The Ancient Greeks and Romans seem to be fascinated with human/animal hybrids, like the Sphinx, the Centaurs, Sirens and the like. The Harpies are another example of these animal/human amalgams, and like the Sirens, the name is frequently used as a derogatory term for a woman.
What were the Harpies. Bird bodies, women’s faces with supernatural speed and long sharp talons. They were punishers. (One of the most famous of the punished is Phineas. He was cursed with immortality, but normal aging. As soon as he lifted food to his mouth, the Harpies descended and snatched it away. Zeus paused the punishment so Phineas could help Jason acquire the Golden Fleece.)
The Harpies retired to a cave in Crete.
The ancient peoples in Crete, commonly called the Minoans, had rituals involving dances where the women pretended to be birds. The women wore masks and dresses with long flowing sleeves designed to appear as wings.
Like the Minotaur, who I suspect was a man wearing a bull’s mask in some ancient rite, I wonder if the Harpies are the dancing women in their bird masks and fluttering sleeves. The bull, revered in Ancient Crete, became something totally different in the later Greek myths. I wouldn’t be surprised if the dancing maidens evolved into the Harpies.
I wil be reading some of the books I bought at the Suffolk Book Festival. Murder Strikes a Chord by Heather Weidner is the first.
When Cassidy inherited her grandmother’s property and event venue business, she also inherited her grandmother’s four sixty plus friends, the Pearly Girls, who wear their pearls everywhere.
In this outing, Cassidy has arranged a nostalgia tour for several rock bands popular during the eighties. The Weatherman are the headliners; that is, until the lead singer and primary songwriter is founded garroted.
Since the relationship between the band members is testy, suspicion immediately falls on them. But Johnny Storm has lived the rock and roll lifestyle so there are plenty of other suspects.
At the same time Cassidy is investigating the murder, and trying to run a business, she is dealing with the mayhem caused by the Pearly girls.
By now, Everyone knows I attended a book festival in this city. Not only is the festival just about my favorite, but I love the city itself.
The Great Dismal Swamp lies just outside, and, I would suspect, some of the city lies on reclaimed swamp land. I’ve taken several tours of the swamp, which provided the basis for one of my favorite of my own books: Death in the Great Dismal.
The swamp was established as a wildlife preserve in 1974. It is a peat swamp and the estimate of the depth is 15 feet of peat. When walking through the swamp it is important to watch your footing; the tour guide dropped a pole down and it rapidly disappeared from sight. The preserve is owned by the wildlife. Signs of bears are everywhere. All the insects bite. Unusual birds flutter through the tall, straight pole pines. Truly an amazing place.
Suffolk is also a major producer of peanuts. A short drive around shows peanut farms and a drive through town brings one to the peanut factories. The peanut itself is a curious plant. The peanut is unusual because, although it flowers above ground, the seeds, I.e. peanuts, are below the ground. They have to be dried to release the moisture from the soil.
As is usual with some of the weird plants we eat for food, how were peanuts discovered? Did someone dig up the roots and find the peanuts growing beside the roots? Who figured out they need drying? That they can be roasted?
The Virginia peanut is large and very crunchy, larger than most, and so crunchy my jaw started to hurt. They are a legume, not a nut, despite the name. These groundnuts, originally only eaten by pigs, were studied extensively by George Washington Carver. He developed hundreds of uses for them but credit for making peanut butter lies with Dr. John Kellogg, he of cereal fame.
Instead of blogging about books, I thought I would talk about the Festival. I’ve gone many years running; this is one of my favorite festivals. The staff is great, I love the area, and I really enjoy meeting the readers.
I also always sell quite a few books.
This year I also served on a panel. Moderated by Christine Trent (author of Lady of Ashes and the Florence Nightingale mysteries), the panel discussed Balancing Fact and Fiction. Also on the panel were Ellen Butler, Nicole Glover, Stacie Murphy, and Katharine Schellman. Of the panel members, outside of Christine, I’ve read only Katharine Schellman. Expect reviews of the other authors’ books to come. I bought eight books while I was there.
Other old friends I connected with: Heather Weidner and John Dedakis, both of whom have new books out in their series. (For Heather, it is the Pearly Girls.) Some authors I met last year: Maggie King and Mike Marsh I met last year and got reacquainted with this year.
New authors for me: Esme Addison and Lee Clark. I expect to read books by these authors as well.
The headliner was Tonya Kappes who has written more books than I can count.
This festival is such fun I hope to attend again next year.
The thistle and the rose, by Linda Porter, is a biography of Margaret Tudor.
Sister to Henry VIII and wife to James IV of Scotland, Margaret was married by age 14. James was almost thirty. She bore James six children, although only two survived: James V and his younger brother (who also died young.) Margaret was widowed in her early twenties when James was killed at Flodden.
A woman in a very patriarchal time, and in a foreign country, Margaret fought hard to hold on to the crown. The angry nobles of Scotland put the Duke of Albany over her as regent and her two boys were removed from her care. She was confined to Stirling Castle. This, despite her husband’s will, which specifically named as regent of his sons.
After a hasty remarriage, a disaster as the one that followed, and seven months pregnant, Margaret escaped captivity and fled to England and the not so tender embrace of her brother. Henry resented her, and resented him in turn and refused to obey his commands or allow him to control his life.
Margaret was really a remarkable woman. Her son, James V, became king largely because of his mother’s efforts.
The biography reads almost like fiction and is quite captivating. Highly Recommended.
Except for a wedding band or signet ring, in our culture men wearing chains or earrings was thought to be effeminate. That certainly has not been the case in the past. In fact, men have worn jewelry since the Neolithic. Then, they wore necklaces of teeth or claws, usually from an animal they themselves had hunted and killed. They were a sign of fierceness and hunting prowess.
In the Minoan times, men wore the fancy belts around their waists, just like the women. The frescoes show them wearing necklaces, armbands and earrings of precious metals and gems.
Ancient Egyptians not only wore earrings but armbands and large, heavy pectorals of gold and jewels. This fashion is clearly illustrated in the frescoes. Mummies were buried with their jewelry, not just the elite but common folk as well although the earrings might be made of bone instead of gold. Wearing silver and gold and precious gems was a sign of wealth and status. King Tutankhamun was buried with many pairs of earrings as well as other jewelry. Here’s an odd tidbit; statues of cats display earrings and jewelry has been found in the burials of sacred animals such as the Apis bulls. I find it hard to imagine the cats and dogs I’ve known putting up with earrings for a minute.
In the Renaissance, men wore heavy chains and massive rings, again as a symbol of wealth and status. (I suggest that the same is true of men today.Just look at the rappers and the hiphop stars.)
But what about earrings? A man wearing earrings has taken longer to become acceptable. I know I was startled when I saw a young man wearing diamond earrings that any woman would desire. But earrings have always been just as much a man’s adornment as a woman’s.
Pirates frequently wore earrings. Besides adorning themselves, the earrings could pay for a funeral if he died while on land. No one could accuse a pirate of effeminacy.
Jewelry has also been used as an award or prize. A new sailor had the privilege to put on a ring when he crossed the equator. European kings regularly rewarded a favorite with a piece of jewelry.
ashiI don’t wear too much jewelry – too lazy I guess – but I enjoy seeing it on other people.
This past week I read two books that could not be more different, both suggested to me by Amazon.
While I read Murder for Christmas by Francis Duncan, I kept thinking that it had a very old fashioned feel. The action takes place at a Christmas Party, at a fancy house, in the snow. The detective, Mordecai Tremaine, is a bland fellow with piece-nez.
Christmas morning, the guests are shocked to find the body of a fellow guest wearing a Santa suit. He is the guardian of a young girl. (This is where the old-fashioned nature appears; the description of the girl, and the other women in fact, is very dated.) As usual, as Tremaine investigates, he discovers everyone has secrets, from Benedict Grame’s sister (planning to elope) to the seemingly dull married couple, to Benedict himself.
Dated in some respects but the mystery holds up. Recommended.
The second book I read was Singapore Sapphire.
Harriet Gordon has moved to Singapore to live with her brother after a stint in Holloway prison for her activities as a suffragette. Her brother is a minister and the headmaster of a boys’ school. Desperate for some income, she advertises her services as a stenographer and typist. When she goes to the home of her first client, Sir Oswald Newbold, to retrieve her typewriter, she finds his body. This introduces her to Robert Curran, the Detective Inspector of the Police force. Needless to say, Harriet involves herself in the investigation. She develops a friendship with Curran, something she wishes would be more. But he is already involved with a beautiful Chinese woman.
This mystery has it all: interesting characters, an exotic and well-drawn locale, and a captivating mystery.
Since I like to cook, I find researching the food eaten in the different times I write about in my books fascinating. I own several Shaker cookbooks as well as one of the first written (from the late 1700s). (I also own multiple ethnic cookbooks, several Amish, a Middle Ages and Elizabethan cookbooks, and a handwritten cookbook with old recipes handed down by family from the Depression.
I do not, of course, own anything from the Bronze Age Crete mysteries. Not only have we not decoded Linear A, but archaeologists are still excavating and interpreting what they find. Although we know that the Ancient Minoans had grapes and made wine, as well as olives, and olive oil, the rest of their diet is a little mysterious. We are not even sure they ate cheese, although right now theories tend toward yes. Researching what they ate has been a challenge. I assumed they drank an herbal tea and we know they drank beer as well as wine. Since barley was grown throughout the region, it is generally thought that was part of their diet. And since almond trees grow on Crete, we can be pretty sure they ate almonds.
The diet in early America tended to be meat heavy. Farmers had poke, although the pigs were almost feral and allowed to run wild. Cattle, sheep, poultry – all of it could end up on the dinner table. They also consumed game of various types. One of the recipes I saw began ‘tie the front legs of the turtle together.’ Venison is heavily featured. I have several recipes for squirrel (without any direction for cleaning or skinning). One begins with ‘cut two squirrels into pieces’, and ends with ;young squirrels can be fried.’ All I can is say is EWW.
The old time New England cookbook has fewer meat recipes but a lot involving lobsters, oysters, clams and so on. As one would expect.
What surprised me about the Medieval and Elizabethan cookbooks was the amount of spice and sugar used. These must have been food for the wealthy while the poorer folk ate cabbage.
Probably my favorites among these old cookbooks, though, are the Shaker ones. The Shaker Sisters cooked for a crowd so everything is in large amounts. They were famous for their foods, their cider, their seeds. They probably ate the best of anyone.
But what I like is those cookbooks contain extensive baking chapters. All kinds of bread, cakes, cookies and pies. Their potato bread is great, although it makes many more loaves than I need. The one failure that I’ve tried is the recipe for lemon pie. The lemons are sliced thin, covered with sugar, and baked in a crust. It was unbearably sour.
The Depression recipes include such items as navy bean hash, fried bean patties, and desserts such as tomato soup cake and grape pudding. Eggs and sugar were expensive so they were kept to a minimum or left out altogether (usually with some odd substitution.)
On the recommendation of a friend from my writing group (Mally Becker of the Mavens of Mayhem), I read Murder once removed by S.C. Perkins.
The detective/protagonist is a genealogist who researches family histories. She is researching the family history of Gus Halloran and discovers an ancestor was murdered. Halloran wants to know who murdered his ancestor and Lucy narrows down the field to two possibilities. Halloran chooses Applewhite, the ancestor of a current state senator.
Things spiral out of control. Files and Photos are stoles from another descendent and Lucy is threatened.
The mystery turns out not to be so simple and, of course, involves property and money.
I loved this. The characters, not just Lucy but her best friends Roxanne and Serena, are fun and the information about genealogy and family relationships is fascinating.
Right now, in New York where I live, it is 27 degrees. Last night it dropped to 7 and earlier this week it was 3.
The pipes in the house didn’t freeze but the outflow from the sink did. When I filled it with hot water in preparation for washing my good knives and some of the other things that cannot go into the dishwasher, I realized that the water was not draining. At all. So now, all the dishes in the dishwasher and that were waiting for washing must be washed in the bathroom sink. What fun!
That prompted me to think of the past. No dishwashers. In fact, no electricity at all. I might have to step outside into the freezing cold to use the outhouse or to pump water. No hot showers. The house might be heated by a fireplace. How cold would that be when the temperatures are at 7?
How much water would I need to pump, and then heat, to do laundry? And where would I put it to dry, in a basically unheated house?
We got about 8 inches of snow a few days ago. By 11 a.m. the next day, the plows had cleared the roads. My husband went out with a snow blower to clear the driveway and the walk. What would 8 inches of snow have done to travel plans in the past? In the 1700s and 1800s, horses and/or sleighs would have been the option.
This doesn’t even touch on the rapid communication we enjoy. If I want my husband to pick up something from the store, all I have to do is text him. Yes, we really have many amenities now. I am glad I don’t live in early America, the time of Will Rees.
