I never dreamed I would hit such a high number. Thanks to all who participated. My final number was 1874.
Category Archives: murder mysteries
Goodreads Giveaway Milestone
I am so excited I don’t think there is a word. Unless I use the slang chuffed, common in the UK. With two days to go, I have 1242 requests. Wow.
Tarot and circuses
Why am I interested in tarot? These cards have been around since the mid 1500s. They were used as playing cards and like our deck, they had suits.
But aren’t they used for divination? That is certainly what I was most familiar with them as. Certainly, their use for that purpose is documented from about 1540. Manuscripts from shortly after document a system for laying out the cards. According to Wikipedia “Giacomo Cassanova wrote in his diary that in 1765 his Russian mistress frequently used a deck of playing cards for divination
Antoine Court de Gébelin, a French-born Protestant pastor and Freemason, published a dissertation on the origins of the symbolism in the Tarot in volume VIII of his unfinished fifteen volumes of the Le Monde Primitif. De Gébelin, who never knew the Tarot as the thought the Tarot represented Egyptian theology including Isis and Osiris. For example, he thought the card he knew as the Papesse and known today as the high priestess represented Isis.
The 1700s saw a rebirth of the circus.
I say rebirth because the kind of performances one thinks of have a long long history. The Egyptians had a tradition of acrobatics and juggling and they passed that onto the Greeks and the Romans. And these itinerant performers, called funanbuli – literally rope dancers – traveled throughout the expansive empire. During the middle ages, all the fairs boasted performers: jugglers and the like.
But all of this ceased in Great Britain and then in the new country with the Puritans who thought performances of all kinds were works of the Devil. Theaters in New England were forbidden right up until the late 1700’s. But in Europe traveling performers continued. In 1768 Sergeant-Major Philip Astley began exhibiing his equestrian prowess outside of London. Other equestrian acts followed. He called it a ‘circus’, the Latin word for circle because the riders rode around a ring. He struck gold. In 1779 he built a riding school. His ampitheater became the model for circuses everywhere.
At first these circuses were primarily exhibitions of trick riding but gradually acrobats, jugglers, rope dancers – tightrope walkers – were added. Family dynasties of circus performers were born.
A pupil of his, John Bill Ricketts, brought the circus to America. He first began a riding school in Philadelphia in 1792. It was wildly successful; people were hungry for entertainment. By 1793 he had begun bringing over European performers – including acrobats, clowns and rope dancers.
Other entrepreneurs followed suit, including a farmer from Brewster, New York , who found an elephant somewhere and brought it on tour. The display of exotic animals had been popular as early as the Bronze Age but this was a first in the U.S. Animal acts, primarily using dogs and pigs, followed.
Since tarot had been popular in Europe for centuries and had been used almost as long for divination, I wonder if some of these early circus performers didn’t bring the cards with them. Tarot would have predated the stereotypical circus fortune teller with the glass ball.
Now, with our jaded sensibilities, it is hard to imagine how exotic and wonderful these early circuses appeared. Farmers knew horses but not ones who allowed riders to stand on their backs. Pigs and dogs, animals they saw every day, performed the most amazing tricks. And any fortune telling would have seemed truly magical.
Winter again?
Usually I am very happy to get to St. Patty’s Day; I put in my peas. Not this year. Even with the warm up there is still too much snow on the ground. And more coming.
OK, I know that we sometimes get snow this late, sometimes into April. But after this year? Seriously?
What is wrong with this weather? I thought climate change meant we’d be more like Florida, not Alaska.
In fact, we have Alaska’s weather. The Iditirod had to be pushed way north. Hey, they could have had it in my yard.
Audiobooks and narrators
I am very excited and happy to announce I have selected a new audio book narrator for “Cradle to Grave” and “Death in Salem”. As any librarian will tell you, audiobooks are very very popular. A good narrator can really make a story shine. I am very glad to see both these titles become audiobooks for all my patrons.
Shelby – and Snow
by eleanorkuhns
Snow – and Shelby
This winter has been more like living in the Arctic than the Northeast, and more like living in the Arctic than living in the Arctic. We’ve broken all kinds of records, both for cold and snow. This past week we had three storms, small ones in comparison to some of the ones we’ve had, but the snow still added up to a foot.
Even Shelby is beginning to get tired of it all. But it doesn’t stop her from going out on the trail and making sure no squirrel or rabbit has come on to her territory.
audiobooks and more
I am happy and excited to announce I have just signed the contracts with Dreamscape for audiobooks editions of “Cradle to Grave” and “Death in Salem“. Because Cradle is already out, I hope to see the audiobook come out this spring. “Death in Salem” won’t be out until June 17, 2015 so I hope the audio will be available in the summer.
I am cautiously optimistic that I will be able to choose the reader.
Just a reminder too: I will be running a giveaway from Goodreads and my website for “A Simple Murder” through the month of March. I hope to run another for Death in Salem, maybe in May?, but that will be determined by the number of copies I will get from the publisher.
Midwifery – and Witchcraft?
As Lydia, one of the principle characters (married to my detective Will Rees) prepares to deliver their first baby, my thoughts turned to births. In that time both maternal and infant mortality was high. It was not uncommon for a man to be buried in a church yard with several wives.
Most women, especially those in the country, had their babies delivered by a midwife. For one thing, it was considered indecent for a man to witness the birth. Male physicians were just beginning to make inroads in delivering babies in the cities. Thousands of women who were burned in Europe as witches were midwives and healers . Why? Well. everyone knew women, who were ill-educated to begin with, were too stupid to learn something like this so the knowledge had to have a supernatural origin, i.e. the Devil. This in spite of the fact that midwives have been part of human history for millennia and there were less deaths when midwives delivered the babies. They washed their hands. Male doctors, according to the history I’ve read, did not and they passed bacteria from one woman to another, with maternal death following.
What did midwives do? Think about this: there were no pain killers other than alcohol and opium and anyway it was thought women should suffer. After all, they were guilty of listening to the serpent in the Garden of Eden and persuading Adam to eat the forbidden apple. Queen Victoria popularized pain killers during birth. (Smart woman).
There were no stethoscopes. They were not invented until 1816 and then looked like a long tube. Forceps were invented centuries earlier but were risky. Obstetric tools discovered in 1813 included forceps used by a male physician so they were known and used by then.
But midwives helped with the breathing, cut the cord, and some experienced midwives could turn a baby who was in a breech position. After the birth, they cleaned the baby, removing the mucous from nose and mouth, and made sure the cry was robust. Usually the midwife had an apprentice or two.
Now, with an interest in ‘natural birth’, we have come full circle back to midwives.
Witch Hunts after Salem
Although the witch craze in Salem ended, with many consequences as I have mentioned in an earlier post, the belief in witches did not end. With an increasing interest and belief in science, a belief in witches faded but did not disappear, either in Europe or in the Colonies – new United States. Legally, a witch trial and a judicial solution to perceived witch craft became unlikely (and I imagine that the uncritical acceptance of spectral evidence by Samuel Parris in Salem had a lot to do with increasing skepticism) hanging by lynch mobs could still happen.
In Europe women were still attacked and in some cases executed for witchcraft. In Denmanrk (1800), in Poland in 1836 and even in Britain in 1863. Violence continued in France through the 1830’s. And in the United States, as previously mentioned, Ann Lee of the Shakers was arrested and charged for blasphemy in 1783. But she was released.
In the 1830s a prosecution was begun against a man (yes) in Tennessee. Even as recently as 1997 two Russian farmers killed a woman and injured members of her family for the use of folk magic against them.
Why am I blogging about witchcraft? Well, one of the comments about one of my earlier posts talked about the influence of one person in swaying a community to hunting a witch. No matter how you look at it, most of the motivations behind witch hunts show the worst of human nature. Readings I’ve done point to class warfare and gender conflict. And while it is true that in some European countries men have been accused, in most of Europe and the United States the ones hunted have been women. There are a variety of opinions: control of a woman’s sexuality for one. The control of women’s reproductive life (and the eradication of midwives) for another. Considering what is still happening here I believe it. But some of the other motivations are equally as unflattering: greed, malice, revenge.
With all of this bouncing around in my head, I’ve decided that my next Will Rees (after Death in Salem) will look at some of these themes. You heard it here first.
Salem witches – Personal relationships
I wonder what happened when officials stepped in from outside put a halt to the goings on in Salem. Think what it must have been like living there at this time. Actions have consequences. Salem ( a misnomer since the action really took place in a small town named Danvers and, later, Salem Village) was a small community. Those accused were friends, family and neighbors of their accusers. How could you forgive the ones who hanged one of your family members as a witch and terrorized the others? What kind of amends would be enough? Speaking for myself, I am not sure this is something I could ever forgive. I would guess that, despite the end of the witch hunts, this village remained troubled for years.
Some believe that the curses laid upon the accusers, the judges, and the ones who executed the alleged witches are in effect to this day. Giles Corey was pressed to death, the only one not hanged. He cursed all the Sheriffs to die before their time forever. Oddly enough, quite a few have died from various chest related illnesses.
Financial reparations were paid beginning in the early 1700s. Would this be enough to ease the grief? Many of those whose family members had been accused or hanged moved away to a new Village called Salem’s End. We can’t know what they are feeling but I would guess PTSD would be the least of it. How could one every trust anyone ever again? People on both sides: the accused and the accusers, changed their names. One of the hanging judges was a Hathorne; Nathaniel Hawthorne added the w. And the Nurse family, right in the thick of the storm, moved away and became Nourses.
And what about those who remained firm in their belief that the accusations had merit? That the hangings were valid?
Reverend Parris was one who continued to defend his actions, refusing to believe – or behave as though he believed – that he had been in the wrong. Right from the beginning he was a believer in the girls’ tales. He accepted the testimony of ‘spectral evidence’. He remained in his post in the village. (Can you imagine what Sunday morning in church must have been like? All the hard looks and muttered comments and the minister who had really supported the crisis sermonizing from the pulpit.) It must have been a nightmare.
Anyway, those who opposed Parris (and I would guess there would be many) tried to force him to leave. The battle went on for several years. Finally ministers and other important personages from Boston were called in to render an opinion. But it was not until 1696, four years later, that Parris finally stepped down.
Parrish had a very hard time finding another post. (Consequences, remember?) He finally ended up in a tiny town in western Mass, the frontier at that time and the target of regular Indian attacks. Salem had trouble finding a replacement. (Anyone surprised?) The village finally accepted a young man just out of school.
In the wider political world, the storm in Salem adversely affected the futures of both Cotton and Increase Mather, destroying their influence. Admittedly, I am not as conversant with the politics of that time as perhaps I could be but in my view there was some duplicity in Cotton Mather’s behavior during the witch trials. In any event, the witch trials and all the consequences stemming from them destroyed the hold of Puritanism on New England and the developing country.