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The First Colorado Infantry Company D, a living history group out of Denver, returned to Gold Rush Days with a special treat. As the infantrymen practiced their musket demonstrations, the women gathered for a Victorian tea.

This marks the companys third year at Gold Rush Days. Each year, it presents something different to the public. This year, the company ladies decided to bring in more feminine appeal.

Were trying to bring different aspects of Victorian life to Gold Rush Days, said Rebecca Hunt, company member and history professor at University of Colorado Denver. The men are doing the Civil War military piece, and were showing that there was a civilian side as well. A tea is something that excites peoples imagination.

Personally, Ive been doing living history events for over 40 years in all kinds of settings, Hunt added. I think its really important to bring history to life for anyone whos interested in any kind of community that wants to host a living history event because people dont always understand the past. Its very interesting and very complicated.

A Victorian Tea for women in dress was held at the Civil War encampment on Aug. 12 at 1 p.m. At 2:30 p.m. the tea became open to any women who wished to participate, no matter the age.

As adult women sat together and conversed while sipping their tea, children sat at another table, trying out the tea, cookies and cucumber sandwiches and learning about life during the 1800s.

Many of the girls commented on their favorite cookies and what dresses they liked. Some came dressed up as well.

Meanwhile, two of the company women would explain to them the different kinds of dresses worn during the period, how children were educated at home and how girls would learn to sew by the age of 4.

I think its great. It gives us a great opportunity for people to see how things were in the past, said company member Kelly Hall.

While dressing in Victorian garments may seem a hassle nowadays, it isnt so for these ladies. I think its delightful. I do it whenever I can, said company member Jenny Wright.

Wearing a dress she made for herself, Hunt doesnt even think of it as dressing up. Ive done it so much, this feels like my normal clothing, she said. When I move into my 1860s clothing, I also move into my 1860s state of mind. I enjoy it; I wouldnt do it if I didnt enjoy it. I love the opportunity it gives me to talk to people.

Next year, the company hopes to come up with another new idea to try for Gold Rush.

For any men or women who would like to join these historians, the First Colorado Infantry Company D welcomes everyone.

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Victorian tea party brings history to life in Buena Vista - Chaffee County Times

By Sherri Kolade

Posted August 15, 2017

click to enlarge

(Thinkstock image)

(Thinkstock image)

FARMINGTON HILLS Holistic health practitioner Sonja Ozog is ready to take todays tea drinking back a couple of centuries.

Ozog specializes in herbal medicine and wants to show tea-drinking aficionados and newbies alike how to use medicinal teas, herbs and spices to their benefit.

Ozog will share her knowledge at the Herbal Tea Party 6:30-8:30 p.m. Aug. 18 at the Longacre House.

I fell in love with herbs they are one of my favorite ... things, and I immediately started thinking, I should teach other people what they do, so I created a workshop, Ozog said of a workshop she held at the Farmington Hills Nature Center last year. The workshop was titled Cooking and Healing with Kitchen Herbs and Spices and was well-received, she said.

The upcoming class, which is designed for adults, will feature sample therapeutic herbal teas and will venture into the medicinal benefits and practical approaches to herbs, many of which are grown in the mitten state. Participants will also take home a booklet that describes two dozen herbs and details how to create herbal tea blends, according to a press release.

Ozog became a volunteer at the nature center almost two years ago, after asking Farmington Hills Nature Center Supervisor Ashlie Smith about volunteer opportunities.

Actually, still to this day I am taking care of the bird sanctuary in the nature center, said Ozog, who finished her holistic health practitioner degree in December 2016. Ozog received her holistic health practitioner degree, specializing in herbal medicine, from the Om Wellness Institute in Flint.

Ozogs second herbal workshop is going to talk about the art of tea drinking.

Our ancestors used herbs more (extensively) than we (do), she said, adding that they knew what effects certain spices would have, which led to the development of many common spice mixes still used today.

She will bring potted herbs to the event.

Herbalism used to be called the art of simpling, because herbs were called simples, Ozog said.

One of the main rules is to use the herbs that grow near you like the stinging nettle, which grows in our yard, she said. The idea behind it is that plants create fighter chemicals to protect themselves from their environment and we live in the very same environment. We need the very same protection.

Smith said in an email that Ozog is very passionate about natural healing.

Ive worked with her on other programs, and we thought a tea party event would be a great way to share herbal remedies with the community, empowering them to do something fun and healthy, Smith said via email, adding that the nature center will offer an herbal healing plant talk series in the fall and other herb/spice workshops throughout the year.

Smith said that attendees will learn about easily accessible Michigan herbs and their benefits, while discovering how to create their own herbal teas.

The upscale atmosphere at the Longacre House will help add to the fun of the tea party too, with real teacups, she said.

Program materials will be provided, and the event costs $35 for residents and $40 for nonresidents.

Registration is required at the Costick Center or at recreg.fhgov.com.

The Longacre House is located at 24705 Farmington Road, between 10 Mile and 11 Mile roads. Call the nature center at (248) 477-1135 or email asmith@fhgov.com for more information about this and other programs.

About the author

Staff Writer Sherri Kolade covers Farmington, Farmington Hills, Farmington Public Schools, and Oakland Community College for the Press. Sherri Kolade has worked for C & G Newspapers since 2013 and graduated from Central Michigan University.

Full bio and more articles by this reporter

For more local news coverage, see the following newspaper:

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Herbal tea party to steep in medicinal benefits - C&G Newspapers

Wading into a roomful of California tea party members over the weekend, the two most prominent Republicans running for California governor professed their reverence for President Trump.

It was a must-do if they want to win over the highly charged conservative activists who favor Trump. The tea partys rising influence in the state Republican Party makes its members votes essential for any candidate hoping to coalesce enough GOP support to make it to the November 2018 general election. A USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll released in 2015 found that 48% of Republicans in California supported the tea party movement to some degree.

So Huntington Beach Assemblyman Travis Allen and Rancho Santa Fe businessman John Cox on Saturday worked feverishly to prove their pro-Trump credentials.

I support Trump 100%. Im happy hes elected, Cox assured about 120 members at the Tea Party California Caucus conference, dubbed The Real Resistance, at a hotel near the Fresno airport Saturday.

Allen one-upped Cox when the stood at the podium about 90 minutes later: Theres only one candidate for governor who actually supported the Republican nominee for president, and his name is Travis Allen.

Still, both candidates had some explaining to do.

Silvia Flores / For The TImes

Republican gubernatorial candidate Travis Allen, right, poses for a photo with Gina Roberts, president of the Log Cabin Republicans of San Diego, at the Fresno conference.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Travis Allen, right, poses for a photo with Gina Roberts, president of the Log Cabin Republicans of San Diego, at the Fresno conference. (Silvia Flores / For The TImes)

In 2012, Allen crisscrossed the country campaigning for GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who has been one of Trumps most vociferous critics. In Novembers presidential election, Cox voted for Libertarian Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico. Cox also is a member of the New Majority, a group founded primarily by Orange County executives to nudge the state party away from social conservatives and their emphasis on issues such as gun rights.

Out of earshot of conference-goers, the Los Angeles Times also asked both Allen and Cox if they considered themselves tea party members. Both sidestepped the question.

I just consider myself a common-sense Californian, Allen said.

Cox said he was campaigning across the spectrum of the Republican Party, including the gay group Log Cabin Republicans: Im out to unify all Republicans. I am at heart a fiscal conservative.

From the outset of their young campaigns, Allen and Cox have faced a seemingly insurmountable challenge. Not only are they up against three well-known, well-funded Democratic heavyweights Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and state Treasurer John Chiang but theyre also running in a state where Democrats hold a 19-percentage-point advantage over Republicans in voter registration and where Hillary Clinton trounced Trump by 30 points last November.

Along with Cox and Allen, little-known GOP candidate for governor Stasyi Barth of Lake Elsinore was also on hand at the Fresno event. Barth, who had a table at the conference but did not have a speaking slot, pushed back on Allens pronouncement that he was the only Republican candidate for governor to vote for Trump. Not only did Barth vote for Trump, shes a tea party member, she said.

Barth yelled above the din as members starting drifting out, telling everyone that she has been a proud, longtime tea party member and was a Trump supporter from the beginning.

If the Democratic vote splinters, the states Republicans could provide enough votes for one of the GOP candidates to finish in the top two of the June primary. In California, the two candidates who receive the most votes in the primary advance to the general election, regardless of their party affiliation.

As the California Republican Party has weathered steady declines, the tea party's influence in the state GOP has appeared to grow across the state, especially in the Central Valley and Californias northern reaches. But it still doesnt have anywhere near the numbers to get an ideologically pure conservative elected as governor, U.S. senator or any other statewide post.

Its a faction of a faction right now, said UC San Diego political scientist Gary Jacobson. Its hard to imagine that a party aligned with the tea party will be able to expand its reach.

But the conference was designed to do exactly that. Caucus chairman Randall Jordan, a general contractor from Paso Robles, urged members to run for local office, county Republican central committees or become a state party delegate.

We have to take back the Republican Party. Theyre imploding, said Randall Jordan, who also serves as chairman of the San Luis Obispo County GOP Central Committee. I know how terrible our Republican Party is here . Its a good ol boy club. Its run by big money.

The loosely affiliated, national tea party movement was born after President Obama was sworn in to office in 2009, fueled in part by outrage over the Affordable Care Act and the mounting federal deficit. In California, it has evolved into a network of chapters up and down the state.

To the north, tea party members have joined in the State of Jefferson movement made up of activists who feel ignored and mistreated by state government and want Northern California counties to break away into a separate state. To the south in the Inland Empire, tea party protesters in 2014 blocked buses filled with immigrants and their children bound for a U.S. immigration facility in Murrieta.

California tea party members still burn with mistrust of and animosity for the Republican Party establishment, which they feel must be purged for abandoning core conservative ideals. Among their top targets over the weekend: the GOP-led Congress that failed to repeal Obamacare and a cadre of state Republican legislators who joined with Democrats to extend Californias cap-and-trade environmental program.

The only thing salving that political animosity was the election of Trump, praised as a long-awaited savior after eight years with Obama.

I believe [that] with Donald Trump God gave us another opportunity to save this country, Ken Campbell, a retired dentist from Lincoln, said before delivering the opening prayer for the conference.

phil.willon@latimes.com

Twitter: @philwillon

Updates on California politics

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California's GOP candidates for governor must win over the tea party. Here's how they're trying - Los Angeles Times

California Tea Partiers met in Fresno on Friday and Saturday in hopes of activating their supporters on behalf of President Trumps agenda. The Real Resistance Conference brought together diehard anti-establishment conservatives and disillusioned Republicans to talk strategy.

The group slammed anyRepublicans that cooperate with Democrats. Singled out for criticism were the eight GOP legislators in Sacramento including Assembly Republican leader Chad Mayes who recently voted for cap-and-trade legislation supported by Gov. Jerry Brown and Democratic leaders.

Among the names hurled at them by Tea Party leaders: The Swamp 8. They saycompromise is not an option. The 140 or so people in the crowd nodded and shouted their agreement.

In his keynote address, California Rep. Tom McClintock put the stakesin stark terms. Were going to be looking back on this era as the days that either saved or lost the American Republic, he said, and perhaps even Western civilization itself.

Later McClintock told the crowd that 2016 was the most important election in his lifetime, but added a warning: 2018 will decide whether 2016 was indeed the turning point that made America great again or whether it was merely a speed bump on Americas road to ruin.

After McClintock got a standing ovation, Jan Soule of San Jose made her way over to the registration table to become a member the Tea Party California Caucus.

Im desperate! she said. I came here because Im hoping to connect with other conservatives who are hoping to change California. Theres got to be an alternative to the California Republican Party.

While some described themselves as the conscience of the Republican Party and said they hope to influence leaders in office, others declared the party dead, calling formore radical action.

We dont have a Republican Party anymore, former California Assemblyman and onetime gubernatorial candidate Tim Donnelly told the crowd. He offered two options. We can either take it back completely or we can abandon it and move on. Were not gonna help the GOP anymore. Were gonna help hard-core American patriots.

The chief complaints at the conference were government overreach, too much immigration and allegations ofvoter fraud. Although Trump claimedthere was voter fraud in the presidential election, there has been no credible documentation of that.

While Tea Party members blamedliberal policies for these problems, they focused their anger on California Republicans who they say dont stand up for conservative principles.

We have a lot of [swamp Republicans] in Sacramento right now, said Randall Jordan, who heads up the California Tea Party Caucus. He reserved special disdain for Republican lawmakers who voted to extend cap and trade.

Thats what this conference is about, Jordan said. Thats what were trying to do is get people activated in their local communities to try to get those people out of here who only care about power and money.

He said change has to start at the local level. Thats where you groom people that will be your future assemblymen, your future Congress people.

For all the vitriol trained on the Republican Party, President Trump managed to escape criticism. Conference goers almost unanimously expressed their support for the president.

I dont know who in this room was as emotional the night Donald Trump got elected, Jordan told the crowd, to applause. My wife and I cried. We both cried and I still get choked up.

Vanessa Rancano is the Central Valley reporter for The California Report. Before joining KQED she was an NPR Kroc Fellow and a California Endowment Fellow with Latino USA. She's a graduate of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

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California Tea Party: It's Time for an Alternative to the GOP - KQED

By Robert Kellogg

In recent days it has become clear that some in the local Tea Party leadership have specifically targeted my record and my campaign for City Council. There is nothing wrong with that, in fact that is what democracy is all about and I welcome the challenge to earn your vote, because even though some at the top of the leadership chain feel I am not worth a second look, I take nothing for granted and feel some within your ranks need an underdog champion who will fight for you if you ever find yourself down on your luck.

First I must respectfully disagree with the notion that this council is irresponsible with fiscal matters. On the contrary, we have passedtwo budgets in a row that does not raise property taxes while giving many of our police and firefighters a much needed raise. I think all of us can agree that if we have a fire or need the police we want someone to respond who is getting paid what they are worth and who has experience in the expertise in which they make a living.

It has also been stated (erroneously) that we have carried the bill for bus rides to Crowders Mountain State Park. That service was a request from the state park rangerand has been covered by state and national funding. This was not initiated by the council, however we did agree to help the park service for the next couple months as they use this as not only a tool to promote the park, but work out communication and logistical kinks before the park gets busier in the fall.

This leads me to the underdog fighting for all. As participants of the local Tea Party I can respect your concerns for fiscal conservatism. I also think you will agree that you need a fighter who has proven themselves in a very short 20 months.

If you want a fighter who is going to continue to work with local law enforcement and non profits to bring awareness to the opioid crisis as well as directly combat the national emergency as declared by our president then please let me continue to fight for you. After all statistics state that most of you have a close family member or friend who is battling addiction or it could even be you. You are not alone and together we can make it clear that addiction is not a moral failure, but an illness that requires treatment in order to conquer.

If you want a fighter who is going to continue to work to address crime, then please let me continue to fight for you. If it feels like some forms of crime have been on the rise this past year you are right. In talking with the N.C. Department of Justice most of the rise in crime can be directly related to a national trend that in large part is directly related to the opioid addiction crisis. Crime certainly needs to be addressed, that is why myself and other council members have voted to raise salaries to recruit more officers and retain the ones we have. We have also empowered our chief to do what is necessary to combat local crime. Crime will also be reduced through job creation and economic development. Knocking down the old Sears building is not only ridding our city of an eyesore, but reducing the unsavory activity that takes place in those empty buildings and I do not think anyone would argue that removing the Budget Inn from the westside would help to boost safety in that area.

Additionally, raising education levels (a county and state function) as well as reducing generational poverty (all of our responsibility) will go along way in stabilizing our crime rate, however until the underlying issues just mentioned are tackled with long term solutions we will continue to deal with intermittent spikes in crime. The greatest thing we can do to immediately affect crime is to deal with the opioid crisis. In spite of the notion by a few that meetings, coalition building and group efforts to tackle this problem are nothing but rhetoric...It actually has served as the building blocks to a community model that has been lauded by the State Attorney Generals office. We should be proud of taking the lead instead of waiting for someone to rescue us. That is leadership, that is fighting for the underdog.

If you want a fighter who is going to continue to address job creation, then please allow me to continue to fight for you. You cannot wave a wand and have jobs appear, but one can work on improving our image, empowering small business and presenting tools that will create an environment for private business to thrive. That is what I have done and what this council is doing. I personally advocated for a downtown liaison (manager) to work closely with merchants in building a stronger downtown and central city. This position will now be a reality, without using any additional funds (thanks to the creative and responsible work of our city manager and staff).

It is also correct to assume that it is the job of the city to create an environment for job creation instead of creating jobs. Bingo, that is why I support FUSE and will continue to fight for good jobs. FUSE is an initiative that creates an environment for small business and even larger business to come in and revitalize several blocks that has otherwise been undesirable and blighted. That is what it is all about. We have left job creation to chance for 30 years now and it has not gotten us anywhere. If we can take a couple blocks, build an entertainment venue that contains a sports complex and then turn that around as a tool to recruit business to the area, that is a plus. The jobs created are needed and we can no longer wait for the cavalry to rescue us, we have to rescue ourselves.

Finally, if you want a fighter who is going to continue to fight for the safety of children, then please allow me to continue to fight for you. I was the driving force behind and the council member that brought forth a change in our cityhuman resourcespolicy that calls for specific training on child abuse and detection if they work directly with minors. If you work in Parks and Rec for example or the Schiele Museum you will be trained to recognize abuse, because those who do not have a voice and are the most vulnerable in our society should have advocates fighting for them.

I want to thank the Gaston Tea Party for targeting me in their local political campaigns. It has made me more focused and forced me to articulate what I stand for and why I hope you will vote to re-elect me to the Gastonia City Council. Although the attacks of their leadership may appear to be personal to many, it is politics, politics as usual and I understand that.

I am not running to be a politician. The divisive rhetoric that has infected Washington and Raleigh cannot infect Gastonia. We have too many challenges ahead of us and need to keep our eye on the prize. To my Tea Party Patriots who value responsibility, fighting the opioid crisis, reducing crime, assisting small business, job creation, protect our children and bring a positive attitude that works for all; then vote for me. Thank you for reading and may we all work together to build a better future.

Jim Kellogg represents Ward 1 on Gastonia City Council.

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My Turn: Gaston Tea Party: I am fighting for you! - Gaston Gazette