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HALLOWEEN, JACK O' LANTERNS, and STINGY JACK

10/28/2016

Happy Halloween to all you humans, ghouls, elves, werewolves, vampires, demons, gods and goddesses, and everyone, whoever and whatever you are. You all know the origins of Halloween, right? Too bad. I'm going to tell you again.

THE ORIGINS OF HALLOWEEN
The ancient Celtic harvest festival Samhain dates back nearly 2000 years. After the Roman conquest, Samhain became enriched by the Roman festivals of Feralia [commemorating deceased ancestors], Pomona [celebrating the Roman goddess of fruit trees, gardens, and orchards], and Lemuria [exorcising malevolent ghosts of the dead and evil spirits -- lemurs -- from their homes]. This festival is recognized as the origin of our modern Halloween.

[Don't forget, at the time of Christ, the Celtic Empire encompassed most of what we know as Europe. So the Celts are not only from the British Isles.]

Samhain (pronounced "sow-in" or "sah-van") is Irish-Gaelic for "the summer's end" and represented the death of Lugh, the summer sun god. It was the third day of a Druid festival and began at dusk on October 31, marking the change of the seasons and the beginning of the Celtic new year.

In the Middle Ages, after Christianity had taken hold, the festival was renamed All Saints Day and All Souls Day when Pope Gregory IV confirmed celebration of All Saints Day on November 1 and All Souls Day on November 2, coinciding with the festival of Samhain.

LET THERE BE LIGHT
One of the practices of the ancient Celtic festival was casting the bones of slaughtered cattle into a large bonfire. Samhain, as the point in the year ushering in the "dark season", was believed to be the that night opened a portal to the Otherworld, allowing the dead to return to where they had lived and letting spirits roam the earth. Part of the ceremony of Samhain was providing hospitality for the dead ancestors.

The period after the fall of Rome was also a period of supernatural intensity, when the forces of darkness were thought to be abroad, To combat the threat, ancient Celts often held raging bonfires – fire being a common way to ward off evil spirits. The practice continued throughout the region even after Christianity took hold in the Middle Ages.

WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH PUMPKINS
and JACK O' LANTERNS?

There is a connection, I promise.

In the Middle Ages, the festival remained, but the bonfires got smaller and smaller until they were replaced by symbolic lights. Turnips, gourds, and other vegetables which were plentiful and inexpensive, were hollowed out and pierced to allow the light of hot embers to shine through. They were like lanterns but still were intended to ward off evil spirits.

The practice of carving the gourds grew in Europe, and scary faces that were carved in the vegetables began to look like the evil spirits they were supposed to scare away.

Immigrants from Europe brought their festivals and practices to America with them, along with vegetable carving. Irish immigrants had a strong influence on how Halloween developed into what is in America. They soon found that turnips weren't in abundance, but pumpkins were. Voilá. Here we are today.

STINGY JACK
One of the myths the Irish brought to America was the one about a man nicknamed "Stingy Jack."

The story tells us that Stingy Jack invited the Devil to have a drink with him, then didn't want to pay for the drinks. So he persuaded the Devil to take the form of a coin Jack could use to buy their drinks. When the Devil turned himself into a coin, Jack decided to keep the money and put it in his pocket where he kept a silver cross, which supposedly kept the Devil from turning back into his original form.

Finally, Jack bargained with the Devil and agreed to free him on the condition he wouldn't bother Jack for one year and that, should Jack die, the Devil wouldn't claim his soul. And so he released the Devil.

After a year, the Devil came around again. This time, Jack coerced him into climbing a tree to pick a piece of fruit. While the Devil was in the tree, Jack carved the sign of the cross into the tree's bark, preventing the Devil from coming down. Jack agreed to let him down if the Devil didn't bother him for ten years. It was agreed, and the Devil came down.

Unfortunately, not long after, Jack died, but God would not allow such an unsavory figure into heaven. The Devil, upset by the tricks Jack had played on him, kept his word not to claim Jack's soul, and as a result, Jack wasn't allowed to go to hell either.

Instead, the Devil sent him into the dark with only a burning coal to light his way. Jack put the coal into a carved-out turnip and has roamed the Earth with it ever since. The Irish began to refer to this ghostly figure as “Jack of the Lantern,” and then, simply “Jack O’Lantern.”
Reworded slightly from History of the Jack 0' Lantern. http://www.history.com/topics/halloween/jack-olantern-history]

THE FINE ART OF PUMPKINRY
But we are not finished. Americans may have inherited the art of pumpkin carving but we have taken it to new heights with our imagination and spirit of adventure.

Four things you never wanted to know about pumpkins
and are going to read anyway.

●Pumpkins are native to the western hemisphere.

●Pumpkins are not a vegetable - they are a fruit! Pumpkins, like gourds, and other varieties of squash are all members of the Cucurbitacae family, which also includes cucumbers, gherkins, and melons.http://www.pumpkincarving101.com/pumpkin_carving_history.html

●The United States' major pumpkin states produce over one billion pounds of the vegetable annually, worth over $100 million. Illinois produces more pumpkins than any other American state.

●The largest pumpkin on record is a 1,725 pound behemoth grown in Ohio.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Resources
http://www.history.com/topics/halloween/jack-olantern-history
http://www.pumpkincarving101.com/pumpkin_carving_history.html
http://www.motherearthliving.com/natural-health/history-of-carving-pumpkins
http://www.pumpkinnook.com/facts.htm
http://www.livescience.com/5831-carve-pumpkins-turnips.html
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THE MYSTERY CHARACTER IN YOUR NOVEL Setting As A Character

10/22/2016

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You've done character profiles for your hero, heroine, antagonist, and secondary characters. You've plotted your novel. You're ready to go. But wait! Have you overlooked that mystery character?

Who's that? Your setting, of course.

In 2013, when I e-mailed Leslie Ann Sartor about guest blogging, I said I'd write about St. Petersburg, the setting for my then-most-recent release All For Spilled Blood. "Great," she replied. "Setting is another character."

Absolutely! That stirred the juices, and I decided to blog on using your setting as a character in your novel.

SETTING OF THE NOVEL
Without place, the characters are just there without reason to act or care. Setting is not only the time, location, and circumstance of where the story takes place, but the social milieu which shapes values and the characters. Nathan Bransford sees three important traits in a novel:

● "Change Underway: The best settings are not static, unchanging places that have no impact on the characters' lives. Instead in the best worlds there is a plot inherent to the setting itself: a place in turmoil, or a place that is resisting change but there are tensions roiling the calm, or the sense of an era passing in favor of a new generation.

● "Personality and Values: A great setting has its own value system. Certain traits are ascendant, whether it's valor and honor, justice and order, every man for himself, or it could even be a place where normal values and perspectives have become skewed or inverted…There's a personality outlook that throws us off kilter and makes us imagine how we'd react if we were placed in that world."

● "Unfamiliarity: Most importantly, a great setting shows us something we've never seen before. Either it's a place that most readers might be unfamiliar with and have never traveled to, or it shows us a place that we are all-too-familiar with, but with a new, fresh perspective that makes us look again."

The setting may establish the mood of the novel, as well as serve as a character that helps the protagonist achieve his or her goals, or as the antagonist working against them [e.g. a novel where the protagonist's goal in climbing Mt. Everest and the setting does everything it can to prevent that with wind, falling rocks, breaking ropes, and so on].

So, your setting is definitely a character in your novel. Whether it's a primary or secondary character depends on the kind of novel and what the author wants. But choosing the correct setting is just as important as the other components of the novel. It can assist the reader to experience the drama and feel the moods and emotions of each particular scene, as well as the novel as a whole.

Sometimes settings are such that the story couldn't take place anywhere else because of the mood, physical features, social values and customs. Think about what makes your setting unique.

Author Susan Meissner writes: "We are wired to assign value to places. That's why home is so sweet, Yosemite is so beautiful, Paris is so romantic and a moonlit beech is so calming. It's also why dark houses scare us, crumbling cliffs intimidate us, and foggy moors depress us. Places communicate something to us. A spider doesn't care if it makes a web in the dark, musty cellar or under a chair in an opulent ballroom. But we care!""

ou hear the background sounds, feel the rhythm and pace. These things are often hard to research. Even if you've never been to the location where your novel is set, thinks about those characteristics of place.

While setting may not be the same as mood and atmosphere, the reader's emotional response to the time and place of the setting, each setting has its own unique mood and atmosphere. And the more familiar you are with the sense of place, the more you can use it to assist or hinder your protagonist, which will add depth to your novel.

Doing research in advance allows the author to pull those in as details that affect and further plot without stopping in the middle to look things up, or going back later to add them…and then forgetting to do that.

A few things to look at include: Weather and climate, slang and language, particularly if the setting is foreign, the appearance at different times of day and in different seasons. You may even want to find out of the location is on daylight savings time…and that's not just for the US settings. What places in the setting are particularly scary/dangerous and peaceful/safe, map and satellite pictures, topography and physical characteristics.

Susan Meissner also suggests, as part of your research, that you look at the location's newspaper on line and check out "real estate ads, the society page, obituaries, and the restaurant guide." You can get a good sense of what the city or town is like. Personally, I'd throw in reading the police blotter or equivalent, too.

SETTING OF EACH SCENE
I was intrigued by Author MaryLu Tyndall's list of six ways the setting can help or hinder the protagonist in achieving his/her goals in general and in a scene. It's worth the time to read her article. (See Resources) Here's a recap of her points.

● The setting as a friend / a comfortable, relaxing place where protagonist can reflect, or a safe place to hide from enemies.

● The setting as an antagonist / introduce conflict, trouble, thwarts protagonist's plans.

● The setting as a mentor / a place to learn or make discoveries, a place to prepare to take something on.

● The setting as a shadow for protagonist / a shadow reflects the deepest flaws of the character / a setting that opens the character's eyes to his/her own flaws.

● The setting as a model of what the protagonist wants to be / a setting that fosters qualities to which the protagonist aspires.

● The setting as an example/ a setting that either assists or hinders the character in the particular scene. There are important roles of the setting of each scene.

ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA

St. Petersburg is a beautiful city founded by Tzar Peter the Great in 1703. Although created to be as much like other contemporary European cities as possible, nothing is really old by European standards, and the buildings themselves take on some of the special expansive qualities typical of Russian architecture.

I didn't know, when I went there in 2004, that St. Peterburg (previously Leningrad after 1917) is called the Venice of the North. It was originally constructed on ten islands on the north side of the Neva river delta. Today the city spreads over more than forty islands and has 342 public bridges of all sizes, types, and designs.

It’s impossible to walk more than a few hundred meters without crossing a bridge. The canals and the morning fog give the city a very romantic and picturesque mood, as do the white nights when the sun goes down at 1 am and the rest of the night is like twilight until the sun comes up at about 3:30 am.

The Tsar expected residents of the city to move around during the summer months by boat on the canals. In the winter, when the canals are frozen, they were expected to use the canals with sleds. I guess that didn’t work out. After Peter’s death, they started building bridges. The first permanent bridge of bricks and stone across the main branch of the Neva was constructed in 1850.

The Russian people are integral to St. Petersburg as a setting. I found them friendly, helpful, and often outgoing … but serious. Yes, they do laugh and smile, and they know how to have a good time, but in the shopping center or along the streets, most of them seemed to go about their business with unsmiling intense expressions, as though they take life very seriously. The older ones rarely step out of the box of their responsibility, seemingly conditioning from prior times.

If you read All For Spilled Blood, which will be published by Desert Breeze Press in July 2018, you'll see how I use the setting as a character in the novel.
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References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setting_%28narrative%29
http://www.rachellegardner.com/2012/06/using-setting-as-a-character-a-tip-for-novelists/
http://www.novelrocket.com/2011/10/make-your-setting-character-by-susan.html
http://www.julieleto.com/articles/where-am-i-the-importance-of-setting-to-your-romance-novel/
http://www.scribophile.com/blog/importance-of-setting-in-a-novel/
http://leaguewriters.blogspot.com/2010/05/making-of-world.html
http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2010/05/what-makes-great-setting.html
http://www.saint-petersburg.com/photo/index.asp\

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ISLAND OF THE DOLLS

10/17/2016

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I had so many questions about the photo I posted of the Island of the Dolls, that I thought I'd follow up with a brief history.

La Isla de la Munecas (Island of the Dolls) is located in the borough of Xochimilco, a two hour boat ride from Mexico City, on Teshuilo Lake. Xochimilco is best known for its canals and floating gardens, remnants of a large lake and canal system that connected most of the settlements in the Valley of Mexico more than a hundred years ago. The island itself is a floating garden.

DON JULIAN SANTANA BARRERA
The only inhabitant of this small island was Don Julian Santana Barrera, a man from La Asunción. He was either the owner of the island or the caretaker. Either way, he was definitely a hermit. Although he was married and had a family, he chose to live alone on this island for the last fifty years of his life.

THE LEGEND
One version of the story is that Don Julian found a little girl drowned under mysterious circumstances and was not able to save her life. (There is no mention anywhere of what those mysterious circumstances might have been.)

The other version is that there were three little girls playing on a small island on Teshuilo Lake when one of them drowned. As a result, the area became known as a haunted spot and no one came there, except Don Julian, who lived there.

Whichever beginning is true, the stories converges when, not long after the girl's death, Don Julian found a doll floating in the water close to the same place where the girl drowned. He assumed it had belonged to her, and hung it on a tree as a sign of respect, a memorial. There was no sinister or weird intent.

After this, however, it's said he began to find one doll after another in the canals, and that he heard footsteps, whispers and wailings even though he lived in the wilderness far from any other inhabitants. He believed it was the dead girl's spirit or, in some references, an evil spirit.

He began hanging more dolls on trees as protection from the evil spirit and to calm the spirit of the dead girl. He would search for discarded dolls everywhere and brought them to his island as an offering. It's also said that Julian had a garden and sold fresh produce to the locals. They began bringing him broken and discarded dolls to trade for vegetables.

Julian didn't clean or mend the dolls, just hung them up. Over fifty years, he collected hundreds, perhaps thousands, of dolls in varying degree of decay and dismemberment. Even dolls in good shape when they were hung, have suffered from exposure to sun, wind, and rains over many years. He made the entire island into a shrine. It is said that the locals today think of the island as an "enchanted" place, not a "haunted" place.

ONE OF THE MOST CREEPY PLACES ON EARTH
When Don Julian died in 2001, he was found drowned in the same location as the little girl. Since his death the island has been open to the public, but you can only get there by taking a ferry or gondola from Mexico City.

The end result is one of the creepiest sights you will ever see.

When Don Julian died in 2001, he was found drowned in the same location as the little girl supposedly drowned. Since his death the island has been open to the public, but you can only get there by taking a ferry or gondola from Mexico City. Creepy or not, it has become a big tourist attraction.□

Resources
http://www.odditycentral.com/pics/mexicos-island-of-the-dolls-is-beyond-creepy.html
http://isladelasmunecas.com/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/14/islas-de-las-munecas_n_5663181.html
http://www.mexicovacationtravels.com/ruins/isla-de-las-munecas-mexicos-island-of-the-dolls.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xochimilco
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xochimilco
http://www.amusingplanet.com/2011/04/island-of-dolls-mexicos-creepiest.html

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cOLUMBUS DAY

10/5/2016

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By Ann Siracusa, Revised from post published on Dede Craig's Blog, 2011

COLUMBUS DAY
On Monday, October 10, our nation officially celebrates Columbus Day (although the Columbus Day is actually October 12).

Columbus Day? October 12? A National Holiday? Do we actually get the day off? Well, yes and no. Columbus Day is still a national holiday, even though for many it's an obscure or obsolete holiday. And not everyone gets it off.

Sometimes it seems that many Americans have forgotten the real reasons why we celebrate any of our national holidays, including this one. It's just another long weekend for the lucky ones who get it off. If you're in Retail, sorry!

WHY OCTOBER 12?
October 12, 1492, is the date when explorer Christopher Columbus (Genoa, 1451-1506) and his men set foot on the soil of the New World, the present day Bahamas, and claimed the land for Spain. Then they continued on to the islands of Cuba and Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic).

Even though U.S. President Benjamin Harrison issued a proclamation in 1892 to honor four hundred-year anniversary of Columbus’ landing in the Bahamas, it wasn’t a national holiday until 1937, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared it a legal federal holiday. I find it interesting that in quite a few Latin American countries, October 12 is celebrated as Día de la Raza. In the Bahamas it is called Discovery Day, Día de la Hispanidad and Fiesta Nacional in Spain, and as Día de las Américas in Uruguay.

COLUMBUS DISCOVERED AMERICA ... RIGHT?
Well, not exactly. It depends on how you define the word “discover.” What about the Indians living there when Columbus landed? And what about Leif (The Lucky) Ericson (970-1020) the Norse explorer who is regarded as the first European to land in North America some 500 years before Columbus? There's no longer any debate about Leif the Lucky reaching Canada, and that's still North America.

Or how about the Jewish, the Chinese, the Egyptians, Scott Wolter, and everyone else on the History Channel? Every year there are new discoveries that have the potential of rewriting the history we're taught in school, and the ability to DNA test certain ancient finds may eventually be able to put to rest old myths and word of mouth stories and establish real evidence.

Leif Ericson Amerigo Vespucci Christopher Columbus

While it’s true that Columbus never set foot on what U.S. citizens consider “America,” he never claimed he had. The name “America” (bestowed on the New World) was derived from the name of explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci (Florence, 1454-1512).

WHY DID VESPUCCI NAME THE NEW WORLD, AND NOT COLUMBUS?
That’s another ironic quirk of history. Vespucci didn’t name it, either. In fact, both Columbus and Vespucci believed what they discovered to be parts of Asia that, at that point, had not been explored by Europeans. Historians tell us that neither man had any concept of a new continent.

One source indicates Amerigo Vespucci was a merchant from Venice who owned a business in Spain outfitting ships for mercantile expeditions. Another claims he worked for Lorenzo de' Medici and was sent, in 1492, to work at the Seville, Spain branch of the Medici bank. According to that source, King Manual I of Portugal invited Vespucci to participate as observer in several exploratory voyages to the east coast of South America between 1499 and 1502. And, in fact, both versions might be correct.

However he got there, Vespucci accompanied those expeditions to South America and, as a result, wrote letters with glowing descriptions of the newly discovered countries which he called the lands of a "New World."

Vespucci’s letters were read by Martin Waldseemuller, a noted geographer, and Mathias Ringmann, who were preparing a reproduction of Ptolemy's treatise on geography. They decided to incorporate Vespucci's voyage into the treatise. Ringmann, acting as editor, was apparently unaware of Columbus’ discoveries fifteen years earlier and wrote the following in his introduction: “There is a fourth quarter of the world which Amerigo Vespucci has discovered and which for this reason we can call 'America' or the land of Americo."
Their work (entitled "Cosmographiae Introductio") was published in April, 1507, and marked the first time the word America appeared in print.

And this is sooo not what I learned in high school American History. Do we really know anything for sure?

According to Toby Lester, a contributing editor to The Atlantic and the author of The Fourth Part of the World, “History hasn’t served poor Matthias Ringmann nearly as well [as Martin Waldseemuller]. That doesn’t seem quite fair. So tonight let’s send up a few of our fireworks in honor of the man who had the audacity to declare, before anybody else, that the world had a fourth part—and to imagine that he might be the one who could give it a name.”
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/04/where_america_really_came_from/

DOES COLUMBUS GET THE CREDIT?
Stories have it that Columbus died broke and in jail, but for the most part, the history books give Columbus the credit for “discovering” the new world and opening up the Americas to European colonization. They also lay the blame for the negative impacts of his arrival in the Western Hemisphere. A double-edged sword.

He is also blamed for the destruction of the native peoples of the islands he explored, and he is labeled a racist, as were most of the aristocracy of that period. People have expended many words on extolling his successes and virtues and criticizing his faults and failures. There is plenty to read, if you want to explore those avenues.

ONE THING YOU CAN BE SURE OF
Regardless of who got here first and the "real" story, the fact is that Christopher Columbus' voyages changed the world from what it was in 1492. He opened a new era of trade and exploitation. And that's what we acknowledge on October 12.

Resources
http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/1492.exhibit/c-Columbus/columbus.html
http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/bookmarks/americas_name/
http://www.answers.com/topic/columbus-day
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/04/where_america_really_came_from/
http://columbus-day.123holiday.net/christopher_columbus.html
http://blogs.tennessean.com/opinion/2010/10/05/why-is-columbus-day-celebrated/
http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Amerigo_Vespucci.aspx
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Amerigo_Vespucci
http://www.theholidayzone.com/columbus/history.html
http://aglobalworld.com/holidays-around-the-world/discovery-puerto-rico-day-puerto-rico/
http://aglobalworld.com/holidays-around-the-world/bahamas-discovery-day/
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HALLOWEEN, JACK O' LANTERNS, and STINGY JACK

THE MYSTERY CHARACTER IN YOUR NOVEL Setting As A Character

ISLAND OF THE DOLLS

cOLUMBUS DAY

Author R. Ann Siracusa

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﻿HALLOWEEN, JACK ﻿O' LANTERNS, and STINGY JACK

THE MYSTERY CHARACTER IN YOUR NOVEL Setting As A Character

ISLAND OF THE DOLLS

cOLUMBUS DAY

Author R. Ann Siracusa

Archives

Categories

HALLOWEEN, JACK O' LANTERNS, and STINGY JACK