Minoan Crete

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I’ve been asked why I chose such a long ago era to write mysteries about. After all, it is the Victorian era that is so popular now.

Well, I am fascinated by the ancient past. In some ways, the past is all around us. A large Roman mosaic was just discovered in Eastern Turkey by a man gardening on his property. Roman ruins have been discovered in Italy, Greece, Great Britain, France and more.

In other ways, the ancient past is an undiscovered country. There is much we don’t know. Although they were human beings like us, so many aspects of ancient cultures are strange, odd, sometimes downright offensive to modern eyes.

Ancient Crete

Differences between Ancient Crete and our current culture go far deeper than clothing of technology. It is believed the Minoans were matrilineal, maybe even a matriarchy. Some of the archeologists I read had real problems with that. It is certainly true that women were powerful.

The Minoans worshipped a Supreme Goddess, although there were Gods in their pantheon.

And some of their sports/rituals seem absurdly dangerous to us. The bull leaping, in which teenagers run at a charging bull, grab the horns, and flip over, is something that would not be allowed today. I cannot imagine a parent nowadays who would allow this.

Some archaeologists have even suggested the Ancient Minoans practiced human sacrifice (of children no less) under certain exigent circumstances.

These differences are what make this society so fascinating. It shows the breadth of human culture and belief.

The other factor that I find captivating is the cultural line that stretches from Ancient Crete to Greece and then to the entire Western civilization. (Greece is commonly honored as the cradle of democracy.) Certainly, the mainland Greeks who became Classical Greece, adopted Minoan Gods, art, and language. Although Linear A has not been deciphered, Linear B has and it is an early form of Greek.

So here it is. This ancient culture, so very different from our own and with so much still unknown about it, influenced the course of Western Civilization right down to modern times.

Talk about a lasting impact.

Currently Reading

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This week I read two books.

This title, written by Jacqueline Boulden is the winner of several Indie awards.

At a corporate function, Emily Archer, tired of the sexist comments and harassment, slaps a man who gropes her. Since he is an important client of her company, she is immediately threatened with dismissal. Her boss manages to keep that from happening but she is suspended. Therapy reveals a long ago trauma.

Now sensitized, she is made uncomfortable by the behavior of a new hire. This evolves in the reveal of a sexual predator, and puts her life in danger.

Although not a whodunit, engrossing. Recommended.

I also read the new mystery of Donna Leon.

I’ve read all of Leon’s books and greatly enjoyed them but I found this one disappointing. The book starts with a bang. The members of two gangs are arrested and brought into the station. When the father of one of the boys, does not pick him up, Griffoni walks him home. At the same time, Brunetti is asked to vet that father, Dario Monteforte, for a job.

Monteforte, lauded as a hero twenty years previously, was never awarded a medal. Why the contradiction?

The case becomes even more serious when the forensic scientist, Enzo Bocchese, is attacked in his apartment.

I found this book confusing. The two halves don’t mesh well and it felt to me as though two different stories had been mashed together. Leon’s writing is, as usual, lovely and her characters are wonderful but I felt the story was disappointing.

What I did on my Summer Vacation

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Shades of my fifth grade essays.

This past week, my husband and I went on an Alaska cruise. This makes two visits to Alaska in about one year. The previous visit was an interior one. We biked in the back country (and saw bears), kayaked, hiked a bit of Denali, and so on.

This time we cruised up the coast. We left from Vancouver, an amazing beautiful city, traveled up the Inside Passage.

Our first stop was at Icy Strait Point. We are talking remote. Goods are delivered once a month by boat. Our van driver said that many of the people go south for the winter. I believe it.

From there we went to the Hubbard Glacier which was definitely a high point of the trip.

Hubbard Glacier

This glacier is still growing, despite climate change. We saw it calve several times. The water was filled with floating ice.

From there we sailed to Juneau

and Ketchikan.

It was cool and rainy throughout, but at least we didn’t see snow like we did the previous summer.

In Ketchikan we went on a tour of Saxman Village, a First Nation community. Above is a lodge house and some fine examples of totem poles. They are designed to communicate information in a pre-literate society. The original paint colors were ground ores, e.g. iron oxide, mixed with the saliva of woman (who first chewed the roe of one of the local fish.) Since they have declined to continue doing that – no wonder – the paint is now bought.

Alaska is amazing and very beautiful. It seems to stay pretty cool all year round though. (The temperature never rose above 57 and this was the first week of September.) I wonder what the winters are like. Harsh I’m sure, and this is from someone who is familiar with both New York and Maine winters.

Currently Reading

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I read quite a few books while I was on vacation but I will discuss only one: The Yellow Wife by Sadequa Johnson.

Phelby is the daughter of the plantation’s master and thus grows up petted and treated differently than most enslaved people on the plantation. She has been promised her freedom at sixteen but instead, while the master is away, Phelby’s mother dies and the mistress (a jealous and vengeful woman) sells Phelby. She is supposed to be sold to a ‘fancy house’, a brothel but while the line of slaves is being held at an intermediate point, the jailor sees her and pulls her out to become his mistress. She bears him several children and after the Civil War, when intermarriage is allowed, he marries her.

I wanted to read this because, although it takes place later in the 1800s than my own book – Death in the Great Dismal – it does have some similarities.

First, both deal with slavery. Writing about this very thorny subject was difficult for me and it took me a long time to reach the point when I felt I could do it.

Both also feature a mixed race woman involved with a white man/master. Both include a white woman who was jealous of the mixed race woman.

Of course, there were some obvious differences. My protagonist, Will Rees, is a white man. He is also a northerner, outside of the Southern culture, and so always maintains a certain distance. Johnson wrote her book from the point of view of Phelby herself, the woman at the center of the action. My mixed race character, Sandy, fancies herself in love. Phelby’s reaction to the jailor who plucks her out of the coffle to become his mistress/wife is much more nuanced. She’s afraid of him but remains tied to him until his death. Although her children, all but one, escape to the north and pass for white, Phelby does not. My character Sandy does escape with Rees and Lydia after a severe beating by the mistress of the house. I wanted a happy ending.

Since I wrote my mystery as entertainment, the story is not as dark as The Yellow Wife. I suspect it is more accurate to the experiences of the times.

I will be at the Albany Book Fair on Saturday from 10 am to 4pm. The Festival is held in the upper campus; my table will be in the ballroom. Stop by for a chat if you’re in the area.

Currently Reading

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Occasionally I read other genres than mystery. Science fiction and historical fiction are two of my other favorites. This week I read System Collapse by Martha Wells.

I have read quite a number of novels and stories by Wells but this was a new series for me. Told from the viewpoint of a Murderbot, an android if you will, it tells of a hunt for some rogue colonists and a skirmish with a corporation determined to enslave the colonists and take the planet for its resources. Put like that, it sounds average but the murderbot’s voice is so human in so many ways that the story works. The bot, like Data in The Next Generation is both human and not and struggles with the dichotomy. Fun.

I also read Finlay Donovan Rolls the Dice. In this outing, Finlay and Vero head to Atlantic City to save Vero’s cousin from a mobster and rescue the Aston Martin given Finlay by a Russian gangster. Needless to say, it does not go smoothly. Finlay’s ex-husband and mother insist on accompanying her and then Finlay’s hot cop boyfriend turns up. Laugh out loud funny.

Archaeological advances

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One of the things I find so interesting about the research into the distant past is how many more things are discovered, seemingly every year. One would think that after decades of excavation, everything would have been discovered already. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Recently a labyrinth was discovered on Crete on the top of a hill. Crete has undergone many excavations but clearly there is still plenty more to find.

And, as science moves on, we have better tools. archeogenetics is a new and burgeoning field. The discoveries made through testing DNA have upset many long held beliefs. The Etruscans, for example, believed to have emigrated from Anatolia to Italy are now found to be from the Caucasus.

Tests of the Blackfeet Indian Tribe have been similarly surprising.

Previously, they were thought to have migrated to the High Plains from the Great Lakes. Some anthropologists have argued that the Tribe’s language if part of the Algonquin family. Nothing in the Blackfoot oral tradition supports this.

DNA supports their belief that they have lived on their ancestral lands since time immortal. Current linguistic research indicates that the Blackfoot language has features belonging to an ancient language that predates Algonquin. 

Even coffee has proven to have a surprising journey. The coffee bushes evolved in Eastern Africa in a few different strains that eventually interbred. The plants that grew on the eastern side of the Great Rift Valley remained wild but the ones on the eastern side were brought to the Yemen city of Mocha. Folklore says that the red berries were eaten. (Yuck.) Oral histories say that an Indian monk brought the berries to India from which it spread around the world. Dutch explorers cultivated c. arabica on Java – Typical. Another variant was cultivated by French colonists – Bourbon – and that combination of those two varieties largely gave rise to the coffee most of us drink today. Who knew?

Currently Reading

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The third of Amy Myer’s cozies, Marsh and Daughter’s murder mysteries, Murder in Hell’s Corner, finds Georgia and her father investigating the murder of Patrick Fairfax, a revered WWII pilot.

As Georgia and Peter investigate, especially looking into a close knit group of pilots who knew Fairfax, they realize that he was not as universally admired as his family believed.

Was the murderer one of his many women? Or one of the other pilots? Or his business partner? The solution, and the twist at the end, is surprising.

What I found captivating, though, was the descriptions of WWII. The relentless bombing by the Germans, the loss of friends and comrades that occurred almost hourly, the sheer scale of a war pounding at this small country. Like Foyle’s War, it is a reminder that England was almost destroyed and was metaphorically hanging by its fingernails.

Highly Recommended.

Olympics

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I was captivated by the Olympics this summer and watched as many events as I could. I did not realize how many really fast runners there are! Really impressive.

There were a couple of things that struck me. Perhaps the most striking was the good sportsmanship displayed by the athletes. So much hugging between winners and losers. Refreshing.. I also loved the engagement of the audience. The French men’s basketball team took silver and the crowd broke into a spontaneous anthem. So moving!

The teams were diverse, not only the United States contingent, but most. I love seeing the inclusion of all these athletes, including some from countries who not only have never won but never even participated before now.

Also impressive was the number of women competitors. Women have not been well represented in the past but, boy, they sure were this time. Wonderful to see.

The only two blots on the Olympics had almost nothing to do with the athletes but with the judges instead. I have been following the dustup over the gymnastics. The judges made several mistakes, that is fact. They marked off one gymnast for going out of bounds and the replay clearly shows she did not. They missed the difficulty of one of the moves in Jordan Chiles’ routine, added it on review and then took it away again. Instead of admitting their mistakes, they’ve doubled down. Both the USA and Romania agree to multiple bronzes (3 to include another gymnast) but the judges refuse. This is not a good look and certainly does not display good sportsmanship.

Finally, the Chinese diving team tested positive for a banned substance. When Kamila Valieva tested positive during the figure skating in the Winter Olympics she lost her gold and Russia was banned. China suffered no consequences. If this is the rule (and it should be) it should be applied uniformly. The Chinese divers may have won anyway – they are that good – but doping gave them an edge and supposedly is forbidden.

Currently Reading

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On a Bookbub recommendation, I bought the set of Marsh and Daughter mysteries by Amy Marsh.

So far, I have read the first two and begun the third.

Georgia and her father, a retired police detective, research cold cases. Anything that piques their curiosity – a little bit of supernatural here – and then write books solving the mystery.

In the first one, The Wickenham Murders, a young gardener Davy Todd is accused of murdering Ada Proctor, the Doctor’s daughter. But so many parts of the story don’t make sense. The villagers don’t want the Marshs poking around but there is that strange music indicating someone doesn’t believe Davy was guilty. Then Georgia discovers Davy’s old sweetheart, still alive, and convinced of his innocence.

In the second book, Murder in Friday Street, a rock musician, Fanny Star, is murdered when she returns to the village to give a concert. Although her partner is accused of the crime, serves time and is murdered almost immediately upon his release, Georgia and her father don’t believe he was the guilty party. Suspects abound but the investigation into ‘the gang’, the friends of Fanny when they were kids, leads to the solution.

These are darker than Agatha Christie but, like her mysteries, show that murders happen even in cozy villages.

Terrific!

Age and Athletes.

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The Olympics are associated with Classical Greece, where these games officially began.

But there were contests of athletic skill before that. And women participated. At least we know they did in Sparta. (Some of the writings by men in other areas were shocked by the freedom of Sparta’s women.)

Since the murals and frescoes in Knossos seem to display both male and female athletes, I chose to believe the young women in Minoan Crete also engaged in races and other games of skill.

And with the Summer Olympics are going on now, I’ve reflected on the athletes who are competing.

I’ve gotten more than a few questions on the youth of my protagonist. (Martis is 16.) Here’s my question: do you think a forty-year old has the stamina, the speed, and the fearlessness to run at a charging bull?

Even in the 2024 Olympics, the athletes tend to be young. One of the skateboarders is 11. Another competitor is 12. There are quite a few teenagers competing. DHINIDHI DESINGHU, a swimmer from India, is 14 years old.

Hezly Rivera. American gymnast, is 16. After Kamila Valieva, a Russian figure skater, won at fifteen (and then lost the gold because of a doping scandal) the age for competing in figure skating has been raised to 17.

The ‘old’ athletes in their late twenties are referred to as though they have one foot in the grave and the other on a roller skate. Simone Biles, arguably the best modern female gymnast, is the oldest competitor at 27 since the 1950’s. She’s referred to as a ‘veteran’ and ‘experienced.’So, a 16 year-old athlete is not an outlier at all, even now.