Myths, folklore & symbolism

"The cross of St. Andrew was the sign used for the Scottish flag before Scotland's union with England. The Union Jack, today's British flag, is a combination of the English St. George's cross (white), the Scottish cross of St. Andrew (white on blue), and the Irish cross of St. Patrick (red)."

Get the full story at symbols.com.

Bamboo

Myths, folklore, and symbolism
Bamboo: In the Far East, he bamboo plant is thought to bring good fortune. It is frequently the object of meditative painting; the joints, individual segments, and straight growth of the bamboo symbolize in Buddhism and Taoism the path and individual steps of spiritual development. (Herder)

Feast

Myths, folklore, and symbolism
Feast: As a ritual banquet in many cultures, the feast symbolizes participation in a community and sometimes also in a religiously significant act. (Herder)

Sacred prostitution

Myths, folklore, & symbolism
Sacred prostitution: Usually practiced in the temple precinct, it was customary in the ancient Orient, Greece, and India (among other places). It was regarded as the symbol of the union with the gods and as a fertility ritual. (Herder)

The Word-Hoard: Elem

Elem: Made of elm [similar to oaken]. (Edward Slow's Glossary of Wiltshire Words, Used by the Peasantry in the Neighbourhood of Salisbury, c. 1900)

Book Review: the Hidden Man

Here's the last of my three reviews in this month's Historical Novels Review.

THE HIDDEN MAN

Anthony Flacco, Ballantine Books, $14.00, pb, 275pp, 978-0-8129-7758-5

Nine years after San Francisco’s great earthquake and fires, the city is just beginning to be reborn and is full of possibility. Against this backdrop, and the 1915 Pan-Pacific Exhibition, Detective Randall Blackburn and his adoptive children Shane and Vignette Nightingale struggle to understand their places in the world – all while protecting the famous mesmerist James “J.D.” Duncan from a threat only he can see.

Though this book is a sequel to The Last Nightingale, reading the first book is not a prerequisite (I did not). The setting and concept had a great deal of potential; sadly, I do not think the execution capitalizes on either.

The setting – both time and place – felt like props rather than integral parts of the story; I never felt a real sense of place or time, though the details were strewn throughout. The same can be said for the characters: I wanted very much to care about them and their plight (particularly Shane), but I just couldn’t connect with them – they felt very much like props themselves.

The potentially interesting characters were done a real disservice with a flimsy plot and sluggish pacing. The book is serviceably written, but could have used a much stronger hand in editing, for continuity, content (so many long expository passages!), and line editing.

Overall the book is enjoyable enough, though I would recommend it only for historical fiction fans who want a quick read in between works with more depth.

Book Review: Museum of Human Beings

Here's the second of my three reviews in this month's Historical Novels Review.

MUSEUM OF HUMAN BEINGS

Colin Sargent, McBooks Press, 2008, $23.95/C$26.95, pb, 321 pp, 9781590131671

We first meet Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau in 1805 as he bounces along on his mother Sacagawea’s back, seeing the world with her eyes as they lead the Lewis and Clark expedition to the Pacific. He is a child, and a man, caught in the middle – half-French, half-Shoshone, struggling to find his place in the world and watching America grow up around him, struggling to find its identity.

This sprawling, quasi-bildungsroman, loosely based on J.B. Charbonneau’s life, is a story of dichotomies – “Injun” vs. white, the wilderness vs. civilization, the new world vs. the old, past vs. present, knowledge vs. knowing. Baptiste struggles throughout the book to find his place in these dichotomies, never bridging, always seeking to choose sides. It is a story of the labels we put on each other, and those we take on to ourselves.

The book is beautifully written, and has a good sense of time and place, but I felt held at a distance. Though Baptiste’s life was full of adventure and tragedy, I found it hard to really care about him, and watched his struggles as though he were the subject of an anthropological study. Perhaps, given the themes and subjects of the story, this was intentional – he seemed like another exhibit in Clark’s Museum of Human Beings, and not a flesh-and-blood person to struggle with and care for.

MUSEUM OF HUMAN BEINGS is an ambitious, thoughtful book, but ultimately fell short for me.

Book Review: Seal Woman

Here's the first of my three reviews in this month's Historical Novels Review.

SEAL WOMAN

Solveig Eggers, Ghost Road Press, $19.95, pb, 283pp, 0-9796255-3-x

A Historical Novels Review Editor's Choice

Berlin, 1947. The Icelandic Agricultural Association advertises for “strong women who can cook and do farm work,” and artist Charlotte, who has watched her life and her city crumble around her, agrees to work at a farm called Dark Castle.

SEAL WOMAN is, at its core, about the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, and our lives. What is real, and what is myth? After almost incomprehensible pain and loss, how does one go on?

Impressionistic and mythic in the Iceland-based sections, and all too real and present in the Berlin-based sections, the settings – both time and place – are beautifully rendered. The characters, particularly Charlotte, are very real, and every bit as frustrating and messy as real people. I caught myself more than once thinking I was reading the biography of a mid-20th century war survivor.

But as fascinating as the story and the characters are, the writing itself is gorgeous – many passages so lovely, I wanted to underline them and commit them to memory so I’d never forget their lyric beauty. Overall, a challenging book on many levels – and very rewarding. A fantastic story, beautifully written. Highly recommended.

Bind and loose

Myths, folklore, & symbolism
Bind and loose: It was a frequent symbolic practice in magical rites that was intended either to restrict (through binding) or to set free (through loosing) specific energies or forces. (Herder)

My full soundtrack is now live over at the Writers and Soundtracks blog. Check it out!

The Word-Hoard: Agacerie

Agacerie: Allurement; attractive air; bewitching grace; from French. (C.A.M. Fennell's The Stanford Dictionary of Anglicised Words and Phrases, 1964)

Eye

Myths, folklore, and symbolism
Eye: As the primary organ of sense perception, it is closely associated with light, the sun, and spirit. It symbolizes spiritual and mental perception, but it is lso - as the "mirror" of the soul - the organ of spiritual and mental expression. The right eye is sometimes associated with activity, the future, and the sun; the left with passivity, the past, and the moon. Buddhism speaks of the third eye as symbol of inner vision.

In antiquity the eye frequently was a symbol of the sun deity. In Egypt a common amulet was the so-called udjat eye, the hawk eye of the sky god Horus, resting on a crosier; the eye symbolizes the broad view and omniscience, and the staff the power of the ruler. The amulet was supposed to bestow invulnerability and eternal fertility.

In the Bible the eye is a symbol of the omniscience, vigilance, and the protective omnipresence of God. In Christian art an eye surrounded by sun rays signifies God. In Christian art an eye surrounded by sun rays signifies God; an eye in the hand of God signifies God's creative wisdom; an eye in a triangle signifies God the Father in the Trinity. Eyes on the wings of the cherubim and seraphim refer to their penetrating ability to recognize and know. Since ancient times, apotropaic [having the power to prevent evil or bad luck] powers have been attributed to representations of the eye. (Herder)

Myths, folklore & symbolism

"A sign from alchemy for sulphur, brimstone, black sulphur, or black mercuric sulphide."

Get the full story at symbols.com.

Also, my inner 12-year-old is amused.

Hood

Myths, folklore, & symbolism
Hood: It is a garment of various gods, demons, magicians, and monks. In addition to its practical use, it signifies concentration of spiritual power or self-concealment. Covering the head with a veil or a hood during initiation rites sometimes symbolizes death. (Herder)

Author Soundtrack: Julie Rose

So, I've posted my own soundtrack - it's now live over at the Writers and Soundtracks blog. Check it out!

If you have an extra buck or two in your pocket, consider sending that extra didge along to the lovely folks at Farrago's Wainscot. The editors there (and at Behind the Wainscot) give voice to fascinating, challenging, and award-winning short fiction and poetry, and are looking to increase the amount they pay their contributors. It's a worthy cause!

The Word-Hoard: Hydegild

Hydegild: A price or ransom to be paid for the saving of his skin from being beaten. (William Rastell's Terms of the Lawes of England, 1708)

Honey

Myths, folklore, & symbolism
Honey: Often associated with milk, it represents sweetness, gentleness, or the highest earthly or heavenly good, and hence the condition of perfect bliss (e.g., of Nirvana). As a substantial, nutritious food, it also symbolizes vital energy and immortality.

In China, honey was closely associated symbolically with the earth and the midpoint or center; hence there always had to be some honey among the dishes served to the emperor. In antiquity, honey was considered to be a mysticl food because, among other reasons, it was extracted by an innocent insect from innocen blossoms, which were touched but not destroyed. Honey symbolized spiritual insight, knowledge, and dedication, as well as calmness and peace.

There are isolated instances of initiation rites in which it was customary to wash the hands not only with water but first with honey, since honey was valued for its medicinal properties and was thought to provide internal cleansing. Because of its golden yellow color, honey was sometimes associated with the sun. According to Jung, honey represents the self (the maturational goal of the individuation process). (Herder)

Myths, folklore & symbolism

"This form of cross is sometimes called St. George's cross."

Get the full story at symbols.com.

YES WE CAN

Needless to say? I'm thrilled.

Bullbeggar

Myths, folklore, and symbolism
bullbeggar: In North Country and West Country dialects, a term for any frightening supernatural figure. In Reginald Scot's The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584), it comes at the head of a mixed list of scary creatures: "Our mothers' maids have so fraied us with bull beggars, spirits, witches, urchins, elves...and other such bugs that we are afraid of our owne shadowes." (Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore)

A friend passed this along and I had to share. I'd not read this one before.

Election Day, November, 1884
by Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show,

'Twould not be you, Niagara--nor you, ye limitless prairies--nor
your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,

Nor you, Yosemite--nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic
geyser-loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,

Nor Oregon's white cones--nor Huron's belt of mighty lakes--nor
Mississippi's stream:

--This seething hemisphere's humanity, as now, I'd name--the still
small voice vibrating--America's choosing day,

(The heart of it not in the chosen--the act itself the main, the
quadriennial choosing,)

The stretch of North and South arous'd--sea-board and inland--
Texas to Maine--the Prairie States--Vermont, Virginia, California,

The final ballot-shower from East to West--the paradox and conflict,

The countless snow-flakes falling--(a swordless conflict,

Yet more than all Rome's wars of old, or modern Napoleon's:) the
peaceful choice of all,

Or good or ill humanity--welcoming the darker odds, the dross:
--Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify--while the heart
pants, life glows:

These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,
Swell'd Washington's, Jefferson's, Lincoln's sails.

Author Interview: Elizabeth Chadwick

My interview with Elizabeth Chadwick is now live over at the Writers and Soundtracks blog. Check it out!

From MoveOn

Election 2008 Voting Information

Today, November 4th, is Election Day! Remember to vote—not just for Barack Obama, but for Congressional, state, and local candidates as well.

Where and when do I vote?
Find your polling place, voting times, and other important information by checking out these sites and the hotline below. These resources are good, but not perfect. To be doubly sure, you can also contact your local elections office.

Obama's VoteForChange site: voteforchange.com
League of Women Voters' site: vote411.org/pollfinder.php
Obama's voter hotline: 877-US4-OBAMA (877-874-6226)

What should I do before I go?
After you've entered your address on either Vote For Change or Vote411, read the voting instructions and special rules for your state.

Voting ID laws vary from state to state, but if you have ID, bring it.

Check out all the voting myths and misinformation to look out for: http://truth.voteforchange.com/

What if something goes wrong?
Not on the voter list? Make sure you're at the right polling place, then demand a provisional ballot.

If you're voting on an electronic machine with a paper record, verify that the record is accurate.

Need legal help? Call 1-866-OUR-VOTE.

If you encounter a problem, try to videotape the situation and submit it to VideoTheVote.org

Now, everybody go vote!!!

The Word-Hoard: Ambiloquy

Ambiloquy: The use of ambiguous expressions. (Edward Lloyd's Encyclopaedic Dictionary, 1895); The use of indeterminate expressions; discourse of doubtful meaning (Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, 1755); Double-speaking (Nathaniel Bailey's Etymological English Dictionary, 1749)