Marilyn Chambers & Ivory Snow Box
I don’t follow the news much, so I missed the fact that Marilyn Chambers, star of Behind the Green Door, one of the first “main-stream” porn films, died earlier this month. I only found out when it was briefly mentioned in People magazine.
What I found interesting was the note that before Marilyn made her move into sexually explicit films, she was on the Ivory Soap Box.
Yesterday I got a call from the owner of our local Feed Store (capitalized because that’s actually the name of the store). Since it was 7:00pm on a Sunday evening, I knew something was up. Turns out that a woman in town, Carolyn, had become the unplanned foster parent of 11 mallard ducklings.
The back-story is that there was a momma and her babies trying to cross the road. The momma got scared by the cars and flew away, leaving the ducklings scattering. If you’ve never seen baby ducklings before, they are extremely small and very uncoordinated. A passing man picked them up (to save them from being run over) and – instead of leaving them safely by the road for momma to return to, he packed them in a box and took them to Carolyn.
Carolyn had just raised some chicks, so she had facilities to care for the ducklings overnight, but she lives in town (and is in her 70′s) and didn’t want the duck.
Long and short of it is that now we have 11 ducklings safely in our baby-duck-and-chick raising pen. As of this evening they were all healthy, warm and somewhat confused.
We’re hoping that some of them will be females. Turns out that of the 18 or so other ducks we still have living on the pond, only 3 are females. I think the drakes out there would appreciate evening up the score a little!
Here are some more EO blends from The Manual of Toilet Soap-Making by Dr. C. Deite.
The amounts given in the book are for scenting a soap batch using 50 kilos of oil; I’ve adjusted them down so the amounts shown below are for a soap batch containing 5 kilos (11 pounds) of oil. The names of the soaps are as given in the book.
11 gr. ginger-grass oil
21 gr citronella oil
7 gr lemongrass oil
7 gr cassia oil
Poster - www.washup.org
As we all know, washing with soap and water is one of the very best ways to prevent the spread of disease, including colds, flu, and other illnesses. The CDC has long been promoting the benefits of washing with soap and water. But a study by the The Soap and Detergent Association (SDA) and the American Society of Microbiology (ASM) showed that:
So, the SDA and ASM have teamed up to produce hand hygiene educational brochures to help inform both adults and children of the benefits of hand-washing with soap and water. It’s another way to promote the benefits of soap.
Back around the turn of the (last) century, synthetic fragrances were just making their debuts. Soapmaking manuals and books for the time still gave recipes for scent blending based on essential oils.
My Manual of Toilet Soap-Making by Dr. C. Deite lists a number of scent blends for what were “traditional” toilet soaps at the time.
Fulling a Wool Scarf
I found a reference in The Art of Soap-Making by Alexander Watt (1918) which describes “fulling soaps”. Being unsure of what, exactly, “fulling” really was, I wasn’t sure if the soap described would be suitable for washing woolens as well.
Turns out not, but I did make some interesting discoveries along the way. And I learned how to wash and care for my wool sweaters and shirts … it wasn’t anything like what I had been told!
Imagine New York City and the island of Manhattan in the 1840′s. The city was rapidly expanding with an influx of immigrants from all over the world. Industry was expanding with the rise of the Industrial Revolution. The northern part of the island, was still providing the city with dairy products and meat. Sewage disposal was non-existent and garbage was tossed into the street or river. Horses provided all the transportation, and there were over 15,000 horse carcasses to dispose of per year. And then there were the remains from the slaughterhouses.
What in the world, you ask, does this have to do with soap? The answer is … tallow.
Also residing and working mostly on the north end of the island were the soap boilers. Those people who took the animal remains and rendered them into fats and oils to make soap. Not a pretty job, but necessary and important to the city.
Then, in 1849, it started to change.
Soap from Kitchen Grease
It seems that what goes around, comes around – even with soap. What was once a distasteful chore of country housewives or the task of garbage entrepreneurs has now become the new eco-friendly activity of chefs. According to a recent article at Food and Wine there’s a new line of soaps made from the byproducts of turning restaurant kitchen grease into biofuel.
Soap is a chemical reaction between animal or vegetable fats or oils and an alkali (sodium or potassium hydroxide) and water. Through the history of soap, one of the sources of those animal or vegetable fats has been kitchen grease. In 1832 Mrs. Childs published The American Frugal Housewife: Dedicated to Those Who Are Not Ashamed of Economy
Look frequently to the pails, to see that nothing is thrown to the pigs which should have been in the grease-pot.
Look to the grease-pot, and see that nothing is there which might have served to nourish your own family, or a poorer one.
And, of course, from the grease-pot, soap was made. She also mentions that in the city, “it is better to exchange ashes and grease for soap”.
Certainly in city environments, keeping and rendering tallow and then making soap was more difficult. Others apparently felt the same. By the 1850′s in New York City, as the city expended into the more rural parts of Manhattan, the slaughterhouses and “soap-boilers”, with their mess and smell of tallow rendering, were becoming an issue (see Manhattan Garbage and Soap). With a little creative thinking and some municipal graft, the business of collecting garbage and rendering it into oil had become a multi-million dollar industry by the mid-1890′s. Through the 20th century, how waste, including kitchen grease, restaurant grease, animal by-products and garbage in general was handled went through many changes as information and public awareness changed.
Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, we’re cycling back to putting kitchen grease back to use in soapmaking. Of course, we have the advantages now of better science, better technology and better equipment but the chemistry is still the same – animal or vegetable fats, lye and water make soap. What goes around, comes around!
Tonight after dinner I looked out the window and saw an elk in the yard. The picture isn’t very good since it was dusk and he was about 75 yard s away, but it is proof that he was there!
We have several small elk herds that wander through the ranch, but they generally stay near the tree lines and away from people and roads. They come out into open areas to graze.
Alexander Majors
Pony Express Founder (1860)
Soapmaker (1887)
Of all the soapmakers I know, not one started out young in life saying,”When I grow up, I’m going to be a soapmaker.” While some have said they “always had an interest”, most were in other careers when they discovered (and got hooked on) soapmaking. Pre-soapmaking careers include accountant, journalist, engineer, chemist, housewife, teacher, internet guru, IT professional, computer programmer, farmers, goat-herd owners – and even founder of the Pony Express.
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