Priscilla Brown meets a Scottish horse (kind of)

I love to travel in Australia and overseas, and recently was lucky enough to visit Europe (at least 21 hours flying from Sydney, folks!) As I travel, I am noting locations, characters and situations which eventually may weave their way into my contemporary romantic fiction. But I cannot work into this genre of novels a story I found in Falkirk, Scotland. Before this visit, I knew kelpies only as Australian sheepdogs. Then I discovered "kelpie horse" structures located by the Forth and Clyde canal.

Unlike kelpies, horses appearing in "Hot Ticket", a recently published Books We Love contemporary romance, are warm-blooded handsome characters in their own right, with parts to  play in the blossoming love between their owners. Love or her career? Will ambitious lawyer Olivia listen to her heart or to her head before it's too late? Her career, and she can ride her beloved horse Silk Georgette every weekend. Love, the length of the continent away, what can she do with Georgette?

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  These Falkirk structures replicate the head and neck of kelpies of Scottish folklore.

 Their complex engineering, at 30 metres tall (about 100 feet) the world's largest equine sculptures, took approximately 18 000 pieces of steel for each one. While impressed with the design and construction, I became interested in the kelpie mythology.
According to the lore, kelpies are water spirits, and also known as spirits of the dead. They inhabit lochs and rivers, appearing in the shape of a horse, usually white, and identified by its wet mane; they can also shape-shift between horse and water, and on land into a human. This shape-shifting ability may be located in its bridle (how a wild thing like a kelpie came to have a bridle seems unexplained, but then this is myth, no logic necessary), and if a human could grab it and keep it, that person could control the creature. Apparently this would be useful, since it purported to be as strong as ten 10 real horses.
These beings are malevolent, and like to lure humans, especially children, into the water. A common tale I heard from more than one Scot involves nine children, attracted by a ride on the kelpie's back; the kelpie's skin then became sticky so they couldn't fall off and escape.A tenth child, managing to avoid the trap, was chased by the kelpie, but still got away, presumably to relate the story. The nine were dragged down, killed and eaten.

I peered into a river close to where I was staying; an angler asked me what I was looking for. I told him, and he shook his head. He didn't laugh.

Best wishes, Priscilla

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Women's Equality Day

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woman behind the man

This little known American commemoration (August 26) was created back in the 70's by Bella Abzug, a colorful, out-spoken member of the House of Representatives (1971-77). She was a labor attorney, a graduate of Columbia (Harvard, which she was qualified for, refused to admit her because she was female). She was always an activist, a force in the peace movement, the antinuclear movement and the civil rights movement too. Later, Bella became a leader of the women's movement. How well I remember her rousing speeches!

The test for whether or not you can hold a job should not be the arrangement of your chromosomes.

 Women's Equality Day is meant to be a celebration of the 19th Amendment to our Constitution, the one which gave American women the right to vote. Before that, women obeyed the laws and paid their taxes, but, never mind--taxation without representation for people of the "wrong" gender remained the law of the land.

I've always loved research, so digging around in the past comes naturally. I often write novels with female protagonists, and the social/cultural conditions which affect my heroines are always a big part of the background. 

I've just participated in a local celebration of Equality Day, so it's fresh in mind, and I think American women ought to know more about their own history. As I started reading,  I stumbled into a whole world of forgotten, not-in-the-textbooks people and fantastic facts. I thought that this month, I'd share a random few.

All Americans know the Paul Revere story, but who has heard of Sybil Luddington? When the message "The British are coming" arrived at her father's house--he was a colonel in the Colonial Militia--his 400 men were 40 miles away on some other task. The original rider/horse was too exhausted to continue, so Sybil, aged 14, mounted the family steed and rode all night--a distance of 40 miles--to call the men back to battle. We may not have heard much about Sybil, but still, at half Revere's age, she rode twice as far to deliver the same important message. General George Washington knew her, though, and later came to the Luddington house to say his personal thank-you. Now, Sybil was news to me, and I thought I knew a thing or two about the American Revolution.

Or, much later, how about Claudette Colvin? In 1955, on her way home from High School, fifteen year old Claudette refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, AL bus to a white passenger. This was some daring, as it would be 15 months before Rosa Parks did the same thing. Here's what she told Newsweek:

 “I felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman was pushing down on the other—saying, ‘Sit down girl!’ I was glued to my seat.”

Truth is powerful, and it prevails

Claudette was arrested for violating the segregation laws and the entire family was threatened with mayhem and death by white supremacists. Fortunately, the judge gave this brave young woman probation instead of a jail sentence, and, to my knowledge, the family escaped unharmed. 

And here are some fantastic facts concerning voting rights in the US. I've just learned that women actually  possessed the right to vote in several of the original 13 states, but lost it under the brand new "revolutionary" governments. 

In 1777, New York revoked women's right to vote, followed by, in 1780, Massachusetts. In 1784, New Hampshire did the same. When our present Constitution was adopted in 1787, the allocation of voting rights was left to the states. All states, except New Jersey, promptly put an end to a woman's right to vote. In 1807, New Jersey stepped backwards with the rest of the country, effectively leaving American women without the right to vote until, post Civil War, a few western states (Wyoming, Utah and Montana), began to do things differently. 

Women have still got a lot of work to do on the equality front all over the world. Here in the west, we're fortunate not to be considered chattel property, which is the case in many of today's Third world nations. However, things aren't perfect for us, either. Here are a few (not so) fantastic facts about the economic costs of being female in the US:

According to statistics released in 2015 by the U.S. Census Bureau, year-round, full-time working women in 2014 earned a real median income of $39,621 and full-time, year-round working men earned a real median income of $50,383. The U.S. Census Bureau’s 2014 Current Population Survey found progress in closing the wage gap so slim as to be “statistically insignificant."

According to the National Committee on Pay Equity, over a working lifetime, wage 
disparities cost the average American woman and her family $700,000 to $2 million in lost wages, impacting Social Security benefits and pensions.

Four in ten mothers are primary breadwinners in their households and nearly two-thirds are primary or significant earners, making pay equity critical to many families’ economic 
security.

So sisters, let's go! Get to the polls and exercise that hard won right to vote. Get familiar 
with local issues and engage in off year elections too. If you've got ideas--speak at the town hall meeting or better yet, run for office! Inequality will continue to negatively affect you, your daughters, and your grand-girls unless we in this generation fix it, once and for all. 

"...I’ve been female for a long time now. I’d be stupid not to be on my own side."

--Maya Angelou

~~Juliet Waldron

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