Erin O'Riordan writes smart, whimsical erotica. Her erotic romance novel trilogy, Pagan Spirits, is now available. With her husband, she also writes crime novels. Visit her home page at ko-fi.com.
(I know they're silly, but I absolutely love the retro-style, patriotic pin-ups. See this post for other examples.)
In the U.S., we call November 11th "Veterans Day," and in Canada it's known as "Remembrance Day." For a lovely Remembrance Day post that incorporated Canadian poet John McCrae's immortal World War I poem "In Flanders Field," please visit Mumfection. I'd like to extend a heartfelt thank you to all U.S., Canadian and allied veterans for their service to our way of life.
My husband, Tit Elingtin, is a Navy veteran, and so is my Uncle Lee. So was my grandfather, who was wounded at Pearl Harbor when he was a mere 17 years old. Actually, both of my grandfathers served in the Navy in WWII. My mom's dad once told me his military job was to "sit at a desk and smoke cigarettes," but I'm certain there's much more to the story than that. I believe my mom's dad served in the European theater.
I was thinking about my mom's late father, Marion (known within the family as Blackie because of his black hair and relatively dark complexion; he was of Russian and Polish descent), when Tit and I went to a family wedding on Saturday. My grandfather's older brother Joseph, who's been deceased for many years, has a grandson named Adam, and Adam married a woman named Andrea. Now that Andrea has my grandfather's last name, her married name is the same as my mom's maiden name, since my mom is also named Andrea. (Different middle names, though.)
Andrea and Adam had a photobooth at the their wedding. I added the hearts on PicMonkey.
Appropriately enough, Veterans Day is also the birthday of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. The author was born in Indianapolis in 1922. Sadly, he is no longer with us. Vonnegut was an army veteran who survived the firebombing of Dresden, Germany, by British troops. He turned this horrifying experience into the brilliant novel Slaughterhouse-Five. It remains one of the best war novels ever.
Of course, I also highly recommend reading James Jones' war trilogy. From Here to Eternity tells you what it's like when a war is imminent, The Thin Red Line tells you what it's like to be in the middle of a war, and Whistle tells you about the after-effects. I can't recommend it highly enough.
Hopping by from the Evernight Publishing Birthday Blog Hop? See this post.
October 12, as you know, is Columbus Day. I'm going to ask you all to do something, not for me but for yourselves - read Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen. (It'll be interesting, but less immediately relevant, to you if you live outside the U.S.) It was first published in 1995, but it's about history, and I doubt very much has changed in that academic field in the intervening 17 years. Read the book and you'll discover why.
I "read" this book (listened to it on CD) probably 8-9 years ago, and two things always stick with me. One is that the U.S. Republican party has historically been the proponent of human rights in a way that seems the polar opposite of the party's current incarnation. The other is that Christopher Columbus' "discovery" of America led to events so horrifying, they make Dick Cheney seem like a humanitarian. If Ann Rule had been alive in 1492, she would have been writing true crime books about Columbus.
I'm going to share excerpts from this book. I know Christopher Columbus was said to be a native of Genoa, Italy (it can't actually be proven), and is a folk hero of many Italian-Americans. I promise you, I am not trying to pick on Italy or people of Italian descent. I love you; you're pretty. (See Wednesday's post.)
BUT you don't want to associate yourselves with Columbus. He was not a good guy. This is graphic, so sensitive readers may not wish to continue.
Using materials written by Columbus himself and other first-hand sources from the fifteenth century, Loewen writes:
"When Columbus and his men returned to Haiti in 1493, they demanded food, gold, spun cotton - whatever the Indians had that they wanted, including sex with their women. To ensure cooperation, Columbus used punishment by example. When an Indian committed even a minor offense, the Spanish cut off his ears or nose."
Quoting a biography written by Columbus' son Ferdinand on the quashing of a rebellion against the Spanish by the Arawak people: "The soldiers mowed down dozens with point-blank volleys, loosed the dogs to rip open limbs and bellies, chased fleeing Indians into the bush to skewer them on sword and pike..."
"Spaniards hunted Indians for sport and murdered them for dog food."
"Haiti under the Spanish is one of the primary instances of genocide in all human history."
"Columbus not only sent the first [American Indian] slaves across Atlantic, he probably send more slaves - about five thousand - than any other individual." When large numbers of American Indian slaves died of starvation, overwork, suicide and disease, the Spanish simply looked to African slaves to replace them.
"A particularly repellent aspect of the slave trade was sexual. As soon as the 1493 expedition got to the Caribbean, before it even reached Haiti, Columbus was rewarding his lieutenants with native women to rape. On Haiti, sex slaves were one more perquisite that the Spaniards enjoyed. Columbus wrote a friend in 1500, 'A hundred castellanoes are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand.'"
There you have it, in Columbus' own words even. He literally believed that he had the right to do whatever he pleased to people who were non-Catholic. Their refusal to accept the Spaniards' "faith" justified everything, according to the cultural ethos of the time. The sex trafficking of 9- and 10-year-old children didn't bother Columbus. Dismemberment didn't bother him. Murder didn't bother him. Genocide didn't bother him.
So now I hope you see why if we're going to observe Columbus Day in the U.S., we might as well observe Slobodan Milosevic Day, too. Read Lies My Teacher Told Me. It's disturbing, and sometimes we should be disturbed.
Hopping by from the Evernight Publishing Birthday Blog Hop? See this post.
In the U.S., Monday was the national holiday observing Columbus Day, but I don't celebrate that. I'll tell you very specifically why, with the aid of a book by James Loewen, on the actual holiday, October 12th. This post is just for fun. This is where I'd normally hook up Oh, How Pinteresting!
According to a skit on the long-ago MTV sketch comedy program The State, Christopher Columbus was internationally world-famous for beating up anyone who wasn't Italian on his holiday. I would be in line for a beat-down. I don't even have a little Italian in me.
That doesn't mean I don't want some. Yeah, I totally meant that dirty. So get your little passports, 'cause we're going to Little Italy.
Milo Ventimiglia is from a multicultural background - some Italian (Sicilian, I believe) and also some French and American Indian. Everybody loves Milo. He'll make excellent vampire bait in Kiss of the Damned, and he almost kissed semi-werewolf Jesse Eisenberg in Cursed. If only he were gay in real life - Milo V. and Zachary Quinto would be the cutest couple ever.
Zachary Quinto is Italian and Irish, which is almost as good a combination as Irish and Jewish, in this Irish-American woman's opinion. The chocolate-brown eyes? Unnf. They melt me.
This Adriatic beauty is Joe Calderone. Who is also Lady Gaga. Who is also Stephani Joanne Angelina Germanotta.
This is Joe Manganiello. He plays the werewolf Alcide Herveaux on True Blood. You may remember him from last Halloween season's Werewolf Wednesday or from his gig playing a stripper named Big Dick Richie in Magic Mike.
This one is David Giuntoli. He plays Nick Burkhardt, the Portland, Oregon, police detective on Grimm. Grimm is my replacement for Heroes, and Giuntoli is my new Milo Ventimiglia. Except that while Sylar made clock repair look creepy on Heroes, Monroe makes it look pretty normal again on Grimm - even though Monroe is a blutbad/werewolf. But a mostly-good one.
Then there was Peter Facinelli. Quoth Alexandra O'Hurley, "he was NOT meant to be a blonde," and it's true he's a complete hottie as a brunette. But he's Carlisle fucking Cullen. So I tells Alex, I says, "As a Twilight fan who likes her vampires noble, I so wanna get Carlisle in the sunlight and watch him sparkle, baby!"
I think Carlisle Cullen is my perfect fictional husband, actually. I also have this theory that Carlisle and Esme are secretly really wild in bed, wilder than Emmett and Rosalie. Same deal Molly and Arthur Weasley, 'cause the Demeter-esque mother-goddess archetype is perfectly comfortable with her sexuality. Ambiguously Italian-American: Jim Caviezel
I called him Italian in the Epic Easter Post, going on IMDB's suggestion that his unusual surname is of an Alps Italian dialect. Wikipedia says Swiss, BUT Swiss people come in a variety of French-speaking, German-speaking and, yes, Italian-speaking ethnic varieties. The last names suggests Swiss nationality, Italian ethnicity. Does he get his ass kicked on Columbus Day? Well, no, 'cause he's a total BAMF and he'd kneecap anyone who tried.
Totally, unambiguously Irish-American on his mom's side, though. (Those "dorky" sweaters? Hella expensive imported Irish wool, and a total Celtic pride thing. He also rocks the flat tweed cap like nobody's business.) So if I can't count him for Columbus Day, we'll still have St. Patrick's Day.
These are a few of my favorite people of Italian descent. On the 12th, remember that I said nice (or at least respectfully lustful) things about them. "Respectful lust" is totally a thing.
Happy Memorial Day! We celebrate it happily, because it's a federal holiday and some people get the day off from work, but actually, we're remembering the ones who died in defense of the country. It's a solemn occasion.
We have no war dead in my family. As I may have blogged once or several times before, my grandfather, at the age of 17, was at Pearl Harbor when it was bombed. He was wounded, and then, with the small amount of medical training he had as a pharmacist's assistant, he helped attend the wounded. After World War II, he stayed in the Navy, and also served in the Korean War. He passed away in 1994, in between my junior and senior years of high school - which is to say, when I was at the age he was when he survived Pearl Harbor.
Now let's go a little retro. I kinda already used this idea for Veteran's Day 2011, but that was before I had the aid of Pinterest.
Boys can be pin-ups, too. Oh god, the abs.
I'm loving these fishnets. (It's really too bad that the "pin-it" button covers up the young lady's face. Sorry about that.)
The fourth one, Jo-Ann, makes me laugh, because no woman sits like that, except while doing yoga.
Forgive a chick for being in crazy Catholic schoolgirl lust, but here Jim Caviezel is wearing Navy camo. I'm not entirely sure why - he did some Navy SEAL training or something.
...and of course he also played my fictional Memorial Day army boyfriend, Private Bob Witt from James Jones' novel. All I really want is to be the nurse who stitches up the gash on Witt's cheek when he gets drunk and cuts his face on a rock. Maybe while he's sleeping off his drunk, the hospital unit needs the bed for a more severe case, and I have to wake him up and send him back to his unit. Outside the door, I examine his face one more time, checking my stitches. I tell him not to shave for a few days and ask him if he's in any pain. He answers with a rather lewd suggestion, something like, "My face don't hurt, but I got this other ache you could take care of..."
Sidebar: In the movie, when Witt tells First Lieutenant Welsh, "I'm twice the man you are," I think he means to tell Welsh that he refuses to be humiliated by Welsh's punishment of busting him down to the disciplinary unit. However, I am imagining an alternative interpretation of this statement; see also In Which the Term "13-Inch" Is Thrown About Shamelessly.
I tell him I'm not that kind of girl, but eventually, after we've seen each other around a few times and know each other a little better, his rough-hewn Kentucky charm starts to wear me down. If I'm in a HEA type of mood, maybe we're even reunited when we get back to the U.S. (In the movie, Witt sacrifices himself, but at the end of the book version, Witt is alive.) Maybe, even though my character is from the Bronx or Boston or some such, she moves to Kentucky to be with him and they live on a farm and have babies.
As a literary exercise, it would be interesting to revisit a Jones novel from a female character's perspective. I think the only female character in The Thin Red Line is Bell's wife, Marty, and she's back in the States. All we know of her comes from Bell's memory and her Dear John letter.
But if I had to choose a back-up fictional army boyfriend, it would definitely be Logan Thibault.
Today, April 24th, is St. Mark's Eve. St. Mark's Eve is one of three traditional "Spirit Nights," along with All Hallows Eve (Halloween) and St. John's Eve (Midsummer Eve). The spirit nights are all associated with divination - the veil between the seen and unseen worlds is at its thinnest. In that spirit, I present this early Halloween guest post.
Now, without further adieu, your guest blog post by Katherine Cao:
Each time when Halloween approaches, kids will be too impatient to wait. They will put on colorful costumes and fantastic masks. They carry Jack O' Lantern and ask gifts from adults. Here, some unique DIY foods for this festival are collected. Designers are concentrated on their appearance and also taste. To delight your kids, why not try a DIY food? It will undoubtedly enhance the atmosphere of the festival :D!
Top 1: Grimace Biscuit
Required materials: one egg, granulated sugar (40g) and some starch.
Step 1: break the egg into a certain container.
Step 2: add a few starches. Then, pour granulated sugar into the container three times. Blend them.
Step 3: a pastry tube is needed here. Squeeze out above mixed item onto the baking paper via the pastry tube. Since the food is designed for Halloween, you need to squeeze the mixed item to be round and ghost-shaped. How large should the biscuit be? Of course, this depends on you.
Step 4: preheat the oven to be 100 degree and bake the biscuit for 70 to 80 minutes. Actually speaking, you won’t bake the biscuit, but dry them by hot wind.
Step 5: after baking, draw ghost or any other evil on each biscuit by chocolate. Certainly, you can also draw various patterns lover by your kids. Moms, just explore your mind.
PS: biscuit after being drawn with ghost should be stocked in a refrigerator because it easily absorbs moisture. Aside from this, it may become soft and sticky when the temperature rises. At last, kids are not recommended to eat too many these biscuits because they have too much sugar.
Top 2: Pumpkin Porridge
Required materials: shrimp meat, green pea, two eggs, two pumpkins, salt, starch, soup stock, pepper powder and sesame oil.
Step 1: wash the shrimp meat and wipe it. Add two spoons of egg white, salt and starch. Pickle it for about 10 minutes.
Step 2: cut off the top of the pumpkin and use the cut part as the cover later. Draw out all seeds and cover it via a plastic wrap. Put them into the microwave over and heat them for 4 minutes.
Step 3: three bowls of soup stock will be needed. Boil them and put in green pea. After boiling, put in shrimp meat and boil them.
Step 4: break the egg into the soul and add starch. Then, salt, pepper powder, chicken powder and sesame oil need to be put in too.
Step 5: scoop out the boiled item and load them into the pumpkin.
PS: while heating the pumpkin, be careful about the temperature in the microwave oven. If you are not sure about this, heat it gradually please.
Top 3: Witch Finger Biscuit
Required materials: unsalted butter (220g), berry sugar, one egg, almond extract, vanilla extract, flour, baking powder, salt and almond (it’s used to make the nail. There should be one almond for each finger. It’s okay to use skinless almond or almond tablets.
Step 1: the unsalted butter should be softened under room temperature. After softening, add sugar, egg, almond extract and vanilla extract. Use a stand mixer to blend them.
Step 2: mix flour, salt and baking powder. Then, pour them into the butter. Since the machine is in service, you can adjust the speed to be low. Sure, you can do this by hands too. Just mix the flour with butter. But you will need to knead the dough arduously.
Step 3: take out the mixed item from the container and load them into taker-bag. A paste forms then. Put it into the refrigerator for over 30 minutes. In this case, the paste will become hard and form.
Step 4: take out the paste from the refrigerator. Get the almond ready and find a small spoon.
Step 5: scoop a small spoon of paste and twist it to be a long strip, which should be as long as a finger. You are suggested to make the strip slimmer than a finger since it will become larger while being baked.
Step 6: get an almond and embed it into the finger. So, the nail is finished.
Step 7: pinch the nail slightly. It’s better to use a knife or spoon to make some “ruffles” on the nail.
Step 8: when all nails are completed, put them into the ovenware with baking paper.
Step 9: preheat the microwave oven to be 165 degree. And bake the biscuit in it for about 20 to 25 minutes.
To scare your friends by a biscuit with a ghost face on it and then invite them to enjoy your DIY food is absolutely a good idea. Do you also like it? Katherine shares you many other food or costume ideas on her site. Pay her a visit now?
Happy Easter! It's also Pesach (Passover); tonight will be the second seder night.
Some may think that because my blog is called Pagan Spirits, I must not celebrate Easter or believe in Jesus, but this is not the case. I was raised Catholic, you know. Now when I want to go to church, I go to Episcopalian services, because I kind of fell in love with the Church of England's American sister. Just 'cause I'm a witch doesn't mean I don't love Jesus.
No, really, you can do that - ask Joan Borysenko. She wrote a fabulous, amazing book called A Woman's Journey to God.
On pages 218-226 of this book, Borysenko writes the passage that gave me a new appreciation of Yeshua bar Yahosef (Jesus, son of Joseph, in Hebrew) as the mythological archetype of the Annually Dying and Returning Vegetation God, like Tammuz, Osiris or Dionysus. Based on the work of Margaret Starbird, the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail (the same book on which The Da Vinci Code is partially based) and her own imagination, Borysenko created "Jesus and Mary: Partners in the Hieros Gamos."
Heiros gamos, as readers of The Da Vinci Code know, is Greek for "sacred marriage," a sexual rite in which the woman represents the Goddess and the man represents a male God. Borysenko envisions Mary of Magdala (Magdala being Hebrew for "watchtower") as a zonah, a word that means both prophetess and "prostitute." Not "prostitute" literally in the sense that they took money, but they had sex with the various worshipers who came to the temple. In modern Hebrew usage, "zonah" also means Jewish woman who has sex with non-Jewish men.
Mary Magdalene was a priestess of the Mother Goddess. In Borysenko's telling, Jesus comes to the temple of the Goddess, called Esther. Esther is a form of the goddess-name Asherah, or Ishtar. When the young priestess Mary reached a mature age, she and Jesus made the sacred marriage. It's a beautiful story.
Jesus is the archetypal solstice-born male god who becomes the consort of the Goddess, delights her with lovemaking, dies and goes to the Underworld and then is reborn to start the whole process anew.
In The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, Barbara G. Walker links Esther/Asherah/Ishtar with other Near Eastern goddesses, including Egyptian Isis (called Star of the Sea, a title also applied to Mary the mother of Jesus - Key West has a Catholic church called Mary Star of the Sea), Indian Kali and Astarte. Astarte was called Queen of Heaven, where she kept the souls of the dead in the form of the stars. She is recalled in the Bible in Jeremiah 44:19:
"And," said the women, "when we were burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven and were pouring out drink offerings to her, was it without our husbands that we made for her sacrificial cakes in her image and poured out drink offerings to her?"
"Esther" is the Hebrew word for "star," and Walker contends the Biblical Esther celebrated at Purim is a version of Ishtar; Mordecai is Ishtar's consort Marduk. In this version of the myth, rather than Marduk/Mordecai being personally sacrified, a proxy is accepted in his place - Haman.
The virgin form of the mother goddess is Mari, and it is no coincidence that the mother of Jesus and the bride of Jesus have the same name. In the ancient Near Eastern legend, the Goddess is both mother and lover, the young God both son and lover in a never-ending yearly cycle of sacrifice and rebirth. It's an extended metaphor for the yearly cycle of the seasons and the crops, so try not to be too freaked out by the incestuous implications. The son is the grain-seed that has to be buried in the earth (his mother) and "die" so he can sprout/be reborn and we can eat.
For an alternate literary version of the son-lover's sacrifice, see "The Sacrifice" in The Virago Book of Erotic Myths and Legends by Shahrukh Husain.
I said in a previous Easter post that the name of Ostara, a Germanic goddess said to be the origin of the name "Easter," may not be historically accurate. This is still true, although I will point out that Walker traces "Ostara" to "Astarte."
In a movie by A Douchebag Who Shall Not Be Named During Passover, this is Jesus.
http://pinterest.com/pin/46936021088155415/
This gorgeous Italian-American is Jim Caviezel, and he's who I'm imagining when I'm envisioning the sacred marriage of Jesus and Mary. (We won't get into the whole issue of why Hollywood likes Jews to be played by Italians; that's a rant for another day.) Your image of Jesus may vary.
It could be Christian Bale in Mary, Mother of Jesus. But it could be.
"Crucified" - cover by German Goth-rock band Atargatis - appropriately, named for the Syrian mother-goddess, the mother/lover of Mithras according to Husain
"Judas" - Lady Gaga as an Italian-American Mary Magdalene - wouldn't she go great with Jim Caviezel as Jesus?
This may come as a shock, but St. Patrick wasn’t born in Ireland. He was born in Scotland around the year 387, in a colony of the Roman empire. Both of his parents were Roman citizens. At 14, he was kidnapped by a raiding party, taken to Ireland and forced to work as a shepherd. His masters were Druids, practitioners of the ancient Celtic religion. Christianity had already been introduced to Ireland, but it hadn’t really caught on yet.
Patrick’s captivity lasted until he was about 20, when he escaped and returned to his family. However, he felt a spiritual calling to return to Ireland as a missionary. He died there in about 461, after 40 years of preaching and performing miracles. He’s said to have used the shamrock to teach the idea of the Trinity (the idea of God as being the Father, Son and Holy Spirit all in one).
Pagan lore claims that “Saint Patrick” is a myth, a Christianized reference to another Trinity: the Morrigan, the Irish triple goddess composed of maiden Brigit, mother Babd and death-aspect Macha. (Macha is the bean-sidhe, the woman of the fairy-mound, better known as the banshee.) Patrick was the mythical young warrior who was annually wedded to Brigit, then sacrificed to the Morrigan, only to rise again the following year to have the whole cycle start over. Brigit was Christianized as St. Brigid of Kildare, a nun who founded Ireland’s first convent near the place where the priestesses of Brigid once tended a sacred fire.
In Ireland, the saint’s day is observed as a religious holiday, with charity shows, parades and church services. In the U.S., community celebrations of St. Patrick’s Day originated in Boston, which boasts a large number of Irish-Americans. It’s New York City, though, that holds the oldest St. Patrick’s Day parade; the tradition began in 1762.
No one knows exactly who poured the first green beer, but Chicago has dyed its river green every year since 1962. They use enough biodegradable, vegetable-based dye to keep the green color visible for one day. Favorite activities on St. Patrick’s Day include cooking Irish foods like colcannon, listening to Irish music, and learning Gaeilge words.
The Irish Language
Gaeilge, Anglicized as “Gaelic,” refers to a group of closely related languages native to Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man (where the language is called Manx). Other Celtic languages, including Welsh and Cornish, are more distantly related. Some Gaeilge phrases:
Carve out a hole in a potato large enough to hold a shot glass. Place shot glass in potato. Pour Bushmill’s whiskey into shot glass. Float potato in pint glass of Guinness stout. Spit in drink and serve.
Some Irish People I Love
1. William Butler Yeats
Yes, his father was English, but his mother was Irish, and he was born in County Dublin.
"He Wishes for the Clothes of Heaven"
"Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."
2. Dolores O'Riordan. No relation (that I know of - we could be distant cousins). This Limerick-born rocker chick may have made her fame in '90s fronting The Cranberries, but to this day she's considered one of the 10 richest women in Ireland. You go, girl!
3. Bram Stoker
What vampire lover doesn't appreciate the first real master of the vampire novel? I've read Abraham Stoker's best-known novel, originally published in 1897, twice. He was born in Clontarf (a district of northern Dublin).
Ellen Barkin's baby daddy is one of the Irish dudes I'd most like to see lewd. All I have to say to impress you is "He played Keaton in The Usual Suspects," but he's done so much more than that. His two most Celtic-inspired films are Into the West and Excalibur. He studied archaeology before becoming an actor and speaks Spanish fluently. Byrne was born in Dublin.
Also appearing in Excalibur, Neeson is from Ballymena, Northern Ireland (like my Irish ancestors, who came from Derry). All I have to say to impress you is "He played the title role in Schindler's List." Well, he played Oskar Schindler, not the list, but you get the idea. He's done so many great things, from the voice of Aslan in the Chronicles of Narnia films to that fight with Christian Bale in Batman Begins to his guest appearance as a Catholic priest on The Simpsons.
I always imagine Neeson and Byrne as having something of a friendly rivalry because Byrne, as Lord Byron, kissed Neeson's wife Natasha Richardson (as Mary Shelley) in Gothic.
Welcome, repeat and new readers of Pagan Spirits alike! Today is the first day of the beautiful month of March, which always excites this Irish-American girl. This week, I'll be participating in the "Get 100 Blog Post Comments" event hosted by Blogelina.
The Pagan Spirits blogging schedule:
Are you a Pinterest pinhead? Stop by Pagan Spirits on Mondays for Blue Monday. I'll share some of the images from my "I've Got the Blues" board around a theme.
Are you an author? Would you like to share about a work in progress? Stop by Pagan Spirits on WIP Wednesday! I'd love to have some new WIP Wednesday guest authors, and you can read about what I'm writing.
Speaking of guest authors, on March 13th I'll be welcoming PM Terrell. She'll be talking about her book Vickie's Key and some real-life psychic warriors.
My guest on the 20th will be Diva Jefferson, with an excerpt from her historical romance novel, To Love an Irishman.
On March 24th, my guest author will be Julianne Snow, who writes zombie horror fiction.
Do you ever need a chance to dump your thoughts out onto the page? If so, you'll want to stop by Pagan Spirits on Sunday. I hook up with the blog hop hosted by AllThingsFadra for Stream of Consciousness Sunday. Fadra provides the prompt - all you have to do is free write for 5 minutes and link up.
This SOC Sunday post is about Whitney Houston's passing, and how tough it is to love somebody with a drug problem.
Are there any Twilight fans in the house? (You probably guessed I was a Twilight fan by my Breaking Dawn Pt. 2 countdown widget.) Then you may be gearing up to celebrate St. Marcus Day on the 19th - don't forget to wear your red!
Have you ever wondered how much of St. Marcus Day was fact, and what was fiction? Read this post.
The Vampires for Valentines giveaway post is HERE.
Random.org declares the winner of the Romancing the Book paperback giveaway to be...Anne! Congratulations. I'll be contacting you by e-mail to get your address!
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Happy Lupercalia! To me, nothing says Valentine's Day like chocolate. I'm good with a Ritter Sport hazelnut bar, but for fancy Valentine's Day gift-giving, these chocolates are a girl's second-best friend. After words, of course. I love you, words.
Guylian Belgian chocolate seashells. I actually associate these with Christmas, since that was when my Catholic-of-Jewish-descent grandmother would order these delicacies, considered some of the finest Belgian chocolates. The company donates a portion of its profits to Project Seahorse, which supports ocean conservation.
Ethical Ocean Madagascar chocolate. This award-winning chocolate bar is made with 70% organic ingredients. If that wasn't good enough, it's also fair-trade chocolate; the farmers who produced the organic ingredients earned a fair wage.
Dagoba Organic Chocolate. These bars come in flavors including Eclipse (barely sweetened), New Moon, lavender blueberry and lemon ginger. Prefer to drink your chocolate? Dagoba's drink mixes come in flavors including chocolate chai and xocolatl, the latter of which is flavored with chilies.
Seattle Chocolates. If you like variety, you'll love the selection of specialty truffle bars from this company. They include:
*Pike Place Espresso
*Cappuccino Crunch
*Birthday Cake
*Coconut Macaroon
*Rainier Cherry
*San Juan Sea Salt
Want organic AND fair trade AND an espresso flavor? Then the Equal Exchange Co-Op is there for you.
If you're looking for something different from chocolate bars and hot chocolate mixes, try the Guthrie's Original Sin in a Tin chocolate pate dessert. It's all-natural, and it actually comes in a tin. So does Guthrie's Original Lemon Lust lemon crisp tart. The chocolate pate has a unique texture, and can be served hot or cold, by itself or spread on fruit or cookies.
Any one of these cocoa-rich offerings would make an excellent sacrifice to Juno Februata. They could also make me very, very happy.
Seahorse, Turneffe Islands, Belize. Image taken by Clark Anderson/www.aquaimages.net. Creative Commons license.
Today marks the first day of the Chinese New Year, and it is now the Year of the Dragon according to the Chinese zodiac.
There are five different kinds of Years of the Dragon: Earth, Fire, Metal, Water and Wood. 2012 is a Year of the Water Dragon; the previous Year of the Dragon, in 2000, was Metal. Metal dragons are the strongest of all dragons, so people born in 2000 (Chinese astrology goes) are natural-born leaders. Those born in the year of the water dragon (the last cohort was born in 1952, the year both of my parents were born) are calm and take a balanced approach to life, seeing things from multiple points of view.
All dragons, including those born in '64, '76 and '88, are said to be hard-working and independent. They'll help you, but rarely ask for any help in return. They may have colorful personalities that attract others to them, but deep down, all dragons prefer to be alone.
It may help to know that in East Asia, dragons are rarely vilified as they are in Western culture. According to David Colbert's The Magical Worlds of Harry Potter, Asian dragons are typically benevolent, "though sometimes bossy." One such benevolent dragon is Haku in Spirited Away.
The West is coming around to the idea that dragons might be misunderstood creatures, though. The wizards and witches in J.K. Rowling's novels consider them worthy of study, and they're appalled at the mistreatment of the Gringott's dragon. (Some might still call the use of dragons in the Triwizard Tournament rather exploitative.) Christopher Paolini's Inheritance series, Patricia C. Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles and Cressida Cowell's How to Train Your Dragon series all feature heroic dragons.
Dragon shape-shifters are also counted among the immortal hotties in Gena Showalter and Jill Monroe's Dating the Undead, a comic guide to vampires, zombies and other immortals out there in the dating pool.
Katie MacAlister, who was born in the 1964 Year of the Dragon, has written not one, not two, but three paranormal romance series featuring dragon shifters (technically, they share the same general cast of characters and take place in the same world): the Aisley Grey, Guardian series, the Silver Dragons series and the Light Dragons series. A dragon shifter tale called "Perils of Effrijim" appears in the anthology Death's Excellent Vacation.
1964 was the Year of the Wood Dragon, and appropriately, wood dragons are highly creative and must express their artistic side.
Just don't be like Homer Simpson. If a dragon asks for your airline peanuts, give him or her the entire bag - or you'll break the dragon's heart. The dragons will cry rainbow tears and sing about it accompanied by a traditional Chinese stringed instrument (the erhu).
The Scots invented the modern-day celebration of New Year's Eve, from "Auld Lang Syne" to the big disco ball. In Scotland, New Year's Eve is called Hogmanay.
The word's origins are obscure; it may be of Celtic, Norman (French) or Anglo-Saxon origin. The nearest Gaelic term is oge maidne, or "new morning." Large Hogmanay festivals are now held in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling.
"Auld Lang Syne" is often attributed to the Scottish poet Robert Burns, but Burns was only transcribing and adding to an existing folk song. Translated from the Scots dialect into everyday modern English, "Auld Lang Syne" means "old long since." In Scottish folk tales, "In the days of auld lang syne" takes the place of "once upon a time," and "for auld lang syne" could be restated as "for old times' sake."
The big disco ball is a modern descendant of the fireballs traditionally swung on Hogmanay. This tradition has its roots in pagan bonfire nights, also observed at Samhain and Beltane. The light wards off evil spirits and encourages the days to get longer. You'll see men carrying a 20-pound fireball attached to a 5-foot pole in Aberdeen's southern neighbor, Stonehaven. The fireball's traditional name is the Clavie.
Hogmanay is also celebrated with the custom of first footing. The first person to set foot through your door on the new year should be a tall, dark male. (Blonds, associated with the Viking invaders, were bad luck.) Traditionally, he would bear gifts of coal, whisky and black bun (a really heavy Scottish fruit cake) or another kind of cake. In eastern Scotland's fishing communities, he may also bring herring. Coal meant the house would stay warm for the coming year, and food gifts meant the house would not go hungry.
(Hogmanay 2007 in Biggar - by David Hamilton, Creative Commons)
Clement A. Miles writes in Christmas Customs and Traditions, "Drinking is and was a great feature of the Scottish New Year Eve."
During the Protestant Reformation years when celebrating Christmas was discouraged, Hogmanay became the gift-exchanging day in Scottish custom. Scottish children chose Hogmanay rather than Christmas Eve to go door to door wassailing - a begging custom that will remind Americans of trick-or-treating. Welsh kids carry a gray mare, but the old Scottish wassailing custom is for the leader of each group of children to dress in a sheepskin.
Hogmanay has its own website. This one is specific to Edinburgh Hogmanay.
Rather than a Yule tree, I like to put up a large wreath, wrapped in lights and garlands, then suspended from the ceiling. I have a theme to many of my Yule ornaments. Many of them have to do with my favorite children's books.
First, there's Hedwig. She was a gift from the aunt and uncle who got me started on Harry Potter in the first place.
Did you know that J.K. Rowling chose the name Hedwig for the beautiful white owl because St. Hedwig is the Catholic patron saint of orphans?
Here are a few of my many Alice in Wonderland collectibles. I have many different editions of this book, one of my all-time favorites. I even brought back Alicia en el Pais de las Maravillas from Madrid.
A couple of my ornaments are from Dr. Seuss stories. The little bell has The Grinch and his dog Max on it, and the silver one is either Thing One or Thing Two from The Cat in the Hat. I've also included the adorable Pat the Bunny ornament - this was quite possibly my first favorite book.
I actually don't have a lot of my childhood Dr. Seuss books anymore - I donated them to a school where I used to work. I do have I Can Lick 30 Tigers Today, which wasn't originally mine, but which resided at my grandparents' house, in a book box on the enclosed front porch, for years. I have many pleasant memories of Christmas Eves at that house.
Next, we have Rainbow Brite. Okay, she's really more of a cartoon character than a book character, but as you'll see, I also have a Rainbow Brite book. (The read-along cassette went missing years ago.)
What girl doesn't want a horse with a rainbow mane and tail?
My newest acquisition (thanks, Mom!) is Hallmark's Twilight Eclipse ornament, depicting Bella Swan, Edward Cullen and Jacob Black.
If I could have an ornament from any kids' book in the world, I'd like to have one from Dianna Wynne Jones' Howl's Moving Castle. They could be the anime versions of Howl and Sophie from the Studio Ghibli film, but preferably it would be right after Sophie cleaned up in Howl's bathroom, he tried to dye his hair blonde and it came out slightly pink. He's so vain about his hair!
But Howl and Sophie are the cutest fictional wizard-witch couple this side of Ron and Hermione. I want her power to make things happen to inanimate objects by talking to them. And he saw her once (on May Day) and fell in love with her - so romantic. Cheesy fan video? I think so.
My Yule wreath will look stylish and well-read this year. Thank you to the gracious hosts of the Witches Yuletide Ball!
