Sunrise in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania USA on May 1, 2021 at 6:17:30 am EDT.
Last year, in our first lockdown, my favorite holiday came and went and I didn’t even notice. But this year there is hope of a return to gatherings and celebrations and, while I will still be participating in a May Day celebration remotely, I am eager to share some May Day thoughts.
(Left: aesthetic dancer in 1910 at Pennsylvania College for Women (now Chatham University) Aesthetic dance is basically modern or interpretive dance.)
I wrote a book about May Day! And it’s a jolly good one, too. I’m going to highlight just a few photos and comments from it. [Read more…]
With A04_Schooldays at the Abbey, published by Collins in 1938, we begin the cluster of nine books known as the “Retrospective Titles.” They fall after A03_Girls of the Abbey School (1921) and the order resumes again in publication time with A11_The Abbey Girls Go Back to School (1922). The nine retrospective titles were published between 1938 and 1957, three years before Oxenham’s death. They feature younger girls 
Elsie J. Oxenham’s ninth book, published in October of 1914, is the “origins” story of the Abbey Girls series, and is one of the books that contains the most folk dancing, culminating in a lengthy description of a performance of folk dance and song to honor the first-crowned May Queen of the series. If you are a folk dancer