Posted by Eleanor on 5/9/2002, 9:48 am I'm sorry, I'm afraid I'm going to be a little bit shrill, but not at you Anna, or Sally. But I have a few things to say about "Frontier House"! It was a media stunt -- PBS does its version of survivor. It had about as much "reality" as Gilligan's Island, and as much historical validity as "F Troop"! (In fact, F Troop might score _better_!) --Previous Message-- Not even close to the frontier experience. Trust me! The family with the teenage girls were the worst, and a total joke. Running around in corsets without a chemise underneath, no drawers, no petticoats, no _dress_, for heaven's sake! The way they acted, the way the dealt with the daily chores -- this was not reenactment, living history, and/or experimental archeology. This was a stunt, pure and simple. PLEASE, if you are at all interested in what really happened, go to your library. Read Laura Ingalls Wilder (DON'T watch the show), that will give you a much better idea of a legitimate "frontier experience". I thought it was interesting It would have been, if they would have HAD to. For instance, that wedding cake wasn't period. Period! It just frosts my cookies that this was passed off as something legitimate, and by PBS at that! As I said, I'm not yelling at you, Anna, you watched in good faith. But PLEASE, go investigate the time for yourself if you are at all interested -- and realize that 1883 is VERY late, actually _past_ the time that classic historians consider the end of the "frontier". Technology is well on its way to what we have now, in domestic venues -- it isn't so far away from what we do now! Forgive the rant. Suffice to say, I was NOT impressed. Make them head out after the Corps of Discovery in birch bark canoes, and we'll talk. Eleanor
Hi all.
: I got to watch a little bit of it. I thought
: it was rather interesting, what I got to
: see. It's a nice reality check for those,
: like myself, who tend to romanticize that
: time period. I mean, I'm sure it wasn't a
: completely accurate example of how life
: was then (for example real 1883 families
: would likely know and have some experience
: building cabins and doing the various
: tasks these modern day families were
: struggling to figure out) but probably
: pretty close and it gives a good idea how
: hard life was then and what was required
: to make it.
: to watch those families try to take on the
: task of "real" frontier living.
: 
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