#pretty cool. i know so little about the archaeology of the americas

[hexjulia]

"A huge ancient city has been found in the Amazon, hidden for thousands of years by lush vegetation.

The discovery changes what we know about the history of people living in the Amazon. The houses and plazas in the Upano area in eastern Ecuador were connected by an astounding network of roads and canals.

The area lies in the shadow of a volcano that created rich local soils but also may have led to the destruction of the society.

While we knew about cities in the highlands of South America, like Machu Picchu in Peru, it was believed that people only lived nomadically or in tiny settlements in the Amazon.

"This is older than any other site we know in the Amazon. We have a Eurocentric view of civilisation, but this shows we have to change our idea about what is culture and civilisation," says Prof Stephen Rostain, director of investigation at the National Centre for Scientific Research in France, who led the research.

"It changes the way we see Amazonian cultures. Most people picture small groups, probably naked, living in huts and clearing land - this shows ancient people lived in complicated urban societies," says co-author Antoine Dorison.

The city was built around 2,500 years ago, and people lived there for up to 1,000 years, according to archaeologists.

It is difficult to accurately estimate how many people lived there at any one time, but scientists say it is certainly in the 10,000s if not 100,000s. This LiDAR technology found 6,000 rectangular platforms measuring about 20m (66 ft) by 10m (33 ft) and 2-3m high. They were arranged in groups of three to six units around a plaza with a central platform. The scientists believe many were homes, but some were for ceremonial purposes. One complex, at Kilamope, included a 140m (459 ft) by 40m (131 ft) platform.

They were built by cutting into hills and creating a platform of earth on top.

A network of straight roads and paths connected many of the platforms, including one that extended 25km (16 miles).

Dr Dorison said these roads were the most striking part of the research.

"The road network is very sophisticated. It extends over a vast distance, everything is connected. And there are right angles, which is very impressive," he says, explaining that it is much harder to build a straight road than one that fits in with the landscape.

Link to the actual paper (11 jan 2024)

[memories-of-ancients]

The Ancient and Medieval American Mississippian culture 500-1500 AD

Going down a deep dive of the Mississippian mound culture of precolumbian United States.

I knew some stuff about the topic, pretty basic and precursory information, but now I think I'm gonna do some more in depth research. It's just fascinating to learn how throughout the Mississippi river region and deep south there were large cities that rivaled medieval cities in Europe with populations in the tens of thousands. Cahokia Illinois for example.

And they made all kinds of really cool artifacts

They had trade routes all over North America. For example copper from the Great Lakes region, shells from the Atlantic and Gulf Coast, and Obsidian from Mexico. In addition their own goods have been found exported to archaeological sites all over North America.

Then around the 14th century the Little Ice Age started, which was basically a sudden drop in global temperatures lasting until the mid 19th century, which resulted in crop failures and famine worldwide. In addition large populations were already stretching the food resources and agriculture of the area. This resulted in the decline of urban culture among the Mississippians. At the time in Eurasia the same was happening, which helped bring about the Black Death. So there were hard times all around. The 14th century was a bad time to be alive almost everywhere. Final collapse occurred in the 16th century when smallpox swept through the Americas after European contact.

Unfortunately for us they had no system of writing, at least none that can be found. So we will probably never know their story and history as well as say the ancient Romans. All that we know is pieced together through archaeological findings and oral history of their modern descendants.

Anyway I'm gonna find some good audiobooks to listen to on the subject while I do my weightlifting.

[sam-glade]

Happy STS, Sam!

Writing about a world other than our own involves choosing some elements of our world to include and others to leave out. In your writing, do any such elements stand out, like a real topic you put in your fictional setting, or a significant everyday detail of our world which doesn’t exist there?

Did anything work its way in without your intent, e.g. sayings or traditions or units of measurement you didn’t consciously include, but noticed later on? If so, did you remove them or leave them in place?

- @verkja

Happy STS, Verkja💜

I very much bring to attention what real-life elements I add to my main setting. It's been created to celebrate the aesthetic of 18th century Central and Eastern Europe and explore Slavic mythology. I want to double-down on it, since I find it VERY underrepresented in fantasy, while it's a goldmine for cool details. So I'm going to quickly link fashion and architecture info dumps.

The significant details I left out deliberately are plants and animals brought to Europe from the Americas (so no pumpkins, potatoes, tomatoes, etc.). In part, it's a thought experiment, what would our cuisine look like without them, and in part it's motivated by in-setting geography and non-expansive policies.

With the amount of research I've done, I could probably pull off historical fiction at this point, and I'm toying with this idea, however, it doesn't sound appealing to me personally. I want my setting to be my playground, and specifically 1. I want it to be queernormative and 2. I don't want to include real-world countries and their baggage of historical tensions. And at this point I might just as well go into fantasy, and add magic swords to the mix.

As for unintentional inclusions...

(I'm going to preface it with: my method of worldbuilding involves writing what 'feels' right, but then looking up if the detail is feasible in the setting. E.g. does it require technology that wasn't yet discovered or is it an invasive species from another continent. Then it's cut/replaced with something. It's noticed pretty quickly, by the 2nd draft.)

For The Fulcrum, the backburner sci fi with bronze/iron age birdfolk: I'm using it as an excuse to brush up on biology and archaeology, and also run a fun simulation 'what if our evolution ran a different path'. That's a deliberate choice though. One thing that appeared there unintentionally is a fast growing, light woody plant - it was needed for constructing cheap buildings which can be destroyed during monsoon season. It's bamboo. It wasn't meant to be bamboo, but bamboo by any other name will work just as well.

I've got a slightly longer story for Days of Dusk. The setting is based on Slavic mythology, which permeates the stories I was told as a kid, by my family. I'm brushing up on them and reading the less kid-friendly versions now, and I deliberately choose which demons to include. However. The demon possessing the protag feeds off his energy/lifeforce. As I was trying to explain this metaphysics and I've had a nagging feeling that I've read about it, but it's meant to be added to the setting, not based on myths, so whatever, don't need to look it up.

Prompted by all the Dracula-related stuff on my dash, I was talking to someone about vampires, explaining that Slavic vampires are a little bit different. And then it clicked. I re-discovered mares. There are upyrs/vampyrs, which feed on blood, and related to them are lifeforce-devouring mares. So that stayed and got highlighted during editting.

And whenever I need to give a character a hobby or a task to do, I write what I know - and I know some odd things independently of writing. E.g. I bake rye sourdough bread since I got some starter as a birthday present a few years ago, and so I can describe the smell and feel of the dough when a character is mixing it during a conversation.

[carnegiemuseumnaturalhistory]

How I Became an Archaeologist

If you had told me when I was 15 that I would spend my life as an archaeologist, I probably would have been pretty surprised. I didn’t grow up knowing a great deal about archaeology or even being fascinated by arrowheads. At that time, I might well have asked what an archaeologist really is and what one actually does. I did get to visit the Parthenon and other ruins while on a trip with my aunt when I was sixteen. Even then, I don’t remember having more than a casual interest in what could be learned from these places. I was more interested in the living people and the new food dishes I encountered on that trip, which was my first trip outside the United States.

From talking to other archaeologists, I’ve learned that there are a lot of paths to deciding archaeology is going to be your life’s work. In my case, what led me to archaeology was anthropology, and specifically an elective course I took in the Fall of my senior year in high school that was taught by a Ph.D. student at the University of Massachusetts. Until then I had not been a serious student, although I did well enough in school. Perhaps I was slightly bored by most of my courses, but anthropology was anything but boring! It looked at people elsewhere in the world and over great periods of time. Many of these people lived different lives than my friends and I did, and they sometimes thought very differently about what was important in life than people here in the United States. I was fascinated, and, honestly, I particularly liked the fact that the conventions of American society, which to my teenage self were sometimes a little confining, weren’t after all the only sensible way to approach life. That year, as I chose a college to attend, I specifically looked for anthropology programs. I chose Beloit College in Wisconsin, which to this day has an excellent anthropology program.

Initially, I thought that I was most interested in cultural anthropology, but like most anthropology departments in the United States, Beloit required its anthropology majors to take courses in biological anthropology, linguistic anthropology, and archaeology as well as cultural anthropology. These are what are known as the four fields of American anthropology and together, they give us a more complete picture of humans in both the past and the present. Most people focus their careers in one subfield or another, though we recognize the importance of each one for understanding humans, and in most cases in North America our degrees are in anthropology not one of the subfields. In college, I found all these courses more fascinating than anything I had studied before, and I actually became a good student as I explored anthropology. I was learning so much neat stuff! I also did volunteer work in the Logan Museum at Beloit, which was founded at the end of the nineteenth century and holds some pretty amazing ethnographic and archaeological collections. It was there I first became interested in artifacts and learned to clean and care for them. After a college internship in cultural anthropology convinced me that cultural anthropology was not the most interesting part of anthropology after all, I began to focus on archaeology. I was most intrigued by my courses in Mesoamerican archaeology and North American archaeology, which before college had been completely unknown to me.

When I graduated from college, I still wasn’t sure what I would do with my life. I worked for about two years both in social work and as a tax auditor for the IRS, but decided in 1974 to try graduate school in archaeology because I still found what archaeology had taught me about past people compelling. I lived in Chicago, so I enrolled in the Ph.D. program in North American archaeology at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

My graduate self in the late 1970s. Photo credit: Phillip Neusius

The biggest shock of graduate school was my professors’ almost immediate insistence that I pick what research I wanted to do. They pushed me to develop an expertise or skill within North American archaeology through my research. It sounds obvious to me now, but I think many beginning graduate students are like I was, lovers of the discipline’s knowledge, but a bit daunted by becoming an independent researcher. Developing an area of focus and specialty skills is part of becoming a professional archaeologist. One reason for this is because contemporary archaeological undertakings rely on teams of researchers, each contributing special skills and knowledge to accomplish the many aspects of excavation, analysis, and interpretation. If you envision archaeology as the solitary pursuit of an elusive artifact or site, you don’t have the picture quite right. Think instead of archaeological fieldwork involving groups of scientists working together to discover and carefully record many different bits of evidence about what the world used to be like and what people did in it. Also think about the many hours these scientists and others will spend not only in the field, but in the laboratory after an excavation is completed cleaning finds, describing artifacts, and analyzing data in order to make meaningful interpretations.

For someone like myself, who loved all aspects of anthropology, not to mention archaeology, and who had only gradually settled on North America as my geographic focus, picking a focus on entering graduate school was a hard task. There was so much that would be interesting to study! However, I did remember especially enjoying a research paper I had done in college on the relatively new interdisciplinary field of zooarchaeology, so under pressure, I told my professors I wanted to pursue this subfield in graduate school. Amazingly, this turned out to be a good choice of specialization for me. I found that I really love to work with collections of animal bone. For me, opening a bag of bone refuse from a site still is exciting. Bone identification work is a little like doing a jigsaw puzzle without all the pieces. It is challenging, and it takes concentration and careful observation to piece together what you can. There is so much to figure out about any single piece of bone! What animal is it? How healthy was the animal? What part of the animal’s body is it? Has it been burned or cut? How was the bone buried and changed after the humans were done with it? Then you have to record this information so it can be combined with other observations on the assemblage of bone you are looking at. After identification, making sense of what a collection of the bones means and correlating these kinds of data with other information from a site and region requires careful analysis, but also insight and creativity. To me it is endlessly fascinating.

Besides finding that I liked the work, choosing zooarchaeology was also serendipitous since my professors were looking for a student to work with them on this aspect of a big project they were undertaking in west-central Illinois centered on the Koster site, which was first inhabited more than 9000 years ago and then reinhabited by people right up into modern times. Most importantly the poorly known Archaic Period levels were numerous, well-preserved, and distinct from each other so we could add a lot of new information through our work. For my dissertation I was able to look at the animal remains from levels of this site dated between approximately 8500 and 6000 years ago, which represent how people used animals at that time.

Koster site strata. All those dark layers are from Archaic period camps at the site. Photo credit: Del Bastian, Center for American Archaeology.

Graduate school was intense, but I continued to be fascinated by archaeology’s ability to tell the story of people lost to standard Western history. In those days I was excited to be part of this science that could do so much more than describe and take care of cool artifacts. It was a heady thing to learn that I could contribute to what was known about people who lived thousands of years ago. In later years, I’ve had to think more critically than I did then about what a privilege it is for an archaeologist to learn about the history and lives of other ethnicities. Today’s archaeologists recognize their responsibility to present information about past people for both scholarly and public use in ways that are sensitive to what is considered sacred and private by the descendants of those people. I think this is an important change in perspective, but in the 1970s most archaeologists just wanted to show that people’s stories from the past could be told using the techniques of archaeology. I certainly was happy, if a little naively so, to have found a way to contribute to telling the human story.

If I consider entering graduate school as the start of my professional career as an archaeologist, I have been pursuing this career for more than 45 years! Over the years I have done zooarchaeological and archaeological work in the American Midwest, Southwest, Southeast, and Northeast working on telling the story of people who lived as long as 9000 years ago and as recently as the Sixteenth century. I’ve worked at several universities, in a small museum, and on small and large archaeological projects in the field of Cultural Resource Management (CRM) doing archaeological survey, site excavation, and zooarchaeological identification and analysis. I’ve written scholarly papers and articles as well as a textbook on North American archaeology. However, beginning in the late 1980s, I spent more than 31 years doing research and teaching anthropology and archaeology here in Pennsylvania at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. In this job I taught both undergraduates and graduate students, but, as is typical of university professors, I also spent time doing fieldwork and analysis as part of my research while at IUP. Fortunately, because archaeology is a team undertaking, I’ve been able to involve many students in my research. Working with students in research as they discover what fascinates them has been a highlight of being an archaeologist for me. I’ve now retired from teaching but not archaeology. I’m still working with both physical and digital archaeological collections both through CMNH and elsewhere and writing about archaeology. Who knows what this career still will bring me!

Drawing a profile at the Johnston site with one of my students in 2008. Photo credit: Erica Ausel, IUP Archaeology.

Tracking down a bone identification with one of my students in the Zooarchaeology Lab at IUP. Photo credit: Beverly Chiarulli.

If you are reading this blog because you are thinking about archaeology as either a career or a hobby, I hope you realize that mine is just one story among the many that could be told. Because there are so many aspects of archaeology, people come into it from all sorts of backgrounds and because of all sorts of interests. I think that it is important to remember though that it really is about understanding people and telling their stories through the artifacts and other evidence we find. This is what interested me in archaeology in the first place. Discovering the details of the human story is a giant undertaking. There is no shortage of research problems or work to do, but solving the puzzles presented by sites and collections is both challenging and fun. I’m certainly glad I decided to become an archaeologist and zooarchaeologist so many years ago!

Sarah W. Neusius is a Research Associate in the Section of Anthropology at Carnegie Museum of Natural History and Professor Emeritus, Department of Anthropology, Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

Definitions of Bolded Terms

anthropology -the study of humans including the physical, cultural and social aspects in the past and present.

cultural anthropology - the study of the cultural aspects of humans especially recent and contemporary social, technological, and ideological behavior observed among living people.

biological anthropology – the study of the biological or physical aspects of humans, including human biological evolution and past and present biological diversity.

linguistic anthropology - the study of the structure , history, and diversity of human languages as well as of the relationship between language and other aspects of culture.

archaeology - the study of past human behavior and culture through the analysis of material remains.

ethnographic – relating to the scientific description of people and cultures especially customs and beliefs.

Mesoamerican archaeology - the archaeology of the area from central Mexico southward through Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica.

North American archaeology - the archaeology of the area from central Mexico northward throughout the United States and Canada.

zooarchaeology – a subarea of archaeology involves the identification of animal remains from archaeological sites and investigates the ecology and cultural uses of the animals represented.

assemblage - a collection of artifacts from the same archaeological context.

Archaic Period - a time period from approximately 10,000 BP to 3000 BP that is recognized in most of North America.

Cultural Resource Management (CRM) – an applied form of archaeology undertaken in response to laws that require archaeological investigations.

archaeological survey – the systematic process archaeologists use to locate, identify, and record archaeological site distribution on the landscape.

[ladyhistorypod]

Episode 16: Ms. Conceptions

Sources:

Bra Burning

Time

Carol Hanish (dot) org

Further learning: Florynce Kennedy (Harvard), NPR, BBC

Harriet Tubman

Time

National Women’s History Museum

National Parks Service

History Channel

Smithsonian Magazine

Monica Lewinsky

The Clinton Affair

CNN

News 24

Further learning: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (YouTube), Vanity Fair

Attributions: Commercial for Playtex Cross Your Heart Bra, Railway to Freedom, Pure T Saxophone Sample by Stan Rams

Click below for a transcript of this episode!

Alana: Yeah my sister is here. Erika: It’s me I’m here. Haley: I can't believe you’re both sitting in the goddamn closet. Sure the acoustics are better but you could’ve cleaned it up. Alana: The whole point is that the clothes do the soundproofing. Lexi: This is high end professional podcasting. Haley: What do you study, because this is like how I’m gonna judge you now. Erika: I'm a television radio film major. Alana: But I'm the one with the podcast. Haley We like this. She can stay. I was ready for you to say like– Erika: I really like TV. I really like movies, so I decided to make a career out of it. Lexi: That would have been me if I'd had balls. Except then I went to another pointless moneyless career so what's the deal? Alana: What are we doing? Lexi: Well, I don't have a sister. No just kidding, I have three thousand five hundred and two sisters. Actually I think that number's been updated since I memorized it because it's been a whole semester and there are new sisters. Alana you tell them what you think about my sisters. Alana: Every single time Lexi talks about a sister, I always think… she'll be like oh my sister Kate… Lexi you don’t have a sister. Haley: I completely agree but she doesn't say, or she went through this phase where she didn't say the people's names. She’d be like one of my sisters blah blah blah. And that will lead into like my next– like the other banter because I have a motherfucking story for you. Lexi: Okay, I love it. What about your sister Haley? Haley: Lou Lou? She's about to graduate from NYU and she's like writing a thesis right now and internally I'm just so happy that she has to like write this because I need her to feel this type of pain. Erika: That's sisterhood. Haley: I needed her to like feel this type of… Because for some reason I feel like her undergraduate time has just flown the freak by and she studied abroad three different times and I always feel like study abroad is always like some bullshit thing from like all the times for GW kids that come back and they're like well it's not graded you just have to pass the class. Lexi: All my friends who studied abroad in Korea and my sisters who studied abroad in Korea just like drunk and… Drank? Drank. Just drunk drank the whole time. Haley: Because she was out of like NYU London or NYU Madrid or NYU Abu Dhabi. Lexi: So it's like real classes from your school. Haley: I think so, yeah. Erika: Yeah that’s how it is for Syracuse. Alana: Yeah. Erika: Two of my roommates in– when I was in London last semester were from GW and we all– it was me and two other girls from Syracuse and two girls from GW and all the Syracuse girls were like are you kidding me. Like, are you for real? Because I was taking classes for my major and for my minors and they were just like well we're gonna mess around we're gonna like not try on this paper because we need a C. Lexi: Yeah. GW’s like go for the experience. Alana: Let’s talk about brothers for a sec. Lexi is the only one who has a brother. Lexi: Yes. I am the only one who's experienced the brother and let me tell you… Erika: I always wanted one. Alana: Okay well fuck off. Erika: I wanted an older one– Alana, louder: Okay fuck off! Erika: An older than you one. Like an old, old one. Haley: My sister’s like I wish I had an older brother and I'm like okay I didn't want you either. Erika: I didn’t mean it like that! Haley: I wanted to be a child so fucking badly. Erika: She wanted to be an only child. Alana: I was supposed to be an only child. Lexi: I literally cried. I locked myself in the bathroom and cried. [INTRO MUSIC] Alana: Hello and welcome to Lady History; the good, the bad, and the ugly ladies you missed in history class. Back on Zoom is Lexi. Lexi, what’s something you wish people knew about your field? Lexi: I guess I'll say about archaeology. I wish people knew that archaeologists do not dig up dinosaurs. Alana: And my other zoom companion is Haley. Haley, what's something most people incorrectly assume about you? Haley: Did you really fucking set me up for that one? Everyone thinks I'm gay. Alana: And if I'm a little echo-y today it's because we have a very special guest. My sister Dave is here. Dave, what's your actual name and why do I call you Dave? Erika: My name is Erika. It’s not Dave. The Dave joke started because way back really really long ago there was a Staples commercial for like a one man running his own business. Alana: The tagline was in a small business it's all you. Erika: right so with all Dave and it was just a bunch of Dave's around the office. Like one guy was like making copies, one was walking around with papers or whatever. Then it’s just like hey Dave, how you doing Dave, how's it going Dave and we thought that was so funny. Alana: Uproariously funny. Erika: I remember like crying on the couch laughing for like twenty minutes. Alana: And I'm Alana and it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that wax is the part of the candle that burns. Haley: So I thought of this in the shower where all my great thoughts come but since we're doing misconceptions– I did not have a misconception of Alana, but my first impression of Lexi was the furthest thing from Lexi possible. Lexi: What? I've never heard this before. Haley: I never accurately told the story– or like actually told this story to anyone. I like kept it in, but secretly chuckle from time to time. So like our group of friends didn't have Lexi immediately. Like I knew Cece and Kelsie from class, and I knew Cece from freshman year even. This is like second semester sophomore year so I kind of knew Alana. But for Lexi, I just knew Lexi from this one guy who we won't mention– we just won’t mention they're not important– and our lovely Holly. And Holly described Lexi as a girl from like rural Pennsylvania who was like really smart. Like I was ready for a fun loving friend because Holly's great and like I trusted Holly on personality like recommendations and just life choices to an extent. And I was like cool great let's meet this gal, we're all going to be like taking this one class together. Let's rock and roll. And then Lexi comes in, she's wearing like this bird– you were definitely wearing a skirt, like a long flowy skirt and had some sort of animal bird or whatever on your shirt or like on you. Speaker 0: And literally within five minutes you were talking about your sisters. I'm in my head thinking oh crap do we have like another nineteen kids and counting? Like who the fuck is this girl? Alana: Oh my god. Haley: Because like I called out Lexi, fifty fifty she may not say like sorority sister. But she may not even say like her sister's name. Like enter sorority sister name but using my sister and then… But at this point, she also used the phrase also commonly use and does commonly use is one of my sisters. So she said “one of my sisters,” “and other sisters,” “so a group of my sisters are hanging out.” So I was like this did this whole family just fucking come to GW? Speaker 0: Like either we have like Weasley but in reverse of like six girls and one bro, or like nineteen kids and counting coming on in. And I… Straight three weeks at least I was trying to figure Lexi out because I knew I was going to instantly love her but I was like scared to get like deep dive in like all her siblings. Lexi: So you thought I was like from a rural Pennsylvanian Amish family with thirty kids? Haley: Literally.

[Archival Audio of a 1960s bra commercial] Lexi: In my opinion, this is the biggest misconception in modern women's history because even I believed it until very much into my adulthood of so far my adulthood. And I was definitely told this in a history class in high school as being true, the lie. So we'll get right into it. The Women's Liberation Movement of the sixties and seventies granted women many rights, reforming policies surrounding work, education, and medicine. So overall, pretty good move. Today, the efforts of mid century feminists are often lumped into other stories and are not granted their own lesson plans in schools or their own sections of museums. Instead, stories like the suffrage movement are rehashed time and again and the more modern efforts of women fighting for equality are brushed aside. I mean even we are guilty of this, covering many more suffragists than twentieth century feminists so in keeping with our mission– Alana: Hold on. Lexi: Yeah? Alana: This is episode sixteen. Lexi: Yeah. Alana: There haven’t been many episodes! We haven’t had a chance to talk about twentieth century feminists! Lexi: Valid. So the story I'm about to tell you it's just a small piece of the larger movement, but considering someone could start an entire podcast series covering just the events of this movement and probably go on for like five seasons, who knows, I think it does make the most sense to give a small snippet of the efforts of these women here on our show, and maybe in the future we can cover other snippets as they relate to other things we're doing, so stay tuned. In 1968, a group of women gathered to protest the Miss America pageant. You know, we all know Miss America, women come from each state and I think also territories now, they get together they compete and one becomes Miss America. Carol Hanisch, whose name I might be saying wrong so please correct me if you know, the feminist scholar and activist who coined the phrase “the personal is political” conceived the protest as a way of bringing the Women's Liberation Movement to the mainstream. The pageant itself had a tradition of using white single childless women's beauty to make money, which is not exactly a very cash money thing to do or a very feminist thing to do. Actually it is a super cash money thing to do because it makes a lot of money. Alana, singing: Capitalism Lexi: Yes. So Carol and her fellow activists of the New York Radical Women organization decided the pageant was the perfect institution for them to protest. Women of all political backgrounds were invited to join in the protest which took place on the Atlantic City boardwalk outside the pageant venue, and the pageant venue was one of the Atlantic City casinos, so they were just on the boardwalk outside of it. And they had a permit, and they were doing it with permission, just in case anyone tries to come at them about that. They did have a permit for a protest on the boardwalk. These women rejected the idea of the massive air quotes ideal woman perpetuated by the Miss America pageant. Reporters arrived at the scene. The women spoke only to other women who were reporters and refused to speak to reporters who were men. The women issued a document to everyone in attendance outlining the ten reasons they decided to protest Miss America. One such reason was the fact that women of color had never won and a Black contestant had never even been allowed to participate, so the feminists believed the pageant was racist and they were calling out it as a racist institution. And we love to see intersectional feminism, so this is why that's the specific reason I wanted to point out. The women were also protesting the consumerism promoted by the event which was fueled by corporate sponsorships. They protested it as a symbol of military industrial complex, asserting that Miss America's role in entertaining troops made her a death mascot, you know those are just a few. Protesters also engaged in performance art. One protester Florynce “Flo” Kennedy, a Black woman who worked as a reproductive rights lawyer, chained herself to a doll depicting Miss America, invoking metaphors of enslavement. In an interview she said “the Atlantic City action is comparable to peeing on an expensive rug at a polite cocktail party. The Man never expects that kind of protest, and very often that's the one that really gets him uptight.” And she means the Man like capital M The Man, just in case that wasn't clear. Side note, five years later Flo hosted what she called a “pee in” at Harvard University to protest the lack of women's restrooms on the campus because women had to walk out of one of their academic buildings into another when they needed to pee, so I think Flo had a thing for peeing on rich people’s shit. And that's a mood because she just went into the quad and she just had people poor jars of yellow liquid which may or may not have been pee down the steps and that was the demonstration, so… Alana: I like that her name is Flo. Lexi: It's a very fun name. I love it. I like that her name is Flo and she's doing all of this like… (Laughing) Lexi: The women’s work. Simultaneously, women across the country in support the movement boycotted companies who were sponsoring the pageant. So this wasn't just contained to the New York Radical Women, it involves lots of people. Yet, the iconic image of the protest is the “Freedom Trash Can” and you might see pictures of this around on the interwebs it's like a barrel, a can, and it says “Freedom Trash Can” painted on the side. Protesters filled it with objects of oppression such as girdles, bras, wigs, fake eyelashes, hair curlers and homemaking magazines- so like “Country Woman” and “Women’s Day” and that kind of stuff. Then, they lit it on fire. Just kidding. Nothing was set on fire. No burning, no fire, not even the tiny candle, not even a tiny spark, no one pulled out a lighter. They just filled up a trash can and presumably took all the stuff out of the trash can after they were done. It was performance art. That's literally it. But this powerful, falsified visual leads to a myth that perpetuates to this day, of feminists gathering around, burning their bras as if they're participating in some sort of religious ceremony. It was a perfect visual to sell to the American people; don't support these radical angry women, who run around braless, unshaven, burning their undergarments, and worshipping like witches. Frustrated men argued that by burning their beauty products the protesters were making themselves less appealing to men, which is a hot take no one gives a shit about. So, the truth is a group of a few hundred women in Atlantic City in 1968 threw their bras and other items in the trash. They tossed away objects representative of consumerism and oppression, the two things they were protesting. The myth of bra burning lives as an anti-feminist propaganda piece, boiling a strong political and intellectual movement down to a visual of air quotes “Nasty Women,” a stereotype that continues to this day and myth even young women believe until learning the truth because it's literally taught in schools and exists in some textbooks that you can still buy. According to many historians, this protest event ushered in mainstream second wave feminism. The next day just down the boardwalk the first Miss Black America competition was held, which Oprah would go on to compete in in 1971 as Miss Tennessee. Just a few months later, Carol expressed that she regretted protesting Miss America saying “one of the biggest mistakes of the whole pageant was our anti-womanism...Miss America and all beautiful women came off as our enemy instead of our sisters who suffer with us.” The fight continues today. Yes all women. Alana: We love that, acknowledging mistakes. We love intersectional feminism. We love including all kinds of women in the feminism. Lexi: And since all the pictures are copyright, I can't put them on our Instagram but they are in the articles, so please go enjoy. They’re fantastic pictures of the performance art. Haley: When you started talking, I was having such flashbacks to like middle school/high school. The women around me, and I won't name names in case they ever listen to this, but just like their attitude towards how I and other budding females should act and like dress. Alana: I totally was that feminist bitch in high school. Everyone was like going to parties and I was like no one wants to fuck you when you're that feminist bitch. [Archival Audio: Railway to Freedom] Haley: This next story on Lady History, we're gonna be talking about Harriet Tubman and for a brief content warning topics like slavery, racism, and violence will be discussed. Alright friends bear with me because I've been very sick, not the coronas, no fever or whatever, just exhaustion, isolation dust hitting my asthma, and I've just been in the pits. So, anywho, when creating like the master spreadsheet of ladies that we had Harriet Tubman was on this list, but I think I switched her around… Alana: Who recommended Harriet Tubman? Haley: Excellent question, it was your sister Erika. I actually moved Harriet Tubman, so I had her originally, I think it was one of the earlier episodes, it was definitely before this episode. Yes I had her for heroines but I was gonna move her down the list because I wanted to do Selena. And then Erika was like let's do Harriet Tubman so I was like sweet, had some notes on her already, got sick, decided to do a radical change because I love testing out different methods of storytelling. I love narrations and for Harriet I think this would be a good opportunity to like pick a new style because she is very well known but mainly because of slavery, her being an enslaved human being, and then quote the conductor of the Underground Railroad where– where she was given the nickname “Moses of her people” because of all the people she helped. I would say ninety percent of the time, there's some article or book that I read and that's kind of like my aha moment of what I want to shape a full on story around, besides doing like our usual intros. So I found that article and it's kind of like… It’s got me going I kind of liked doing it that research way even though I'm sweaty and tired but my eyeballs still were like we're sweaty and tired but we like this article. So cracking open this history book to 1820 Maryland where Harriet Tubman was born, and we don't know her exact age so she may have also been born in 1822 if your ears are perking up and being like this lady got her dates wrong. So I didn't know this and this was kind of like one of my misconceptions for Harriet Tubman, but her name is not actually Harriet Tubman, or like the name her parents gave her, like birth name was Araminta Ross and I just love the name Araminta, like I think that's just a lovely name, you could have some stellar nicknames. And besides the point, we're gonna go back to just some deep dark history and by the age of five she was quote “rented” by her quote “owners” as a quote “domestic servant.” I'm gonna be using a lot of quotes because I really hate some of the terms used across some sources and just that's also a misconception for history is that you have to use X. Y. Z. term, like yes they should be taught in the sense of vocabulary, but like we don't… I don't want to be teaching five year olds or like elementary school kids that like… “rented by her owners.” Talk about the dichotomy but I don't I don't know it makes me– Lexi: Kidnapped by the people who enslaved her. Haley: Yeah, yes. I like that way more. And by age twelve we see her resistance to slavery blossom because she intervened a fight/quarrel/scuffle between very bad slave owner and a man who was trying to like escape slavery, and she kind of like came on in. So that was one of the many moments where she was like “I'm standing up for myself, I'm standing up for others, slavery is very very bad.” So now you get to the article because of course, of course, and it ties into also the movie Harriet that came out, starring Cynthia Erivo as Harriet. This was actually the first movie dedicated solely to this American icon. So like that was also a surprise to me. This Time Magazine opinion piece by Erica Armstrong Dunbar was ran exactly a year ago, when also the movie Harriet came out, and of course it's in the show notes, and it's called The True Story of Harriet Tubman Shows That Sometimes Running is Brave as Fighting. There are a lot of little misconceptions like the Underground Railroad wasn't actually a railroad, that's a big one I see many times. Also with the movie Harriet, I watched half of it, it's on HBO. So like every biopic… it's not a documentary, people are acting. Like I'm obviously people who are way more in depth into the American Civil War, Harriet Tubman history than I am will be like this misconception, this inconsistency. I'm gonna be– I'm gonna agree with you. So I'll just come out right there and say it like when you have actors portraying a character and just movies like this, they have to add some sprinkle of fiction. However, what this article really talks about is that how we have this whole misconception that fight or flight. So if you fight your battles, you’re coming up to a quarrel or scuffle and you fight them, you're seen as brave. You are seen as like this alpha human, alpha wolf. If you flee, if you fly, with your little wings, you are seen as like a coward, and that's just not true of Harriet Tubman because she literally ran away, but that was like the brave thing she could do. Also with this misconception, what the article also kind of nodded to was like if you're running into battle… like that’s still brave. Like that’s seen as heroic. But running towards like another route… because like it wasn't like if you left the South, you passed like northern Maryland, going into like up past the Mason Dixon line you were like Scot free. It wasn’t like this magical like utopia. You're running away from one battle into another battle. It was not black and white for this, so like her running away was not running away from the situation and that was like one misconception I never really thought about but after reading this article, reading more about Harriet it's like oh, that's a hundred percent true. And then the last misconception was how I perceived her as like an elusive person. Like I truly thought that the reason why we have pictures of Harriet Tubman was that she got caught, not in a great way. Like she got caught and like she had to like weasel her way out like but she was still free and like when she was free it was– she was just free because she happened to be in like the northern part and not like the part where she could go back to being a slave. I'm explaining this horribly wrong but this is me trying to remember back to like early middle school/late elementary school history. So like I– and this was also a misconception for just history, and I thought it was more like if you were a bad important, we would have a picture to remember your face. So that was kind of like I knew Harriet Tubman was like the hero and the good guy in this whole scenario, like I thought the reason why she was photographed and talked about was because she got caught and didn't want to be in the public eye. That is not necessarily true; she was an elusive person who tried to keep to herself, however she did do speaking engagements. Like she would talk about like her life in the North and then go back into the shadows and just like taking time away from society. And I don't know if she I can't like find out like what she did talk about the talks, like specifically, but I know that in the speaking engagements she obviously condemned slavery, and she would also condemned like the lawmakers, and like for the lawmakers who condemned slavery but didn't do anything about it she was still like you're not as good at like– you're not good or better… or you’re not better, you're still doing a shitty job. And in the end, she made twelve to thirteen trips to Maryland rescuing nearly seventy people and by doing that each of those trips she was breaking federal law each and every time. [Saxophone music because Lexi thought it would be funny] Alana: This is the first time we're covering someone who is still like active in the world, and I'm very nervous, but I’m gonna do my best. So this story it has a content warning for sexual assault and a brief mention of suicide that I'll note when it comes up so just in case sexual assault isn't triggering for you but maybe suicide is I will let you know when to hit that skippy boi. So I am talking about Monica Lewinsky, who was born July 23, 1973 that makes her a Leo. A lot of my notes come from the 2018 so kind of recent docuseries called The Clinton Affair, which I watched all of it, I binged it, it was exhausting. It features Monica herself actually and so in further reading I have included a Vanity Fair article that she wrote about why she decided to participate. One of the reasons was that she really liked that so many women were involved, whereas until that point a lot of the biographies of Bill Clinton and like the books about that whole time were written by men and she was like oh this is really cool that a lot of women are so heavily involved so she agreed to participate in the docuseries and I thought that was really cool of her. So after she graduated college, we're going back in time to 1995, she graduated college, and she had initially wanted to get a PhD in forensic psychology but she didn't score high enough on one section of the GRE. She was very interested in where psychology and the law kind of meet, but she wasn't really into politics. But also she like didn't know what to do since she wasn't going into a PhD program. She had a family friend who had done the White House summer internship, he put in a good word for her, and so she got the summer internship for the summer of 1995. At one point she had a conversation with one of the other interns who was like “oh, isn’t President Clinton so handsome” and she was like “no.” But then they were in the same room together and he was hypnotically charismatic and she developed like a celebrity crush kind of on him. There were a couple of flirtatious interactions during the internship but nothing like serious. She had been hired full time after the internship was over and so that's when the affair began, in November of 1995. Except here's the thing, 1996 was an election year, and Clinton was running for reelection. This would have been, and ended up being, very scandalous and could have cost him his reelection. So she was transferred to the Pentagon with the promise that she'd be back at the White House when the election was over. Except then the election was over and Monica was still at the Pentagon. She made a joke about how she was so underqualified to be at the Pentagon but there she was. She confided in her colleague named Linda Tripp, and what is the first thing that this bitch Linda Tripp does? She calls a literary agent and starts taping their conversations. I would like to note that Linda Tripp did not participate in the docuseries; she also died in April, but as previously mentioned this docuseries came out two years ago. So that timeline doesn’t work. I don't know if they asked her but I feel like… The literary agent participated. Let me take a second and put all of this in context. There was an ongoing sexual harassment lawsuit against President Clinton by a woman named Paula Jones who said that he assaulted her when he was governor of Arkansas and there were a lot of other accusers involved. So calling it The Lewinsky Scandal– as it kind of has been– is bad, but you also can't really call it The Clinton Scandal because there are just too many of them. There was this thing called like Whitewater about banking that I didn't really understand… it's fine. I'll touch back on that at the end. And so someone leaked to Ken Starr, who was the investigator, that President Clinton was having a– currently having an affair with a young intern. On January 16, 1998 the FBI like held her in custody at the Ritz Carlton in Pentagon City. They didn't really arrest her, but they also– it was pretty clear that she wasn't allowed to go anywhere. They teased her for wanting her to call her mom, and then manipulated her into not calling her lawyer, and lied about an immunity deal. And this is the suicide mention, so maybe skip forward fifteen seconds. She was so distraught and scared that she thought the only way to protect her loved ones and the president was to jump out the window. Like that was a serious thought she had. There was some back and forth between Ken Starr, who sucks, just objectively– I guess not to Ken Starr and his family, but he's the worst. So there's some back and forth between him and Monica's lawyers if she can have an immunity deal or not and she finally gets one in writing in July of 1998. The lawyers in the docuseries said that they probably wouldn't have charged her with anything anyway. Frustration noises. Part of the immunity deal was answering very specific and very detailed questions about the nature of the sex that they had had directly to Ken Starr and she was very uncomfortable and so she made a chart, and wrote it all down instead of saying it. Later Starr said that he didn't want the president getting asked pornographic questions. Except hold the fucking phone, there’s a horrible relatively new thing out there called the internet. And in September, the House Judiciary Committee releases the Starr Report on the internet. And this is where we get to the horrible way that late night shows and the news treated Monica Lewinsky. She was slutshamed, she became a caricature, all of the late night shows have their go at her, and just say horrible things. Fuck Jay Leno, all my homies hate Jay Leno. He was the worst of them and has yet to apologize and even called for like civility to return to late night TV and I was like MM. Also fuck Bill Maher, I hate Bill Maher, not just because of this but also in general, sorry Dad, I hate him. But Bill Clinton, President Clinton, had encouraged Monica to lie during the Jones investigation and that was what came up and caused the impeachment trial. Not the assaults, not the affair, the quote “obstruction of justice.” Fun fact for my fellow DC friends, my favorite place in the whole world Kramerbooks and Afterwords Cafe which is now just Kramers and that makes me feel weird, is kind of tangentially involved in this because Monica bought a book on phone sex from them and the investigation subpoenad those records. Lexi: Are you kidding me? Alana: I am not kidding you. Lexi: I guess the point is for twenty five years young women in DC have been going to Kramer's and buying suspicious books. Alana: Totally! So could all of this have been avoided if Bill Clinton was just honest the first time he was asked because there was like years and years of denying this, and if he just said he had an inappropriate relationship with her? Maybe. Monica probably would have still been ridiculed and slutshamed though, but I guess certain semen stained dresses would not have come to light. For context there's this very famous blue dress that Monica wore during one of their encounters that had Bill Clinton’s semen on it. Fun fact, Linda Tripp encouraged her not to wash the dress. On the tape of that conversation Tripp says that she just has this nagging feeling that it'll come up later. Also all the women who accused Bill Clinton in the nineties of sexual misconduct went on to support Trump in 2016. Lexi: Like, like advocate– like publicly tell people? Alana: Yeah. There's this whole panel of them. He did– in 2016 he did a whole panel with all of Bill Clinton's accusers because that was relevant to Hillary’s run, I guess. Lexi: Did he pay them for that? Alana: I don't know. Lexi: Or they just really– they just– they hated him so much they had to just yeet HIllary? Alana: I mean the alternative title for this is “The Way in Which Bill Clinton is Democratic Donald Trump.” If you, if you're not seeing parallels…  Like I watched this in 2018 I was like oh my god… Or, I watched it now but that it took place in 2018. Haley: I've trick or treated at Bill and Hill's house. I've met them on various occasions, we grew up in– I grew up in Chappaqua, New York and that's the town they live in. Alana: My cousin has prayed with Jared and Ivanka because they're Jewish. So Monica today is a goddamn delight. She's so much fun. She is an anti bullying and anti public shaming activist. Her Twitter bio includes “rap song muse” which is hilarious because according to a John Oliver piece from 2019, which I have linked in the show notes because he is also a goddamn delight, her name is featured in 193 rap songs as of 2019. There was this Twitter meme a while ago that was “what pop culture thing ruined your first name” and she was like “am I even allowed to play?” If you want to know more, I do recommend The Clinton Affair docuseries, but maybe don't binge it like I did. You might want some time to recover. It also has snippets of info about the other Clinton scandals, like Hillary's involvement in one of them, a little bit about Hillary, how Newt Gingrich and his Republican Party pretty much single handedly made politics the vitriolic cesspit that is and definitely made space for Trumpism to rise, an actual right wing conspiracy and a lot of things that I just couldn't cover because we're only talking about Monica and we don't have a lot of time. Basically, society was shitty to Monica Lewinsky and we have a lot of repenting to do and we should do better. I say that like I wasn't literally born in 1998, like right in the middle of all this, but like in general we need to call bad people on their shit and believe survivors. Lexi: You can find this podcast on Twitter and Instagram at LadyHistoryPod. Our show notes and a transcript of this episode will be on ladyhistorypod dot tumblr dot com. If you like the show, leave us a review, or tell your friends, and if you don't like the show, keep it to yourself. Alana: Our logo is by Alexia Ibarra you can find her on Twitter and Instagram at LexiBDraws. Our theme music is by me, GarageBand, and Amelia Earhart. Lexi is doing the editing. You will not see us, and we will not see you, but you will hear us, next time, on Lady History. [OUTRO MUSIC] Haley: Next week on Lady History, you'll see Alana crap herself because we have such a special guest. Alana: I have a burger waiting for me. Lexi: Go. We love you. Haley: Bye. Lexi: We’ll talk later. Okay bye.

[fishdavidson]

(BELATED!) Dream Journal 2019-07-10: Sort of Like Good Omens, But With Superheroes And Loud Farts

Good news, everyone! So far the new medication is not affecting dreams! However, I didn’t end up posting last night because I played Electronic Super Joy and AudioSurf 2 (purchased in the most recent Steam sale) until it was too late for me to write anything substantial before going to bed. But now that I have steeled my resolve to not play any more computer games until I have caught up on my writing, I’m finally getting around to posting some high-quality content.

This dream in particular was an almost perfectly coherent narrative without doing any editing, and it was a pretty cool story, too. And the best part is that it even had a semi-plausible and self-consistent mythology. So let’s get to narratin’!

It is mere days before the end of the world, but everyday life looks pretty similar to how it looks today. Except there were a handful of superheroes that the general public knew about who were trying to keep the world safe from various threats. These superheroes were more like Iron Man than Superman, in that they were regular mortal people that happened to own super-suits and fantastic technology.

An unnamed detective with an interest in historical archaeology is trying to solve a case where some expensive Vera Wang ceramics were stolen. She finds the plates in a disused janitor’s closet in an apartment building, and the only person who had access to that closet claims the plates were counterfeit items purchased at a dollar store. Either way, the plates got confiscated as evidence and the detective went home for the evening.

Later that night, the detective is contacted by a superhero who is basically Arthur from Amazon’s version of The Tick. Arthur has discovered something written in an ancient language that he believes may herald the impending end of the world. The detective translates it, and she confirms it has some bearing on an ancient prophecy about the battle for the end of the world.

It postulates that Adam and Eve were forbidden from ever entering the Garden of Eden again, but Adam will one day be reborn and use powerful magic to unmake the world as we know it and reshape it into a new Eden that Adam and Eve will live in to spite God. Yes, my asleep mind actually came up with this. But it gets even better!

Adam has come into our world already and reached adulthood. His mighty powers begin to manifest, but they are not quite as strong as God’s powers of creation. In order to achieve omniscience, Adam has only a scant handful of days to accomplish several large tasks:

Sing the Song of Creation, which had long since been lost to time

Find the Letters of Creation, which were a set of love letters written between Adam and Lilith.

Summon Eve into the world

Move all the land into one big supercontinent that shall become Eden.

You might think that it is nearly impossible to reconstruct a song that has been lost for thousands of years and was never written down, and you’d be right. Unfortunately, Adam realized that he can just pick a song and use his semi-divine powers to declare it to be the new Song of Creation. His choice is a little too on-the-nose, and he chooses “The Circle of Life” from The Lion King soundtrack.

This is where I, Fish Davidson, enter the picture. It’s also one of the few points in the dream that aren’t as narratively consistent. Somehow I have managed to acquire five of the twelve known Letters of Creation. Twelve letters? SUBCONSCIOUS SYMBOLISM, I SAY!

I meet up with Adam in the service corridor of a shopping mall. Adam wants to negotiate for possession of the letters. Why he doesn’t smite me on the spot at this moment is beyond me, but I have brought the letters in a ziploc bag and I am prepared to do stupid and reckless things to prevent the end of the world.

I have not come to negotiate. I am just here to stall for time.

Adam starts singing “The Circle of Life,” and it is filled with majesty and divine power. It is hard to resist singing along, so I do the only thing I can think of: yank the letters out of the bag and start literally eating them. Apparently reading the letters aloud was the key to bringing Even into this world, which would allow the newly-reunited power-couple to work even faster. But I put the kibosh on that plan by gnawing on that ancient parchment like a cow on grass-flavored methamphetamine. You can’t read the letters if they are impossibly shredded by the gnashing of teeth.

Meanwhile, Arthur has reverse-engineered something called the Engine of Creation with the help of the detective’s impressive knowledge of history. The Engine is an apocryphal golem that looks like a large clay urn with dog legs that God supposedly used to create land and vegetation in the beginning. It requires the power of a true god to work at full capacity, but Arthur is reasonably confident that it will still work (albeit less efficiently) with some big batteries and a bit of ingenuity.

Adam has already begun moving big chunks of land toward Africa. Most of South America is now underwater, traveling like a jet plane under the sea toward the western coast of Africa. By the end of the day, South America, Africa, and Australia will be one big continent.

Arthur has is charging every battery he can get his hands on, and has even sacrificed the nuclear reactor in his flying super-suit to power the Engine of Creation (codenamed Seedy) in an attempt to make more land for the displaced people of South America.

Seedy gets powered up and runs around like a playful puppy for a moment before it lowers itself to the ground and starts shaking. If God was there to give Seedy some extra power, it would be spraying industrial quantities of dirt and trees everywhere. But on battery power, all Seedy can manage to produce is a loud 10-second long fart and a single turnip.

In more traditional narratives, this would be the place where all hope seems lost. Adam has far more power by himself than we could ever muster on our own. But between Arthur activating Seedy and me eating the Letters of Creation, God got angry enough to come back Old-Testament style and smite Adam with an adequate amount of force to destroy him forever.

Humanity, you’re welcome.

----------------

Header image is Adam and Eve expelled from Eden by an angel. Etching by H. Winstanley after G. Reni, 1728.

[luckyspike]

Jack of All Trades - Good Omens fanfic

Crowley and Aziraphale have been around for 6000 years. Adam wants to know what they’ve been up to in that time. Anathema discovers a secret. Aziraphale is friends with the Loch Ness Monster. Maybe.

-

“So.” The assembled parties turn to look at Adam, all of fourteen years old, who is sitting on the stone wall around the garden of Jasmine Cottage, semi-melted ice cream cone dribbling down his hand. “I have a question.”

The Them, also sitting on the wall and flanking him on either side, nod encouragingly. Anathema, Newt, Madame Tracy and Mr. Shadwell, seated around the garden table and having a pleasant after-dinner chat about current events and relation to witchcraft (if any), raise their eyebrows and look politely interested. Aziraphale and Crowley, side-by-side on a bench under the jasmine, shared an apprehensive look. Dog, chewing a stick at their feet, did not pay Adam any heed. 

“S’for you two,” he said, indicating the supernatural entities with his ice cream cone. “You been around for a while, yeah?” A pair of trepidatious nods. “So you gotta know all kinds of weird stuff.” He considered his words and went on. “I mean, Crowley, I know you know a lot about science, an’ Aziraphale you’ve prob’ly read every book ever written -” Aziraphale actually blushed “- but like, there’s gotta be other stuff, right? Bet you know loads of cool stuff.”

The attention of the assembled turned to Crowley and Aziraphale, who exchanged another look which was still apprehensive but now, also, confused. “How do you mean, Adam?” Aziraphale asked politely, after Crowley shrugged. “I’m sorry, I’m not sure I follow.”

“Well, like,” Adam gestured grandly. “Say I lived for a thousand years. First of all, I wouldn’ bother with school. But I’d wanna learn about other stuff, actually properly interesting stuff, like swordfighting an’ archery an’ like … geology an’ stuff.” He beamed. “I could be like Indiana Jones, going all over the world to find stuff about lost cities and the Holy Grail an’ all that.” A thought occurred to him. “Do you know where the Holy Grail is?”

“Yes, and no, you can’t know,” Crowley answered, while Newt and Shadwell’s mouth’s dropped open. “I think I get it.” He considered it, swirling his wine in his glass. “I’m quite good at sewing.”

Adam blinked. “Sewing?”

“Yeah, you know, back before tailors and all that, you had to be able to do your own repairs and the like. And you couldn’t always miracle up a new robe or whatever. Right?” He looked to Aziraphale for confirmation, who nodded in agreement.

“I did a good deal of metalwork, as well, around the turn of the century,” Aziraphale said. “Smelting and the like. I started with just making swords and that but it’s actually very interesting, really, and I got quite good at it if I say so myself.”

“Cool,” Pepper said, eyes wide. “What else?”

Crowley considered it. “Technically I’m a medical doctor.”

Anathema cut in. “Really?”

“Well, yeah, but I got the degree on a lark in the eleventh century so I’m not ah, up-to-date as it were.”

“So should we call you Dr. Crowley?” Wensley asked, his head to one side. 

Aziraphale answered. “Best not. Unless you’re fond of leeches.” The Them and some of the assembled adults made a face. Crowley did, too. 

“Never did like that part.” He poked Aziraphale. “What else you got? Don’t you know glassblowing?”

“Oh, yes, but I haven’t done it in ages. Can’t imagine it’d be any good at it now. Pottery, too. Oh, and carpentry!” He shrugged. “That was another one of those semi-essential skills long ago.”

“Picked some of that up myself from a guy,” Crowley muttered into his wine, trailing off when Aziraphale glared at him briefly. Anathema definitely put a pin in that with plans to revisit it later if possible. “I’m pretty good at shooting. Arrows, guns, whatever you got. Part of the infernal workings or whatever.” He thought further, while Aziraphale did the same. “I was a miner, for a while, and a pilot, a couple of times.”

“I was a sailor,” Aziraphale reflected. “In the eighth century. I went to Hawai’i.”

“Easy to be a sailor when you’re not worried about drowning.” Crowley sat back. “Oh, I don’t know Adam, it’s been a long time. Anything you’re interested in?”

Brian’s eyes were bright. “Did you go to the old west? In America?”

“I’ve never been to America,” Aziraphale answered, but looked surprised when Crowley nodded to the affirmative. “You were in America in the nineteenth century?”

“Around, oh, the 1860s, yeah. It was dreadful.”

Newt cut in, hesitant but interested nonetheless. “What about the space program?”

Crowley and Aziraphale exchanged a look. “I certainly didn’t participate,” Aziraphale said. “Heaven frowns on that kind of thing.”

Crowley raised a hand. “Dah, comrade,” he sighed. “Thought it seemed interesting, so I joined up with the soviets for a bit in the 50s.” He looked pleased with himself. “I was there when they launched Sputnik, the stupid little thing.” Aziraphale raised his eyebrows at the expression of unadulterated fondness Crowley had while he talked about the satellite. “Dumb little ball with wires sticking off it and there you have it, humans in space. Amazing.”

“Can either of yeh do witchcraft?” Shadwell asked in a low voice. “I asked ye’ in the seventies if ye’ were a witch, a warlock, or someone who calls their cat funny names.”

Crowley shook his head. “And I’m not. Never was.” He spread his hands. “Just a plain old demon, no frills.”

“And a doctor,” Wensley added. 

“Sort of. And no, I don’t know any witchcraft. Never saw the need,” Aziraphale added. “Was there something in particular you were interested in, Adam? Safe to say if there’s something specific one of us might know something about it.”

Adam thought about it. “What about archaeology?” he asked, eventually. “Dinosaurs an’ the like. You must’ve seen some dinosaurs.”

They didn’t look at one another. They resolutely did not look at one another. Aziraphale answered first, clearing his throat slightly before he started. “I’m afraid not, my boy. I was, ah, occupied with the preparation for the Garden -”

“I was in Hell,” Crowley said, matter-of-fact, although Anathema and Madam Tracy did notice his arm, which had previously been draped over the back of the bench, moved to Aziraphale’s shoulder.

“Yes, and he was in Hell, unfortunately -” Crowley shrugged “- so neither of us were very much involved in dinosaurs, Adam. I am sorry.”

Adam looked a little disappointed. “S’okay. Alright, I guess. You can’t be everywhere at once.”

Crowley raised a finger. “Ah, I did do an archaeological dig in the ‘30s. 1830s, that is. Right into the early 40s, until I went to America.” The Them were rapt. “Found some footprints, a few bones, but back then nobody really knew what to make of any of it. 1842, that’s when the dinosaurs came onto the scene properly in terms of scientific research.”

“Cool,” Brian breathed. “So you did the digging and all that stuff?”

Crowley hedged. “Eh, I was there for it.”

Adam nodded. “So you know how to do it.” It was more of a statement rather than a question. 

“I suppose I do.”

The Them shared a look amongst themselves. Then, Pepper said, “We want to excavate the chalk pit. We reckon there’s probably loads of dinosaurs under there.”

“At least one T-Rex,” Adam added, confidently. Wensley looked less confident.

“Or a baryonyx.”

“I want to find a triceratops,” Brian said, plucking Adam’s unfinished ice cream cone out of his hand and making short work of the soggy cone. “I think there’s probably one of those under the T-Rex. I bet the T-Rex was eating it when they both died.”

“How’d you reckon they died then?” Pepper asked, with disdain. “Not the triceratops, obviously, but the T-Rex.”

“Maybe it choked.”

“I don’t reckon T-Rexes can choke.”

“Well, if they take big enough bites -” The conversation devolved into good-natured bickering, as was typical with the Them. The assembled adults and adult-shaped beings breathed a collective sigh of relief. 

Aziraphale prodded Crowley in the ribs. “‘Just a plain old demon,’” he taunted. “There’s nothing plain about you, dear. I had no idea you spent so much time in America.”

“Eh, I was in a phase.”

“You were really there for Sputnik?” Newt asked, still somewhat awestruck. “How’d you get the clearances?” Crowley stared at him. “Ah, right. Never mind.”

Anathema propped her chin on her hand. “What about you, Aziraphale? You can’t have just been collecting books all those years.”

He waved a hand. “No, no, I did all sorts of things. Mostly foiling this one.” He nudged Crowley, who looked skeptical. “But no, I was around for several historical moments I suppose. They didn’t seem particularly notable at the time, of course, but in hindsight they were quite significant.” He shrugged. “I helped mix the paint for Michelangelo sometimes. I sold him some pigments, as well. I just rather liked his paintings, at the time. Although the Sistine Chapel is a bit overly righteous for my tastes.”

“What? You love the Sistine Chapel, angel, don’t - oi, what’d I do?”

“Some of the illustrations are patently inaccurate,” Aziraphale muttered. “And, you know, there was the time with King Arthur.”

Madame Tracy looked rapt. “Oh, I think I remember a bit about that. Seemed very damp.” She looked apologetic. “Sorry, it’s all I remember.”

Crowley smirked into his wineglass. “That was the long and short of it. Damp and rife with damned uncomfortable suits of armor. And horses.”

Aziraphale frowned. “Yes, there were horses. Lots of riding horses.” He shook his head, as if to shake away an unpleasant memory. “Anyway, no, it wasn’t always all collecting books, although there was always that, too.”

“How did you look after them?” Madame Tracy asked. “All those years, all that moving around.”

“Oh, here and there. I … to be honest I didn’t do much moving around after about the ninth century.”

“Because your little pocket dimension got too small to hold all your books,” Crowley snickered. “Had to start using a proper building.” Aziraphale glared, but his heart wasn’t in it. 

“So was Merlin really a wizard, or was it something else, like he’d made a deal with a demon -” she glanced to Crowley “- or an angel, or was he just a hoax?”

“Interesting question, because there were elements of all of them at play,” Aziraphale replied, suddenly eager. “You see, humans are typically not capable of magic beyond basic witchcraft, which really is just science with a trick to it, except in exceedingly rare cases, but Merlin -”

“Hey, Crowley?”

Aziraphale stopped, because Adam and the Them were off of the garden wall and standing in front of the demon, expectant. “Sorry to interrupt,” Wensley apologized. “Only - we want to start excavating the chalk pit, and we were wondering what we might need to do it.”

Crowley blinked. He looked to Aziraphale, and then, with a look of determination, downed his wine and lurched upright. “Don’t,” he said to the angel, “tell them I had anything to do with bloody Merlin. I didn’t,” he insisted to the adults. “He was completely mad, and I was not involved in that at all.”

“Oh, okay, Black Knight, certainly.”

“Nothing to do with Merlin!” He thrust his glass to Aziraphale and then turned to the children, smoothing his jacket down. “Right. Alright. Let’s have a look at this chalk pit.”

“I think I have some old toothbrushes at home,” Pepper volunteered. “Mum saves them to recycle them for other stuff later.”

“We can just use my regular toothbrush,” Brian added. “I don’t.”

“Ew,” Wensley said, quietly. The chatter continued, Adam volunteering molding putty, chisels, and the like from his father’s garden shed as the five of them wandered off to Hogback Woods and the old chalk pit.

Newt looked thoughtful. “I wonder if they’ll find anything. Chalk is quite good for fossils, I’ve read.” He caught Anathema looking at him, amused and trying not to laugh. “What?”

“You want to go with them?”

“No, I mean, I don’t know the first thing about archeology, just saw films, but …” He trailed off. “I mean, a bit. I do what to go, a bit.” Madame Tracy patted his hand. 

“Well then off you go, find some dinosaurs, Newt. We have it well in-hand here.” He glanced to Anathema, who nodded, and then with some hasty muttered goodbyes, speed-walked out of the garden of the cottage and down the path to the chalk pit after the group. “Can you imagine if they did find something?”

“They might, with Adam,” Anathema reflected. Shadwell sipped his lager.

“I thought the lad doesn’t have any powers still?”

“Sort of,” Anathema and Aziraphale replied simultaneously. She looked to the angel and he shrugged. “They’re fading as he gets older, but he does have some left. I’m not sure what’s left will be strong enough to materialize an entire fossil, though.”

“I was just thinking there could be a real one there,” Madame Tracy suggested. “You never know. There’s certainly ones that haven’t been found - they can’t dig everything up to find them. Might be exciting, is all, wouldn’t it?” She laid her hand over Shadwell’s. “Quite a story to tell, hm?”

“Aye.” Shadwell thought of the kids who would come up to him outside of the pub on nice days, and ask for stories of witches and demons and eldritch horrors. Dinosaurs, he considered, might be good to add into the rota, especially if he could throw a little personal flair into it.

“Shame you never saw any,” Madam Tracy sighed to Aziraphale. “I bet they were a sight to see, hm?”

Aziraphale laughed, and tried to force confidence into it. “Yes they were … quite large, from what I understand. Astounding beasts.” He patted his knees and smoothed his waistcoat, before standing up. “Anyway, while they’re doing that I’ll get started with the cleanup, Anathema?”

She stood as well, hands in her skirt pockets. “Oh, you don’t have to -”

“No, no, I insist.”

She smiled. “Well then, let me help you. It’ll be quick with just the two of us.” She followed the angel into the cottage, weighing her words carefully. She shut the door behind them and trailed him into the kitchen. After a beat, she asked, “Were dinosaurs real?”

Aziraphale looked startled, as if he’d forgotten she was following him. “What? Oh.” He laughed, weakly, and tried to sound dismissive. “Oh, I mean, there are skeletons, aren’t there? Very real skeletons.”

“Right, but that doesn’t mean there were actual dinosaurs,” Anathema pointed out reasonably. “Just means the bones are real. And you can consider that if some omnipotent being could create the entire Earth, then how hard would it be to stick a few bones in there?” She wagged her eyebrows. “Am I on the right track?”

The angel looked perturbed. “You really are too clever by half, my dear. Do not let anybody know about this conversation, by the way.”

“I won’t,” she assured him, through her broad grin. “I knew it. I always thought they didn’t seem physiologically possible.” She crossed her arms and squared her stance. “So, cards on the table, how about sasquatch?”

“I’m sorry?” Aziraphale turned away, turning his focus to the sink full of dishes and rolling his sleeves up to his elbows. “Really, Anathema, that’s all fabricated. Humans thought those up.”

“Did they? Did they, really?”

“I’m sure I don’t know. I wasn’t involved in all of Creation,” he blustered. 

She put her head to the side. “What about the Jersey Devil? The Chupacabra? The Loch Ness Monster?” Her smile faded as she waited, and eventually turned to a frown as Aziraphale resolutely did not answer and, instead, handed her a dish to dry. “You’re not going to tell me, are you?” 

“Absolutely not,” he replied, as she began drying the dish with prejudice. “I’ve already said too much today.”

Anathema sighed. “I guess I could always ask Crowley.”

“He’ll say yes to everything.” Her forehead creased, and Aziraphale handed her another dish. “He always liked cryptid hunters. He’ll probably volunteer to go on an expedition to find the Loch Ness Monster with you.”

“So it’s not real,” she said, flatly.

“I didn’t say that.” He shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe it is and you’ll find it.” She found herself smiling as the angel grinned at her. “If anyone can find it, you could, Anathema.”

“I’m definitely going with ‘not real’,” she laughed.

“I’m sure Nessie will be disappointed to hear that when I speak with her next week.”

She rolled her eyes, but she also laughed. “Yeah, okay. So anyway, what were you saying about Merlin? And did you say Crowley was actually the black knight?”

[dresden-sandiego]

World Building, Part 1

Okay, I've talked about the book series that serves as the source material (Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3). I've covered the basics of the FATE system and the more nuanced aspects of the Dresden Files Role-Playing Game. Now, it's time to go over the world building process and start to share the city of San Diego, California as we've imagined it.

Before diving right in, I want to stress that almost everything in these games is a collaborative process. It's more fun when all the players work together to build the world, and to build their characters. The game system actually suggests building aspects involving at least two other player characters, to help everyone feel more connected. All of the parts of the world were built with more than two players working together. If you ever decide to run a Dresden Files game, I can't recommend the collaborative world-building enough.

Anyway, let's get to it with the first step: choose a setting, themes, and threats.

Choose a Setting

The DFRPG book "Your Story" contains all the rules and procedures for building your world, the first step of which is picking the city or setting for the game. The sky is the limit for a game; the setting can be anything from a specific city or region to something abstract like a cruise ship or archaeology dig site. I think it can be paralyzing to have so many options, so it helps to have a high-level idea in mind. The location is an important aspect of the game, but it's not something that can't be changed. If you get partway through and don't think it will work, go back and change it.

In terms of world building, once you have a location idea, you want to start doing research. If you have local knowledge, that's a great start; however, there are things about every semi-large city that even locals don't know. With Google and Wikipedia at your fingertips, you can find out a lot about a city and its history in just a little bit of time. You can find out what local sites are famous (or infamous) or visit tourist destinations through Google Earth and photos. Each player should write down what they like or think is cool, and have notes ready for the city building process itself.

Themes and Threats

Once you have picked your setting, you get to start building up the themes and threats that will run through the game. Themes and threats are both problems that the players will likely face during the game; the only difference is the length of time the problem has existed. Themes are old and run through the entire framework of the game. They are problems that are relatively well known, at least among people "in the know." Threats, on the other hand, are recent developments and are new or mostly unknown.

Themes are pervasive and inexorably linked to the setting and aren't something the players are likely to tackle directly. These are big issues that provide tension to the story. Themes should force players to make choices and take actions; these, in turn, will define their characters. For example, in a game set in Los Angeles or Washington, D.C., the tension between the wealthy elite and the poor would make an excellent theme.

Threats will be what provides most, if not all, of the conflict within a game. These are smaller problems that the players can deal with, given time. Maybe there has been a rise in street crime tied to drug trafficking. It might take a few adventures, but the party can probably root out and deal with the entire supply chain of the drug. Good threats will adventure and story hooks, informed by the themes of the setting, but providing goals for the players to accomplish.

Once you have the setting, the themes, and the threats, you should think about the supernatural elements in your game and how they fit into your setting. Your game's power level will be a big factor here, as well. If you're "Feet in the Water," it will be hard to have too many supernatural elements be too visible; your characters simply won't be equipped to deal with it. On the other hand, for a "Submerged" game, your characters will walk all over the more mundane elements.

I have found that for the supernatural elements, it's a delightful spice to add to your game's cuisine. But like any spice, too much given too often risks becoming overwhelming or dull. Not every even in your setting's history needs to be tied to the supernatural. Remember, in the world of the Dresden Files, the supernatural is well hidden from the mundane. And a good urban fantasy game needs a mundane world that is as fleshed out as the mystical.

For now, you want to identify threats and themes in terms of ideas. Later on in the world building process, you will associate them with aspects that define them. These aspects define the setting and will guide additional world-building.

Building San Diego

For our game, we chose San Diego (where I and all the players live) as the setting. San Diego was chosen for two reasons. First, we wanted a place that we were all familiar with to some degree. Secondly, we wanted to be pretty far out of the way of the main setting for the books, Chicago. All of my players are big Dresden Files fans, and love the books, but we didn't want major characters turning up often, if at all. San Diego let us allow for some cameos if we wanted them, while offering up interesting history and complexities.

San Diego is one of the largest cities in the United States (8th as of July 2018) and the second largest city in California. It's south of Los Angeles and adjacent to the border with Mexico, across from Tijuana. San Diego is known for a lengthy association with the US Navy, a mild climate year-round, and as a recent hub of pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry.

Historically, the area now making up San Diego was the territory of the Kumeyaay people. Spanish explorers arrived in the area in the mid 1500s and started settling in mid-to-late 1700s. The area would eventually become part of the Mexican state in the early 1800s until the Mexican-American war, when it became part of the United States. California was admitted as a state in 1850; the same year, the city was named the seat of San Diego county and was officially incorporated as a city.

Because of the climate in San Diego and its year-round consistency, this city is a major tourist destination. A lot of people visit San Diego and then, later in life, move here to enjoy the weather. Combined with a major military presence, it means that a lot of people that live in San Diego aren't from San Diego. This gives us our first theme (also note I'm working a little ahead and giving you the aspect that goes with it):

San Diego is a city of change.

As more and more people move to San Diego, or are stationed here, the background of the city is always changing. San Diego is a hub of transport and visitors, mundane and supernatural. The aspect that represents this theme is [NOBODY IS FROM HERE].

Our second theme builds on the first. As a border city, with an airport, an extensive highway network, and a port, San Diego has been a hub for shipping and transportation since it's founding. The industries have changed, from military production to tuna farming to biotech, but San Diego has always been a place that provides. It shouldn't be hard to believe that as the mortal focus has changed in the city, so has the mystical. Thus:

San Diego is a hub of supernatural research and development.

Given how important supply lines are to R&D, it makes sense that industries would invest in facilities in San Diego. As long as people have been living and working here, others have specialized in getting things people want. [I CAN GET THAT, BUT IT'LL COST YOU] is the aspect that represents this theme.

A lot has been said about the climate in San Diego, but over the past few years it's started to be measurably warmer. It might be due to climate change, or perhaps it's just a hot decade, but it has been warmer in the summer than it historically has been. I and my group tend to be very liberal, politically, so sweeping this under the rug felt wrong. Instead, we decided to build it into the city as a threat:

Summer's power is growing in San Diego.

The Summer Court, one of the major political powers in Dresden universe. It made sense that Summer would have power in San Diego; perhaps Summer Sidhe vacation here. In any case, Summer has a foothold in San Diego and their power here is growing. The aspect, a riff on a tagline from Game of Thrones, is [SUMMER IS COMING].

We didn't worry too much about exactly when our game starts compared to the Dresden Files timeline, but we did want it to take place after Summer Knight and before Changes. Given that time frame, the war between the Red Court and the White Council is always in the background and it would need to be addressed. If it needed to be addressed, why not make it a threat?

The Red Court is infiltrating San Diego. Later novels establish that significant Red Court territory makes up Central and South America. Logically, that could extend into Mexico and that might make San Diego an attractive target. Assuming that the Summer Court is maintaining enough control to keep them from openly crossing, we extrapolated that [THE RED COURT IS COMING] to establish some foothold in the US.

Conclusion

When we first built the DFRPG San Diego, we decided to make two (2) themes and two (2) threats. We knew we could add more as we played, so the stuff presented here is how the city was built at the beginning of the game. From these outlines, we went on to build locations and put faces to these themes and treats. That will be covered in the next blog post.

Thank you for reading!

[transcripted-podcasts]

Zombie Fishbowl - Episode 1

Haunted Battlefields

In our first episode, we talk about the phenomenon of ‘haunted battlefields’ after we introduce ourselves and explain WTF ‘Zombie Fishbowl’ actually means!

Listen to the episode here!

---

[Intro music]

Melanie: Hello!

Danielle: Hello!

Melanie: Welcome to Zombie Fishbowl, a podcast about random shit!

Danielle: Zombie Fishbowl? What does that even mean?

Melanie: Not a damn thing.

Danielle: And everything at the same time! Wow!

Melanie: All right, so let's start by introducing ourselves. 

Danielle: Hello! I'm Danielle, I live in Northwest England, in a very damp, seaside town. But I did live in California for about 13 years, hence the weird accent. I'm studying for a master's degree in archaeology after deciding that I wanted to change my career after being a support worker for 10 years. So, I fucking love history and logic, and am, as you will get to know, very skeptical of the paranormal world (which we will probably do a lot of talking about because it's the most fun). And, even though I roll my eyes at ghost hunters and psychics and spooky YouTube videos, I still fucking love it! I love a ghost story. I love a weird happening. My mum and I share this enthusiasm. She kinda passed it on to me. 

But although I am absolutely intrigued by the unknown, I also like to have a look and see what reason there might be behind something. So, I'll be bringing the scientific papers and whatever reliable publications I can find to try to explore humanity's obsession and consistent claim that there is something, some other world that we cannot see or test or measure.

Melanie: And I'm Melanie and I live in California, USA. Daughter of a horror novelist and a porn star, I'm an enthusiast for the bizarre, taboo, and fun. I am pagan, a recovering medium, a horror and fantasy fanatic, and mythology nerd so, needless to say, whatever she doesn't believe in? I just might. Or, at least, will enjoy the telling.

So, backstory. Danielle and I were best friends growing up in southern California. We were nerds with a punk/goth twist that were never quite cool enough for the punks or the goths or even the nerds. But we partied together, grew together, and basically been through hell and high water. We grew up and I stayed in California...

Danielle: And I moved back to England to be with my loverboy.

Melanie: So here we are, in our 30s, continents apart. But whenever we get a chance to chat, it's always insane, fun, and full of information. So we thought we'd share our love of the random, macabre, fun facts and turn it into a podcast.

Danielle: Also, in regards to the name of our podcast, I suppose you do need some kind of explanation. Well, we tried being clever, intellectual, and punny, but nothing was quite working until Melanie, randomly, in an exasperated moment threw out Zombie Fishbowl which was the name of the band we almost-tried-to-but-didn't-quite-ever-have in high school, although I did attempt to learn how to play the bass, and I can still play the intro to Crazy Train like a total badass. 

Melanie: And I can sing, so that was something. [laughs] It doesn't mean anything but it could mean so much.

Danielle: So throw it all in a zombie fishbowl and eat it up!

Melanie: So here's the plan. We have a list of wide-ranging topics from magic to UFOs, and every week we throw them into a randomizer and then research the shit out of it. Hopefully, as this podcast grows, we'd love to hear from you. All of our social media information will be holla-ed at you at the end of the podcast.

Danielle: But we're going to steer clear of current affairs, politicky stuff, because it is so so so so divisive and polarizing and just plain frustrating. We will no doubt get political, it is in our very nature, but not as a topic, and we'll try not to be overtly preachy.

Melanie: Also, sports because we do not sport.

Danielle: Nope, I can't sport and neither can Melanie, so no sport. Anyway, one more thing before we get into the topic this week: we have The Purge.

Melanie: Dun dun dun! So this is where we, mostly Danielle, will have a moan for a couple minutes to clear the air before starting. So what do you want to vent about this week, Danielle?

Danielle: Wet rain.

Melanie: [laugh]

Danielle: Not normal rain that just comes down and you can, you know, put your umbrella up and you're quite happy walking across the street looking all emo and [unintelligible], but the kind of rain that just makes everything on your body damp and no matter what you do, everything is just wet and miserable and it just...it makes everything difficult. Uh! I just fucking hate wet rain. It's that stuff that comes from the ground as well as the skies, comes from the left and it comes from the right, and there's nothing you can do about it, and you're just damp all the time and--

Melanie: It's like a soggy miserable rain.

Danielle: Yeah, which is pretty much 90% of the weather in this bloody town. It's really, really grim out there right now. It's been grim for a couple days, but then there's like an hour of beautiful sunshine and everyone runs out in their shorts just--just 'please give me the vitamin D! Please give me the vitamin D!' and then everybody runs back inside as soon as it starts to rain again. It's June! It's supposed to be lovely outside but it's like looking at a November...ugh, so miserable. That's--that's what I wanted to get off my chest. I got wet earlier today and I haven't got over it yet.

Melanie: [laughs] I'm sorry for your soggy life over there.

Danielle: Well, you know, it's what I signed up for, I guess. You gotta have the bad damp horrible weather in order to appreciate and really take advantage of lovely sunshine which I can see you're having right now, ya bitch.

Melanie: Oh yes, the sunniest of sunshines. And it's not quite yet at like 90 degrees. I think we're at a nice medium 65 heading toward 70.

Danielle: That sounds perfect! 

Melanie: Yeah, yeah that's that's the sweet spot, but give us about two hours and it's gonna probably be like 85.

Danielle: Yeah, it kind of goes OTT after a while. I don't know why I said OTT! I don't say that in my daily life. I'm gonna say it fully: over the top.

Melanie: [laughs] Okay, good because I'm old, and when you said OTT, I have no idea what that meant.

Danielle: I read a lot of Reddit. [laughs] I learned the lingo of the youths.

Melanie: Yeah I'm not, I'm not hip with the kids today with their their letters instead of words.

Danielle: I have to admit, every so often I have to Google an acronym, but...

Melanie: I have to Google an acronym almost every day. It's awful.

Danielle: [laughs] fantastic. Right, okay. Do you have anything you want to purge? 

Melanie: Oh I suppose we'll go with cats. No, I love cats. I have two cats. I--I love my cats, but they can be such fucking cats. Like Phineas, my big fat old one. He's fine. He's too lazy and slow to really do anything much as far as the bothersome cat behavior. He just has that Siamese cat meow which makes you want to kill something, but other than that? But my kitten is such a kitten and I can't stand it! She, I have a cup of water above my bed every night, and every night I get clunked in the head with a glass full of water. And you'd think I'd learn.

Danielle: Yeah. [laughs]

Melanie: But I don't because I keep forgetting that she's such a cat. Like not just...the little things, you know, knocking things off the things, the technical term. Why?! Why! It's so cute until it actually is in your life and then you're like 'why the fuck are you catting so hard!'

Danielle: [laughs]

Melanie: So that's--that's my purge because I keep getting knocked in the head with water at like 2:00 in the morning.

Danielle: Patrick started...it's his summers sick ritual which is, you know, when the summer comes around, cuz he's a long-haired cat, and every other day he'll be hacking up a hairball. But he just doesn't do it over the--the wood floor, it's all over the carpet and it's all over multiple carpets because he moves three feet between each regurge.

[Laughter]

Danielle: So, you know, swings 'em roundabouts, really. They're awesome, they're awesome. I love my cats, they're my little dudes, but yeah. They don't knock water into my face but they certainly make for a Russian Roulette when you're walking around the house barefoot. Yeah, all right, I feel better, do you? 

Melanie: I think I do. A little bit.

Danielle: All right. Let's take a deep breath and we'll start this week's factotastic Zombie Fishbowl podcast.

Melanie: Ready?

Danielle: Ready.

[Sounds of exaggerated deep breaths and laughter]

Danielle: That's never gonna get old.

[Laughter]

Melanie: All right. So, this week's topic randomly picked from our random topic picker is:

[In unison]: Haunted battlefields!

Danielle: Wow, that was shit, fantastic. You go.

Melanie: I felt good about it, I don't know about you.

Danielle: [laughs] 

Melanie:  I really did.

Danielle: Fantastic.

Melanie: Okay, so I suppose I'll start. Being in America, we have had a bloody civil war, which we all know, but really getting a grasp on the numbers of it was was phenomenal. So, out of all of the soldiers that have ever fallen in a war, every single American soldier, if you add them all up from the beginning of American soldiers being a thing to present day, if you add all those casualties up, half of them took place in the Civil War. But brother against brother so, no matter who fell, it was an American falling and it was just so, so much and that's not even including all of the battles against the Native Americans and--and the Mexicans and--and just--just the slaughter that took place here all over the place. There are many ways I could have gone, and I kind of got stuck in the Civil War, mainly because I have never in my life had any interest in it. So I thought, this thing that I--I know enough about to pass like, what, third grade, but it never really hit me as anything super interesting, so I researched into it.

Danielle: I feel you on that. I'm not a big warfare history buff. I like my history and stuff like that but, you know, battlefields and war and battles, it's never really been...because it's--it's a little bit repulsive.

Melanie: Yeah! Yeah! And it's funny because, instinctively, I think we're just kind of like 'oh yeah, no, this happened' but if you actually just take a second to really try and grasp what happened, it's heartbreaking and hideous and then just horrifying.

Danielle: Yep. 

Melanie: So, um, I started by researching the top ten bloodiest battles of the Civil War.

Danielle: Oh, god.

Melanie:  Which is so fucking significant like, oh my god. And poor Virginia, man. Well not so much poor Virginia but, Jesus, the amount of people who died there for this--this war is staggering. It's like at least 15,000 just in a couple of these battles? It's just absurd. Anyway, so we'll start with the--the biggest, which is the Battle of Gettysburg.

Danielle: The most famous, I think, in American history.

Melanie: It is the bloodiest battle of the Civil War. It lasted for three days in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Grand total casualties including wounded was almost 50,000 people in three days. 5,425 people just went missing. Which I think is interesting, and looking at all of these battles, you don't see a number so much for people just missing. But with the Battle of Gettysburg, almost 5,500 people just, poof!, disappeared. So, Battle of Gettysburg. With so many dead, dying, injured, and just missing, it's--it's one of the most haunted sites in America.

Danielle: Mm-hmm.

Melanie: All right, the battle took place across this one field, but it also took place over mountains; it even went into the city itself. It was so bad that in some of the houses that were healing the--the injured, people were like ankle deep in blood.

Danielle: That sounds like an exaggeration.

Melanie: It's an exaggeration, but--but the--the walls? Covered. The floor? Covered. Like completely covered. Ankle deep, yeah, is a bit of an exaggeration, but to say that they were at least heel deep in blood I don't think is an exaggeration.

Danielle: They were slipping in the stuff.

Melanie: Yeah.

Danielle: Yeah.

Melanie: But one of the things, with all the battlefields that I researched, I found that most recurring...thing was when...hold on, I got the word...residual hauntings.

Danielle: Mm-hmm 

Melanie: The residual hauntings are really just a replay of the events.

[Overlapping talk]

Danielle: I have heard that. Yeah, sorry, you, go ahead, you say it.

Melanie: [laughs, then with a lisp] So from a psychic pagan perspective…

Danielle: [laughs] Yes.

Melanie: All right, with residual hauntings, I believe that...when you have that much death and that much rage and fear and--and just--just really amped up energy, it sort of leaves an imprint. I mean, you go into a room where somebody's been, you know, beaten their whole lives, even if you don't have any context of what happened there before, that room feels dark and oppressing and not great. So when you go to a battlefield or go to a place where, you know, the soldiers were taken to be treated and eventually probably die or have their legs amputated with no anesthesia, there's a lot of emotion there and so with residual hauntings, a lot of it is just, you see these people replaying these moments, whether it's somebody's specifically getting up and walking across the room or [clears throat] a lot of the times they'll see people standing on (or sitting on) horses just sort of standing there in the field, just--just chillin'.

Danielle: So my--my knowledge of this means that they're not intelligent, they can't interact with them, and they don't interact with you. In fact, they probably don't even see you. It is an imprint of emotion left, so this kind of definition within the metaphysical world implies that it's not actually the human soul; it's not actually a person who is dead, it is actually more like a film being replayed.

Melanie: Yes exactly. Exactly. And so, you know, when it comes to those kinds of hauntings I don't find them particularly---

[Children's screams]

Danielle: Ahh!

Melanie: Holy Jesus! I'm gonna close that window!

[both laugh]

Melanie: Lord have mercy!

Danielle: Hopefully people with earphones didn't suddenly think some child was screaming in their ears.

Melanie: It's my own ghost child...so when it comes to residual hauntings, I don't find them particularly spooky because, again they're, yeah, they're unintelligent, they don't have a motive or instinct or reason; they just are replaying.

Danielle: Mm-hmm. I think and also, by its own definition, it's not proof of an afterlife.

Melanie: Absolutely! Absolutely! Yeah, they're--they're not so much ghosts to me as like, yeah, holograms, imprints.

Danielle: Yeah. 

Melanie: But one thing I thought was really interesting at Gettysburg is people getting wafts of phantom scents of mint or vanilla. And they'll come out of nowhere.

Danielle: Vanilla?

Melanie: Vanilla because, back then, back in the day, after the war, you know, the streets are piled up with bodies, just--just piled up in the middle of Pennsylvania's summer which, I gotta tell ya, it's hot. Not only is it hot, it's humid. So bodies were swelling to twice their size and they were just sitting in the streets. But it still had to function as a city, so people would have to walk through these streets, and they would douse their handkerchiefs with peppermint oil or vanilla oil to try and mask the smell.

Danielle: Oh, I'd definitely be a peppermint, because, if I was smelling the rotting corpses of the dead and vanilla, it'd be like that sickly sweet...oh no, mint for me, definitely mint.

Melanie: It would put you off [unintelligible] forever

Danielle: Yeah, seriously.

Melanie: But yeah, I think--I think that's interesting, especially because, you know, it's not that mint isn't native to it, but when you get just a waft from out of nowhere, and it's gone within a second, I mean, that's--that's a little bit more telling than sort of been like 'well, no, there's probably people just growing mint all over the place' no, it's a strong, concentrated smell.

Danielle: And people in Gettysburg still get whiffs of that?

Melanie: Oh yeah. Oh yeah, it--it's just, to them, it's just sort of what it's like there now. But people who go to visit, they'll be walking and they'll smell, like, you know, just regular street, they'll smell flowers, they'll smell the baker, and all of a sudden just a bomb of menthol in your nostrils.

Danielle: It's interesting that it's that and not the smell of rotting corpses.

Melanie: That's what I thought, too! Why not the smell of corpses? I mean, you'd think that would be more predominant, but I think because the intention, there's that very strong intention of, you know, masking this smell or--or even, because mint was also believed to help prevent disease and decay, it was sort of like also as a medicinal buffer from the dead? I think the fear from--from...while inhaling such a scent is what left its imprint rather than the whiff of the dead bodies.

Danielle: Okay, okay. Plus, if you smelled what you thought was dead bodies, you possibly just misinterpret it as the drains? [laughs] Who knows?

Melanie: There's that, too.

Danielle: I don't know. Anyway, carry on.

[Both laugh]

Danielle: I find smells very hard to believe because, like you said leading up to it, it can just easily be coming from someone who's growing some mint in their back garden or, you know, the smell of some concentrated vanilla isn't that unusual in the 21st Century with cupcake shops and doughnuts and stuff. So, you know, if it was something like, you know, really unique, like the smell of a very particular cigar or something like that, maybe I'd be a little bit more intrigued, but mint and vanilla, to me, I could write straight off. Poof! Those are common smells.

Melanie: And--and, I was willing to write it off too until I was reading the accounts of people. It's like, no, it's not just a subtle mint smell, it's like, it's like being chloroformed with mint, just...

Danielle: All right.

Melanie: You know, really strong, strong whiff. [with a lisp] So that's what I got for Gettysburg. [back to normal speech] There's--there's so many. God, the amount of people that died is just insane. Next one I wrote out was Little Bighorn. Do you know much about that?

Danielle: Native American battle...was that...I'm going to sound really ignorant...west coast?

Melanie: So Little Bighorn...shit, I don't think I even wrote down where it fucking was.

[Both laugh]

Danielle: The Matterhorn is in California? And that, maybe that's what I'm mixing it up with.

Melanie: So the battle of Little Bighorn took place somewhere very important...

[both laugh]

Danielle: Over there.

Melanie: Over there. And there was a whole bunch of tribes involved, and that was basically one of Custer's last battles. It was his last battle. There we have the Sioux nations, Hunkpapa Lakota, Sans Arc, Blackfoot tribes, whole bunch fought against Custer's 7th Cavalry. On January 25th, 1876, most of the native warriors survived, but almost every single one of the troops that went into battle died. There was a rumor or a legend or a myth that the only soldier to come out of there alive was the horse named Comanche.

Danielle: On the American side?

Melanie: On the American side. Well, I guess they're all Americans. So Custer went over there with 600 troops. Only 300 entered the battle. Sitting Bull gathered his warriors and ensured the safety of women and children, while Crazy Horse left with a large force to attack. Custer was quickly defeated. Including Custer, over 260 troops of the 300 died. The hauntings again seem to be residual, but they do seem to be a little bit more intense. And I think a lot of that comes from either the Native Americans' connection to the land itself, I think it just has a deeper significance to them. But most of  them, again, it's residual. Warriors on horses just surveying the field. Occasionally believed to see some of the federal soldiers looking for their limbs.

Danielle: Nice. 

Melanie: Which I found this interesting.

Danielle: How do we know they're looking for their limbs?

Melanie: Probably just that lost look and that one arm reaching...'it's gotta be here somewhere.'

Danielle: Someone hopping along and saying 'has anyone seen my foot?'

[Both laugh]

Danielle: 'My country for a foot!'

Melanie: [laughs] And then from there I have cryptids. So I want to hear what you've got before I go into cryptids.

Danielle: Cryptids on battlefields.

Melanie: Mhmm.

Danielle: Melanie told me that she was going to cover the continent of the USA, Northern America. Or, did you go into South America? Because you did just say continent. 

Melanie: I did not. I'm a big fibber. I was pretty strictly on my end...

Danielle: Right, that's fine, that's fine because, I did--I did a couple. You can tell me whether you want to hear both of them at the same time or one at a time. But the first one I did was one called the Battle at Culloden Moor. Or [repeats name slightly differently] I don't want to sound like I'm doing the Scottish accent, but it's in Scotland. And it's up in the Highlands. It was during the Jacobite rebellions. So, for those over the pond that don't know, the Scottish really don't like the English, and at every opportunity have fought tooth and nail to not be part of English sovereignty, if you will. You'll still hear about that today. They really don't like it. The Jacobites were basically these, sort of, people of the Highlands of Scotland who did not want to be a part of the English Kingdom, but the king was pretty adamant that they should better bend the knee kind of thing. So it's up in the Highlands, near Inverness, so if you wanted to take a look for it, it's in a lovely little place which is on the crook[?] of the Moray Firth which is a part of the North Sea that goes into Scotland. Lovely part of the country. Never been. On me list. It took place in 1746. It's the last battle of the Jacobite rebellion. They've been fighting for 31 years, so this was a long time coming.

Melanie: Good grief.

Danielle: It was horrific, it was bloody; you can imagine, we're still using swords and, you know, stabby things at this point.

Melanie: Pointy sticks.

Danielle: Pointy sticks, throwing shit, stones, all that horrible stuff. And, unfortunately, it's the infamous death of Bonnie Prince Charlie, and loads of his followers. I'm not going to get into why he was called Bonnie Prince Charlie, I will let you imagine why the Scots call him Bonnie Prince. I'm sure it won't take you very long to work it out. It also lasted less than an hour. I mean, they were annihilated, and it was the end of the Jacobite rebellion, and the king was victorious in the end. So not only were they horrendously defeated, apparently their suffering didn't end at the end of the battle because they still haunt the battlefield to this day, so people say, anyway. Every year on April 16, which is the anniversary of the battle, people see, I guess, a residual haunting of a reenactment of this battle. So...I'll get more into that bit in a bit but, um, people have apparently seen this reenactment, but it gets funny. But I'll tell you about this afterwards because I want to tell you this--this story about these two old ladies because this is the cutest ghost story I've ever heard.

Melanie: Nice. 

Danielle: So, right, I like it because it works backwards, and to me, that is more logical than when somebody's told something's haunted and then sees a ghost.

Melanie: Mm-hmm. 

Danielle: Other way around. So, I will show you this. These two old dears show up at a National Trust for Scotland site. National Trust for Scotland, basically, we put up an office in a nice little Museum next to historical buildings and places of historical interest and charge people to get into it to keep and maintain it because we love that shit. On a bank holiday weekend, we'll go to a castle, go through the cafe, go sit down in the castle, have a look around, come out, go through the gift shop and have another brew. That is a bank holiday weekend to the tee.

Melanie: Nice

Danielle: Literally tea. Anyway, so these two old dears go to this National Trust of Scotland site, and they asked if they could see a map which would show the route for this infamous Jacobite retreat. Now, the bit that I didn't talk about before was that, prior to the actual battle, there had been a failed surprise attack by the Jacobites. So, they had split into two and decided to ambush the Duke of Cumberland, which was the son of the king at the time (and nicknamed The Butcher) who they were going to be battling at some point or another, but they split into two to decide to go and surprise attack them. One of the armies, one side of the army, decided that it was just not workable, we're going home...well back to the camp, and went back. And that was about 2:00 a.m. in the morning. Well, the other half didn't get the message until nearly daybreak, when they were literally on top of Cumberland's camp, was, like, literally about to attack as far as I understand it, and then someone was like 'no! call it off!' so they all had to run. So this lady knew about this retreat, but she wanted to see the route of it, so she and her friend were looking at this map, and the--the helpful people in the gift shop at the National Trust were showing them the route that the--the retreats took (because we did take very good notes, I guess; someone took the time to write it down). So they're looking at this, and then the woman goes 'ah! there's my house!' So she sees on the route of the retreat that it runs right through her back garden. And she turns to her--her best friend, or old lady friend over there, and goes 'see! see! I told you! I told you!' Apparently, about five times over the last ten years, she'd been woken up in the early hours of the morning to the sounds of, very distinctly, soldiers running through her garden. Now, I don't know what soldiers running through a garden sounds like, but I imagine it probably gives off a little bit at a different aura, difference aural sound... 

Melanie: Yeah. 

Danielle: Transmission or whatever than your average running man? But she says that it sounds like soldiers. So she--she'd run up to the window to see, what the heck, who's running through her garden. And then she wouldn't see anything, but she'd still be able to hear them. And she was like 'I've always heard soldiers running through my garden.' and--and so this kind of gave her a little bit of validity in that the route of the retreat most likely went through her garden. So she is pretty convinced that she's heard the residual sounds of the Jacobites in retreat, which is quite interesting. Because it works backwards, I'm more likely to believe an old lady trying to prove herself right (because I know how that is) than somebody that goes somewhere that is known to be haunted and saying 'oh I saw a specter.' Well, you were expecting to see it so you're gonna see something. That's the other way around, it's a little bit more believable.

Melanie: Exactly.

Danielle: And the actual battlefield itself...I forgot what it's called already...Culloden, Culloden Moor, the actual battlefield itself has your typical array of ghosty apparitions. Mostly sounds: war cries, clashing swords, screaming in agony, those sorts of things. Especially around the anniversary of the event itself. So this is what I'm gonna get a little bit cynical because, interestingly enough, the author of the Outlander novels, name's Diana Gabaldon, have you heard of Outlander? 

Melanie: Yes.

Danielle: Yeah. So the writer of these novels, right when she was releasing a book which happens to be talking about star-crossed lovers who were separated by this very specific battle, came out to say that she's been to the battlefield, and she was brought to tears by the feeling of dread and sadness of the--of the souls that were on the battlefield. So it was pretty highly, not highly but, you know, it was put in all the press and all the tabloids and everything about how she feels it was so much...she's just...knows it's haunted. She just knew, Melanie, when she went; she knew it may be haunted by all these souls. ‘Buy my book! It's so haunted, it's so, you know, it's such a horrible thing. Buy my book.’ So that happened.

Melanie: [laughs]

Danielle: Some other stuff that's happened: locals and tourists say that they are visions of unearthly specters over the graves of the Jacobites. Basically, the Jacobites were buried in mass graves right in the battlefield.

Melanie: Mass graves are the worst.

Danielle: Yeah there's loads of the burial mounds, there's loads of things like that around the battleground, they're just chucked in. One person claimed  to have seen a tartan-clad man lay maimed and bloodied on the ground on the moor. So I wanted to look at see if the Jacobites would have actually worn tartan, but then I forgot and didn't. There's this whole thing about how tartan is associated with the Scots...Scottish. Ooh, they don't like, sorry with the Scots, Scottish...Scots.

Melanie: Stop offending people. 

Danielle: I know, I just, you don't say Scotch, you say Scots. There's a whole thing about how the certain tartans weren't actually around until hundreds of years later and things like that, so I meant to go and have a look if it was even likely that someone in this battle would have been wearing tartan, but I didn't. I'm sorry...

Melanie: We'll never know!

Danielle: But that's the one thing I'm like, right, okay so if you're going to say that something so specific that they're wearing tartan, I'm gonna go find out if it was even likely that a Jacobite was wearing tartan, but I'll get into that another time. But the thing that the actual site themselves claim is that birds do not go near it. That is something that can be verified. So apparently birds don't go near the battlefield, and they certainly don't sing. So if they are passing by, or hopping along, they won't sing while they're at the battlefield. Now that is something the site itself, like, the sort of touristy bit of the site claims - there's no birdsong so that's definitely something that I'd like to explore further. that is, literally, you just have to go there and stand there, and if you don't hear any birds, you go 'huh, no birds. That is weird.' But if I hear a bird, then I'm gonna be like 'well that's obviously BS.' So... 

Melanie: Bullshit!

Danielle: Yeah. So with this sort of battlefield ghosts, I mean, it was--it was horrendous and it was devastating for Highlanders. It's really gotta sting; this was their defeat. So I feel like these legends just ensure that the story of the battle continues. And that people don't forget how shit and nasty the English can be. So I don't blame them; ghost stories are a perfect way to do this. But I can't take away from peoples’...I can't take away peoples’, like, personal experiences. So I'm not pooh-poohing anyone that feels like they have actually seen something or heard something on any scale because I wouldn't be so bold as to say that I'm right and they're wrong. But it just seems too perfect for me that a place where the Scottish would want people to remember a battle that they want people to be pissed off about, you know, the best way to do that is to build a legend around it. So the legend around it is that it's incredibly haunted

Melanie: Yeah.

Danielle: So it's a really good way to transmit a cautionary tale, you know, about how shit the English are. You'd think we'd learn but, you know...and that was Culloden Moor, anyway. Do you want me to do my other one?

Melanie: Yeah, do it!

Danielle: The second one that I thought I'd do...I knew you'd have to do Civil War, if you were doing the US; that's the only war you fought on your own soil. Unless you did Pearl Harbor, which I don't really know if counts as a battlefield, really.

Melanie: Right?

Danielle: It's a location of war, but it's, you know, like warfare but not necessarily battlefield. It was a bit one-sided.

Melanie: Yeah, a battlefield is where two forces are clashing.

Danielle: So I thought that I would sort of educate, in a way, your side of the pond in that we also had a civil war. So we have, you know, we have had a civil war was between the Parliamentarians and the Royalists, because there was a time in our history where the kings and queens of the Royals were not looked upon favorably by a certain sector of the population. They were taking the piss and so Parliamentarians, people that wanted to have a more democratic - I'm gonna say that with a pinch of salt because it was…it was a religious revolution more than it was a political one. And one of the greatest battles of the Civil War took place in 1642 in Warwickshire. It was called the Battle of Edgehill. It was, as you can imagine, pretty horrendous; thousands died and it ended up being strategically moot because both sides lost about the same amount of people. It added no strategic advantage to one side or the other, and the war continued, and it didn't seem to really have much of an effect other than the fact that they all had less people. But they ALL had less people so, you know, it didn't leave anyone with any advantage, so it was kind of a bit, you know, shittily planned battle.

Melanie: Yeah, pointless.

Danielle: Yeah. The funny thing about this particular haunting is that it happens almost immediately. So, you know, you've usually got a little bit of time between when a tragedy occurs and you start seeing ghosts.

Melanie: Yeah.

Danielle: Well, this literally happens less than two months later. So it happens in about November, that was (I’m trying to remember now) October, at the end of October, in 1642, and just before Christmas, a shepherd reported seeing a reenactment of the battle. But not just, you know, on the ground, like your typical reenactment. Up in the sky! Above the battlefield. Right, so you could hear the clashes of armor, cries of the dying, screams, voices, even horses up in the sky. So he runs and he tells his priest like ‘I just saw this great battle in the sky over the battlefield at Edgehill.’ And what does the priest say, do you think?

Melanie: That he's drunk.

Danielle: No. ‘I saw it, too!’

Melanie: Oh, shit.

Danielle: The priest tells him ‘I saw it too! I thought I was going mad!’ Now, I don't think if he said that bit but he said ‘I saw it, too’. And over the next few days, apparently, more and more locals reported to seeing the phantom battle in the sky. So much so that they produced a pamphlet in 1643 (so this is the next year) called A Great Wonder in Heaven. And it detailed all the different peoples’ accounts of this battle.

Melanie: Yeah.

Danielle: Right. So this little, you know, town who's made this pamphlet about this haunted battlefield, and the king finds out, and he's very intrigued. So he sends his, he sends his bros down to see what the fuck is going on, right? So it's in Warwickshire, so it's not that far. He sends him up from London. And, lo and behold, his cronies see the phantoms at the battlefield, too! Not only did they see this phantom battle going on in the sky, but they could recognize people who were in it. This only happened two months previous. Their comrades up there, and I can actually see, apparently, their friends and their, you know, their confidants up in the sky.

Melanie: Oh no, it’s Jeff, he's getting stabbed! Run, Jeff!

Danielle: Exactly. There's one particularly interesting one which was the king’s standard bearer. And for those of you don't know what a standard bearer is, it's the person that is tasked with holding the flag that has the standard of the king on it. So they don't actually fight, they're not soldiers, but they're usually highly…they were soldiers, and usually are very highly decorated, but their role on the battlefield is not to take part in the battle but to hold the standard. And if the standard falls into the hands of the other side, it's kind of like they win the battle. It's kind of like capture the flag.

Melanie: Wow…

Danielle: [laughs] So I don't think that people would just, like, surrender if the other side had the flag, I think people would keep fighting, but it's kind of like symbolic? If the other side has your standard, then it's like ‘oh shit, we're losing!’ So, you know, it could either serve as motivation to fight a little harder or it could make you feel despair that you're losing. It depends on your predisposition

Melanie: I would imagine they kept those guys at the back, right? They had to work their way through?

Danielle: I mean, it would usually be quite close to the king, so the king will be pretty heavily protected. Or, you know, like the commander of the particular rank…you know, the most highly ranked person there because you'd have to have a standard bearer there to sort of decree so everybody knew whose side was who, I guess. I'm not an expert on these things, but there's always somebody holding a standard. I think that it shows up in Game of Thrones at some point, so if you guys wanted…that really did happen, people did really hold flags. But this guy, Sir Edmund Verney, was the standard bearer for this battle and had gallantly refused to let go of the standard when it was being, like, yanked from him by the other side. So they chopped off his hand and his arm to get at the standard and then got it. So, apparently, these guys who had come down or up from London to have a look, saw their friend Sir Edmund Verney getting his hand lobbed off and the standard taken. PSI…is it PSI? Side note: the Royalists do get the standard back, and, apparently, they get it back and his hand was still clasping onto the pole. What a guy! Still, you know, and the Parliamentarians hadn't, you know, tried to rip it off. It was time-consuming, I guess. So apparently when they got the standard back, his hand was still attached. So this guy was pretty well thought of. There's this sort of…he's almost martyred, if you will. The standard bearer of the King, ‘til his dying breath, held the standard and had to have his arm cut off before he would be able to have it pried from his hands, right? So, can you say propaganda with me?

Melanie: Yeah.

Danielle: So these people that have come up from the king just happen to see the hero of the battle, if you will, Sir Edmund Verney, getting his hand lobbed off and the--the standard being yoinked. So I'm not saying the story’s bullshit or anything, but [laughs].

Melanie: I don't know, watching the whole battle in the sky sounds pretty realistic to me.

Danielle: I just mean that their--their particular account of their friend Sir Eddie there. So yeah, but it certainly makes for interesting telling to the king when they get back, which they do, more on that later. So the villagers and, I imagine the priest, who in no way makes any money from this, wink wink, decide to give all the corpses a proper Christian burial. So they get the proper rite, it's the Christian rites, as they're being…because obviously they've just been kind of dumped in this field. It was only two months ago; some of them were probably still sticking out of the ground. And apparently, for the time being, the great ghost battle in the sky stopped. So apparently burying them in Christian graves by the priest and getting all of their last rites, apparently settled their souls for a time. 

Melanie: That's usually the way to do it.

Danielle: Yeah, well, it seems to be pretty consistent in these kind of stories that they need some kind of resolution, unfinished business, if you will. 

Melanie: Yeah.

Danielle: Contradictory to this, people still report to hear shit to this day. So, at the time, they were quite happy with settling, you know, settling it and saying, ‘Listen we gave them all Christian burials and everything went away.’ Well that's very good Christian propaganda, end of story, right? Well, as time has gone on, people have latched on to the ghost story a little bit more. And the whole thing about God Almighty letting them all settle at the end, you know, as long as they've got their rites? That's finished, we don't believe that anymore, do we? So people still report to hear shit like screams, cannon fire, hooves galloping, and battle cries on the site, especially around the anniversary. Like a week or so before a fair or a carnival or something that doesn’t need press or publicity or anything. Suddenly people will start hearing shit and it gets into the local paper and at the bottom of it might seem like ‘oh we're having a carnival!’ I'm not cynical or anything…

[Both laugh]

Danielle: But it's infamously haunted, this place, Edgehill. Interestingly, and this is my last little fact on this, because this is--this is the most fun fact for me because of all the…both these stories I can easily dismiss as…the first one was Scottish making up legends to try to, you know, demonstrate how shit the English are, and then this one clearly a religious one because the Civil War was a religious war. But this, this is funny because this is the historical impact that this ghost story's had on our country. Because the king sent this official committee, if you will, to go and investigate this? Their account is held in the public records office.

Melanie: Nice.

Danielle: So it is the only officially recognized phantom battlefield in Britain. In fact, any ghosts whatsoever. It is an officially recognized haunted location according to the public records office because the king sent an official group of people to go and get an account. They wrote it all down, it went into the public records, eventually into the archives. So, legally, it’s haunted.

Melanie: Yeah, totally real. That’s awesome.

[both laugh]

Danielle: I don’t know if there’s any other legally, you know, officially recognized haunted places. I think things that are of historical interest, the haunting will be included in that. But in this particular case, the haunting is the record.

Melanie: Wow, that’s awesome.

Danielle: I thought that was pretty cool. I actually tried to find the official document within the public records, but it's not that easy to track down because it's not really called like the public records office anymore, it's like the National Archives. And they haven't digitized everything yet. So it's there, but I’d have to actually go to London and go through the National Archives and find it.

Melanie: If you ever do that, you could put that in the notes on our sites.

Danielle: I wanted to quote it. I wanted to quote it, I wanted to read it and be able to tell you what these dudes actually said. Like, ‘Lo, before me ‘twas the face of Sir Edmund, my friend.’ [laughs] I wanted to hear what he actually had to say. Anyway, so those are my battlefields.

Melanie: All right. Well then, in our last few minutes, let me just get in a cryptid and a yokai.

Danielle: All right.

Melanie: So the one cryptid that I did want to bring up is [says ominously] Old Green Eyes.

Danielle: Okay.

Melanie: So Old Green Eyes, he appeared...it's believed that he appeared before the battle but he really became popular around the time of the Battle of Chickamauga. And I have some details on that. It's the second bloodiest battle of the Civil War, second only to the Battle of Gettysburg. A shit ton of people died…where is me notes? Ope, there it is. Sorry.

Danielle: Organized as ever!

Melanie: Yeah, right? So the Battle of Chickamauga took care took place in Catoosa City in Georgia. It was a two day long battle. 3,969 people died. And right after that, even during the battle, it was said that the--the smell of blood, the screaming, the devastation…so much blood was spilled that a creature of great malice was drawn to the devastation. Most people believe it's a ghoul. It's not so much a ghost as a creature that stands about six to seven feet tall, humanlike. Some people say it's got long black hair and bright green, glowing eyes. They kind of, they have that--that green that almost turns orange; that shift of, like, night vision, like in a wolf.

Danielle: Like 1990s, you know, Fresh Prince hats.

Melanie: [laughs] Yes. But he has a huge deformed jaw and terrifying fangs (some people say fangs and some people say tusks) protruding. And he came to eat the dead. I wanted to, I didn't have enough time, but I wanted to see if there was any sort of, you know, native lore on a creature like that that might have been around that area. I'm still going to research that and, if I can come up with some facts, then I'm gonna throw that on one of our pages because I thought it was really interesting.

Danielle: Was it in Virginia again? 

Melanie: Georgia, I believe. [Sound of notes shuffling] Yes, Georgia. And he's been seen over and over and over again. There was this one telling that there was this guy who was like a park ranger, and he'd seen it a good couple times. I meant to write down his name. I think it was Tidds or Timmons or Tiddly. [Laughs]

Danielle: TT, my friend!

Melanie: The park where this battle took place, it's kind of like Lovers Lane. It's a good makeout spot for a lot of people, and there have been numerous people that felt, like, while they were making out, all of a sudden this hot breath on the back of their neck.

Danielle: That’s very romantic.

Melanie: Then they turn around and they'll just see these big, bright green eyes. Then, of course, [clap sound] they fucking book. Sorry about my loud clapping. And then they fucking book. And this one park ranger had seen him a good few times. And it's interesting that, as the years progressed, the ghoul progressed. So whereas before he was a mostly naked kind of ghoul, but some people will see him now and they see him with a top hat or like a long black coat. And back in the 60s or…60s? I want to say 60s or 70s. No. Yes. One of them have this really racist viewing of it. They saw this tall…with gold green eyes and had the six feet tall and a big white head as if it was hair was wrapped up in something. And the person who walked upon it seeing it, seeing this giant, like, not hairy but human-like thing but so dark in the shadows but this big white thing on their head, they hear a baby crying, and they go to go approach them and, you know, say ‘what--what was going on? Can--can we help?’ and they described it as looking like an African American with their head wrapped up in a towel and then said in a big burly deep voice [speaks in growly voice] ‘just leave me alone’.

Danielle: Sounds like a Voodoo demon. I'm trying to remember. There's lots of fun folklore about particular, um, I think he's the sort of Voodoo version of death or, you know, like the Grim Reaper type of thing. Sounds a bit like him. I'm trying to remember what he's called.

Melanie: Oh, I know it.

Danielle: He’s sort of like half zombie half, you know, beast humanoid with the green theme is running through that one as well, but he's got white face paint on. He's definitely a black man with the top hat.

Melanie: I know his name. I have it in my flipping head.

Danielle: I know, it’s so bugging me.

Melanie: It’s like Big Daddy Saminy...Samily? Sam…something. Shit.

Danielle: We’ll remember like ten seconds after we finish this.

Melanie: Yeah.

Danielle: But Big Green sounds a lot like that legend.

Melanie: Old Green Eyes evolved and I think probably, I think initially it was just something that somebody was seeing when they were really, really terrified though. All of this monstrosity is going on, a monster in the mix really doesn't seem that out of place right now. But…

Danielle: So people on the battlefield themselves reported to seeing this thing before they went into battle?

Melanie: Yeah or during, in the middle of battle.

Danielle: Ooooh.

Melanie: Yeah. That was interesting. So some people had seen it or had been talking about it before the battle. But none of the soldiers who were there knew anything about it at all. They all of a sudden just see this--this tall huge creature with this massively deformed jaw just, like, slinking out from the woods to grab a corpse and pull it back in to eat it.

Danielle: Could it not possibly be an animal, but it's all fucked up and mangy looking because there's a war going on?

Melanie: Absolutely, especially because of the--the green eyes. And some people say that the green eyes turned from green to orange so it had that nighttime reflective much like a wolf, I think like that. But I did think that was neat with the whole, like, the tusks and the deformed jaw, I think it's really terrifying. Some of the images I found were downright spooky. And I love a good monster so I--I'm all about Old Green Eyes. But, over time, I think that it was interesting that he sort of evolved to just sort of be this like racist creature. 

Danielle: Yeah, it’s a bit odd, that’s very telling.

Melanie: Yes, and that's how humans are, you know? We latch onto a story, and we sort of evolve it with--with us. And then my last thing I want to mention is my yokai because, with any topic, there's a yokai for that. My yokai is…I went with the Kosenjōbi which is a demon fire. It's made from the blood of warriors and animals that died in battle. The blood soaks into the earth and then the Kosenjōbi rises from the--the blood-soaked earth into the air at night, creating fiery shapes or orbs. They occasionally take the form of fallen warriors or animals, but mostly it just sees just balls of flame. And that's really predominant a lot of Japanese, like, mythology. Same thing with Chinese mythology, too. They do the big flaming balls of hate, fear, children, all kinds of things. But these ones are specific to battlefields. It’s said they, once again, they wander around the fields looking for their missing body parts. They're harmless but spooky.

Danielle: See, to me, oh you know the whole thing, everything that we've both researched, that all of it is not happy, right? And it’s never going to be happy when you're researching the ghosts of fallen soldiers. But these particular stories have a very clear message. All of them have a clear message: that war and battles and death like this is just bullshit. It's just...shit, it's shit; it creates horrible monsters, it creates balls of flame that could possibly represent like anger and hatred. You know the great sort of battles that are being reenacted with our friends dying over and over and over again, all of it has a very...although you can sort of twist it and mold it to your own narrative as much as you want. Overwhelmingly the, you know, without any doubt, going into it and coming out of it, this topic was going to come out. The moral of the story is: war is bad, m’kay?

Melanie: War sucks.

Danielle: War sucks. So yeah, any story that comes out of a battlefield, anything like that, I'm going to be a little, I suppose, I'm very skeptical and cynical of it, obviously. But I am NOT cynical of the message that is being…so if in Japanese culture they believe in this fiery, you know, beast if…sorry in this fiery yokai. If in Georgia they believe in this, you know, cannibalistic man-pig thing that comes and devours these bodies of the dead and--and--and mine as well, it just, you know, it's sad. It's sad that we don't listen to these things and…or at least that we manipulated the actual stories of the event to fit this kind of weird spooky side story and not actually tell the true stories or what actually…I'm sorry, I'm getting a little preachy, but I don't really like war.

[Both laugh]

Melanie: War, not so much fun.

Danielle: No, it's a little bit depressing. Because, after all of this, like, we've had a laugh and we've added this or we’ve added that, but these people really did actually exist at one point and they were killed horrendously. So just thought I'd end our little topic there, just like, sorry guys, you know...shit, no, sorry guys, sorry.

Melanie: I wanted to go into the stories of what generals took what where and--and all those details but there's so much and war, it's such a huge, huge topic that I unfortunately went the lame route of just, like, there was a battle and people died there. It was, you know, they had names they--they had families and the amount of places that General E Lee apparently haunts is hysterical. 

Danielle: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I imagine. I think I've seen a few documentaries because allegedly the spirit of, you know, you’re going ‘yeah well isn't he meant to be haunting that other place?’ Like, he gets around.

Melanie: You know he seriously haunts, like, 60 different places.

Danielle: If you could, would you multi-haunt? Like, if you were a ghost and you could go on holiday and haunt loads of different places, wouldn't you? 

Melanie: Probably.

Danielle: Yeah! You wouldn’t want to be in the same spot all the time.

Melanie: You’re, like, stuck here, you might as well…I'm gonna haunt Disneyland. Was never there, but I’m gonna do it.

Danielle: I'm gonna latch on to this guy because this accent does not sound familiar, and I want to know where it goes.

Melanie: Hey, where does he come from?

Danielle: [in slight southern accent] Oh Spain! I’ve never been here before!

Melanie: [in southern accent] This is neat!

Danielle: That was my really bad southern accent, but I tried not to do it over the top. [laughs] Okay, so, well, that was a lot of shit there for the Zombie Fishbowl. 

Melanie: Indeed it was. I think we did some stuff. 

Danielle: Stuff definitely happened.

Melanie: Definitely.

[Both laugh]

Danielle: And if, after all that stuff, you enjoyed it and want to listen to us again for some reason, please, please, please subscribe. And, if you could, rate and review us, that would be awesome.

Melanie: And tell your friends. 

Danielle: Yes please! You can also follow us on Twitter and Instagram and join our Facebook page all under Zombie Fishbowl Podcast. It's dead easy.

Melanie: And if you want to contact us to tell us where we're wrong about something, which I'm sure there's plenty of that, and want to request a topic to be added to the random topic picker, you can email us at Zombie…hold on, my brain, zombiefishbowlpodcast@gmail.com. 

Danielle: No hate mail, though.

Melanie: Speak for yourself. [evil laugh]

Danielle: All right. Thank you so much for listening to our little podcast. If we, sorry, we really want to do well, so any feedback would be received with much, much love and humility. Also, if you want my list of sources or Melanie’s list of sources at any point, give us a shout and we'll give you the details. I'll keep track of any scientific journals and stuff whenever I mention them, which I didn't this episode. It was a bit tricky to shoehorn in, but I'll try harder next time

Melanie: Well that just leaves us to say goodbye and thank you.

Danielle: And I will leave you with a quote by one of the greatest minds of the 20th century: ‘In critical moments, men see exactly what they wish to see.’

Melanie: Danielle, is that a Spock quote?

Danielle: Yes.

Melanie: For fuck's sake. 

[Laughter] 

Danielle: Bye!

Melanie: Wait! We need to pick a topic!

Danielle: Oh shit! I forgot!

[Laughter]

Danielle: Right, okay. I'll pick a topic right now. I'm going to the random topic picker. [Singing] Random topic picker, random topic picker, pick a random topic, I’m a topic random picker.

[Laughter]

Melanie: That was solid!

Danielle: You want to know our next topic?

Melanie: Yes.

Danielle: Mummies!

Melanie: Oh, that's exciting! 

Danielle: Yes. 

Melanie: And on that note, bye!

Danielle: Bye!

[Laughter]

[Outro music]

[horsyunicorn]

2, 4, 5, 9, 22, 43, 48

2. Favorite underrated historical figure?

Nikola Tesla. I have a romanticised version in my mind because of books like The Prestige (plus the movie!) and The Witches of Chiswick but honestly he tried to change the world so much and his contributions weren’t recognised properly in his time. It makes me sad.

4. Favorite conspiracy theory revolving around history?

The pyramids as landing pads for alien spacecraft hahahah no I’m kidding (sorry Daniel). Probably the theory that Atlantis was a real island that some claim, should have existed in the Atlantic off the coast of modern-day Spain and Morocco, or otherwise in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. There’s some actual, archaeological evidence of a small island that did actually sink in a volcanic or geological event around the same time as Crete, Egypt, Greece, Phoenicia; but I don’t know it off the top of my head.

5. Favorite political scandal to examine?

I actually know very, very little about politics anywhere. I suppse the one that comes to mind is the current one in Australian politics - you have to be an Australian citizen and not a citizen of anywhere else in order to be a member of parliament; but MPs left, right and centre (literally) have been finding out that they were actually technically citizens of other countries by default, birth, parentage, etc etc and it’s absolutely ridiculous in terms of both the constitution being possibly outdated, and all these Australian politicians being little ignorant shits.

9. Favorite musical based on history?

Les Mis. It’s only based on a “minor” rebellion in Paris, but it’s a pretty fricking good musical, and I had great fun playing in the orchestra in my high school’s producton of it (it screwed up my maths marks, but that’s another story).

22. Most pointless war in your opinion?

The Emu War (although the Russian-Finnish Winter War should get an honorable mention). I find it hilarious that so much effort was put into trying to cull emus because they were destroying crops. The army basically got machine guns and fired at the birds, which for reference are 1.8 m tall and can run at 50 km/h. It was very much ineffective and they basically had to declare the emus the victors.

43. Opinion on the Watergate Scandal?

I actually barely know anything about it and don’t have an opinion on it. It was referenced in Doctor Who but even then, I don’t live in America, so *shrug*

48. Fuck, marry, kill: Elizabeth the First, Bonnie Parker, and Teddy Roosevelt?

I’d say fuck Elizabeth the First, marry Bonnie Parker and kill Teddy Roosevelt - but I’m highly annoyed it’s not “fuck, marry, and also marry” since Roosevelt was kinda cool and Elizabeth was not too shabby either.

history asks

[brigdh]

Book Blogging

A Tyranny of Queens by Foz Meadows. The sequel to the portal fantasy I read last month. Most of the plot here is fallout from the climax of that book: Saffron has returned back to Earth from the fantasy world of Kena, but can she re-adjust to a 'normal' life? And if not, what choices will she make? Yena's adopted sister died in the final battle, but can Yena reclaim religious rights for her sister's funeral and learn more about her mysterious heritage? The evil king has been overthrown, but escaped – where is he and what caused his actions? What's up with the mysterious magic artifact he left behind in the castle? Sadly, I didn't like this book nearly as much as its predecessor. The biggest problem is simply a shift in the use of characters; whereas the first book divided its pages fairly evenly among a vast cast, A Tyranny of Queens is hugely dominated by Saffron and Yena. And I'm sorry to say it, but they're the most boring characters in this series. Both are an example of the 'normal teen girl dealing with events outside her experience' archetype, which is a fine enough archetype as far as it goes, but not one that's particularly exciting unless you give her some sort of distinctive personality trait, anything other than 'determined', 'hard-working', 'smart'. Buffy wanted to date boys and wear cute clothes; Katniss wanted to be left alone and was unexpectedly ruthless; Saffron wants... ? The characters who did grab my attention in An Accident of Stars are pushed mostly off-screen here. Yasha, the grumpy, staff-wielding elderly matriarch who was revealed late in the first book to be an exiled queen, gets something like ten lines of dialogue in this entire book. Viya, the young, spoiled but trying hard to improve noblewoman who is named co-ruler of Kena at the end of the first book, and thus should be navigating the delicate balance of maintaining equality of power while still learning to handle so much responsibility, gets literally two scenes out of three hundred pages. And so on through a whole list of really cool characters. Instead we get multiple chapters of Saffron arguing with her guidance counselor, then her parents, then her social worker over whether she should apologize to one of her high school teachers over a minor incident caused by a bully. Exciting fantasy! My second problem with the book, unfortunately, is much more fundamental. The plot revolves around discovering that the evil king wasn't really evil after all, but was brainwashed. I'm sure this is an attempt to do an interesting redemption arc, or to look at how even the worst-seeming villains have their reasons, but it didn't work for me at all. It felt like a cop-out to remove blame from the king by passing it on to a historic figure from centuries ago (who never gets an explanation for his evil actions, so Meadows hasn't really complicated the role of villains so much as pushed the question a few steps outside the main narrative). None of the many people who died in the wars he started or were tortured in his pursuit of knowledge get a voice in this second book, so I kept feeling as though the suffering he caused was conveniently being swept under the rug to get readers to feel sorry for him. In addition, for a book that tries so hard to be progressive, ending with 'it's not the king's fault! He was manipulated by a foreign woman who made him fall in love with her!' is, uh... not a great look. All in all, a disappointing book. But there was enough good about the series that I'll give the author another chance. The Written World: How Literature Shaped Civilization by Martin Puchner. A nonfiction book that makes its way through human history via the medium of literature. Each of sixteen chapters focuses on a particular classic and shows how it both influenced and was influenced by contemporary events, from Homer's Odyssey giving Alexander the Great a hero to model himself after to The Communist Manifesto inspiring revolutions across the world. A subthread is the development of the technologies of literature itself – the inventions of the alphabet, paper, the printing press, ebooks, etc. It's a pretty neat idea for a book! Unfortunately the execution is terrible. I started off being annoyed that Puchner never seems quite clear on what he means by the term 'literature'. He implies it only includes written works (in the Introduction he says, "It was only when storytelling intersected with writing that literature was born."), and yet many of the pieces he choses to focus on were primarily composed orally (The Odyssey and the Iliad, The Epic of Sunjata, the Popul Vuh, probably the Epic of Gilgamesh, certainly at least parts of One Thousand and One Nights). And yet there's never any discussion of what it means to go from an oral mode to a written one, a topic I was eagerly awaiting to see analyzed. It's just... never addressed beyond a passing mention here and there. Okay, fine, I thought to myself, Puchner means 'literature' as in 'stories'. But that doesn't work either, since once again many of his choices don't tell any sort of narrative (Saint Paul's letters, Martin Luther's theses, Benjamin Franklin's 'Poor Richard's Almanac', Confucius's Analects, Mao's 'Little Red Book'). So what does Puchner mean by literature, the central organizing principle of his whole book? God alone knows. My irritation with the book deepened when I got to Chapter Four, where Puchner claims credit for inventing the concept of the Axial Age: "It was only in the course of trying to understand the story of literature that I noticed a striking pattern in the teaching of the Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, and Jesus. Living within a span of a few hundred years but without knowing of one another, these teachers revolutionized the world of ideas. Many of today’s philosophical and religious schools—Indian philosophy, Chinese philosophy, Western philosophy, and Christianity—were shaped by these charismatic teachers. It was almost as if in the five centuries before the Common Era, the world was waiting to be instructed, eager to learn new ways of thinking and being. But why? And what explained the emergence of these teachers?" Sure, dude, sure. You came up with this vastly original idea all on your own. (To be fair, if one choses to read through the endnotes, Puchner does cite Karl Jaspers, though he still insists his own version is ~so different~.) He then proceeds to get basic information about the Buddha completely wrong. For example: Some form of writing may have existed in India during the Buddha’s time (the so-called Indus Valley script may not have been a full writing system and remains undeciphered). This sentence. I can't even. I almost stopped reading the book right here, it's so incredibly incorrect. It's like saying, "Thomas Jefferson may have been literate, but since we find no Latin engravings in his house, we can't be sure." Let me lay out the problems. The Buddha lived around 500BCE; the last known well-accepted use of the Indus script was in 1900BCE. That's a gap of nearly two millennia. The Indus script was used on the western edge of South Asia, in Pakistan and the Indian states of Gujarat and Haryana; the Buddha lived on the eastern edge, in Nepal. At minimum, they're 500 miles apart. There is no chance in hell the Indus script was remotely relevant to writing about the Buddha. And in fact, we don't need to guess at the script of the Buddha's time and place. It's called Brahmi and it's quite well attested – though Puchner doesn't once mention it. He does include a photo of an Indus seal, because why not waste more space on utterly irrelevant information. Let's quickly go through the problems on the rest of this single page: What mattered above all were the age-old hymns and stories of the Vedas, which were transmitted orally by specially appointed Brahmans for whom remembering the Vedas was an obligation and a privilege. Though the Vedas do have an important oral history, they were certainly written down by the time of the Buddha, and possibly as early as 1000BCE. The oldest Indian epic, the Ramayana, was also orally composed and only later written down, much like Homeric epics. The Mahabharata is generally considered to be the older of the two epics. Despite my disillusionment at this point, I continued on with the book. And to be fair, I noticed many fewer mistakes! Though possibly because I know much less about Renaissance Germany or Soviet Russia than I do about Indian history. I did hit several problems again in the chapter on the Popul Vuh, the Mayan epic. To begin with, the chapter opens with a long dramatic scene recreating the Spanish conquistadores' capture of Atahualpa, the Incan emperor. Incan. Who lived in Peru, in South America. The Classic Mayan culture was based in Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize – North America and a bit of Central America. This time Puchner is literally on the wrong continent. Once he finally makes his way up to the Mayan homeland, he focuses his narration on Diego de Landa, a Spanish priest who did indeed write an important ethnography of the Mayans of the 1500s. The Classic Mayan Era was over by 950CE, introducing a discrepancy Puchner does not deign to acknowledge. Even aside from that small problem, Puchner describes Landa's writings multiple times as "an account [...] that has remained the primary source of information on Maya culture." This entirely ignores not only the Popul Vuh itself; but the multiple other Mayan codices that survived Spanish colonialism; the many Mayan writings carved on their pyramids, palaces, and stele, and painted on their pottery; their murals of war, sport, and history; the enormous archaeological record of their cities, technology, and diet; and, oh yeah, the fact that Mayan people are still around today. Oh, my bad – Puchner does remember the Mayans still exist. Here's what he has to say about them: "My journey began in the Lacandon jungle. A bus dropped me at the border of the Maya territory, where a beat-up truck picked me up at the side of the road. The village of several dozen huts was located in a clearing in the jungle. Everyone but me was dressed in what looked like long white nightgowns. Men and women both wore their black hair shoulder length (I thought of the shipwrecked sailor who had gone native), and most of them walked around barefoot, sometimes donning rubber boots." That's it. That's literally the only mention of the modern Mayan people. (Puchner's in the area to learn about the Zapatista uprising, to which he devotes the rest of the chapter.) I'm so glad he spent ages detailing that and de Landa's biography instead of devoting any space at all to the contemporary persistence of Mayan beliefs, language, or rituals. When I first read its blurb, I looked forward to the rest of The Written World. Unfortunately it's the closest I've come to hurling a book at the wall in a long, long time. I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.

[DW link for ease of commenting]

[casinthegarden]

So tempted to ask about CAS but I won't. So, Aph America?

Too late, you dropped the name so now I’m doing both lol

APH America:

general opinion: fall in a hole and die | don’t like them | eh | they’re fine I guess | like them! | love them | actual love of my life 
hotness level: get away from me | meh | neutral | theoretically hot but not my type | pretty hot | gorgeous! | 10/10 would bang there’s not an option that says “cute” but that’s my stance so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 
hogwarts house: Gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuff

I KNOW SUPER UNPOPULAR OPNION: America is a very ambitious country and I stand by the hogwarts sorting as something that’s sorted by the traits you admire, not necessarily the ones you have. I think Alfred could fit in either Gryffindor or Slytherin….but I’m leaning more towards Slytherin
best quality: his enthusiasm
worst quality: ….I’d say his enthusiasm is his worst and best trait.
ship them with: omg I’m not really a shippy person…I’ve got nothing for this one
brotp them with: France, Japan…and I recently read a post where someone brought up Germany and America which was pretty cool too
needs to stay away from: sometimes everyone 
misc. thoughts: I think it’s a shame the fandom doesn’t acknowledge his interests in archaeology and filmmaking more often…or the fact that he’s not a total idiot

Castiel (bc I’m always up to talk about Cas)

general opinion: fall in a hole and die | don’t like them | eh | they’re fine I guess | like them! | love them | actual love of my life KILL ME HES MY IMPERFECTLY PERFECT FAVE
hotness level: get away from me | meh | neutral | theoretically hot but not my type | pretty hot | gorgeous! 10/10 would bang
hogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuff hands down 
best quality: ooooh boy….“too much heart"
worst quality: recently he’s been taking every little mistake to heart and let’s people (dean) walk all over him….I wouldn’t call it his “worst quality” because he’s depressed but I just wanna state that I hate watching him do this every season 
ship them with: Meg, Sam, Crowley, Balthazar
brotp them with: Sam, Crowley, Balthazar, Gadreel (they don’t have much in canon but they have a lot in common soooo….), Hannah....I think that’s all my brotps for Cas
needs to stay away from: Dean
misc. thoughts: Idk where to start. He’s my number one fave and he deserves better than what he gets in the show.

Thanks for sending in characters!

[hermanwatts]

Sensor Sweep: Antiheroes, Theodore Sturgeon, A. E. van Vogt, Dreadstar

Popular Culture (Adam Lane Smith): Much has been made about the oft-lamented shift from Hero to Antihero and the modern obsession with romanticizing evil. Most frequently, I’ve heard this complaint directed at modern western media’s fixation on selecting one unyielding human trash fire after another as every main character. There’s a reason modern book sales and movie sales are struggling. To understand the shift over the last hundred years of stories and main characters, one must understand the cultural environments and the mental aspects at play, particularly attachment formation and its impact on society.

  Writing (Rawle Nyanzi): With every passing day, it seems that global pop culture disappoints us more. Classic franchises are vandalized into self-parodies to “modernize” them, creative talent increasingly treats fandoms as the enemy, and geek-oriented media champion the intimidation and silencing of creatives who don’t toe a very particular ideological line. The Pulp Mindset is not a book on how to make millions with one simple trick. It is not a book about gaming Amazon’s ever-changing algorithm. It is a book about having the right mentality for storytelling.

Hugo Awards (Dark Herald): This years Hugos went so far beneath my radar I didn’t know they had happened. I think we have finally reached the point where a Hugo Award is actually damaging to an author’s reputation. Certainly, no one who loves Science Fiction will want to buy a book with the words Hugo Award winner on the cover. As you may know by now. George R.R. Martin hosted the 2020 Hugo Awards and he was apparently too old to be Woke.

Fiction (DMR Books): Now I don’t have to wait six months to release my collection! Necromancy in Nilztiria will be available in next month, and the cover illustration (which you can see to the left) is based upon “A Twisted Branch of Yggdrasil.” In this tale, the Norseman Hrolfgar and the Atlantean Deltor have been drawn through the labyrinths of time and space to the world of Nilztiria by a sorceress, who commands them to slay her enemy, Xaarxool the Necromancer. But as you can see this is no easy task, for Xaarxool has giant skeletons to defend him.

Fiction (Marzaat): Like most critics, he regards Sturgeon’s supreme strength as characterization. Sturgeon was allegedly good at seeing the cruelty behind civilization and the ways “conventional morality” (supposedly Sturgeon distinguished that from “fundamental ethical systems”) created anxieties and phobias hence some of his horror stories like “Bianca’s Hands”). Stableford contends Sturgeon never was onboard with John W. Campbell’s enthusiasm for science and technology. He suggests that Sturgeon’s “Killdozer!”, with its bulldozer under the control of a hostile alien force, is a hostile metaphor for that enthusiasm.

Fiction (Wasteland & Sky): Much credit should go author and editor Richard Paolinelli for all the work he has done in the Planetary Anthology series. After Superversive Press shuttered it looked unlikely that the project would ever be completed and was destined to be a what-if, but not only has Tuscany Bay released more volumes than Superversive did (and next month will have re-released all of Superversive’s old volumes), it has also carried the project into a whole new medium. That would be into the burgeoning audio book world.

History (Jon Mollison): The pre-history of the Americas is a true dark age – a time of great uncertainty and filled with mysteries for which we may never have solutions.  The most basic of these, who was the first to arrive, remains shrouded in conflicting narratives and contradictory evidence provided by scattered and controversial archaeology sites. The question assumes the Bering Straits Theory is the only one that holds water.  A rather sizable assumption given the dearth of evidence.  And the possible explanation lies in the stone-age sailing ship piloted by Thor Heyerdahl.

Dragon Awards (Dragoncon): In this three-part series, past Dragon Award recipients talk about their award-winning novels and their Dragon Awards experience. During this time, nothing provides a better escape from the world than diving into the pages of a Dragon Award winning novel. The Dragon Awards, launched in 2016 in tandem with Dragon Con’s 30th anniversary, allows readers, writers, publishers, and editors a way to recognize excellence in all things Science Fiction and Fantasy. These Awards are by the fans, for the fans, and are a chance to reward those who have made real contributions to SF, books, games, comics, and media.

Cinema (Other Master Cylinder): John Saxon was born Carmine Orrico in Brooklyn, the first child of Antonio and Anna Orrico. His mother was born in Caserta, a small city near Naples in Italy. There’s some confusion about John’s age, partly due to his fiddling’ of the dates for his first contract. “I was born on August 5, 1936. Many have it wrong because I made myself a year older to get a Universal contract at the start. If I had been younger it wouldn’t have worked.”

Review (George Kelly): The 9th book in the Harry Dresden series features Dresden in a desperate quest to clear his vampire brother, Thomas, from a cunning plot by powerful Magical Interests. Harry Dresden, professional Wizard and Private Investigator for the City of Chicago, grew up an orphan. His upbringing included a lot of physical and mental abuse which explains his taciturn disposition.

Comic Books (Totally Epic): Finally! After 3400 pages of Epic Illustrated, we’ve (that is, I) have finally arrived at the first thing published by Epic Comics! Er, or, rather not, because first we’re doing Marvel Graphic Novel #3, Dreadstar. I mean, I kinda have to, because it bridges the story started in Epic Illustrated and The Price (over at Eclipse) and the Dreadstar series proper.

Fiction (Amatopia): I’m three-quarters through The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons–sequel to Hyperion and book 2 in the 4 book Hyperion Cantos series–and I can’t stop singing these books’ praises. I think so far I’ve convinced over ten people to give Hyperion a shot. It has been a long time since I’ve found a novel or series that has engrossed me to this degree, particularly a sci-fi novel.

Fiction & RPG (The Other Side): Over the last couple of years, I have been on a quest to find and read all the Raven books by “Richard Kirk” who was, in reality, the pen name of authors Angus Wells and Robert Holdstock.  Both wrote Book 1 and then they alternated with Wells on Books 3 and 5 and Holdstock on Books 2 and 4. The story is one that is simple, but close to many FRP gamers. Raven wants to kill Karl Ir Donwayne. How is going to do that? Well, they need to Skull of Quez to appease this ruler to get to Donwayne.

Review (Rough Edges): The Digest Enthusiast, Book Twelve – Richard Krauss, ed. Interviews

Tony Gleeson (Fantastic, Amazing Science Fiction, Mike Shayne, Personal Crimes).

John Shirley (Weirdbook, Fantastic, The Crow, Constantine, Wetbones).

Games (25 Years Later): From the very beginning, you are made readily aware of not only the stakes but the epicness of the tale at the heart of Darksiders. The tale I speak of is at first set in modern-day Earth, and you take up the role of War, one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, who finds himself in our realm in the midst of a battle between Heaven and Hell. This is where Darksiders gives us a taste of War’s power before stripping it all away when he is killed during the battle. After War’s demise, he is brought in front of the Charred Council, where the blame of the apocalyptic events is placed squarely on his shoulders.

Pulp Fiction (DMR Books): The story starts in the “author as ghostwriter” conceit, as was the fashion of the time ever since its popularisation by Edgar Rice Burroughs in his Sword and Planet tales, and indeed utilised by Merritt himself in other stories such as The Moon Pool. So ubiquitous is this method of acclimatising the reader to tales of death-defying derring-do, it almost lulls the reader into a false sense of security – that this adventure will be just another ripping yarn, good for the mental exercise, but could safely be put down after reading.

RPG (Black Gate): Getting into Conan 2d20, for the casual gamer, or for the merely curious, demands a fair amount of cognitive load. This is because, I believe, the system is so innovative — and those innovations are precisely what makes this a Conan game. I have encountered many anecdotes of gamers and consumers gleefully obtaining this gorgeous hardcover tome (or PDF), riffling through it, saying, “Huh?” then setting it aside with a “Sorry, not for me, but the art is pretty, and this still makes a good resource.” adventures, the pandemic hit, and these two players weren’t interested in online play.

RPG (Silver Key): Ideas are a dime a dozen. It’s all about execution. The title of the post should speak for itself, but a little context. Heard on the intranets recently… “Gary Gygax ripped off Dave Arneson! Dave is D&D’s true creator!” My response: Horse shit. Ideas are like a@#$holes. We’ve all got one, and most stink. I can sit here in the calm quiet of my living room and fire off a dozen. “Weight loss app.” “Online mentoring program for pediatricians.” “Telehealth scheduling interface.” “Dying Earth role-playing game.”

Comic Books (Bleeding Cool): Sylvian Runberg writes: “When I was offered to do an adaptation of Conan, I was immediately thrilled, and for several reasons.     The first is that this character was a part of my childhood, especially with the comics drawn by John Buscema and obviously the film with Arnold Scharwzenegger. But the second, and maybe the most important reason, is Patrice Louinet, one of the worldwide best specialist of Robert E. Howard, who could advise us during the making of this adaptation, offered me the possibility to discover an another Conan from the one I had in mind from this childhood, a more complex character living in a more complex world, even if we’re still talking about fantasy, magic spells, epic adventures and monsters.

T.V. (Dark Worlds Quarterly): In 1982, Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Cimmerian was brought to the big screen in a film featuring Arnold Schwartzenegger. The success of Conan the Barbarian spawned a plethora of bad Sword & Sorcery films (including Conan sequels). I will make no comment on those films here but state none was better than average and most were far below the worst of the Ray Harryhausen’s classics. Until 1999’s The Thirteenth Warrior I can’t think of a post-Conan film of a heroic fantasy of any real interest. Since the release of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Fantasy films have been experienceing another renaissance.

Tolkien (The Wert Zone): The Hugo Awards are the premier awards for science fiction and fantasy literature, first given out in 1953 and every year since 1955. One of the more interesting mysteries of the award is that J.R.R. Tolkien, widely regarded as the most prominent fantasy author of the 20th Century, was never given one despite being eligible on multiple occasions.

Science Fiction (Fantasy Literature): This collection of nine short stories, novelettes and novellas originally appeared in hardcover form in 1952, from the publisher Pelligrini & Cudahy, and sold for $3.50. By the time my edition came out, the Berkley Medallion paperback from 1963, with another wonderfully abstract/Surrealist cover by the great Richard Powers, the cover price had dropped to 50 cents but the number of stories in the collection had been reduced to seven. Missing were the novelettes “Vault of the Beast,” from the Aug. ’40 ASF, and “Heir Unapparent,” from that same magazine’s June ’45 issue.

RPG (Grognardia): I bought Mörk Borg solely because of its physical characteristics. A local friend of mine raved about it months ago and then, while perusing Free League’s website recently, I caught a glimpse of it in all its lurid glory. I was so intrigued by its bright yellow cover and black, white, and red artwork that I ordered a copy and anxiously awaited its arrival. I was not disappointed when it appeared at last: the 96-page A5 book is sturdy and well-made, like so many European RPG books these days. Most of the paper in the book has a satin finish, but its last section, presenting an introductory adventure, has a rough, natural feel to it.

Fiction (Adventures Fantastic): Today, July 24, is the birthday of John D. MacDonald (1916-1986). MacDonald wrote for the pulps and transitioned to paperbacks when the pulps died. (I wish someone would collect all his science fiction.) For today’s birthday post, I want to look at One Monday We Killed Them All. Dwight McAran beat a girl to death and went to prison for it. He’s about to get out. Dwight is Fenn Hillyer’s brother-in-law. Fenn is a cop. They don’t get along.

Sensor Sweep: Antiheroes, Theodore Sturgeon, A. E. van Vogt, Dreadstar published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

[kristablogs]

Five surprising ways people have used (and are still using) bones

Some people use bones as macabre decor, but they're good for so much more. (Artem Maltsev via Unsplash/)

For February, we’re focusing on the body parts that shape us, oxygenate us, and power us as we take long walks on the beach. Bony bonafide bones. These skeletal building blocks inspire curiosity and spark fear in different folks—we hope our stories, covering everything from surgeries and supplements to good old-fashioned boning, will only do the first. Once you’ve thoroughly blasted your mind with bone facts, check out our previous themed months: muscle and fat.

Imagine sitting down to a meal of ground-up bone, served on a plate made of burned bones, while two musicians—one rattling two sawed-off ribs together and the other ominously shaking part of a horse’s skull—provide grim ambience in the dim candlelight. Off in the corner, an oracle shoves some bones into a fire in an effort to predict whether the crops you just fertilized with shattered bones will yield a hearty harvest.

It might feel like you’re in the opening scene of the latest binge-worthy adaptation of a popular fantasy series, but this is real life. Or, at least, it would be if you mashed everything you’re about to read into one time period.

Humans have found unique uses for skeletal remains since prehistoric times. You may be familiar with bone arrowheads, fish hooks, and jewelry, but you may be surprised to learn how bones have found their way into the everyday lives of both ancient and modern people. Let’s journey beyond the grave.

Musical instruments

There are plenty of musical instruments that look like bones or include bones as part of their design. For example, artist Bruce Mahalski and guitar maker David Gilberd teamed up to build a bone guitar that features about 35 skulls. Super metal, yes, but not quite bony enough. It’s still, at its heart, a guitar.

On display at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, this 1856 portrait of "The Bone Player" shows how a skilled musician might hold the instrument. (William Sidney Mount/)

For instruments straight-up made out of bone, two stand out: the aptly named “bones” and the jawbone. Even if you only listen to the latest pop songs, it’s possible you’ve heard the former without realizing it. In 1949, Freeman Davis, known as “Brother Bones,” recorded a version of the Jazz Age standard “Sweet Georgia Brown,” which found widespread fame after the Harlem Globetrotters picked it up as their theme song three years later.

You’re more likely to find them made out of wood today, but in their most basic form, bones are a pair of animal rib bones—usually sheep or cow— cut down to between 5 and 7 inches long. Players hold them between their fingers, curved sides facing each other, and knock them together with deft flicks of their wrists. Like skilled tap dancers, experts can create a vast range of percussive sounds.

The bones have their roots in traditional Irish and Scottish music, and immigrants from those countries brought them to America, where they found a home in bluegrass and other folk genres. They’re similar to other clacking percussion instruments like the spoons, the Chinese paiban, and castanets.

The jawbone, meanwhile, is originally an African instrument that made its way to the Americas as a result of the slave trade. It’s usually the jawbone of a horse or another equine (like a donkey or zebra), that’s been stripped of all flesh and dried.

Once it’s dry, the teeth become so loose they rattle around in their sockets. But it’s more than a simple rattle—players can create other sounds by striking the jawbone with a stick or rubbing the wood across its teeth.

It’s a little more niche, but you may have also heard the sound of a jawbone without realizing it—the vibraslap, patented in 1969 by Martin B. Cohen, was designed to sound exactly like it. Cohen said in his patent application that he’d found it hard to replace actual jawbones when they break.

Fortune telling

The original users of these bones hoped they'd foretell the future. (Deborah Harding, Carnegie Museum of Natural History/)

Yeah, you’ve heard of necromancy, and probably pyromancy. Now, get ready for scapulimancy and plastromancy. Relatives of pyromancy, these two divination practices involve writing questions on bones (usually large animal shoulder bones or turtle plastrons), heating them up until they crack, and then interpreting the cracks.

How they were heated is unclear and likely varied. Some sources simply mention fire, while others describe diviners inserting hot metal rods into holes drilled in the bones.

These practices weren’t restricted to any particular region, either, and ancient people worldwide had their own versions. Inhabitants of Europe, western Asia, and North Africa simply inspected the natural condition of the bone after all flesh was scraped away, but those who lived in North America and other parts of Asia used fire, according to David N. Keightley, a former professor of Chinese history at the University of California, Berkeley.

Perhaps the most well-preserved oracle bones come from China, most of which date back to the Shang dynasty (1600-1046 BCE). About 20,000 pieces (mostly ox scapulae and turtle plastrons) were dug up between 1928 and 1937 during official excavations around the dynasty’s capital city of Yinxu, about 300 miles southwest of modern-day Beijing. Most turned out to be predictions performed for the royal family. This discovery, among others, helped Chinese archaeologist Li Ji prove that the Shang dynasty actually existed.

The Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh has a large collection of these bones in storage for research purposes. Amy Covell-Murthy, who manages the museum’s archaeology collection, said the inscriptions on their bones ask questions like whether or not someone will have a baby, which crops to plant in a field, or how a war will turn out. She also said some are fakes, but that they still hold value because they’re at least 100 years old themselves.

Bone china

Unlike true porcelain, which contains only minerals, the ceramic material known as bone china includes bone ash. It originated in England in the 1700s and for a long time, most, if not all, bone china was made there.

A few potters and companies experimented with bone ash as they sought to bulk up their soft-paste porcelain to rival the stronger hard-paste ceramics made in China, but Josiah Spode I is generally understood to have been the one who standardized bone china production. When he died, his son, Josiah Spode II, took over and continued to improve on his father’s work.

Today, bone china is made across the globe by companies such as Lenox, which has made numerous pieces for presidents dating back to 1918, and the Spode family’s eponymous business, Spode.

Fertilizer

Plants love to eat bones. Hardcore. (CDC via Unsplash/)

All living things need phosphorus, and bones have a lot of it. This is why bone meal, as ground-up bones are called, has found its calling as plant fertilizer. Without phosphorus, plants can’t function, can’t grow, and can’t photosynthesize, says Dennis Stevenson, vice president for science at the New York Botanical Garden. Bone meal is also high in calcium, which plants need for their cell walls.

But with its benefits come some potential problems. Health experts say some bone meal can be high in lead, and possibly also mercury. It’s also got a bit of a dark history in the U.S., dating back to the near-total destruction of the American bison.

The hunting of these thousand-pound animals was driven by their highly prized skins, but also by the U.S. government, which promoted hunting in an effort to starve Native Americans and force them onto reservations. Hunters would kill and skin bison, but often left the carcasses littering the Great Plains. As settlers moved west, they began picking them up and selling them to use as fertilizer.

Gelatin and glue

The revelation that gelatin is made out of animal parts is a common one. But the simple fact that everyone seems to have this somewhat traumatic revelation at some point in their lives made it seem relevant for this list. If you already know this, great—maybe you’ll learn something new here anyway. And if you didn’t, now you do, and you can reveal it to others in your life.

Most gelatin is made from the byproducts of the meat and leather industries, usually bones and skin. In its purest form, it’s 98 to 99 percent protein and is nearly tasteless and odorless. Its use dates back to the medieval era, and because it was hard to make, it was originally just for rich families.

Today, it’s still pretty complicated to make, but industry has taken much of the hands-on labor out of it. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the 20-week process for making gelatin out of cattle bones starts like this: The bones are crushed and cooked at 180 to 250 degrees Fahrenheit before being spun in a centrifuge, dried at 160 to 270 degrees, degreased, and treated for five to seven days with a weak hydrochloric acid solution.

Then, the ground-up bones are washed several times with water and treated with a lime slurry (not the tasty tropical kind) for one to two months in an effort to remove everything that’s not collagen. After that, the almost-gelatin is washed again, made more acidic, and may be filtered. Finally, its pH is made more neutral (between 5 and 7), it’s sterilized at 280 to 290 degrees for several seconds, cooled, and dried with hot air for 1 to 3 hours.

This stuff ends up in obvious foods like gummies, but can also be used in a wide variety of ways to stabilize, thicken, and add texture to the things we eat. It’s also used to make modern film.

Gelatin and animal glue are closely related, though use of the latter has largely disappeared. At least as late as the early 2000s, gelatin-based glues were used to stick those “organic” stickers on fruits and vegetables, the USDA says.

Animal glue has a long history, and in 2014 researchers found that it was used to hold together the painted layers of Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang’s massive terracotta army. It was used worldwide until the early 1900s, but was essentially eliminated by the invention of synthetic adhesives.

[scootoaster]

Five surprising ways people have used (and are still using) bones

Some people use bones as macabre decor, but they're good for so much more. (Artem Maltsev via Unsplash/)

For February, we’re focusing on the body parts that shape us, oxygenate us, and power us as we take long walks on the beach. Bony bonafide bones. These skeletal building blocks inspire curiosity and spark fear in different folks—we hope our stories, covering everything from surgeries and supplements to good old-fashioned boning, will only do the first. Once you’ve thoroughly blasted your mind with bone facts, check out our previous themed months: muscle and fat.

Imagine sitting down to a meal of ground-up bone, served on a plate made of burned bones, while two musicians—one rattling two sawed-off ribs together and the other ominously shaking part of a horse’s skull—provide grim ambience in the dim candlelight. Off in the corner, an oracle shoves some bones into a fire in an effort to predict whether the crops you just fertilized with shattered bones will yield a hearty harvest.

It might feel like you’re in the opening scene of the latest binge-worthy adaptation of a popular fantasy series, but this is real life. Or, at least, it would be if you mashed everything you’re about to read into one time period.

Humans have found unique uses for skeletal remains since prehistoric times. You may be familiar with bone arrowheads, fish hooks, and jewelry, but you may be surprised to learn how bones have found their way into the everyday lives of both ancient and modern people. Let’s journey beyond the grave.

Musical instruments

There are plenty of musical instruments that look like bones or include bones as part of their design. For example, artist Bruce Mahalski and guitar maker David Gilberd teamed up to build a bone guitar that features about 35 skulls. Super metal, yes, but not quite bony enough. It’s still, at its heart, a guitar.

On display at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, this 1856 portrait of "The Bone Player" shows how a skilled musician might hold the instrument. (William Sidney Mount/)

For instruments straight-up made out of bone, two stand out: the aptly named “bones” and the jawbone. Even if you only listen to the latest pop songs, it’s possible you’ve heard the former without realizing it. In 1949, Freeman Davis, known as “Brother Bones,” recorded a version of the Jazz Age standard “Sweet Georgia Brown,” which found widespread fame after the Harlem Globetrotters picked it up as their theme song three years later.

You’re more likely to find them made out of wood today, but in their most basic form, bones are a pair of animal rib bones—usually sheep or cow— cut down to between 5 and 7 inches long. Players hold them between their fingers, curved sides facing each other, and knock them together with deft flicks of their wrists. Like skilled tap dancers, experts can create a vast range of percussive sounds.

The bones have their roots in traditional Irish and Scottish music, and immigrants from those countries brought them to America, where they found a home in bluegrass and other folk genres. They’re similar to other clacking percussion instruments like the spoons, the Chinese paiban, and castanets.

The jawbone, meanwhile, is originally an African instrument that made its way to the Americas as a result of the slave trade. It’s usually the jawbone of a horse or another equine (like a donkey or zebra), that’s been stripped of all flesh and dried.

Once it’s dry, the teeth become so loose they rattle around in their sockets. But it’s more than a simple rattle—players can create other sounds by striking the jawbone with a stick or rubbing the wood across its teeth.

It’s a little more niche, but you may have also heard the sound of a jawbone without realizing it—the vibraslap, patented in 1969 by Martin B. Cohen, was designed to sound exactly like it. Cohen said in his patent application that he’d found it hard to replace actual jawbones when they break.

Fortune telling

The original users of these bones hoped they'd foretell the future. (Deborah Harding, Carnegie Museum of Natural History/)

Yeah, you’ve heard of necromancy, and probably pyromancy. Now, get ready for scapulimancy and plastromancy. Relatives of pyromancy, these two divination practices involve writing questions on bones (usually large animal shoulder bones or turtle plastrons), heating them up until they crack, and then interpreting the cracks.

How they were heated is unclear and likely varied. Some sources simply mention fire, while others describe diviners inserting hot metal rods into holes drilled in the bones.

These practices weren’t restricted to any particular region, either, and ancient people worldwide had their own versions. Inhabitants of Europe, western Asia, and North Africa simply inspected the natural condition of the bone after all flesh was scraped away, but those who lived in North America and other parts of Asia used fire, according to David N. Keightley, a former professor of Chinese history at the University of California, Berkeley.

Perhaps the most well-preserved oracle bones come from China, most of which date back to the Shang dynasty (1600-1046 BCE). About 20,000 pieces (mostly ox scapulae and turtle plastrons) were dug up between 1928 and 1937 during official excavations around the dynasty’s capital city of Yinxu, about 300 miles southwest of modern-day Beijing. Most turned out to be predictions performed for the royal family. This discovery, among others, helped Chinese archaeologist Li Ji prove that the Shang dynasty actually existed.

The Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh has a large collection of these bones in storage for research purposes. Amy Covell-Murthy, who manages the museum’s archaeology collection, said the inscriptions on their bones ask questions like whether or not someone will have a baby, which crops to plant in a field, or how a war will turn out. She also said some are fakes, but that they still hold value because they’re at least 100 years old themselves.

Bone china

Unlike true porcelain, which contains only minerals, the ceramic material known as bone china includes bone ash. It originated in England in the 1700s and for a long time, most, if not all, bone china was made there.

A few potters and companies experimented with bone ash as they sought to bulk up their soft-paste porcelain to rival the stronger hard-paste ceramics made in China, but Josiah Spode I is generally understood to have been the one who standardized bone china production. When he died, his son, Josiah Spode II, took over and continued to improve on his father’s work.

Today, bone china is made across the globe by companies such as Lenox, which has made numerous pieces for presidents dating back to 1918, and the Spode family’s eponymous business, Spode.

Fertilizer

Plants love to eat bones. Hardcore. (CDC via Unsplash/)

All living things need phosphorus, and bones have a lot of it. This is why bone meal, as ground-up bones are called, has found its calling as plant fertilizer. Without phosphorus, plants can’t function, can’t grow, and can’t photosynthesize, says Dennis Stevenson, vice president for science at the New York Botanical Garden. Bone meal is also high in calcium, which plants need for their cell walls.

But with its benefits come some potential problems. Health experts say some bone meal can be high in lead, and possibly also mercury. It’s also got a bit of a dark history in the U.S., dating back to the near-total destruction of the American bison.

The hunting of these thousand-pound animals was driven by their highly prized skins, but also by the U.S. government, which promoted hunting in an effort to starve Native Americans and force them onto reservations. Hunters would kill and skin bison, but often left the carcasses littering the Great Plains. As settlers moved west, they began picking them up and selling them to use as fertilizer.

Gelatin and glue

The revelation that gelatin is made out of animal parts is a common one. But the simple fact that everyone seems to have this somewhat traumatic revelation at some point in their lives made it seem relevant for this list. If you already know this, great—maybe you’ll learn something new here anyway. And if you didn’t, now you do, and you can reveal it to others in your life.

Most gelatin is made from the byproducts of the meat and leather industries, usually bones and skin. In its purest form, it’s 98 to 99 percent protein and is nearly tasteless and odorless. Its use dates back to the medieval era, and because it was hard to make, it was originally just for rich families.

Today, it’s still pretty complicated to make, but industry has taken much of the hands-on labor out of it. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the 20-week process for making gelatin out of cattle bones starts like this: The bones are crushed and cooked at 180 to 250 degrees Fahrenheit before being spun in a centrifuge, dried at 160 to 270 degrees, degreased, and treated for five to seven days with a weak hydrochloric acid solution.

Then, the ground-up bones are washed several times with water and treated with a lime slurry (not the tasty tropical kind) for one to two months in an effort to remove everything that’s not collagen. After that, the almost-gelatin is washed again, made more acidic, and may be filtered. Finally, its pH is made more neutral (between 5 and 7), it’s sterilized at 280 to 290 degrees for several seconds, cooled, and dried with hot air for 1 to 3 hours.

This stuff ends up in obvious foods like gummies, but can also be used in a wide variety of ways to stabilize, thicken, and add texture to the things we eat. It’s also used to make modern film.

Gelatin and animal glue are closely related, though use of the latter has largely disappeared. At least as late as the early 2000s, gelatin-based glues were used to stick those “organic” stickers on fruits and vegetables, the USDA says.

Animal glue has a long history, and in 2014 researchers found that it was used to hold together the painted layers of Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang’s massive terracotta army. It was used worldwide until the early 1900s, but was essentially eliminated by the invention of synthetic adhesives.

[drtanstravels]

I have finally got around to wrapping up a journey that I had already written three pieces about previously, but this post contains the sole purpose for that particular trip — Anna, her friend and colleague Fatimah Gilani, myself, and some other volunteers going on a mission trip to provide free eye surgery for people in a reasonably remote area of Honduras.

So far on this trek, one that took place almost three and a half years ago, I have covered:

Central America, pt. 1: Christmas in Guatemala: Anna and I had spent a strangely warm Christmas Eve in New York City watching the Rockettes Christmas Spectacular, completed a hellish check-in at Newark Airport in New Jersey, flew to Guatemala, and then spent Christmas Day exploring Antigua; chocolate museums, monasteries with deep pits full of human bones, that sort of thing.

Central America, pt. 2: “Hey! Let’s Go Climb an Active Volcano!”: We ate a heap of incredible food including pig face stew, went through some pretty cool markets, and climbed an active volcano, all before getting plastered in a hidden mezcal bar on our final night in Antigua.

Central America, pt. 3: Our First Visit to Mayan Ruins: We then flew to the Guatemalan city of Flores to explore Mayan ruins, as well as some flora and fauna at the Maya Biosphere Reserve.

In this, what was initially going to be the second instalment of my ‘Tales I’ve Forgotten to Tell‘ series, I will look at some old photos, check up Wikipedia, and ask Anna a bunch of questions, as well as try to recall whatever I can to tie up the loose ends and complete the story of what was one epic two-week getaway. As is always the case with these types of posts, there will be a ton of pictures.

Wednesday, December 30, 2015 Similar to how we had spent the previous day, Wednesday was also going to consist of walking around Mayan ruins, this time the ancient city of Tikal:

Tikal is the ruin of an ancient city, which was likely to have been called Yax Mutal, found in a rainforest in Guatemala. It is one of the largest archaeological sites and urban centers of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization. It is located in the archaeological region of the Petén Basin in what is now northern Guatemala. Situated in the department of El Petén, the site is part of Guatemala’s Tikal National Park and in 1979 it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Tikal is the best understood of any of the large lowland Maya cities, with a long dynastic ruler list, the discovery of the tombs of many of the rulers and the investigation of their monuments, temples and palaces.

Also worth noting:

There are thousands of ancient structures at Tikal and only a fraction of these have been excavated, after decades of archaeological work. The most prominent surviving buildings include six very large pyramids, labelled Temples I – VI, each of which support a temple structure on their summits. Some of these pyramids are over 60 metres (200 feet) high. They were numbered sequentially during the early survey of the site. It is estimated that each of these major temples could have been built in as little as two years.

We spent most of the day on a guided tour around Tikal. One of the highlights was when our guide told us about an area where the ancient Mayans used to play a ball game resulting in a team, sometimes the winning team, being sacrificed to the Gods:

For the Maya, human sacrifices were associated with the ball game. The game, in which a hard rubber ball was knocked around by players mostly using their hips, often had religious, symbolic or spiritual meaning. Maya images show a clear connection between the ball and decapitated heads: the balls were even sometimes made from skulls. Sometimes, a ballgame would be a sort of continuation of a victorious battle: captive warriors from the vanquished tribe or city-state would be forced to play and then sacrificed ​afterwards. A famous image carved in stone at Chichén Itzá shows a victorious ballplayer holding aloft the decapitated head of the opposing team leader.

This was our tour guide’s reasoning as to why Guatemala are terrible at football, they simply killed off all of their best players. Anyway, a bunch of photos can probably describe the place better than words can. Some of these pictures may also begin to look similar after a while, but Tikal definitely was beautiful:

Where we’d be strolling around

A scale model

These people traveled halfway around the world to take a photo with the first punk they’d ever seen

Might steer clear of there

Lemurs?

Our first pyramid

Looking down from the top

One of our tour guides

Me inside a temple

I secrete my own salt

After Tikal we showered and went back into town to grab some dinner and find a bar to kick back in. We might have washed ourselves, but we were still so sweaty that if we did tequila shots, we wouldn’t need the salt, we could just lick our arms, which is probably what I did (right).

Thursday, December 31, 2015 It was New Year’s Eve and the plan was to travel down to Guatemala City to ring in the new year, but first we went to have a look around Lake Petén Itzá, as the city of Flores, where we had stayed for the previous three nights, lies on an island near the lake’s southern shore. Once done with the lake we went to the adjacent municipality of San Benito, another small town, but this one had somehow managed to double in size over a period of 10 years! Again, we ate well, had a look around a really sad shopping mall and some markets, having our photos taken with random strangers and trying to fight the urge to buy fireworks, before stumbling upon one of the most miserable looking amusement parks I’ve ever encountered. The park had a giant billboard for the Bolontiku Boutique Hotel, a beautiful five-star resort, however, the park itself was located directly in front of Hotel Pinita (not to be confused with the far nicer Hotel Leo Y Pinita), a place that looks like the kind of motel in which hookers get murdered in seedy films and TV series’, and one which is so bad, even their Facebook page doesn’t have photos! It’s hard to tell if the amusement park was still operating, but I doubt it, either that or they haven’t had any fatalities requiring them to move to another town yet, hence why the grass was so long. We wandered around the deathtrap rollercoasters and Disney knockoff rides before stopping in at a bar prior to making our way to Guatemala City.

After a short flight and a couple of run ins with some dodgy characters we were in the squalid heart of Guatemala City, but there was a bit of a problem — It was now 9:30pm on New Year’s Eve and we were staying in what was supposed to be the safest area of the city, mainly surrounded by embassies and very little else. We found ourselves walking around looking for a bar to celebrate in, but initially with little success as the few that were there were either full or closed. At first only two options presented themselves; there was the bar in a nearby hotel, which was where we began, one that had a two-piece band and contained a combination of some lonely-looking friends of the band and a couple of elderly people who very probably were crying into their drinks, or there was the local Hooters. Yes, we almost ended up spending New Year’s Eve in a Hooters. Hey, at least we know the wings would’ve been good, but it too was closing when we arrived. We had had a great time in Antigua and wished we had just stayed there, but we eventually found ourselves in a relatively empty bar, possibly even crashing their staff party, because it seemed that everybody drinking in the room was an employee or at least dating one. One of the significant others’ of a bar employee was an osteopath from a small town in the USA whose girlfriend only spoke Spanish, thinking this gave him a licence to say whatever he wanted in English, as she had no idea what he was saying. I got talking to this douche while Anna danced with his lovely, friendly girlfriend and it turned out he was simply an awful person. I told him that we were in Guatemala for a holiday, but were traveling to Honduras so Anna and some others could perform volunteer eye surgery in a rural community where it is difficult for the citizens to seek medical attention. His response? He said he does similar mission trips, but he doesn’t see the point because you don’t know where the money goes. I tried to explain to him that that wasn’t really the point and that it was more about helping people, a statement that led to a rather loud argument and him demanding to speak to my wife about the subject instead. This was a rookie mistake on his part, because he probably assumed that not only wouldn’t Anna be able to speak English particularly well, but she must also be yet another subservient Asian woman who will just go along with whatever he says, boosting his fragile ego. However, nothing could be further from the truth — First of all, English is Anna’s first language and secondly, anyone who has ever met Anna knows she does not back down from anyone and this guy had just opened a can of whoop-ass when he asked to discuss what he thought were the cons of Anna’s biggest passion with her. She explained the auditing process that is involved with mission work, but he tried to point out that he himself was a big deal because he works with orthopaedic surgeons. He then went on to tell us in front of his oblivious girlfriend that you simply can’t help Central American people due to them being lazy and continued to use a lot of other disrespectful terms, knowing he could get away with it, because we were among the only other people in the bar that spoke English. This just triggered Anna further, igniting a heated argument between the two. By this time it was almost midnight so we counted in the new year with the staff, had a few more drinks while ignoring that particular asshole, and then made our way back to the hotel. We couldn’t have a massive night anyway, we had to fly to Honduras the next day. A look at the final day of 2015 from our perspective:

Anna on Lake Petén Itzá in front of some cool houses

One of those houses

Our view during lunch

Not a bad place to stop off as long as you don’t have a gun. That bug on my arm is enormous!

One of many sculptures scattered around San Benito

A good example of the locals in town

So many fireworks if one were so inclined

Tempting…

Anna and a pillar

A guy who makes wire ornaments in a mall that wanted a picture with me

Approaching the dilapidated amusement park

The luxurious Hotel Pinita

I like the clown at the back the best

Michael Mouse?

A good place to stop before we get on our flight

The sad hotel bar we went into first in Guatemala City

What we thought was our only other NYE option…

…until we found this

Anna dancing with the American guy’s girlfriend. Shame she had no idea he was such a prick.

Friday, January 1, 2016 It was the first day of the new year and the main purpose of our Central American journey was finally here. We’d be flying into Toncontín International Airport, located just 6km (4 miles) from the centre of Tegucigalpa, the capital city of Honduras, and the one that was ranked second on the History Channel’s Most Extreme Airports. In fact, interestingengineering.com listed Toncontín International Airport as the eighth most dangerous airport in the world due to this little tidbit:

As you may be noticing, airports in mountains become very hard to land at due to the variant terrain and often short approaches. Toncontin Airport is no different. In order for planes to prepare for the descent, they must make a quick 45-degree bank turn to reach the runway in a valley. After this bank, planes must rapidly drop in altitude, being careful not to scrape the terrain directly underneath. High altitude makes flights to this city a real challenge.

Yes, we needed to land in one of the world’s most dangerous airports from a technical standpoint to arrive in what was once the world’s most dangerous country from a murderous point of view. I’m not kidding!:

In 2012 Honduras had the highest murder rate in its history. It also had the highest murder rate in a non-war country. In 2012, 7172 homicides were recorded. On average, there were 20 homicides a day. There was a 6.2% increase in homicides compared to the previous year. 83.4% of these homicides were committed with firearms.

Between 2011 and 2015 the murder rate in Honduras decreased by 30% (rate claimed by government, not independently confirmed). Homicides went down from 88.5 per 100,000 residents to 60.0 per 100,000. Homicide rate decrease stopped in 2016 when the murder rate did not present any significant differences from 2015. In the first semester of 2016 a rate of 14 deaths per day equalled the murder rate in 2015.

Due to the high levels of impunity in the country, the majority of murders in Honduras are never punished. In recent years only 4% of homicides have ended in a conviction. The lack of justice has produced a lack of trust in the police and other authority figures, which is not good for creating civic participation.

That’s crazy for country of just over nine million people. To put those numbers in perspective, in 2012 Honduras averaged 20 homicides per day, whereas in the last count done in 2016, Singapore had 18 (0.32 per 100,000 people) and Australia had 227 (0.94 per 100,000 people) for the entire year! Even the USA’s most recent murder rate was only 5.35 per 100,000 people, compared to Honduras’ then 88.5 per 100,000 people! At least the Honduran government had claimed the murder rate had gone down by 30% by the time we arrived, but that was only factoring in residents, however, tourists are also a big target as well due to the poverty in Honduras, along with gang problems. We weren’t going to be spending our time in Tegucigalpa though, we were going down to the city of San Lorenzo, just 34 km (21 miles) from the border with El Salvador, the newly crowned first-place on the murder poll, although with a percentage still slightly below Honduras’ personal best just a couple of years prior. Anyway, enough about the killing, let’s find out a bit more about our home for the next five nights, San Lorenzo:

San Lorenzo is a municipality in the Honduran department of Valle.

The city was established by Spaniards as a village in 1522 but not granted city status until 1909. It is the primary Honduran port on the Pacific coast and lies on the Pan American Highway.

According to the 2001 Honduran National Census, San Lorenzo is the 20th largest city with a population of 21,043. According to census, the population was divided between 19 colonias and barrios. It had a population of 15,294 in 1988 and 9,467 in 1974.

This mission trip was organised through Surgical Eye Expeditions (SEE) International, a nonprofit organisation based out of Santa Barbara, California, and they arranged all of the accommodation and transport from Tegucigalpa to San Lorenzo, as well as within San Lorenzo to the hospital, complete with an armed detail. That’s right, nobody was allowed to travel anywhere without the company of several guys with machine guns. I’m not sure what time we arrived in Tegucigalpa, but by 4:30pm we were on the road and were on our way to San Lorenzo

Saturday, January 2, 2016 On the first day of volunteering they needed as many people as they could find to get down to the hospital early in the morning and help set up. This is an area whose economy is based around the seafood industry and agriculture, particularly fruit, but it’s difficult to make a living from fishing or farming if your eyesight isn’t the best so it was absolute madness when we arrived, with hundreds of people that were seeking help barely kept from storming the hospital early in the day by even more armed guards already in place. Take a look at the mayhem:

In the van on the way to the hospital

Our first glance of the waiting crowd from the van

A few more patients than expected, probably should set up as quickly as possible

Arranging lenses

Sticking up eye charts

The view from the inside

Almost done

Time to let them in slowly

Anna, Fatimah, and the crew trying to keep some semblance of order

One of the older patients (not the last time you’ll see her)…

…and her husband

Some weren’t doing so well

The scene out the door to the left…

…and to the right

Even the administration work was stressful!

Vision test

Another of the many volunteers

Anna doing her thing

These guys were the only thing stopping the hospital being overrun

Keeping things civil outside

It wasn’t a lot of fun for those that had to wait out in the heat

Anna conducting more vision tests

Fatimah doing similar work

Sunday, January 3, 2016 – Wednesday, January 6, 2016 The rest of days at the hospital followed a similar pattern, but also with patients from the previous day returning for checkups or to have the other eye worked on if a procedure were necessary. The only difference was that for the final two days I wasn’t permitted to travel to the hospital, despite the fact that I had made myself available to run errands or do any labouring work that was needed, due to the fact that leaving the resort where we were all staying was deemed an unnecessary safety risk for me. Instead, I was forced to stay back with nothing much else to pass the time but to kick back with a book, which was fine by me, but I did spend most of that time just hoping in the back of my mind that everyone got back safely, relieved when I heard the van arrive home each evening.

The people at SEE International did a fantastic job organising this mission trip, but I did have one major problem with the whole thing; a lot of the American non-medical volunteers and fundraisers who were present for the trip in San Lorenzo, but spent all day kicking back at the resort, were devout Christians from the same church and also appeared to be spoilt trust fund kids. None of them were struggling for cash. Lunch was a standard meal at the resort and supplied to the volunteers at the hospital, but a buffet of home-cooked food was provided for dinner at the resort every night, generally an hour or so before any of the volunteers or guards had returned back from an extremely tiring and busy day of free labour. I saw on the final nights that before each dinner they would say grace, saying how they were doing God’s work and thus they were blessed with the bounty they were about to consume, and went on to eat almost all of the food, leaving hardly anything for the people who were really getting their hands dirty when they returned from the hospital! It was disgusting. At least on the final night they took everyone else out for dinner and drinks to thank all of the surgeons for their hard work in improving the lives of many Hondurans who normally couldn’t access or afford the help they received. Some more photos from those final days in San Lorenzo, Honduras:

They seem pleased with the results

Anna and Fatimah take a lot of pride in doing this type of thing

Anna checking up on the previous day’s procedure

Some more people back for checkups

And more

I think that was intended for her eye

Another satisfied customer

There were still a lot waiting outside each day

Definitely meets the criteria for being a wheelchair

The local media interviewing some patients

A typical lunch for the volunteers

These guys were literal lifesavers, it all would’ve been a lot scarier without them around

Finally time to unwind

The view from our restaurant on the last night

Everyone involved having dinner

Sorting out what needed to be returned and what could be chucked out before heading back to the US

On the way back to Tegucigalpa

Outside Toncontín International Airport

The final leg of this particular trip was an unusual one — Checking out ancient ruins is always fun, especially in a place like Tikal, we had one of our most anti-climactic New Year’s Eves ever in Guatemala City, and doing volunteer work in Honduras was at times terrifying, but ultimately satisfying, something that couldn’t have been achieved without the hardworking people at SEE International.

I finally got around to writing about the sole reason we went to Honduras three and a half years ago I have finally got around to wrapping up a journey that I had already written three pieces about previously, but this post contains the sole purpose for that particular trip -- Anna, her friend and colleague Fatimah Gilani, myself, and some other volunteers going on a mission trip to provide free eye surgery for people in a reasonably remote area of Honduras.