tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-76603571946502228502024-03-19T02:46:49.800-06:00History and WomenMirella Patzer Historical Fiction Author Books and the Biographies, Secrets, Scandals, and Sassiness of Lion-hearted Ladies throughout HistoryMirella Patzerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14928081276314403541noreply@blogger.comBlogger399125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7660357194650222850.post-6860571486198968552023-10-06T10:44:00.005-06:002023-10-06T10:44:33.521-06:00Titanic and Crickets<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://youtube.com/embed/9K_74KddzGI?si=JZ5f_JH5JcHM_IRK" width="480"></iframe></div>Mirella Patzerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14928081276314403541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7660357194650222850.post-47207639686345714212023-10-05T13:18:00.002-06:002023-10-05T13:18:25.823-06:00Cleopatra's Last Dance: The Scandal that Shook Empires <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia3q42hkUksCyZ1ixCpDOCSp7Z5zzgNob-Lu02sx_3TL1AsEsKIrSnl3bGsCSjyUYaIFvrb3Q34w97k3Nc0aMhm8y2WMxswiiSmvpBqLJk9QVuyDMubTB-k-Kpo-EAs5NZa4aous9nV1Wr3SmJOO6EkqYp30KNXFI0mWMsrgcS3PsQB7ojB1hQXr5fuMs/s1024/cleopatra-epic-royal-background-big-royal-uncropped-crown-royal-jewelry-robotic-nature-full-s.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="832" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia3q42hkUksCyZ1ixCpDOCSp7Z5zzgNob-Lu02sx_3TL1AsEsKIrSnl3bGsCSjyUYaIFvrb3Q34w97k3Nc0aMhm8y2WMxswiiSmvpBqLJk9QVuyDMubTB-k-Kpo-EAs5NZa4aous9nV1Wr3SmJOO6EkqYp30KNXFI0mWMsrgcS3PsQB7ojB1hQXr5fuMs/w325-h400/cleopatra-epic-royal-background-big-royal-uncropped-crown-royal-jewelry-robotic-nature-full-s.png" width="325" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b>Cleopatra's Last
Dance: The Scandal That Shook Empires<o:p></o:p></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;">Long ago, in the
sizzling sands of ancient Egypt, there reigned a queen whose life was juicier
than a basket of ripe figs. Her name? Cleopatra, the original drama queen of
the Nile. While your typical monarch might spend their days counting gold coins
and managing their kingdom, Cleopatra had a different approach to governance.
She took the phrase "affairs of state" quite literally, making her
court more scandalous than a celebrity red carpet event. In a world where
discretion was the name of the game, Cleopatra played by her own rules, and her
audacious escapades with Roman heartthrobs Julius Caesar and Mark Antony would
give even the Kardashians a run for their money. This queen didn't just break
hearts; she rewrote the script on how to rule with style and sass.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;">Our tale unfurls
with Cleopatra, a queen who'd make even the bravest lion in the Sahara pause
for thought. She wasn't your garden-variety ruler; oh no, she was a tempest in
a tiara. Armed with a wit sharper than a crocodile's tooth and a flair for the
dramatic that could outshine a thousand sunsets over the pyramids, Cleopatra
was anything but ordinary. She wasn't content with merely ruling her kingdom;
she wanted to rule hearts, minds, and probably the constellations too. Cleopatra
was the kind of queen who'd strut into a room and make the Sphinx himself do a
double take. Her allure wasn't just skin deep; it was as deep as the Nile, and
just as mysterious. But it wasn't her diplomatic prowess or her penchant for
elaborate jewelry that earned her legendary status; it was her love life that
would put any Hollywood romance to shame. Cleopatra didn't just write history;
she penned her own steamy saga of love, power, and intrigue, and it's a story
that has left historians and hopeless romantics alike swooning for centuries.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;">Picture this:
Rome, circa 48 BC, a time when the city was bustling with toga-clad
politicians, and the Roman Forum was the epicenter of the world's shenanigans.
Enter Julius Caesar, the man with the power to make senators quake in their
sandals. He's not just any Roman; he's the crème de la crème, the big cheese,
the top dog—call him what you will, but one thing's for sure, he's the most powerful
man on the planet.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;">Now, switch gears
and set your compass due south to the sun-kissed land of Egypt. Here,
Cleopatra, the queen with more charisma than the Sphinx himself, hears whispers
of Caesar's impending arrival. But Cleopatra isn't one to twiddle her thumbs
and wait for destiny to knock on her palace door. Oh no, that's just not her
style.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;">In a move that
would make even the most daring Hollywood stunt double raise an eyebrow,
Cleopatra decides to play a game of historical hide-and-seek. She doesn't just
send a humble messenger with a fancy scroll; that would be far too mundane for
our intrepid queen. Cleopatra opts for a theatrical entrance that's nothing
short of cinematic brilliance.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;">Cue the dramatic
music, and imagine the scene: Cleopatra, the queen herself, wrapped in the
finest linens, nestled within the confines of an opulent carpet. It's not just
any carpet; it's a carpet fit for a queen—plush, adorned with the finest
Egyptian motifs, and, most importantly, Cleopatra-sized. It's the kind of
carpet that screams, "Look at me, I'm royalty, and I'm coming to steal the
show!"</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;">Now, fast forward
to Caesar's quarters. The unsuspecting Roman leader, exhausted from his long
journey, is probably contemplating his next conquest when, lo and behold, the
grandest of grand carpets is unfurled before him. As the carpet rolls open like
a blooming lotus, out pops Cleopatra, a vision in regal splendor. If you think
a red-carpet entrance is impressive, try a queen-in-a-carpet entrance; it's a
game-changer.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;">It's a moment that
transcends time, a spectacle that would leave even the most seasoned Hollywood
director in awe. Cleopatra doesn't just make an entrance; she crafts an
unforgettable moment in history, a scene that will be recounted for generations
to come. It's a move that would give James Bond's secret agent skills a run for
their money, and it's just the beginning of Cleopatra's scandalous, dramatic,
and utterly mesmerizing story.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;">Cleopatra's
cunning plan unfolds like a meticulously scripted scene in a Shakespearean
play, and as the carpet unravels, it reveals not a dusty rug but a vivacious
queen who knows how to make an entrance. Imagine the moment: the suspense in
the air as Caesar, the most powerful man in the world, unrolls that carpet.
There's anticipation, there's curiosity, and there's Cleopatra, poised like a
goddess.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;">As Cleopatra
emerges from her cozy carpet cocoon, it's not just sparks that fly; it's more
like a fireworks display over the Nile. Caesar, the man who has conquered
empires and stood atop the world's stage, finds himself utterly captivated by
the audacious Egyptian queen. She isn't just a pretty face; she's a force of
nature, a whirlwind of charm and charisma that sweeps him off his sandaled
feet.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;">The chemistry
between them crackles like a desert storm, and before you can say "Et tu,
Brute?" Caesar and Cleopatra are not just allies; they're an item, the
power couple of their era. It's a love story for the ages, a romance that
transcends borders, and a scandal that sets tongues wagging from Rome to
Alexandria.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;">The scandal of the
century ensues, and the gossip mills of ancient Rome work overtime. The ruler
of Rome, the man who holds the world in the palm of his hand, has fallen head
over heels for an Egyptian queen. It's the kind of juicy scandal that makes
even the most tantalizing reality TV dramas look like a snooze-fest.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;">As word spreads
like wildfire through the Roman Empire, the air is thick with intrigue,
jealousy, and no small amount of shock. Cleopatra, with her intelligence,
beauty, and undeniable charisma, has managed the unthinkable. She's ensnared
the heart of a man who seemed untouchable, and in doing so, she's secured her
place in the annals of history as the woman who tamed the mighty Caesar. But
their love story is just beginning, and the drama is far from over in the grand
epic that is Cleopatra's life.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;">But hold onto your
laurel wreaths, dear readers, because Cleopatra and Caesar were not content to
settle for the typical whirlwind romance. Oh no, they decided to up the ante in
the grand game of love, and what's a grand love affair without a dash of
scandal, right? So, they did what any passionate couple in history would do;
they decided to throw in a love child for good measure, and not just any child,
but a bona fide royal love child. Talk about adding some spice to their
romantic repertoire!<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;">Enter Caesarion,
the pint-sized product of their whirlwind love affair and the living embodiment
of their scandalous entanglement. This was no ordinary child; this was the
offspring of Cleopatra, the mesmerizing Egyptian queen, and Julius Caesar, the
ruler of Rome himself. It's safe to say that family gatherings in the Caesarion
household were probably more awkward than a toga-clad Thanksgiving dinner.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;">Imagine young
Caesarion, growing up with the weight of history on his tiny shoulders. He was
a living symbol of the union between two of the most powerful figures of their
time, a fact that likely earned him some mixed reviews on the playground.
"My mom's Cleopatra, and my dad's Caesar" is a pretty impressive
show-and-tell statement, but it also has its downsides, like having to explain
the complexities of ancient geopolitics to your classmates.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;">It's not every day
that you stumble upon a royal love child in the history books, after all.
Caesarion's existence was a testament to the audacity of Cleopatra and Caesar's
love story, a story that transcended borders, empires, and, in this case, even
the traditional bounds of family life. But if there's one thing we can be sure
of, it's that Cleopatra and Caesar knew how to keep their love life
interesting, and Caesarion was just one of the many colorful chapters in their
captivating tale.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;">Fast forward a few
years, and Julius Caesar, the Roman heartthrob, meets his untimely demise,
leaving a void in Cleopatra's love life that could rival the Grand Canyon in
depth. But let's not forget, this is Cleopatra we're talking about, and she's
not the type to wallow in heartbreak. No, she's the type to dust off her royal
sandals and dive right back into the tumultuous sea of love and drama.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;">Enter Mark Antony,
another Roman bigwig with a taste for adventure that could make even Indiana
Jones envious. Cleopatra spots him from across the room, or maybe across the
palace, and decides that he's the next leading man in her ongoing epic. She
sets her sights on Antony, and thus begins a passionate affair that makes her
previous escapades with Caesar look like mere warm-up acts.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;">Their love story
isn't just your run-of-the-mill romance; it's a blazing firework show on the
Fourth of July, a rollercoaster with no brakes, and a drama-filled opera with
Cleopatra and Mark Antony belting out their emotions on a grand stage. If Caesar
and Cleopatra's love affair was a spark, Antony and Cleopatra's romance was an
inferno.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;">The drama
surrounding this couple would make the most seasoned soap opera writers shake
their heads in disbelief. They threw lavish parties that put Gatsby's soirées
to shame, sailed down the Nile on golden barges, and declared themselves rulers
of Egypt and the East. To put it mildly, they weren't ones for subtlety.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;">Cleopatra and Mark
Antony's passion was as hot as the desert sun, and their love story was so
captivating that it left Rome in a state of shock and awe. Octavian, another
player in this epic love triangle and the future Emperor Augustus, was left
scratching his head and wondering how he could possibly compete with the
explosive romance between Cleopatra and Mark Antony.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;">But as we'll soon
discover, the drama and scandal in this story were far from over. The sands of
time continued to shift, and Cleopatra's love life took yet another turn, one
that would leave the world in shock and awe. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;">With Cleopatra
entering the scene, the Roman triumvirate, that supposedly harmonious trio of
Mark Antony, Octavian (the future Emperor Augustus), and Lepidus, was suddenly
more chaotic than a chariot race during rush hour in the Eternal City. You see,
Cleopatra wasn't content with being a mere spectator in the political arena;
she was determined to be the star of the show.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;">Her influence over
Mark Antony was like a gust of hot desert wind in the Roman Senate, ruffling
more than a few finely tailored togas and causing no small amount of
consternation among the Roman elite. They had never seen anything quite like
it; it was as if a Pharaoh had stepped into their power play, and the drama was
reaching epic proportions.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;">Octavian, a
cunning strategist, realized that Cleopatra's presence in Mark Antony's life
was more than just a lover's quarrel; it was a political liability that could
spell trouble for the future of Rome. Cleopatra, with her sharp wit and even
sharper ambitions, was a wildcard in the grand game of Roman politics, and
Octavian knew it.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;">The Roman Senate,
ever a hotbed of whispers and conspiracies, was abuzz with rumors and
speculations about Cleopatra's influence over Mark Antony. Some said she had
him wrapped around her little finger; others whispered that she was bewitching
him with ancient Egyptian sorcery. The truth was likely far less mystical but
no less scandalous.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;">As the power
struggles escalated, the triumvirate's once ironclad unity began to crumble. It
became increasingly evident that Cleopatra was more than just Mark Antony's
paramour; she was a political player in her own right. Her ambitions for her
own kingdom and her desire to see her children inherit a Roman legacy added layers
of intrigue to an already convoluted power dynamic.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;">The drama was
reaching its crescendo, and Rome was holding its breath, wondering how this
tangled web of love, power, and politics would ultimately unravel. Cleopatra,
the Queen of Egypt, was proving to be a formidable opponent in the world's
grandest chess game. But as history has shown, the most thrilling twists and
turns were yet to come in the saga of Cleopatra and her Roman paramours.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;">Cleopatra and Mark
Antony were not the type to do things by halves. Oh no, they were the couple
that made every other power couple in history seem like mere amateurs in the
game of extravagance and drama. They weren't just in love; they were head over
heels, moonstruck, and positively starry-eyed in love.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;">Picture this:
their parties made the opulence of a Vegas casino look like a quaint
neighborhood bingo night. The invitation alone was probably more ornate than
the average Roman villa, with Cleopatra's signature scent, a blend of rare
Egyptian perfumes, delivered to each guest as a preview of the sensory overload
to come. These soirees were legendary, featuring endless feasting,
entertainment that could rival a Broadway production, and a guest list that
read like a who's who of ancient celebrity society. To put it bluntly, their
parties were the stuff of legends, the kind that inspired poets and left
regular folks clamoring for a glimpse of the action.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;">But the parties
were just the tip of the pyramid. Cleopatra and Mark Antony took their love to
the next level by sailing down the Nile on golden barges. That's right, golden
barges. It was as if they decided that a regular boat just wouldn't do for a
couple of their stature. These weren't mere vessels; they were floating
palaces, decked out with all the luxury you could imagine, and then some. If
Cleopatra wanted to bathe in a tub filled with milk and honey while floating
down the Nile, you can be sure she did it. It was all part of their grand,
romantic, and utterly scandalous love affair.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;">And if that
weren't enough, Cleopatra and Mark Antony decided to take things a step
further. They declared themselves rulers of not just Egypt but the entire East.
It's the kind of bold move that would make even the most ambitious monarchs of
the time raise an eyebrow. With the world as their stage and drama as their
currency, they rewrote the rules of power and romance.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;">This love affair
was like no other, and it had all the elements of a blockbuster romance novel.
Love, power, extravagance, and yes, drama, enough drama to keep a tabloid
editor in business for a lifetime. It was the kind of love story that had the
world watching with bated breath, wondering what Cleopatra and Mark Antony
would do next. Little did they know that the most dramatic chapters were yet to
come in this epic tale of love and ambition in the ancient world.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;">As the ancient
saying goes, "All good things must come to an end," and so it was
with the scandalous love affair between Cleopatra and Mark Antony. But don't
think for a moment that their story concluded with a sigh and a gentle fade to
black. No, this was no ordinary love story; this was a tale of grand
proportions, and it deserved a grand finale.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;">Enter Octavian,
the crafty Roman strategist who had been watching the dramatic proceedings with
the patience of a spider in its web. He could smell an opportunity from the
shores of Rome to the sands of Egypt, and he wasn't about to let it slip
through his well-manicured fingers. Octavian, always the opportunist, decided
it was time to take matters into his own hands.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;">With a calculated
cunning that would make even the most devious soap opera villain jealous,
Octavian waged war against the star-crossed lovers and their combined forces.
It was a move that set the stage for a showdown of epic proportions, the kind
of showdown that would make the Colosseum battles look like a friendly game of
chariot races.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;">The world held its
breath as the armies of Octavian and Mark Antony clashed on the battlefield,
their swords and shields echoing the thunderous drama of their love story.
Cleopatra, ever the queen of intrigue, watched from the wings, her heart torn
between two powerful men and her kingdom hanging in the balance.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;">The drama was
unfolding on a global stage, with the fate of empires and the legacy of lovers
hanging in the balance. It was a war of words, of wits, and of sheer willpower.
Octavian, fueled by ambition, sought to claim his rightful place as the ruler
of Rome, while Mark Antony, driven by love and loyalty, fought to protect the
woman who had captured his heart.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;">The sands of Egypt
witnessed this epic showdown, and the Nile itself seemed to hold its breath. As
the battle raged on, the world watched, wondering which side fate would favor.
Would Cleopatra and Mark Antony triumph over Octavian, or was their scandalous
love affair destined to end in tragedy?</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;">This was a clash
of titans, a crescendo of drama that would leave an indelible mark on the
annals of history. But the most shocking twists and turns were yet to come, and
the final act in the tale of Cleopatra, Mark Antony, and Octavian would leave
the world in stunned silence.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;">As the battle
raged on, Cleopatra and Mark Antony found themselves teetering perilously on
the losing side. It was a grim moment in their rollercoaster of a love affair
that had seen more ups and downs than a chariot ride through the Roman Forum.
But, as we all know, even the most scandalous love affairs must, at some point,
face the cold, unrelenting winds of fate.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;">Cleopatra,
however, was no damsel in distress; she was the queen of drama, and she wasn't
about to let her epic love story end with a mere whimper. Oh no, she had one
final act to perform, a plot twist so audacious it would leave the world in
shock and awe.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;">With the weight of
impending defeat bearing down upon her, Cleopatra hatched a plan that would
make even the most cunning of Roman senators shake their heads in disbelief. It
was a plan worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster, a grand scheme that would go down
in history as one of the most dramatic twists in the tale of love, power, and
scandal.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;">The details of
Cleopatra's plan were shrouded in secrecy, known only to a select few trusted
confidants. But one thing was certain: it was a move that would leave the world
talking for centuries to come. Cleopatra, ever the queen of intrigue, was about
to unleash a scheme so audacious that it would rewrite the narrative of her
life and change the course of history itself.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;">The stage is set,
the players are in position, and the world is poised for the climactic
showdown.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;">As the din of
battle surrounded them, Cleopatra and Mark Antony found themselves in dire
straits, the fortunes of war tipping away from their favor. It was a grim
reality, one that would have sent most mortals into despair. Faced with
impending doom, Cleopatra unlashed her pièce de résistance, a scheme so
audacious that it would make even the mighty gods of Olympus take notice. She
retreated to the inner chambers of her palace, where she met with her most
trusted advisors, her brain working at warp speed as she laid out her daring
plan.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;">The details of
Cleopatra's grand scheme were as complex as the hieroglyphics adorning the
walls of her palace. She would feign her own death, a ruse that would leave the
world in shock and her enemies off guard. The queen, ever the consummate
actress, would stage her own demise, and in doing so, throw Octavian and his
legions off the scent of her true intentions.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;">The scene was set,
and Cleopatra's plan was executed with precision. Rumors of her death spread
like wildfire, and the world believed that the Queen of Egypt had taken her own
life, unable to bear the thought of captivity. It was a masterstroke of
deception, and it left her enemies in disarray.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;">In a twist of
fate, Antony received false information that Cleopatra had died by suicide,
which left him devastated. Believing Cleopatra was dead and seeing no way to
escape captivity and humiliation at the hands of Octavian, Antony took his own
life. He fell on his sword in a manner that echoed the tragic death of many
ancient heroes.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;">As Octavian's
forces closed in, believing they had won the ultimate victory, they were met
with a stunning revelation. Cleopatra, the queen they thought had perished, was
very much alive and had outwitted them all. It was a twist that would have left
even the most skilled playwrights of the time in awe.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;">But every grand
plan has its moments of uncertainty, and Cleopatra's was no exception. As she
sought refuge in her monument to love, the Mausoleum of Mark Antony, the weight
of her audacious gambit pressed upon her. It was a race against time, a
desperate bid for freedom and survival. It was here that the final act of this
grand drama would reach its crescendo.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;">Inside the
shadowed chambers of the mausoleum, Cleopatra faced a dilemma that would test
the very limits of her resolve. With Octavian's forces closing in like
vultures, escape seemed improbable. The walls of the mausoleum felt like the
bars of a gilded cage, and hope dwindled like a flickering candle in the dark.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;">But Cleopatra,
ever the queen of resourcefulness, had one last card to play. She sent word to
Octavian, expressing her willingness to surrender and end the conflict that had
ravaged Egypt. It was a calculated gamble, a plea for mercy that masked her
true intentions.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;">Octavian,
believing he had won, saw no reason to refuse Cleopatra's offer. He agreed to
meet with her, unaware of the trap that had been set. Cleopatra, dressed in
regal attire befitting her status as Queen of Egypt, met with Octavian in a
meeting that would determine the fate of empires.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;">In this pivotal
moment, Cleopatra used her legendary powers of persuasion to sway Octavian. She
spun a tale of a defeated queen, a woman who had lost her love and her kingdom.
She played the role of a despondent monarch, but beneath her sorrowful façade
lay the heart of a lioness.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;">Octavian,
believing Cleopatra to be no threat, allowed her to return to her mausoleum. It
was a grave mistake.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;">Cleopatra, with
the cunning of a serpent, had concealed her final plan. She knew that captivity
would bring not only her own ruin but also that of her beloved Egypt. In the
shadowy depths of her mausoleum, she devised a plan to end her own life and
cheat Octavian of his prized captive.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;">As the sun set on
the final day of Cleopatra's life, she and her loyal servants prepared for the
inevitable. A poisonous asp, concealed within the leaves of a sacred fig, would
be her chosen method. Cleopatra, the enigmatic queen who had captured the
hearts of Rome's most powerful men, would decide her own destiny.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;">As the poison took
hold, Cleopatra reclined on a gilded couch, her royal robes flowing like liquid
gold. She welcomed the embrace of death with a regal dignity that left no room
for pity. Beside her, the lifeless body of Mark Antony bore witness to a love
that defied empires.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;">It was a tragic
end to a life of scandal, power, and drama. Cleopatra, the queen who had turned
Rome into a soap opera, had taken her final bow. Her death marked the end of an
era, the closing act of a story that would be told for centuries to come.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;">Octavian, upon
discovering Cleopatra's lifeless form, recognized the brilliance of her final
act. In death, as in life, Cleopatra had defied expectations, leaving an
indelible mark on history. He granted her a royal burial, a fitting tribute to
the queen who had outwitted even the mightiest of Rome's rulers.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;">And so, we
conclude the epic tale of Cleopatra, the queen whose life was more scandalous
than a reality TV show. Her story, a captivating blend of love, power, and
scandal, continues to captivate our imaginations. In her audacious life and
dramatic death, Cleopatra remains an icon of enigmatic beauty and unwavering
resolve, a queen whose legend will forever grace the annals of history.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p></div><p><br /> </p>Mirella Patzerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14928081276314403541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7660357194650222850.post-1773767412298872202023-09-25T17:28:00.006-06:002023-10-05T12:03:06.203-06:00Exquisite Insults - Nincompoops and Calamities<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFXu5DJ0TksCp3rWVeVoy7zTjE17hqPsqkqsh3jTR3colMDJG6L5uGBC0AktV3QoHhpkMb8pSr_I807fRQBI-5ESAVXne_tcFryqiNAQVy55QFdIVyyxVSbC5ugyqzgYdt7E5Fy3SC3KcQx3C_w1FScqN6HQCZ4AsA-XmAsdVgl1RkzfvwgHYhkroBaPg/s1024/a-beautiful-victorian-woman-with-a-smirk-her-hair-elaborately-styled-wearing-beautiful-plum-victor.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="832" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFXu5DJ0TksCp3rWVeVoy7zTjE17hqPsqkqsh3jTR3colMDJG6L5uGBC0AktV3QoHhpkMb8pSr_I807fRQBI-5ESAVXne_tcFryqiNAQVy55QFdIVyyxVSbC5ugyqzgYdt7E5Fy3SC3KcQx3C_w1FScqN6HQCZ4AsA-XmAsdVgl1RkzfvwgHYhkroBaPg/s320/a-beautiful-victorian-woman-with-a-smirk-her-hair-elaborately-styled-wearing-beautiful-plum-victor.png" width="260" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='397' height='330' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dxUUa1weYXXpAsXAo8jQU0O2iPzfp4I0QE5XTkloqH_16FhcSAnSnTo6HuhP090nD1FAobSwhj9v8Ov1sfb1g' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /> <p></p>Mirella Patzerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14928081276314403541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7660357194650222850.post-15658707581108878632023-09-25T17:27:00.000-06:002023-09-25T17:27:00.934-06:00Exquisite Insults - Fake Diamonds and Cabbages<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://youtube.com/embed/noDkdvtXAcs?si=bSlH7oWGc_wp5Zt_" width="480"></iframe></div>Mirella Patzerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14928081276314403541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7660357194650222850.post-79177120142049076612023-09-18T16:27:00.007-06:002023-09-18T16:27:53.433-06:00Juliette: The Original Teenage Rebel with a Cause<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="360" src="https://youtube.com/embed/ABMLHlBFi1w?si=RTtirkRqKO05HU6P" width="480"></iframe></div>Mirella Patzerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14928081276314403541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7660357194650222850.post-77415279741767089652023-09-18T16:27:00.003-06:002023-09-18T16:27:20.820-06:00Kristina of Sweden - The Nordic Queen who Dared<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="360" src="https://youtube.com/embed/lB7E9KH0gSo?si=0WUTjI4rbRmGsDjr" width="480"></iframe></div>Mirella Patzerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14928081276314403541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7660357194650222850.post-38626697023319099282023-09-18T16:26:00.003-06:002023-12-04T13:56:17.694-07:00The Soapmaker - Leonarda Cianciulli: Italy's Most Infamous Murderess Rev...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk2P5LvAq6Fu8MEOt8PuieUufy4aG7R_dxQ0xrr8sokArFupdu9dVepFL0A4surF3VmBGyP5yRBDC_yFJEoyPa52EfOJAJ-40kaP34eQd1EN4dbmS9DbTDOVu-CyMYuFx7CsbnHic1pddwW-kOmHbedQczQA9N312aoqseF8I1RXdOhSNP_wZIKJF2XfM/s310/Leonarda_Cianciulli_mugshot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="204" data-original-width="310" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk2P5LvAq6Fu8MEOt8PuieUufy4aG7R_dxQ0xrr8sokArFupdu9dVepFL0A4surF3VmBGyP5yRBDC_yFJEoyPa52EfOJAJ-40kaP34eQd1EN4dbmS9DbTDOVu-CyMYuFx7CsbnHic1pddwW-kOmHbedQczQA9N312aoqseF8I1RXdOhSNP_wZIKJF2XfM/w400-h263/Leonarda_Cianciulli_mugshot.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="360" src="https://youtube.com/embed/Xqp8_X2tMsg?si=i74Ckwxmo9Si8AJW" style="background-image: url(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Xqp8_X2tMsg/hqdefault.jpg);" width="480"></iframe></div>Mirella Patzerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14928081276314403541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7660357194650222850.post-16638169914625202812023-09-18T16:00:00.010-06:002023-12-04T13:57:28.131-07:00Spreading More Than Flavor: The Typhoid Mary Saga<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1UfkuqxX3oogyo3ykv2L0C5K2cPiK48o41w8299ykAE0pbLPpoW6nocX_3tJRBTWx6DwtAnBJb8AElrjl1llrOiUgRlBg2icVZhj48L8mP4Eil-BjPAwdMuMIbVzacIq39lY1B_MGi_5hAh3I30dhnv7aM0aXIPhb4sJaifEJfN3NKEWmgOhlDxTl_0o/s2843/Mallon-Mary_01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2248" data-original-width="2843" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1UfkuqxX3oogyo3ykv2L0C5K2cPiK48o41w8299ykAE0pbLPpoW6nocX_3tJRBTWx6DwtAnBJb8AElrjl1llrOiUgRlBg2icVZhj48L8mP4Eil-BjPAwdMuMIbVzacIq39lY1B_MGi_5hAh3I30dhnv7aM0aXIPhb4sJaifEJfN3NKEWmgOhlDxTl_0o/w400-h316/Mallon-Mary_01.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="360" src="https://youtube.com/embed/-uL_1g1amgw?si=NpzqNMmWunb2MLjQ" width="480"></iframe></div>Mirella Patzerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14928081276314403541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7660357194650222850.post-20829151551968241102023-06-05T16:05:00.003-06:002023-06-05T16:05:35.989-06:00"Barbara Strozzi: The Illegitimate Diva of Venice<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBwmAgmA4vyFE8Pwuh3EdaMLtj6yXmP8hbv1bJbgAgYGmnF6nMj2p995VKqjoR5ug4fHqAtklAMBU9fcNwnZrzCaZLC9a_q_do4Tr9ZRjhwl3NErltQH5oZAwyA6r27cprcanCNvx9morWjmZjECCNeudcU4y8K0tmmeh6M1n31eEgFtTU9F3BJD16/s1198/928px-Bernardo_Strozzi_001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1198" data-original-width="928" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBwmAgmA4vyFE8Pwuh3EdaMLtj6yXmP8hbv1bJbgAgYGmnF6nMj2p995VKqjoR5ug4fHqAtklAMBU9fcNwnZrzCaZLC9a_q_do4Tr9ZRjhwl3NErltQH5oZAwyA6r27cprcanCNvx9morWjmZjECCNeudcU4y8K0tmmeh6M1n31eEgFtTU9F3BJD16/s320/928px-Bernardo_Strozzi_001.jpg" width="248" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">During the 17<sup>th</sup>
century, in the magical city of Venice, a little girl named Barbara Strozzi
came into the world. She had quite the mysterious birth, with her mother known
only as “La Greghetta.” Talk about a secret identity! Barbara was baptized in
the church of Santa Sofia, and while her birth certificate didn’t spill the
beans on her father’s identity, rumor has it that he might have been Giulio
Strozzi, a poet and librettist who had quite the influence in
seventeenth-century Venice.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">Now, Giulio was
a big shot in the literary world. He was a member of the prestigious Accademia
degli Incogniti, which was like the Avengers of intellectuals back then. They
were a force to be reckoned with in the Republic of Venice and beyond. Giulio
dabbled in all kinds of writing, from poetry to operas, prose to plays, and
even lyrics for songs. He was basically the Renaissance version of a
multi-hyphenate superstar.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">As for Barbara’s
mother, not much is known about her. Historians suspect her name was Isabella,
and she might have been a servant of Giulio. Barbara and Isabella lived under
the same roof and were even mentioned in Giulio’s will. So, it seems like they
were one big happy (and slightly unconventional) family.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">Now, here’s
where things get interesting. Despite being an illegitimate child, Barbara had
a unique relationship with her “adoptive father” Giulio. He saw her potential
and helped her carve out a career as a musician later in life. Talk about a
supportive dad! Barbara grew up in a household that was a hotspot for literary
and musical geniuses of the time. Imagine having a front-row seat to all the
creative magic happening around you. It must have been like living in a
Renaissance version of MTV Cribs.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">As Barbara
entered her teenage years, Venice was hit by plague after plague, and it seemed
like everyone was dropping like flies. But Barbara and her mother managed to
survive. Clearly, they had some serious survival skills. By the age of twelve,
Barbara had already started showing off her musical talents. She had a voice
that could move mountains, and she could even accompany herself on instruments
like the lute or theorbo. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">Barbara’s
musical gifts became more apparent as she grew older, and Giulio decided to
take things up a notch. He arranged lessons in composition for her with none
other than Francesco Cavalli, one of the hottest composers in town. By the time
she hit fifteen, Barbara was hailed as “la virtuosissima cantatrice di Giulio
Strozzi” (Giulio Strozzi’s extremely virtuosic singer). I bet her business card
was the size of a billboard to fit that title.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">Giulio wasn’t
one to keep Barbara’s talent under wraps. He started promoting her musical
prowess like a proud stage mom, ensuring that works were dedicated to her left
and right. He even founded the Accademia degli Unisoni, a fancy club for
musicians that operated from the Strozzi household. Talk about a private
concert venue! Barbara got to showcase her singing skills and perform her own
works in semi-public settings. It was like being a pop star before pop stars
were even a thing.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">When Barbara
turned 18, she officially adopted her father’s last name, Strozzi, and carried
it with her until her last breath. By her late teens, she had gained quite the
reputation for her singing. Two volumes of songs full of praises for her voice
were published, and she was the talk of the town. Well, at least the musical
circles in Venice.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">Now, Barbara
had big dreams, and she sought out patronage to help make them come true. But
let’s just say she had a few misses along the way. Her opus 2, dedicated to
Ferdinand III of Austria and Eleanora of Mantua on their marriage, went
unnoticed. Ouch. But hey, she didn’t give up! She dedicated works to other
notable folks like Anne de’ Medici, Nicolò Sagredo (who would later become the
Doge of Venice), and Sophia, Duchess of Brunswick and Lüneburg. She even
composed songs for the Duke of Mantua, proving that persistence pays off.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">Barbara Strozzi
was a force to be reckoned with in the music scene. She was the most prolific
composer of secular vocal music in Venice during the seventeenth century. Her
compositions were like catnip for the ears, and she had a knack for poetic
lyrics. She was a master at setting texts by the poet Marino, using them as a
way to express herself and challenge gender norms of the time. She knew how to
hit those high notes both musically and metaphorically.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">And let’s not
forget her opus 5, a rare collection of sacred songs. She dedicated it to the
Archduchess of Innsbruck, Anna de Medici. Barbara’s motet “Mater Anna” was like
a musical homage to both the Catholic saint and the archduchess herself. It was
a power move, combining spirituality and flattery in one composition. Barbara
knew how to work her musical magic.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">So, there you
have it, the extraordinary and witty tale of Barbara Strozzi, the musical
prodigy of Venice. She may have faced challenges and setbacks, but she never
stopped pursuing her passion. Her legacy lives on as a testament to the power
of talent, determination, and a touch of Renaissance charm. Bravo, Barbara!<o:p></o:p></p>Mirella Patzerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14928081276314403541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7660357194650222850.post-61466413689404785792023-05-30T12:55:00.003-06:002023-05-30T12:55:47.663-06:00Lucrezia Borgia: The Renaissance Superwoman<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR4N-QVH0rRuWpiucmvRPRySWojzDugwOyC9P8D7MwdvLQFrLP530cpIbXbhN8WRa9jE7GjsOJS_zMenCtk0Ba4KYyfosHFIK8vsq22yZbo84xBssw3714ljLgc6Mq7eGpAO6c21y7BDnn9vJTbIumdNyFCI2T2pg1-hzXLeOt4-jUY7d6BoDD7HsN/s3168/1520_Veneto_Idealbildnis_einer_Kurtisane_als_Flora_anagoria.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2928" data-original-width="3168" height="296" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR4N-QVH0rRuWpiucmvRPRySWojzDugwOyC9P8D7MwdvLQFrLP530cpIbXbhN8WRa9jE7GjsOJS_zMenCtk0Ba4KYyfosHFIK8vsq22yZbo84xBssw3714ljLgc6Mq7eGpAO6c21y7BDnn9vJTbIumdNyFCI2T2pg1-hzXLeOt4-jUY7d6BoDD7HsN/s320/1520_Veneto_Idealbildnis_einer_Kurtisane_als_Flora_anagoria.jpg" width="320" /></a></div></span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Let us embark on a chronicle of
the extraordinary and scandalous life of the one and only Lucrezia Borgia. Grab
your fans and brace yourselves for a tale of passion, politics, and poisonous
plots. But fear not, for we shall traverse this labyrinth of scandal with a
humorous and witty touch, for laughter is the best antidote to scandalous
affairs!<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Lucrezia Borgia, the woman who
could make even the most virtuous of saints blush, burst onto the scene in
1480. As the daughter of Pope Alexander VI, she had a front-row seat to the
wildest show in town—the Vatican. Oh, the Pope may have been the head of the
Church, but it was Lucrezia who was the real star, shining brighter than the
papal tiara itself.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Now, Lucrezia was not just a
pretty face. She possessed the cunning of a fox and the political savvy of a
Machiavellian mastermind. She maneuvered through the treacherous waters of
Renaissance politics with the finesse of a tightrope walker, juggling alliances
and crushing her enemies like overripe grapes.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">But it was in matters of the
heart that Lucrezia truly left her mark. Her love life was a veritable soap
opera, my friends, with more twists and turns than a labyrinth. First, there
was her ill-fated marriage to Giovanni Sforza, a union so joyless and fraught
with scandal that it had more drama than a Shakespearean tragedy. Rumor has it
that she managed to get the marriage annulled by her father, claiming that her
husband couldn't perform his husbandly duties. Oh, the lengths one will go to
escape a dull marriage!<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">But Lucrezia was not one to
wallow in disappointment. No, she quickly found herself a new husband, Alfonso
of Aragon, the Duke of Bisceglie. Ah, amore! Their relationship was a
rollercoaster ride of passion and betrayal. Jealousy ran amok, like a bull in a
china shop, as rumors of Lucrezia's infidelities and her husband's own
indiscretions swirled around the court. It was enough to make one's head spin
faster than a cardinal's hat in a gust of wind!<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">And let us not forget the
whispers of poison that tainted Lucrezia's reputation. Oh, the drama! It is
said that she had a fondness for concocting deadly potions and slipping them to
her enemies. Whether these rumors were true or mere exaggerations, they
certainly added a dash of excitement to the already scandalous cocktail that
was her life. A sip of poison here, a sprinkle of suspicion there—it's enough
to make one wonder if she was plotting a grand finale or just trying to keep
things interesting.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Alas, Lucrezia's tale came to a tragic
end. In 1519, she departed this world, leaving behind a legacy that would be
whispered about for centuries to come. Love her or loathe her, you cannot deny
that she was a woman who knew how to make waves, leaving scandal in her wake
like a ship plowing through stormy seas.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Lucrezia Borgia taught us that
being extraordinary doesn't mean conforming to society's expectations. It means
embracing your unique talents and using them to make a difference. So, go out
there and conquer the world like Lucrezia—with grace, style, and a touch of
scandal. After all, life is too short to be ordinary.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">So, let us raise a glass to
Lucrezia Borgia, the scandalous siren of the Renaissance. May her life be a
lesson that sometimes a little scandal, a touch of wit, and a hearty dose of
laughter can make even the most tumultuous of existences a delightful spectacle
to behold!</p>Mirella Patzerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14928081276314403541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7660357194650222850.post-91587597323638114942023-01-22T09:51:00.001-07:002023-08-02T12:27:09.624-06:00History and Women - One of the 25 Best Women's History Blogs<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCl5Bb8L-u5h8Tl9JWPphezabUIwWX_E9nqNFqoJYzoOVwzCSFQYq3rbHLKHBX4_qL1zMnEDckx77s2fQgLiNys7QRm1NmCCT1iXSo1ufE5mKwhz6U-qc8P2gxtxpfLQe2FFQ68XWIzOOyYZSaaCNxRsKxHS_fgL8Pdm2SwngSsz4FATDUuw8x4TsU5MY/s441/awards.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="345" data-original-width="441" height="313" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCl5Bb8L-u5h8Tl9JWPphezabUIwWX_E9nqNFqoJYzoOVwzCSFQYq3rbHLKHBX4_qL1zMnEDckx77s2fQgLiNys7QRm1NmCCT1iXSo1ufE5mKwhz6U-qc8P2gxtxpfLQe2FFQ68XWIzOOyYZSaaCNxRsKxHS_fgL8Pdm2SwngSsz4FATDUuw8x4TsU5MY/w400-h313/awards.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p>I'm thrilled to announce this blog has been listed at <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/">FeedSpot</a>, the Internet's Largest Human Curated Database of Bloggers and Podcasts as one of the <a href="https://blog.feedspot.com/women_history_blogs/?feedid=1383966">25 Best Women's History Blogs</a>!</p><p>I would like to express my sincere thanks to all my readers and those at FeedSpot for finding my blog and honoring it in this way. </p><p>I encourage all my readers to visit FeedSpot to search out and peruse all the lists. Whatever you are searching for, this index will help you find the best of the best on the Internet. </p>Mirella Patzerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14928081276314403541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7660357194650222850.post-44174679782780011182022-07-03T12:10:00.002-06:002022-07-03T12:10:30.518-06:00Alice Arden <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVedGKza-5c4sRTD5UXNoDIfCyuPrdF_sQqR6yC5SvRPW392_Qaany8ucbg0t8BRImmBAXVIJv_tPaQ-QR50OKpCSznZcah-sL3O_15L1k_zbOPGigC9DbNQXxhNFiS42RVaNMoYEOIi1oxHEyK5ivEdGyT1DvDbtHsO8qZD8TbrbpcnXwemAzyijX/s800/unnamed-2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="406" data-original-width="800" height="203" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVedGKza-5c4sRTD5UXNoDIfCyuPrdF_sQqR6yC5SvRPW392_Qaany8ucbg0t8BRImmBAXVIJv_tPaQ-QR50OKpCSznZcah-sL3O_15L1k_zbOPGigC9DbNQXxhNFiS42RVaNMoYEOIi1oxHEyK5ivEdGyT1DvDbtHsO8qZD8TbrbpcnXwemAzyijX/w400-h203/unnamed-2.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">On a cold, snowy day in February 1550, the perforated
body of Thomas Arden, an insignificant, aristocratic scoundrel, was discovered
in Faversham, a district of London, England. He had been stabbed at least seven
times. Rumors soon emerged about an obvious culprit…Alice Arden, Thomas’ wife.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Alice had been carrying on an affair with her
husband’s tailor, Richard Mosbie. The two flaunted their romance openly. Alice
preferred Richard over Thomas, who she detested. The only way for her to be
happy was to be rid of her husband. </span><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">First, she served him poisoned milk for
breakfast. After a spoonful or two, Thomas hated the taste and refused it. </span><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This would not be as easy as she thought. She
needed help. Who better than her husband’s enemy, John Green, who had lost a
precious piece of land in a dispute against Thomas? The two had even exchanged
blows over it. Bent on revenge, Green was a willing accomplice. For a mere ten pounds,
they hired Black Will, a soldier turned highwayman and notorious murderer to
help them kill Thomas. </span><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As he walked through the church, they tried to
kill him. They laid in wait for him at various locations. They tried to access
his temporary lodgings in London. One day, they tried to ambush him, but they
went to the wrong place. They even tried to coerce him into a duel. All these attempts
failed. Of course, they had to try again. This time, she got more help – Mosbie’s
sister, their daughter, and a female servant. </span><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">She hosted a dinner party. Of course, Mosbie would
be there too. When all was ready, Alice sent all the servants out of the house
on various errands. Mosbie and Black Will were the first to arrive. Mosbie to
his place at the table and Black Will hid in the closet. A pre-arranged phrase
was agreed upon so that Will would know when to jump out of the closet. All was
in place. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">When Thomas arrived home, he took his place at
the head of the table, his back to the closet. He and Mosbie played backgammon
while waiting for dinner. Finally, Mosbie uttered the phrase. Black Will rushed
out, and with a towel, strangling him while Mosbie struck him with an iron. The
two men dragged their victim to another room where Black Will emptied his
pockets and stripped him of his jewelry. Alice then paid Black Will the ten
pounds and Mosbie and Black Will escaped on horses. To make sure her husband
was dead, she stabbed Thomas many times, then set to work cleaning up the blood
and mess. After discarding the knife and cloth, they were ready to receive the
dinner party guests. </span><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The guests all waited for Thomas to arrive but
was late so Alice served supper. Afterwards, she entertained them with music
and dancing. And still no one knew what could keep Thomas from arriving home
and attending such a lavish dinner party. Feigning distraught nerves, she sent
her servants to search for him, sobbing, bemoaning, wailing her worries over
his absence. The guests and servants went out looking for Thomas. </span><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Alice, her daughter, and Thomas’ sister
remained. They wanted to make the murder look as if Thomas had been killed
outside the home. So, the trio dressed Thomas in his nightclothes before
dragging his body through the garden and a gate opened into the church yard where
they left him. </span><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Soon, Thomas’ body was discovered. Why was
Thomas dressed in nightclothes on such a wintry night? Fresh snow had been
trampled between the body and the Arden home, revealing the body had been
dragged there. </span><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Of course, Alice was the primary suspect. The victim’s
blood, hair, knife, and cloth were soon discovered. Alice was forced to
confess, naming her accomplices, and the three women were arrested. Also
arrested was Mosbie who was found ‘sleeping it off’ with bloody socks at a
nearby residence. </span><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Alice was tried and found guilty of murder. She
and the maid were burned at the stake. </span><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Mosbie's sister was hanged. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Mosbie was hanged, drawn, and quartered. </span><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Black Will went on the run for several years. But
he too, was caught and hanged, drawn, and quartered. </span><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202122; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">But their legend lives on…</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: "Bookman Old Style", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202122; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Alice cursed Thomas bitterly, that the world might wonder on him. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: "Bookman Old Style", serif; font-size: 14pt;">And no grass would ever grow on the spot where Thomas Arden’s body was
found.</span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><p></p>Mirella Patzerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14928081276314403541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7660357194650222850.post-10729954561638096622022-06-25T10:06:00.012-06:002023-05-07T16:49:57.607-06:00Anna Vieti - Pictures of Anna - A Novel by Sam Martin<p style="text-align: center;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-large;">Pictures of Anna </span></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-large;">A Novel </span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">by</span></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Sam Martin</span></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6JlrcODbJProTs0VWNyFj1F2lYXCHt9D0-txBGxR4kt8R-hYUFa84WV6A2iH2oB0zWQ3HlpIv15vAzXJgLRo1i4Y_tKpBtm4CVM0n3vEoya4AA8LktDt5R1_MyYNqY9gdlIs-eOv-CtoZ-x6uDAS7RDDnK6aaVwsWZBTYJcdIX0ItDla8QR1eRv25/s2592/DSCF3447.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1944" data-original-width="2592" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6JlrcODbJProTs0VWNyFj1F2lYXCHt9D0-txBGxR4kt8R-hYUFa84WV6A2iH2oB0zWQ3HlpIv15vAzXJgLRo1i4Y_tKpBtm4CVM0n3vEoya4AA8LktDt5R1_MyYNqY9gdlIs-eOv-CtoZ-x6uDAS7RDDnK6aaVwsWZBTYJcdIX0ItDla8QR1eRv25/w400-h300/DSCF3447.JPG" width="400" /></span></a></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: medium;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif">Anna Vieti </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif">was a German of Roma/gypsy origin who worked for two Jewish doctors in Hamburg. In the mid 1930s, after the persecution & extermination of Jews and gypsies had begun in Germany, the two doctors managed to flee to the UK and promised Anna that once they’d settled there, and as soon as they could sort out the paperwork for her, they would send for her and she could once again work for them in England, where they had set up their practice - and in 1938 Anna arrived in the UK.</span></div></span><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: medium;">This is where the story becomes personal and how I got to know it, because my aunt also worked for the two doctors and she was given the task of looking after Anna and helping her to settle in the UK, as she’d arrived unable to speak a word of English and she had no money at all in her purse, and very few personal belongings.</span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: medium;">After some time she met Guy, who himself had dual German / British nationality - and in 1940 they became engaged.</span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: medium;">My story begins on Anna’s wedding day, May the 26<sup>th</sup>, 1940, which was also the day that the British Parliament approved the so-called Defence Regulation 18B, which allowed the authorities to round up and detain without trail or sentence any individuals who they deemed to be “enemies of the State” - and on his wedding day, with Anna waiting patiently at the altar for him, Guy received a visit from the local police who took him away without explanation or reason, and he was incarcerated in the local prison, without knowing why and without knowing for how long. It was the UK’s policy at the time of “lock up first, think about it later”.</span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: medium;">Anna engaged a lawyer to try and free Guy, but against the backdrop of a country at war ( & losing), and the growing hostility towards “the enemy”, all efforts were in vain.</span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: medium;">But Anna didn’t only escape the camps and certain death at the hands of the Nazis when she came to Britain, she also fled from a bleaker-than-bleak family background of violence and abuse towards her which manifested as a morbid fear of being locked up - the legacy of being thrown into a freezing cold, pitch-black cellar no bigger than a dog kennel for days on end. This fear of being incarcerated herself came back to haunt her in Britain only days after Guy had been imprisoned when the British government declared that ALL enemy aliens were to be interned.</span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: medium;">So Anna went on the run, trying to avoid imprisonment herself, and found sanctuary with a Swiss artist.</span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: medium;">The authorities however - specifically MI5, whose leadership became increasingly paranoid about the presence of any enemy aliens at large in the country - were determined to track down all and every German, Austrian, Italian etc who had thus-far evaded them.</span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: medium;"><span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span><span face="Arial, sans-serif">Pictures Of Anna is a document - but not a documentary - about Anna’s fate and her attempts to avoid imprisonment, which she knew would “kill her” inside.</span></span></span></span><span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span><span face="Arial, sans-serif"> It is <em>about</em> history - about politics - but mostly about one young woman's fight to find freedom in the world, at a time when the forces lined up against her had never been so mighty nor so formidable. </span></span></span></span><span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span><span face="Arial, sans-serif">In Germany she was up against the Nazis (because of her race) - in the UK her foe was the government and the military (because of her passport) - and at 'home' in Hamburg she was the enemy of a vicious and vindictive family.</span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: medium;">'POA' is a story about a never-before episode in both British and German history which – until my novel was published – had never before been told in popular culture i.e. not in literature nor film, which offers us a way of looking at our world through a window to the past. </span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: medium;">-------------------</span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: medium;">I met Anna myself on two occasions, but that was long before I knew her story. My aunt always used to say “someone should write a book about Anna’s life” and - at the ripe old age of 80-plus - my aunt, still a close friend of Anna’s right up to her death, decided to do an A-level in German at the local college in the UK and one of the exercises she was given was to “write a short essay in German, either about someone famous, or about someone who you know who has had an interesting life.” So Joan, my aunt, wrote about Anna and sent it to me in Germany for my wife (Jutta was German) to read through and check for grammar, expression etc. I too read it and thought directly “this without any doubt is a screenplay – I knew immediately that I was sitting on something special, something explosive - (** I am a screenwriter) - and began to write a script based on Anna’s story but using the character I’d discovered when researching for another project about looted Nazi art in the 1940s in Paris i.e. the French girl who had tried to save her Jewish artist/boyfriend from being deported to the death camps by “befriending” the SS officer who was in charge of the paintings’ distribution. That SS officer happened to be my neighbour’s father when we lived down on Lake Konstanz in southern Germany.</span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: medium;">My screenplay turned into a novel along the way, although it is also an ongoing movie project - a German-UK co-production.</span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: medium;">----------------------------</span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: medium;">Why did it become a novel? That was my gift to my late-wife – or maybe it was her gift to me... I’ll never work that one out. When she was diagnosed with ALS/motor neuron disease she began to write Anna’s story herself – but after just six pages in, her only good hand began to weaken badly and then pack up altogether and she realised that she couldn’t type anymore, and “spelling” it out with her eye-controlled speech computer would have taken her 100 years to complete. She didn’t even get 100 weeks.</span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: medium;">I cared for her right up to the bitter end... and the end, believe me, it was more than bitter. But we did a deal. She gave me an hour-and-a-half every day in order to vanish into my office – to vanish into Anna’s world and into Anna’s story – and write the novel. I wrote it, she read it, she cried. And she said I’d done a special story justice. And that – really, just those words alone – that was enough for me.</span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: medium;">But she is a big, big part of this because I told her to put together something for the front cover. She was extremely restricted by that time – almost in a “vegetable state” – but by using her eyes only she designed the front cover (<i>she was a good painter and could actually paint using her eyes and some amazing Spanish software that a friend discovered for her</i>).</span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: medium;">As I said, the above is only perhaps 1 percent of what I could tell you about the project, which has taken me to Berlin, to London, to Hamburg, to Vienna, and has allowed me to meet and work with some of the biggest names in the film industry.</span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: medium;">Finally I’ll give a big shout-out and a heartfelt “thank you” to Sandra David, my publisher at Arrow Gate Publishing in London. I’d turned down three previous offers to publish the novel because I wanted to keep the movie Rights – or the majority share of them – because Pictures Of Anna was also a movie project and it was imperative that it continued. The first three publishers rejected my request and I thought “Sam, you idiot, you’ve really blown it now”. Then came the call from Sandra.</span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: medium;">I should say “thanks” too to the ones who turned me and my request down because Sandra David has been a rock, an absolute hero for me and no words can express my gratitude for taking the chance and for her support. She called me the day that Jutta died and she cried and cried – we both wanted so much for the book to come out while Jutta could share in its success. I another lifetime maybe... another <i>fairer </i>lifetime.</span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: medium;">I am donating whatever Pictures Of Anna earns for me to the ALS/mnd research guys. I’ll never see a cure for the worst of all illnesses in my lifetime, but if in 100 years from now someone can be cured and someone doesn’t have to go through what my poor wife went through... just to know that maybe... just maybe.. that I’ve made a contribution – that’s enough for me. But that isn’t all. I’d also like Arrow Gate to get their reward too. I’d love, just love, Sandra David to get her fair share of its success too. She really does deserve that much, because a better person in this world for a project like Pictures Of Anna... well, I’m pretty sure that person doesn’t exist.</span></span></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixZi9Aq1DAjuSFY2ss5sONYLWmk9e2_sTMy9IisDzcIPxZL7NbeBTQX_CMLHJCjFG4uZyPNHvyIh6cK40gCqTaqGRUnVLXjS9Ip4yVl1eY-eeDSrHUAeYhNkls9PAq160r4AKFG2-mbX97B3tFYvcNjZAYH0JdMe2PmPjvIKXokIm_6-b6GSVK5tsB/s3067/Picures%20of%20Anna3.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: #500050; font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3067" data-original-width="2311" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixZi9Aq1DAjuSFY2ss5sONYLWmk9e2_sTMy9IisDzcIPxZL7NbeBTQX_CMLHJCjFG4uZyPNHvyIh6cK40gCqTaqGRUnVLXjS9Ip4yVl1eY-eeDSrHUAeYhNkls9PAq160r4AKFG2-mbX97B3tFYvcNjZAYH0JdMe2PmPjvIKXokIm_6-b6GSVK5tsB/w301-h400/Picures%20of%20Anna3.jpg" width="301" /></span></a></div><p></p><p><span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span><span style="color: #500050; font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: medium;">Where can you buy the book? Obviously all the big book retailers, or via the publishers:</span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: medium;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://arrowgatepublishing.com/product/pictures-of-anna/&source=gmail&ust=1655411343177000&usg=AOvVaw2MGNTmoCMVk0Yth35YyYMe" href="https://arrowgatepublishing.com/product/pictures-of-anna/" target="">https://arrowgatepublishing.<wbr></wbr>com/product/pictures-of-anna/</a></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: medium;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/-/de/dp/B07WJHWJVK/ref%3Dsr_1_1?__mk_de_DE%3D%25C3%2585M%25C3%2585%25C5%25BD%25C3%2595%25C3%2591%26crid%3DI8PRXJ2KN0VI%26keywords%3Dsam%2Bmartin%2Bpictures%2Bof%2Banna%26qid%3D1654618782%26s%3Dbooks%26sprefix%3Dsam%2Bmartin%2Bpictures%2Bof%2Banna%252Cstripbooks-intl-ship%252C137%26sr%3D1-1&source=gmail&ust=1655411343177000&usg=AOvVaw0Rs5OYHIJLrOt4XXmzDP-O" href="https://www.amazon.com/-/de/dp/B07WJHWJVK/ref=sr_1_1?__mk_de_DE=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&crid=I8PRXJ2KN0VI&keywords=sam+martin+pictures+of+anna&qid=1654618782&s=books&sprefix=sam+martin+pictures+of+anna%2Cstripbooks-intl-ship%2C137&sr=1-1" target="_blank">https://www.amazon.com/-/de/<wbr></wbr>dp/B07WJHWJVK/ref=sr_1_1?__mk_<wbr></wbr>de_DE=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%<wbr></wbr>95%C3%91&crid=I8PRXJ2KN0VI&<wbr></wbr>keywords=sam+martin+pictures+<wbr></wbr>of+anna&qid=1654618782&s=<wbr></wbr>books&sprefix=sam+martin+<wbr></wbr>pictures+of+anna%2Cstripbooks-<wbr></wbr>intl-ship%2C137&sr=1-1</a></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: medium;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pictures-Anna-Sam-Martin-ebook/dp/B07WJHWJVK/ref%3Dsr_1_1?crid%3D1YHLR962IEN5N%26keywords%3Dsam%2Bmartin%2Bpictures%2Bof%2Banna%26qid%3D1654618850%26sprefix%3Dsam%2Bmartin%2Bpictures%2Bof%2Banna%252Caps%252C74%26sr%3D8-1&source=gmail&ust=1655411343177000&usg=AOvVaw22bYevNyXFp3ze7-YUD9T6" href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pictures-Anna-Sam-Martin-ebook/dp/B07WJHWJVK/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1YHLR962IEN5N&keywords=sam+martin+pictures+of+anna&qid=1654618850&sprefix=sam+martin+pictures+of+anna%2Caps%2C74&sr=8-1" target="_blank">https://www.amazon.co.uk/<wbr></wbr>Pictures-Anna-Sam-Martin-<wbr></wbr>ebook/dp/B07WJHWJVK/ref=sr_1_<wbr></wbr>1?crid=1YHLR962IEN5N&keywords=<wbr></wbr>sam+martin+pictures+of+anna&<wbr></wbr>qid=1654618850&sprefix=sam+<wbr></wbr>martin+pictures+of+anna%2Caps%<wbr></wbr>2C74&sr=8-1</a></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: medium;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.waterstones.com/book/pictures-of-anna/sam-martin/9781913142063&source=gmail&ust=1655411343177000&usg=AOvVaw0Rb-rzP7jPEq5371nF5-kW" href="https://www.waterstones.com/book/pictures-of-anna/sam-martin/9781913142063" target="_blank">https://www.waterstones.com/<wbr></wbr>book/pictures-of-anna/sam-<wbr></wbr>martin/9781913142063</a></span></span></span></span></p>Mirella Patzerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14928081276314403541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7660357194650222850.post-15548968896454092802022-05-09T11:03:00.004-06:002022-06-29T14:54:45.487-06:00Susanna Hall (Shakespeare's eldest daughter)<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKE-2G9bL-wK_QlKDfY4vNgbFJgKYNCQWP-MN70dhjiAMhLKTOi4eicV-NqUNn4Ky-7tnh-pFJW8fZj8Sjy_c3srGkSZIMHw3jEWFDJDTEXHr0Ppji8wYf_A-OjcQTGSWLUKswWYYJr3kg9t7w7jWjEd_-r4CVw-vS0MoxZp84KoYEVg0yoyWB5fdm/s319/susanne_large.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="319" data-original-width="250" height="319" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKE-2G9bL-wK_QlKDfY4vNgbFJgKYNCQWP-MN70dhjiAMhLKTOi4eicV-NqUNn4Ky-7tnh-pFJW8fZj8Sjy_c3srGkSZIMHw3jEWFDJDTEXHr0Ppji8wYf_A-OjcQTGSWLUKswWYYJr3kg9t7w7jWjEd_-r4CVw-vS0MoxZp84KoYEVg0yoyWB5fdm/s1600/susanne_large.jpg" width="250" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans";">Susanna Hall was the eldest child of
William Shakespeare. She was baptized on 26th May 1583 at Holy Trinity church
in Stratford upon Avon. She had two younger siblings –<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>twins Hamnet and Judith – and was raised in
the family home owned on Henley Street, owned by her grandfather, John
Shakespeare. It was a crowded house when she was little, containing both her
paternal grandparents, her mother and siblings, and several of her father’s
younger siblings as well.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large;">While it is unlikely she had any formal education, which was
reserved for male children at the time, Susanna did learn to read and write,
possibly taught by her parents or by one of her younger uncles who were not too
far from her in age.</span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans";">In 1607, at the age of 24, Susanna married a newcomer to
Stratford, the 32-year-old physician and Puritan, John Hall. They had one
child, Elizabeth, born in 1608. John Hall had a successful practice, ministering
to the local gentry. Some of his case notes were published after his death in
1635, shedding<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>valuable insight on
medical practices in the seventeenth century, and they include a description of
his wife’s illness and the treatments he prescribed.</span><span lang="EN-CA"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans";">When Susanna was a young wife and mother, in June 1613 a young
man, John Lane, accused Susanna of adultery with a local haberdasher, Rafe
Smith, and claimed she had caught a venereal disease from Smith. It turned out
however that Lane held a grudge against John Hall for his support of a Puritan
minister at Holy Trinity church and sought to hurt him through attacking his
wife. Hall sued him for slander and, when Lane didn’t appear in court, won.
History doesn’t record Susanna’s thoughts and feelings on the slander.</span><span lang="EN-CA"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans";">Shakespeare made John Hall the executor of his will and left the
bulk of his estate to Susanna Hall when he died in 1616. This included two
houses on Henley Street, several pieces of land around Stratford, and New
Place, one of the oldest and largest houses in Stratford, where Shakespeare and
his wife lived. The Halls subsequently moved in with Susanna’s widowed mother. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans";">In 1643, at the height of the English Civil War, Queen Henrietta
Maria, wife of King Charles I, stayed with Susanna at New Place for three days.
The town hall in Stratford had been blown up a few months earlier and tensions
were running high. It is said that she brought a thousand horses and a hundred
wagons. One can only imagine the conversation between the young queen, a French
woman and a Catholic, and Susanna, herself English, Puritan and citizen of a
town that was firmly against the King. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans";">Susanna died on July 11, 1649, at the age
of 66 and was buried in Holy Trinity Church beside her parents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The epitaph below was likely written by her
daughter, Elizabeth.</span></p>
<h3 style="line-height: 115%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans";">Witty above her sex, but that’s not all,<br />
Wise to salvation was good Mistress Hall.<br />
Something of Shakespeare was in that, but this<br />
Wholly of him with whom she’s now in blisse.<br />
Then, passenger, hast nere a tear<br />
To weep with her that wept with all<br />
That wept, yet set herself to chere<br />
Them up with comforts cordiall?<br />
Her love shall live, her mercy spread<br />
When thou hast nerre a tear to shed.<o:p></o:p></span></h3><div><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans";"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2uQSAXEGmWbBJTRlpJQ3PaDO3JXHL7MN7E7aC4ZQMWOrkq5qinmUeKyr4Q6LeaFHWzQXW2mesSalVSF86Mm-E-4VTnsWX4Dl8X62GEQVQd3mrnsfO09T9vDh79shB0ZSqI0jWILnUQmV3xwV2FLUCbwPHNCg5sGRlA0VoTgXr8J6-VxBoKB6LvBI_/s679/cover.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="679" data-original-width="455" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2uQSAXEGmWbBJTRlpJQ3PaDO3JXHL7MN7E7aC4ZQMWOrkq5qinmUeKyr4Q6LeaFHWzQXW2mesSalVSF86Mm-E-4VTnsWX4Dl8X62GEQVQd3mrnsfO09T9vDh79shB0ZSqI0jWILnUQmV3xwV2FLUCbwPHNCg5sGRlA0VoTgXr8J6-VxBoKB6LvBI_/s16000/cover.jpg" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large;"><span style="text-align: justify;"><div><span style="text-align: justify;"><br /></span></div>Jennifer Falkner (she/her) is an
award-winning short story writer living in Ottawa, Canada, on the traditional,
unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg First Nation. The novella, </span><i style="text-align: justify;">Susanna
Hall, Her Book</i><span style="text-align: justify;">, is published by Fish Gotta Swim Editions.</span></span></div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-CA">To order, please visit: </span><span lang="EN-CA"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans";"><a href="https://www.fishgottaswimeditions.com/books-1">https://www.fishgottaswimeditions.com/books-1</a></span></span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large;"><a href="https://jenniferfalkner.ca/">https://jenniferfalkner.ca/</a></span></p>Mirella Patzerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14928081276314403541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7660357194650222850.post-48472404175948883622021-07-28T12:43:00.003-06:002023-05-07T16:10:46.754-06:00Sirma Voivode - A woman warrior who led a mountain gang while dressed as a man<p> <span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large;"><span>S</span><span>irma voivode - a warrior who led her own mountain gang, while dressed as a man</span></span></p><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large;">Sirma Strezova Krasteva was born in a small village in the Shar mountain, which was terrorized by Albanian outlaws. One day, the outlaws kidnapped her best friend Ruzha to bring her to their leader - Hamza Bei. Fed up with their cruelty, Sirma decided to strike the outlaws back.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large;">She dressed up like a man and joined the Haiduks - a gang of Slavic peasants aiming to protect their villages from assaults. Once there, she not only earned the respect of her comrades, but they also choose her by vote to be their gang leader. Thus, she turned into Sirma voivode (voivode means leader). And she was only 18.<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large;">For 24 years her gang roamed the mountain, protecting the defenseless mountain villages and waging war on Hamza Bei and his underlings. With time, Sirma's group reached 72 loyal comrades, and it took a long time until they realized she was a woman.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large;">Living in the mountain wilderness was tough, especially when they had frequent battles to the death with their enemies. Eventually, Sirma and her gang killed Hamza Bei and ended his reign of terror.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large;">After that, Sirma retired and went back to living the domestic life of a housewife. She married Velko Spirov - her second in command, whom she fell in love with in the midst of their dangerous adventure. Sirma lived to the old age of 88 when she was shot dead by the side of the road by an old enemy. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large;">During that time of history in Eastern Europe, there were lots of Haiduk gangs across the Ottoman Empire. Haiduk literally means "outlaw", that's how the Ottomans called the Slavic mountain gangs and frequently hunted them down and executed them. Most Haiduks were men, but there were also many women among them.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large;">Sirma voivode's story is especially successful because not only did she defeat her enemy, but she could also retire and enjoy the peace she fought for.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq36yjmUJriFGbW4-nTLLnXJb1cFCJEWBj4jMQKbi8b-kRnaZVcrotrWacEFmyvZ4sSlkmD-B3sbjWq23o0kdNO5wygWDcW7ouLUHIsI-fBicFAR6AGrpKh0GqrAQISn-mg0ZcXW4zLYA/s2048/Sirma+-+book+cover.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1366" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq36yjmUJriFGbW4-nTLLnXJb1cFCJEWBj4jMQKbi8b-kRnaZVcrotrWacEFmyvZ4sSlkmD-B3sbjWq23o0kdNO5wygWDcW7ouLUHIsI-fBicFAR6AGrpKh0GqrAQISn-mg0ZcXW4zLYA/w427-h640/Sirma+-+book+cover.jpg" width="427" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sirma-Novel-Reni-Stankova-ebook/dp/B07R8G21KJ/" target="_blank">Purchase on Amazon</a><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigbm_Lx7LGewjVqUDQSGalCcni5dEsYXgd2exvCsyGgff0nG83RGqTWWfznUSLRxJLH7surwgrZTur5hYj4-ZgyCE36F1wG7Fvb0Rb5Gwqlq0Bo_p49oe7hd_n3nnFL7y8ScstLfmqWDg/s900/unnamed.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigbm_Lx7LGewjVqUDQSGalCcni5dEsYXgd2exvCsyGgff0nG83RGqTWWfznUSLRxJLH7surwgrZTur5hYj4-ZgyCE36F1wG7Fvb0Rb5Gwqlq0Bo_p49oe7hd_n3nnFL7y8ScstLfmqWDg/s320/unnamed.jpg" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large;">About the Author</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large;">Reni Stankova</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large;">Reni Stankova is a book author, a tired office worker, and a nature lover who enjoys going on mountain treks. She lives in Bulgaria. In her free time, she writes about feisty characters, steamy chemistry, and edge-of-your-seat action scenes. In 2019, she self-published the historical fiction novel Sirma.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large;">Website link: <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.renistankova.com/&source=gmail&ust=1627582687288000&usg=AFQjCNHeTvTo8jStZrufIBVNUAAETppvVg" href="https://www.renistankova.com/" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">https://www.<wbr></wbr>renistankova.com/</a></span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large;">Goodreads: <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/19105728.Reni_Stankova&source=gmail&ust=1627582687288000&usg=AFQjCNGeLWf9araHf4H8tNSY1ZuHOM3iBg" href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/19105728.Reni_Stankova" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">https://www.<wbr></wbr>goodreads.com/author/show/<wbr></wbr>19105728.Reni_Stankova</a></span></div></div><span><span style="font-family: Bookman Old Style; font-size: large;"><br /><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;" /></div>Mirella Patzerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14928081276314403541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7660357194650222850.post-84883815975666308082021-04-28T09:43:00.001-06:002022-06-29T14:36:16.357-06:00Sarah Bordetsky - Forget Russia <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKX7GIzfLDDalex7C8WBwbnFBIiEEFAQBamrO_SZ3Xj_Pog_Y9S_ZPYs3cxUigR7g2NhOlBnk6nFnu4nUD94koINeCc0CfqWroYlRE5xsL-QsjBe4qFWHlrkPgjI6nTA2nZphicUPwaAA/s982/Sarah+Bordetsky+early.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="982" data-original-width="700" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKX7GIzfLDDalex7C8WBwbnFBIiEEFAQBamrO_SZ3Xj_Pog_Y9S_ZPYs3cxUigR7g2NhOlBnk6nFnu4nUD94koINeCc0CfqWroYlRE5xsL-QsjBe4qFWHlrkPgjI6nTA2nZphicUPwaAA/s320/Sarah+Bordetsky+early.jpg" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Many families have an unlikely hero—someone who quietly
saves the family, so quietly that perhaps most in the family don’t even know
the story of her courage. Sarah
Bordetsky, born in 1906, in the small Jewish shtetl of Gornostaypol, Ukraine,
was one such person. She suffered
tragedy at a young age—when she was around fourteen years old her mother Zlata
was raped and murdered in a pogrom in 1921.
The Ukraine was an extremely unstable place to be after the 1917
Revolution since the Civil War was fought there. For a while the Bolsheviks lost control of
the Ukraine and warring factions of Ukrainian Nationalists and other factions
opposed to the Bolsheviks vied for power and control. In 1921, when the Bolsheviks were able to
vanquish the White army and its many factions, the defeated armies, as they
retreated went into the Jewish shtetls, murdering and pillaging anyone they
could find. Sarah’s mother, Zlata
Oushomirsky, lost her life during one of these pogroms. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Sarah’s father, Lazer
Oushomirsky, had already deserted the family.
Years before, he had left for the US, and remade himself as Louis
Shumer, an elegant and talented tailor.
He had promised to send for his wife and daughter as soon as he could,
but instead, years later, he mailed Zlata a letter of divorce and a five-dollar
bill. After her mother’s brutal murder, Sarah must have felt like an orphan. An
uncle who owned a store took her in and tried to locate her father in
America. Eventually, Sarah’s uncle found
him, and she journeyed alone on the SS Samaria ship to her father in
Boston. In recounting her journey, many
years later, she said so many were sick on the boat and there were many
pregnant women. When Sarah got to
Boston, Massachusetts, her father had remarried, and Sarah discovered she had a
half-sister and a half-brother. Her new
step-mother did not welcome her. She complained she didn’t want another mouth
to feed.</span></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNP1iDdlNEDymuwacYC_D51X5Av8WXvMCi5TNseeEYrb1farUsmYPgdnXMFI_qzRVXHma0DsnhgWd2COk1xK7SHA1Zy9P6hmV1R3FAXqybOR1NuAc_FpoCPN7LB9otkv3INH8dhuPUWxQ/s708/Passport+Photo+of+Children+1931.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="596" data-original-width="708" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNP1iDdlNEDymuwacYC_D51X5Av8WXvMCi5TNseeEYrb1farUsmYPgdnXMFI_qzRVXHma0DsnhgWd2COk1xK7SHA1Zy9P6hmV1R3FAXqybOR1NuAc_FpoCPN7LB9otkv3INH8dhuPUWxQ/s320/Passport+Photo+of+Children+1931.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><span>Within a year, Sarah had married
Barnett or Barney Bordetsky, another Russian Jewish immigrant seventeen years
older. Barney had come to America in
1909. Like Sarah, he too had a parent,
his father, murdered in Russia as part of an anti-semitic hate crime. Barney was a master cabinet maker, who longed
to return to the Soviet Union to build the Revolution. In 1931, at the height of Depression, he and
Sarah and their two daughters, ages five and three, returned to Leningrad. Barnett was excited to be part of a
Revolution that had promised equality to all.
He and Sarah were part of the ten thousand Americans who went to the Soviet
Union in 1931 to escape the brutal reality of the Depression. Life in Leningrad was also very harsh. Famine raged in the countryside of the
Ukraine. Starving peasants filled
Leningrad, seeking to escape hunger. Most people lived in communal apartments, a railroad apartment of up to
twenty families, each with a room or two of their own, and all of them sharing
one bathroom. Sarah, Barney, and their
daughters, sick with whooping cough, only stayed in Leningrad nine months. If they had stayed any longer than a year,
they would have lost their American citizenship and never gotten out. They
would have surely been murdered or imprisoned during the height of Stalin’s
purges in 1936 -1938, or they would have died during World War II, during the
siege of Leningrad. Because of Sarah,
the family returned to America before it became too late to get out of Russia.</span></div></span><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJj7F3jzc5so6E3V31BUQDldP4sQw28Ti3FfdDWl2lcVHm6_45bgrULYJlh8P5qoT-pdps-Zw1smKqGnxN7U8Lpty_AFicAJXuTsxb0Sqcnh4zBzvzWW9f6jkRdKbem2pdI6gHoPmVF4k/s800/Sarah+Bordetsky_Citizen.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="655" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJj7F3jzc5so6E3V31BUQDldP4sQw28Ti3FfdDWl2lcVHm6_45bgrULYJlh8P5qoT-pdps-Zw1smKqGnxN7U8Lpty_AFicAJXuTsxb0Sqcnh4zBzvzWW9f6jkRdKbem2pdI6gHoPmVF4k/s320/Sarah+Bordetsky_Citizen.jpg" /></span></a></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Sarah Bordetsky died in 1995. In
her last years, she spent many hours humming to herself the Russian love songs
from her girlhood, songs mainly of unrequited love from a country that had not
been kind to her.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOBXNX0MObj3yjWWA2-paexVs8NmIf72J3KfkHqiHVXJOjce2aWxhZCj8knqP1hi-I422ASfWJ2fea0gADX1IrX2Bme_m32UrYzmwX_KNoBMYF9qF9gR4pQievoqt-i1PsX3pu5PVqyps/s2048/Williams+Black+9.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1273" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOBXNX0MObj3yjWWA2-paexVs8NmIf72J3KfkHqiHVXJOjce2aWxhZCj8knqP1hi-I422ASfWJ2fea0gADX1IrX2Bme_m32UrYzmwX_KNoBMYF9qF9gR4pQievoqt-i1PsX3pu5PVqyps/w249-h400/Williams+Black+9.jpg" width="249" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSJXfozvPZ_VGqGBvYlQvGcigONwdmWMPovlLwBCWQwUTxTX52gY8XiwkojYRXgNdgWPnmQ-OUuOHnw-TzkuIs7eSESjrBvtW5FZsKk9f_LqHH1J09Sc-6nAF7RuEQmKBSP1ZxP321-H0/s1401/L+Bordetsky-Williams.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1157" data-original-width="1401" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSJXfozvPZ_VGqGBvYlQvGcigONwdmWMPovlLwBCWQwUTxTX52gY8XiwkojYRXgNdgWPnmQ-OUuOHnw-TzkuIs7eSESjrBvtW5FZsKk9f_LqHH1J09Sc-6nAF7RuEQmKBSP1ZxP321-H0/s320/L+Bordetsky-Williams.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span>In the historical novel, </span><i>Forget Russia</i><span>, author Lisa Bordetsky-Williams, explores three generations of family history—the short and tragic life of her great-grandmother, her grandparents’ journeys back and forth from Russia to America, and her own experiences in Moscow in 1980 when she met Soviet Jews, many of them Refuseniks, whose grandparents had been Bolshevik leaders and sympathizers, murdered or imprisoned by Stalin. </span><i>Forget Russia</i><span> explores the interlocking connections between people across three generations, across space and time. It looks at the nature of destiny</span><i> and the ways</i><span> women in a family seek to transcend inherited trauma.</span><span><span> </span></span></div></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">LINKS</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Book website</span></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 150%;"><a href="https://www.forgetrussia.com/">https://www.forgetrussia.com</a><span class="MsoHyperlink"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 150%;"> <br />
Book trailer</span></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 150%;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDICgOz-Kqo&t=3s">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDICgOz-Kqo&t=3s</a><span class="MsoHyperlink"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 150%;"><br />
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</span></span><span style="line-height: 150%;">Amazon</span></span></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 150%;"><a href="https://d.docs.live.net/8a8851eac5cc89cb/:%20https:/www.amazon.com/Forget-Russia-L-Bordetsky-Williams/dp/1732848041/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=forget+russia&qid=1616968008&sr=8-1">https://www.amazon.com/Forget-Russia-L-Bordetsky-Williams/dp/1732848041/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=forget+russia&qid=1616968008&sr=8-1</a><span class="MsoHyperlink"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 150%;"><br />
Bookshop</span></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 150%;"><a href="https://bookshop.org/books/forget-russia/9781732848047">https://bookshop.org/books/forget-russia/9781732848047</a><span class="MsoHyperlink"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 150%;"><br />
B&N</span></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; line-height: 150%;"><a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/forget-russia-l-bordetsky-williams/1137552610?ean=9781732848047">https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/forget-russia-l-bordetsky-williams/1137552610?ean=9781732848047</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p>
</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; text-align: justify;"> </span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv6a6bCF2fWK4SRV3Qql9zaiROQFm3RQJRO_c1f0EAcnLwpHvnpqm3OB6ynCAl0R-E5ldo5k7JArqctQtOY-lgzD09O0GOK2msMp31bx0JXtLuZUpu92po8nGSVJ1J4ZSJk4pZCiDueNM/s2048/Williams+Black+9.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1273" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv6a6bCF2fWK4SRV3Qql9zaiROQFm3RQJRO_c1f0EAcnLwpHvnpqm3OB6ynCAl0R-E5ldo5k7JArqctQtOY-lgzD09O0GOK2msMp31bx0JXtLuZUpu92po8nGSVJ1J4ZSJk4pZCiDueNM/s320/Williams+Black+9.jpg" /></span></a></p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /> </span><br /><p></p>Mirella Patzerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14928081276314403541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7660357194650222850.post-55175597430388580132021-04-11T12:34:00.003-06:002022-06-29T14:36:44.704-06:00Mary Perkins Olmstead - Landscape of a Marriage<p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaQ-v5kS-PvUidqszyfOR-zDx_jj4xdl2QF7qs_dG3UTLqyxvHukJRV1IygarFqZKg7qblTPkjnesC6GX8MqdgY96M43SrwSsc6LQABOBK_Rbxp8npD-XEQASJvzV-NqWgR9lUvJgYScs/s320/IMG_0796.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaQ-v5kS-PvUidqszyfOR-zDx_jj4xdl2QF7qs_dG3UTLqyxvHukJRV1IygarFqZKg7qblTPkjnesC6GX8MqdgY96M43SrwSsc6LQABOBK_Rbxp8npD-XEQASJvzV-NqWgR9lUvJgYScs/s0/IMG_0796.jpeg" /></a></span></div><span><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Mary Perkins Olmsted was born on March 26, 1830. Orphaned at the age of eight, she was raised by her grandparents on Staten Island. As a young girl, she loved to play the piano and sing. When she was 21, she married Dr. John Olmsted. They honeymooned in Italy and over the next five years, she gave birth to three children while living in Europe. John died at the age of 32 from complications from tuberculosis and Mary returned to New York with her children. A year later, she agreed to marry her brother-in-law Frederick Law Olmsted in order to provide a secure future for her family.<span style="color: #222222;"> </span></span></div></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Her new husband was involved in a plan to turn 800 acres of Manhattan swamp land into a public park. Tempted to quit a number of times, it was Mary’s wise counsel and support that kept him focused on their joint goal ‘to create a beating green heart in every urban space’. Fred and Mary had four more children, only two of whom survived infancy. Fred’s career as a landscape architect took him away from the family for long periods of time as he worked on projects including Boston’s Emerald Necklace, the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC, the grounds for the Chicago World’s Fair, the park spaces at Niagara Falls and Yosemite National Park, as well as dozens of urban parks, college campuses and private estates.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; margin: 0px;"><span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">More than her husband’s greatest fan, Mary organized the firm’s business operations, fine-tuned many of the design projects (as many as 50 different projects were on the books at any one time), paid the bills and kept track of the company’s finances.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span>After Fred died in 1903, Mary became more involved in philanthropic activities, leaving the Olmsted Brothers’ operations in the capable hands of her sons John and Rick.</span><span> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPDhye6__8ST_6SHiapUTDtMRsv8TKwGOksHmU2S1sTZU1r1s8fXhu5kaqjALL1ioHlVUB8TXbAJTqlGqEtHmxiUCEi34rxEGFrJZrKqN7mggkKgIpaJ3P8i7B6YyesUNlPmkQ-DB7k2c/s320/IMG_0795.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPDhye6__8ST_6SHiapUTDtMRsv8TKwGOksHmU2S1sTZU1r1s8fXhu5kaqjALL1ioHlVUB8TXbAJTqlGqEtHmxiUCEi34rxEGFrJZrKqN7mggkKgIpaJ3P8i7B6YyesUNlPmkQ-DB7k2c/s0/IMG_0795.jpeg" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; margin: 0px;"><span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">She died on August 23, 1921at the age of 91, surrounded by her children and grandchildren.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; margin: 0px;"><span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; margin: 0px;"><span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Mary's life story has been immortalized in the novel, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Landscape-Marriage-Central-Park-Beginning/dp/1684337216/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=landscape+of+a+marriage&qid=1618165721&sr=8-1">Landscape of a Marriage</a>, written by Gail Ward Olmsted, a distant relative of Mary. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; margin: 0px;"><span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWJOUwlD-Fucq87E6Ug3PQQOHK6cUMIqAsyEXUXTaeIcBaK10PsN2Q3-gUnKcLSYPMiLgbXeKaD6lZGcbQZxiv9ZWZEC0UyjpvcJqmi7iy-Hj35_gWENJbDMidtaYt998CtWYJaiCF1H0/s320/IMG_0663-2.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="214" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWJOUwlD-Fucq87E6Ug3PQQOHK6cUMIqAsyEXUXTaeIcBaK10PsN2Q3-gUnKcLSYPMiLgbXeKaD6lZGcbQZxiv9ZWZEC0UyjpvcJqmi7iy-Hj35_gWENJbDMidtaYt998CtWYJaiCF1H0/w268-h400/IMG_0663-2.jpeg" width="268" /></a></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Author</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Gail Ward Olmsted</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrV1LBU7bhhTXRdylNSMgUIdqPKw1n_Fe_IB3-aO3Vd2X-MyL_vaJvhwf6OYKETrEx1VXr5GBQa6ylFrEIjPlSrZDLNW8-I0GfvHDwXOYQsmyWSvvKPcHidd5dh33GaHkFe-9_JecELTw/s246/IMG_0491+copy+2.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="246" data-original-width="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrV1LBU7bhhTXRdylNSMgUIdqPKw1n_Fe_IB3-aO3Vd2X-MyL_vaJvhwf6OYKETrEx1VXr5GBQa6ylFrEIjPlSrZDLNW8-I0GfvHDwXOYQsmyWSvvKPcHidd5dh33GaHkFe-9_JecELTw/s0/IMG_0491+copy+2.jpeg" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Gail Ward Olmsted was a marketing executive and a college professor before she began writing fiction on a full time basis. A trip to Sedona, AZ inspired her first novel Jeep Tour. Three more novels followed before she began Landscape of a Marriage, a biographical work of fiction featuring landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, a distant cousin of her husband’s, and his wife Mary.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; margin: 0px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">For more information, please visit her on Facebook and at <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://GailOlmsted.com&source=gmail&ust=1618247049461000&usg=AFQjCNFXyClrTQzcWWakJ_-w3beiLxVHOw" href="http://gailolmsted.com/" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">GailOlmsted.com</a>.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; margin: 0px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: start;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Website: <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.gailolmsted.com/&source=gmail&ust=1618247049461000&usg=AFQjCNFp1axZEclGFOtU2RR0DRbWRzJ8lw" href="http://www.gailolmsted.com/" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">www.GailOlmsted.com</a></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #1c577d;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://author.to/gwolmsted&source=gmail&ust=1618247049461000&usg=AFQjCNEvtJarSOqJzSliYG6DYmW0IAezLA" href="http://author.to/gwolmsted" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">Author.to/gwolmsted</a></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #1c577d; 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font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13pt;"><br /></span><p></p>Mirella Patzerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14928081276314403541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7660357194650222850.post-54527996889342036962020-08-31T00:00:00.002-06:002022-06-29T14:37:14.223-06:00Boudicca - Rage Against the Dying Light<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg88WlrzWbhYvSNl6I_AnSm6TILD2xFHhodmWGLwTwn0qD_QLAcErZu10Sgf1lxbJ3QeVGQ0kCYkMflsODpUikZXG4zLixfPcva5yjnMcNAZf9b3t-n9eD2VZ2bbINv1FEGN5QD-AUMzJs/s800/Boudicca+Statue.jpg" style="display: inline; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="750" height="410" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg88WlrzWbhYvSNl6I_AnSm6TILD2xFHhodmWGLwTwn0qD_QLAcErZu10Sgf1lxbJ3QeVGQ0kCYkMflsODpUikZXG4zLixfPcva5yjnMcNAZf9b3t-n9eD2VZ2bbINv1FEGN5QD-AUMzJs/w384-h410/Boudicca+Statue.jpg" width="384" /></span></a></div><p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Boudicca was born in around 25 A.C.E. The only known writings about her
are the following. We have <i>The Annals of Tacitus </i>written about fifty
years after her death which covers in a few paragraphs her uprising and battles
against the Roman invaders of her beloved British isle. She is also mentioned
in a history of Rome written one hundred years after her death by Cassius Dio.
Both are accounts written only about her battles against the Roman invaders.
Those accounts also include the battles between Venutius a foster prince of a
Celtic tribe and Cartimandua, the vicious queen of a large Celtic tribe who
married Venutius and then betrayed him. Both were her contemporaries. Both
accounts are written from the Roman point of view.</span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Boudicca was married to Prasutagus a much older king of a large and
wealthy British Celtic tribe the Iceni in a politically matched marriage. When
Romans invaded Briton Prasutagus made a pact with the Romans to lay down all
tribal arms and only use them in defense of the Romans in return for a pact
that would save his people and his wealth. When Prasutagus died the Romans
broke that pact overrunning the Iceni palace, taking slaves, publicly flogging
Boudicca now queen of the Iceni and assaulting her two young daughters.</span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Boudicca enlisted thousands of Celtic warriors to lead them into battle
with her two young daughters beside her in a chariot to avenge their assaults
upon her daughters and upon herself and free her beloved isle from Roman
tyranny. Her epic battles are the most celebrated in Celtic history making her
the first known woman warrior.</span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Many poems have been written about her and many paintings have
celebrated her courage, along with a statue to her memory that overlooks the
Thames in London with Big Ben in the background. A rehab facility for women
army veterans from the Iraq war considers her their inspiration and patron.</span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">There are still many groups around the world who meet and celebrate her
memory and her courage as well as a Facebook site which features her that has
had millions of hits.</span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="text-align: center;"><i>Written by Jan Surasky</i></span> </span></p></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJE65aEqJNqVn8el3bxB9k6tBIsHBU_X1NrQvhxRx9MeAzg5kfG4HyjnDFp9WXj9jw5YnBlRGBYEetfvvJmaovfQe4I_9wjjs1yEduDzB0UtC3jIU3idOoDdVCoNZLoCNZkT97fpVWol4/s1083/Boudicca+book+cover.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1083" data-original-width="695" height="512" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJE65aEqJNqVn8el3bxB9k6tBIsHBU_X1NrQvhxRx9MeAzg5kfG4HyjnDFp9WXj9jw5YnBlRGBYEetfvvJmaovfQe4I_9wjjs1yEduDzB0UtC3jIU3idOoDdVCoNZLoCNZkT97fpVWol4/w329-h512/Boudicca+book+cover.jpg" width="329" /></span></a></div><p></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Rage-Against-Dying-Light-Surasky/dp/0578003678/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1596581595&sr=8-2"><span face="" style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Amazon</span></a><u><span face="" style="color: #0070c0; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
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<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.booksamillion.com/p/Rage-Against-Dying-Light/Jan-Surasky/9780578003672?id=7946918187249"><span face="" style="line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">BAM</span></a><span style="color: #0070c0; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Of all the women warriors
in myth and legend few are more storied than Boudicca, the fierce redheaded
queen who, in the first century A.C. E. led the most celebrated Celtic
rebellion in history. Until now books about her have been based on the only
written records that exist—ancient Roman writings. But, <i>Rage Against the
Dying Light </i>tells the story from the Celtic point of view. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">At first a carefree young
princess who revels in friendships and the beauty of her land, Boudicca learns
the ways and rites of her Druid tribe. She prepares for the day she will be
queen, wife and mother. Soon after her politically matched marriage to the much
older king of a large and wealthy tribe, however, her world turns dark. After
the death of her husband Roman invaders intent on conquering the loosely allied
Celts attack the palace breaking a pact that would have saved the tribe from
doom, taking slaves, publicly humiliating Boudicca and assaulting her two young
daughters.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Betrayed and outraged
Boudicca does not back down. She nurses her daughters back to health and with
them beside her in a chariot she leads thousands of warriors in an epic battle
to avenge her daughters and rid her beloved homeland of Roman tyranny.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><i><span>Rage Against the Dying
Light </span></i><span>is the story of history’s first
woman warrior and a symbol of courage inspiring paintings, poetry and a statue
in her honor overlooking the Thames in London.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPtn6aIzgJXYtlJaVFF47wDXCVBAp2_16jpBRZeielu9bTBU_CmNL_boSh10WGX2mw1UT013m9acjQe3NfIcvHP8kIVrwW_2aVjTJePFN2nhr2_5C_srE9H0rmxLy0wsg88DXp4Up2dak/s581/Boudicca+Author+Photo.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="509" data-original-width="581" height="407" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPtn6aIzgJXYtlJaVFF47wDXCVBAp2_16jpBRZeielu9bTBU_CmNL_boSh10WGX2mw1UT013m9acjQe3NfIcvHP8kIVrwW_2aVjTJePFN2nhr2_5C_srE9H0rmxLy0wsg88DXp4Up2dak/w465-h407/Boudicca+Author+Photo.jpg" width="465" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> Author Jan Surasky</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">M<span style="text-align: justify;">ultiple award-winning author Jan Surasky has worked as a book reviewer, movie reviewer and entertainment writer for a daily San Francisco newspaper. Her many articles and short stories have been published in national and regional magazines and newspapers. She has also taught writing at a literary center and a number of area colleges. She is a graduate of Cornell University with graduate courses in English literature at the University of Rochester. She lives in upstate New York. </span><span style="text-align: left;">Her
first novel </span><i style="text-align: left;">Rage Against the Dying Light </i><span face="" style="text-align: left;">was a finalist in the Eric
Hoffer Book Awards. Her website is </span><a href="http://www.jansurasky.com/" style="text-align: left;">www.jansurasky.com</a><span face="" style="text-align: left;">.</span></span></div><p></p>Mirella Patzerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14928081276314403541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7660357194650222850.post-53836186516752594792020-08-24T00:00:00.018-06:002022-06-29T14:37:40.636-06:00Martha Graham's Cold War<span id="docs-internal-guid-25f1e816-7fff-1657-9b31-70cbb8515e59"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFD_ciCNrBQ25TACHFS8Fd44X5wRCTTzf2nW9jpG9FYtTXU_eOV4l8ActpUB3cwP-cEecmRL6gaTTMxCzou7SEPpO4dzKJ0qPdOc4ara2IIAIVYsQHSDLkmQ2V4-XAGYIcYLEvWCoPhqk/s934/Martha+Graham+2.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="934" data-original-width="750" height="410" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFD_ciCNrBQ25TACHFS8Fd44X5wRCTTzf2nW9jpG9FYtTXU_eOV4l8ActpUB3cwP-cEecmRL6gaTTMxCzou7SEPpO4dzKJ0qPdOc4ara2IIAIVYsQHSDLkmQ2V4-XAGYIcYLEvWCoPhqk/w329-h410/Martha+Graham+2.png" width="329" /></a></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Martha Graham, sometimes referred to as the “Picasso of modern dance”, was the first dancer to perform at the White House in 1937 and travel abroad as an officially launched Cold War cultural ambassador. Representing every seated president from Dwight D. Eisenhower through Ronald Reagan, Graham performed politics in the global field for over thirty years during the Cold War, through to the fall of the Berlin Wall with a planned tour to the USSR under George H.W. Bush, which was never completed. Her contributions to US cultural diplomacy efforts and ability to forge human connections make her a fascinating figure in both political history and dance history.</span></span></div><p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Although Graham worked with the men in the White House, she relied on the power of the women in the wings. Starting with Eleanor Roosevelt, who invited Graham to perform for her husband and their guests and then wrote about Graham for her nationally syndicated column, to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Ladybird Johnson, Betty Ford and Barbara Bush, Graham’s relationships and intimate friendships supported her diplomatic work. In addition, Graham forged great works with the financial support of female philanthropists including Bethsabée de Rothschild, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, and Lila Acheson Wallace. Although she defiantly proclaimed, “I am not a liberationist” and refused to participate in feminist movements, she relied on powerful women like herself.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHjN0cnz5PiU_bhHhNWBysktP23NslpbNqoMe5REnpseaQuBFvuY8KVNUUBizYeMjJ_PQPwk2unx-hEX4A4F24bygGiJdUz92qatJ3BONC3TGu-qwvCPYo_eaxIsf6Fu7MH7d_INCdslI/s1166/Martha+Graham+4.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="904" data-original-width="1166" height="254" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHjN0cnz5PiU_bhHhNWBysktP23NslpbNqoMe5REnpseaQuBFvuY8KVNUUBizYeMjJ_PQPwk2unx-hEX4A4F24bygGiJdUz92qatJ3BONC3TGu-qwvCPYo_eaxIsf6Fu7MH7d_INCdslI/w328-h254/Martha+Graham+4.png" width="328" /></a></span></div><p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After beginning her training at the Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts in the 1910s and becoming integrated into the school as an instructor and then as a dancer in their touring company, she moved on to create her own foundational dance technique, which remains one of the staples of modern dance training today. Born as a product of the global modernist impulse in the early twentieth-century, Graham’s technique used the pelvic contraction – weeping,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">laughing, breathing in ecstasy – as the source of all movement.</span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By 1926, Graham had formed her company of women, and in 1930 took center stage as</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">an American modernist with her piece, </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klF8Ob8bRSE" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lamentation</span></a><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. She then went on to find a distinctly</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">American dance, mining the power of the West with her work </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX--wIO82FY&amp;t=148s" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Frontier</span></a><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (1935). Along with the iconic work of what the State Department called “Americana” with </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmgaKGSxQVw" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Appalachian Spring</span></a><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, many works from the 1940s were based on Greek myths, with strong central female characters, such as Oedipus’ Jocasta in </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_63g5TICeY" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Night Journey</span></a><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. She expressed the deepest of human emotions and joyous love in </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-h2IAkS_xJY&amp;t=28s" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Diversion of Angels</span></a><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. With this combination of works, Graham became a representative of the nation and showed its sophistication as she tapped into “hearts and minds” to win the Cold War.</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3CRD4Vl-PJG7U8rPvLglriCo4R9p6HP2b_rbrpSUyzEMYwvpbzPM-K_oghpB053AAf7mCNIezrA1ewd9fgd2VPUrAyCzFwf-2O32ZAiL4yxPfCc6Brg3sSDoixLfdj1gzvw8QtyWuJoM/s1162/Martha+Graham+3.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="898" data-original-width="1162" height="254" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3CRD4Vl-PJG7U8rPvLglriCo4R9p6HP2b_rbrpSUyzEMYwvpbzPM-K_oghpB053AAf7mCNIezrA1ewd9fgd2VPUrAyCzFwf-2O32ZAiL4yxPfCc6Brg3sSDoixLfdj1gzvw8QtyWuJoM/w328-h254/Martha+Graham+3.png" width="328" /></a></span></div><p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In 1956, during the Cold War, Graham embarked on the first of many international tours as a cultural ambassador for the US government. Bringing along dance works with strong themes of frontiers and classic Americana, she performed for the elite classes in “domino nations” and promoted American ideals of freedom and democracy. These works were all instilled with her unique dance form, which was completely different from the classical ballets the Soviet Union was sending for international performances. Thus, US scholars asserted that modernism could have emerged only from the “land of the free,” and not from totalitarian states such as Germany or Japan, and certainly not the Soviet Union. Although Graham herself claimed to be apolitical, she became a valuable export for US cultural diplomacy for many years.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF_-kBfpdujH1fS8EVFfGpp2JPwTGRqm3gQJ-dnG1yITnNoAx1k7jraVaBiPJ6Y64LWm6lZZJWv81jYD_8muTLOjYjcwezy6sIX-V8kVagVhyxcbUjOR2vXfuX_lHN2WEH0v6CTINLm2M/s1102/Martha+Graham+1.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="898" data-original-width="1102" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF_-kBfpdujH1fS8EVFfGpp2JPwTGRqm3gQJ-dnG1yITnNoAx1k7jraVaBiPJ6Y64LWm6lZZJWv81jYD_8muTLOjYjcwezy6sIX-V8kVagVhyxcbUjOR2vXfuX_lHN2WEH0v6CTINLm2M/w328-h267/Martha+Graham+1.png" width="328" /></a></span></div><p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Graham continued traveling and performing for US administrations until the Cold War began to come to a close in 1989-1991. Although there was a tour planned under President Bush to the bloc nations (Poland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Russia), it never came to fruition. Martha Graham passed away in 1991, the same year the Berlin Wall came down. Her legacy, nevertheless, continues today in the form of the Martha Graham Dance Company in New York City, which continues to perform Graham’s works all over the world, honoring her many contributions to modern dance and cultural diplomacy.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix1Kum9wpC31sZ3X4UNj0plvt_ldlYtEq-s5-2LWf005guezG_LXn3_4dkeezhWNID2XOC1EoV2vKqqzgA7sSdRc1mDTKPwLlWA4cojCliCnqlUMniUtw8vF4RCVc0PaIcfQsh6cxqxGg/s499/41ez3l11AAL._SX351_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_+%25281%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="353" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix1Kum9wpC31sZ3X4UNj0plvt_ldlYtEq-s5-2LWf005guezG_LXn3_4dkeezhWNID2XOC1EoV2vKqqzgA7sSdRc1mDTKPwLlWA4cojCliCnqlUMniUtw8vF4RCVc0PaIcfQsh6cxqxGg/s0/41ez3l11AAL._SX351_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_+%25281%2529.jpg" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Martha-Grahams-Cold-War-Diplomacy/dp/0190610360/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Martha+graham%27s+cold+war&qid=1574031612&sr=8-1">Amazon</a></div></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">The above bio on Martha Graham was written by author Victoria Phillips</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinOpX2KAPZszxs5qK59-lmrhqy3urGZH6gmzSbS9y-jWb9ZD2pQXxlZTFHOjVQ0SmyVE_8tA34wHWIGcbtdATcXalBnvQ1Flyy0hdTDi4280qGwHQCDr0iLd9QjWaTZ994LnSg5UmvQ_k/s2048/9+Headshot+Color.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1511" height="328" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinOpX2KAPZszxs5qK59-lmrhqy3urGZH6gmzSbS9y-jWb9ZD2pQXxlZTFHOjVQ0SmyVE_8tA34wHWIGcbtdATcXalBnvQ1Flyy0hdTDi4280qGwHQCDr0iLd9QjWaTZ994LnSg5UmvQ_k/w242-h328/9+Headshot+Color.jpg" width="242" /></span></a></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div></span><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.victoria-phillips.global/"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">https://www.victoria-phillips.global/</span></a></div>Mirella Patzerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14928081276314403541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7660357194650222850.post-84023828480144026092020-08-17T00:00:00.001-06:002022-06-29T14:38:04.799-06:00The Aloha Spirit - The Life of Carmen Dolores Jaime Medeiros Rodrigues<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "bookman old style", serif; font-size: 12pt;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfXTrAhg6Biy_MIUQCr_2jxBR5TcQwYmVIjU0Gu_QMP3cUy2ZQFipumW3EpzCWTyYaArrAT4YeXoR-K6Hg8EF7MHPI47Gj3vs-Yw5SN5vog9BNJeOkbr3u3BWneiRGZOW4RHGzuszZC64/s2048/Carmen.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfXTrAhg6Biy_MIUQCr_2jxBR5TcQwYmVIjU0Gu_QMP3cUy2ZQFipumW3EpzCWTyYaArrAT4YeXoR-K6Hg8EF7MHPI47Gj3vs-Yw5SN5vog9BNJeOkbr3u3BWneiRGZOW4RHGzuszZC64/w300-h400/Carmen.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">My husband’s
grandmother, featured in my new novel <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Aloha-Spirit-Novel-Linda-Ulleseit-ebook/dp/B0837LCGP8"><span style="color: #1155cc;">THE ALOHA SPIRIT</span></a><span>,</span><span> </span><span>was an amazing woman. She loved to laugh, and
she loved family. Her home was always open to anyone who wanted to be there. I
know that if I ever arrived for dinner with ten strangers, she would make room
at the table for all of them. That spirit of giving and loving has always
embodied the aloha spirit for me, especially after learning of her early life.</span></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Carmen was born
on Kauai in 1915. All that remains of her birthplace now is the U.S. Post
Office in Mekaweli. Her parents had emigrated from Spain. In Hawaii, Carmen’s
father was a dairyman. She had an older brother, but her mother passed away in
childbirth with her third child. When Carmen was still small, her father moved
the family to Honolulu. Sometime after that, he decided to take his son and go
to the mainland to look for work. He left Carmen with a large Hawaiian family.
Her children and grandchildren were never told much about her time with this
family, only that she was treated poorly.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">As soon as she
could, Carmen went to live with her friend, Rachel Galedrige. Rachel had a lot
of sons, so Carmen became somewhat of a sister and a daughter. The two women
remained friends for the rest of their lives.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">When she was
sixteen, Carmen married Manuel Medieros, a man she’d met on the beach at
Hanauma Bay. Manuel was the youngest child of Joe and Jessie Medeiros,
emigrants from Portugal who had eleven children. Joe had left his wife and
family, but Jessie owned four houses in the Punch Bowl area of Honolulu. The
entire family gathered at Jessie’s house for lunch every day. What a raucous
crowd that must have been! Carmen, though, had lived with a large family
before. From the Hawaiians, she no doubt learned Hawaiian superstitions and
customs just like she learned Catholic superstitions and customs from her
husband’s family.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Carmen’s life
still wasn’t settled. Her husband had a good job as a power plant engineer for
Hawaii Electric, but he had a violent temper. Carmen’s oldest daughter says
Manuel abused his wife and became an alcoholic. By the age of 23, Carmen had
three daughters. As a Catholic in the 1930s, she could not divorce. Help came
from another source.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span>Earl Rodrigues
was her nephew. His mother was Manuel’s oldest sister, which made him close in
age to Carmen. He teased her by calling her Auntie, which she said made her
feel old. Earl had an irrepressible sense of humor. He was a free spirit who
often cut school to surf Waikiki, climbing palm trees to get coconuts to eat,
or buying </span><i>pipikaula</i><span>, Hawaiian beef
jerky. Earl protected Carmen and her daughters, and she fell in love with him.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">When Pearl
Harbor was attacked in 1941, Earl was at work as a shipfitter. Carmen and the
rest of the family watched from their home in the hills of Honolulu as the
harbor burned. Carmen must have been frantic for Earl as well as scared for her
daughters’ safety. Six months after the attack, Carmen and her daughters left
Honolulu for California. They zigzagged across the Pacific Ocean on a Navy
ship. Arriving in San Francisco, they lived for a time with Carmen’s brother
and his wife. Manuel sold their things in Hawaii and joined them in California
a few months later. Those months as a single mother, without the support of the
extended family she had in Honolulu, must have been hard. Even so, Carmen must
have learned she could manage independently.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Manuel, Carmen,
and the girls settled in San Jose. Manuel returned to his drinking and flitted
through jobs. After the war ended, family from Hawaii visited constantly.
Earl’s parents came to visit with Earl and his siblings. Earl was once more
where he belonged, protecting the woman he loved. He built himself an apartment
in back of Carmen’s house when the rest of his family returned to Hawaii. They
must have discussed a future together, but both were still bound by her
marriage vows to Manuel in a Catholic church. Manuel drifted in and out of
their lives like another visitor.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span>I’m going to
stop there because to tell you any more would ruin the novel for you! The basic
outline of Carmen’s life is all I had to go on when I wrote </span><i>The Aloha Spirit.</i><span> My goal was to explore
how she could endure constant setbacks yet still emerge with a heart full of
aloha. I hope you enjoy her story.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYPs9qClCJqm1VRw2NjoB7HbzokNyaVOAxP-4b6d3dDmAS5nQ5oDE6t6Ale37VXD9PCOIhaHPbh7-H9p2nMgdcs9Qot08rfjYGVzRZocqG6ezsHfj-JfmfhIpQHkFPdbhYp6msT2fO7u0/s2048/51101782.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1325" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYPs9qClCJqm1VRw2NjoB7HbzokNyaVOAxP-4b6d3dDmAS5nQ5oDE6t6Ale37VXD9PCOIhaHPbh7-H9p2nMgdcs9Qot08rfjYGVzRZocqG6ezsHfj-JfmfhIpQHkFPdbhYp6msT2fO7u0/w259-h400/51101782.jpg" width="259" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; text-align: center;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Linda Ulleseit<o:p></o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-hyphenate: auto;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqEpjsagnng9YTNWEiV-vdNihBAsM_x2Xj5J-ObBjbQqE2shwwN45FPCFMxEU5_WSxY8M7_DxMmNrpv1cWE0foQxBGHoX5SPGd-YLDBqPNPHksf795JbxMCsdjF_Lkenw5rGttobY-q98/s640/4624551.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqEpjsagnng9YTNWEiV-vdNihBAsM_x2Xj5J-ObBjbQqE2shwwN45FPCFMxEU5_WSxY8M7_DxMmNrpv1cWE0foQxBGHoX5SPGd-YLDBqPNPHksf795JbxMCsdjF_Lkenw5rGttobY-q98/s320/4624551.jpg" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-hyphenate: auto;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Author of <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Under-Almond-Trees-Linda-Ulleseit/dp/149925220X" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc;">Under the Almond Trees</span></a></i><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-hyphenate: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Coming soon from She Writes Press: </span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Aloha-Spirit-Novel-Linda-Ulleseit-ebook/dp/B0837LCGP8" target="_blank"><i><span style="color: #1155cc;">The</span></i><span style="color: #1155cc;"> <i>Aloha Spirit</i></span></a></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-hyphenate: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Author Website: </span><a href="http://ulleseit.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc;">ulleseit.com</span></a></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "bookman old style", serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></p>Mirella Patzerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14928081276314403541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7660357194650222850.post-62925519929344604972020-08-03T00:00:00.003-06:002022-06-29T14:38:30.689-06:00Edith of Wessex - The Confessor's Wife<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang=""><font face=""></font></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><font face=""><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqHKFZg-B5YRla7SfyTFIGqcsd7AlKfZdD13U_OIKe2aEUplQY6dGlaMRkbizRRXtS7YIeNzKkZWvE9nwe8UTtEpO6kmZj1Bs6J6jS9BptReeCsis-7tAXu-f9Uf3FwMgv_m9SfIi4_yI/s163/Edith_z_Wessexu.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="156" data-original-width="163" height="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqHKFZg-B5YRla7SfyTFIGqcsd7AlKfZdD13U_OIKe2aEUplQY6dGlaMRkbizRRXtS7YIeNzKkZWvE9nwe8UTtEpO6kmZj1Bs6J6jS9BptReeCsis-7tAXu-f9Uf3FwMgv_m9SfIi4_yI/w204-h195/Edith_z_Wessexu.png" width="204" /></a></font></div><font face="inherit" size="4">In a time when barren wives were customarily cast aside, how did Edith not only manage to stay married to King Edward the Confessor, but also become his closest advisor, promote her family to the highest offices in the land, AND help raise her brother to the throne? She was obviously highly regarded in her day: she is one of only three women depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry. And highly educated, speaking several languages and having studied grammar, mathematics, rhetoric, weaving, and embroidery, among other things. </font><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span><font face="inherit" size="4">With her family’s constant betrayal, her mother-in-law’s condescension, and the upheaval facing the country, Edith’s path is complicated and, at times, treacherous, and her position by no means secure. Still, she both survived AND thrived. Truly a fascinating woman! </font></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang=""><font face="inherit" size="4"><br /></font></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><font><span lang="" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"></span></font></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpzhg8Q2IjrbYgATOWf5rXcKZKpOBZBbVTfQKIKTVVrbh9ZXmSkiI6XHfHE7NPUib3p_uEcCMLmt6akCam1UygARvswyu7zB81UjQ3jXZb_0fQVYiTZGsAMp6KOFvXRaXhLP93t9C5R68/s1200/EZcUql2WkAAJ8Zo.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><font face="inherit" size="4"><img border="0" data-original-height="1168" data-original-width="1200" height="389" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpzhg8Q2IjrbYgATOWf5rXcKZKpOBZBbVTfQKIKTVVrbh9ZXmSkiI6XHfHE7NPUib3p_uEcCMLmt6akCam1UygARvswyu7zB81UjQ3jXZb_0fQVYiTZGsAMp6KOFvXRaXhLP93t9C5R68/w400-h389/EZcUql2WkAAJ8Zo.jpg" width="400" /></font></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><font face="inherit" size="4"><br /></font></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: center;"><span lang=""><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://t.co/Z5XqWduovD?amp%3D1&source=gmail&ust=1593451809376000&usg=AFQjCNGyYyEgG5uWlM9XcXW81vKbPVZTKg" dir="ltr" href="https://t.co/Z5XqWduovD?amp=1" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1b95e0; display: inline; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.3125; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; text-decoration-line: none; white-space: pre-wrap;" target="_blank" title="http://mybook.to/ConfessorsWife"><font face="inherit" size="4"><span color="inherit" style="border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 1.3125; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; white-space: inherit;">http://</span>mybook.to/<wbr></wbr>ConfessorsWife</font></a></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang=""><font face="inherit" size="4"><br /></font></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyAzLWuBvnL37MrM4VDKbgYxJbAy_93Rvql-Z9cfQbPNX8nws4yFuaW3PgNRIBxXezOjIdOALBxSgkJRmii7kSBcvmMOIyqT20t-cTlU59OF7WmYK9WxjEn0KPqLTorBI-8OGHPGufxBI/s230/me-author.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><font face="inherit" size="4"><img border="0" data-original-height="230" data-original-width="230" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyAzLWuBvnL37MrM4VDKbgYxJbAy_93Rvql-Z9cfQbPNX8nws4yFuaW3PgNRIBxXezOjIdOALBxSgkJRmii7kSBcvmMOIyqT20t-cTlU59OF7WmYK9WxjEn0KPqLTorBI-8OGHPGufxBI/w288-h288/me-author.jpg" width="288" /></font></a></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: center;"><font face="inherit" size="4"><br /></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: center;"><span lang=""><font face="inherit" size="4">Author</font></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: center;"><span lang=""><font face="inherit" size="4">Kelly Evans</font></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: center;"><font face="inherit" size="4"><br /></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="" style="line-height: 18.4px;"><font face="inherit" size="4">Born in Canada of Scottish extraction, Kelly Evans graduated in History and English from McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. After graduation, she moved to the UK where she worked in the financial sector. While in London Kelly continued her studies in history, focussing on Medieval History. </font></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span lang="" style="line-height: 18.4px;"><font face="inherit" size="4"> </font></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="" style="line-height: 18.4px;"><font face="inherit" size="4">Kelly now lives in Toronto, Canada with her husband Max and two rescue cats. Her books include The Confessor’s Wife, The Northern Queen, The Mortecarni, and Revelation, all set in Medieval Europe. Kelly's first children's book will be released soon, a historical ghost story, as will her first young adult historical fiction novel, about Elizabeth I. When not writing, Kelly enjoys reading, playing medieval recorder, and watching really bad old horror and sci-fi movies, preferably with lots of popcorn. </font></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span lang="" style="line-height: 18.4px;"><font face="inherit" size="4"> </font></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit" size="4"><font><span lang="" style="line-height: 18.4px;">Website: </span><span lang=""><span style="color: #954f72; line-height: 18.4px;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.kellyaevans.com/&source=gmail&ust=1593451809376000&usg=AFQjCNEl_ksufuqlEKbkqgJXGQDr5dZt3g" href="https://www.kellyaevans.com/" style="color: #954f72;" target="_blank">https://www.<wbr></wbr>kellyaevans.com</a></span></span></font><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><span lang="" style="line-height: 18.4px;"></span></font></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang=""><font face="inherit" size="4"><br /></font></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><div><br /></div>Mirella Patzerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14928081276314403541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7660357194650222850.post-21195067607811293302020-07-27T00:00:00.005-06:002022-06-29T14:38:59.236-06:00George Sand (Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin) 1804-1876<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><font face=""></font></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: center;"><font face=""><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIw9gh8yODOyLH5_KLvDwmflBfQDvTQ-kiOryaD0n9v5cH1hxDBCy0plTV3z2cxzFDqe55d8mAxvfIQ43B-I_zzak9F3b24y4OYVeo1cHa_phxIxEj1h_DGwQm1cAJVGSCH3BeLxqNZcI/s204/George+Sand.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="204" data-original-width="170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIw9gh8yODOyLH5_KLvDwmflBfQDvTQ-kiOryaD0n9v5cH1hxDBCy0plTV3z2cxzFDqe55d8mAxvfIQ43B-I_zzak9F3b24y4OYVeo1cHa_phxIxEj1h_DGwQm1cAJVGSCH3BeLxqNZcI/d/George+Sand.jpg" /></a></font></div><font face="inherit" size="4">George Sand (née Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin) (1804-1876) shone brightly as one of very few 19th century female authors. Born into a world where only men could be writers, she often imitated them in dress and manner by wearing pants and smoking cigars. She relentlessly pursued of her wants: writing, lovers, and family. Along with novels, she wrote urging reforms to better the lives of the poor and working class, gain suffrage for men and women, and capture equal rights for women. <u></u><u></u></font><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit" size="4"><br /></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit" size="4">Early in her life, she inherited her grandmother’s estate, Nohant, in Central France. Married only once, she took many lovers, including Frederic Chopin, with whom she had a nine-year affair. They shared a passion for the arts—he for the piano and she for literature—although their discussions traveled far and wide. That bond kept them together well beyond Chopin’s “usefulness” as a satisfying companion due to his debilitating tuberculosis. Although their breakup was harsh and long in coming, Sand tended to him while together as she would any child. Toward the end, she resented the encumbrance and freely admitted to several dalliances. </font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit" size="4"><br /></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRxYEf26MZ6jIKVyik1maPS1wdyJI9DFfS_Hai2Q6K6KVZMN1HZOROlty2ThyphenhyphenFT8jhTocT7U6aoquLQwJ5ygMEkEU8UfcqdwSQlVfqSwUbFDUxaDFUvQWZpKz9GhC5HHyYCEa_q14dofQ/s254/Sand+and+Chopin.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><font face="inherit" size="4"><img border="0" data-original-height="199" data-original-width="254" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRxYEf26MZ6jIKVyik1maPS1wdyJI9DFfS_Hai2Q6K6KVZMN1HZOROlty2ThyphenhyphenFT8jhTocT7U6aoquLQwJ5ygMEkEU8UfcqdwSQlVfqSwUbFDUxaDFUvQWZpKz9GhC5HHyYCEa_q14dofQ/d/Sand+and+Chopin.jpg" /></font></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit" size="4"><b>“</b><span>When he was sick unto death in Majorca, he composed music imbued with the very fragrance of Paradise. I am so used to seeing him lost in the clouds that it doesn’t seem to me as if life or death means anything to him. He himself really doesn’t know on what planet he is living, and has no awareness of life as we conceive and experience it,” said Sand.</span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit" size="4"><br /></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px;"><font face="inherit" size="4"><u></u><u></u></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit" size="4">She wrote every night from midnight to six a.m., slept till noon, then took care of her children. Such a dedicated schedule resulted in many novels, plays, an autobiography, political tracts, newspaper articles, and several volumes of personal correspondence. She risked societal ridicule for doing what she wanted but is still revered in France today. Independent, gifted, and willful, she brooked no nonsense when it came to her friendships or criticism of her works. </font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit" size="4"><br /></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px;"><font face="inherit" size="4"><u></u><u></u></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit" size="4">In <i>The Education of Delhomme</i>, George Sand is the monarch’s <i>bête noire </i>because he believes her writings are fomenting rebellion among the working class. So great is the king’s fear of further turmoil that he orders his henchman to hire the main character, Beaulieu Delhomme, to spy on her. The enmity between Delhomme and Sand springs from other reasons, but her values of fairness and an unerring focus on aiding the oppressed help her overcome such discord.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px;"><font face="inherit" size="4"><u></u><u></u></font></p></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit" size="4"><br /></font></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit" size="4"><br /></font></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-kjt5HbBKqhAxlijvcToTHqx7vHKw6hBIYwyKctnfRpcRckGvPPWoS49NWhAVOtTucrIl2UK-luMBcnuCsnzzatlQPeelYprPwP_hfNoNAgSJCf3VVB1u-r18_vzRlT7ftEbDof-qQAk/s1280/Book.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><font face="inherit" size="4"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="853" height="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-kjt5HbBKqhAxlijvcToTHqx7vHKw6hBIYwyKctnfRpcRckGvPPWoS49NWhAVOtTucrIl2UK-luMBcnuCsnzzatlQPeelYprPwP_hfNoNAgSJCf3VVB1u-r18_vzRlT7ftEbDof-qQAk/w333-h500/Book.jpg" width="333" /></font></a></div></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit" size="4"><br /></font></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: center;"><font face="inherit" size="4">This title is scheduled for release on Nov. 17, 2020.</font></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: center;"><font face="inherit" size="4"><br /></font></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: center;"><font face="inherit" size="4"><a href="http://authl.it/bno">Amazon </a></font></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: center;"><font face="inherit" size="4"><br /></font></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: center;"><font face="inherit" size="4"><b>Author</b></font></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: center;"><font face="inherit" size="4"><b>Nancy Burkhalter</b></font></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit" size="4"><br /></font></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit" size="4"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgD0u_6Tu9mllbZjzQz67zT0cIklFRpb5hHCel53mBlQFbzP2r6wcIU9iKxboo08BwFRn62PUvFkXsW3CpyQGjFac0baLswDLG_HI0SdjlTqofSp0WR7q0RTC6ppuALYuZue0aLHlfNj00/s1280/img063+%25281%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="961" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgD0u_6Tu9mllbZjzQz67zT0cIklFRpb5hHCel53mBlQFbzP2r6wcIU9iKxboo08BwFRn62PUvFkXsW3CpyQGjFac0baLswDLG_HI0SdjlTqofSp0WR7q0RTC6ppuALYuZue0aLHlfNj00/s320/img063+%25281%2529.jpg" /></a></div></font></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit" size="4"><br /></font></div><div style="background-color: white;"><p style="color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 6px; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit" size="4">Nancy Burkhalter is an educator, writer, journalist, linguist and piano tuner. She holds a master’s degree in journalism and English education as well as a doctorate in linguistics from the University of New Mexico. She has taught composition for many years in the U.S., Germany, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, and Russia. Her overseas work led to an interest in comparative education, especially critical thinking. Both observations and research resulted in her book and blog, Critical Thinking Now. In 2019, she was a recipient of Go Back, Give Back, a fellowship through the State Department to train teachers in St. Petersburg, Russia.</font></p><p style="color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 6px; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit" size="4">Burkhalter’s upcoming novel, <i>The Education of Delhomme: Chopin, Sand, and La France,</i> tells the story of Beaulieu Delhomme, a fictional piano tuner for the famed French pianist Frédéric Chopin.</font></p><div style="color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit" size="4">Nancy Burkhalter resides in Edmonds, Washington.</font></div><div style="color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit" size="4"><br /></font></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><div style="color: #222222; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit" size="4">Purchase Link: </font></div><div style="color: #222222; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit" size="4"><br /></font></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><font color="#222222" face="inherit" size="4"><a href="https://www.historythroughfiction.com/delhomme">https://www.historythroughfiction.com/delhomme</a></font></div><div style="color: #222222; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit" size="4"><br /></font></div><div style="color: #222222; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit" size="4">History Through Fiction: <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.historythroughfiction.com/store/the-education-of-delhomme-chopin-sand-amp-la-france&source=gmail&ust=1593451817821000&usg=AFQjCNGgPA_RZLgoS9JkmGmpQhGYTcHR-g" href="https://www.historythroughfiction.com/store/the-education-of-delhomme-chopin-sand-amp-la-france" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">https://www.<wbr></wbr>historythroughfiction.com/<wbr></wbr>store/the-education-of-<wbr></wbr>delhomme-chopin-sand-amp-la-<wbr></wbr>france</a> / <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.historythroughfiction.com/store/the-education-of-delhomme-chopin-sand-amp-la-france-ebook&source=gmail&ust=1593451817821000&usg=AFQjCNEXh5ah5FTcm7F1gE563jwYgDSUTg" href="https://www.historythroughfiction.com/store/the-education-of-delhomme-chopin-sand-amp-la-france-ebook" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">https://www.<wbr></wbr>historythroughfiction.com/<wbr></wbr>store/the-education-of-<wbr></wbr>delhomme-chopin-sand-amp-la-<wbr></wbr>france-ebook</a></font></div><div style="color: #222222; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit" size="4"><br /></font></div><div style="color: #222222; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit" size="4">Amazon: <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/Education-Delhomme-Chopin-Sand-France/dp/1732950857/ref%3Dsr_1_1?dchild%3D1%26keywords%3Dthe%2Beducation%2Bof%2Bdelhomme%26qid%3D1593188255%26sr%3D8-1&source=gmail&ust=1593451817821000&usg=AFQjCNEKOWH26WpPvfIeTbTCQwlLBOO3gg" href="https://www.amazon.com/Education-Delhomme-Chopin-Sand-France/dp/1732950857/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=the+education+of+delhomme&qid=1593188255&sr=8-1" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">https://www.amazon.<wbr></wbr>com/Education-Delhomme-Chopin-<wbr></wbr>Sand-France/dp/1732950857/ref=<wbr></wbr>sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=the+<wbr></wbr>education+of+delhomme&qid=<wbr></wbr>1593188255&sr=8-1</a></font></div><div style="color: #222222; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit" size="4"><br /></font></div><div style="color: #222222; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit" size="4"><br /></font></div></div><div style="color: #222222; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><font face=""><br /></font></span></div></div>Mirella Patzerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14928081276314403541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7660357194650222850.post-61773338746764331472020-07-20T00:00:00.001-06:002020-07-25T10:04:56.288-06:00Those Not-So Wicked Sporting Ladies of the Wicked West - Pearl DeVere<div style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.3333px; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit" size="3"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: 13.3333px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibvbHVgQyAm8F685QdRwiAulyl1wsbDn8BY9s_mnogXd4L4ok03hY1dSK9ogMq7pwt4JXjM5Tg8orM3ikaIxc-LrZXlKRQ1TXk7IGhauhjqnnH1rmdJlpsw7dSjfOXUEMyFAQ5mKHs_vY/s2076/img063+%25281%2529.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2076" data-original-width="1470" height="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibvbHVgQyAm8F685QdRwiAulyl1wsbDn8BY9s_mnogXd4L4ok03hY1dSK9ogMq7pwt4JXjM5Tg8orM3ikaIxc-LrZXlKRQ1TXk7IGhauhjqnnH1rmdJlpsw7dSjfOXUEMyFAQ5mKHs_vY/w354-h500/img063+%25281%2529.jpg" title="Pearl Devere" width="354" /></a></div>A hundred years ago they were known as soiled doves, frail sisters, bawds, painted ladies, scarlet women, <i>fille de joie</i>, molls, courtesans, concubines, sporting woman, denizens, strumpets, adventuresses, working girls, tarts, unfortunates, the demimonde, the tenderloin, shady ladies, jezebels, harridans and harlots, among many other names, and more often than not, were residents of a brothel, red-light district, parlor house, seraglio, hog ranch, crib, harem, the Line, whorehouse, bordello, or a bawdy house. Many of these ladies of the night had fallen unintentionally – and many intentionally -- into the sporting life as it was typically known, wishing to obscure their true names, origins and backstories, making it virtually impossible to ever reliably unravel their individual and occasionally, lurid histories.</font></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit" size="3"><br /></font></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In most western frontier towns where men significantly outnumbered women -- a ratio of at least 20 to 1 and typically far greater -- prostitutes were considered an essential, though certainly not warmly embraced, necessity by their conservative female counterparts. Decent married women were willing to put up with prostitutes to keep those randy single men away from their own otherwise puritanical daughters until those men managed to firmly affix a wedding ring on their daughters’ hand. All a young girl had was her reputation and, as was well known, if that evaporated even by innuendo, she was most likely ruined for the rest of her life as borne out in literature by Jane Austen, Henry James, Edith Wharton and countless other authors of the day.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Once a woman had crossed over that line, society tended to lump loose women into a single mold. Certainly all of them had to maintain a shrewd edge, but they were quite diverse in terms of temperament, education, worldliness, scientific and entrepreneurial endeavors. </span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Of these so-called fallen women, it’s interesting to note that the madams, or owners, of many brothels, were wealthy, powerful and quite influential individuals whose brothels became centers of community, arts and culture in western towns. Some of the most powerful madams were serious patronesses of art, music and education, as well as being philanthropists and major real estate moguls.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Being a madam was one of the few actual “careers” afforded a woman in the 19</span><sup style="font-family: inherit;">th</sup><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Century -- the earliest prototype we have of a career woman, in fact! Madams (and other wealthy prostitutes) donated money to charities, hospitals, churches, schools, cared for the impoverished and sick, and housed the homeless when no one else could be bothered. They were involved with helping fund many cities’ initial infrastructures of gas, telephone and electric lines as well as owning mining claims, stocks, investing in municipal bonds, even jumping into the fray to keep banks afloat during challenging financial years. There was a huge demand for their money, but the women themselves, as well as their children, were forever shunned by society.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">According to June Willson Read’s biography</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">“Frontier Madam: The Life of Dell Burke, Lady of Lusk”,</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">huge financial contributions by Dell Burke, a madam in Lusk, Wyoming, created infrastructures such as railroads, waterworks and electric lines through that part of the state. Several biographers have mentioned Josephine “Chicago Joe” Hensley (or Airey), a madam in Helena, Montana who had a weekly payroll of $1,000 for numerous businesses she owned outside that of her brothel’s, paid hefty taxes on more than $200,000 in real estate holdings, and also contributed huge sums to many charities and political candidates, although she was never allowed to attend any of their meetings or even be introduced to anyone involved in those important enterprises. According to Anne Seagraves’ book</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">“Soiled Doves: Prostitution in the Early West</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">”, “these enterprising women, who played an important role within their communities, were never invited to join or attend a commercial club. They were not accepted by society, and in most cases, were not even protected by the law due to their profession.”</span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mattie Silks, a wealthy Denver brothel owner, claimed that she had become a madam simply as a successful business venture and that she had never worked as a prostitute. This claim was quite interestingly never disputed. And Georgia Lee, a Fairbanks, Alaska prostitute, was quietly involved in funding many civic affairs and co-founded the Fairbanks branch of the Humane Society according to “</span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Good Time Girls of the Alaska-Yukon Gold Rush</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">” by Lael Morgan. </span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Another well known beautiful face who was a particular enigma was Etta Place, who for those of us enamored many years ago with Paul Newman and Robert Redford in</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">“Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid”</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">, was either a high-class parlor attraction at Fanny Porter’s infamous house in Hell’s Half Acre in San Antonio, Texas, or she was a sedate schoolteacher in a one-room rural schoolhouse, helping to mastermind many of the infamous duos’ train robberies, something of a Robin Hood operation, according to Michael Rutter’s</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">“Boudoirs to Brothels – the Intimate World of Wild West Women”. </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">A young lady who led an incredibly complex double life, the beautiful Etta Place quite skillfully disappeared without a trace in the early 1900s.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Many prostitutes had exceptional nursing and mid-wife skills, often obtained by necessity, along with vast knowledge of herbs, medicinal concoctions and other healing remedies. Occasionally they were clandestinely called upon to assist a married woman experiencing a difficult childbirth, but that same woman would turn her head the opposite direction afterwards if she encountered the prostitute on the street, refusing to acknowledge an acquaintance. Additionally, women were not allowed any form of birth control (which was often unreliable anyway) an</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">d some prostitutes were quietly skilled abortionists, even aiding “respectable women” who wished to end an ill-timed pregnancy. In the years between 1850 and 1870, one historian estimated that one abortion was performed for every five or six live births in America. </span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Although she later denied it, Margaret Mitchell originally claimed that her fictional character of Belle Watling in “</span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Gone with the Wind</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">” was based on a madam in Lexington, Kentucky known as Belle Brezing, who died just after the movie’s 1939 release. Ms. Mitchell’s husband was from Lexington and familiar with Belle Brezing’s checkered history, including the fact that the woman was quite well known as an excellent nurse. In both the book and the movie, Belle Watling indeed claims to be a nurse and donates a rich purse filled with gold coins to the rapidly failing Confederate cause through Melanie Wilkes, the only married woman within the group willing to be seen accepting such a windfall from one of Atlanta’s most notorious madams.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Pearl DeVere, who was the madam of the Old Homestead brothel in Cripple Creek, Colorado, like so many others of the demimonde, wove multiple stories about her early life that makes it impossible to verify any of the tales. Not even a verifiable photograph of the young woman exists. Born in Evansville, Indiana in 1859 as Eliza Martin into what certainly appears to have been a well-to-do family, exactly what led her into the world of prostitution is somewhat mysterious, based on the many different tales that Pearl herself fabricated over her short life. She arrived in Cripple Creek possibly via Denver, around the time of the 1893 repeal of the Silver Act and set herself up quickly in the “trade” in the newly booming mining town. Her sophistication, remarkable intelligence, and appreciation of fine arts and culture helped her build one of the most influential brothels in the country.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So who was Pearl DeVere? Unless you’re from Colorado, have studied the Cripple Creek gold rush or have actually visited Cripple Creek and maybe participated in the annual Pearl DeVere bed race or some other quaint festival, you’ve probably never even heard of this woman. And, as we’ve so often heard in recent years, history is really just “his” story and rarely also “her” story, particularly with respect to “career” women and their contributions to our past.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mabel Barbee Lee’s memoir</span><i style="font-family: inherit;">, “Cripple Creek Days”</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">, published in 1958, was drawn from her recollections as a very young child having grown up in the region. In the acknowledgements Ms. Lee mentions that one of her neighbor’s names, Molly Letts, was a pseudonym in her book because she had been a former prostitute and even after fifty years had ensued, she refused to let the woman’s reputation be sullied. </span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Without question, however, at age 11, Mabel’s recollections of Pearl DeVere were firmly stamped on her memory, even though Mabel’s timelines appear to be a little fuzzy on occasion. In mining camps very few women had beautiful stylish clothes or jewelry or immodest displays of wealth, certainly very impressionable items for a pre-teen. Pearl was an excellent dress designer and wore her creations perfectly over her marvelously sculpted physique. At age 31 she was a beautiful girl with red hair, bright flashing eyes and a slender build sporting gorgeous tight-fitting clothes and it was said that she never wore the same outfit twice. She was strong-willed, shrewd, very well read, eloquent, and a very smart businesswoman. </span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">According to Janet Lecompte’s introduction in</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">“Emily: The Diary of a Hard-Worked Woman”</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">, a journal by a 42-year-old Denver divorcee: “In 1890 the average working woman in the United States had started to work at age 15 and was now 22, earning less than $6 a week for a 12-hour day. In Denver, 15% of all women worked in 1890, most of them as domestic help, laundresses, or seamstresses, some making as much as $4-$6 per week.” Unlike out East, there were very few factories or mills. A miner’s wages typically brought a working man $3 per day for a nine-hour day. By contrast, a wealthy man booking a stylish young courtesan’s company at the Old Homestead was shelling out $250 for the evening and had to book well in advance! One can easily see the attraction for a young cultured woman such as Pearl to have built such an empire!</span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mabel Barbee Lee goes on to say in her memoir: “Pearl DeVere became my secret sorrow, the heroine of my fondest daydreams, mysterious, fascinating and forbidden.” Even some fifty years afterwards, Mabel vividly recalled hearing a gramophone playing from the Old Homestead’s windows, an expensive toy back in those days, and distinctly remembers the many details of Pearl’s unusual New Orleans’ early jazz style funeral cortege. Accounts of the Old Homestead’s opulent parlor with a telephone, expensive Turkish carpets, chandeliers and the unheard of extravagance of two bathtubs also fill Mabel’s remembrances. These finer houses demanded an almost European-like adherence to order, an essential step towards our country’s slowly working its way towards the civil society we’ve attempted to establish since that time.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Along with so many others of the demimonde, Pearl’s contributions to the economic and political movements of the era were obscured as we’ve followed “his” story through our country’s development. However, such acknowledgement is richly deserved and a sad omission. These enterprising women’s contributions are long forgotten – or in many cases, were never even recognized. But silently, all around us, as our first “career” women, their intriguing legacies live on.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-mlcDtMKqIputDO_5YF8wsOSnmolZ0ybU3uMNF2vkcNClWUQoSiHrh5kt0dlzO1HxD7_SwmsGnf2k5CRxU1YY44CfyxGipoBk8b8J0q8yFzzLZD7e5LeZeNkfd984AryRbFcZxxR_a1Q/s504/HeadStone+%25281%2529.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="378" data-original-width="504" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-mlcDtMKqIputDO_5YF8wsOSnmolZ0ybU3uMNF2vkcNClWUQoSiHrh5kt0dlzO1HxD7_SwmsGnf2k5CRxU1YY44CfyxGipoBk8b8J0q8yFzzLZD7e5LeZeNkfd984AryRbFcZxxR_a1Q/w400-h300/HeadStone+%25281%2529.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit" size="3"> </font><span style="font-family: inherit;">Photos courtesy Charlotte Bumgarner, owner of The Old Homestead Museum, Cripple Creek CO</span></div><div style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit" size="3"> </font></div><div style="background-color: white; margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit" size="3">(1)<span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span>Pearl DeVere’s grave marker – so many admirers originally placed jewelry around the heart-shaped stone that unfortunately the gifts stained the marble and a fence has now been erected around the tombstone to deflect such well-meaning, but destructive additions. Appropriately, however, a pearl necklace remains.</font></div><div style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit" size="3"> </font></div><div style="background-color: white; margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit" size="3">(2)<span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span>Lil Lovell – a beautiful prostitute in Denver who may have originally worked at the Old Homestead according to “<i>Brothels, Bordellos, and Bad Girls - Prostitution in Colorado, 1860-1930”</i> written by Jan MacKell Collins.</font></div><div style="background-color: white; margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit" size="3"><br /></font></div><div style="background-color: white; margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit" size="3">The above biography was written by Mim </font>Eichman, the author of A Sparrow Alone.<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div><div style="background-color: white; margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit" size="3"><br /></font></div><div style="background-color: white; margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSKXwhr0xBw_QmJ6_QUo_HbOC79puGR_sclNAZl21uhzm1ben0wg6ASkCX-2GGKgz45nIiagiiF2UJQxG0mQtDNhOt2JJUVQNxCJOynOqDXPmc1gvVtrp8U86MbgijwCVH6B-eA-nzxuk/s2626/A+Sparrow+Alone+Cover-01+%25281%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2626" data-original-width="1726" height="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSKXwhr0xBw_QmJ6_QUo_HbOC79puGR_sclNAZl21uhzm1ben0wg6ASkCX-2GGKgz45nIiagiiF2UJQxG0mQtDNhOt2JJUVQNxCJOynOqDXPmc1gvVtrp8U86MbgijwCVH6B-eA-nzxuk/w329-h500/A+Sparrow+Alone+Cover-01+%25281%2529.jpg" width="329" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://authl.it/bnn">Amazon</a><br /></div><font face="inherit" size="3"><br /></font></div><div style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mim Eichmann’s debut historical fiction novel “</span><i style="font-family: inherit;">A Sparrow Alone</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">” – a provocative coming-of-age saga of female empowerment during the 1890s Cripple Creek, CO gold rush -- was published on April 15, 2020 by Living Springs Publishers of Centennial, CO. Ms. Eichmann is a professional musician, singer/songwriter and choreographer living in</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">the Chicago area</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">. Her author website is:</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.mimeichmann.com/&source=gmail&ust=1593451817852000&usg=AFQjCNHkwtde7iDrcfYGwsA-s33cJlHuYg" href="http://www.mimeichmann.com/" rel="nofollow" shape="rect" style="color: #1155cc; font-family: inherit;" target="_blank">www.mimeichmann.com</a><span style="font-family: inherit;">.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit" size="3"> </font></div>Mirella Patzerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14928081276314403541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7660357194650222850.post-18873507838162608212020-07-13T00:00:00.005-06:002020-07-13T00:00:02.219-06:00The Pioneer Women of California - Ellen VanValkenburgh, Emily Williams, and Eva VanValkenburg<div style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="671" data-original-width="1600" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkGBJFqK5RVILBBTg_X6ipE8NkzrLjEroPRUV0GllA59OiCV2jKx0zRHK53iADuGXs6t7M3s2n4jKDuiE4losaND7N_YMA2Moc-fYhNcuSo6w5Zv883ngApWlhVErbJG1ZQxjcxJj8_is/w500-h210/trio+of+women.jpg" width="500" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">Left to Right: Eva, Emily, Elle </div><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal;"><font face="inherit"><span style="background-color: transparent; text-align: justify;">Before California became a state, pioneers from all over the world brought
their dreams of the future there. It was a time of opportunity for everyone
willing to work. Women were no different. Even though it wasn’t called women’s
rights at the time, many women in early California fought for their own futures
and affected the futures of all who came after. Three of these women are
featured in my historical novel </span><i style="background-color: transparent; text-align: justify;">Under the Almond Trees.</i></font></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit"><span>Ellen
VanValkenburgh</span><span> came West from New York during the Gold Rush. She and her sister
sailed not around the horn but upriver through Nicaragua, then overland to the
Pacific on muleback. Her journal from that trip is extraordinary. They even
wore bloomers when riding the mules! In California, Ellen married Henry
VanValkenburgh. They lived in Santa Cruz, where Henry owned a paper mill on the
San Lorenzo River. When he was killed by a falling tree branch in 1862, Ellen
took over the running of his business. She was pregnant with their third child
at the time. Running a business gave her civic awareness and she desperately
wanted to vote on legislation that affected business. In 1872, she sued the
county of Santa Cruz to be able to vote. The essence of her argument was that
under the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution, many American women like
herself were granted citizenship, and therefore, the rights of citizenship
which included voting. </span><span style="color: #222222;">In the official court decision, it explained that the amendment
did not apply to women. California women did not get the vote until 1911.</span></font></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Emily
Williams</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;"> was the sister of Ellen’s daughter-in-law. She grew up in San
Jose, California, in the early 1900s. Her dream was to be an architect, but
women were not allowed licenses at that time. In addition, her father did not
approve. After he passed away, Emily used her inheritance to a</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">ttend a college
to become an architect. She applied for an architect’s license but was denied.
Julia Morgan studied in Paris and developed a reputation there, so the state of
California granted her a license in 1904. Emily was not to be deterred. Without
a license, Emily was limited to small structures so she and her life partner,
Lillian Palmer, built houses in San Francisco, San Jose, and Pacific Grove.
Lillian was a coppersmith who created amazing light fixtures. Emily designed
the houses. The first house they built together still stands in Pacific
Grove. </span></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit"><span style="color: #222222;">Eva
VanValkenburgh</span><span style="color: #222222;"> was Ellen’s granddaughter. She was raised with an appreciation
for the strong women in her family and their independent spirits. Growing up in
Inverness, California, she was a solitary child who took to photography. She
sold postcards at the local store. Instead of going into photography
professionally, though, she decided to marry and have a family. The traditional
choices she made served her well until her daughter wanted to go to college.
Eva’s husband refused to pay for it. She opened a photography business to earn
the money herself.</span></font></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><font face="inherit">These three women embody
different facets of opportunities for women. Ellen’s focus was political,
Emily’s career, and Eva’s family. They fought to make their own life choices
work for them, and in doing so they helped ensure that future generations would
have the same rights.</font></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYDtBd370ThYai0tulBZTUe8R9J06ZScu78CtD2xXNkdI_g-8DjuHs9kI_L243ippi8nmqzP1t8qP_Z8mw5e8f6vm7izA4hbLhDGkZgSulw3TRFaZIC_SxDpL23-GdNapvBflPiA-EqLg/s2098/Linda%2527s+cover.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><font face="inherit"><img border="0" data-original-height="2098" data-original-width="1400" height="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYDtBd370ThYai0tulBZTUe8R9J06ZScu78CtD2xXNkdI_g-8DjuHs9kI_L243ippi8nmqzP1t8qP_Z8mw5e8f6vm7izA4hbLhDGkZgSulw3TRFaZIC_SxDpL23-GdNapvBflPiA-EqLg/w335-h500/Linda%2527s+cover.jpg" width="335" /></font></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><font face="inherit"><br /></font></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://authl.it/bnm"><font face="inherit">Amazon</font></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><font face="inherit"><br /></font></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #333333; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><font face="inherit">Under the Almond
Trees is the story of three ordinary women in California who lived
extraordinary lives. </font></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><font face="inherit">It starts with a falling tree branch that kills Ellen
VanValkenburgh’s husband in 1862, forcing her to assume leadership of his paper
mill, something women weren’t allowed to do. Women weren’t allowed to vote yet,
either. Ellen decided that had to change, and became a suffragette.</font></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; text-align: start;"><font face="inherit">In 1901, Emily Williams, Ellen’s daughter-in-law, became an
architect – very much against her family’s wishes. No one would hire a woman,
but Emily would not be deterred. She and her life partner Lillian set out to
build homes themselves.</font></span></div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; text-align: start;"><font face="inherit">By the 1930’s women enjoyed more freedom, including the vote.
Even so, Ellen’s granddaughter Eva VanValkenburgh chose a traditional life of
marriage and children, even closing her photography business at her husband’s
insistence. When he later refused to pay for their daughter’s college
education, Eva followed the example of her Aunt Emily and reopened her
photography business.</font></span></div><p></p></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><font face="inherit"><br /></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirjYgBh1oMZmpMC9Ji3TwmbPw8BVTH4d0bjIAEpUNbpp-AWMhqFgyUB2lMhIt8Qkleooe_vSYOvYSS9PHZJ8EVwIE-D5zWyIDpbryoabFZgTOuIMXdeCCAWXKrKjvgLUp0mokXyAHf7Jc/s2042/Linda%2527s+Author+Photo.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><font face="inherit"><img border="0" data-original-height="2042" data-original-width="2042" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirjYgBh1oMZmpMC9Ji3TwmbPw8BVTH4d0bjIAEpUNbpp-AWMhqFgyUB2lMhIt8Qkleooe_vSYOvYSS9PHZJ8EVwIE-D5zWyIDpbryoabFZgTOuIMXdeCCAWXKrKjvgLUp0mokXyAHf7Jc/s320/Linda%2527s+Author+Photo.JPG" /></font></a></div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><font face="inherit"><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Author</b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Linda Ulleseit</b></div></font></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #444340; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><font face="inherit">Linda Ulleseit, born and raised in
Saratoga, California, has an MFA in writing from Lindenwood University. She is
a member of the Hawaii Writers Guild, Marketing Chair for Women Writing the
West, and a founding member of Paper Lantern Writers. Linda is the author of <i>Under
the Almond Trees</i>, which was a semifinalist in the Faulkner-Wisdom Creative
Writing Contest, and <i>The Aloha Spirit</i>, to be released in 2020. She
believes in the unspoken power of women living ordinary lives. Her books are
the stories of women in her family who were extraordinary but unsung. She
recently retired from teaching elementary school and now enjoys writing full
time as well as cooking, leatherworking, reading, gardening, spending time with
her family, and taking long walks with her dogs. She currently lives in San
Jose with her husband. They have two adult sons and a spoiled yellow Labrador. For more about Linda and her books, visit: <a href="ulleseit.com">ulleseit.com</a></font></span></p></div>Mirella Patzerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14928081276314403541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7660357194650222850.post-7779320833917217242020-07-06T12:48:00.003-06:002020-07-06T12:48:00.595-06:00Tituba - The First Witch of Salem <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "bookman old style", serif;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCFdchPmvbcRlqPvaUDt4vWkl2kQApABXQ4g_X10rPWgHxWAR63aCvG8wv09Nd8ObWrImXcenThR-yW3Oc_28kdA4kTiswLyXwRma8mMEpvSC9BtTfW0gi80ZRis7XQuIgX4VMz8qgzks/s321/Tituba-Longfellow-Corey_%2528cropped%2529.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="321" data-original-width="220" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCFdchPmvbcRlqPvaUDt4vWkl2kQApABXQ4g_X10rPWgHxWAR63aCvG8wv09Nd8ObWrImXcenThR-yW3Oc_28kdA4kTiswLyXwRma8mMEpvSC9BtTfW0gi80ZRis7XQuIgX4VMz8qgzks/w274-h400/Tituba-Longfellow-Corey_%2528cropped%2529.jpg" width="274" /></a></div>Ask just about anyone what they
know about Salem in colonial Massachusetts and the most common answer is the
witch hunts. But in the middle and late 1600s people knew Salem Town for its
shipping. It was the first large seaport in the Massachusetts Bay colony. Salem
seafarers and merchants played an important role as the Puritans grew wealth
through trade between the mother country and the colony. As the town grew
wealthier, it expanded as newcomers arrived and moved inland to establish
fertile farms to feed the coastal population. Salem farms, also called Salem
Village was established on the outskirts of the harbor town. And that village
became ground zero for the first witchcraft accusations in 1692 after people
accused an enslaved woman named Tituba of serving the devil by hurting
children. Tituba’s owner was the village minister. Her alleged first victims
were her master’s children Betty Parris and Abigail Williams, along with a
neighbor child, Ann Putnam, Jr. <o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "bookman old style", serif; text-indent: 0in;">The history books and records
tell us what Tituba said and did after they arrested and charged her. But there
is no information, not an inkling, of what she was like as a human being. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "bookman old style", serif; text-indent: 0in;">Most of the others involved in
the Salem tragedy, those afflicted by witches, the judges, witnesses and the
accused, have modern descendants scattered around the globe. For many of the
descendants, it seems to be a mark of pride when they identify an ancestor
involved in the Salem witchcraft story. Tituba is an exception because no one
knows what happened to her. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "bookman old style", serif;">Court records show the how and
why Tituba was charged. They show she at first denied the crime until she was
“interrogated”. And after they persuaded her to confess, she surprised them all
by naming two other women as fellow witches, servants of the devil. In
subsequent court hearings Tituba called out the existence of more witches, some
of them flying in from distant Boston! <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "bookman old style", serif; text-indent: 0in;">The written documentation lays
out the latent fears the Puritan colonists lived with. Those fears in some
combination lead to the hysteria that drove hundreds of accusations, dozens of
trials, and 19 hangings of innocent people during six months of infamy.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "bookman old style", serif; text-indent: 0in;">They have preserved sworn
depositions and court transcripts in museums and universities. And although the
records detail the kangaroo court proceedings, and their rush to judgement with
imaginary visions of specters as valid evidence, many questions remain.
Historians still comb through occasional newly discovered information. And even
so, after analyzing village, town, and colonial government records, parish
records and sermon books, the root causes of the events remain shrouded in
mystery. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "bookman old style", serif;">The elusive woman of color,
Tituba, who opened the door to the wild accusations of neighbor against neighbor
remains a mystery too. No one preserved records of an uneducated slave, one
considered by most to be less than fully human. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "bookman old style", serif; text-indent: 0in;">Enter the novelist. Without clear
evidence of Tituba’s origins and her character, creative fiction can fill the
void of a memorable woman erased from history. Her name, Tituba, roughly
translated from the west African Yoruba language means one who appeases.
Why would an appeaser turn on her masters, then? Dave Tamanini offers his own
provocative tale of what happened and why with a bit of magic thrown in.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9B5tGPwszRDB9OEcluDqFffJSzbLoxV5NCsuwcPYIJ4rFp4cXhNdpSaIpK1WhTKJUmY6JflFaKxwcXz9PD-6QDtAx6FmADKqrnEvPuI0bj99IFaxceoM1tmGmxN1GqRajBc9PChKtvnQ/s2400/Tituba+ebook+cover_1600x2400.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2400" data-original-width="1600" height="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9B5tGPwszRDB9OEcluDqFffJSzbLoxV5NCsuwcPYIJ4rFp4cXhNdpSaIpK1WhTKJUmY6JflFaKxwcXz9PD-6QDtAx6FmADKqrnEvPuI0bj99IFaxceoM1tmGmxN1GqRajBc9PChKtvnQ/w333-h500/Tituba+ebook+cover_1600x2400.jpg" width="333" /></a></div><span style="font-family: "bookman old style", serif; text-indent: 0in;"><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "bookman old style", serif; text-indent: 0in;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Tituba-Intentional-Witch-Dave-Tamanini/dp/1734830808/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=dave+tamanini&qid=1592592304&sr=8-1">Amazon</a><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;"><a href="https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781734830804">IndieBound</a><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;"><a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/tituba-dave-tamanini/1137135466?ean=9781734830804">Barnes and Noble</a><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "bookman old style", serif;">For Dave, it took a while to
become a fiction author. Born in the northeastern coal region of Pennsylvania,
he lived a nomadic childhood while growing up in a U.S. Army family. He was the
first to head off to college. And after earning a B.A. degree at the University
of Maryland, he landed a job as a civil rights investigator of race and gender
discrimination. That work in the legal field led to the University of Detroit
Law School and then private law practice for over thirty years. There is no
better work than lawyering to prepare for writing fiction, he says. You get to
help clients from all walks of life and learn about human strength, frailty…
and hypocrisy. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "bookman old style", serif;"> You can reach Dave at: <a href="https://d.docs.live.net/8a8851eac5cc89cb/www.DaveTamaniniAuthor.com">www.DaveTamaniniAuthor.com</a> or <a href="www.facebook.com/DaveTamaniniAuthor">Facebook</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "bookman old style", serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><br />Mirella Patzerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14928081276314403541noreply@blogger.com0