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I must start here with the dreadful confession that part of my regular routine is to Google my full name (which is, if not unique, at least distinctive) for new recent hits. Mostly I'm looking for reviews and other book publicity items. I don't have an agent to monitor my literary career, so I have to strap down the ego and monitor it myself. There are authors who will tell you that what I do is bad Bad BAD, but we each have to find our own path.
But this post isn't about my books. It's about other stuff that gets caught up in the net when I run those searches. So what are the topics in which my name gets bandied about on a regular basis? My article on constructional sewing techniques as extracted from surviving textiles. My article on the Mammen embroideries. Those make a fair amount of sense. They're practical how-to articles with illustrative diagrams, on topics of interest to a lot of historical hobbyists.
The third most common non-literary Google "hit" is a bit more peculiar, and it's the one that inspired today's post. It's a Pinterest pin of one of the 14th c. manuscript images of bathhouse attendants from the Wenceslas Bible. And underneath the image is a text that reads, in part, "I think...Heather Rose Jones is entirely incorrect in assuming these were not corset-like undergarments." (The text then goes into further discussion of details of this specific image.) So...there's that.
This isn't a post about the construction and purpose of the garments depicted on 14th century Bohemian bathhouse attendants. There are a lot of theories. There may well be a variety of garment styles involved. That's not what I'm interested in here. What I find curious is that this pin (which has been re-pinned several hundred times, if Google is accurate) carefully identifies me by name (both real name and SCA name) in order to refute an opinion attributed to me. An opinion that--based on the topic--I almost certainly expressed well over 20 years ago.
To be honest, I find it unlikely that I "assumed" anything, though I very probably did present an opinion on the construction of this class of garment. But neither that opinion nor any evidence or argumentation I may have presented is at hand. Only a triumphant refutation of it. My name is invoked, not so that people are invited to engage with my analysis (which is neither presented nor pointed to), but evidently because there is some value attributed to the act of refuting me. Me, specifically. By name.
Now there is intellectual immortality. For as long as Pinterest endures, I will live on as The Person Who Was Wrong About the Bathhouse Dress. (Whether I was wrong or not.) It's quite possible that there are people for whom that is the sum total of their knowledge about me: that I was Wrong About the Bathhouse Dress. And given the nature of Pinterest, it may no longer be possible to retrieve the identity of the person who first proclaimed my wrongness. (I haven't tried. What would be the point?) You, too, may live on in some corner of the internet as the dragon that someone else is proud of having slain.
But this post isn't about my books. It's about other stuff that gets caught up in the net when I run those searches. So what are the topics in which my name gets bandied about on a regular basis? My article on constructional sewing techniques as extracted from surviving textiles. My article on the Mammen embroideries. Those make a fair amount of sense. They're practical how-to articles with illustrative diagrams, on topics of interest to a lot of historical hobbyists.
The third most common non-literary Google "hit" is a bit more peculiar, and it's the one that inspired today's post. It's a Pinterest pin of one of the 14th c. manuscript images of bathhouse attendants from the Wenceslas Bible. And underneath the image is a text that reads, in part, "I think...Heather Rose Jones is entirely incorrect in assuming these were not corset-like undergarments." (The text then goes into further discussion of details of this specific image.) So...there's that.
This isn't a post about the construction and purpose of the garments depicted on 14th century Bohemian bathhouse attendants. There are a lot of theories. There may well be a variety of garment styles involved. That's not what I'm interested in here. What I find curious is that this pin (which has been re-pinned several hundred times, if Google is accurate) carefully identifies me by name (both real name and SCA name) in order to refute an opinion attributed to me. An opinion that--based on the topic--I almost certainly expressed well over 20 years ago.
To be honest, I find it unlikely that I "assumed" anything, though I very probably did present an opinion on the construction of this class of garment. But neither that opinion nor any evidence or argumentation I may have presented is at hand. Only a triumphant refutation of it. My name is invoked, not so that people are invited to engage with my analysis (which is neither presented nor pointed to), but evidently because there is some value attributed to the act of refuting me. Me, specifically. By name.
Now there is intellectual immortality. For as long as Pinterest endures, I will live on as The Person Who Was Wrong About the Bathhouse Dress. (Whether I was wrong or not.) It's quite possible that there are people for whom that is the sum total of their knowledge about me: that I was Wrong About the Bathhouse Dress. And given the nature of Pinterest, it may no longer be possible to retrieve the identity of the person who first proclaimed my wrongness. (I haven't tried. What would be the point?) You, too, may live on in some corner of the internet as the dragon that someone else is proud of having slain.
