A LEAP OF FAITH - MARGARET TANNER

SELECTION OF LAND - A LEAP OF FAITH

In a leap of faith, driven by desperation and the chance to improve the lives of their families in Australia, men took advantage of the Selection of Land Act, and staked their claim on parcels of crown land. Unfortunately, for many inexperienced in the ways of farming in a harsh continent like Australia, they were doomed to failure and heartache. Many not only lost their land but their lives. Others struggled on for years, their lives blighted by bitterness and regret at a leap of faith that didn’t deliver the riches they had dreamed of. Some made an adequate living. A few, of course, prospered. Rather than a leap of faith, I would call it a lottery. It all depended on the experience of the man, but more importantly the quality of the land on which he selected.

In Australia the 1860/61 Land Act allowed free selection of crown land. This included land illegally occupied by the squatters, (wealthy ranchers), who had managed to circumvent the law for years. A similar scheme apparently operated in the US as well, (nesters against the ranchers).

The Act sometimes allowed selectors (small farmers) access to the squatters’ land, and they could purchase between 40 and 320 acres, but after that, the authorities left them to fend for themselves. Not an easy task against the wealthy, often ruthless squatters who were incensed at what they thought was theft of their land.

The Act of Selection was intended to encourage closer settlement, based on intensive agriculture. Selectors often came into conflict with squatters, who already occupied land. The bitterness ran deep for many years, sometimes erupting into violence.

Steele Rudd (a pseudonym for Arthur Hoey Davis 14.11.1868 – 11.10.35), an Australian author wrote a story On Our Selection. He based it on his father’s experience as a selector struggling to make ends meet on a small parcel of land.  It started out as just one chapter published in a magazine in December 1895 and eventually became the basis for Dad and Dave, a popular radio series which ran from 1932 – 1952.

Henry Lawson 1867 – 1922, was born on the gold fields of NSW. Many believed him to be the first poet to capture the Australian way of life. After a childhood ear infection, he was totally deaf by the age of 14, and he grew up to be bitter about his poverty and ill-fortune.

In 1888 he started publishing his stories and poems.

The Fire at Ross’ Farm, was a classic poem about selector versus the squatter.

Robert Black, the squatter’s son, loved Jenny Ross the selector’s daughter.

When Robert tells his father about the bushfire (wild fire) threatening the Ross farm, his father said, and I quote these couple of lines from Henry Lawson’s poem, which I feel epitomise the extent of the hatred and mistrust between the squatters and the selectors.

Then let it burn the squatter said, I’d like to see it done

I’d bless the fire if it would clear Selectors from my run (run is an old, no longer used, Aussie term for ranch).

FIERY POSSESSION (HISTORICAL FICTION WITH ROMANTIC ELEMENTS)
Jo Saunders is a feisty American beauty and Luke Campton is a wealthy squatter.

Explosive results and tragedy follow Jo and Luke when they cross the fine line dividing love and hate.

http://amzn.com/B00C2JOK6M    

Books We Love's Tantalizing Talent ~ Author Eleanor Stem

Due to an eclectic mind, Eleanor Stem writes stuff that is ‘out there’.  Not X-File stuff but theories like: what precipitated mythology? There had to be a source that caused these stories. What was the true message of prophets before word-of-mouth and time morphed the truths, or were deliberately changed due to the powers-that-be didn’t like something that was written? Those are the type of stories Eleanor enjoys writing. On a more mundane note, Eleanor lives in a small Texas town with her husband and pug mix. 

Miri’s Song is considered an alternative historical fiction. It is the personal story of Magdalene’s spiritual journey after being rescued from death by Joshua the Nazarene.  

The Salt Box is a YA fantasy that explores a world that is pristine, the people gentle. The mass of their bodies are more translucent than the homo-sapiens. They judge another by their auras. Their land is clean. The oceans are of fresh water. A new species comes to their world and through the innocence of a gift, changes everything. 

Eleanor Stem http://bookswelove.net/authors/stem-eleanor/

NDEs by Shirley Martin

Amazon

I’ve never had one, although I’ve read quite a bit about them.  I’m referring to Near Death Experiences.

The term Near Death Experience is often misused.  So let’s discuss what it is not.  It doesn’t mean you almost drowned, or that you almost had a fatal  car crash.

How do you define a near death experience?  Here’s the online dictionary’s definition: “An occurrence in which a person comes very close to dying and has memories of a spiritual experience, such as meeting dead friends and family members and seeing a white light when death was near.”  We see from the study discussed here that a person can be unconscious when he has this experience.  And of course, it can involve so much more than is given in the above definition.

The pathfinder in the study of near death experiences is Dr. Raymond Moody, who wrote “Life after Life” in 1975.  In this blog  posting, I quote almost entirely from  “Evidence of the Afterlife, the Science of Near Death Experiences” by Jeffrey Long, M.D. and Paul Perry.  Over ten years ago, Dr. Long, a radiation oncologist, developed an online questionnaire for people who have had NDEs, asking them numerous questions about their experiences but narrowing the study down to nine lines that best describe their experience.

On the study of near death experience, Dr. Long considered a person to be near death if the person was so physically compromised that he would die if his condition did not improve.  The NDErs studied in the doctor’s book were generally unconscious and often apparently physically dead with the absence of a heartbeat or breathing.  The experience had to occur at a time he was near death.  Besides that, the experience had to be lucid.

Dr. Long divided the NDEs into nine different aspects, or elements.   Not everyone had all nine elements.

The first element is lucid death.  One person had a brain hemorrhage in which he knew he was dead.  When he realized that he was dead, a great warmth of love enveloped  him.  If there is any one word that describes what goes on during a NDE it is love, an overwhelming warmth and love.  This patient was in a coma for three days.  During this time, he “saw” a world economic downturn and a nuclear explosion in North Korea.  Sound familiar?

A second aspect of NDE is an out-of-body experience.   In many NDEs, the OBE is the first element.  (It goes without saying that some people have an OBE when they are nowhere near death.)   Out of body means the separation of consciousness from the physical body.  We have all probably known of people on the operating table who floated up to the ceiling and could see the doctors working frantically on their body.

The third element is blind sight.  Doctors have found that many people who were born blind develop vision during the NDE.  They can see the same sort of things that other NDErs do.

A fourth element consists of people who had a near death experience while under anesthesia.  Many of these people may already have been near death before the operation.  A case study involved a man who experienced complications during surgery.  At first, all he saw was darkness.  Then he felt himself being pulled through a dark tunnel and coming out to a bright light.  After that,  he met his grandmother, who was dead.

The life review is an interesting element.  In this case, people see pictures of the life they have lived.   Many say it is like watching a movie of one’s life.  Here, the person is shown how he had hurt someone else, and he feels their emotions.  Some describe it as “life flashing before their eyes.”  Sometimes, spiritual beings accompany the person who is having the life review.  Some NDErs say their life review consisted of feelings rather than events.

A further aspect of the NDE is a family reunion.  Many see their loved ones who had died before.  We often read of a border that separates the NDEr from the loved  one, a border over which he can’t pass.  The near death experiencer is made to realize that once he crosses this border, there is no returning.  Often communication with their loved one is through telepathy.  People who had died years or decades before are often encountered.

Mark Twain said, “Death is the starlit strip between the companionship of yesterday and the reunion of tomorrow.”

Skeptics say that NDErs fabricate their experiences.  Yet very young children–five or under–are known to have had NDEs.  Dr. Long’s research reveals that very young children had every NDE element that older children and adults do.

What about people from other countries, especially non-Western countries?   Are their NDEs similar to those of people from the United States and other Western countries?  Dr. Long’s study is the largest cross-cultural study of NDEs ever done.  The doctor hired interpreters who have helped him in his research..  From his study we see we see that the NDE is the same throughout the world.

The last element in the doctor’s study–the ninth element–reveals that people often change their lives after their near death experience.  For one thing, they are no longer afraid of death.  Many people become more sympathetic, empathetic, and kinder.  They become more considerate of others.  Many realize that facing death is not the end but the beginning.

In thinking about NDEs, bear in mind that Dr. Long’s study is quite intensive and comprehensive and was conducted by a radiation oncologist.  So we can safely assume that the accounts registered in this study are factual.

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Astral Travel by Eleanor Stem

We are born remembering where we came from, what we can do. While in-utero we are partially with the growing fetus and also within the ether. We divide our time between the two and swear to the heavens we will not forget. 

By the time we reach the age of two or three our spirits are totally enclosed in the fleshly casing we call our bodies and we forget. We start to feel lonely, bereft. The light does not penetrate easily into our souls through dense skin, sinew and bone. 

We forget we can astral travel. 

Now, please bear with me; I promise this will be interesting. You just have to read a little before getting to it: 

I knew this lady who had to move to another town for work, leaving her husband behind. For about 6 months, they visited each other every other month. The only friends she made during this time were two coworkers, a man and a woman. 

She heard about a music festival that was popular in the area. Musicians competed with each other. They sold crafts and funnel cakes but to get there she had to travel narrow roads that wound through long stretches of farmland. As with her life of late, it was located in an isolated area. 

She did not want to go alone but it was supposed to be fun. She also wanted to get some Christmas gifts for her family. Her female coworker was out of town so she asked the guy to accompany her. She did not want to tell her husband. He would be upset. 

Toward the weekend, she became nervous. On Saturday, when she was supposed to meet the guy, she texted her husband to let him know her plans and to trust her. She stuck her mobile into her purse and almost ran out of the apartment. 

The road to the small town and music festival was pretty, but again isolated. She didn’t like her male coworker very much. The more she learned of him, the more his dark moods concerned her. One day he stood near the door of her office as he ground out some ill and she literally saw his aura, brownish, like a dark, disintegrating shield. She backed away. 

They got to the festival and separated, he to a conference call and she to the crafts. After a while, they met where the food was being served. He asked if she liked funnel cake. She responded she’d never eaten one. He said, “Well we can’t have that, can we?” 

As they sat across from each other at a picnic table, people with their children meandered through. Music could be heard in the background, cheers from the stadium where groups performed. 

She cut into her piece of funnel cake, a rich delight of whipped cream, pastry and apples. The guy confided something to her, but she watched over his shoulder, not hearing what he said. His mouth worked as if she were deaf. She found living apart from her husband lonely. Friendly coworkers didn’t help. 

Suddenly she heard a loud pop. Something altered in the ether. She turned in that direction where, close at hand, energy shifted. As she watched, fractured space folded back to normal. 

But she never made the connection to astral travel. A woman had just sent her food remnants into a rubbish barrel. She must have thrown something heavy in there. 

That night, she spoke with her husband. He said he’d been at the festival with her, saw her eat the funnel cake. She wore a white shirt. From what he saw, he knew she was not being disloyal. He felt good, reassured. The pop she had heard was when someone knocked on the door, hurtling him back to their house and onto the couch where he sat. 

Amazed, she explained what she had felt, what she had heard, that the ether had popped. She had worn a white shirt. 

Everyone acted normally. The guy across from her kept talking about his ills and needs. No one had looked up to see if something had made that loud pop. 

She alone had heard the shift in the ether, seen the air move while her husband had been with her.

 ~~~~~~

Many thanks to Terri for her story.

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Homage to the Firefly

 by Kathy Fischer-Brown

Well here it is, July 30^th…again. Here in Connecticut we’re smack dab in the midst of an extended heat wave (yesterday the heat index reached 103 F). I’ll be out with one of the dogs on our “walkies” around the block when a neighbor invariably asks with a big sweaty grin as he pauses from his mowing, “Hot enough for ya?” My answer, usually, is that I don’t mind the heat and find it preferable to freezing my butt off during our overly long, cold New England winters. No, I never complain about the heat. Not that I enjoy peeling myself from the chair I’m sitting in, or having my glasses fog up when I move from the outdoors to the air-conditioned inside (or vice versa), it’s just that summer happens to be my favorite season.

What, really, is there not to like about summer? The trees are in full leaf, flowers are in bloom, and our garden is producing zucchinis, peppers, tomatoes, and herbs faster than we can eat them. The backyard pool has been open since before Memorial Day and Tim, my husband, and Evie, our mutant springer spaniel, take advantage of a refreshing dip throughout the day. It’s a lazy time of year, a time for taking things a little slower, especially when outside playing ball with the mutant. It’s a time of glowing skies long after sunset, of sitting on the back deck with a good read on my Kindle, a baseball game on the radio…and, my favorite spectator sport: firefly watching.

I can’t remember when I first fell in love with those sparkly little critters, but I have memories

from when I was six-or-so running across the lawn in bare feet as I tried to catch them in my hands. And then there was an Independence Day night some 25 years ago when the sounds of fireworks from the park across town seemed in sync with the flickering of hundreds—if not thousands—of those incandescent insects in our yard. Twelve years ago, after a grueling eight months of surgeries, treatment and recovery from breast cancer, I found myself enjoying a warm late spring evening on the deck with no other thought in my mind except to breathe in the night air and give thanks to whatever powers that be for being alive. As if in answer, and totally unexpected, fireflies—like so many stars—lit up the trees and shrubs and flickered over the grass, a simple reminder that life is good and beautiful. I actually cried from happiness.

The sad thing is that “firefly season” is short-lived. By this time, end of July, the most spectacular displays are over. A few stragglers—those late for the party—appear well past dark, sometimes no more than two or three at a time to signal their desire for a mate. And then, within an hour or so, the yard is dark and still, with only the sounds of crickets filling the night.

Over the years I’ve done some reading up on the Lampyridae family of insects, the winged beetle order Coleoptera. No, they’re not flies, and up close they’re probably among the ugliest creatures I’ve seen. There are over 2,000 species of fireflies in the world, but only a few have the ability to emit the yellow, green or pale blue glow we have here in the eastern U.S. According to scientists, the reaction in their bodies that produces their light (bioluminescence) is among the most efficient in that it is nearly all glow and almost no heat. The light comes from luciferin, a chemical in their abdomens that, when combined with oxygen, produces their characteristic glow.

Among the fireflies in my yard, I count four different varieties. There are the synchronistic pulsers, males which signal the females of the species that they’re ready to mate. The females generally lie low in the grass with their answering flicker. Streakers seem to be in a great hurry, maybe to a party in someone else’s yard. And then there are the seducers, cannibal fireflies that mimic the flash of the female to lure an unsuspecting male to his death.

Unfortunately, due to a host of factors such as pesticide use and light pollution, firefly populations are in decline over most of the planet. But not in my yard. We have the perfect combination of damp creek bed in a forested tract just beyond a stand of willows, where the females like to lay their eggs. The larva and even their eggs are known to produce a glow, protection from other critters that would otherwise find them distasteful, even poisonous. In some species, the larvae burrow underground, sometimes for years, before emerging in late spring.

As writers, we’re told to write about what we know, which is good advice, but only to a certain point. In my fantasy novel, The Return of Tachlanad, I found a place for my beloved fireflies (which you can see on the lovely cover by Michelle Lee). At first glance they appear to be the same flickering, flying creatures that light up my summer nights, but these guys have a whole other personality and a bit of magic.

~*~

Kathy Fischer Brown is a BWL author of historical novels, Winter Fire, Lord Esterleigh's Daughter, Courting the Devil, The Partisan's Wife, and The Return of Tachlanad, her latest release, an epic fantasy adventure for young adult and adult readers. Check out her The Books We Love Author page or visit her website. All of Kathy’s books are available in e-book and in paperback from Amazon.