Erica Jurus's Blog, page 10

Forbidden Planet and the Golden Age of Sci-Fi Movies

I had way too much fun taking one of my photos from New Mexico and turning it into an alien landscape

Our theme for the month is exploration, and this week we’re going to have some fun and take a look at one of my all-time favourite movies, Forbidden Planet.

Forbidden Planet (1956) was a ground-breaking science fiction movie in many ways. The script had a great pedigree – it was loosely based on The Tempest by William Shakespeare. The movie introduced Robby the Robot, who became a fixture in numerous other science fiction productions subsequently. And it had an entirely electronic music score, which created a remarkably effective ambience to the story of space explorers investigating a distant Earth colony that hasn’t been heard from for quite some time.

Why do so many of us love science fiction? I believe it’s because the genre allows our imaginations the kind of free reign that they had when we were children and anything seemed possible. I remember concocting all kinds of scenarios for my friends and I to play with as a child, but inexorably as we get older we’re expected to learn to behave like adults.

My favourite annual holiday, Halloween, is a case in point: there’s a certain age beyond which kids are expected to stop participating in trick-or-treating. For a long time after I reached adulthood no one even discussed Halloween during the main part of the year – but, I’m delighted to say, rebellious adults have chosen to embrace their imaginations and inner children year-round, a thumb in the eye of those who feel maturity is the be-all and end-all of existence.

Psychologists in recent years have all banded together to emphasize the need for play, especially for adults. And what else is science fiction than letting our minds out to play, to speculate all kinds of ‘what if’ scenarios?

What if, for example, future travellers were to land on a planet where the long-deceased civilization had become almost god-like technologically, but still hadn’t excised psychological flaws? How would our intrepid explorers handle any knowledge that they were able to glean from the cultural remnants? Would they succeed where the society that was thousands of years more advanced had failed, or would they fall into the same trap?

That’s the question that Forbidden Planet poses.

Science fiction, more loosely called ‘speculative’ fiction, has apparently been around since ancient times. Some scholars point to legendary tales like the Mesopotamian story The Epic of Gilgamesh as early science fiction, and perhaps they’re right, but there was still an element of religion and belief in those stories. However, there was a story written in ancient Greece that can only be read as deliberate science fiction. It was titled, ironically, A True Story, and was written around the year 2 CE (AD) by Lucian of Samosata, as a poke at all the fantastic legends prevalent at the time.

Lucian really let fly with his imagination while he advised that everything in the story was total baloney. In it, he and a group of fellow travellers got blown off course by a storm, found an island with women-shaped trees and got carried to the moon by a whirlwind. There they got mixed up in a war, then returned to earth only to get swallowed by an enormous whale full of fish people that they had to battle, and much more. It’s the sort of pulp plotting we’d expect to find in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ tales of John Carter’s exploits on Mars (published 1912-1943), not in Classical Greece, but there it was.

Over the centuries numerous writers engaged in speculative fiction, generally more fantasy than science, but there seemed to be an enduring fascination with the orb that dominates our night sky in all its phases.

However, the biggest sci-fi breakthrough came with a medical theme, with Mary Shelley’s extraordinary Frankenstein in 1818. Following that, Edgar Allan Poe wrote several stories that contained sci-fi elements; Jules Vernes took up the mantle with lots of detail and scientific accuracy; and H.G. Wells lifted the genre to a new level with a wide variety of scenarios, from a man who becomes invisible with one of his scientific concoctions, to a man who travels millennia into the future with a time machine, and invading Martians who wage war on our planet.

Science fiction began to enter the mainstream in America with the advent of pulp magazines, starting with Amazing Stories in 1926, followed by Weird Tales, Astounding Stories and Wonder Stories. The covers were replete with evocative images that provoked and tantalized.

First issue of Amazing Stories, art by Frank R. Paul. By Unknown author – see above, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10503159

When Radio and Hollywood got in on the action, the universe became the limit. In 1938, a brilliant young producer/actor named Orson Welles created a radio production of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds that scared quite a few listeners and made history.

Early sci-fi movies replicated all the classic sci-fi novels, but eventually took off with inspired ideas of their own, often influenced by what was happening in the news. After the incident at Roswell, New Mexico in 1947, movies featuring aliens became hugely popular. Sometimes the aliens were evil and predatory (The Thing from Another World 1951), sometimes wiser than us and bearing warnings (The Day the Earth Stood Still 1951). The advent of nuclear power created a lot of anxiety in the world, which manifested with all kinds of cautionary tales, especially the massive 1953 hit The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms about a dinosaur that had been frozen under the waters of the Arctic until nuclear testing thawed it out and sent it on a grumpy rampage.

By Copyright 1951 by Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp; – Scan via Heritage Auctions., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=86859809

The financial success of these movies led some Hollywood producers down a different path – cheaply-made movies that still enthralled audiences in the theatre – and the sci-fi “B-movie” was born. Most notorious was Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), complete with pie-plate flying saucers and some of the silliest dialogue in movie history (“This man’s been murdered, and someone’s responsible!”). It’s a must-see just for its place in the canon of worst movies ever.

In the latter part of the 1950s, though, the ongoing success of the sci-fi genre in movies led to some tries at making more serious films, and one of them was Forbidden Planet.

Writing science fiction is a lot of fun, but it also has its challenges. It takes us into a world that’s an extension of our own, only different in some way – perhaps the future, either better (the Star Trek series) or worse (e.g. Blade Runner); perhaps the present with an unexpected development (e.g. one of the best sci-fi movies ever, IMHO: The Andromeda Strain, 1971); perhaps an alternate reality unknown to the average person (the Men in Black movies)… This means that the premise must conform to some known scientific principles and theories, both to make the story relatable to readers/viewers, and to give it some plausibility. Fantasy novels/movies can get away with far more departures from reality because they deal with magic, not science.

And even the most fascinating concept is nothing without characters who have goals and face conflict as they work through whatever problem the story has posed for them. Great sci-fi resonates because it stems from real-world issues. What made many episodes of the original Star Trek series so brilliant was their exploration of 1960s societal issues like racism that would never have been allowed in normal programming (check out Season 3 Episode 15, Let That Be Your Last Battlefield, where two aliens come on board, both dichromatic but on opposite sides of their bodies, who consider themselves so different that the other shouldn’t be allowed to live).

When Forbidden Planet was in development, it was originally supposed to be a cheaper film to be pitched to one of the B-movie studios. However, the team working on it, Irving Block and Allen Adler, decided to offer it to MGM. As part of their pitch, they had to act out the story, including some of the special effects, and were quite surprised when the studio bought it and gave it a big budget. The screenwriter they hired, a novelist named Cyril Hume, came up with a script with much more depth than a lot of the sci-fi movies of the time. MGM insisted on some comedic scenes, which some reviewers think were unfortunate, but I feel they actually add to the realism of the plot (if perhaps a little cheesy) – our lives are always mixed with humour as well as drama.

Two years of research went into the movie to provide scientific accuracy – at least as much as was available at the time. The writers still had to come up with a way to explain super-fast travel across the galaxy – pay attention as you watch the movie to find out what.

The movie begins with a crew from Earth, who’ve been in space for 14 months, arriving at the planet Altair-4 to find out what happened to an expedition from 20 years previously that was never heard from again. As they approach the planet, they’re greeted from the surface by Dr. Morbius, who warns them not to land. Determined to carry out their mission, they land regardless, and quickly find out what monstrous entity has been terrorizing the planet – and why Morbius and his daughter have survived.

So, given the lack of CGI (computer-generated imagery), how to convincingly create an alien planet? The film was shot inside MGM studios for the most part, using a gorgeous 10,000-foot circular painting as a backdrop. What I love about the movie is that it created a world similar enough to Earth to be fathomable, but fascinatingly alien, through the use of the painting (the jade-green planetary sky is surprisingly beautiful, and the cliff-shrouded area where the spaceship lands is strangely ominous) and other effects.

Two experimental composers, Louis and Bebe Barron, were brought on board to provide the score, which was composed entirely of electronic sounds – not too weird, just enough to add a certain eerie ‘otherness’.

The scenes where Dr. Morbius takes the crew’s captain, played by Leslie Nielsen, and the ship’s doctor, on a tube-shaped shuttle to the ancient power plant of the Krell (the transcendent race that created such a magnificently-advanced civilization while humans were still trying to stand upright) are visually stunning. Scenes where massive glowing generators stretching for miles and diving deep inside the planet, endlessly producing vast amounts of power even though their builders had died out 200,000 years before, are one of the reasons why the movie received an Academy Award nomination for Best Special Effects.

Screenshot of YouTube post @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHXfMjp2zqI

Well, that’s enough of a teaser – time to watch! Apart from waiting Forbidden Planet to run on Turner Classic Movies (or a sci-fi themed channel), you can rent or buy it on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV and Google Play Movies.

The movie’s style has been a great influence on science fiction ever since. MGM kept the Earth crew’s flying saucer-style space cruiser prop and later used it in a number of productions on the MGM lot, including an episode of The Twilight Zone. Gene Roddenberry, producer of Star Trek, cited the film as a major inspiration for his own space opera series.

Today it still earns high ratings – Rotten Tomatoes gives it 96% on its Tomatometer.

So turn off the lights, make yourself some popcorn (or something a little more ‘space-y’), watch TCM’s Ben Mankiewicz’s introduction to the movie, and settle in for a wonderful Golden-Age of sci-fi treat!

Theatrical poster for the film Forbidden Planet, By Copyrighted by Loew’s International. Artists(s) not known. – http://wrongsideoftheart.com/wp-content/gallery/posters-f/forbidden_planet_poster_01.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25226691

The post Forbidden Planet and the Golden Age of Sci-Fi Movies first appeared on Erica Jurus, author.

The mysterious Andean city in the sky, Tiwanaku

“Gateway of the Sun”, Tiwanaku, drawn by Ephraim Squier in 1877. The vertical scale is exaggerated in this drawing.
E. G. Squier – as published by E.G.Squier, “Peru Incidents of Travel”, 1877/w/index.php?title=Image%3ATiahuanacoGateEGSquier1877.jpg here]. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2244953

At 12,500 feet in the Andes Mountains, the air is clear and cold. On a spring day, during the rainy season, clouds can blanket the sky and make the area look even more bleak.

Yet, above the tree line, tucked into the Altiplano – a high, flat, barren plain that stretches below the deep blue sky at the crest of the mountains – there’s an ancient city that once thronged with up to 20,000 people and held sway over parts of Bolivia, where it’s located, and into Argentina, Chile and Peru. It was the most important pilgrimage site in the Andes, and one of the largest Pre-Columbian cities in South America.

Not many people go to see it; tours usually stop on the Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca and don’t cross over into Bolivia. That’s unfortunate, because they miss setting foot on one of the greatest mysteries of the continent: Tiwanaku.

But around 1000 A.D. it fell apart, its inhabitants scattering across the landscape.

The doldrums of winter in Canada give me wanderlust every year. I don’t mind the season, but when the days are all grey in succession and a frigid polar vortex keeps us trapped inside, I start to think about adventure in warmer climes. It began many years ago when the weather was particularly dreary and I tried out a recipe for Moroccan lemon & cinnamon chicken with couscous. I’d never cooked anything ‘exotic’ before, although we’d eaten Middle Eastern and Asian foods in restaurants, and the warmth and sunshine embodied in that meal was the perfect antidote on that cold January day. A trend was born.

I’ve always been interested in archeology as well – the mysteries behind stunning ruins like the Great Pyramid, the Sphinx, Machu Picchu. I try to imagine, from details that researchers have pieced together through remnants in written records and clues left in the ruins, what it must have been like to live back then.

Among my many books on archeology and ancient civilizations, quite a few years ago I stumbled across photos of a remote, enigmatic place high in the Andes mountains, about which little seemed to be known. But the few images taken by early researchers were fascinating, especially the massive construction called the Sun Gate. The ancient ruin was called Tiahuanaco, or Tiwanaku. Not nearly as famous as other temples, citadels or cultures scattered around Peru, but that only added to the allure. I hoped one day to be able to see it in person.

That adventure finally materialized a few years ago, when I found a three-week tour to Peru and Bolivia that included a visit to Tiwanaku. I think I may have been more excited about that than even seeing Machu Picchu. The latter is so ridiculously famous that as you climb the path to get there, there’s an element of ‘will it live up to all its hype’? But Tiwanaku – that was like being in an Indiana Jones movie, or The Lost World tale by Arthur Conan Doyle! No treacherous guides, hostile jungle tribes or dinosaurs to worry about (at least we hoped), but the wonder of going somewhere hardly anyone else ever had.

Little was still known about Tiwanaku when we visited it – even our local guide didn’t have a lot of information. Less than 10% of the estimated total site had been excavated. But I’m delighted to say that more has been accomplished since then, opening a long-buried window on a remarkable civilization that managed to make a home in one of the most inhospitable landscapes on earth.

In fact, this post was inspired by a short film I saw recently on the BBC website: Tiwanaku: The civilisation that mysteriously disappeared. “The Tiwanaku civilisation, which precedes the Inca civilisation and has a lifespan of 25 centuries, is known as the ‘mother culture’ of South America. The civilisation mysteriously vanished without a trace. There are numerous theories, but recent findings have shed light on the truth of what may have happened and the significance of this cultural mystery.”

Tiwanaku is located in the Altiplano, a high, arid plateau in the Andes where not much grows except the stiff clumps of serrated beige grass that vicuñas feed on.

Wild vicuñas grazing in the AltiplanoThe cold, barren Altiplano in Peru & Bolivia

Rather ironically, the largest lake in South America, Lake Titicaca, lies within the plateau, with five major river systems feeding into it. The average altitude in this oxygen-deprived part of the world is 12,300 feet. Just for context, the city of Toronto sits at only 250 feet above sea level, and the highest town in Canada is Lake Louise, Alberta at only 5,200 feet.

Visiting the Altiplano takes some prep – our low-altitude bodies take time to get used to breathing in such rarified air. Most people think that there’s less oxygen at high altitudes, but it’s actually the air pressure that’s much lower, which means that our lungs have to work much harder to take in the amount of oxygen our organs need to work properly.

People, and animals, who live at high altitudes are naturally acclimated; for the rest of us, we need several days of gradual ascent, plenty of rest, and stimulants like carbohydrates and caffeine to give our metabolisms a boost. (Before I set up the eight-person tour we embarked on, I did a great deal of research on acclimation and possible high-altitude illnesses.) Coca leaf tea and candies are readily available in every town and hotel – this is the plant that cocaine is derived from, but there’s not enough of the active ingredient in the small, bay-shaped leaves to provide a buzz. They’re also excellent for high-altitude nausea.

So why would anyone choose to live at such altitudes, where the air is thin and cold, and little grows? Numerous cultures have done so, including the Uros, the ‘Reed People’ who still live on floating reed islands on Lake Titicaca. The totora reed that grows so readily in the lake is used to construct their islands, assemble their huts on the island, treat fever, and many other functions.

A typical Uros floating island on Lake Titicaca, Peru

According to archeological records, people first started to live in this region around 8,000 BCE. They were somewhat nomadic, living in temporary camps while they hunted the wild animals like guanaco and vicuña. Lake Titicaca also had plenty of fish and waterfowl, and gradually settlements began to spring up around the shore.

By 400 CE, Tiwanaku had become the largest and most important site in the Titicaca Basin, an expansive,  diverse city at the centre of a large network of neighbouring cultures. By around 800 CE it reached its peak, with a population of between 10,000 to 20,000 people. The rulers controlled their populace by throwing large work feasts to build monuments, bringing in trade caravans and thousands of pilgrims.

Remnants of Tiwanaku’s great city

The city was inhabited by both wealthy and regular people, with houses were arranged in neighborhoods. The richer neighborhoods were closer to the centre of the city, in a palace called the Putuni. Those homes were adorned with paint, and had a sophisticated drainage system to remove dirty water. Remnants of beautiful pottery and decorative objects made of silver and copper have been found.

The less wealthy lived on the edge of the city. The houses had kitchens, patios, and space for the family’s domesticated animals, including alpacas and guinea pigs (the latter are still a delicacy raised for special feasts in Peru to this day).

The Tiwanaku people were brilliant agriculturalists, raising crops in an environment that seems impossible. Despite the intense nightly cold and frosts, brief rainy season and threat of floods, and depletion of an already less-fertile soil, they successfully raised a variety of crops (especially potatoes and quinoa), by constructing raised fields lined with ditches where rain water could flow for irrigation and dissipate if too high. The raised beds also created a warmer microclimate that kept the crops from freezing. The Tiwanakan farmers were so successful that, during the city’s heyday 1,500 years ago, it was a breadbasket area capable of supporting 125,000 people.

The Akapana as it looked when we were there. More has been excavated since.

Today most of the city is buried under the reddish soil of the area. Only a handful of ritual buildings are visible, offering tantalizing hints of what the site must once have been – the stepped Akapana Pyramid, a large rectangular enclosure known as the Kalasasaya, and the Semi-Subterranean Temple studded with heads that are believed to represent all the conquered cultures.

The Kalasasaya

The Kalasasaya contains the imposing Gateway of the Sun, carved in great detail with strange figures, which the Inca believed represented Viracocha, the Creator God. The portal-like structure is made of a single piece of stone weighing approximately 10 tons – which begs the question ‘How on earth did the Tiwanakans transport the massive monolith to the site, and raise it into position’? The average car today weighs around 2 tons, not even a quarter of the huge stone, and would need something like a crane to move it. There are numerous other statues similarly challenging to put into place.

If you watch the video, you’ll learn that the ancient people of Tiwanaku had another trick up their sleeve: they knew how to use chemical reactions from plants to actually soften stone and manipulate it. This information is from extensive research, not ‘Ancient Alien’ speculation – although one might wonder where the inhabitants got such knowledge 10,000 years ago. Adjacent to the main Tiwanaku site, the area known as Puma Punku has many architectural anomalies that have led many people to speculate about the involvement of an advanced, probably alien race. Whatever theory you might believe, Tiwanaku is a tantalizing doorway into a world long forgotten.

One of the walls of the Semi-Subterranean Temple, decorated with dozens of oddly-shaped stone heads

In Aymara legends, Tiwanaku was the literal centre of the earth, at the convergence of the moist eastern, agricultural, female lands, which were considered ‘terrestrial’, and the dry western, pastoral male lands that were ‘celestial’. Lake Titicaca (which was once much closer than it is now) was the place where Viracocha, the Sun, emerged and created a new world order. The entire centre of the city was surrounded by a moat, signifying a sacred island that existed in liminal time and space, i.e. the transition point between regular life and the divine. 

But despite all the physical and spiritual power and wealth, the leaders of Tiwanaku were overthrown only 200 years after their civilization peaked, around 1000 CE. Over 200 years after that, a new political power base, called the Inca, began to expand from their base in Cuzco, and became the dominant civilization of the Andes region  until they were destroyed by the Spanish.

So what happened?

Unfortunately the people of Tiwanaku didn’t keep written records (or at least none have yet been found). There are a variety of theories, from environmental disaster to political revolt. The answers are perhaps buried under the 90% of unexcavated ground, waiting to reveal themselves one day to our wonder and amazement.

The post The mysterious Andean city in the sky, Tiwanaku first appeared on Erica Jurus, author.

Our Own Hero’s Journey

Intrepid explorers in the heart of Africa (hubby and me)

Someone asked me once who my heroes were, and the person who immediately came to mind was a customer at the pharmacy where I worked. She had Crohn’s disease, which can be a miserable experience on a daily basis, but whenever she came in she was unfailingly pleasant and nice. I don’t know how she did it, to be honest – I’ve had my own chronic illnesses, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t manage so well.

We love heroes and their stories. They’ve existed since ancient times, as far back as the Epic of Gilgamesh, a Mesopotamian king who embarks on a series of adventures, as well as Inanna, the Sumerian goddess who challenges Gilgamesh and has plenty of exploits of her own.

By the rise of the ancient Greeks, numerous heroes roamed the landscape performing amazing deeds and helping people who’d run afoul of the capricious Greek gods. One of them, Prometheus, was a god himself, who stole fire from Hephaistos, the god of metalworking, to give to humans so that they could keep themselves warm and work with metal themselves.

The most famous Greek hero was Heracles, aka Hercules, who lives on in Hollywood to this day, although my personal favourite is Xena, Warrior Princess, along with her surprisingly resourceful sidekick, Gabrielle. Neither of those women were part of Greek mythology, but they were kick-ass heroines in a time period when male heroes still dominated the media.

Heroes and heroines tend to arise during darker times, when we need the shining beacon of the hope they embody.

The first superhero comics appeared amid the Great Depression and World War II. Superman was the first,  followed by Batman (a somewhat ambiguous hero with a darker side), Captain America, Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman (the first of many female heroes to prove that women could be just as remarkable).

What is it about heroes that captivates us?

The stories provide us with an escape from hard reality, and a fun adventure to read, but according to psychologists, they also remind us of the potential for good in humanity when we see so much darkness in the news. Heroes remind us to be more kind and compassionate.

They represent the qualities that we all strive for: bravery, determination, selflessness and justice, and those can be guiding lights when we’re going through our own dark times.

I read an article recently, We Can Be Heroes, about how seeing your own life as a hero’s journey can be just as transformative for you as what the heroes go through in the stories.

The author, Adam, was inspired by the life of his grandfather, a nothing-particularly-special fellow who embarked on an adventurous life as a journalist just at the start of World War II. He survived to tell stories that prompted his grandson to take up the same career. Along the way Adam has interviewed quite a few people who turned themselves into heroes to overcome major setbacks.

The point of the piece is one that really struck a chord with me, as we all embark on another new year. It’s the idea of reframing our own lives into uplifting heroic stories.

Now you may think that’s a load of hooey, that bad times can’t be so easily remade as hero quests. And it’s certainly not always going to be easy.

But start on a small scale – every time you’ve given aid to a homeless person, helped someone out in a bind, had any kind of positive influence on someone else’s life. Once, many years ago while my mom was still alive, I was next in line at a cashier in a convenience store, and an elderly lady in front of me didn’t have quite enough cash to complete her purchase. She reminded me of my mom, and I gave the cashier the rest of what was owing. It wasn’t even $2.00, but the woman was so grateful for the kindness. I remember thinking that if my mom were ever out shopping and got herself into the same predicament, someone else would help her out. On that day I was a hero to that woman.

Psychologists tell us that we see our own identities as stories to make sense of our lives and all the pieces and layers within them. In our heads, we’re our own autobiographers. Some of us view our lives as comedies, some as tragedies.

My hubby and I are firmly on the comedy side, so many silly things have happened wherever we go for the entire time we’ve been together. I think we’d rather have a sense of humour about them.

The author of the article became interested in psychological resilience, and read some profound thoughts by an Austrian psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl, who’d survived Auschwitz. Frankl was tasked with counselling his fellow prisoners in arguably the worst possible circumstances, and what he told them was that “everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

He wrote that, “The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the sufferings it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity—even under the most difficult circumstances—to add deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified, and unselfish.”

Research has shown, time and again, that people can change their perspective, can become happier by changing their thoughts about life.

Morning tea in the African bush with a herd of red lechwe

What a remarkable idea that is! Who wouldn’t like to be able to see themselves as the hero in their own journey through life?! We don’t have to be Superman or Spiderman, we can just be our best selves, and continue to improve the world while we’re in it.

A hero’s journey is a classic one throughout the millennia of storytelling.

The Hero always starts off in an ordinary place – if you’re a fan of Lord of the Rings, you’ll recall that Bilbo is a perfectly ordinary hobbit (with an extremely well-stocked cellar, but that doesn’t help him on his quest).Something happens in which the would-be hero is called to some kind of adventure.Initially the Hero doesn’t want to take up the quest, butEventually he/she decides to go (or, or course, there would be no story). However, they don’t feel ready, and gladly accept the help of a Mentor.The Hero has committed to the journey, and sets off into the unknown.There are companions on the journey, and challenges to be met.The Hero arrives at the place where his/her goal lies.There’s a test, some kind of ordeal, that usually involves the Hero’s greatest fear. But success will bring transformation.The reward/goal is achieved.Every action has consequences, and the Hero must deal with them.In stories and films, things aren’t over yet – there’s one final test the Hero must face, where the villain gets one more chance to finish the Hero off. (Sometimes this works, sometimes it’s just a timeworn cliché.)The Hero is finally able to return home, with the prize/goal, but they’re a changed person and have to find a way to fit back into their old lives. That’s not always easy.

Our lives may have held many heroic journeys – nothing as grandiose as Bilbo’s quest to help the Dwarves regain their kingdom, but transformative nonetheless.

I can share one significant journey of my own by way of illustration.

Several years ago, as my and hubby’s silver wedding anniversary was approaching, we weren’t exactly looking forward to the African safari we’d planned to celebrate it. We’d had a bad year – we’d lost a family member and both of our beloved dogs, had upheavals at work. As we were packing our gear, I just couldn’t summon up my usual pre-departure excitement, even though this safari was the fulfillment of a long-held dream.

We flew out at night, and landed in London in time for my 50th birthday. With a 10-hour layover, we stowed our carry-ons at Heathrow and took the Tube into the city to wander around a bit and have lunch. Yet I remember walking around feeling not much of anything, just a kind of battered and bruised numbness, as if I was wrapped in a giant casing of cotton batting. London is one of our favourite cities, and a wonderful place to spend a milestone birthday, but I just couldn’t get into it.

Me, looking as soul-weary as I felt, in London

Then there was a long, 10-hour flight to Johannesburg, followed by another 3 hours to the small city of Maun in Botswana, one of the gateways to our objective, the Okavango Delta. The Delta wasn’t well known to many people at the time, although I’ve seen it featured on many nature shows since then. It’s the astonishing result of the Okavango River draining, not into the ocean like most other rivers, but into the Kalahari Desert, where it forms a beautiful, permanent wetland. We met our safari guide and fellow participants in Maun. Our guide, Ike, was very excited to get us out to the bushland that he loved, and we were swiftly ushered onto two small bush planes to fly to our first bush camp.

For this was a camping safari. We’d call it ‘glamping’, as we got to have all the fun with none of the work, but this was the first time my hubby and I had ever gone camping – yes, in the middle of the African bush. The flight was amazing, just 1,000 feet in the air over swamps and islands and elephants grazing among the trees right below us. We landed on a short strip of sand in the middle of nowhere, and boarded our safari vehicle for an hour-and-a-half game drive to get to camp. We saw our first impalas, bunched among the brush with ears raised, and a leopard tortoise, all kinds of birds, towering termite mounds, and much more.

In camp we were assigned our tents – 9’ x 9’ domes of canvas with mesh windows and a canvas bucket on a stand out front for washing up a little. The two bathroom tents were shared with the other five participants, and consisted of long-drop toilets and bucket showers.

Our tent in the Okavango Delta, Botswana

We had a delicious lunch overlooking the blue waters of the Delta, followed by an afternoon game drive where we saw majestic elephants just a few feet away from us, including an adorable baby. Dinner was by oil lamp next to a blazing fire, and early bed after a full day. I remember lying on my very comfortable cot under a cozy duvet against the nighttime chill, and thinking, My god, we’re really here, in Africa, under the stars and the Southern Cross. The night was filled with the sounds of tree frogs and fruit bats, and somewhere out in the darkness there were lions looking for dinner. My cotton casing was finally starting to unravel.

My foot next to the print of an elephant in the dried mud

The rest of the trip surpassed anything we might have imagined, as we got to know our delightful local guide and staff in the 4 camps we stayed in, as we saw giraffes grazing among the thorny acacia trees and listened to hippos tussling in the waters at dusk. The fresh breezes of the savannah blew away all our mental cobwebs, and the stillness of thousands of acres of African wilderness restored our balance. By the time the trip was over, it was difficult to leave it all and go home, and to try to live an ordinary life again after such wonders. We saw our Western conspicuous consumerism through new eyes, and certainly came home with a very different perspective of life in Africa.

A rare leopard sighting – a beautiful female beautifully camouflaged in the brush

It was an enormously transformative journey, meaningful only to us, but as we shared our adventure with others, we inspired others to go to a continent that had long been viewed with anxiety. And if something you’ve done inspires someone else, perhaps that’s a little heroism in action.

So I love this idea of viewing your life as a heroic journey, of something that’s full of wonders, challenges and learning. It’s what gets us through when the challenges seem overwhelming – both the memories and the hope of more adventures still to come.

Viewing the huge, awe-inspiring Victoria Falls from a helicopter

All photos were taken by me or belong to me, and may not be used without my express permission. E. Jurus

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New book releases for anyone’s taste

Hi folks,

A little under the weather at the moment, so I thought I’d share this entertaining list of upcoming books and when they’ll become available, Book releases 2024: From RuPaul to Salman Rushdie, on the BBC Culture website. Hope you enjoy the browse.

And while it’s not on this list, the second book of my trilogy, Into the Forbidden Fire, will be published this spring, and you’ll be able to find out what happened after the stunning ending of Through the Monster-glass. Check this space, or my Facebook page, for updates!

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Ode to Eggnog

Imagine a chill December night, frost riming the grassy slopes leading down to the Hudson River in New York State. A young man with dark hair and haunted eyes removes his cadet jacket and slings it over the back of a colonial-era chair beside a small wooden table. He lights a fire, which begins casting a warm glow over his shared room in the barracks of the great stone fortress called West Point. It’s been a long, grueling day of training, and he felt well deserving of his just-finished supper in the mess hall.

But the cold night, twinkling with stars, calls for some additional comfort. His roommate arrives, and together they assemble everything needed for the favourite tipple of the institution, a smooth cup of Eggnog – eggs, which they separate into yolks and whites; fresh milk and its thick topping of cream; a cup’s worth of sugar from the Caribbean; a hearty portion of brandy and a smaller of rum from one of the nearby taverns; and a pinch of nutmeg from the spice isles to scent the entire concoction. 

First, the whites are whisked in a bowl. Then the yolks with the sugar, beaten until they’ve turned a pale creamy yellow. The milk is added to the yolks, along with the rich cream, then the alcohols. Finally, the stiff, pillowy whites are carefully folded in to create a gentle froth. The libation is poured into two glasses, with a final dusting of nutmeg to serve.

Edgar and his roommate pull their chairs near the fire and toast the heavenly goodness of their potent helpings of eggnog on such a wintry night.

During his time at the University of Virginia, followed by a stint at West Point Academy, a young Edgar Allan Poe discovered the delights of well-laced cups of the American version of a British libation. He became such a devotee that he struggled with alcoholism for much of his life.

If you’re turning up your nose at this point, may I speculate that you’ve never had real, home-made eggnog? It’s a very different animal from the overly-sweet thickened yellow stuff you can buy in grocery and convenience stores during the holiday season. I don’t mind the store-bought in a pinch, but I can only drink a small glass of it before my taste buds rebel. On the other hand, I can drink the real deal until the cows come home (thoughtfully bringing their rich creamy cargo with them in time for more eggnog).

Eggnog has an interesting history. Its closest relative was likely “posset”, an old British beverage made by boiling milk and then mixing it with wine or ale, which curdled it. Cinnamon or nutmeg were typically added to spice it up. By the 14th to 15th centuries, eggs, cream, sugar and citrus juices joined the concoction, making an indulgent beverage favoured by the wealthy. “Posset sets” were popular gifts and included a pot for mixing, cups and spoons for serving, and containers with the necessary ingredients. For the betrothal of Queen Mary I of England and King Philip II of Spain, the Spanish ambassador presented them with a lavish set made of gold, crystal and precious gems.

Posset pot, Netherlands, Late 17th or early 18th century, Tin-glazed earthenware painted in blue V&A Museum no. 3841-1901
By VAwebteam at English Wikipedia – http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/t/art-of-drinking/, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26201875

Milk, eggs and expensive spirits like sherry, brandy or Madeira wine were mainly foods of the wealthy, and eggnog was often used for toasting prosperity and good health.

During the 18th century the drink made its way across the Atlantic Ocean to the British colonies in North America, where brandy and wine were heavily taxed but rum from the Caribbean islands, made by slaves, was a readily-available and cheaper alternative. Farm and dairy products were abundant, and ‘eggnog’, no longer confined to wealthy households, became very popular. When the American Revolution curtailed the supply of rum to the newly-founded independent country, Americans turned to domestic whiskey, and particularly bourbon. In places where even bourbon was too expensive, homemade moonshine was used. Along the way, eggnog became associated with the holidays, and remains so to this day for many people.

The beverage, tweaked for colonial tastes, became known as “eggnog” in America in the 18th century, possibly a kind of portmanteau word derived from two colonial slang words—‘grog’, i.e. rum, which was served by bartenders in small wooden mugs called ‘noggins’.

In 1775, the first mention of the term “eggnog” showed up a clergyman and philologist in Maryland devotedly wrote a poem about it:

“Fog-drams i’ th’ morn, or (better still) egg-nogg,

At night hot-suppings, and at mid-day, grogg,

My palate can regale.”

The first US president, George Washington, served an eggnog-like drink to visitors that included “one quart cream, one quart milk, one dozen tablespoons sugar, one pint brandy, 1/2 pint rye whiskey, 1/2 pint Jamaica rum, 1/4 pint sherry”, and an unspecified number of eggs. Modern chefs estimate approximately one dozen. The recipe instructed cooks to use the same technique that Edgar Allan Poe and other cadets used (as outlined above), then to let it set in a cool place for several days.

Reputed recipe from George Washington’s kitchen

Here in Canada we’re able to make eggnog according to the traditional method, with raw eggs. In the U.S. cooks have to deal with possible salmonella contamination in their eggs, so they typically make a kind of heated custard with the yolks and milk to kill off any bacteria. I’ve never tried the American method, so I can’t speak to how well it matches the original.

I grew up in an eggnog-loving home. Both of my parents were nurses, and emigrated from Europe, where eggnog was used to nourish patients suffering from a variety of ailments. In the 19th century, since eggs contain proteins, fats, and essential vitamins, doctors felt that eggnog was an ideal way to deliver prescriptions and nutrients for those on liquid diets, or patients recovering from surgery or serious illnesses like typhoid fever, dysentery, diphtheria and tuberculosis. “Warming spices,” like nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, turmeric and cayenne could provide relief from stomach cramps, diarrhea, nausea and flatulence. A tablespoonful of brandy, port wine or whisky added didn’t hurt either.

Hospital diet manuals, such as this 1941 edition supplied by the U.S. army’s Fitzsimons General Hospital,  regularly included instructions on nutritional eggnog supplements.

screenshot, Fitzsimons General Hospital Diet Manual, 1941

My tonsils deteriorated at an early age, so as a child I picked up every virus going around, and I have fond memories of being given delicious glasses of eggnog to help me regain my health. It was such a hardship to quaff down rich, creamy glasses of the stuff (without alcohol) as often as my mom was willing to make them.

At West Point in the 1800s, when Edgar Allan Poe was in residence, it was something of a badge of honour for students to wind up in the Hospital. It showed their ‘fortitude under duress’, and, along with the opportunity to rest from the punishing daily schedule, convalescents ate very well at the hands of a famous French chef named Vatel, including liberal eggnog treatments.

Small wonder, then, that the cadets developed a deep passion for the beverage, to the point where restrictions under a very strict disciplinarian, Colonel Sylvanus Thayer, led to a riot that made the history books.

Too many prohibitions for a group of people (in this case, things like no cooking in the barracks, no dueling, and stark rations of beef, bread and water) invariably lead to a revolt, and after a boisterous Fourth of July celebration in 1826, alcohol was banned as well.

Cadets began sneaking out to the two local taverns, North Tavern and Benny Havens (which was the young Poe’s favourite venue). Benny Havens even allowed hard-up students to barter shoes and blankets for liquor. Future Confederate president Jefferson Davis got arrested regularly for leaving his post to go drinking.

Screenshot of Benny Havens Tavern, Hudson Valley Tavern Trail, http://www.taverntrail.com/hudson-valley-tavern-trail.html

When a group of his friends suggested they thumb their nose at the superintendent’s new law and throw a Christmas Eve party, Davis was in like a dirty uniform shirt. Their beverage of choice was inevitable: eggnog.

Four sets of students left their posts to get supplies: a gallon of brandy and a gallon of wine, additional liquor just in case, and eggs, milk, and nutmeg. Mutton was smuggled in from Benny Havens for party food.

The party began around midnight, starting in one dorm room and gradually increasing in size. Two hours later, Jefferson Davis and others were heard singing loudly. Another student tried to quiet them down, but by four a.m. the ruckus could be heard through the floorboards and a faculty member, one Captain Ethan Allen Hitchcock, went to investigate.

Davis tried to warn the other thirteen partyers, but it was too late. Davis and others were literally read the Riot Act, then placed under arrest and ordered to their rooms. However, Hitchcock made the mistake of assuming they’d stay put.

After he left, the cadets worked themselves into a lather and decided to hunt him down and harass him. For the next two hours the faculty and a few sober students chased the partyers and those who drunkenly joined them around the grounds. Windows and furniture were broken, swords were brandished and shots fired, a drum and fifes were hijacked, and a lieutenant was knocked out. The six a.m. reveille was chaos. Most of the cadets ended up making it to roll call, where twenty-three were arrested and nineteen expelled.

In an interesting turn of events, Jefferson Davis missed everything. He’d stumbled to his room, vomited and passed out. He was allowed to remain at West Point, but graduated in the bottom third of his class. Nevertheless, his rather memorable time at the academy instilled a long-lasting hatred for ‘Yankees’, which reached a boiling point during the Civil War.

Eggnog premade and sold in cartons first appeared in supermarkets in the late 1930s. By the 1950s it was a common sight in refrigerated holiday aisles. Today, Canadians drink around eight million litres of eggnog during the Christmas season.

Commercial eggnog, surprisingly, does contain actual egg, in the form of frozen yolks. In Canada, a product can’t be called “eggnog” unless it contains egg in some format. Modern commercial eggnog manufacturers then add gelatin (not a vegetarian or vegan product, by the way) and other thickeners, which allows them to lower costs by using less egg and cream to produce a properly thick beverage.

Ingredients that are typically included include milk, sugar, modified milk ingredients, glucose-fructose, water, carrageenan, guar gum, natural and artificial flavourings, spices, monoglycerides, and colourings. Glucose-fructose syrup is a nutritionless sweetener that’s actually toxic to our bodies (i.e. avoid it like the plague), while carrageenan (made from seaweed, can cause intestinal inflammation) and guar gum are the usual thickeners.

Many well-known people have expressed their opinion about eggnog. Canadian chef Heidi Fink likes homemade eggnog but criticizes the “slimy glop you can buy in supermarkets”. The Guardian writer Andrew Shanahan said that eggnog “lurches around the glass like partially-sentient sludge”, so I’m guessing he doesn’t like it in any form. On the other hand, writer Tristan Stephenson for TIME magazine thinks it ticks “every single one of the guilt/pleasure boxes”. Although traditional eggnog is far from low-calorie, The New Yorker writer Carmen Maria Machado feels that its “decadence should not be considered sinful; indeed, it is one of those foods whose low-fat variations I believe to be a kind of crime.”

Should you like to give traditional eggnog a try on one of these cold, wintry nights, you can always give Edgar Allan Poe’s recipe a try:

7 eggs, separated
1 cup sugar
5 cups whole milk, divided
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
1 1/2 cups brandy
1/4 cup rum
Nutmeg

In a medium bowl combine egg yolks and sugar, whisking until thick and pale. Set aside.

Fill a large bowl with ice water and set aside. In a small saucepan, warm 3 cups milk over low heat. Whisk 1 cup of warm milk into yolk mixture. Add this back to the milk in the pan, stirring over low heat until combined and thickened. Remove from heat and quickly stir in cream.

Place saucepan in prepared ice bath. Stir occasionally until chilled, then add brandy, rum, and remaining 2 cups milk.

Pour eggnog into glasses. In a medium bowl with a handheld mixer, beat egg whites until soft peaks form. Spoon egg whites over eggnog, and top with grated nutmeg.

Source: A Second Helping of Murder: Diabolically Delicious Recipes from Contemporary Mystery Writers

Author notes:

Use an electric mixer.Poe’s recipe is similar to the one my family has used, but we don’t heat the milk and cream. We also fold the whipped whites into the whole thing with a soft touch to preserve some of their fluff.It’s essential to beat the yolks and sugar together for a couple of minutes until they meld into a thick, velvety, pale yellow cream – that’s what gives proper eggnog its unique flavour.Make sure to add the whipped egg whites: they lighten the finished beverage and provide a slightly-frothy, festive mouth feel.My favourite alcoholic addition is bourbon, which has a caramelly undertone that builds on the other ingredients. Brandy, rum and Irish whiskey are good too. Gin would be god-awful; vodka would be pointlessly bland.Serve immediately at room temp, or chill a bit if preferred or if prepping some of it ahead of time.If making for children or anyone who can’t have or doesn’t want alcohol, that can be added separately glass by glass.You may see some recipes that call for vanilla ice-cream. This is definitely not traditional, and personally I think it makes the eggnog too sweet.DO NOT add ice cubes.

Happy nogging, and a very Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays!

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Indulge in a Christmas Tea

“There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.”
– Henry James

Afternoon tea is one of those lovely pauses in a busy day – small wonder it’s become extraordinarily popular in our crazed modern world. And what better time to slow down and enjoy such a break than during the holiday season, when things are even more frenetic than usual.

You can certainly just book a tea sitting at a local tea shop or restaurant, but if you want to host something a little different, a Christmas Tea might be just the thing.

The Set-up

Since your house is already probably decorated for the holidays, there’s not going to be much you’ll need to do, but I do have a few tips:

Do not burn scented candles. Their aroma will interfere with both the aroma and taste of the refreshments.The overall style is up to you. Be traditional, get a little funky/boho, serve the tea on a low table beside a dancing fire if you have a cozy fireplace…the possibilities are myriad. What matters most is that it fits you, and that your guests feel comfortable.Music should be light and in the background, which makes good ‘meal music’ for any occasion actually. Early 20th-century tea dances in London featured just such music, named after the hotel tea room where the dances originated: “Palm Court” music. For holiday atmosphere, anything themed and done in a light jazz would be perfect, or retro music if you’re into that.Alcoholic beverages? Sherry or champagne are traditional, but light cocktails or a punch would be okay as well if you have some extra time.

Recipes

Let’s keep this simple so that you can enjoy the experience as well.

The Tea

Here’s where you shouldn’t skimp. The type of tea you’ll serve depends on the type of food. A hearty Assam-based tea is a good all-purpose offering. However, if you’re going with a light theme like a Snowflake Tea, with more delicately flavoured savouries and desserts, a more refined tea like Darjeeling would be better, while something like a Nutcracker Tea, with richer flavours, would go well with a lightly smoked tea like Russian Caravan. It all depends on your taste preferences.

Twinings, which is readily available in grocery stores, makes a good medium-bodied all-purpose English or Irish Breakfast tea. For more gourmet teas, like a Golden Tippy Assam, or the two I mentioned above, you’ll need a good tea shop, either locally or online. The shop I order my teas from is based in Victoria, B.C., and is called Murchies.

To loose-leaf or bag it: Tea bags were invented as a marketing ploy by a merchant named Thomas Sullivan around 1908. He created little silk pouches to send samples of his tea to customers. The idea was for the leaves to be removed from the pouch and put into an infuser as usual, but some people just put their pouch straight into a tea pot. The convenience appealed, and customers requested more of the same but with a slightly heavier mesh than the silk; Sullivan complied using gauze, and the tea ‘bag’ was born.

Over the ensuing decades, some tea purveyors began saving money by putting lower-grade tea leaf bits in their bags. Tea leaves are graded by size, from the full, loose, curled leaves down to the dust or “fannings” left on the warehouse floor after the larger leaf pieces have been sorted over mesh. If you’ve ever had an insipid cup of tea from a bag, it was made with such poor-quality product.

However, reputable merchants (such as Murchies) put good-quality leaf pieces in their bags, and you can make a very good cup with their bags. The choice is up to you. One tip: if making loose-leaf tea for a crowd, you’ll need either more than one teapot, or a larger pot, and a larger infuser – but larger metal infusers won’t fit through the openings of the pots. My favourite solution is a Finum tea filter, an expandable paper sac that can hold a fair amount of leaves and easily go into any size of teapot. The nice thing about these sacs is that you can prep more than one in advance, either to make more pots of tea, or if serving a different tea with each ‘course’.

Flavoured teas, like Earl Grey or something fruity, are a bit chancy – they may not complement all of your food, and not everyone likes them – so I’d be careful there.

If you’d like to offer a decaffeinated tea, Twinings makes a decent decaf English Breakfast, but Rooibos tea is all natural and robust enough to stand up to whatever food you’ll be serving – you can serve it with all the same accompaniments listed below.

I always offer a number of accompaniments: organic unbleached sugar (I prefer the flavour), some artificial sweetener, and lemon slices, as well as light cream and perhaps a small pitcher of milk as well. I firmly believe that the ‘rules’ be damned: everyone should drink tea however they enjoy it most.

Savouries

Tea savouries are all bite-sized, i.e. nothing requires a fork to eat. I think it’s nice to have a mix of colours, textures and flavours: a couple of different sandwiches, made a little festive, along with some mini-quiches (easy to make with purchased frozen tart shells), perhaps some sausage rolls (very British).

But don’t hesitate to have a little fun with things, like serving a nice Camembert cheese with a festive topping paired with a good cracker (individual spreading knives would be included in each place setting). Here’s an easy version: buy a Camembert in a round wooden box. Carefully cut the top rind off the cheese and put back in the box. Crush a few pink peppercorns with a mallet or rolling pin and sprinkle on top of the cheese, along with a little bit of chopped fresh rosemary. Place the box on a cookie sheet and heat the cheese with toppings gently in a 350oF oven for a few minutes just until the top begins to soften. (Note: this recipe isn’t my own creation, but I’ve had it for so long I no longer know where I got it from.)

You could also serve some Cranberry Glazed Meatballs, quickly made with frozen cocktail meatballs and served with festive toothpicks in each one.

Small sips of a festive soup are also delicious, if you have appetizer-sized bowls or ramekins to serve them in. I’ve even seen it done in tea cups.

Scones

Scones are generally deemed de rigeur for an Afternoon Tea, and are even supposed to be a separate course after the savouries. While I do love a good scone with clotted cream and a fruit preserve, your tea will still be lovely if you decide to forgo them. If you do want to include, here are a few tips:

Scones should be light and moist, not heavy, dense or stiff.Clotted, aka Devonshire, cream isn’t always easy to find; you’ll get the same texture and taste with crème fraiche, which is usually stocked in grocery stores (at least those in the area I live in).Find a good fruity jam that’s not overly stiff with pectin. Strawberry jam is classic, but for a festive tea you could switch it up with an orange marmalade (light on the peel), a nice cherry conserve, or something with spices in it.You could go with a fruity scone, with currants, dried cranberries or citrus peel and a sweet glaze, but be careful what jam you pair with it (if any) to avoid sugar overload.

The BBC Good Food website has a nice recipe for a basic scone, Easy fluffy scones.

Sweets

You need make only one sweet for this occasion: a luscious Trifle.

I was introduced to Trifle at my first boyfriend’s house. His father was Polish, but his mother was British, and for Christmas she made a classic raspberry and sherry Trifle for dessert. For me, Trifle (the lush dessert in the featured image at the start of this post) is the perfect celebration dessert: creamy, fluffy and boozy There are many variations on this dessert, which makes it completely customizable, but essentially there’s a light cake-type layer, a layer of boozy fruit/fruit jam over the cake that allows the juices to permeate the cake, a layer of rich custard, and clouds of whipped cream to top it all off. Flavour combinations, the organization of layers, substituting lady fingers or other kind of light pastry, even the type of booze – all can be played around with, but the basic dessert is easy to put together. Best of all, it’s a make-ahead dessert, put together a day in advance to allow all the flavours to blend, then stored in the refrigerator overnight. You can make the pastry base a couple of days ahead of that, or purchase lady fingers or a good quality sponge cake. Assemble it in a generous glass bowl to show off all the lovely layers.

Make your own; store-bought versions don’t really come close. This recipe on the BBC Good Food website is pretty classic with a couple of acceptable shortcuts to make your life easier.

If you feel you’d like to have additional sweets, you can put out a plate of Christmas cookies, but something else I’d like to suggest, if you can find them at a store that stocks British goods, are Eccles Cakes. These are not actually cakes, but buttery pastry shells stuffed with a wonderful mix of currants, chopped citrus peel, sugar and spices. The brand I like is Real Lancashire Eccles Cakes, 4 to a package – heat them very gently in the oven or microwave just before serving for the best texture and flavour.

For a little inspiration, check out the Chesterfield Mayfair Winter Wonderland Afternoon Tea – if I’m ever back in London, England during the holidays, I’d love to try it out myself.

Screenshot of the Chesterfield Mayfair’s website listing for the Winter Wonderland Afternoon Tea

I hope you enjoy your holiday tea, and that it provides just the break in the action that you need for a couple of hours. Feel free to send photos to this blog, or share them on my Facebook page!

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Holiday magic?

So the Victorian Christmas wasn’t always so perfect, with all the social ills of the period, but in Dickens’ view, Christmas was what you made of it. And I think he understood the celebration far better than a lot of people do today.

What makes a perfect Christmas, or other holiday event?

Three things:

Not trying to make it perfect,Enjoying the company, andSerendipity

I see a lot of emphasis these days on beautifully-curated images of holiday scenes, made to look pretty for social media, but over the years I’ve also seen a lot of people drive themselves crazy trying to live up to some Hallmark©-worthy ideal.

But the best Christmases – and in fact the best holidays in general, whether celebrations or vacations – are those that just come together in a magical, sometimes unexpected way.

My family, with a European background, placed the emphasis on Christmas Eve, and I’ve continued the tradition. But when you’re working full time and the Eve falls on a weekday, it’s not so easy to summon the energy. And so one of my favourite Christmas Eves celebrated with beautiful simplicity.

It was the Friday night of a tiring week. Earlier, I’d come across a recipe for a Gumbo with chicken, andouille sausage and shrimp that looked not very labour-intensive, and would be a good make-ahead dish. It sounded ideal.

That evening was one of those cold, dark nights of winter when you really feel the need for lights and warmth. I’d produced an enormous amount of Gumbo, filling one of my cast-iron soup pots almost to the lid. As I reheated it, I put piles of sliced crusty bread in a basket and made my favourite company-worthy salad. There was an English trifle dessert, also made ahead, waiting in the fridge. Candles were lit and holiday music turned on as our family began to arrive.

Seating was informal, and the food was self-serve straight from the pot. The mood was cozy and relaxed, snugged inside our house eating unfussy, delicious food. It seemed to strike a chord. Much to our amazement – and delight – the entire pot of stew disappeared, not even a dribble left on the bottom. After a little while, we turned on the coffee maker and kettle, and brought out the sweet finale.

What a wonderful, warm and convivial evening that was! I’m an experienced cook, so we knew the food would go over well, but we couldn’t have foreseen how special it would all turn out – just a combination of circumstances that came together to make it memorable.

It’s been my observation that the harder you try to find that elusive perfection, the farther that result recedes from view. And why should anything be ‘perfect’ anyway? Who even decides what that is? To my mind, it’s the delight of the unscripted. The best times my hubby and I have had are when things surprise us, and those have rarely been in a bad way.

Last year we spent New Year’s Eve with our cousin in Tennessee. The plan was to go for Christmas, as we’ve done a few times in the past, but a massive blizzard spreading all the way from where he lives about 20 minutes outside of Nashville up though Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ontario and Quebec made that impossible. We were able to finally hit the road on December 27th. While we were there, I’d thought to cook a nice meal on NYE, but as we were figuring what to do for the ‘big night’, the Chinese Lantern Festival at the Nashville Zoo – Zoolumination – held a lot of appeal. The weather was fine, and we headed over in mid-afternoon to walk around in the daytime and get a sense of the layout.

A little after four p.m. we bugged out to go and have a light dinner, and found a Turkish restaurant just down the road from the Zoo. The meal was generously-portioned and fabulous, so much so that we just took our doggie bags with us to enjoy leftovers later.

We returned to the Zoo at dusk, when acres of breathtakingly beautiful silk tableaux from Chinese mythology, as well as some traditional North American holiday vignettes, all lit up against the velvety black sky. A few hours passed while we strolled along the pathways, as did many families enjoying NYE together with their children.

Exhibit at the Nashville Zoolumination, December 2023 – photo by E. Jurus, all rights reservedExhibit at the Nashville Zoolumination, December 2023 – photo by E. Jurus, all rights reservedExhibit at the Nashville Zoolumination, December 2023 – photo by E. Jurus, all rights reserved

Later in the evening we returned to our cousin’s house full of good cheer, in time to open a bottle of champagne and eat the dessert I’d assembled the night before. One of the neighbours popped by for a while and shared the treats with us, and it was just a lovely, low-key way to mark the turning of the calendar.

One lesson I’ve learned over decades of holiday events is that if the hosts aren’t relaxed, the guests won’t be either.

A few years ago my hair stylist was grousing about trying to host a nice Thanksgiving meal while herding everyone to the table away from drinking beer and glued to a televised football game. The prospect was really bothering her, so I asked her, “Are they enjoying themselves, watching the game?”

“Yes, I guess so,” she replied.

“Well, isn’t that the idea?” I said. “Why not just put the food on the table in warming pans and let your guests eat when they’re ready? Less stress for you, and everyone has a good time.”

She looked at me. “I’ve never thought of it that way. I’m going to try that.”

I asked her at the next appointment how things had gone, and she gave me a hug. “The best piece of advice I’ve ever gotten.”

So this holiday season, take it easy on yourself. Good food doesn’t have to be fancy or elaborate, just yummy. The house/condo/apartment doesn’t have to look perfect, just welcoming. A celebration is all about the joy you get out of it, and the time you spend with loved ones and friends. Dickens knew it very well.

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A humble pudding creates a ruckus

Now that we’ve been on the subject of British food at Christmas, who’d have guessed that a little bit of crusty, puffy goodness would become the nucleus of a holiday controversy?

I can’t remember when I became interested in Yorkshire pudding; probably from an old boyfriend’s British mother decades ago, although I don’t remember her making it specifically. Nevertheless, in my teen years I bought a copy of the venerable culinary bible, A Joy of Cooking, and began making that recipe so often that eventually the page detached from the binding.

If you’ve never had Yorkshire pudding, it’s basically an unsweetened pancake-like batter roasted in hot fat (preferably beef drippings) until it puffs up with a delicious golden crust. It’s the perfect accompaniment to a beef roast, smothered in luscious gravy.

The Brits love Yorkshire pudding (and apparently so does everyone else on the planet – if you search the dish by name, you’ll find over 16 million results). But it seems they’re deeply divided on whether it belongs on a Christmas table. I suppose that can be blamed on Charles Dickens, who was more-or-less single-handedly responsible for turkeys being the main course of choice for a holiday meal in England.

Nowadays, though, a lot of people enjoy some variety in their Christmas nosh, and a great prime rib roast with ‘Yorkies’ is perfectly acceptable.

As far as anyone can tell, Yorkshire puddings arose in the 18th century —  or at least that’s when they were first mentioned historically-speaking, in a best-selling cookbook called The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Simple. The recipe was referred to as a ‘dripping pudding’, as the batter was usually placed in a pan underneath the roast, which would then drip savoury flavours onto it. The pudding was served with gravy as an appetizer, meant to fill up tummies before the expensive meat was carefully parcelled out, or in poorer families as a main meal in itself.

I’ve read that the people of Yorkshire insist that the pudding be made in a single pan, but, heathen as it may be, I prefer making it in muffin tins – easy to serve, and everyone gets a full crispy exterior to enjoy. One of the great things about the dish is that the batter can, and should be made at least 30 minutes (and up to 12 hours) in advance. Then you just heat up the fat in whatever baking dish you’re using, spoon the batter in and roast until risen (I believe that the British term is ‘podgy’) and golden.

How beloved is Yorkshire pudding? I can’t speak for millions of people, but I can share a small personal anecdote.

When my hubby and I spent 15 days in Egypt for our 10th wedding anniversary, we thoroughly enjoyed all the local food – to a point. At the time, at least, we found that all the restaurants had a certain oily miasma tinged with garlic, and by the middle of our second week there we were longing for a change. Since we’d picked up our round-trip EgyptAir flight from London, we’d be spending overnight there on the way home, and we actually began discussing how great it would be to go to our favourite pub, the Museum Tavern across from the British Museum, and have roast beef with Yorkshire pudding. What were the odds that the pub would be serving it on cue? Well, a person could dream.

We arrived in London late in the afternoon, dumped our baggage at our hotel in Bloomsbury, within walking distance of the pub, and made a beeline there. And damned if they weren’t serving the very meal we’d been pining for, with buttered broccoli as a side. It was beyond delicious, and I think we may have even had apple cake with pouring custard and a cup of tea for dessert.

Yorkshire pudding has even made it onto the Masterclass canon. How’s that for cred?

Try one of the two recipes linked in this post, or any recipe you like; I’ve never had a bad version. Two requirements: the batter needs to rest for a while, because, according to Sainsbury Magazine, “this allows the starch to swell and absorb the liquid fully, which gives a lighter pudding when cooked”; and the oil must be hot so that the pudding puffs up beautifully.

Various fats can be used – I’ve made the dish with a mix of olive oil (the cooking oil I tend to keep on hand) and some butter if I want to get the pudding completed before I have to fiddle with the beef gravy (or I’m making a beef roast that doesn’t produce a lot of drippings). The preferred alternative fat is sunflower oil because of the high oven heat for baking, and I’ve seen canola oil suggested but I don’t like the stuff particularly.

I like making a beef roast for Christmas because it’s simple: season and stick in the oven. My hubby and I have had many adventures with holiday turkeys (some day I’ll relate the tale of “Mary Lou” the somersaulting bird), but I have made a lovely rolled and stuffed turkey breast that’s not too fussy. Holiday meals shouldn’t be so much strain on the cook that they don’t get to enjoy the actual meal, so I say: simplify the main dish, let a few great sides have their moment, and relax enough to share a good time with your guests. For my hubby and me, that’s what getting together for the holidays is about.

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A brilliantly original holiday tale

Charles Dickens. A Christmas Carol in Prose; Being a Ghost Story of Christmas

Long read (17-18 min.).

As cold winds blow down from the north towards the end of November, households start prepping for Christmas. We’re going to take a stroll back to Victorian times, via a story that has been a beloved part of the holiday season for 180 years. Steep some mulled wine and pour a mug while you read/stroll.

Every author secretly hopes that their book will have a legacy, will create an impact on literature beyond their own lifetime, whether they admit it or not . Having said that, many literary scholars believe there are only seven basic narrative plots in all of storytelling, told over and over again with variations:

Overcoming the MonsterRags to RichesThe QuestVoyage and ReturnRebirthComedyTragedy

Writers will customize their story with characters, settings, and overall personality, but the basic framework remains more-or-less the same. Even copy writers for organizations will use these same themes to create relatable business promos.

Is it then possible for a writer to stand out? Once in a while, an author has come along who developed such a unique take on a basic plot that it blazes across the literary firmament, and takes up a lasting place in our imaginations. Bram Stoker, when he wrote about Dracula, Mary Shelley’s tale of an arrogant scientist who thought to play God by creating his own ‘human’ being out of assorted parts, and (not last nor least) Charles Dickens, when he wrote A Christmas Carol in Prose; Being a Ghost Story of Christmas.

Dickens’ classic could be classified as a basic Rebirth tale – which the author intended – but the idea of three ghosts leading a terrible man to redemption was both simple and profound.

Charles Dickens was a passionate reformer and crusader for change in the lives of poor people in Victorian England. He’d come from a middle-class home, but his father, John, mismanaged the family income and ended up being committed to the Marshalsea, a grimly notorious debtor’s prison. Mrs. Dickens and their youngest children joined him there, per the practice at the time.

Charles, then only 12 years old, was only slightly better off by boarding with Elizabeth Roylance, a family friend living in impoverished circumstances herself. He had to leave school, pawn his collection of books, and work 10-hour days at Warren’s Blacking Warehouse (near present-day Charing Cross railway station), a dirty, rat-infested factory where he earned six shillings a week pasting labels on pots of boot blacking. As he grew up, he learned very well how inhuman and degrading the class system was, and it influenced his adult life deeply.

Dickens’ grandmother passed away a few months later and bequeathed John £450, enough to get him out of prison. The family joined Charles at Mrs. Roylance’s, but mother Elizabeth still wanted Charles to keep working at the dreadful factory, something he never forgave her for.

Able to resume his education, in a seedy academy run by a sadistic headmaster, Dickens eventually found work in a law office as a junior clerk, and began exploring the worlds of theatre and journalism. He began writing stories, using his wide range of life circumstances for fodder, along with a burgeoning sense of wit and sarcasm.

When it came to writing his holiday masterpiece, he was influenced by a number of factors.

Celebrating the Christmas season had been growing in popularity. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were putting up a Christmas tree every year, and many homes around the country began emulating them.  Dickens had a general interest in Christmas, as well as in ghost stories, and in fairy tales and nursery stories, which he felt were stories of transformation.Christmas carols, which had actually fallen off over the previous hundred years, were enjoying a revival.Dickens was concerned about the plight of poor children at the time, having suffered miserably himself. Two recent experiences in particular raised his hackles: a tour of tin mines in Cornwall, where he saw the appalling conditions small children worked under there, and a visit to the Field Lane Ragged School, one of several less-than-savoury London schools supposedly run for the education of the illiterate street children.

In a fundraising speech that October, 1843, Dickens urged workers and employers to join together to combat ignorance with educational reform. However, he came to realize he could reach more people if he wrote a Christmas story illustrating his message than more political pamphlets and essays.

He started on his novella, A Christmas Carol, that very month, and completed it in only six weeks. Apparently he created much of the contents in his head while taking night-time walks of 15 to 20 miles (24 to 32 km) around London. According to his sister-in-law, he “wept, and laughed, and wept again, and excited himself in a most extraordinary manner, in composition”, and published the work that December.

I’m assuming everyone’s seen at least one movie version of the famous story – most people consider the 1951 version Scrooge, with Alastair Sim as the title character, a classic, but there are other greats – but you may never have read the original work, and it’s worth a look.

Dickens was as adept at creating atmosphere as he was skewering out-of-touch wealthy people who blissfully ignored the lot of the country’s poor. (I think he would have heartily enjoyed the outraged reaction during the first COVID lockdowns to wealthy celebrities complaining about being confined to their palatial estates.)

Reading Dickens’ description of pre-Christmas London (above) early in the story, you’re immediately drawn almost full-bodied into the novel. The darkness and chill of the day are vivid – we’ve all experienced winter days like that, when all you want to do is get home, put a fire on if you have a fireplace or wood stove (or turn the furnace up), and wrap your hands around a hot cup of tea.

We enter the life of Ebenezer Scrooge, a hardened miser with a heart of stone who lives a joyless life despite his wealth, on a most fateful night.

Scrooge despises Christmas and anything resembling happiness or charity, and ends up nastily rebuffing both his nephew, who stops by the premises of “Scrooge & Marley” on Christmas Eve to invite his uncle to dinner the next day, and two gentlemen collecting donations to help the poor through the holidays. After barely agreeing to allow his clerk, Bob Cratchit, the luxury of spending the big day with his family with pay, he goes to his home to spend another evening alone, with a bowl of gruel for supper – or so he thinks.

His deceased partner Jacob Marley shows up, an equal miser when he was alive and now a phantom doomed to wander endlessly with “the chain I forged in life”, and no hope of passing into heaven. He warns Ebenezer that his fate will be even worse, as Scrooge has had seven years longer (since Marley died) to forge more links, unless he changes. Three spirits will arrive to show Scrooge the way to redemption, if he’s willing to listen.

As Marley departs out the window, Scrooge is horrified to see that:

What follows is an emotional and sometimes harrowing journey for Scrooge, who sees how much he’s changed from when he was a happy young man apprenticing at the warehouse of Mr. Fezziwig, and fell in love with a young woman he would have married were he not captivated even more by his growing greed.

The second ghost, of Christmas present, shows Scrooge many scenes of people around the country celebrating a day of kindness and family whatever their circumstances. All around London are scenes of Victorian holiday bounty, so enticing that they’ve shaped what we think of nostalgically as the perfect Christmas ever since:

At the home of Ebenezer’s clerk, we get a very personal snapshot of Victorian Christmas Eve traditions that have been handed down to this day, meager as the family’s dinner is on Cratchit’s measly salary.

Poorer families of the time didn’t have stoves or ovens, and had to cook their roasts at a public facility. The potatoes and gravy were cooked in a pot on the hearth that heated the home, while the Christmas pudding dessert was cooked, wrapped in a clean cloth, in a copper basin used for washing clothes. Nevertheless, the entire family is exuberant for this special meal, eaten once a year, and determined to enjoy the evening to the fullest.

Next came Mrs. Cratchit’s dessert pudding, looking like a ‘speckled cannon-ball’, which doesn’t sound very appetizing, but Dickens waxed poetic about her masterpiece: 

If you were a Victorian woman and had a copy of the essential Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, you’d find ads for kitchen equipment like a special ‘Queen’s Pudding Boiler’ to make your life easier.

Title page of ‘Household Management’ Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://wellcomeimages.org The title page of Mrs Beeton’s ‘Book of Household Management’. This well-known guide to household management provided advice on how to deal with all level of issues. 1861 The book of household management : Beeton Published: 1861 Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

As Scrooge watches the merry evening transpire, he notices how ill the youngest child, Tiny Tim, is, and is told by the Spirit that the shadow of death is hanging over the boy, unless Bob’s circumstances improve enough for medical help. When the third Spirit, of the Future which may be, shows Scrooge that possible outcome, his heart breaks for his clerk and he finally understands the toll that his own miserly ways have taken on anyone he’s had dealings with.

I really do recommend reading the original novella to appreciate Dickens’ genius at letting his readers into the lives of others, as well as capturing the atmosphere of Victorian society and London at the time. You can download a copy from the Gutenberg.org website, in various formats.

Just like authors today, Dickens ran into some publishing issues – clearly some things never change! Because of disagreements with his publishers, Chapman and Hall, over the commercial failures of his previous work, Martin Chuzzlewit, Dickens even paid for the printing himself in exchange for a percentage of the profits.

Happily for Dickens’ pocketbook, the first run of 6,000 copies sold out by Christmas Eve. Second and third editions were issued before the new year, and the book continued to sell well into 1844 with eleven more editions released. Since its initial publication the book has never been out of print, translated into several languages and issued in numerous hardback and paperback editions.

However, that ensuing January, Parley’s Illuminated Library published an unauthorized version of the story in a condensed form. Dickens sued for copyright infringement and won, but Parley’s declared bankruptcy and Dickens had to pay £700 in costs, reducing his actual profits substantially.

Pundits at the time posted varying opinions of the novella.

The Illustrated London News wrote that the story’s “impressive eloquence … its unfeigned lightness of heart—its playful and sparkling humour … its gentle spirit of humanity” all put the reader “in good humour with ourselves, with each other, with the season and with the author”.

There were criticisms that Dickens stepped too far away from the religious aspects of Christmas; writer and social thinker John Ruskin thought Dickens had imagined it as “mistletoe and pudding – neither resurrection from the dead, nor rising of new stars, nor teaching of wise men, nor shepherds”. My impression is that Dickens understood his target audience very well, and emulated St. Francis of Assisi’s technique of creating the Nativity scene in common style in medieval Italy to teach in a form that his followers could relate to.

Throughout Dickens’ stories you can see where he drew on his own past and present for inspiration, as all authors do. There’s been speculation that Ebenezer Scrooge was partly inspired by Dickens’ own irresponsible father, whom he had conflicting feelings about. For rich misers, there were also two well-known men in London at the time: John Elwes, a miserable Member of Parliament, and Jemmy Wood, the owner of the Gloucester Old Bank who was called “The Gloucester Miser”. Both provided the author with plenty of source material.

Other influences were:

a tradesman’s premises with the sign “Goodge and Marney” near where Dickens lived as a youth, which likely inspired the name for Scrooge’s former business partnera visit to the Western Penitentiary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1842, where he saw, and was deeply affected by, fettered prisoners – which may have inspired the chained ghost of Marleyhis nephew Henry, a disabled boy who was five at the time A Christmas Carol was written and became the character Tiny Timhis visit to a Ragged School in the East End of London, which clearly inspired both the dismal boarding school of Scrooge’s youth and the two miserable figures of Want and Ignorance hiding under the robes of Christmas Present.

A Christmas Carol in Prose; Being a Ghost Story of Christmas has had an enduring legacy beyond the many, many film, television and theatre productions over the decades.

The phrase “Merry Christmas”, which didn’t enter popular usage, even though it had been around since the 1500s, until the publication of  A Christmas Carol.The words “Bah! Humbug!”, still used today in various holiday contexts.Misers are typically called Scrooges – the word was even added to the Oxford English Dictionary as such in 1982.The introduction of turkey as the main meat of the Christmas meal (although nowadays pretty much anything goes, from ham to roast beef and all kinds of glammed-up vegetarian dishes). In Britain at the time the tradition had been to eat roast goose, especially for poorer families, but there was a turkey revolution after the publication of the book.Dickens’ emphasis on a more humanitarian kind of holiday, with generosity for those less fortunate, family gatherings, games and seasonal refreshments, is still the core of our modern Christmastime, even for those who aren’t religious.

Should you wish to add some Dickensian flair to your holiday meal and try making a Christmas Pudding, BBC Good Food has a recipe for Slow cooker Christmas pudding that would remove some of the fuss out of making one (definitely no washbasin steaming required). For what to serve with the pudding, you could try Nigella Lawson’s recipe for Eggnog Cream, a simple blend of whipped cream and Advocaat, a smooth and custardy Dutch liquor made from eggs, sugar, and brandy. Never tried it myself, but it sounds yummy.

I made a Christmas pudding once when I was a teenager at home; it’s dense and fruity, but nothing like a fruitcake if you’re not a fan of those. No overly-sweet maraschino cherries or other candied fruit in sight. You may have to do some hunting to find suet, or ask your grocery about getting some. Suet is the hard, raw fat from beef, lamb or mutton, and is a traditional ingredient in a number of British puddings (desserts) – if you can’t find any, Nigella has some suggestions for good substitutes.

If you’re planning on making your own Christmas pudding, you’ll need to start now, as it will need to ‘age’ to let all the flavours blend. Traditionally plum pudding is ‘made’ on ‘Stir Up Sunday’, the fifth Sunday before Christmas. According to the BBC recipe, after cooking and cooling, you can store the pudding for up to six months!

And after setting your pudding on fire to serve it, you can savour the entire meal peacefully as Bob Cratchit and his family did:

The post A brilliantly original holiday tale first appeared on Erica Jurus, author.

A.I. and a writer’s perspective

Someone asked me the other day how, as an author, I felt about A.I.

Let me answer that by mentioning a query in one of the Facebook groups for authors that I belong to. A fellow asked this question: if he used A.I. to create an entire novel for him, would it be ethical for him to list himself as the author?

NO!!!!!!

The fact that he even asked that question tells me he has no concept of what being an author is.

A.I. can never replace a writer’s inspiration, their unique voice, their leaps of imagination that bring fantastic stories to their readers.

As far as I’m concerned, readers around the world should begin protesting. If I buy a book by my favourite author, I want to be sure that they actually wrote it (yes, that includes the apparently widespread use of ‘ghost’ writers for authors who become famous and get too ‘busy’ to churn out their own stuff).

I liken it to all the photographic filters people are using for their social media that make them look nothing like their actual selves: it’s not real!

Quite a few people swear by using a program like ChatGPT to do research for them. Personally, I love doing my own research. My brain works kind of like a mind map – I start with a core search term, like “eggnog” that I’m doing a blog about in December. It’s typically associated with Christmas, but my mom, a nurse, made it for my brother and I whenever we were sick, so I’ll do some research on that. Then I’ll probably bring up some historical associations for the beverage. There might be regional variations in recipes that are interesting. I also recall reading some time ago that the beverage was a famous writer’s favourite tipple, and I pull up information about that. And so on, down many intriguing rabbit holes to see where they might lead me, like Alice in a wonderland of cool factoids about eggnog.

Along my journey, I’ll probably find other fascinating things that don’t relate to eggnog per se, but that I’d really like to research further for different blog posts. ChatGPT can’t replace which White Rabbits I may want to chase, or the fun I have going after them in all directions.

I write fiction, and I love following White Rabbits – many of them have led to some really great ideas for my novels. If I were writing non-fiction, an A.I. program might save some time chasing down facts for me (although I am really good at chasing them down myself).

My worry about the use of A.I. is the couch-potato brains I’m afraid will be the end result. All kinds of studies have shown how critical it is to exercise our brains regularly in order to stave off age-related dementia. If people begin letting A.I. do all the heavy lifting for them, what kind of cognitive degeneration will that lead to?

And what if, in some dystopian future, a lot of technology were to fail? Would survivors no longer be able to think for themselves?

So I will continue to say “Hell no!” every time I see an ad that wants to convert me to A.I. usage, and I will research and write my own novels for as long as I have good ideas to enchant my readers with.

If you’d like to join in a (polite, respectful) discussion of this topic, feel free to comment.

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