficult to paint over. It is totally non-toxic, though, and can be used to give furniture an antique look.

Oh, and one final fun fact. House painters in the past did not ‘paint’; they distempered the walls.

For the latest Will Rees, I researched sea shanties (or chanties) thoroughly. I’d expected to use that information more than I did. I actually only mention the sea shanties in passing. That’s what happens when one researches something for a work of historical fiction. Either some of the information isn’t used at all or you need more and more of it.

Although I knew of the shanty only as a subset of folk music, it was important for the loading and unloading of cargo from merchant ships.  It is thought that one leg of the shanty’s back ground comes from British ‘chants’. That makes sense to me. Even the language implies a connection.But although other countries had work songs, sea shanties were primarily an American phenomenon.

Shanties were created here. Well, if one strand is the British ‘chant’, where does the rest of it come from?  Where else in our history do rhythmic work songs play such a big role? Answer: the slaves. Contemporary accounts frequently describe the slaves and their songs. The slaves, to the eyes of the white who observed them, were so happy they sang’. The casual condescending racism of the descriptions make a modern sensibility shudder.

However, like the work songs sung by the slaves, the shanties include the same kind of rhythmic repeats necessary to keep everyone on the same beat Keeping everyone together as they pull lines or shift bales is efficient. Since there were so many black sailors at that time (with a name of their own: the Black Tars) it makes sense the rhythmic underpinning of the shanties probably sprang from the same source as the rounds sung by the slaves: i.e. African music.

Minotaur/ St. Martin’s Press has a wonderful Graphics Arts Department.They have produced another fabulous book cover for the third Will Rees: Cradle to Grave.