Yikes

I thought I was pretty strong in my beliefs regarding nature until I met an acquaintance. This isn't a person that calls occasionally for a friendly chit chat. Nope, this person lives close by. A couple houses away. I am sometimes honoured with face to face chats with her.

We live in the country. We get critters and lots of them. Deer, wild turkeys, lots of birds, squirrels, chipmunks, you get the idea. Her love of critters can be a bit extreme. Now, don't get me wrong, raccoons have a beautiful face, but, they can be destructive. So can skunks. Given the fact my dog loves the great outdoors even though she sleeps beside our bed, I really don't want either racoons or skunks nosing around on my property.

This acquaintance encourages both racoons and skunks to set up house around her deck. I'm serious. Yes, their deck is attached to their house. When I complain about the broken bird feeders, she tells me to stop feeding my birds. Apparently her feeders don't attracts the critters. 

"If there isn't any bird feed, they won't go there." 

Ugh. I refuse to argue with that. I'm not going to stop feeding my birds. Not going to happen. 

She came over a few weeks ago, as spring was ever so slowly springing. In late April, I still expected cold nights and the potential for frost. She had put her hummingbird feeder out and wanted me to put mine out. Not trusting mother nature, it was too early. 

"But the humming bird needs food," she informed me. "I don't want him to go hungry. I've had him at my feeder."

"How do you know that? Have you actually seen him?" I asked. 
"No. But there is poop on my deck. It's so small, it must be his."
I've never fought as hard to restrain from laughing in my life. OMG.  Send for Bird Poop Analysis. As I relayed the story to my husband, it dawned on me. I think our property value just decreased. 

Heather Greenis is the author of The Natasha Saga 

Empowerment shatters traditions and lives. Greed and pride have devastating consequences. Sacrifices must be made. Written on multiple levels, the saga deals with hope, relationships, and giving, set against a background of conflicting values. Through a series of dreams, modern day couple Keeghan and William follow the triumphs and tragedies of multiple generations of the Donovan family. A chance encounter changes Natasha’s life, forever. In her diary, Natasha writes of her dream, and her hope to escape a horrid dictated future. Will Natasha's legacy survive an uncertain future?

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School Days, School Days...by Gail Roughton

"School days, school days, dear old Golden Rule Days....". Well, the country's school kids are back in school now, most of them a lot earlier than those of us of a certain generation ever walked back down those long hall. Doesn't Fall take you back? The smell of school has to be one of the most distinctive smells in the world, even if chalk doesn't really feature in the medley of aromas anymore, having given way to to dry erase markers and computer screens.

But no matter the technology employed, those heroes and heroines of the classrooms we call teachers still strive to shape and form the minds of the next generation. And where would we be without them? I was lucky. Looking back, I don't think I ever had a bad teacher in my life, but I think everyone has one or two teachers they'll never forget, teachers without whom they wouldn't be the individuals they are today. 

I had Miss Louise Parker. Yes, Miss.  Not Ms. See, back in the dark ages when I was in grammar school, Ms. hadn't been thought of yet.  Ladies were either Miss or Mrs., and in a child's pronunciation, there wasn't a lot of difference in sound between the two, but Miss Parker was truly a Miss. She'd never been married and she lived with her sister in an old house in a little town about thirty miles away from the school. A former college English professor, she chose to leave the politics and drama of college behind and teach seventh grade at a little rural grammar school named Florence Bernd Elementary, back in the days when grammar school was first through seventh grade and Junior High started with the eighth grade. And no, I never did know the story behind that decision.  

I don't, in fact, even have any idea how old she was at the time I walked through the doors of her Seventh Grade classroom. She was an institution herself at the time. She'd taught seventh grade at Florence Bernd for years, she'd always looked exactly the same, from her straight skirt, white blouse and sensible shoes to her short gray hair and black rimmed glasses. Most of the kids were petrified of her, even back in the day when school authority was absolute, a teacher was judge, jury and executioner and woe, woe unto you if you were sentenced to the principal's office. But for some reason, Miss Parker never scared me, and I was probably one of the few kids who actually wanted the start of school roll call to assign me to Miss Parker's room.  

Because of Miss Parker, I never learned another bit of English grammar after the seventh grade, not even in college, because I didn't need to.  And let me tell you something, folks, a noun does not name. A noun is a word that names a person, place, object or thing.  Likewise, a verb does not denote action or state of being.  A verb is a word that denotes action or state of being.  If I close my eyes, I can hear her voice now, and no, patient's not the word I'd use to describe it, repeating the litany that was so driven into my brain I did it with all three of my kids during homework help and I'm doing it now with my grandson.  A noun (or verb or pronoun or adjective or adverb or whatever part of speech) does not do anything. Because it's a word that does--whatever part of speech that word is does.  


Miss Parker taught for several years after I left her classroom for the halls of higher education, but as I recall, she did retire relatively soon thereafter. I hope she knew how much impact she had on all the generations of children she taught, and I really, really wish she could have read my books. Here's to you, Miss Parker, and to all the Miss, Mrs., Ms. and Mr. Parkers in all school rooms everywhere. I like to think you'd be proud, especially of this one...

 My name be Cain...

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Writin' With Southern Stylin'

Published by Books We Love, Ltd.

Troubles & Cannibalism in the New World by Katherine Pym

Jamestown House c. 1630

I’ve decided one of the reasons it took so long to get the original settlers off the ground and their colonies successful was due to their origins. Merchants wanted money and power and they felt they could get it by banding together to outfit a fleet of ships and send men to the North America. Their money would establish these settlements. Their money would insure the men in these new settlements would give a great return for the merchants’ investments.

There were several merchant companies that ranged up and down the East Coast of North America. Given grants by their monarch, they considered the land theirs from Florida to Newfoundland to do with as they pleased. The colonists were ‘employees’ of these companies. They had to obey what the merchant companies dictated. With the spoils, these merchants in turn, were to give wealth and power to their monarch.

Men came first, then women. They used the tools and supplies provided by the merchant company to build, to trap furs as payment to the merchants. If the colonists found the passage to the Northwest and the Pacific, if they found gold or silver, these, too, were to be given to the merchants.   

Merchant companies did not provide well for the extremes that pervaded this new land; i.e., harsh winters, unyielding soil, wild beasts and the original peoples who could turn violent.

It seemed little thought was given to establishing long term settlements. To do this, one must have tools and the know-how to use these tools to build new tools and implement them into the task at hand. They must have livestock, not for eating but for breeding. When the herd could provide, then the colonists could eat. They must learn the type of seeds that would grow in their soil, their climate.

Settlers relied on the merchants returning each spring/early summer with clothing, food, more implements, powder and shot for their guns. If the governments changed during this time, or the merchant company disbanded, if it took years to obtain more money, sometimes merchants did not return, or if they did, it was years later. This put the colonists at great risk.

Many died of starvation. In the latest archeological digs, signs of cannibalism have been discerned.

Take Jamestown.

George Percy, of early Jamestown, wrote how badly life was. He sadly mentioned people were so hungry, they dug up corpses and ate them.

Capt. John Smith wrote: “One amongst the rest did kill his wife, powdered (salted) her, and had eaten part of her before it was known, for which he was executed, as he well deserved... Now whether she was better roasted, boiled or carbonado’d (barbecued), I know not, but of such a dish as powdered wife I never heard of.”

In the spring of 2013, archeologists revealed they had located the first evidence of cannibalism with the discovery of a 14 year old (Jamestown circa 1609-10). Found in a refuse pile, her remains showed she had recently died.

Someone, or several, cleaved at her body and head. She was dismembered and her flesh removed. Knife tips gouged away at her skull and chin as if to cut away her tongue or throat tissue. “Her brain, tongue, cheeks and leg muscles were eaten, with the brain likely eaten first, because it decomposes so quickly after death.”

The clumsy attempts to cut away flesh shows whoever had done this had never butchered an animal for food. This was done by people desperate enough to eat another human being after she was dead.

The skull was restructured, so you can see what she looked like. Due to copyright issues I’m not sure if I can share this young girl’s picture.

Please see:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130501-jamestown-cannibalism-archeology-science/#/66888.ngsversion.1422283061236.jpg

For the whole article:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/starving-settlers-in-jamestown-colony-resorted-to-cannibalism-46000815/?no-ist

And another:

http://www.roanoke.com/news/virginia/cannibalism-found-at-jamestown/article_77c83a47-fac3-5916-b5bb-f9d3218db597.html

Other sources:

Coleman, R.V., The First Frontier. Castle Books, NJ, 2005

Kirke, Henry, The First English Conquest of Canada, London SE, 1908

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Welcome to new BWL author David Anderson

David Anderson brings his thriller novel The Beachhead to Books We Love. Welcome David!

BWL: How long have you been writing and in what genres?

DJA: I’ve been writing seriously for about a decade.  I write adult thrillers and now YA thrillers.  I’m particularly interested in updating some classic thriller tropes such as man-on-the-run and the classic heist novel.  The Beachhead might be summed up in the cry, “I am not a number, I am a free man” from the Sixties TV cult series, The Prisoner.

BWL: Where do you get your inspiration?

DJA:  From the books I’ve read throughout my life, and still like to read, and from experience and reflecting upon experience.

BWL: Tell us about your books.

DJA:  Earthly Powers is a novel about old (and new) Nazis and buried treasure on a remote island.  An innocent man is relentlessly hunted in the depths of the forest while his female partner is locked in a race against time to uncover a vital artefact.  I told you I like modernising classic thriller tropes!  

Meaner Things is a heist novel centring on a fiendishly difficult vault robbery.  Unlike, say, the movie Ocean’s Eleven, my heist is ethical, and also feasible (as it’s based on a true crime that succeeded).  I’ve woven in moral quandaries about trust and humanised it with some good old-fashioned romance.

 

The Beachhead is a ‘prison break’ kind of thriller, again revisiting the man-on-the-run trope which I love so much, and again dwelling on themes of trust/suspicion and the value of teamwork.  

BWL: What about your next book?  Will it be part of a series or a standalone?  Can you give us a taste to whet our appetites?

DJA:  I’m currently working on a sequel to The Beachhead and, simultaneously, an adult thriller provisionally entitled Shadow of a Killer.  The latter will deal with guilt, shame and vengeance, and have my usual fast pace and action.  I try to push myself harder and further with each new project I write.  My aim is that both these new novels will blow my readers’ socks off!

BWL: What are your hobbies and interests?

DJA:  Reading and philosophy.

BWL: What does the future hold for you?

DJA:  Preferably, bestselling author status and several movie contract offers!

Find David at Books We Love here: http://bookswelove.net/authors/anderson-david/

and his blog here:

https://davidjandersonauthor.wordpress.com/