Determined to Survive by Eden Monroe

 

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Among the many terrifying situations that I could imagine, being confined in a small space would be one of them, but that’s my claustrophobia talking. Apparently I’m not alone though because according to the National Institutes of Health, about 12.5% of the population suffers from this fear, with the majority being female.

Grace Upton in Dangerous Getaway suffers from that intense fear of enclosed spaces, especially when escape seems impossible.

“She moved her fingertips lightly along the wall until she felt what had to be the start of the wine racks, and sure enough there were plenty of bottles to choose from. Picking a bottle, she pulled it soundlessly from its nest, her hand closing around the long cool neck with the same satisfaction and sense of power cavemen must have once felt when clutching a cudgel with which to protect themselves. In that sense, evolution had not happened at all as her primal brain recognized its elemental function. Stay alive.

There was another sound off to her left. Whatever it was, it was coming closer. It wasn’t as far away this time, then silence that seemed to echo through the cellar. There it was again, closer still. She could make it out now. Footsteps, and if it was that Rhone Alexander coming to get her, he didn’t seem to be making any attempt to hide his scuffling footfalls. In fact, they sounded heavy, almost erratic which could be a terror tactic, and they were headed straight toward her. Whoever it was she was sure they could hear her heart thumping as blood rushed in a tidal wave in her ears, ready for battle. She would not go out without a damned good fight.

Inching away from the wine racks until her back was once again against the stonework, she held the bottle of wine in an iron-clad grip, raising it over her head in a two-fisted stance and waited, willing her breathing to slow so that she wouldn’t feel so frustratingly lightheaded.”

The list of other horrible circumstances from which people would want to escape, besides claustrophobia, is practically endless.

That piqued my curiosity about those who did manage to escape terrible situations, against all odds. So I visited cracked.com and found the following six great escapes, in some cases from certain death, and certainly great harm:

Number six was a young woman in China who woke to find a man on her bed, and to add to her terror he covered her mouth and nose to stifle her screams for help. I don’t have to tell you what he tried to do next – while trying to strangle her. On the verge of unconsciousness she still had presence of mind to start coughing and managed to tell him she was self-isolating due to COVID-19 symptoms. That was prior to vaccines, and it made him back off in a hurry! So he robbed her instead.

He then fled her apartment. Surprisingly, he later turned himself in to authorities.

Number five is the story of a man in Greece who found himself at the mercy of the out-of-control wildfires there in 2007. The fires were catastrophic with significant loss of life, not to mention the destruction of countless homes and other buildings. Nevertheless, despite the odds, this man decided to stand his ground. A traditional winemaker with hundreds of litres of the stuff at his disposal, he continued to pour wine into his fertilizer pump and fought the inferno for seventeen hours, eventually gaining the upper hand and surviving.

Number four involves one of the world’s most tragic events … and the humble rubber squeegee. It’s about a group of window washers stranded on an elevator around the 50^th floor in the first tower of the World Trade Centre on that fateful morning of September 11, 2001. Determined to survive, they managed to jimmy the elevator doors apart with a squeegee pole. However the elevator had stopped between floors and they were faced with a solid wall of sheet rock. Undaunted the men then used the blade of the squeegee to dig an opening through the drywall and escaped WTC One, astonishingly, just five minutes before it collapsed.

Number three involves a man in Saskatchewan, Canada, stranded unexpectedly in his boat on what became an ice lake when bad weather suddenly struck and the temperature plummeted dramatically. He had no means of communication to call for help and he would have died from exposure had he not found and chopped down four power poles onshore, plunging several communities into freezing darkness. When the power company sent a helicopter to investigate the source of the outage, they found the dying man and were able to save his life.

Most would consider number two to be a pretty grizzly solution, but when hunters were returning with their prizes from the mountains on horseback, they encountered problems with a broken saddle. Nightfall and subzero temperatures caught up with them before they could remedy the situation. Now forced to spend the night outdoors, they attempted to start a fire to keep warm. However high winds prevented them from building that fire so they did what they had to do in order to survive. No nightmarish details here about the how, but they took shelter in the hollowed out carcasses of their horses and escaped certain death.

Number one (also cbc.com) involves a mushroom foraging woman in the Northwest Territories, Canada, who found herself being stalked by a wolf, albeit an old one, for twelve hours. The animal blocked the way to her truck, actually leading her away from it. Her dog tried to eliminate the threat to no avail and at some point she and the friend she was with became separated. The woman, after walking all day, was exhausted, dehydrated and tormented by “zillions” of mosquitos. It should be pointed out that she was doing some heavy-duty praying when she heard the growl of a mother bear. So the woman decided to approach the cub, which in itself can be a deadly action, but it paid off. Somehow the stalking wolf and the mamma bear began to do battle with each other, and the woman and her dog escaped. In my opinion the woman’s prayer for survival was answered because divine intervention is written all over this one.

Keeping your wits about you when trapped in any difficult situation is key, but of course much easier said than done. You have some very difficult moments to overcome, just as Grace did in Dangerous Getaway:

“She could feel her panic beginning to rise, just as it had that day in the old steamer trunk only now there was no one to come to the rescue and that thought terrified her. Moving away from the dim flashlight beam she slapped her hands against the cold stone wall, giving in to tears.

“This might as well be a tomb because we’re basically buried alive. The pain in her shoulder burned like fire and she was having trouble getting her breath as she stumbled in the direction of the stairs. She would beat her way through the door with her bare hands; claw it to splinters with her nails. She had to get out of this dark hole somehow. Was this how it was all going to end for them? Dead and forgotten in a wine cellar in the middle of nowhere? Murdered? Buried in the woods with God only knew how many others?

Strong hands seized her from behind, his arms circlets of steel that held her in place while she struggled to get free of him.

“Let me go! I have to get out of here, but I can’t! We’re trapped forever!”

“Grace!” He shook her gently. “Grace, get hold of yourself, we can’t afford to give in to panic. It won’t get us anywhere. We have to keep our heads if we’re to survive.”

“It’s over, can’t you see?’ “

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Throw it up in the air, and it comes down--SQUASH

 

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Well, just past Thanksgiving and what am I thinking about? Squash -- not the silly joke above, but their origins. BTW, squash are in the fruit family, strictly speaking, not a vegetable, as we are accustomed to thinking of it. 

The actual origin is still murky. People were planting gourds in Africa 11,000 years ago for use as tools. These are the "Bird House," "Bottle Gourds," or Calabashes, the kind you can still plant in your garden today. These were used for eating and drinking and for storing grain as early as 11,000 in Africa and Asia. If our American squash originated in Africa, it would have had a long journey across the ocean, but some scientists have actually figured out that if such a gourd fell into the proper currents, it could have carried viable seeds during the likely 9 month journey to South America. 

However, seeds of the wild squash have been found in ancient Mastodon dung, first deposited by our North American "elephant," as long as 30,000 years ago. These wild squash were terribly bitter and the rinds were thick, so were nothing humans could have eaten, but the Mastodon didn't seem to mind, and by eating and imperfectly digesting, they planted wild squash all over their range. *Kistler & Smith, 2014 

As all our squash/pumpkin varieties were bred by humans out of gourds, I'm voting for indigenous gourds, rather than ocean-faring gourds as the source of North/South American squash today. Once again, those Native Americans, the ones of whom my parents said: "didn't create anything like we Europeans did," are the geniuses who performed this spectacular feat of plant breeding, as they did with corn, many varieties of beans, all the tomatoes, and many of the hot pepper family. Post-contact Europe quickly adopted potatoes, another "new world" miracle food. 

"Anyone who has visited Hirschhorn in the ....Neckar Valley....will remember being confronted by a Potato Monument, dedicated 'To God & Francis Drake, who brought to Europe for the everlasting benefit of the poor--the Potato."* (The Joy of Cooking, by RomBauer & Becker, 1952(c) They should have dedicated it to the inventors--Peruvian Indians.) 

Pardon my potato digression, and of course grains such as oats, wheat, barley, rye, flax, sesame and nutritious, delicious plants like many carrots, rutabagas, spinach, and turnips were created out of unlikely plants in Europe and the Middle East, as well. Took those clever women a lot of time and thought and many generations, I'm sure!    ;)  

Now back to squash. So many kinds to choose from: 

North Georgia Candy Roaster

or, to Northerners,

Sweet Potato Squash

(it looks like a Vorlon ship)

There are four pages of Cucurbita in my Southern Exposure Seed Catalog, and probably many more in Johnny, Burpee, etc. 

Above:

"Cinderella" pumpkin, "Ghost" pumpkin,

and a mini Connecticut Field pumpkin

There are the summer squashes: Crookneck, Zucchini, Scallop (Flying Saucer), and Cocozelle (Stripes), all of which are C. pepo species, despite the multiplicity of forms. There are also winter squashes, so called because they are "keepers" which last long after they are picked. The most familiar supermarket varieties are Butternut, (C. moschata),  Acorn and Delicata, (C. Pepo), and Buttercup or Turban (C. maxima).  

Pumpkins are also part of this same Cucurbita genus as well. People have gone nuts lately breeding strange ones--the warty ones are on my mind--but the most familiar ones are Connecticut Field, Rouge Vif D'Etampes (Cinderella), and Small Sugar pumpkins, for pies. Lately, the "Ghost" pumpkins are in vogue, and there are many types with names like: Luminaria, Caspar, Polar Bear, Snowball, etc. for a gardener to choose from, as well as mini-varieties for decorating the table. They all make good livestock food, I've learned, if you cut them open, so the seeds can be easily got at, as well as the yellow flesh. The squirrels soon took my "artistic" display below apart, as you might imagine, although they had to do it around good old B0B in those days, which was taking their furry lives into their paws.

Overindulgent Goth Pumpkin 

~~Juliet Waldron

Legend of Sleepy Hollow--Redux

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How I loved The Legend of Sleepy Hollow when I was a kid! Of course, my initial introduction was to the Walt Disney version, which most of my cohort saw in movie theaters. Who can forget poor, terrified Icabod Crane on his broken down mount, fleeing from the "headless horseman" as the Specter thundered after him in that pell-mell race to the bridge beyond which it was said that the apparition could not pass! Maybe I missed the point, but if memory serves, my sympathies lay with the skinny school-teacher, who'd dared to court the local heiress.  Or maybe, Disney spun the story that way. Darned if I know at this late date, 70 years later. 

 

In yellow and green, Major General Philip Schuyler's drawing room;

The fireplace before which Alexander Hamilton married Elizabeth Schuyler

As an adult, about 30 years back, while doing research for several novels set in the Hudson Valley at the time of the Revolution, I had occasion to finally read Washington Irving's original story. Unsurprisingly, the Disney version which I remembered was not exactly what Irving (1783-1850), one who grew up in that storied valley, originally penned.  Irving was a famous wit of his day, a writer in post-Revolutionary America, whose fame today rests on two short stories, Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

Irving certainly knew these little valleys, filled back then with descendants of the Dutch original settlers. In a few of these rural backwaters, the inhabitants still spoke Dutch and practiced their ancestral folkways. Old Dutchmen still gazed with disapproval at their "feckless" and "acquisitive" British neighbors, just as the Amish do "the English" today, right here in my neck of Pennsylvania.

In the elaborate language of Irving's day, when people often readstories aloud beside the fire, we learn that Icabod Crane, the lanky, threadbare schoolmaster, is Connecticut born and raised, which makes him an outsider in this rural valley. In those days, the people of Connecticut. unlike their next-door neighbors, the New York Dutch, had been founded by dour fundamentalist Calvinists, who arrived in that "savage-filled wilderness" with strong beliefs and many superstitions. Their Sundays were filled with morning to evening Church services, at which attendance was definitely not optional. 

The Blue Laws, "no business conducted on Sunday," were strictly enforced. Sunday dinner was cooked on Saturday and served cold. You couldn't even move a chair across the dining room to accommodate a new guest without violating their version of scriptural law. They firmly believed in witches and The Devilish Supernatural. It is mentioned in the story that Icabod often read his copy of Cotton Mather's History of New England Witchcraft, "in which he most fervently and potently believed."

The New York Dutch had their superstitions as well and Icabod just naturally loved these scary stories, too.  The old women in whatever house the schoolmaster was lodged each week--most of his pay for teaching the children of the town was room and board--were only too happy to share their own local goblin-filled tales with him. At one of these firesides he was introduced to the "Galloping Hessian," a hooded figure on a black horse who haunted a stretch of road which ran along a creek and passed the local churchyard. This spectre was reputed to be, as you probably know, a cavalry-man from the Revolutionary times whose head had been "carried away by a cannon ball," for which he was doomed to perpetually search.

Major General Philip Schuyler's Home Today

(Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton's childhood Home)

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Penniless Icabod, who dreams of marrying the heiress, Katrina Van Tassel, dreams not only of her, but of her wealth as well. His plans, should she marry him, are to eventually sell the family land and invest "in great tracts of wild land," to pack his bride and all that he can into a Conestoga wagon and head west, "to Kentucky, Tennessee or the Lord Knows Where." Portrayed here is the New York Dutch view of Connecticut Yankee--shrewd and acquisitive! 

This, information, to my mind, removes some of Disney's whitewashing of Icabod as the hapless victim of -- as he is drawn -- Big Brute Brom Bones. Now, Brom doesn't have book learning, but he "had more mischief than ill-will in his composition; and...there was a strong dash of waggish humor at the bottom." The original of Brom was certainly not "Bluto," but your standard, garden-variety Alpha Male. He'd expected to win Katrina sooner or later, as she was the finest marital prize available in their valley.  in his mind, Icabod, was an unexpected, ridiculous interloper, to be disposed of as soon as possible. This he proceeds--after some earlier, clumsy attempts--to to do, by cleverly playing on the schoolteacher's biggest weakness, his well-known belief in the supernatural. 

We may also surmise, as we read the original tale, that Katrina herself decided to move things along by pretending to be charmed by Icabod. Brom, after all, is described as enjoying his bachelor life a great deal, out with his "boon companions," riding around on fast horses half the night and generally not showing a willingness to get serious and settle down. 

Not to overly bash Disney, whose goal was to entertain kids, I'll stop there, but reading Irving's original story, written for adults to enjoy as well as children, was a real treat.  

~~Juliet Waldron

 

National Native American/First Peoples Heritage Month. By Connie Vines #Crazy Horse #Crazy Horse Memorial #Oglala Lakota

 

Crazy Horse Monument 

Sixteen miles from Mt. Rushmore is the Crazy Horse Memorial.

© All photos are from my son's personal collection. I have permission to post on this site.

The mountain monument is under construction on privately held land in the Black Hills, Custer County, South Dakota, United States. It will depict the Oglala Lakota warrior Crazy Horse riding a horse and pointing to his tribal land.

3-dimensional depiction of the completed monument

A guide to turning a mount into a monument

Crazy Horse Memorial is being sculpted on Thunderhead Mountain.

Sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski began the project in 1948. "He believed you can do anything in this world. Nothing is impossible as long as you're willing to work hard enough and pay the price." 

Crazy Horse Memorial honors all indigenous people of North America. This a reminder of the importance of reconciliation, respecting differences, embracing diversity, striving for unity, and appreciating life's deeper meaning as it has always been represented in Native American cultural values.

A glimpse of the sky and the Black Hills

Photos of work in progress

My youngest son has carried on the family road trip tradition. He and his son visited Mt. Rushmore, the Black Hills, and the Crazy Horse monument this Thanksgiving week. 

My grandson's reaction is an assurance another generation will visit and honor the ways of The First People.

Interesting facts:

Crazy Horse Memorial is the world's largest Mountain Carving in progress.

Korczak Ziolkowski married Ruth Ross on Thanksgiving Day, 1950.

Korczak and Ruth had 10 children, five girls and five boys.

3 of the 10 children and 3 grandchildren still work at the Memorial.

Crazy Horse was never photographed.

The likeness created was developed by descriptions from survivors of the Battle of Little Bighorn and other contemporaries of Crazy Horse.

The dimensions are staggering:

563 by 641-foot sculpture-in-the-round is known as Crazy Horse Memorial. The immense work is as long as a cruise ship and taller than a 60-story skyscraper.

If you enjoyed my Blog post, please consider adding my novel "Tanayia: Whisper upon the Water to your "books to be read" collection.

Happy Reading, 

Connie

XOXO

Connie Vines

https://bookswelove.net/vines-connie/

Connie's Blog

Connie's website

My social media links are available on my blog and website.

From Samurai Bounty Hunter to Egyptian Goddess - Developing new stories and characters in the Azura universe – by Vijaya Schartz

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on my BWL page HERE

The Azura Universe is vast and varied. I have been writing stories in it for several years now, over different series. From the Azura Chronicles set on the angel planet, to the Byzantium series set on a space station, and now the Blue Phantom series, featuring the crew of an angel ship. I truly enjoy writing this universe. It’s filled with Humans, alien races, powerful angels, AIs, Cyborg, formidable crime lords, evil sects, power-hungry rulers, bounty hunters, demons, demi-gods, and often big cats with mind-reading abilities.

In all of these novels, you will find strong heroines, brave heroes, and lots of action and adventure, with a little romance for good measure. I write to entertain, and you can trust me to give my stories a happy conclusion no matter what kind of hell my characters have to go through to find their happily ever after.

All my science fiction novels in each series can stand alone, and I like to give each of them a different flair. I sometimes find inspiration in various legends and mythologies of ancient cultures throughout the world, from India to Japan, to the middle east. In Angel Guardian, the latest release, my villainess is Azfet, the Egyptian Goddess of chaos, who has crossed over from another universe.

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But now is the time to plot ANGEL REVENGE, Book 3 in the Blue Phantom series. And this time, my heroine is the one coming from a semi-familiar mythology. A strong warrior woman, a green-eyed beauty, flying over the battlefield on the wings of a genetically enhanced tiger. That’s all I will say. You’ll have to wait until next fall to read her story.

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In the meantime, you can read the previous books in this universe, some of which won literary awards, and all of which gathered rave reviews. Happy reading!

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Vijaya Schartz, award-winning author

Strong Heroines, Brave Heroes, cats

http://www.vijayaschartz.com

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