Scotland the Brave: Part One
A quick note: this post is not intended to be an exhaustive history of Scotland — I glossed over some things for brevity’s sake and summarized where I could.
When the average person thinks of Scotland, they usually picture something like this:
Plaid and poofy red hair.
Or this:
Mmmm…. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Or even this:
Whoops. Irish Flag (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
For all of Braveheart and Mel painting himself blue, most people don’t know that much about Scotland. I’ve had people tell me it was part of Ireland and/or ask if it was its own island. D’oh.
Some people will brighten at the mention of Scotland and say something about castles and golf, whisky or mountains — or they’ll burst into their proud version of a not-so-Scottish brogue and beam. When this happens, I usually sit back on my heels and wonder how America became a world power for a moment. Then I remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bite my lip, say a small prayer to the FSM for the US school system, and go about my day.
In case you’re wondering, Scotland is here:
It’s the bit at the top of the big island! Location map of Great Britain and Ireland, without national borders. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The truth is, Scotland has a long and fascinating history. People have been there for a rather long time. When the Egyptians were building their pyramids, the ancient settlers of Scotland had already erected massive stone circles like this one:
The Ring of Brodgar, Mainland Orkney (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
For the last 10,000 years, there have been people there. It wasn’t until the times of the Roman Empire that the rest of the “civilized world” noticed, however. The Romans took heed when they ran into crazed, naked barbarians whilst attempting to bring all of the island of Great Britain into their empire, then prudently opted to instead build a wall to keep said barbarians out.
Those crazy Picts are the ones who would paint themselves blue with woad and go naked into battle screaming at the tops of their lungs. They had discovered, and rightly so, that yelling like banshees startled even regimented soldiers. I’ve no doubt that the Picts returned to their hearths and had a few laughs about the look on their opponents faces. Around the 5th century, the Gaels (Scoti) arrived from Ireland, and with the charming vikings graciously bestowing their red hair genes along the coastlines of Scotland, the various tribes of the land eventually settled into the Kingdom of Scotland in the 9th century.
Gaelic became the language of Scotland — not to be confused with Irish, which is the language of Ireland. They are discrete languages, though they share some common vocabulary and grammatical structure. They bear similarities that can be approximated by the relationship between French and Italian — they’re not mutually intelligible, but knowing one can help you learn the other. Capiche?
The Gaelic language became an integral part of Scottish culture. By the time Scotland became a kingdom, Gaelic was the vernacular of the country. Scotland was also a tribal, clan-centered society. Contrary to common beliefs, clan did not always correspond to bloodlines, but people could be adopted into clans by their allegiance to the laird of the clan. Early (prehistoric) Scotland seems to have followed an interesting form of matrilineal succession — something that I’m curious to research more.
Music and stories (both in Gaelic) were the cornerstones of their culture. Prior to the Roman invasion, Scottish history was seldom recorded with the exception of a few remnants of ogham writing carved into stones and trees (a rather cumbersome way of marking territory). The tribes and clans of Scotland followed oral traditions for thousands of years, passing down legends and stories from generation to generation.
And so Scotland progressed for several hundred years until the folks in London decided they fancied ruling the entire island and that those yokels in the north were in their way. I’ll let you watch Braveheart to get the gist of it (or you could read a history book and learn it for realsies), but we’re going to skip ahead to the 18th century when the genetics of the royal world skipped around in a circle, did a twirl, and plunked King James VI of Scotland on the English throne. You might know this guy better as King James I (apparently the previous five generations of his name didn’t exist to London), known for getting that big religious book translated into English and printed into perpetual bestseller-dom.
I’m sure a lot of head-scratching ensued when the two countries realized they now had the same king. And if you know your 18th century British history at all, you’ll know that James’s son Charles had some head-keeping issues to deal with later.
Back on the farm, however, there were a great many Scots (primarily in the Highlands) who didn’t take too kindly to their Catholic king governing a Protestant and historically hostile nation to the south. In 1715, these Scots (called Jacobites, because they supported James II of Scotland’s claim to the thrown after the Scottish parliament deposed him — they were rather a divine right, direct succession sort of folks) staged an uprising protesting the 1707 Act of the Union. This uprising was squished, but it paved the way for what happened thirty years later.
After the religious turmoil that took over England during the reign of Cromwell following the execution of King Charles, the Jacobites wanted to place Charles Edward Stuart back on the throne. The son of the exiled Prince James III, the Jacobites preferred a Catholic monarch (and one of the Stuart bloodline). To make a long, bloody, and painful story shorter, the Highland Scots were outnumbered and out-gunned, and at the battle of Culloden in 1745, the English defeated the Jacobite cause. Bonnie Prince Charlie fled back to France, and what happened to to the Highland Scots is one of the more nasty periods of Anglo-Gaelic interactions.
The immediate retaliation against the Scots was swift and brutal. Homes burned, women raped, livestock butchered, children killed. Many highlanders fled the country for America, Canada, and Australia. Those who remained were subject to the Disarming Act, which forbade Scots from owning weapons, and the Dress Act, which forbade Scots from wearing tartans or kilts. In addition to this, their gatherings were limited to no more than six people, and the Gaelic language was outlawed. In the last three hundred years, the speaking of the Gaelic language has receded into only the northwest highlands and islands of Scotland.
What does all this have to do with me? Why does it matter? It matters because these are my people, and their history is also mine. It matters because with the loss of the Gaelic language, the music and the stories that had been passed down for generations evaporated. The storytelling culture of Scotland has all but been eradicated.
It matters because there is a growing desire in me to not only learn the Gaelic and Welsh languages of my predecessors, but to seek out the stories, the music, the memories and the history of our people. Because if there is anything I have learned from my own family, with both sides adamantly claiming Scottish ancestry when I had to go back nearly twenty generations to find it, it’s that stories have power. And that even after generations, those stories can remain, sometimes surfacing as the only tantalizing clue to the past.
And besides, a Scot is a Scot, even unto a hundred generations.
What stories have you learned from your family? What has been passed down to you?
Related articles
- Scottish independence: Debate is ‘no bad thing’ for investment (scotsman.com)
- Scotland Moves Forward – While Ireland Goes Into Reverse (ansionnachfionn.com)
- Scotland: An independent nation? (4b2012.wordpress.com)
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The Black Hole Meets The Sun
Simulated view of a black hole in front of the Large Magellanic Cloud. The ratio between the black hole Schwarzschild radius and the observer distance to it is 1:9. Of note is the gravitational lensing effect known as an Einstein ring, which produces a set of two fairly bright and large but highly distorted images of the Cloud as compared to its actual angular size. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The last couple weeks seem somewhat blurred in my memory. Day to day, fretting over which bills are past due, which bills have passed their grace period, and crunching number after number trying to figure out if and when we can get ourselves on track and how we manage to keep hemorrhaging money even when we’re nickel and diming ourselves for all we’re worth. Each day’s tips are counted and logged onto a calendar. My husband’s income is charted as well, from each of his jobs. On paper, we should be fine.
If everything went by what was “on paper,” most of the world would run a bit more smoothly.
“You’re having trouble with your mortgage payments? Hm, that’s strange. It says right here that your income is high enough to cover it. We’ll just adjust your payment history. You’re right as rain!”
If ooooonly.
And so things fall by the wayside. Things like writing and answering that question people have been shoving in my face like a durian popsicle since I was in sixth grade: “What are you going to be when you grow up?”
I’m almost thirty. My husband is almost thirty. We ought to both have answers for that by now. But he’s working two jobs, and I’m waiting tables for a living while my history degree and near double major in history and Central European Studies moulders in a box somewhere. Come to think of it, I am not even sure where my college diploma is. That’s how little it matters of late.
And so the black hole of finances has consumed us once more. I don’t have a huge number of weapons in my arsenal against it, but I do have a few.
I’ve even tried out a couple new ones. For starters, there’s Tai Chi.
I’ve always been fascinated with Tai Chi. I remember watching a group of adults move through flowing poses as a child. I thought it looked graceful — just standing by as a casual observer managed to relax me somewhat. But I never had the opportunity to try it until I discovered a free video on FiOS. The soft movements and slowness of the forms mask an underlying strength, buttressed by breath and energy. There are strength in those poses. By the end of my first few practices, I was sweating, but my breath came deep and strong as if I had just awoken peacefully from restful slumber.
I bought a five dollar DVD that included a segment on Qi Gong, which is Tai Chi’s even more mellow counterpart that focuses on healing and strengthening. Where Tai Chi is a respected form of martial art (its steady slowness makes many people assume it would be a useless form of defense, but the forms are meant for balance and defensibility, and I dare anyone to take on a Tai Chi master), Qi Gong is a renewal, a way to recuperate both body and spirit by harnessing the body’s energy. Call it chi, call it life force, call it the holy hand grenade — but it helps, and after just a few sessions, I’ve felt a difference in both my body and my level of anxiety.
And then there’s yoga.
What I cannot do. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I never thought I would be a yoga person. Someone telling me in a calm, throaty voice to reach down and casually pick up my foot and pull it up to my face makes me turn blue just thinking about it. I can no more grab my foot and lick my knee than Homer Simpson can, but the beginner’s yoga practice I’ve begun has poses that focus on core strength and building flexibility where there is none. For the kid who would just bend her leg and grab her foot in ballet class, a slow approach to these maneuvers is vital — and much less unsightly.
These are small weapons, small changes I can make to help avoid disintegration via black hole. Even if life is stressful, they create moments of clarity and calm, and my body is the stronger for it. Whatever they’ve helped to get flowing has spurred my creative juices as well, and the drive to write that has been waning over the past few weeks through the mire of stress has returned to tap me on the shoulder and smack me across the face with a very silly white glove.
I don’t have any big news yet, but I am hatching a plot. Perhaps these full body journeys of meditation and movement really have captured the radiance of the sun to shine it into the maw of the black hole.
There are some things in life that you cannot change. There are points where you have to admit you’ve done all you can for one area and only time can do the rest. In those cases, all you can do is change your focus to things you can change, the things that are in your power to alter for the better. I can’t fix my finances overnight, but I can foster a sense of well-being by taking care of my body, eating well, and enjoying the small pleasures of my kitten’s purr or my puppy’s soft coat.
As a kid, I used to go with my mom to meetings for family members of alcoholics, and I remember the prayer very, very well. And though I’m agnostic, it still seems relevant.
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
What helps you combat stress? How can you holistically approach life?
And just in case you think astrophysics are as cool as I do, check out these fun links to get a REAL black hole fix:
- Black Hole Eats Star: Astrophysicists Salivate (geeksaresexy.net)
- How Dangerous is The New Black Hole Discovered by Nasa? (catenacio78.wordpress.com)
- A burp of light from a black hole reveals that it ate a star (arstechnica.com)
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Who Do You Think You Are?
The first time I remember actively hunting around to find information about my ancestry, I was in sixth grade, and a school project demanded it.
When I asked my mom’s side of the family, the response was Scottish, German, and English. When I asked my dad’s, it was Scottish and Welsh.
I’ve spent the last month or so paging through the painstakingly researched information that two great aunts (one on either side of my family) sent me long ago. I got a two week free trial to Ancestry.com a couple months ago and forgot to cancel before it charged me, so now I have a year to use their resources to further that information. In some cases I have more than Ancestry does — for instance, that one of my ancestors, farmer called Oliver Mears, named his son George Washington Mears. This son was born just after the Revolutionary War. An act of pure pride? One of my ancestors fought with Washington at Valley Forge — could it have been Oliver Mears, inspiring him to beget our nation’s first president a namesake?
I spent a long while last night researching my mother’s side of the family, tracing back the Mears name as far as my great aunt Dottie had gone and then some. There have been some funny little discoveries, some almost creepy, others mystifying. Aunt Dottie traced the Mears line back to Caledonia County, Vermont in the early to mid eighteenth century, to the same Oliver Mears. She scribbled notes on the page indicating that the land had been deeded to him possibly by a Boston Mears.
My research on Ancestry.com confirmed that — imagine my surprise when I stumbled across not one or two, but ten family trees that share that common ancestor, and the name Robert Mears which repeated every other generation for about a hundred years. Several generations of my family lived in Boston as far back as the early 1600s, which is astonishing to me. Could they have taken part in the infamous tea party? Who were these people, and when did they arrive?
I nearly moved to Boston five years ago with a friend. I’ve always wanted to go there, and though I’ve never been, I’ve always been a Red Sox and a Patriots fan — finding out my family lived there for over a hundred years made prickles raise on my arms.
My family has always been quite adamant that we were Scottish. On both sides. The Mears name was supposedly the Scottish branch of our lineage, but the Mearses that extended backward from Boston came from London. Of course, it’s possible the family originally came from Scotland, but I don’t know how much farther back I’ll be able to follow them without an extended sojourn in the UK. Scotland in the 1500s and 1600s was very different from London.
Through this research, I wonder. The oral traditions of a family are strong. My German ancestors came over a mere two hundred years ago, but my purported Scottish and English ancestors arrived long, long before.
Some of them seem to have been among the very first settlers of America — Boston in the early 17th century wasn’t exactly a blazing metropolis. If the family has maintained their insistence on their Scottishness for that many centuries, they must have come from Scotland at some point — and that kind of dogged ethnic stubbornness hints that perhaps leaving wasn’t their idea. Any number of reasons could have pushed them from home. Famine, sickness, economics, even the Highland Clearances (though timing-wise, the latter is unlikely).
Even in this dark picture, if you look at the center-left, you can see her name.
Even more eerie is the ghosts of the women who cling to the branches of my family tree. One name stands out among the lines of Mears, Layton, Hurst, Bennett, Spanagel, and Schweinfurth, Unterwagner. Her name was Inez Viroqua Bennett, and all her siblings were called George, Ann, James, Robert, Thomas, and Frank. It’s likely that no one ever will know how a distinctly Spanish name wound up in a sea of Celts, Anglo-Saxons, and Germans. Her name draws my eye over and over when I look at the lists of my ancestors. There’s a direct line between us, and yet I know nothing about her or what caused Robert Bennett and Eleanor Milner to name their daughter so differently than the rest of their children.
When I search through the records in Ancestry’s databases, it’s harder to find women. It is a reminder that they were not as valued. Their names would not show up on deeds for land, and often not in wills. They are even less likely to appear on death records — the only death records I’ve found for my family’s women have been from the last hundred years. So Inez Viroqua Bennett will remain a mystery to me, her name a reminder of stories lost to time.
I’m not done searching yet, on either side of the family. The Taylors on my dad’s side who settled in the Scottish-populated mountains of North Carolina are a mystery as well — people who share my common ancestor Moses Taylor have said they were English, but a many times removed cousin I met several years ago at the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games — a Taylor from the same region who is also descended from Pvt. Moses Taylor — has been raised knowing he was Scottish.
John Swilly Camp and his favorite horse — thankful to my Great Aunt Doris for this one.
It’s tough to track people into the past, to follow the footsteps of bloodlines and names and hope to strike family among thousands of faces. In many cases, you can never know for sure when you get back far enough that Social Security numbers were nonexistent and almost all countries had kings in lieu of prime ministers and president, parliaments and congresses.
And yet the drive to find them is still strong. On my father’s side, it’s the Powells I want to find the most. We know they came from Wales, but that’s all. They are, like the ghostly Scots, but ghosts in a murky and distant past who sought a new life in a new world. They say a Scot is a Scot even unto a hundred generations. I haven’t had to go back a hundred yet, and I know who I am.
Great Aunt Doris herself is in the top picture with Uncle Dickie, Uncle Rip and Bops, my grandfather who passed in 2001.
I want to know who they were. I want to know where they came from and why they came here. I’m an historian, after all. And history is all about the people and the why — it’s how the psychology of a human being becomes the psychology of nations. So I’ll keep reaching my fingers back into the folds of time before this country was a country. I’ll see if I can find the people who helped birth it, and who birthed me hundreds of years after their struggles.
Wish me luck.
Have you ever tried to track down your ancestry? What oral traditions have your families left you about your history?
Related articles
- Tracing the Hamilton family (hamiltonfamilytree.wordpress.com)
- Finding a Family’s Jewish Ancestry (spittoon.23andme.com)
- THE PATH OF MY ANCESTORS….I am Scottish mainly (fanniesyouraunt.wordpress.com)
- Scotland’s DNA: Descended from lost tribes… and related to Napoleon (scotsman.com)
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Lighting the Fires of Life
Blessed Beltane -- and may your fires burn ever bright.
Today marks the beginning of the season of light. Halfway between the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, Beltane has been celebrated among the Celtic cultures for eons.
So many people suffer from seasonal depression in the winter months when the sun hides his face from the earth and plant life lies dormant, awaiting the return of warmth and light. Beltane is the day to rejoice in the return of the sun, to revel in the beauty of life, and to appreciate the bounty of spring.
Today is about the central aspects of human existence and celebrating the joy they bring.
Food. Sex. Light. Growth. Warmth.
All these things we cannot live without. They provide the basis for our survival, as individuals and as a species. On Beltane, we honor these things and what they bring to us as the seasons change from scarcity to plenty.
Tell me you don't want to eat these.
Food
In past times, and even now for many people in rural areas or people who struggle beneath the poverty line, winter was a time of scraping by with what you had gathered the previous summer. Winter‘s rations were often monotonous and carefully portioned to ensure families could survive the cold, cropless months until spring. If rot set into storage spaces, it could decimate an entire village.
With the return of spring, animals come out of hibernation, crops are planted, and wild fruits and vegetables begin to surface. This marks a return to variety in diet, of lighter fare and fresher foods on the table. Beltane is a celebration of food, an offering of spring’s blossoms in expectation of summer’s bounty.
These Belarussians know what's up. Image via bbc.co.uk, Associated Press
Sex
Spring is all about fertility. The birds, the bees, the bunnies, the trees — everything yearns to reproduce. The earth comes alive with procreation, attempting to ensure survival of the young in the warmer months.
At Beltane, people celebrated sex and fertility. As the last of three fertility holidays (Imbolc and Ostara being the first two), Beltane is the full flush of blushing spring as it ripens into summer. Marked by handfastings and passion, young couples would initiate their love by leaping over a fire together. Some unions lasted the night, others lasted a year and a day (the “trial marriage” of handfasting), and yet others blossomed into marriage.
Bonfires and warm spring air — what better time to contribute to the continuation of the human species?
The return of the sun.
Light
Winter was a dark time, especially in the north where the Celts marked the turning of the seasons by the presence or absence of light. Samhain, the Celtic new year, is a celebration and honoring of death and darkness. Beltane represents the return to the season of light and life and the renewing of the earth. None of spring’s gifts would be possible without the sun.
Humans need light. The sun gives us vitamins and helps our bodies release endorphins (and in my case, more redness than melanin). It is also a symbol of hope. If the winter solstice is dawn, Beltane is a shining bright morning. Light chases away the ghosts of winter darkness and turns simple scenes to dusky gold.
Budding life.
Growth
Winter is a season of stagnation, of biding time. It is a quiet season with its quiet comforts. With spring, stagnation and biding give way to budding and growth. Animals begin to mature; plants don their leafy cloaks and reach their arms toward the sun. It is a time of renewal and vigor, where the sighs of winter can be sloughed off to reveal brightness and life.
At Beltane, we celebrate the growing and thriving world around us and marvel at its wonders and its willingness to sustain us for another season. It is a time to gather ourselves, mind and body, to prepare for summer planting and harvest — both literal and metaphorical.
Warmth
Warmth
Above all, Beltane is a fire feast. Winter is cold, but spring returns the sun’s warmth to the land. Fire connects us to the sun. Fire consumes, but it also sustains. Fire is a tool. It forges steel from raw metal and refines gold and silver, burning away the dross. It seals ties and cooks our food. It warms our homes and brings us joy as we watch its dancing flames. Fire is to be respected; for all it gives, it can strip all away.
Fire is passion and life. Fire is anger and love and conviction. It purifies and makes new, just as spring makes the earth new after winter. On Beltane, the Celts would build fires from the nine sacred woods and light them to symbolize the return of warmth. This fire would lend its embers to all neighbors, who would use it to light the fires on their hearths.
Beltane is a day of celebration. What will you make new this Beltane? What will you celebrate today?
Related articles
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The Second Star to the Right
Ah, people.
I had thought to start out this post with an anecdote about Van Gogh or Sylvia Plath, illustrating how creative people often find themselves in a state of anguish and are known for having some — ahem — mental problems. But it’s not something that is unique to writers or painters or musicians. Everyone goes a bit mad sometimes. The last few weeks I’ve spent in the doldrums haven’t made me bring a knife to my ear (owie) or think about sticking my head in an oven (ours is electric, anyway, so that would be quite silly and macabre), but they have consisted of a routine something like this:
Think about writing.
Hmmmm....writing.
Think about story.
Hmmm, story. That old thing?
Wrinkle nose.
Story.
Look at computer.
*Crickets*
I am waaaay better than this player. Best score: 1098. Boo-yah. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
It occurred to me that I had lost sight of something. Maybe several somethings. Then today I typed the WordPress address into my browser and one of the Freshly Pressed articles caught my eye. It was this one about the Scottish Highlands, and it happened to contain pictures of some of my favorite parts of Scotland, including my beloved Inverness where I used to call home (still do, to be honest).
Some of the pictures bore striking similarity to some of my own favorites that I took. Others simply brought tears to my eyes. And I realized that I have lost sight of my guiding star.
One of my favorite lines in Disney’s version of J.M. Barrie‘s Peter Pan has always been that childlike and simplistic direction Peter gives Wendy, John, and Michael as they soar out of their bedroom window.
Second star to the right, and straight on till morning.
Pleiades Star Cluster (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This week at work, I told someone how I wanted to live a life of adventure. How I wanted to see the world, explore it. And she said, “I should have done that earlier. Now I never can.”
And I thought to myself that her words sounded such a sad and lonely toll, like the mournful bells of a funeral knell. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard that, that getting married and having a family meant your dreams and hopes had to vanish.
It doesn’t have to. And how much resentment builds out of that sentiment? To look at a wedding ring or a child as an obstacle between you and your dreams births such bitterness. It might not surface all at once, and you may be able to tamp it down for a while, but then it will nose above the calm and make ripples that turn into waves.
Travel and family are not mutually exclusive dreams. It might not be easy, but nothing worthwhile ever is.
I realized this morning whilst gazing at the pictures of Glen Coe and Culloden’s aqueduct and the familiar steeples of Inverness’s riverside churches that I have lost sight of my dreams. I want to write, and I want to travel. And yes, I do want to make a little Emmie or two along the way. There are no reasons not to do those things, only excuses. Like Fruit Ninja. And that it will be difficult.
I’m married. I don’t yet have children, but I will one day. I also have these guys. And they are definitely kind of like children. With fur. And I didn’t make these ones.
I'm a wolf! See?
I'm a lounging tiger in a tree!
Regardless of the critters, both four-legged and otherwise, we will have adventures around the world. And I will get published eventually. In the month of financial distress and employment upheaval, it was easy feel like I was wearing wrongly placed blinders, leaving me with only my peripheral vision and no sight of what was in front of me. As the world renews itself with spring’s rain and returning warmth, I’ve realized I have to renew myself as well. I have to keep my vision intact, clarity of the present and focus on the future with the wisdom of the past in tow.
So the time comes to think happy thoughts. Any merry little thought — think of Christmas, think of snow. Think of sleighbells…off you go!
Where’s your Neverland? What’s your second star to the right? What excuses have gotten in the way of your Neverland?
Related articles
- The Scottish Highlands, part 1 (cowpattiescarhartsandcremebrulee.com)
- Culloden’s past is present for man who makes living history (scotsman.com)
- Photo a day – February 16, 2012, Inverness, Scotland at Dusk (travelingwithkrushworth.wordpress.com)
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Let the True Blood Flow
Logo from the television program True Blood Français : Logo original de la série télévisée True Blood (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Warning, here be some spoilers. Arrrrgh. Enter at yer own risk, matey.
It’s getting to be that time again.
I can tell when the premiere of True Blood is imminent, like a scent on the breeze. Well. Sort of. Really I can just tell by the number of people who stop me to say:
“Hey! Has anyone ever told you that you look like that girl from True Blood? Jessica?”
If I had a dollar for every time I’d heard that in the last four years, I’d seriously have like $157. That’d be enough to buy me a bike. A rather crappy bike, but a bike nonetheless.
I’m very flattered to be compared to Deborah Ann Woll. She is quite lovely and she and I share the L’Oreal gene of red hair. It’s nice to be compared to someone that beautiful, and more so than the time someone said I looked like Tracy Lords not expecting me to know who that was. (She is most known for having falsely represented her age as a teenager in order to do porn — incidentally, anything with her in it from that time period is now illegal to possess, as she was a minor.) I actually quite like Tracy Lords in the mainstream films she’s done, but I have a feeling the comparison wasn’t meant as a compliment.
I’ll leave it to you to judge, gentle viewers.
C'est moi en rouge.
And here is the lovely Ms. Deborah Ann Woll:
Deborah Ann Woll at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles on January 23rd, 2010. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
My purported doppelgangers aside, I was surprised to find how not enthused I am about the fifth season of True Blood. The first two seasons killed it — witty writing, an attention to plot, and great characterization made a show worth watching. But then it started to go downhill, in my opinion. I kept watching, like not being able to look away from a painful recitation of teen angst poetry.
That and because looking at Eric Northman is never unpleasant.
Eric Northman (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I mean, really.
It began to annoy me how they treated the African-American characters on the show. Lafayette is three-dimensional and fascinating, but Tara has to be one of the most obnoxious and insufferable characters I’ve ever seen, and let’s not forget that her boyfriend Eggs, who was rather interesting, got killed off before he could really take on a solid role. Other than that, there are no main characters who aren’t white — that don’t get dead faster than your fangs can come out, anyway.
I have the same criticism of The Walking Dead — we’re supposed to believe that in the South, all they come across are white people? Oh yeah, they fed the one new black guy to the walkers the moment he walked onscreen.
I found myself rooting for Tara to just bite the dust already halfway through season three. I’d like to see some more sympathetic characters from different racial backgrounds (no, I did not forget Jesus — but is he still alive?) this season. I was reading several articles about the response to Rue and Thresh being black in The Hunger Games — a fact which, if you read the books with any kind of attention whatsoever, you’d already know and thus wouldn’t be surprised by their casting the lovely Amandla Stenberg as Rue and Dayo Okeniyi as Thresh. That some people were outraged by Ms. Stenberg’s beautiful performance as Rue purely because they expected a little blonde white girl sickened me.
We still, it seems, have quite a long way to go.
So as season five of True Blood looms, I don’t have very high expectations. Last season they jumbled so many elements (and did it rather poorly, to boot) from Sookie‘s fairy-ness to the bizarre witches to Bill’s power-hungry demeanor to Eric’s memory loss and kind of contrived relationship with Sookie, season four disappointed me over and over again. The one redeeming quality I saw was in Sookie finally choosing to not be with either Bill or Eric, if only for her demonstrating some real inner strength for once.
I found throughout the season that it’s Jessica, Lafayette, and Jason I care most about, and they are probably the only reasons I’ll even watch season five.
What I hope most is that the writers get a clue and keep it fresh, make intriguing story lines with compelling characters and don’t overload us on subplots. There’s nothing worse than old blood.
Oh, who am I kidding? I’ll watch just to see more of this:
Image via true-blood.net and property of HBO. Visit true-blood.net for True Blood news, predictions, spoilers, and photos! 
Any Truebies out there? Are you excited for season five or do you share my apprehension? What do you think of season four? Do you wish you could have an Eric of your own? Will Tara come back to annoy like the wind, or is she gone for good? Will they give us more than a token sympathetic black character…ever?
Like this:
Remembering Titanic
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
“Did you cry?”
“I cried four times. Just hearing the song makes me cry.”
Such was the conversation of thirteen-year-olds following the release of Titanic in December of 1997. The song of course, is “My Heart Will Go On” by Celine Dion, and reactions to the film somehow became a mark of status among my classmates in our tiny landlocked Montana town. Leo was a heartthrob to wallpaper your bedroom walls with; Kate was a picture of feminine beauty for us to aspire to.
I haven’t seen Titanic in over a decade. The last time I watched the movie all the way through, we had to change the tape halfway through — which ought to clue you in on the year that happened. So this year, with the film being re-released in 3D to honor the centenary of the unsinkable ship’s sinking, I felt a driving need to see it.
It’s strange to re-live a childhood memory through an adult perspective.
It’s strange to watch something so iconic with the eyes of someone who has experienced loss.
It’s strange to allow yourself to let in the reality of what happened that night one hundred years ago, stranger still to experience it through fiction knowing that in the background, the horror of the backdrop pales in comparison to the reality.
I couldn’t start to understand my desire to re-visit Titanic until the arrival of my April issue of National Geographic. The featured articles? All about Titanic. The ship, yes, but also the film. What I didn’t know before then was that James Cameron, aside from being a multi-bazillionaire and one of the most absurdly high grossing film producer in history, is a science buff and an historian. Specifically, it was his personal draw to Titanic that led him to visit the wreck in 1995 and film it, and it was that sense that made him make the film.
In my April issue of NatGeo, James Cameron wrote a piece entitled “Ghostwalking in Titanic.” He wrote it about visiting the wreck, about his emotions and fears, revelations and awe. Some new images of Titanic showed where Hollywood had to improvise; others mirrored the re-creation with eerie accuracy, down to the gold-plated mantlepiece clock in the suite of Ida and Isidor Straus who were known for their refusal to separate and instead opting to ride the wreckage of the ship to her final resting place together. Their suite was the inspiration for Rose’s suite in the film, the clock and the rest of the decor modeled after archival photos of the ship.
Perhaps Cameron sought only money, but in his words I sensed passion. Passion for what exactly, I am unsure. Whatever fire drives him beneath the waves of the North Atlantic time and again to search out the secrets of one of the greatest mechanical tragedies in human history has uncovered just that: secrets and images of the last moments of 1,500 human beings who lost their lives in the frigid cold.
And so this morning I set an alarm and got out of bed to catch the earliest showing of Titanic, unsure of what to expect.
Adult eyes catch more than the eyes of children, even teenagers. Of that I am now even more convinced than I was before I set foot into the theater. I understood a little of Rose’s situation as an adolescent — a young woman forced into an unwanted engagement for the financial gain of her family. That much I got even then. What I missed was the nuance and the insidiousness of Rose’s fiance.
This time around, I was able to understand Molly Brown‘s impudence in asking Cal if he planned to cut Rose’s meat for her. I understood Cal’s gift of the diamond necklace for what it was: a bribe for sex, as clear and naked as that sparkling blue stone. I understood his statement, “I thought you would have come to me last night.” Translation: “I gave you the diamond. You owed it to me to sleep with me.”
And I understood Rose’s character much better for the words in voice over, “Inside, I was screaming.”
I understood for the first time her heroism in rescuing Jack, how her bravery saved his life. I could respect her decision to stay with him and recognize that as a moment that also showed his worth as a character because he didn’t question her choice to do so.
The fictional story captured me again. With an almost Romeo and Juliet sort of naivete, you cannot help but love Rose and Jack. As he takes her from the stilted steps of high society to the pounding bodhran and uillean pipes in the steerage dance, you cannot help the exultation. Their love is unfettered and bright. Even though you know it’s doomed.
Even though their story is fiction, the backdrop against which it is set is not. Watching the film in 3D — well. The sound of the iceberg’s impact thundered through the theater, and I couldn’t help imagining it ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times louder. Feeling it shake the ship, hearing the crunch of thick steel.
Over two thousand souls trusted to Titanic to bear them across an ocean. And as she foundered on the calm midnight seas, some of the most horrific moments were not nature versus human, but human versus human. Locking the lower class passengers in their quarters. The panic that made officers launch life boats half-full or less when there weren’t even enough boats for half the souls onboard. The chaos and the scrambling.
When the water began rushing in, creeping from deck to deck, I felt the panic. As it encroached upon the higher levels of the ship, I had a sense not of the ship going down, but of the sea reaching up to claim it.
Claim it as what? A sadistic tribute in response to the pride of humanity, taken hungrily by an implacable sea? A reminder of the respect we so seldom afford to the earth? A frightening testament to human nature? There are parts of this history that are sickening. How only two of the twenty lifeboats returned to collect survivors after the Atlantic claimed the ship for good. How the arrogance of the shipbuilders led to allowing aesthetics to trump safety. The cost was almost 75% of the lives on the ship.
As I watched the final moments of the Titanic’s sinking in the film, I was reminded of the National Geographic article once more. In it, they described how the ship’s stern (the rear part that broke away from the bow once the waterlogged front portion sunk beneath the waves) corkscrewed to the bottom of the ocean. It’s the part of the wreck you don’t see images of. The bow in all its aerodynamics survived in a rather picturesque state; the stern took a tumultuous and violent spiral downward, and it took hundreds of terrified people along with it.
The end of the film shows those touching moments: an elderly couple meant to be Ida and Isidor Strauss holding one another, an Irish mother telling her children of Tir na Nog. What it doesn’t show, what it cannot depict, is the scream of strained steel, the terrible crush of the in-rushing water, and the darkness when the sea snuffed out the lights leaving people inside the belly of a sinking ship.
It was that that pulled the tears from me this morning. The adult knowledge of people, stuck and helpless, being dragged downward to the bottom of the North Atlantic.
So today, nine days after Titanic’s centenary, I’m remembering not Kate and Leo as Rose and Jack, or even the unsinkable Molly Brown. I’m remembering those who died faceless for human folly, because when people in power err — whether in building a ship and naming it unsinkable or invading a country — it’s the faceless who bear the brunt of it. And that is heavy enough to sink a ship.
I’m reminded also that nature isn’t to be trifled with. Perhaps that is what Titanic should remain: a lesson in humility, and a reminder that the swiftest and most brazen among us can be brought low.
And yes, I wept.
Like this:
Glass in a Minefield
Today is sort of my day off.
And yet the words seem to be stuck somewhere, jammed in my knuckles on the way to the keyboard. I could make a list of everything that needs to be done yesterday. (Cou-this blog-gh.) Somehow I have an inkling that it would be less than helpful.
My normally underwhelming life has taken a turn for the over, between finances and bills that line up with not-so-polite sniffs and a week without income during my job switch. Okay, so I made $24. That’s barely half a tank of gas. Hovering just behind my right ear is the rewrite of my novel. I’d like to think the last few maundering weeks have been ideas stewing in my head like a crock pot full of glory, ready to serve themselves up into bestseller history the second the timer goes off.
Move over, Jo Rowling. I claim this one. (Just kidding. Eilean Donan is way too public.)
No, chances are a few more rewrites and a lot more tooth gnashing stands between me and any real changes in my finances, though this new job will help significantly. So what do I do? Buckle in and dig down? Mix up some metaphors? Nope.
I turn to the dark side.
I make muffins.
Sure, they’re really good muffins. Lemon curd and blueberry. They’re delicious. I already ate four. But unfortunately for them, they aren’t that inspirational. They sure don’t help my behemoth of a project. Now it’s already 1:20, and I have to go to work and take a test on beer and food that I feel 72% sure I will fail (the food part, not the beer part — four days isn’t much to memorize a menu).
So why am I spending my evenings watching Veronica Mars again instead of working on my rewrite? Maybe it’s because every time I sit down to write, every sentence ends up punctuated with, “Buffy! Easy!” as the puppy makes the cat squeak or “Willow, down!” as the kitten sticks her face in my breakfast. By the time they settle down, the puppy needs to go outside (or has gone inside), and I can’t remember for the life of all things fuzzy what I was doing.
Nah. I could blame them, but they’re just being babies.
It’s my own fault I’ve been so lazy lately. There’s a word for it, and that word is discouragement. If I were to scrunch my eyes shut and stick out a finger, that finger would land on an innocuous little sticky note with four lowercase letters written on it.
Yeah, that's the one.
I think I haven’t felt like working on my rewrite because of fear. I’m afraid of the mountain of debt under the carpet of our apartment. I’m afraid that this gamble I’m taking of working as a server while I try to get my writing off the ground will just make me into a 30-year-old with no real “experience” in a traditional field. I’m afraid I won’t be able to provide for my family. Those are harsh fears, sharp and cold and sterile fears. They’re fears I don’t much know how to address or conquer.
It’s not just about the writing. It’s the other things that squeeze in on me. Each distraction, each new envelope that comes in the mail is a reminder that we’re just sprinting to catch up. Each batch of muffins seems to be made of lead. As much as I would like to believe that getting this rewrite done will change something, that belief is as fragile as looping blown glass in a minefield, and as I dance around it, I wonder which step will create the booming symphony of that glass crashing into shards.
I think I turn to baking and cooking because I have to believe that something I make with my hands can sustain us. There’s a power in that belief that can turn blown glass to diamond hardness, if I only knew how to harness it.
So for now, I’ll drink my Thai tea, eat my muffins, and fixate on the irony of the mug I chose quite by accident.
Like this:
I Can Show You The World
Okay, so I can’t. I’m not Aladdin, and my puppy ate my magic carpet.
Not gonna happen. Disney - A Whole New World (Photo credit: Express Monorail)
I’ve been thinking so much about travel lately that I have decided to make a “bucket list,” as it were. Places I want to go, that will burrow regret into my heart if I don’t make it there. Some of these places may be a little strange, some of them will be top tourist traps, some will seem outlandish to anyone who knows me (specifically the arachniphobe part of me).
These are also places I want to go while I’m young. Some are places I want to take my children. I want my children to feel that the world is an approachable place, to associate faces with dots on maps. To hear names and music in the languages of other nations and respect the rich history and culture of the earth and its people. I want to live a life of abandon and adventure. So without further emotional pyrotechnics, here be my places:
Gwynedd, Wales. Image via whywales.org (which is not a travel site, oddly, but a missionary site?)
Wales
This is the side of my heritage that I first felt connected to, and it’s the one I know the least about. I know my last name is Welsh, but my family history on that side has disappeared, wiped away by poverty in the new nation my ancestors settled. In all my trips to the island of Great Britain, I’ve never made it to Wales. Scotland took a firm hold of my heart, and it hasn’t yet loosed its grip. Wales is number one on my list of places I will forever regret missing.
I want to learn Welsh. The language is undergoing a serious revival — to the point that to be a marketable employee in Wales, you must be bilingual. That is a feat in and of itself.
Worship the forge-master! The temple of Hephaistos, Athens, Greece. Français : Le temple d'Héphaïstos, à Athènes, en Grèce. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Greece
My ninth grade English class sparked and nurtured a love of Greek mythology. When I taught in inner city DC, my kids adored our unit about it. We discussed Prometheus stealing fire for the humans and the nature of Hera and the awkwardness of Zeus raping Leda in the guise of a swan. (Really, Zeus?)
I want to visit ancient temples and see the evidence of the Classical Age with my own eyes. This historian has always wondered what would have happened had that age come to fruition instead of being overshadowed by the advent of religious zealotry that stamped out original thought wherever it found it. (Sorry, but it’s true. You can try to argue that the RCC didn’t persecute scientists, but you can also wear poo on your head and call it high fashion. Doesn’t make it right.) Just ask Copernicus, Galileo, Isaac Newton, and Martin Luther.
Walk like an....Photo credit: Wikipedia
Egypt
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been enthralled by pyramids. In fifth grade, this was where I chose when asked where in the world I wanted to go. Cleopatra fascinated me (surprise, surprise). I thought the pyramids held magic. And that was just at age eleven.
Now I want to learn the culture. Wear linen. Feel the throng of the markets. Cough the smog. I want to eat with my hands and see the expansive sands. I want to let those pyramids dwarf me with their age and immensity. And yeah, I kind of want to ride a camel.
What, were you expecting a picture of an impaled Turkish army? What am I, a gore-hound? Don't answer that. Photo credit: viajes-romania.es
Romania
Don’t worry. It’s not all about good ole Vlad the Impaler. Romania has a rich history, a fluid and melodic Latin language, and stunning scenery. The people are hospitable and warm. I love Central Europe. I love everything about it. I love the cultures and the food, the zest for life and the dogged determination that has allowed these lands to survive dictators, oppressors, and invaders century after century.
Yep. Hawaii. Photo credit: cbrconnection.com
Hawaii
Kana will be happy to see this one on here! Honestly, it’s not the beach that draws me to this tropical archipelago. Emmie and beach are sort of non-mixy things, as I tend to become a lobster when I look at the sun. I can get burned in the shade. I can get burned on a cloudy day in Scotland. No one believes me. But it’s true.
Not the beach. It’s the land. It’s the color of the water and the burning volcanoes that keep mutating the islands, changing them and bringing life and humility. It’s the wildlife and the foliage. I want to see colorful bird life and hear really noisy tree frogs. I want to swim with dolphins again and see white and black sand beaches from a safe vantage point under ten layers of SPF a billion and a large, unbecoming hat. I want to pounce coconuts and fall off a surfboard and eat whatever I can stuff in my mouth. And most of all, I want to do the island thing and just chill.
Holi, the Festival of Colors (as an English speaker, I find the name of this festival to be satisfyingly appropriate). Image via tourismontheedge.com
India
Were you expecting the Taj Mahal? I would love to see it. I would. But ever since I first saw images of Holi, the Indian Festival of Colors, I’ve wanted to be a part of it. What a glorious mess! What a stunning surge of life!
There are elephants and tigers in India. There is food to build a fire in your belly. There is barter and silk and smiles and beautiful colors and a country pushing forward with a massive portion of the world’s humans. It’s impressive and humbling and unmissable.
Say it with me: fjord! Photo credit: avidcruiser.westhostsite.com
Norway
I’ve always rather fancied fjords. Just saying the word is rather fun. And you can cruise through them! Mountains, lakes, trees — it’s a recipe for a happy Emmie right there. (Can you tell the Food Network is on in the background?) Plus, Norway has one of the highest standards of living in Europe (and the world), and I’ve wanted to try my hand at a Scandinavian language for a while.
Although I don’t reckon I’ll be trying lutefisk any time soon, there’s a lot to be found in Norway!
Can I move here? Image via bluemtnlodge.com
Banff, Alberta
See above, re: mountains, lakes, trees. Aside from being named after a town in bonnie Scotland, you can’t beat the Northern Rockies for their serenity and beauty. Plus, I could possibly drag my two lovely best friends along with me to their own country for once, though Jordan lives closer to the Scottish Banff than the Canadian one.
People and light. Photo credit: Wikipedia
Thailand
Aside from the food, Thailand boasts some stunning islands and beaches, crystal clear water for me to stare at from the shade, and one of the best light shows on the planet. Every year in Chiang Mai, the residents release the paper-thin lanterns into the sky for good luck, symbolizing the release of their worries and cares into the air.
Thailand is also home to a beautiful elephant sanctuary where you can spend weeks interacting with and caring for their guests up close and personal. For an elephant lover like moi, this is a big draw.
So. If I want to go all these places, where’s home?
Home is, first of all, here:
Spouse-face. Image by Tigran Markaryan of Calypso Digital.
Someday soon, though, I hope the two of us and our fuzzy little critters will make our home somewhere like this:
I'm nothing if not predictable. Image via vacationrentalpeople.com
The world is a big place, but it is increasingly an approachable place. You can get to the other side of it in a matter of hours where before it took months and probably a dollop of scurvy. I want to see what it has to offer. It’ll take a lot of money and some time acrobatics, but we’ll make it happen. Till then, there’s the dream.
Where do you want to go? What places must you get to to satisfy the itch in your soul?
Related articles
- Guides: Walking in Wales – The Best Welsh walks, part one (walesonline.co.uk)
- 5 things to do on your holiday in Wales (visitwales.co.uk)
Like this:
Through the Trees
I haven’t felt well the last few days. Ever since the migraine, my body has ached all over as if a fever waited just over the horizon. Yesterday was my last day at my old job. I’m thankful for it for many reasons. It’s always nice when a decision is reinforced, and yesterday reminded me of many of the reasons I was leaving.
I had to Metro there and get up much earlier. I was a double yesterday, and I made very little money at lunch. (Think $14.) I then had a couple hours to kill, and after getting a little sunburned in the shade with my book, I decided to seek out a more sheltered place under some trees. I discovered a park several blocks away with nice grass, and I laid down there.
I’d planned to read or nap. My body betrayed me, the relief of the cool grass and the soft breeze lulling me into immobility, but not slumber. I spent almost two hours doing nothing more than being still and looking upward.
It struck me that our world so seldom does nothing. There were bouncing basketballs at times, and cars went by, but that little oasis of a park stayed quiet with only the rustle of leaves and swaying branches for accompaniment. So there I stayed, watching. Once a tiny vermilion finch flew overhead, the sun backlighting his wings and sketching every perfect detail.
I don’t know the last time I just sat in nature and enjoyed it. I was raised in a quasi-pagan home, and a love of nature and the earth was something that was gently impressed upon me every day, like the touch of a rubber stamp so often that the ink remains on your skin like a tattoo. It’s been a while. And yesterday, with my knees and muscles aching and feeling more aged than twenty-seven years, I made room in my heart again for the quiet awe that nature affords frail humans when she is in a peaceful mood. There are times for terrible fear of her might, but when she is calm, there is a soft felicity.
As I lay there staring upward, something began to change. The sun’s trajectory turned downward toward the horizon, and tiny shimmering lights appeared. At first I marveled at them, at how the light of the sun could create these shining orbs from small teardrop shapes filled with chlorophyll. Then I began to scrawl in a notebook, still gazing up, not watching the words hit the paper.
It feels almost like a poem, though I seldom write poetry. It just sort of…is.
The sun lit the leaves on the trees above
as if the woods had caught tight
the light of thousands of stars
and hung them on their branches.
Some hover still and stoic
burning bright as sun on metal;
others twirl and twinkle with the breeze.
Together they shine as fine
as any clear moonless night sky could conceive
and I know that were I to chase
the brightness and scale
the elm’s rough body
the stars would vanish
from the bower of branches,
and like pursuit of rainbow’s end
I would hold naught but leaves.
They will not be captured
only seen
as day’s shining stars.
Through the Trees
Related articles
- Tree of life (ofthespiritual.wordpress.com)
- Cool and Fragrant Shade of Unknown Tree (idyllic.wordpress.com)
- From landscape tree to bonsai (bonsaitonight.com)
