The Hessian Feldjagers

Winter Woes

How many people can stand winter's ugliness after several months? I don't mean bleak scenery or the cold (although some people like me might find that ugly). I'm talking about winter's backlash of ugly on us! Dry skin, dry scalps, dry face, itchy shoulders and hard to reach spots. I'm spoiled-- for winter and sometimes spring break (this spring break is looking bizarre and unplanned), I visit Florida and roll around on the beach. We all know the amazing feel of exfoliating sand on skin, after a day or two, you'll be glowing! I find that the itchiness intensifies after I lay down for the night, because then my brain has nothing to do but think about how itchy my skin is. It sucks. Also, first world problems.

This gelatinous mess is a mixture of pure olive oil and sugar. Want to feel like you rolled around on a beach and got some smooth feeling, exfoliated skin? Mix some olive oil and sugar together, seriously. I never used a set amount of sugar or olive oil-- I've always eye balled it and mixed together however much I needed to make the mixture. I suggest using a little bit less olive oil than sugar, but the sugar should be completely mixed and mashed together with a spoon. I've used this in a bath and soaked in the olive oil water. Baby, was I slick and feeling better afterwards. If you have one of those sponge on a stick things if you need to reach that impossible spot that I mentioned before. After a few sighs of complaints, I get my other half to do it for me. Go on and beat winter's wrath! 

Haughty Princes: Margrave of Anspach

After reading parts of "The Hessians" by Lowell, I've grown attached to learning about one of the Margrave of Anspach, who seems to take the cake as the most feared rulers. He looked over the territories of Anspach and Bayreuth. 

What did this prince do when he ran out of booze? Death penalty to criminals. Charles Alexander didn't mess around. When hearing that his dogs had not been fed, he rode to the house of the man who was sent in charge of his dogs, and shot him. An inn-keeper who complained about a little theft?  The thief was hanged on the inn-keeper's door. After a servant girl helped a soldier desert, even she was hanged.

Charles Alexander wasn't someone I'd want to come across of in one of his unexpected bad moods either. After a sentinel guard was asked for his musket, and when he gave it up to the Margrave, he was sent to drag through a pond at a pair of husssars' horses tails. It is safe to say that the man died.

The histories of these princes gave me a better idea of the control they had of their territories, and how the treatment of their people rested in their hands. As the saying goes, it's good to be the King.