On August 15th, 1945, Japan surrendered to the United States, and World War II was officially over. That day has always meant something to me: my father fought in this war, my older brother died in this war, my ex-husband fought in this war, and my husband of 36 years fought in the Korean War. To me, these four men are heroes, as are all the men and women who have fought, died, or returned home from the many wars we have been involved in.
But who are the heroes of today? Sports stars from football, baseball, basketball, and the like are touted by the media as being "heroes." Really? What makes a football star a hero? I guess it depends upon your own personal definition of who or what makes a hero.
This is mine: A hero is a person who willingly, and without a thought of himself/herself, makes a personal sacrifice for the sake of someone else, known or unknown.
This is why every member of the US Armed Services is a hero to me. Each of these men and women have volunteered to sacrifice their own life, if necessary, in order to create safety for those of us left on the shores of the United States. This is why each and every one of the First Responders on September 11, 2001, is a hero to me. They willingly and courageously risked their own lives, and many lost them, to save the lives of hundreds of people they didn't know.
Who are the unsung heroes in our midst? How about the four teachers, school psychologist, and the principal at Sandy Hook Elementary school, who all died defending their students? How about six year old Jesse Lewis, who yelled "Run!" to the first graders in his class when the gunman rushed in, but had to stop to reload his weapon before he could begin killing again? His first shot went into the head of Jesse Lewis, who had waited until all his classmates were out the door before he turned to run. Too late.
What about all the grandparents today who are raising their grandchildren because their own kids have left the life of responsibility to drown themselves in drugs, or alcohol, or who go to jail because of having committed a crime? These Senior Citizens have made personal sacrifices, some have even had to return to some form of work to make ends meet, now that they have children in the home again. Their dreams of an easy and peaceful retirement have come to a sudden halt, as they now have to begin raising kids all over again. As a grandmother, I could not do this, so to me, those who do are heroes.
Where are the values of today's society, when we read and hear over TV all the time about the praises heaped upon the sports stars, celebrities, and other people of note, all of whom are referred to as "heroes?" What exactly have they done to be considered "heroes?" As a society, have we fallen so low that a hero is nothing more than someone who has 715 homeruns, or is a celebrity having children without marriage, and who is often leading an immature and sometimes drug-filled life, but who is still held up by the media as a "star?" These are the people our children are supposed to emulate, to be impressed by, and to grow up to be "just like?" Not in my book.
Who are your heroes?
Mikki Sadil
http:// mikki-wordpainter.BlogSpot.com
The Freedom Thief
Cheers, Chocolate, and Other Disasters
Lily Leticia Langford and the Book of Practical Magic
Night Cries: Beneath the Possum Belly, book one
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
Who Are The Heroes?
I live in a small Victorian town on the Central Coast with my wonderful Corgi, and a lazy Siamese cat. I write fiction and non-fiction for teens, young adults and adults who are young at heart.
Monday, August 24, 2015
Eighteenth Century Welfare-Parish Relief, by Diane Scott Lewis
In my continued research into history, to add to my 18th century novels, I came across interesting details about the English version of Welfare, Parish Relief. Charity in this era was limited. The very poor had to rely on parish relief to survive. But first they had to prove they had a legal link, such as birth, a residence or employment, in the parish—the territorial area under the clerical jurisdiction of one parish priest—where they sought funds. People who were denied parish relief were sometimes found starved to death.
Some parishes were so small they tried to shuffle their poor into the larger neighboring parishes. The elderly and sick were turned away. A few parishes paid indigent bachelors in other settlements 40 shillings to marry their poor women to take them off the books. Overseers of the poor might interfere in a marriage between two paupers, fearing it would result in burdensome children.
To make matters worse, parish authorities were often corrupt and stingy. They’d spend the Poor Rate (the tax on prosperous citizens for the care of the poor) on themselves instead of their deserving claimants.
The poor rates were a source of constant irritation to those who had to pay them. As the population and rates rose, the richer citizens were desperate to find others to pay for their poor. Men who deserted their wives or bastard children were pursued for support. One prominent merchant was discovered to have let his mother wilt away in a workhouse—he was forced to pay for her maintenance.
For deserted children, or foundlings, wherever they were found was their settlement/parish. Self-sacrificing women often traveled to the richer parishes at the onset of labor, hoping to birth their babies in more solvent settlements. But the parish authorities were aware of this and would force these women back over the boundaries. The Parish Act of 1772 came to the aid of these women by stating: “mothers who are suddenly taken in labour will no longer be subject to be removed...” Of course, enforcing this act was another matter.
Children born in wedlock were part of their father’s settlement. If the fathers died, after the age of seven, the children became part of their mother’s parish.
Reformer Jonas Hanway—a merchant who had traveled widely (and the first Londoner to carry an umbrella)—devoted himself to philanthropy. His efforts resulted in a Parliamentary act in 1767 to set aside funds to send urban orphans to country wet-nurses, and provided incentives for the children’s survival.
Though commissioned in the late seventeenth century, the classic eighteenth century’s solution to ending poverty and idleness was the workhouse. By the 1720’s parishes could commit any pauper who sought relief to the workhouse. Ideally a shelter, these places could never make a profit since many people were indigent because there wasn’t enough work available. Workhouses became the repository of the sick, elderly and mentally retarded. Infants consigned to workhouses before Hanway’s intervention were virtually sentenced to death. Hanway called one London workhouse “the greatest stink of mortality in these kingdoms, if not on the face of the whole earth.”
Three substantial private charities would be formed to take the burden from the parishes. The Foundling Hospital for abandoned children, Magdalen House to reform prostitutes, and Hanway’s Marine Society to clothe and prepare pauper boys for the navy.
Parish relief was resented, underfunded, unorganized and corrupt. Along with these issues and the misunderstanding of poverty’s causes, attempts to help the poor, or at least make them less visible, were doomed to fail.
Enjoy my recent release which takes place in 1781 Truro, England: The Apothecary’s Widow.
Click HERE to purchase
Diane Scott Lewis writes historical fiction with romantic elements.
http://www.dianescottlewis.org
Sources:
Daily Life in 18th Century England, by Kirstin Olsen, 1999
Dr. Johnson’s London, by Liza Picard, 2000
Labels:
charity,
eighteenth century,
parish relief,
poor,
Welfare,
workhouses
I'm a former Navy Radioman (person) from California, married to a retired Navy chief. I've always loved to write and discover the past. I have two sons and two granddaughters.
Sunday, August 23, 2015
Regency Fashions for Ladies by Victoria Chatham
Fans of the Regency era will, no doubt, be
quite familiar with terms like muslin and superfine, half boots and spencers.
It doesn’t matter in what era we set our novels, our characters need clothes,
at least for some of the time depending on how hot the romance is. The Regency fashions
were looser and less form fitting than in earlier eras emulating as they did
the flowing neoclassical styles of Greek and Roman statuary.
So what, exactly, did a Regency lady wear under
her gown? The fact is – not much! Short-legged drawers with a drawstring waist
were only just coming into fashion in the early 1800s but were more popular by
1811. Our Regency belle would also have worn a chemise designed to
protect the outer clothes from perspiration or prevent a silk or muslin dress
from being too revealing. A chemise rarely had any trimming as the coarse soap
and boiling water in which it was frequently washed would have reduced
trimmings to rags in no time.
The
chemise was worn next to the skin and the corset, either short or long stays over
it. The short stay fitted just below the bust and the long stays reached the hipbone
and created a smooth vertical line. Both styles of stays were kept in place by
shoulder straps. A petticoat, usually with a scooped neckline, short sleeves
and fastened at the back with hooks and eyelets, was worn over the chemise and stays.
Usually trimmed at the hem, it was meant to be seen when a lady lifted her
outer dress to avoid mud or to otherwise prevent it being soiled. Stockings were
made of silk, knitted cotton or wool and held up by garters.
Dresses
were often made of soft, clinging
muslins but the oft mentioned morning dress was high necked, long sleeved and
made from plain, serviceable fabrics such as wool and linen. The thin twilled
fabric sarsnet, or sarcenet, was woven with different colors in the warp and
weft so that when the fabric moved there was a subtle shift in color. Evening
dresses, or ball gowns, were satin and silk creations, fitted under the bust,
short sleeved and with low necklines. An apparent contradiction in terms was
that being fully dressed referred to evening wear which showed quite a bit of
skin and décolletage, and being underdressed meant wearing a high neckline as
in morning clothes. Colors indicated status as young ladies wore bright colors
such as pinks, pale blues and lilacs, while mature ladies dressed in purple,
deep blue, yellow, strong reds or black.
Outerwear
included capes, wraps, shawls, spencers (a short waisted fitted jacket) and
pelisses. Rather than a pocket, which was worn under a dress with a slit in the
side for access, ladies carried a reticule, or a bag closed with a drawstring
and often decorated with beads. This in essence was the lady’s handbag in which
she could keep her vinaigrette and handkerchief. No respectable lady would
dream of leaving the house without her hat or bonnet and, at home, married
women usually wore caps. Short gloves were worn at all times during the day and
long gloves reaching the elbow or higher during the evening. The latter would
be removed for dining.
Flimsy
flat soled slippers of silk, satin, kid or velvet would be worn indoors. Often
embroidered or otherwise decorated, they were usually tied with ribbons and
sometimes had a short heel. For walking, a lady had her half boots made of
kidskin or nankeen, a canvas type fabric. She might even resort to slipping a
pair of pattens over her shoes, which lifted her up out of the dirt and mud and
prevented both shoes and hem from getting dirty.
No lady would dream of leaving the house
without wearing a hat, usually some style of bonnet trimmed in numerous ways.
Chip straw was not actually straw, but thin slivers of wood woven into shape. Grosgrain,
a ribbon most often used for trimming hats and bonnets, is still in use today
and is a coarse weave, tightly
woven fabric. It resembles a fine cord that lies perpendicular to the long
edges with the warp (the threads which run lengthwise on the loom) being
lighter than the weft (the threads that run across the loom). Grosgrain has to
be sewn carefully as it frays easily and holds pin or needle marks. It was
usually made of silk or wool and occasionally a combination of the two. It was
most often used for trimming hats and bonnets.
Sources:
Tom
Tierney’s Fashions of the Regency Period Paper Dolls
Wikipedia
Victoria Chatham is proud to be a Books We Love author.
Find her at:
Saturday, August 22, 2015
Just A Few Blocks Of Stone
Just a Few
Blocks of Stone
I've had a very
busy month with some personal setbacks. So this month I'm not in the mood for
writing something funny. Someone in last months wrote about some interesting facts
regarding Stonehenge. For those of you who think I'm just a crazy funny guy,
well I am, but those that know me more, know that I have a far deeper spiritual
side and I've done a lot of research into native beliefs and other cultures.
I've written a lot of science fiction and love learning about ancient places.
One of the most interesting for myself has always been the Pyramids of Giza.
Some old blocks of stone, a friend once said to me. Yup, on that he was
correct. But once I begun to look closer at these blocks I begun to realize
there is so much more here than some Egyptian scribes working with copper tools
could have put together.
So some facts on
what is known. The main pyramid contains two and a half million blocks of
rock cut from an Aswan quarry six hundred miles away. It weighs an
estimated six to seven million tons, which probably doesn’t mean a lot until
you consider it’s heavier than all the cathedrals, churches and chapels built
in England since the beginning of Christianity, and the tallest structure
erected until the Eiffel Tower was built it 1889. The main pyramid was
supposedly built by the pharaoh Khufu in twenty years. We now know his name is a forgery put there by an English archeologist which wrongly spelled it as Rhufu, and to this day here's been no true evidence of any pharaoh has ever been found inside the main pyramid, or any inscriptions of any kind. Pretty humble scribes in those days, I'd say.
This is quite a remarkable feat, considering the Egyptians lacked astronomical, geological and mathematical expertise. Although no records recorded anywhere by the Egyptians have shown any details on building, moving or assembling the blocks. Which you'd think some egotistical hotshot would have put into permanent inscriptions. I Know I would.
This is quite a remarkable feat, considering the Egyptians lacked astronomical, geological and mathematical expertise. Although no records recorded anywhere by the Egyptians have shown any details on building, moving or assembling the blocks. Which you'd think some egotistical hotshot would have put into permanent inscriptions. I Know I would.
To build this
grand edifice in twenty years would require placing one block every five minutes, day and
night, nonstop for twenty years (read this as no unions, no holidays). This
doesn’t even include cutting the stone, moving it and building the ramps needed
to place them. Setting a mere twenty blocks a day would need 340 years just for
the main pyramid to be finished. The easiest way would be floating them up the
Nile, man what a traffic jam with all those barges.
Historians
claimed that they were erected using an earthen ramp circling the pyramid.
Engineering experts have said it is not possible to construct them to such
precise dimensions in this manner. Also, that ramp would not be shallow enough
to allow the huge blocks to be dragged up it. A ramp of a shallow enough
gradient to allow this would have to have been 4,800 feet long - that’s more
than three times the length of the pyramid itself - and would have to be built out of stone in order to handle the 5-20 ton blocks. And
if it were made of stone, where are the remains? Nothing has ever been found to
even suggest how all this was done.
If I've got your
attention, here’s where the fun and real mind-blowing stuff starts. The precise
nature of the main pyramid is amazing. The difference in length of any of its sides
is eight inches. The twenty-two inch thick plain it sits on is within one inch
of level on an area of 756 X 756 feet. Which doesn't sound big, but is about
ten NFL fields side by side. Gaps between the casing stones measure just a
fiftieth of an inch and the apex of the pyramid is located directly over the
center, not bad considering this building is forty stories high. Some really good string there and a great plomb bob I'd say.
The lower passageway is 350 feet long. It’s straight to one fiftieth of an inch through the blocks they’ve laid, and straight within a quarter of an inch through 200 feet of solid bedrock. Darn sharp copper chisels and a mighty good eye. Oh, did I forget to mention no evidence of any torches used?
The lower passageway is 350 feet long. It’s straight to one fiftieth of an inch through the blocks they’ve laid, and straight within a quarter of an inch through 200 feet of solid bedrock. Darn sharp copper chisels and a mighty good eye. Oh, did I forget to mention no evidence of any torches used?
The Meridian
Building of the Greenwich Observatory in London was built to align with true
north and even it is out by nine-sixtieths of a degree. The main pyramid is
aligned to true north within one-twelfth of a degree. It sits exactly on thirty
north parallel, that’s an imaginary line one third the distance between the
equator and the North Pole. Also, if a line is drawn along the longest land
parallel on Earth and the longest land meridian the exact center is the apex of
the main pyramid.
Calculations of
the length of the King’s Chamber and of the length of the pyramid divided by
its height both equal pi. If a line is drawn through the apex of all three
pyramids and another through the left shoulder and headdress of the sphinx then
the entire Giza complex becomes a Golden Mean Spiral based on the Fibonacci
spiral of numbers, which is a sacred set of numbers that govern all patterns
and growth in nature. Seashells and watermarks have been found about halfway up
the pyramids, carbon dated to around 10,000 BC. These shells, along with a
fourteen foot layer of silt around the base of the pyramid, seem to indicate
that there was flooding here at one time, a fact which could be further
confirmed by the inch-thick sea salt crystals discovered inside the pyramids
when they were first opened around 1200 AD. You’re probably thinking ‘how did
that happen in the middle of the bleeding desert.
According to the Bible, and fossil records, the Giza area had a lush environment around 10,000 BC. This was also the time of the great flood. Erosion marks on the Sphinx, which, by the way, is the largest limestone structure in the world, shows that it was subjected to rain storms for thousands of years and is perhaps far older than the pyramids. Seashell growth on the Sphinx also indicates that it too was underwater at some time. Lastly, the alignment of the pyramids is the same as the three stars of Orion’s belt as they appeared from Earth in 10,500 BC. The two larger pyramids were originally encased in white limestone and the smaller in red to resemble the color of the three stars as seen in the night sky. The Egyptians weren’t the only ones to build pyramids dedicated to Orion. In Xian, China.
You'll find what look like the same configuration of seven pyramids. Also built in Teotihuacan in Mexico is again the same configuration of pyramids. If you draw a straight line across the globe, oddly enough they all link up. Which makes my scratch my head and say, "Very Interesting. Weird, but very interesting." I like to think facts are stronger than fiction. So if I've got your curiosity piqued, go grab a tape measure and give your local travel agent a call and check out those old blocks of stone.
Note: Photos courtesy of the New York Public Library
Frank Talaber, Writer by Soul.
A natural storyteller, whose compelling thoughts are freed from the depths of the heart and the subconscious before being poured onto the page.
Literature written beyond the realms of genre he is known to grab readers; kicking, screaming, laughing or crying and drag them into his novels.
Enter the literary world of Frank Talaber.
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