AMERICA SINGS by Shirley Martin

PURCHASE FROM AMAZON

Even before this country became a nation, music and singing had been part of our heritage.  We’ve all heard this song:

Yankee Doodle went to town
Riding on a pony
He stuck a feather in his hat
And called it macaroni

According to legend, British soldiers sang this song to mock the disheveled American soldiers they fought with during the French and Indian War.

The War for Independence spawned a plethora of patriotic songs.  Here is a glimpse of one by Thomas Paine, author of “The Age of Reason” and “Common Sense.”

In a chariot of light from the regions of day, the Goddess of Liberty came;
Ten-thousand celestials directed the way, and hither conducted the dame.

If the War of 1812 is remembered for nothing else, it should be recognized as producing our national anthem, ‘The Star Spangled Banner.”  Many people have trouble reaching the high notes and many others would prefer “America, The Beautiful.”  But our national anthem is here to stay.

Known as “the father of American music” Stephen Foster (1826-1864) didn’t receive the recognition he so richly deserved during his lifetime.  Yet his songs have remained classics, not only in the United States but throughout the world.  Songs such as “Oh, Susanna,” “Camptown Races” and “I Dream of Jeanie,” (written in honor of his wife) have remained part of the American tradition.  Since he was a native of  Pittsburgh, there stands a monument to this talented man on the grounds of my alma mater, the University of Pittsburgh.  Roy Orbison sings one of Foster’s loveliest songs, “Beautiful Dreamer.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_VnbtRFx5Y

The Civil War (1861-1865) produced an outpouring of songs, both ballads and those military in nature.  We are all familiar with this southern number, “Dixie.”  From the North, we find this tragic  song, “Tenting Tonight,” written by a young man who’d wanted to join the Union army but was rejected because of a childhood bout with rheumatic fever.  The love song, “Lorena,” was popular in both the North and the South, its lyrics so sad that many commanders forbade its singing at their posts.  Tom Roush gives us a lovely version of this song and sings many other oldies, such as “On the Banks of the Ohio.”  Here is his “Lorena.”   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyskZquf0ac

Years later, after the agonies of the Civil War and the trials of Reconstruction, a sense of optimism burst upon the American scene.  We extended our western boundary (at the expense of the Native American) and entered the Industrial Age.  Names such as Vanderbilt, Carnegie, and Gould became household words.  Our songs took on a whimsical note, like “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze.”  Or this one:

Frankie and Johnny were lovers
Oh, lordy how they could love
They swore to be true to each other
Just as true as the stars above
He was her man, but he was doing her wrong.

And speaking of sad songs, (which we were a while ago), surely  “In the Gloaming” is one of the most sorrowful songs ever written with lyrics such as this:

...For my heart was crushed with longing
What had been could never be....

In my historical romance, “Forbidden Love,” there’s a scene where Lisa, the wealthy society heroine, goes to visit the hero, a steelworker from the wrong side of the tracks.  He’s not home, so she lets herself in his house. (No one locked their doors then.) She tidies up his house while singing “In the Gloaming” because it exemplifies their seemingly hopeless love.
Evelyn Tubb gives us a lovely rendition of “In the Gloaming.”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNqM9wt33VY

In 1916, Woodrow Wilson was elected to a second term as president with the slogan, “He kept us out of the war.”  Except that he didn’t.  By 1917, thousands of doughboys were headed for the European slaughterhouse, better known as the First World War.  Thousands did not come back.  (One of my uncles died of gas poisoning.)  Yet we entered the war with an idealistic purpose and this song:

Over there, over there
Send the word, send the word over there
  That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming
And we won’t come back ‘til it’s over, over there

Once the war ended, and our boys came home again, we tried to forget all the pain and sorrow with this song:

How ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?
How ya gonna keep ‘em away from Broadway
Jazzin’ around, paintin’ the town....
How ya gonna keep them down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?

The Roaring 20s brought us a medley of popular songs like “Ain’t Misbehavin’” and country songs, such as “Prisoner Song.”  Al Jolson gained fame in an entertainment venue known as vaudeville with songs such as “Swanee.”

Despite, or possibly because of, the Great Depression of the ‘30s,we still enjoyed singing songs like “Over The Rainbow.”  This was the era of the Big Bands, and instrumentals found their way into the national psyche.  Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood” remained popular for decades.  The same is true of Kate Smith’s “God Bless America.”

In my opinion, the ‘40s through the mid ‘50s was the golden age of popular music.  “When the Lights Go on Again” and “I’ll Be Seeing You” reflected the trauma of the Second World War.
Vaughn Monroe’s “Riders in the Sky” became a classic, revived decades later.  Country and western music gained new popularity.  Some people called this type of music “hillbilly” music and spoke of it in a derogatory manner, apparently not realizing that many country songs found their way into popular music.  “Cold,. Cold Heart” and “Half As Much” were first recorded by Hank Williams, Sr., one of the greatest entertainers this country has known.  Crossing over into popular music, these songs achieved even greater renown.  One of my favorite songs from the ‘40s is “To Each His Own” by the Ink Spots.  We can listen to this group sing this plaintive song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G5wqiLiPHg

This era produced outstanding male singers, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and Perry Como, to name a few.  Jo Stafford, Patti Paige, and Rosemary Clooney (George’s aunt) were popular songstresses who knew how to carry a tune and didn’t have to screech to reach the high notes.

The ‘40s and ‘50s also gave us Broadway musicals.  We found ourselves singing so many songs from “Oklahoma!” and “South Pacific.”   “Showboat” was revived from the ‘20s, a different kind of musical that dealt with race, miscegenation, and abandonment.  In this musical, Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson sing “We Could Make Believe.”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VvpDE87b7E

Until the mid ‘50s, music was parent-friendly.  Elvis Presley and rock ‘n roll changed all that.  Elvis Presley’s gyrations drove the teenagers crazy, but we soon learned that he could sing.  He revived this golden oldie, “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”  Another revival was Tommy Edwards’ “It’s All in the Game,” the music written by Charles Dawes, Vice  President under Calvin Coolidge.

Funny songs, like “Mairzy Doats” made the popularity charts.  My favorite is “Grandma’s Lye Soap.” (“It’s in the Book” by Johnny Standley.)

As for rock ‘n roll, Bill Haley and the Comets presented a new type of music, but “Shake, Rattle, and Roll,” with its male chauvinist lyrics, wouldn’t gain much traction in today’s politically correct society.

From the ‘60s on, popular music achieved an entirely new tone, and in my opinion, lost much of its charm.  This was the era of protests, and popular music reflected the national mood.

The late ‘60s and ‘70s brought us rock groups with names such as Paper Lace and Three Dog Night.  Young people enjoyed Don McLean’s “American Pie” and “Joy to the World.”  (No, not the Christmas carol.)

The ‘60s also brought us a British invasion, this one friendly.  The Beatles took the world by storm.  They could play their instruments well and achieved good harmony, but in my opinion, their lyrics were sophomoric.  As for melody, John Lennon was sued, and rightly so, for “borrowing” the tune of “He’s So Fine” for “My Sweet Lord.”  The plaintiffs won the lawsuit.

The Swedish group, ABBA, belted out many songs with catchy tunes and lyrics, such as "Dancing Queen" and "Fernando, that soon reached the popularity charts.

Two of my favorite songs from the ‘80s are “What A Feeling” from the movie “Flashdance” and “Make it Real” by the Jets.  That's as far as I'm going with my musical history, because I don't follow today's music.

Wishing everyone a Happy New Year!


I write historical, paranormal, and fantasy romances. Please check out my website at www.shirleymartinauthor.com
My books are sold at Amazon, Smashwords, AllRomance eBooks, Barnes and Noble, KOBO, the Apple iStore and at other sites where ebooks are available online and also at your local bookstore. Three of my books are in print: "Night Secrets," "Night Shadows," and "Dream Weaver.

What’s the World Coming To? by Eleanor Stem

 

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Our World in Crisis

It seems our world is undergoing a crisis. The human race is angry and our climate is changing. Are these connected? Do we feel the earth’s anguish and are, in like, responding? 

I spoke with a friend the other day who asked: “I think you are spiritual. How do you stay calm in all this angry mess?”

I had to think awhile on that one. My first answer was, “Yes, I am spiritual.” What I didn’t say is we travel in several dimensions but on this plane we forget about the other dimensions. This life is hard. We don’t want to think of the other dimensions that may be as hard as this one. 

Subconscious thoughts overlap and zing across our brow on a constant basis. It’s like brain synapses are flashing. Our senses can see, feel and touch these but we forget to look at them. Shadows of wisdom (which we gain through lifetimes) flit across our souls but by the time we consciously acknowledge them, they are gone. How many times do we think: “I had a thought but I can’t remember, now.” 

All the time. 

My friend then launched into a large list of physical ailments she’s been experiencing, and she knew they were all due to stress. My mom said stress can kill you, and I believe it. 

Our world is stressed. We are connected to each other and this plane we live on. We know we are a part of this world stress. We can feel the agony of abuse beneath our feet rise through our bodies and into our souls. We remember past experiences. We want to change what is happening but do not know how. This makes us frustrated, angry. 

There seems to be a lot of violence where the earth is most stressed. We feel overwhelmed and don’t know what to do. This also causes a cycle of frustration then anger. 

The Storm Passing

Until we figure out how to stop this violence and anger, all we can do is try to rise above it. To do this, we can meditate. 

People have asked, “How do you do this? How do I know I’m meditating?” 

I say, “You don’t feel your body when you are lost in a good movie or book. That is where you want your physical being to be at when meditating.” 

Once you are there, visualize our forms rising out of the dark chaos into bright light. Once in the light, our ills will lessen. The trick is to remain there. It’s so easy to drift back into the chaos which I visualize as writhing centipedes on a dark floor. I don't want to see what those roiling creatures look like, only know they are dark and I don’t want any part of them to touch me. 

If everyone does this, perhaps, our world won’t be so stressed. Perhaps, there won’t be so much violence and anger. 

A Bright World

Many thanks to Wiki-Commons (public domain).  

An approach to writing: Lord Esterleigh's Daughter

by Kathy Fischer-Brown

Available on Amazon

One of the most common questions readers ask writers is, “Where do you get your story ideas?” 

For me, most of the time, they come from dreams. In the case of Lord Esterleigh’s Daughter, the first book in “The Serpent’s Tooth” trilogy, published by Books We Love, this couldn’t be truer.

Many years ago, a dream left an image on my waking mind that haunted me for months, of a coach-and-four racing through an English coastal town in the misty dark of a moonlit night, while a three-masted ship sat, moored in the harbor. For the longest time, I had no idea what it meant, or even what to do with it.

I was in my late 20s, recently earned MFA in Acting in my pocket, when husband and I relocated from Connecticut for a teaching gig at a small, private women's college in Indiana. I hadn't written fiction since I was in my teens; my mind was focused on teaching acting and theater history, performing on the stage for the local community theater, and adjusting to the change in culture and environment. Yet, above all else, this dream haunted me. I needed to know who the young woman in the coach was, and why the secretive nature of her nocturnal journey. Was she running away? To be with her lover? Or was she escaping something more sinister? Had she been abducted? Who were the others in the coach with her—people fearing for her wellfare, or those wishing her ill? And what significance did the ship play? What was its destination?

By starting at the beginning of the story, long before the racing coach scene, I became acquainted with Anne Fairfield, who was to become the protagonist of a three book series. Her life and eventual fate became clear. She led me down a path she wanted me to investigate and thereby reveal her story and… What about that coach?

It’s always amazed me—and I know I’m not the first author to make this assertion—that writing a novel is an exercise in exploration. As one who professes to be a “pantser,” I rarely know where my stories are headed until the characters speak and I follow their lead. Some things never change, even as time and experience have helped me grow as a writer.

Ultimately this exploration lasted off and on for over 25 years, as I practically channeled the voices that spoke to me at the oddest times: in the shower, walking the dogs, changing the babies’ diapers, teaching classes, or waiting for my cue in the green room.

As the time period and setting emerged, I found myself immersed in enormous amounts of research into the Georgian Era England and then the American colonies at the onset of the American Revolution. And then there were the rewrites, innumerable rewrites.

With limited resources available (no internet, at the time), I scoured bibliographies and sought out-of-print titles from the local library and through inter-library loans. I wrote letters to authors of the research books that had been most informative, and contacted experts in this particular area of history. I visited historical societies and living history sites, searched old maps and documents, scribbling notes and making photocopies of my prized findings.

For example, even though as a child Anne had been led to believe that her birth was illegitimate, I discovered that her parents had been married, in secret. Up until the early to mid-1750s, a “Fleet Street Marriage” was the choice of those who, for any number of reasons, wished to bypass the posting of banns and acquiring a license. Administered in the Fleet Street Prison or in inns and taverns in its environs, such a union was naturally steeped in speculation and scandal. In March 1754, the Marriage of Act of 1753 went into law in England, effectively putting an end to these clandestine marriages. 

Years later, after a number of moves before finally settling down back in Connecticut—and two small kids who had miraculously grown into adults—when I picked up the trilogy again prior to its publication with Books We Love, I availed myself of the resources that had become available on the internet. This in turn compelled me to rewrite large portions of the books to incorporate nuggets from the gold mine I’d found online, which helped add detail and immediacy to the books.

In the end, the image of that coach—still amazingly vivid in my mind after all this time—played no part in the tale. Instead, it provided a key to the second and third books in the series, Courting the Devil and The Partisan’s Wife.

But that’s a whole other story:-)

~*~ 

Kathy Fischer Brown is a BWL author of historical novels, and The Return of Tachlanad, her newly released epic fantasy adventure for young adult and adult readers. Check out her The Books We Love Author page or visit her website. All of her books are available in a variety of e-book formats from Books We Love, and from Amazon and other online retailers retailers.

KRAMPUS CHRISTMAS

An antidote to our relentless diet of Christmas sugar is the Krampus, a German/Austrian devil who comes to winter celebrations, usually on December 5, which is also Saint Nicholas' day. For a very long time in Bavaria and in the territories of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, he’s been the dark companion to their Good Spirit of the season. He’s doubtless a good deal older than the red-coated, croizier-toting saint, with his horns, furry pelt, and long tongue. Krampus arrives to punish bad children, right beside Saint Nicholas, in, some commentators have noted, a kind of bad cop/good cop routine. He carries chains which he shakes and a bunch of birch twigs, with which he threatens punishment.

 

Old Christmas cards from the region, especially from the 19th Century, show Krampus—sometimes portrayed as a female—delivering spankings in classic bondage attire. However, I believe that Krampus is in essence, male, particularly because of the enormous horns, trophies taken from the iconic mountain Steinbock, which are usually part of the headgear. Surviving from ancient times, despite more than a thousand years of intervening Christianity, there’s still a magnificent horned god who dances in German streets during this cold, sunless time. 

 Nature, in the form of the Teutonic Goddess, Mother Perchta, is no longer fertile, no longer generous to her children. The Wheel of the Year has turned. Now she whips the land with winds, ice, and snow. The birch is sacred to her, and is represented by the rune Berkana.  Are these demonic creatures wielding birch rods her minions?
Are they  avengers--or the agents--of Evil? After all, they are said to carry bad children away in sacks for late-night snacks! 
Are they chasing Winter away or are they the pain and cruelty of Winter itself?

The answers to these questions were lost a very long time ago. 

For the second part of my “Magic Colours” series I wanted to create a shape-shifting creature who lived in the Austrian Alps. Krampus came at once to mind, so I decided to use his legend, changing it here and there to fit my ideas about the character. 

In Black Magic, a disillusioned young soldier, Goran, returns home from the Napoleonic wars to find his family estate semi-abandoned in the wake of more than a decade of European war. During the "year without summer" (1816) thousands of  people in the northern hemisphere sickened and starved, for beside the cold and dark, there were torrential rains. (We now know this was caused by the cataclysmic eruption of the Tambora volcano.) In the alps, all the extra precipitation caused devastating avalanches.

Home at last, depressed, and aimlessly wandering, Goran stumbles into the seasonal celebrations of his tenants. It appears to be a traditional Summer Solstice party, celebrating the start of a warm and sunny year. There is food, beer and the possibility of sex, but after the talk, the drinking and dancing, he finds, too late, that he's walked into a trap. His tenant farmers have their own ideas about what their newly returned young lord can do for them.

When he awakens the next day, he finds himself changed into a sort of local god, not only the horny talisman of fertility, but an avenger of wrongs, a caretaker of man and beast. Now another link in an ageless chain, Goran will “wear the horns” and share, whether he likes it or not, the life of all who dwell on his  mountain.


~Juliet Waldron
 http://www.julietwaldron.com/

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