Halloween-A European Ancestral Festival

 

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Around this time of year in Europe, long ago, the ordinary folks had already celebrated Harvest Home, bringing in grain from the fields and hogs from the forests. The barley, oats and wheat, gathered in, was measured. Now the community knew, more or less, how hungry the coming winter would or would not be. The light was disappearing day by day, the sun setting earlier and rising later, as the northern hemisphere angles away from that ancient God--or in Germanic countries, Goddess--the Sun.

This was a time to celebrate the beginning of a new year, and this season, one of the four most important of the solar year was observed with three days of ritual, full of deep spiritual meaning. We can tell how important this observance was because the Catholic Church, after that entity had firmly established its rule, took over the ancient celebration and gave each of those three autumnal days a new, canonical designation.

Halloween is a contraction of "All Hallows Eve," that falls on the evening before what is today called "All Saints Day." Originally, on that night, all the fires in the village would be extinguished. Everyone would huddle in the dark and increasing chill of their homes. On this night, only the priestly caste dared to be out and about, because, now without firelight, evil beings could be stalking through the villages, the fields and the forests on every side. Offerings, sometimes a bowl of milk, sometimes cakes, were left outside each door in hopes of appeasing the endless hunger of these dreadful creatures. 

Today, all that is left of that practice are our children, costumed and masked, dressed as supernatural beings, who knock on our doors and beg for candy. 

On the morning after, as the sun rose, each housewife would sweep and gather the ashes of the central hearth and dispose of these into the purifying safety of running water. At the same time, religious leaders, male and female, would rekindle each village's sacred fire. Once this was established, flaming boughs would be carried house to house, to rekindle each and every village hearth.  Afterward, everyone set to work to make a communal feast. This day, eventually renamed by the Church "All Saints Day," was then rededicated to Christian Saints. In pagan times, however, this day was the first of the New Year and pagan gods and goddesses were the ones celebrated.

The third day of the feast, later named "All Souls," was originally in honor of the ancestors. Ancestor worship still exists today here and there on planet earth, but 2,000 years ago, this was a universal feature of most religions. Bones of last year's deceased, previously de-fleshed in various ways, and subjected to cremation and temporary housing in pots, might be brought out of dwellings to be reverently interred within the local barrow or stone burial chamber. 

In some places/times, when barrows were the fashion, the great stones which blocked the openings would be laboriously moved so that the year's dead would be carried within, to rest with those ancestors who had gone before. The rituals of deposition for cremains varied from place to place and age to age. Cremains urns have also been discovered beneath standing stones. Others carpet the ditches which enclose stone or earthen monuments, or the ditches that still exist, still guarding a long perished henge made of wood. 

In the Norse tradition, this period, after the full moon of the Autumn Equinox, was celebrated as the Disirblot, a feast in honor of the ancestral female spirits who guarded the family line and also in honor of Freya Vanadis, their chief. The celebration was local and domestic, and was also a harvest home. The pig, often portrayed as the mount of Freya, provided the pork for the feast. 

Of course, there are as many traditions as there are countries for this time of year. Divali, the feast of lights, is celebrated in India by closing the books of the last financial year and opening those of the next. Laxshmi, goddess of good fortune and wealth, asked for Her aid in business. What is most visible, however, are the oil lamps that line the streets and float upon the rivers. Many other divinities are honored during this feast in the vast and populous country.  In some regions it is great Kali with her necklace of demon heads
(She who embodies primeval energy/change and creative destruction) that is honored, in others it is Durga, demon slayer, seated upon her tiger. The Warrior God Rama also gets into the Divali celebration, as his devotees know that in the times long ago, this was the season of his coronation.

~Juliet Waldron

Long Ago on the Internet

 

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Way back, more than 25 years ago, the Internet was a fairly new thing. Ordinary people, from their home personal computers, were finding their way into all kinds of list serves, usually aligned with some niche interest, from TV shows to movies to genealogy, to nascent gaming platforms. There was electronics tech talk, as well astronomy, mechanics, philosophy and music. Universities began connecting, sharing their resources. Fiction began to appear online. This was the time of the birth of what is now today's globe-spanning "social media" and the genesis of many mega-billion dollar fortunes, whose troll lord owners tyrannize the internet -- and the politics - of today's online world. 

In those innocent days, however, the internet was a magical open door for those of us fortunate enough to have a desktop computer and dial up service. Through that electronic door people with all kinds of interests could connect, people from all over the world, in my case, the English speaking world. We could make friends everywhere we shared a language; we could travel vicariously to places like England and Australia, or to the West Indies or Canada.

Through an online friend, I discovered sites for history lovers--one in particular called "Later Medieval Britain" (LMB) where people who were fascinated by the Wars of Roses had debates and heated exchanges with one another. Many of these folks were British, some were Australians. I was one of the first Americans on the list, because the fate of "the princes in the tower" had been an obsession of mine since childhood. (My own on-the-spectrum "penguin.")                                                                          Below: Richard III

  

I'd been advocating for the Yorkist side of this ancient strictly regional spat since I was a bookish kid, even arguing ("Rude American child") with the Beefeaters at the Tower of London in my young teens. I passionately believed that Richard III had been maligned, that he had not killed his nephews as his successors, the Tudors (Lancastrian side) alleged. Whatever the truth is, 500+ years later any evidence can only be circumstantial; we shall probably never know what truly happened to these poor little dynastic pawns, but that's not the subject here. 

My subject is the friends I made--on the Yorkist side of the ancient quarrel, naturally! As time passed, we shared about other things: our families, children and grandchildren, pets, gardens, as well as all the historical sources which were passed around and discussed at length. I didn't have a lot of money, but here was a way I could travel without going overseas. Looking back, I loved the time spent on the LMB and then searching libraries for the books about which I'd heard, but most of all, I loved these people, who were as touched as I was. 

I was writing a novel and many others on the listserve were too. We all had our own solutions of the whodunit, of course. When I finally got together the money to go to the UK, I managed to meet several of these much esteemed online voices. One of them drove a group of us around to various historical sites and museums. We had supper together in York in a little restaurant inside the medieval walls. One venerable gentleman, Geoffrey Richardson, who lived near York, had written books on the Neville/Plantagenet clan which were available in museum stores at the local castles and battlefields. I'd hoped to meet and walk upon his favorite battleground, but it never happened, for flooding rains drove all the tourists out of York. I was lucky to catch the last train that made it to London that week, and never had another opportunity again, for he passed away later that winter, taking all his wealth of knowledge and his caustic wit and unique northern turn of phrase with him.

Death happens more frequently in my world these days. I opened FB today--something I don't do much anymore. What used to be news from far-flung friends is now all advertisements, not the warm virtual connection that once was so reliably there. After scrolling down a bit, I suddenly came upon a funeral announcement for an old LMB Australian friend, one who was younger than I am. 

I was shocked and saddened. Meredith was a fellow Ricardian, a fellow writer, a spirited member of our listserve. Later, she became my online publisher and a talented editor too, but besides that I was acquainted with her husband, her children and grandchildren, her garden and her home. I knew her kitties too--these often pictured lounging luxuriously in bed.  Unasked, Meredith spontaneously sent several Aussie children's books which were informative, clever and funny for one of my southern granddaughters, kindly providing this little girl she'd never meet her first real view into life in far-off land. Another beautiful mind, full of learning, opinions, memories and humour, gone forever. RIP my dear friend!

~~Juliet Waldron      

Mysterious Mythical May

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Weather-wise, May can be a checkered month. I often saw snow in May in my upstate NY childhood during the early 50's. The last time I had such a surprise was while living near Hartford, CT, when I boarded a commuter bus, annoyed that I had snow all over my new high heels. The entire drive to bus, along slippery country roads, I'd seen the white stuff threatening to break the blossoming branches in orchards and front yards. I'm not likely to ever see that again! 

May even feels a little a little unsteady, at least inside my seasonally-minded head. From the little we can know about early European religions, it appears many of our ancient relations felt that way too. May was a between month--between winter and summer--neither one thing nor the other. In many cultures, then as now, it was a time of clearing out of the grime left behind by winter cooking and heating, of freshening and storing away of the heaviest clothing. On the farms, young animals now frolicked in the fields; fresh milk was in. The spring cycle of plowing and planting was already underway, but, in the spiritual sense, this month was a pause.

Now, you may be thinking "Well, what about May Day and May Eve, two nights of dancing, feasting, and coupling, with or without, benefit of clergy?" All that is also true. May traditionally began with a party. We are familiar with the British tradition has the men riding out at dawn wearing sprigs of blooming Hawthorn followed by the Maypole dance. Perhaps the disconnect is a result of a lunar calendar and a year which accomodated thirteen months instead of our twelve. At any rate,

the "unlucky" time, the time of mourning and cleansing, the time of celibacy and onerous spring cleaning, began later in our May, perhaps beginning on the 13th and extending until the 9th of June.

"Ne'er cast a clout ere May be out." (Don't change your clothing) This saying was current in Britain and even into northern Spain, for the idea of an unlucky May was widespread. May was a time to abstain from sex across ancient Europe, from Greece to the west in Ireland, explaining why, traditionally, May is unlucky for marriage. In Britain, the month is associated with the Hawthorn or "Whitethorn," the tree of the Crone Goddess Cardea, who cast spells using hawthorn branches. The Greek's called her "Maia," a deity the romantic poets have led us to believe was young and fair, but Maia actually means "grandmother," a goddess whose son conducted the dead to the underworld. The Greeks propitiated the old Crone at marriages--"for the custom was hateful to the goddess," by carrying five torches of hawthorn-wood.*  

In the temples, May was month of cleansing. Altars were purified, religious images were removed and washed, not only with water, but with rituals.  Ovid, in his Fasti, says that the Priestess of Juppiter told him that his daughter should not enter into marriage until "the Ides of June, (mid-month) for until then there is no luck for brides and husbands. Until the sweepings of the temple of Vesta have been carried down to the sea by the yellow Tiber, I must myself not comb my locks which I have cut in sign of mourning, nor pare my nails, nor cohabit with my husband, though he is High Priest of Juppiter. Be not in haste. Your daughter will have better luck in marriage when Vesta's fire burns upon a cleansed hearth."

In Welsh mythology, Yspaddaden Penkawr, the Hawthorne giant, was father to the Fair Olwen (She of the White Track). No man could have her until her father received a dowry of thirteen treasures--all nearly impossible to obtain, of course. At last, a hero arrived. This man, fated to marry her, was named Kilhwych. Olwen was kept mewed up in a castle which was guarded by nine porters and nine watch dogs--note all those magical numbers! Until the unlucky power of May was broken, the Hawthorn's curse held sway.

 In Ireland, we find  many legends concerning magical wells and associated Hawthorn trees. According to E.M. Hull 's "Folklore of the British Isles," a man who destroys a hawthorn tree will suffer the loss of his children as well as the death of all his cattle.  In "Historic Thorn Trees of the British Isles," It is noted that 'St. Patrick's Thorn' at Tin'ahely in County Wicklow was still celebrated into the 19th Century. Here, celebrants paraded to the church and circled the holy well. Here, they tore bits of cloth from their old garments and left them upon the thorns of the ancient Hawthorn that grew there. Long ago, all over Europe, this practice was a sign of mourning and propitiation that must take place before the time of weddings and bringing in the first fruits of summer, which would take place in June. 

I realize that this has been a long wander into the tangles of ancient mythology. Much of this information comes to me from a controversial source: "The White Goddess" by Robert Graves, who was a poet, and, naturally, often occasionally afflicted by bee in his bonnet fits of hubris and madness. Nevertheless, he was also a man who understood many ancient languages well and who moved in scholarly academic circles. I find it interesting that many of his suppositions, arrived at through his knowledge of ancient languages, has actually anticipated many of the new DNA researches into the migrations of people into Europe, from the steppes and even from what is now Turkey and the Middle East. It amazed him, and it still amazes me, all the journeys that the ancestors made and the places in which they ended.

~~Juliet Waldron

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Quebec - Strife During the Early Years

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European fishermen had long traveled to the west chasing the codfish, which were in high demand in Catholic Europe, especially during Lent. In the course of these sea voyages, they'd long been in contact with the Iroquoian speaking people of Maritime Canada, such as the Mi'Kmaq, and the Wendat, more familiarly called "Huron," or Algonquin. These people lived from the mouth of the St. Lawrence  westward, and, in those days, around the shores of the Great Lakes. These voyaging fishermen--Basques, Portuguese, English-- soon realized that great stores of high quality furs could obtained here, and fur--especially beaver, almost extinct in Europe--quickly became more important than their original  quarry. 

In the 16th Century, when Jacques Cartier sailed down the St. Lawrence, he saw many thriving Huron palisaded villages. By the time of Champlain, these sites had been abandoned and the plains beside the river were empty, except for the seasonal hunting of neighboring tribes and war parties. Perhaps the long war between the Algonquin the Iroquois was the reason that these sites were abandoned, but I believe the real reason was smallpox and the other "new" infectious diseases contact with Europeans brought, which were fatal to these town-dwelling Indians. Cartier treated the native people brutally, even kidnapping prominent members of the same tribes that had had peaceful dealings with him and carrying them back to France. None of these men survived to return. 

Champlain was a wiser man who managed to plant permanent French settlements along the river and to make treaties with the people of Huronia. "Champlain's Dream,"a biography by noted historian David Hackett Fischer, builds a case for this explorer's decent reputation. He, almost alone among "Discoverers,"believed that the native peoples and the French could live together in peace in this land.

His original aim was defeated by practical politics. In order for the French settlers to survive, they were forced to make alliances with his closest neighbors--the Huron and Algonquin. This immediately put him in conflict with the Iroquois, their southern neighbors, and he, and his new weapons became part of ongoing war between these tribes. 

As with all early European settlements, Champlain's ability to supply his colonies was constantly thwarted by the turbulence of European politics. First, there was the Counter-Reformation, which pitted Catholics against Protestants--in this case French Huguenots, who would be massacred and driven out. Second, there was the vicious struggle for power and over royal succession that had wracked the French Court for hundreds years. 

The funding problem accelerated after Henry IV, a believer in religious tolerence and Champlain's patron, was assassinated by a Catholic fanatic. No sooner would a few settlers arrive in this hostile place, too cold for most familiar European crops, than funding and supplies would again dry up, leaving the settlers left to struggle through best they could, all while in the midst of a neverending Indian war.  

Next, another European war got underway. It would take pages to describe who, what, where, and why, but the English tried to seize the St. Lawrence valley and the fisheries on what are now called Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia, islands just beyond the Gulf of the St. Lawrence. 

When Quebec was attacked in 1629 by English privateers named Kirke (licensed to do so by Charles I) the colony, already beleaguered and depending upon friendly Indians for food, was forced to surrender. Champlain got the best terms possible for the citizens of Quebec, but had neither the food nor the gunpowder, shot, and fuses needed to defend the town. (I call these Englishmen privateers, but they behaved like pirates, allowing their men to torture and kill a family of farmers (and their animals!) they found at Cape Tourmente, and to destroy every other small undefended settlement they saw along the Gulf of St. Lawrence.)  

In the end, this English conquest didn't last long as peace was declared between England and France. It took months for the news to reach the New World, but, in the end, Champlain managed to free himself from his captors. He returned in 1633 with three ships and 150 settlers. The year after, four ships with 200 colonists arrived, and in 1635, three hundred immigrants came, although eventually almost half of them returned to France. Still, some of these new Habitants stayed, increased and multiplied, and those determined families are the foundation of French Canada. 

Champlain died in Quebec that winter, on Christmas day in the aftermath of a stroke, but the colony continued to hang on and against all odds--Indian wars, and more periods of dire neglect by the French. Despite everything, Quebec survived. There would be many more twists and turns in the fortunes of French Canada, but the English would not make their final return until the end of the Seven Years War (aka The French & Indian War) in 1763.  

~~Juliet Waldron

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Those Were the Days--maybe...

 

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More memory lane writing for February, a month I get used to skipping, because the obligation only comes around every four years. Recently, I completed my 79th trip around Our Local Star. So it happens that many of my elder friends spend a lot of time wishing they were 50-60 years younger. 

Sorry to say, but contrary to a lot of what my same-age friends seem to remember, youth wasn't all Golden Days. 

Here's a case in point, a memory I have of a now mostly forgotten blizzard which happened in Massachusetts in February in 1969. This was a year in which my husband had graduated from college but instead of entering the work world, we'd fallen for siren song of those days and dropped out. He was working in a leather shop for a pittance and I was working a few days a week as a nurse's aide in a small hospital about an hour's commute away. We lived in a cabin in the woods near the Quabbin reservoir, which, in those days, was pretty empty of people, although there were a lot of deer, rabbits and raccoons. We had 1930's indoor plumbling, a woodstove and a kerosene heater, which made the house a lot more "modern" than others in the area.  

Other college friends had migrated to the big city of Boston (and vicinity) and were working 9-5 jobs. Sometimes we went in to visit them over weekends. On this particular Sunday, we left late, around 12, I think. It was snowing--but in those days that was not unusual or even a subject of much concern. A big storm was said to be coming in, but we knew the drive back to western Massachusetts well. It was two and half hours, give or take, to dirt road that led to our little house. 

We piled into the car. Our son, then 3 years old, was crying at leaving his same age friend and heading back to the no-kids world of the country. My husband took the wheel, I sat beside him, and we all headed out. First, we'd have to travel north on the 128 beltway before intersecting the secondary road which would take us much of the way across the state to our cabin in the woods. At once the wind picked up, blowing mightily. 

Snow blasted down. It was crystaline, and began drifting across the road, making it hard to see. If you remember old Beetle windshield wipers, you understand they were having a hard time keeping up, so now and then it was hard to see. The traffic, always heavy on the beltway, began to slow. The big cars nearby began to skid and wobble, struggling to maintain their lanes, lanes which were rapidly becoming little but the tracks of vehicle ahead of you. 

It was quickly becoming apparent that we weren't going to escape Boston. On every side, people were heading for the exits. Trucks fishtailed and then jack-knifed, but, intrepid Beetle drivers that we were, we manuevered around them. Still, anxiety increased every moment because there we were in the middle of it--Daddy, Mommy and little boy, all within this German eggshell. And, oh, yes, I haven't mentioned it yet, but I was eight months pregnant. We were beginning to get cold too. It was the old VW tale about the single heating vent burning up the driver's left foot, while icicles formed on the passengers. 

The wind was howling, pushing the trucks. The wipers were no longer keeping up. Nothing to see but blowing snow and red tail lights as ahead, people braked for obstacles we couldn't see. Finally, my husband saw a familiar exit, the way to his parent's house in Lexington. This was problematic, as we currently weren't on good terms. Still, it seemed the only choice. We dove into the exit.

Now there was another problem--drifts were clogging the ramp. The plows, always diligent in these populated areas, couldn't keep up. Cars ahead were getting stuckwhile trying to exit the exit! The heavy cars of those days wallowed and skidded. People were getting out of their cars in that whipping wind, hoping to push themselves free. The little V-Dub became bogged down too. 

"Get out and push!" my husband yelled. So there I was, in my full-length dress, high boots and big belly, scarf tightly wrapped around my head, pushing the car. When he found traction and surged ahead, I fell flat on my face into the snow. He managed to manuever around the stalled cars higher on the ramp, until he encountered the penultimate drift. His forward progress came to a halt.

I trudged back to the car amid wind and blinding white, shivering from the snow still stuck to my bare legs. When I arrived, he jumped out, cried, "You drive  now!" There had been only one car ahead of us, but they were making slow forward progress toward the main road. No waiting there! You just had to merge and pray the crawling cars saw you coming. 

So through that final, high drift, with me on and off the clutch, rocking the car, and with him pushing, we broke free and reached the road. He wore his prized, very cool hat, an old fedora--but this blew off, and was last seen sailing above 128 into a wall of white. 

Now at the top, we paused, changed drivers, and went the final few miles to safety, starting and stopping and negotiating our way through intersections where the lights were not working, and past many, many disabled, abandoned vehicles.

No cell phones in those days, so there were, on the steps of the Lexington house, where. blessedly, the door opened to us. Once inside, I had one of those false labor episodes, which are rather painful. I remember my mother-in-law calling a pediatrician who lived close by, who said he would make his way over if this didn't resolve, but, of course, once I was warm and had changed my clothes, it eventually went away.    

We were in that house for three days, because that's how long it took for all the abandoned vehicles to be cleared from the exit/entrances. Our son was happy to be at his grandparents because there were two teen Aunts to play with him, although, naturally, the elders were definitely ready for us to leave by the time we did. Driving around on the second day, hoping to find an opening, we'd passed by " our" exit, and seen the grill of the car that had been behind us, almost buried under a monster drift that completely had encased it. 

When we reached home, we were delighted that our dirt road had been cleared. My husband forced the car into the drift at our driveway, and then we half-swam half-crawled our way over chest-high snow to the house, towing our little boy and a suitcase. The cats were glad to see us, as their kibble had long since run out and the house was darn cold. The old kerosene "furnace," by itself, kept the place in the vicinity of 45 degrees, so the plumbing hadn't frozen. With a fire started in the wood stove in time we were warm again.

~Juliet Waldron

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Simple Gifts

 

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Yellowknife was under fire threat, as more of the terrible forest fires that have ravaged the Canadian wilderness this year raged, moving south toward Great Slave Lake. As the town played a pivotal role in Fly Away Snow Goose and has become dear to my heart, I watched the progress with fear via YouTube. The population was asked to evacuate, and many of the 20,000 inhabitants got out by driving down the single two lane road that would take them out of harm's way. Some were flown out in an all airline effort. This was an all hands on deck emergency and the people of NWT rose to the occasion, as the elderly and the ill were transported to safety in other parts of Canada. 

I could write about causes of these fires, but it's all too dire to explore here. As the fire did not swallow the town as had seemed inevitable, the place was saved, unlike many others in Canada, which have been reduced to ashes during the last few years of extreme heat and drought in a land which is unaccustomed to that.

Instead, I will focus on my summer garden, which is a happier subject. It is also ephemeral, as are our lives on this planet. This year and this year only will my little garden produce this particular selection of vegetables, all planted in hope in the spring. I too have wrestled with early season drought, but, in the end, thanks to the garden hose and a good supply of groundwater in this part of PA, each raised bed has become a jungle of production, providing us with fresh organic food that's better than what can be found in the market. There is also that wonderful feeling of accomplishment that you get when you watch and tend plants from seed to fruit every year!

Tomatoes are now flooding in. My brother in law provided me with two straggly little plants early in the year, which I had to keep indoors for a time as this was before the last frost. Now, I can't keep up with these medium sized red tomatoes. They are tasty, hardy, and leave no leftovers when you are making just two salads at a time. The sweet, mellow cherry tomatoes I raised in the same upstairs window where I nursed red tomato sets. They have a catchy name: I seem to remember "Coyote." 

 

There are also collards, an heirloom variety that I have been lax about confronting yet. These Cabbage Collards aren't huge and they are also milder than the usual supermarket varieties. "Slave food," they are super easy to grow and pack a huge nutritional punch. It's time to get on top of them now, as I experiment with recipes other than the traditional hunk of salt pork or pig's foot bathed in stock simmered for a loooong time.

Next comes "the solution to too many tomatoes." This idea is all over the recipe section of YouTube, but here's mine in mid-process.

You take a big pan like this one, and add: 

Balsamic vinegar and olive oil in a generous first layer. Next:

Sliced tomatoes, sliced green Bell Peppers, lots of diced Vidalia onions, shredded greens and ditto carrots and yellow squash, well dressed with salt, pepper, red pepper, basil, oregano, leafy greens, parsley, chopped garlic, and whatever else you have too much of. The final step is to cover it all with a cup of good stock.

Next, bake in a slow oven until the whole thing looks like the picture above and has reached a sticky consistency. Let it cool at little, and then scoop into a deep bowl. Get your stick blender out, or use your blender, whichever, and whirl until the whole mass becomes a thick paste. 

You can freeze this in little tubs, smear it on chunks of toasted, buttered French bread, or crackers. You might wish to spread it on the cheese sandwich before you grill it. Scoops of the paste can be added to sphagetti sauce or chili really pep them up. (My sauce does anyway, because the one I made is full of garlic, basil and oregano, and, I believe, I also added cumin. 

Nasturtiums, which I grow every year because my Mom always did. These can be used in salads or to decorate homemade cakes. I am always stuffing a few leaves in my mouth as I pass by the garden, and I add them to salads too, for their spicy, peppery kick. 

And last but not least, I will end with an it-doesn't-do-it-justice picture of Ironweed, which is flourishing in various spots around the yard. Bees of all kinds and butterflies, wasps, and all the usual suspects of the pollination racket are delighted to find this "weed." I understand that neighbors call me "the weed lady" because I have native plants in the yard and diss the grass, but the heck with them! The bees and their compatriots are more important, really, in the grand scheme of things, don't you agree?

~~Juliet Waldron

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About Another Hamilton

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 Hamilton came to me via the free local advertiser. Scanning it idly one day I saw an ad which said, “Please Help! I have 31 cats, and need to find good homes.” I called the number, got directions and drove south through various moribund towns and up a dirt road to a run-down farmhouse. As soon as I stopped, I saw them: cats everywhere, cohabiting with a flock of bedraggled chickens in a grassy yard.

 The Cat Lady—I’ll call her “Nancy”--came out and we talked. She’d been working at the Humane Society, but she'd quit because she couldn’t bear the euthanasia of hundreds of animals that was, in those days, part of the weekly routine. She was as thin and tired-looking as her animals. I could see runny noses indicative of the highly contagious Calci virus in almost every cat. My heart sank.

 Even more sadly, most of the cats were wild. They depended upon her for food and sheltered in the tumbledown barn, but they were untouchable.  As she could afford it on a waitressing job, she'd neuter them and get them shots. She’d found a charitable vet who cut prices for her, but her burden appeared insurmountable.

 She and I sat down on the ground and waited. Eventually three scrawny half-grown orange boys drew close. You could actually count their ribs.

 “I call them the Orange Brothers,” Nancy said. “They were almost starved to death when I rescued them.” A veritable herd came in their wake as she opened the 10 lb. bag of kitty food I’d brought as an offering and dumped some on the ground.

 The cats backed off as soon as I tried to touch, so I sat and waited.  One of the Orange Brothers took a few bites of kibble, then came to me. As soon as I began to pet him, gently and carefully, he gave a roaring purr and threw himself into my lap. All was well for about two minutes, and then he bit my arm hard, twisting the skin almost to the breaking point. I didn’t resist. He let go and jumped away, clearly expecting a slap or a shout of protest.

 “He didn’t mean it,” Nancy said. “He wants to be loved, but he gets too excited.”

 I nodded and continued watching.

 A moment later, the bony little tom climbed into my lap again, purring his roaring purr. His fur was dry as straw as a result of malnutrition; his eyes were golden. Long story short, I brought him home, to a house that already had several cats. It took time to get him over the habit of reacting to petting with a bite, but with a lot of affection and enough food, he toned these love bites down to a recognizable level.

 As he was lean and bright orange and I was working on a Revolutionary War novel, I named him Hamilton. That heroic founding father had red hair and a poverty-stricken childhood.

 

Rivington’s (Tory) Gazette printed this snide comment in 1775, when Hamilton was a favorite aide de camp to General Washington:

“Mrs. Washington has a mottled orange tomcat of whom she is so particularly fond, she has named him ‘Hamilton.’ By the flaunting of his tail with the 13 rings around it the Rebels have taken the idea for their flag.”

 The name proved to fit this cat to a "T". Kitty Hamilton was a sensitive soul, and did that tomcat peeing thing whenever he felt anxious or threatened. He was also allergic to that kitty drug of choice, catnip. Until he fattened up, a process which took more than a year, he could not hold his 'nip. If he managed to find some, I soon knew, because he lost control of his limbs, fell down and peed all over himself like an old drunk. I’d have to cradle him and soothe him until he came down, because he cried in fear the whole time. 

 I never did manage to get him to stop marking. Any cat or person passing the house--even an argument with my husband--was liable to set him off. I hadn’t wanted to let him outside, but he made that motherly attempt to protect him impossible. He’d been a free kitty boy for far too long. Like his glorious namesake, he came with a severe case of PTSD which never went away—as well as a determination to be seen as a tomcat’s tomcat, even after neutering.

 

My Hamilton did not die in a duel, like our First Secretary of the Treasury, but he did fight with all challengers at every opportunity, even if he was completely out-matched. He was sometimes beaten up, but he usually attacked outsiders with such berserker rage that they avoided our house like the plague.

 He wanted to seem fearless, but his anxieties continually undermined him. He expressed this by peeing on the refrigerator door, in out-of-the-way corners, and on the backs of upholstered furniture, which I swiftly learned to keep covered with washable throws. Climactically, he slew my original CPU by peeing into the A Drive. A friend of mine said, “If that wasn’t such a nice orange cat--and if his name wasn’t Hamilton--he’d be dead.” My husband heartily agreed, but Hamilton's lover-boy self and willingness to lap sit, his smiling affability and charm aided his survival.

Hamilton always came when his name was called. He greeted my husband when he returned from work, with a raised head for a kiss, a motoring purr, waving that proud, banner-like tail. He slept in our bed, curled around my head in winter, a living, purring hat. He helped me write any number of books, lying beside--and, when he was fed up with "that damned typing" by standing in front of--my monitor.  He lived to be fourteen, and is buried with other cats of blessed memory in the feline necropolis beneath our Chinkopin tree.   

                           

                         

~~Juliet Waldron

See all my historical novels at:

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The Writer's Goals~~Then and Now

All My historicals @

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How did we ever get into this writing business/hobby/obsession? 

Motive varies from writer to writer. Some of us wrote to escape, to create alternate worlds in which to live--worlds where we can control the outcomes. Some of us wrote to tell the stories that natter away in our heads incessantly, stories that entertain us so much, or engross us so deeply, we simply HAVE to share them.  There are many so motives for writing a book.  

When I began writing fiction seriously, by which I mean with an eye to publication, back in the late 1970's, there was a path in place to follow. We learned about the stamped, self-addressed envelope, the eye-catching cover letter, the one page synopsis, and the perfect, not-too-long first chapter, which we slaved and sweated over until finally, with great trepidation, we submitted to a carefully selected editor at a publishing house into which we thought our beloved "baby" would "fit." There were long waits for the mail and for some harried assistant editor's attention, followed by, over the years, perhaps a thousand rejections. Aiming at an ever-shrinking mid-list, acceptance into the "published writer" club became ever harder.

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When we weren't working on our latest book or day jobs, we went to conferences and learned about genres and the rules which governed those genres, that is, writing to the expectations of your future readers. If your story was a love story, it had to have a happy-ever-after ending. If you wrote mysteries, you'd probably have read dozens of books by the all time greats, authors like Agatha Cristie, Earl Stanley Gardner, John Dickson Carr and Rex Stout. You planned your story and outlined a twisting plot, because "who dunnit" requires the reader to be engaged by the puzzle you've created, and, you, the author, has to remain always a step ahead. 

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Back then, you had to be a master of your craft in order to mix genres, and, as a new writer, you did so at your peril. Over time, much has changed. One example would be the old genre, "Romance," which is now split into many many, many categories. The hard-and-fast rules governing genre writing are out the window. 

Moreover, what the ambitious writer of today dreams of is not only the traditionally coveted book deal, but also a movie deal, a TV show, or a series available on one of the many new hungry-for-content streaming platforms, such as Netflix, HBO or Showtime. 

 

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These days you can cross all the genres you can imagine in film. Look at the success of Lucifer, which started on HBO, and, then found a new home at Netflix. Into what genre would you put this show? Lucifer had a Comic book genesis (via Milton's  poetic sermon, Paradise Lost, via Neil Gaiman's Good Omens. Now the title character is a witty, urbane modern celestial escapee from Hell, but added to that, we've got a mash-up of romance, comedy, police procedural, adventure, soap opera and kung-fu fighting + gunfire, all crammed into a fantasy-fast-lane of sex, drugs and rock'in'roll inside the entertainment world of modern Los Angeles. (How's that for a run-on sentence!?)

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One of my cross-genre books:

Black Magic

Vampires, Shapeshifters, Historical, Adventure, Family Saga, set on an 18th Century 

Alpine estate that's nowhere near as placid as it appears.

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Writing, now that we've crossed into another century, remains a labor of love/obsession that may or may not ever pay off. It's probably even harder than it once was to get published in the 21st Century, and ever so much harder to attract an audience with so much material clamoring for attention. 

Still, if the madness is upon you...well, all I can advise is "Go for it."

~~Juliet Waldron