* Oct. 4: A Great Good Place for Books, Oakland , at 7 p.m. (6120 LaSalle Ave.)
* Oct. 8: Litquake, San Francisco’s Foundation Center near Union Square, at 5:30 p.m. (312 Sutter St.)
This image was included in a pamphlet for the witchcraft trial of a Scottish woman, Agnes Sampson, in 1591.(b.unknown- executed 28 January 1591) Agnes Sampson was a Scottish healer and purported witch. Also known as the "Wise Wife of Keith", Sampson is most famous for her part in the North Berwick Witch trials in the later part of the sixteenth century.This image is from Alan C. Kors and Peter Edwards: Witchcraft in Europe 1100-1700Sampson lived at Nether Keith, a part of the Barony of Keith, East Lothian, Scotland. She was considered to have healing powers and acted as a midwife for a large section of local society.
In the spring of 1590, James VI returned from Oslo after marrying Anne, daughter of the King of Denmark-Norway. The Danish court at that time was greatly perplexed by witchcraft and the black arts, and this must have impressed on the young King James. The regal voyage back from Denmark was beset by storms. "In the summer of 1590 a great witch hunt was instituted in Copenhagen. One of the first victims was Anna Koldings, who under pressure divulged the names of five other women, one of whom was Mail the wife of the burgomaster of Copenhagen. They all confessed that they had been guilty of sorcery in raising storms which menaced Queen Anne's voyage and that they had sent devils to climb up the keel of her ship. In September two women were burnt as witches at Kronborg" [1] James heard news from Denmark regarding this and decided to set up his own tribunal.
By the autumn of 1590, Scotland was aflame with witch hunts and many of those sent to trial were questioned by the King himself.
Agnes Sampson was arrested along "sundrie" [sic] others, questioned regarding her role in the storm raising, and that of others. She was put to the torture which she resisted at first but:
"This aforeaside Agnis Sampson which was the elder Witch, was taken and brought to Haliruid house before the Kings Maiestie and sundry other of the nobility of Scotland, where she was straitly examined, but all the perswasions which the Kings maiestie vsed to her with ye rest of his counsell, might not prouoke or induce her to confesse any thing, but stood stiffely in the deniall of all that was laide to her charge: whervpon they caused her to be conueied awaye to prison, there to receiue such torture as hath been lately prouided for witches in that country: and forasmuch as by due examination of witchcraft and witches in Scotland, it hath latelye beene found that the Deuill dooth generallye marke them with a priuie marke, by reason the Witches haue confessed themselues, that the Diuell dooth lick them with his tung in some priuy part of their bodie, before hee dooth receiue them to be his seruants, which marke commonly is giuen them vnder the haire in some part of their bodye, wherby it may not easily be found out or seene, although they be searched: and generally so long as the marke is not seene to those which search them, so long the parties that hath the marke will neuer confesse any thing. Therfore by special commaundement this Agnis Sampson had all her haire shauen of, in each parte of her bodie, and her head thrawen with a rope according to the custome of that Countrye, beeing a paine most greeuous, which she continued almost an hower, during which time she would not confesse any thing vntill the Diuels marke was found vpon her priuities, then she immediatlye confessed whatsoeuer was demaunded of her, and iustifying those persons aforesaid to be notorious witches."
also:
"Item, the saide Agnis Sampson confessed before the Kings Maiestie sundrye thinges which were so miraculous and strange, as that his Maiestie saide they were all extreame lyars, wherat she answered, she would not wishe his Maiestie to suppose her woords to be false, but rather to beleeue them, in that she would discouer such matter vnto him as his maiestie should not any way doubt off. And therupon taking his Maiestie a little aside, she declared vnto him the verye woordes which passed betweene the Kings Maiestie and his Queene at Vpslo in Norway the first night of their mariage, with their answere eache to other: whereat the Kinges Maiestie wondered greatlye, and swore by the liuing God, that he beleeued that all the Diuels in hell could not haue discouered the same: acknowledging her woords to be most true, and therefore gaue the more credit to the rest which is before declared."(Newes from Scotland)[2]
Prior to this last confession James had not been convinced of Sampson's guilt, but afterwards he was convinced. Sampson was taken to the Scaffold on Castlehill, garotted then burnt to ashes.
Edinburgh Burgh Treasurer's accounts itemise the cost of Agnes Sampson's execution, giving the date as the 16 day of January 1590 [OS] 'quha wes burnt' as £6 8s 10d.
Monday, October 8, 5:30-7:30 pm
The Journey to Being Discovered:
First-Time Authors Reveal All
The Foundation Center, 312 Sutter St., Second Floor Conference Room. FREE
Learn from a panel of newly published, first time writers at The Journey to Being Discovered: First Time Authors Reveal All. Three novelists and one nonfiction author will talk about all that was involved in making their dream of writing a reality. We’ll cover finding the time and discipline to regularly write, identifying potential publishers, getting noticed by literary professionals, dealing with rejection, and publicizing your book. In Litquake festival fashion, the writers will also be reading from their newly published works. Bring your questions. Space limited. Advance registration required. Please visit foundationcenter.org/sanfrancisco/sf_october.html starting September 4, 2007 to register
Participants include: Anita Amirrezvani, Bridget Kinsella, Erika Mailman, and Kemble Scott.
The Witch’s Trinity comes out September 25, and I can’t wait. Three months away, but given how time has been flying now that I have a baby, it’ll probably be here tomorrow. My wonderful publicist has set me up with six readings in the Bay Area, as follows:
This last weekend I was a panelist at the Book Group Expo in San Jose. A wonderful event! I really enjoyed meeting the other authors – and a panel is so much easier than a reading. It’s more comfortable to present as a team rather than a solo flyer, and answering questions is more fun than reading a chapter from your book.
I’m posting two different covers of Witch’s Trinity. Can you tell which one is 
the one Crown is going with?
Initially, Crown created the fire cover. I liked this because the wood shape against the fire is mysterious and Rorschachian. But apparently it doesn’t look literary enough (and could even be mistaken for fantasy genre), so the cream-colored cover with the small demons woodcut is the official cover now. I think this was ultimately a good decision!
P.S. Now that I've uploaded the "fire" cover, I'm seeing that it's coming in as a wonderful eerie blue... something to do with me converting a PDF to a jpeg and it being rasterized. Let me scout around for a true-color version, or if worse comes to worse, I'll scan in my g
alley. But I kind of like it in blue!
P.P.S. Here's the galley.
P.P.P.S. I looked at an older post and saw that I had referred to my newborn as "preternatally wise." Pretty funny malapropism... getting the word "natal" in there. I meant, of course, preternaturally.
I'm delighted that I will be reading at Black Oak Books in Berkeley at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, April 4.Historical accuracy is a tough thing to keep your eyes open about. When I first began writing Woman of Ill Fame, my intention was to make it absolutely true (while the characters were fictional)… so, for instance, I was going to situate Nora’s brothel at the same address that I would be able to locate one on a map of the time, any saloon she frequented would be an actual one from 1849, etc., etc.
However, right away (first page!) I ran into a sticky mess: the name of the ship Nora comes to San Francisco on. I knew I wanted Nora to arrive on November 11—a little bit of number superstition on my part—so I went to the UC Berkeley library microfilm room to look at the Alta California newspaper. That’s the actual newspaper that the Gold Rushers read—pretty astonishing that somehow copies existed long enough to be photographed and stowed on microfilm. The Alta California ran lists of the ships coming into harbor on any given day. And to my dismay, none of the November 11 ships had evocative names. I even loosened my superstition enough to look a few days after and before the 11th… nothing good. I always thought ships had very cool names!
So I decided to break my own self-imposed historical accuracy rule and just completely made up the name of the ship, The Lady’s Peril. And what a relief! This instantly freed me up to invent addresses and names of liveries and such. The historical background of the novel is still truthful: things like the Christmas Eve fire, the details surrounding contraception and prostitution…but I felt free to devise small details.
And then came… the final editing phase.
For a writer, few things are as scary as realizing the pages in front of you are your last chance to fix any errors. I was frantically googling and using my dictionary to determine whether things like isinglass windows, the penile appellation John Thomas, and Panama hats were in existence in 1849. And then, too, I was trying to go through garment history to see whether women wore bell sleeves at that point, because I really liked the consonant sound of them –and boy, if you try to google anything about clothing online, you get hundreds of hits for Renaissance Festival costumes and it’s hard to navigate around that stuff to get to solid historical clothing history…
And then you come up on bigger issues.
Here’s my little frustrated note to myself at the time:
Major sticking point. Shit. All along, I’ve had Nora on the ship called The Lady’s Peril, but also had her crossing the isthmus of Panama, canoeing the Chagres River… I did not think it through to realize that if she got off the ship, the ship couldn’t continue… so it would be a different ship that brought her the rest of the way. I got confused between the ships that go round Cape Horn and the ships that make the Panama cutoff.
Shit. So, now I have to restructure all the references to her ship and to the other prostitute on board… or should I make her a Cape Horn person as well and cut all the stuff about the canoe trip?
Damn. Exactly NOT what I need when I’m trying to finish my edits a mere 14 hours before I have to go to the airport for a two-week trip to Paris I haven’t even packed for yet.
Well, I got to Paris and I think/hope I caught all the glaring mistakes. Note to self: next time, write a novel set in the modern day!
Rob Tocalino has posted this review of Woman of Ill Fame over at his very fun Egg Blog--and accompanying his text is a great oldtime photograph of some ladies of the evening.
ch the fire insurance company took into account since such places were a low fire risk.
First of all, you need a lot of greed. You’ve got to want to race out there and fill your pockets with gold.
Secondly, you need a certain amount of arrogance/fearlessness. Think for a moment about whether you’d be willing to undertake a seven-months journey to a land very few people you know personally (or maybe none) have actually visited. On the way:
Overland: You face being attacked and possibly killed by Native Americans protecting their land. You may get lost and perish, like the Donners. You may fall prey to the diseases that stalked the wagon trains: diptheria, smallpox and the like. You may die of starvation or thirst as your supplies run out and you can’t replenish them. You may die of heatstroke. Or pure exhaustion, since most emigrants, to spare the cattle already pulling a very heavy load, walked the whole distance.
By ship: You face the perils of being vulnerable to the sea: shipwrecks, mutinies, rogue waves. Wooden ships, paired with open flame lighting, introduce the very real danger of a ship fire. Plus there’s scurvy, rats, nausea… Oh, and there’s no Panama Canal built yet, so when you arrive in Panama, you’re going to have to deboard and keep watch of your trunk and belongings as you are canoed across the isthmus and then ride a mule to reach open sea on the other side.
And once you get there, you’re not sure what it’s going to be like. Will it be safe? Is everyone so gold-blind that they’ll kill you as soon as look at you? Will there be things to eat? Will you regret coming? (And if you do, can you face doing that same horrible long voyage in reverse?) Will you think of all the folks you left behind in the East and weep?
Based on all of this, I admire the Gold Rushers for their fortitude and brassiness, even while I admit probably a fair number of them were depraved and unprincipled.
And then, when you think of unescorted women making their way to the West Coast… well, the admiration becomes a little stronger, because this was an era when women (at least high class women) were not supposed to even step outside by themselves without a chaperone. This was the Victorian age, with all its rules for “protecting” females. Certainly, many of the women who came to California during that time did not arrive under their own steam (my novel talks about the deplorable plight of Chinese prostitutes brought over in cages), but those who did make the journey willingly and under their own power earn my respect.
Prostitution in the 1800s was a different undertaking, at least psychologically, than today. Women had so few options for employment, and so many real possibilities for starving to death, that embarking on prostitution was more of a put-food-in-mouth situation than today. Supermarkets did not exist. Many people grew their own food, or bought it directly from those who did. Same with meat: the same guy who owned the animals was the one who butchered them and sold the meat, at least in the very early days of San Francisco. In many cases, reform had not yet hit charity houses, so women shied away from the prison-like institutions that might be able to help them.
In 1869, the transcontinental railroad was completed, allowing faster and safer travel across the country. By 1900, 50 years after the Gold Rush, the Bay Area had significantly grown up. My city, Oakland, had a city hall built as a skyscraper. The landscape looked very different, with buildings galore and streetcars connecting the various neighborhoods. And while women were now permitted to gain employment in ways previously unheard of, they were still not making the wages that their male counterparts made (still the case today). In 1913, a prostitute told the Oakland Welfare Commission, “If working girls were paid living wages, there would be fewer prostitutes."
For more on Gold Rush prostitution--in fictional form--read my novel Woman of Ill Fame.
(Oakland, CA)—In an exciting evening celebrating our city in print, Oakland Public Library will host the authors of three fine books documenting Oakland’s diverse history, stories, and neighborhoods. Come hear from and meet authors Erika Mailman, Jeff Norman, Ly Nguyen and Anh-Hoa Thi Nguyen as they promote their books, each of which was funded through the City of Oakland’s Cultural Funding Program. Steven Huss, Acting Cultural Arts Programs Coordinator for the City of Oakland, will help to introduce the evening’s program and the city’s funding objectives. The event will take place Thursday, March 8, 2007 from 6 to 8 pm at Oakland’s Main Library, 125-14th Street.
The books will be available for sale and signing at the event. The titles are Oakland's Neighborhoods by Erika Mailman, Temescal Legacies by Jeff Norman, and As Is, an anthology of visual and literary art by the Vietnamese Artists Collective, which will be presented by editors and collective members Ly Nguyen and Anh-Hoa Thi Nguyen. Each book has been well received by critics and the public, and each will serve as a lasting resource to help in the understanding and enjoyment of our city.
The program is sponsored by the Oakland History Room of the Oakland Public Library. For more information, please call (510) 238-3222, or see the Library's Web site: www.oaklandlibrary.org. Additional information about the authors can be found on the following Websites: http://www.sharedground.org/New_Book.html (for Temescal Legacies), http://www.erikamailman.com/, and http://www.vacollective.org/. Please refrain from wearing scented products. To request sign interpretation, or other accommodation, call the number above or (510) 834-7446 (TTY) at least five working days prior to the event. The Oakland Public Library is a department of the City of Oakland.
In today's Oakland Tribune, reviewer Kathleen Geib says:
Who is the woman on the cover?
I've written a piece on old-time prostitution in San Francisco, including info on Sally Stanford, the madam who became mayor of Sausalito, which appears in this month's edition of the Nob Hill Gazette.
First of all, please patronize your local independent bookseller! Even if they don't stock the book, they can easily order it.
How to Purchase:
This is me today, at 24 weeks and 3 days. Compare to the post two down where I announced the pregnancy... I grew a lot in six weeks!
Ok, the title for my Random House book is hammered down (pun intended, since one possible title was The Witch's Hammer... referring to the Malleus Maleficarum in translation).
Alan and I are having a baby! On Friday, we will be at 20 weeks. He took this picture the day before Thanksgiving, when I was just shy of 19 weeks. We are now more than halfway through this pregnancy, at five months. Amazing. You may wonder why we waited until 20 weeks to announce, when most people do this after the first trimester.
We’ve had a long, long road. We actually started trying back in August of 2003, well over three years ago. After a year and a half of infertility, we began having a series of miscarriages. It was my sister the doctor who suggested we wait until 20 weeks, just to be as sure as possible that things were going right.
And despite a slew of misfortunes that kept convincing us this baby too was not long for the world, she has persevered. She is a trooper! As of yesterday, she quickened – an old-fashioned way of saying I can feel her move. Instead of sweating out the long weeks between ultrasound or Doppler sessions, I now have her own feet and flailing hands to reassure me that she’s still… well, kicking.
Now that I’m a little more relaxed about it, I am loving being pregnant. Those kicks make me feel so close to her, and now that we know the gender we are both calling her by her name and including her in absurd, ridiculous, absolutely wonderful conversations.
Alan and I send our thoughts and love to those still in the trenches… trying to conceive, trying to make a baby stick… or possibly coming to grips with the idea that neither may be possible. We will never forget the pain that this normally-joyful journey can inflict, and we send our hearts to you.
Has it been a whole year we’ve been without Debi?
In the midst of the joy of reconnecting with friends amid the bounty of food we no doubt take for granted, I remember a sweet friend. Debi died last year on Thanksgiving night, and I will never experience this holiday again without thinking of her. Debi was a huge supporter of my writing, and it’s so sad to think the launch party for my first novel will be held in her bookstore… without her.
Recently, I was rereading my diary from that time last year. One of the details I wrote about was how she pronounced her own name with a wonderful Southern-ish twang twinned with some kind of inexplicable bounce or lilt. I’d love to hear her voice on my answering machine one more time: “Erika, it’s Deb-bay.”
[break]
I just went to the answering machine to play all the messages and see if indeed an old one was there. Alas, no. And somehow another message I was saving has been accidentally deleted: from my friend Stephanie who also died way too young. In the message, pathetically and ironically, she was saying “Feeling better now…”
Technology is an amazing thing, where if we are smart enough, we can capture those voices we love and keep them and replay them. For the longest time, Alan was saving one of my messages to him when we had first started dating… but that was several answering machines ago. Just to end this sad post on an upbeat topic, Alan and I were cleaning out our garage today. He found an old legal pad on which he had written some goals—one of them was “still be with Erika Mailman.”
Here's both sets of parents. Mine are on the left and Alan's are on the right.
Aren't they gorgeous? From left, that's Kirsten the maid of honor on the left, me, and Shelly and Cindy.
Unequivocally, Alan and I agree that the best photo from the wedding is this one of our friend Danny. Danny is an engineering mastermind who was briefly featured on a reality series about building big stuff called "The Mother of All."
It got cold fast! Luckily, we had a bunch of those kerosene pillars to keep folks warm--and we had warned people in the invitation to bring a wrap or jacket. This is my niece Jenny and me playing with the sparklers. Sparklers are meaningful to the Mailmans: every year in August (well, most years now that we're all grown up) we hit the beach in Maine, and there's always one night where we fire up the sparklers. Some years we've done a bonfire on the beach when we managed to get a permit.
The rooftop garden in downtown Oakland where we were married is a gigantic three acres, leaving people space to wander the sinuous paths through the trees. We loved the garden because it is both urban and natural, combining our two loves. We visited many times before the wedding and sometimes found ducks floating on the pond.
It feels like a million years ago we were married: August 26, to be precise. But I never posted photos! We didn't get them from the photographer until a month later, and then we weren't completely thrilled with the collection, so it's taken me a while to get up the juice to post these.
Join me, Annalee Allen and William Wong for a lecture sponsored by Oakland Heritage Alliance. All of us have published neighborhood histories through Arcadia Publishing, and we’ll discuss our process of researching and writing.
Chapel of the Chimes is an architectural marvel designed by Oakland’s famous female architect Julia Morgan. It’s not so much a chapel as it is a columbarium. Beautifully morbid this space is, with ash containers shaped as books, placed upon a bookshelf.
Annalee’s book is Oakland: A Postcard History and William’s book is Oakland’s Chinatown. Mine is Oakland Hills.
I had to wait to receive this glorious, full-color photograph from Samuel Adams' Daguerreotype Emporium.
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 Six authors from the SAN FRANCISCO WRITERS WORKSHOP read from their works. The SF Writers Workshop is the oldest writers group in California. The reading is a benefit for the Meridian Gallery, host of the SFWW. Featuring: MICHAEL CHOROST, author of REBUILT, 2006 PEN award winner JOE QUIRK, author of SPERM ARE FROM MEN, EGGS ARE FROM WOMEN DAVID HENRY STERRY, author of CHICKEN ERIKA MAILMAN, author of A WOMAN OF ILL FAME and HEXE MELODIE BOWSHER, author of MY LOST AND FOUND LIFE KEMBLE SCOTT, author of SOMA Hosted by TAMIM ANSARY, author of WEST OF KABUL, EAST OF NEW YORK Friday, November 3, 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Location: The Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell St., San Francisco (415) 861-2011. Admission $7 to $20 sliding scale. |
One of the perks to not hosting Halloween and going to someone else's party is that you can win the costume contest! Which I did as Marie Antoinette, with boat in sail in my hair and blood at my neck. My friend Shelly won too, as an insanely-realistic Oompa Loompa (in fact, based on the reaction she got, we all thought she was going to win first prize, but that went to two girls dressed as Voodoo practicioners.)
Our friend Shane Etzenhouser moved to Ethiopia about four years ago with the idea of starting up a puppet show. He met a gorgeous woman there, Brukty, and they got married. They collaborated on the show, a mixture of sock puppets and computer animation, which is now being televised to great acclaim. It’s Ethiopia’s answer to Sesame Street.Today there were articles in the SF Chronicle and the Washington Post about them. What they’re doing is pretty amazing because illiteracy is a problem in Ethiopia and this show provides a way for kids to learn their alphabet and other important things without going to school, which many children aren’t able to do.
The show’s theme song is in Amharic and says of Tsehai, the charming childish giraffe who is the star of the show, "She asks a lot of questions because she loves learning."
Most moving was the idea that the show might be shown on the big screen in a Times-Square-esque place in Ethiopia where hundreds of street children live. Who knows if seeing Tsehai could make the difference to one of those kids, beginning to arm them for success in a way that wouldn’t have been possible before.
Shane and Brukty, we are so, so, so, so, so proud of you. You are making the world better.
My friend took me to Mills College, which she attended in the late ‘90s, to show me where some scary stuff had happened. She is convinced the place is haunted. In one dormitory’s lounge, she showed me where she had discovered a hidden door in the wall – you can see it in this photograph. We pried it open once again. It’s boarded up inside but we surmise there used to be a staircase or other passageway here.
The ghost story for this dormitory is that people have heard a child in the hallway playing with her ball, but when you go and look there isn’t anyone.
I took a bunch of digital photos and didn’t download them immediately. No, I waited until I was sleepless at four a.m. when it suddenly occurred to me, hey, I could see how those photos turned out. I was convinced in the blue glow of my monitor, with no other lights on, that I was going to see spectral images within the photos.
I didn’t.
But that didn’t stop me from figuring out how to Photoshop in a little girl and emailing it off to my friend. Hope it makes her catch her breath!
Ah, the residents of Springfield, Massachusetts in the year 1640… how well I know your names! I spent all day yesterday at the Sutro Library researching the early Parsons family history, part of my project to learn more about my ancestor accused of witchcraft. And my god, it is like skipping stones, to watch the ripples that fold out and out and out. It’s exhausting. Because my ancestor was not the only one accused of witchcraft, and in fact there’s a complex network of neighbors v. neighbors, and trials affecting other trials, and bitterness pervading through the decades until more accusations are raised…
When I left yesterday, I felt like all afternoon I had been in a dim Colonial cottage, subject to the whispers and suspicion myself. It gets into your blood, gives you a distasteful feeling.
The other day I found a website that listed all the inhabitants of Springfield in a particular year… there were only about 40 of them, and yet I recognized their names, some of them, as testifiers in my ancestor’s case. As I continue to research, those names come up again and again until I almost feel I know them.
Oh, yes, here’s Elizur Holyoke, the guy who wrote down all the testimony, and here’s his son born in 1641… well, and six months later Union Moxon is born; Moxon being a surname I recognize as that of the minister’s children who had fits and caused a woman to be accused of witchcraft, which trial in turn caused my ancestor to have fits… it’s all so insular and incestuous.
I pulled out my huge family tree chart (it’s three feet by two feet) and scanned names again. Sure enough, some of the people who testified in my ancestor’s case were also my relatives. What else could you expect in such a small town?
And most chillingly, but I have to better confirm this, it looks like the father of my ancestor’s accuser shows up on my family tree, by way of what would have been a sister of the accuser. How horrible.
The picture above is Mary Bliss Parsons, the woman accused of witchcraft that I'm related to. I found the image at www.downstreet.net/runoverpagecopy.htm.I will fight to the last ditch, if necessary, to prevent the voters of this city from entering into a lease which will take out of their control property for which I have fought a lifetime and lost a fortune to secure for them... Any man who would turn over municipal lands for this damnable purpose ought to be taken out and hanged.The irony, of course, is that had Borax Smith won his 99-year term, we'd still be in it! We'd be in it until 2015. And Borax is long dead and his estate dismantled and all we've got are some mules in the backyard of the F.M. Smith Recreation Center...
