Erica Jurus's Blog, page 12

September 26, 2023

The Kraken Strikes Back

I’ve always found the legends of sea monsters rather fascinating. The depths of the deep blue ocean have long held mysteries – scientists are still trying to research them all – and are so vast that they could easily contain gigantic creatures terrorizing ancient mariners.

Legends of sea monsters go back more than two millennia, and are found in almost every culture with a sea coast. They even persist today – the largest ‘Nessie’ hunt ever just took place last month in Scotland, even though there’s never been any credible evidence that the creature actually exists.

Medieval maps often showed monsters cavorting in the seas beyond the shores of the known world. Cartographers decorated fine maps with them (on display in fine homes or castles) to entertain people who, because of the difficulties of travel in that period, weren’t able to visit the places on the maps themselves. Maps made for navigators heading out on expeditions would have been drawn with more practical information, even though the sailors would have been wary of monsters lurking out there somewhere.

Furthering the general mystique, strange carcasses have been washing up on shores for several centuries at least. A few have been identified as decayed shark and whale remains, but some remain unexplained. The Stronsay Beast washed ashore in the Orkney Islands, Scotland, after a storm in September 1808. It was measured by a carpenter and two farmers and recorded as 4 ft wide and 55 ft long (later disputed), and a circumference of about 10 ft. Its skin was smooth if stroked from head to tail but rough if stroked in the other direction. There were bristle-edged fins, a row of bristles down its back that glowed in the dark when wet, and three pairs of appendages that were described as ‘paws’ or ‘wings’. An anatomist in London, England, decided that it must have been a basking shark, but the description of all the appendages, as well as a sketch made at the time, bear no resemblance to any kind of shark. The old mystery continues!

Sketch of the Stronsay beast made by Sir Alexander Gibson in 1808; By Sir Alexander Gibson – http://www.geocities.com/capedrevenger/beachedcarcasses.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3128402

The most notorious of the sea monsters was the Kraken, a fearsome beast that was said to be able to capsize an entire ship with its enormous tentacles. This behemoth was said to haunt the waters between Iceland and Norway, and was described by Dano-Norwegian missionary and explorer Hans Egede in 1734.

Egede, basing his knowledge on fishermen’s reports, described a creature several miles long, “having many heads and a number of claws”. When it surfaced, it seemed to cover the whole sea. It used its claws to capture a variety of prey – from fish to men to entire ships – and carry them down into the depths. The fishermen said they could mount the kraken and catch huge numbers of fish that it seemed to attract; however, should they ever capture the monster, the only way to avoid their own destruction was to pronounce its name so that it would return to its watery lair.

Then a Danish author and bishop, Erik Ludvigsen Pontoppidan, fed the legends in a book called The Natural History of Norway said that mermaids, sea serpents and the Kraken existed. Well, who would argue with a bishop? Authors Herman Melville, in Moby Dick, and Jules Verne, in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, even referenced Pontoppidan’s writings.

In 1866, author Victor Hugo wrote of a large octopus called a pieuvre and tied it into the kraken of legend, and when a French malacologist (a scientist who studies molluscs), Pierre Denys-Montfort, published an engraving of a gigantic octopus attacking a ship, the creature became synonymous with kraken monsters ever after.

“Le Poulpe Colossal” by malacologist Pierre Dénys de Montfort, 1801, from the descriptions of French sailors reportedly attacked by such a creature off the coast of Angola. By en:Pierre Denys deok4 Montfort / fr:Etienne Claude Voysard – from en:Image:Colossal octopus by Pierre Denys de Montfort.jpg where it was uploaded by en:user:ffdhhlSalleman., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=977733

Montfort believed that the kraken was the same creature that Pliny the Elder (in the first century CE) described as a man-killer that tore apart ships and killed the sailors. He blamed colossal octopuses for the loss of ten warships under British control in 1782, for which he was roundly ridiculed.

However, in 1813 a ship named Niagara, sailing from Lisbon to New York, logged a sighting of a 200 ft long marine animal floating in the sea, purportedly covered in shells with a lot of birds sitting on it.

What mariners may have been seeing were actually giant squid, which can grow up to 50 ft in length. Almost the length of their own ship, these massive sea creatures must have been terrifying at the time.

Giant squid are deep-ocean dwellers, and so difficult to track down that the first images of them in their natural habitat were only taken in 2004 by a Japanese team of researchers. Sadly, scientists have tried to study them by capturing live specimens to bring back to a lab, but the specimens invariably die. Octopuses and squid are highly intelligent animals.

They belong to a group called Cephalopods, which have large, well-developed brains. They’re highly social, and can communicate visually using a diverse range of signals produced by changing their posture or locomotion, the colour of their skin and even the texture of the skin.

They’re extraordinary hunters who’ve adapted brilliantly to the presence of humans in their habitat. Octopuses will steal bait out of lobster traps and are also known to climb aboard fishing boats to hide in the containers that hold dead or dying crabs, their favourite food.

The prehensile arms with highly sensitive suction cups on octopuses, squid and cuttlefish allow them to grasp and manipulate objects. In captivity, octopuses require stimulation or they’ll become lethargic, so their keepers give them toys and puzzles. They’ve been observed in ‘play’ behaviour, repeatedly releasing toys into a current in their aquariums and then catching them.

If they’re feeling peckish, octopuses have even been known to climb out of their tanks, cross the lab floor and enter another aquarium, where they eat the crabs and then return to their own aquariums.

Cephalopods can solve complex puzzles and remember the solutions to them, such as unscrewing the lids of containers and opening latches on boxes to obtain the food inside.

They also seem to feel despair, and have been known to throw themselves out of their laboratory tanks to commit suicide on the floor. It makes one wonder who the monsters are, the sea creatures or the researchers who insist on capturing them just to study them more closely.

However, because of their intelligence, since 2022 all vertebrates, cephalopods, and decapods have been recognised as sentient by the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022, and that is a very positive development.

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Published on September 26, 2023 20:20

September 19, 2023

True Crime Victorian Style

Looking deceptively innocent today, in Victorian times the Thames as a cesspool of crime and death

It’s only forty-one days to Halloween, so it’s time to introduce a little eeriness to my blog

True crime is extremely popular these days, with plenty of reality shows to watch on television, as well as fictional series that have capitalized on the trend – e.g. Only Murders in the Building, one of my favourites (Martin Short is fantastic in it), and Based on a True Story, starring Kaley Cuoco (haven’t seen it yet). Our modern world has plenty of crime to choose from, especially in the 2000s with instantaneous news transmissions via numerous media outlets online.

But Victorian England beat us by over 100 years, with just gossip and a few highly-sensationalized news publications to inform you of what was going on. When extreme crimes hit the news, they terrified local citizens.

At the beginning of the 19th century in England, the government imposed hefty taxes on newspaper publishers to try to keep them from giving the government bad press. This meant that the cover price of papers rose, to the point where they often cost more than the daily wage of the average working-class person. To combat this, pubs and coffee houses opened “reading rooms”, where patrons could hear the news read aloud for them.

Unfortunately (in a dismaying parallel to modern social media), journalists then began to embellish news items to increase the chances of having them read aloud, and this type of news ‘reporting’ certainly got attention.

Later in the century the government taxes were decreased and many more publications sprang up. By 1885 there were six morning papers and five evening papers just in London, with many more through the rest of the country, and they all still kept whipping the reading public into a frenzy.

Londoners at the time were given the impression that their city was rife with violent crime, even though that was rare (most police work dealt with petty crimes, such as theft and pickpocketing). Cases of gruesome crimes – and especially when more than one hit the news in the same time period – created widespread hysteria in the city.

Such was the case with the so-called Thames Torso Murders, also called the Embankment Murders, which confounded the police in the 1870s and 80s.

Thames Division of the London Metropolitan Police Force on duty near Tower Bridge in the 1800s. Source: www.thamespolicemuseum.org.uk/gallery.html

In May of 1887, workers in the Thames River Valley village of Rainham pulled a bundle up from the river that contained a female torso. During the next few weeks, more parts from the same body were found in various parts of London, until the entire victim was able to be reconstructed, except for the head and upper chest. The poor woman’s identity was never discovered, and the killer wasn’t found.

In a situation that seems completely bizarre now, London doctors decided that the body wasn’t dissected for medical purposes, but they also weren’t able to provide a cause of death or even prove that a violent act had taken place, so the jury gave a verdict of “Found Dead.” The best that the medical community came up with was that whoever cut up the body had a certain amount of medical knowledge.

We take a lot for granted with modern forensics. Charles A. Hebbert, an assistant police surgeon at the time, cited in his case report the difficulties involved in investigating victims found in the water. Length of time immersed, and possible injuries from passing boats, made it hard to decide whether there’d been an accident or foul play. Dismemberment and scattering created additional problems, destroying many of the clues modern police would rely on today, like any information from wherever the crime had been committed, how the bodies had been transported, and anything else that might have been washed away. Doctors had trouble identifying the age of the victim, what condition they’d been in while alive, their height, and sometimes even their gender.

Complicating things, the Thames had long been a depository for dead bodies. City records from 1882 showed that 544 corpses were found in the river, of which 277 cases were unresolved. The London Times ran an article on June 15, 1882 stating that “the facilities afforded by the river for the perpetration of secret murders was one that need to be addressed” and complaining about “the general laxity that prevails in our arrangement for ascertaining the causes of suspicious deaths”.

To the police, the 1887 crime seemed similar to that of another dismembered torso found in the Thames fourteen years before, when a policeman rowing on the Thames found the left quarter of a woman’s torso in some mud off Battersea waterworks. Later that day other policemen found the right side of a woman’s torso by Brunswick Wharf, and portions of lungs in other locations in Battersea. The following day, gruesomely, a woman’s face with scalp attached was found, then a right thigh and shoulder with part of an arm. The local police surgeon reassembled the sections in a workhouse and said that a blow to the head was likely the cause of death.

Reports of the discovery prompted numerous people to visit the corpse to see if they could identify her. There were a lot of missing women in London at the time, which had a population of over 6 million people in a crowded, labyrinthine, soot-fogged and crime-filled city.

In 1873, rumours had spread that the crime was a joke by some medical students, since the body was so dexterously dismembered. A reward of £200 was offered for information, but nothing came of it, and there was never even a criminal profile of the perpetrator worked up. It was thought likely that the victim was one of thousands of London’s prostitutes, who weren’t high on the list of crimes to be solved. The body was buried at Battersea cemetery, although the victim’s face was preserved at the workhouse by its medical officer.

However, in September, 1888, another dismembered female body was found, with pieces distributed in the Thames and various other London locales, followed by yet another the following June.

It was enough for the police to conclude that a serial killer was at work. Then, in April 1888, Jack the Ripper’s killing spree began. Initially, it was suggested that the torsos were the work of the Ripper, but the methods were too different: while “Jack” gruesomely mutilated his victims, the Thames killer surgically dismembered his. Interestingly, there was speculation that the Ripper also had some medical knowledge.

The vast numbers of poor people in London were easy pickings for these murderers. Author George W. M. Reynolds wrote an indictment of the miseries of London’s worst-off in 1844:

“The most unbounded wealth is the neighbor of the most hideous poverty…the crumbs which fall from the tables of the rich would appear delicious viands to starving millions, and yet these millions obtain them not! In that city there are in all five prominent buildings: the church, in which the pious pray; the gin-palace, to which the wretched poor resort to drown their sorrows; the pawn-broker’s, where miserable creatures pledge their raiment, and their children’s raiment, even unto the last rag, to obtain the means of purchasing food, and – alas! too often – intoxicating drink; the prison, where the victims of a vitiated condition of society expiate the crimes to which they have been drive by starvation and despair; and the workhouse, to which the destitute, the aged, and the friendless hasten to lay down their aching heads – and die!”

Charles Booth, a British ship owner and social reformer, published a map of London’s financial strata that gives a sad image of how the majority of people lived amidst slums and crime compared to the narrow window of those well-fed and clothed.

Part of Charles Booth’s poverty map showing the Old Nichol, a slum in the East End of London. Published 1889 in Life and Labour of the People in London. The red areas are “middle class, well-to-do”, light blue areas are “poor, 18s to 21s a week for a moderate family”, dark blue areas are “very poor, casual, chronic want”, and black areas are the “lowest class…occasional labourers, street sellers, loafers, criminals and semi-criminals”.
By Charles Booth – http://www.umich.edu/~risotto/maxzooms/ne/nej34.html (cropped). Original: Charles Booth's Labour and Life of the People. Volume 1: East London (London: Macmillan, 1889)., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26694694

On June 4, 1889, a female torso was found in the Thames, followed by more body parts in the water the next week. By this point the Ripper killings appeared to have stopped. An investigation once again concluded that the perpetrator must have had medical knowledge, although at the inquest it was stated: “the division of the parts showed skill and design: not, however, the anatomical skill of a surgeon, but the practical knowledge of a butcher or a knacker”. The woman appeared to have been dead only 48 hours. She was around eight months pregnant. An official cause of death was never established, but at least the jury concluded that it was “Wilful murder against some person or persons unknown”. Like preceding victims, the head was never found, but somehow the woman was identified as Elizabeth Jackson, a homeless prostitute from Chelsea.

On September 10, 1889, a police constable found the heavily beaten headless and legless torso of an unidentified woman under a railway arch at Pinchin Street, in Whitechapel. The killing seemed to contain elements of both the Ripper and Thames killings, as the abdomen had been severely mutilated. Police decided that the murder was committed elsewhere and then the dismembered parts disposed of around the city, but no other sections were ever found. Again, the identity of neither victim or killer were ever discovered.

By 1890 the Torso murders seemed to have wound down, although In June of 1902 a woman’s torso was found in an alley in Lambeth. It was never identified.

There have been suggestions that there were actually three killers operating in London during these murders. It was possible that more women had fallen victim but were never discovered amid all the human and animal remains floating around in the Thames (a revolting thought). More modern analysis of the Torso murders points out the organization of the killings, systematically dismembering the victims and then dropping the parts around London like puzzle pieces for the authorities. There didn’t seem to be any taunting messages to the police, though, as you might expect in that situation.

All the victims over a roughly 29-year span were similar – vulnerable working-class women – and the bodies violently desecrated. The methods of all two or three killers indicated some amount of anatomical knowledge and perhaps a certain degree of skill. None of the killers were found, and if there was a third one, he remained completely in the shadows.

The Torso Murders became buried under the highly publicized Ripper Murders – as if, by removing his victims’ identities, the Torso killer (or killers) eliminated them from public consciousness, and perhaps that was an even more insidious crime than “Jack’s”.

Mystery is always intriguing, but I worry about the detachment with which we tend to view the victims, who suffered horribly, as well as anyone who may have cared for them. At least the Ripper’s victims, whose names were all known, will never be forgotten.

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Published on September 19, 2023 19:30

September 12, 2023

The colour brown: boring or eloquent?

A small town in eastern Ontario changing into its fall clothing

Brown is a September colour; it always makes me think of ‘back-to-school’, of walnuts and chestnuts on the ground, the bindings of books, tree leaves changing to tan and rust and fluttering off branches to dance on the wind.

I don’t think brown gets enough respect. While it’s not flashy, it carries so many qualities – richness, comfort, earthiness, depth.

Decades ago, when my hubby and I bought our house and tried to develop our personal style, I turned to all the decorating magazines I liked to read for help. Without any analysis, I simply cut out photos of rooms that appealed to me, and after I’d compiled an assortment, what I discovered was that every single one of them was done in earth tones and natural textures. While I enjoyed small splashes of colour, in artwork or decorative pieces, the rooms that I wanted to live in were calm, nature-toned sanctuaries.

Earth tones don’t have to be boring or monochromatic. There are so many different shades and textures – the grain in a beautiful piece of wood, whether polished to glow softly under lights or left in its natural form with all its knots and personality; a beautiful beige or taupe leather sofa; the light-and-shadow weave of wicker and rattan.

Calming, soft brown tones in a hotel bedroom

As a writer, brown is so evocative that it might only need a single word to describe something – think ‘chocolate’, ‘coffee’, ‘sand’, ‘fawn’, ‘mahogany’…

If you’re not on the same page yet, I promise that by the end of this post I’ll have you convinced of what a gorgeous colour brown really is.

According to public opinion surveys in the United States and Europe, brown is people’s least favorite colour, sadly. It’s often associated with plainness, poverty and rusticity, even though it’s widely seen in nature – soil, wood, autumn leaves, wildlife.

In Ancient Rome, brown clothing was associated with the lower classes, and with barbarians (anyone the Romans considered uncivilized and in need of conquering). Brown would have been the cheapest colour to produce for clothing, either in the material itself – in those times, clothing was made from animal skins, tree bark, large leaves, and eventually cotton, flax, linen, wool, all of which are naturally shades of beige/brown – or the easy-to-produce brown plant dyes. Producing colourful clothing, especially the famed ‘royal purple’, was considerably more expensive. And so, the Roman name for the poor in the city was pullati, i.e. “those dressed in brown”.

In the Middle Ages, each social class was expected to wear a color that matched its station – for the poor, it was grey or brown (as if being poor wasn’t bad enough in itself, they had to wear their status around all day). Brown robes were worn by monks as a sign of their humility and poverty. In 1363 there was even a statute requiring poor English people to wear a coarse homespun cloth made of wool, which was dyed with pigments from the woad and madder plants to give it a dull brown or grey shade called “russet”.

The magnificent wood-clad Trinity College Library in Dublin, Ireland

For some reason there seemed to be a disconnect between the beauties of nature, of lavish brown animal furs that edged the clothing of the aristocracy, and of the rich browns of wooden furniture and architecture, and the brown colours that meant poverty. My hubby and I have visited many mansions in various parts of the world, where magnificent carvings and furniture in brown-toned woods illustrate the great wealth of the inhabitants. Maybe the dichotomy was as simple as the contrast between the carved and polished wood and the dirt and mud that the poor lived in – refinement vs crudity.

Brown as a manufactured colour has a fascinating history.

It’s been used in art since prehistoric times, mainly made with umber, a natural clay pigment that’s one of the oldest tints in history. Paintings using umber have been dated to 40,000 BC.

Clay ovens in New Mexico, called ‘horno’, bake really well and are enjoying a renaissance

The Ancient Greeks and Romans also produced a fine reddish-brown ink, made from the ink of cuttlefish, called sepia. This ink was used by Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and other artists during the Renaissance, and by artists up until the present time.

However, in the Middle Ages, dark brown pigments were rarely used in art; painters and manuscript illuminators preferred bright, distinct colors such as red, blue, green and gold. With the advent of oil painting in the late 15th century, artists began making far greater use of browns. During the Renaissance, artists generally used four different brown pigments: raw umber, raw sienna (a reddish-brown earth mined near Siena, in Tuscany), burnt umber, made by heating Umbrian clay until it turned a darker shade, and burnt sienna, heated for the same effect.

In the 17th and 18th century artists really got into creating chiaroscuro effects, where the subject of a painting popped against a dark background – an effect they created using shades of brown.

At a Chinese Lantern Festival in Nashville, TN, glorious shades of brown enhance the other brilliant colours in the displays

Over the centuries, brown has been treated fickly by the masses. In the late 20th century, for example, brown became a common symbol in western culture for ‘simple and inexpensive’, as in brown paper lunch bags. Conversely, bleached white bread was seen as better quality than its ‘poorer’ cousin, brown bread.

Today, in our health-conscious era, the colour brown represents wholesomeness and naturalness – wholegrain brown breads are trendy, and natural unbleached sugar is available everywhere. (I also much prefer the flavour of organic, brown-coloured sugar that still contains its natural molasses – it actually tastes like something, as opposed to the bland sweetness of refined white sugar.)

Mouth-watering freshly baked bread at a farm market in Ireland

Brown is the predominant human and animal eye color in the world, coming from a dominant gene. Other colours like blue, for example, are from a recessive gene, which means that if a baby receives a blue gene from one parent and a brown gene from the other, the brown will dominate and the child’s eyes will be brown. The brown gene became dominant because it conferred an evolutionary benefit: the excess melanin that causes brown irises protects the eyes from sunlight. As a result, brown eyes have been more common in warmer, sunnier climates.

In human hair, brown is actually the second most common color, after black. Although other eye and hair colours tend to stand out more, some of the most famously attractive people in the world are brown-haired and eyed – Sophia Loren, Clark Gable, Catherine Zeta-Jones. (Elizabeth Taylor had brown hair, but was legendary for her violet eyes.)

A large number of mammals and predatory birds have a brown coloration that’s most likely used for camouflage, since many environments, like the savannah or a forest floor, are brown and green. Most mammals are ‘dichromats’ (they have only two kinds of photo-receptors in their eyes instead of three like humans do) and can’t easily distinguish something like brown fur from green grass. Of course, this also works for the prey, as when snowshoe hares change colour from white to brown when spring arrives.

Cheetahs on the prowl in Kenya blend into their multi-textured brown surroundings

The shades of brown in the animal kingdom are varied and beautiful, from the sleek golden-tan colour of lions to the ruddy brown of a majestic reticulated giraffe to the furry coats of colder-climate mammals. Sadly, for most of these animals, their lovely hides made them collectible commodities that decimated their populations, but fortunately a few decades ago people began to take a stand against killing animals just for their skins. With animal-spotting trips increasing in popularity across the planet, we now have a thriving culture of capturing memories with a camera instead of a rifle.

A Kenyan Reticulated Giraffe is resplendent in the morning sunlight

Brown as camouflage has also been embraced by humans. The colour buff dates back to the 17th century, and was named after the undyed buffalo leather that soldiers at the time wore for protection. It’s a common colour in nature, like the sands of many deserts. Shades of brown became a popular color for military uniforms – widely available and blending well into outdoor landscapes.

In 1775, at the outbreak of the American Revolution, the first Continental Congress wanted the official uniform color to be brown, but in many militias the officers were already wearing blue and in 1778 George Washington was asked to design a new uniform. He ended up making the official color of all uniforms blue and buff.

Similarly, in British-ruled India, 19th century soldiers wore a yellowish shade of tan, which became known as khaki from the Urdu word for dust-colored. The color was adopted by the British Army for their Abyssinian Campaign and then in the Boer War, and the United States Army followed suit, as well as the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps.

Shots of Bushmills Irish Whiskey, made for over 400 years, perhaps gave solace to British soldiers far away from home

The colours of tan, khaki and brown also became associated with adventure. In 1909 former U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt led, on behalf of the Smithsonian, a massive safari to British East Africa (now Kenya), the Belgian Congo (now Democratic Republic of the Congo) and up the Nile to Khartoum in Sudan. The expedition made headlines around the world, and both the colours of Africa (browns and rusts of the animals, the sandy landscape) and the tan/khaki clothing that Roosevelt and his party wore became synonymous with heading to exotic places.

Yours truly in safari clothes in Zambia, sitting at the edge of Victoria Falls

Those colour associations became cemented in the Indiana Jones movies – Indy’s iconic clothing, and the entire setting of the first film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, from the cave and boulder in South America to the classrooms and libraries of the university where he was a professor to Marion’s bar in Tibet to the deserts of Egypt and craggy rocks of Malta. Indiana Jones-themed décor invariably includes all the colours of his outfits and escapades.

Indiana Jones-themed decor at a college event

In the marketing world, brown represents ruggedness – probably an extension of the adventure concept. The United Parcel Service (UPS) delivery company has trademarked the colour Pullman Brown for their trucks and uniforms. The colour was formerly used for the luxurious Pullman rail cars during the Golden Age of Travel, and was chosen by UPS both for that association of a high-end product (and because brown is easy to keep clean).

In culinary circles, so many delicious foods are shades of brown – your morning cup of coffee, the comforting and autumnal cinnamon spice, chocolate in its many variations… We bake our bread to have a beautiful golden-brown crust, and toast our bread to give it a lovely brown colour and extra flavour. We cook sugar over high heat to create rich, sweet caramel. We sauté onions to caramelize the sugars they hold and make them extra scrumptious, or we coat them in fluffy batter and deep-fry them for a crusty golden coating. Seared meat, potato chips and French fries, the crispy brownness of cheese under the broiler – the list goes on and on.

Banana bread pudding with rich caramel sauce, Portrush, Ireland

Being surrounded by nature is very soothing and refreshing for the spirit, and I particularly love everything brown, from the pungent scent of good soil to the textured bark of trees to the different kinds of rock surfaces.

A tiny island in the 1000 Islands chain in the St. Lawrence River

Inside my home, the walls, floors and most of the furniture are all in shades of brown and cream. Usually the first comment people make to us when they visit is how relaxed they feel in our spaces. We have a squashy sofa and loveseat in our living room in a distressed leather that looks like grey-brown elephant skin, which fits perfectly with our travel vibe. But the overall impression is one of comfort and serenity, which comes from the colours of nature and all the woodsy textures we have. I wish I could grow plants to add to the ambience, but even my thumb is brown as opposed to green.

I’ve never been able to manage perfectly-cut tea sandwiches, but these still hit the spot

When I’m sitting and writing, reading a good book or watching an intriguing murder mystery on television, my beverage of choice is a cup of steaming, amber-coloured tea. I had no idea how wonderful proper tea was until my hubby and I had it in England – at a tearoom on a street near Windsor Castle, on a damp and chilly day. Our server brought out cups rich in aroma and flavour, like nothing we’d ever had in Canada at that time. (That was when I became addicted to high-quality tea, both the culture and the wide world of different varieties and tastes – and the excuse to have delightful sweets.)

Far from being boring, brown is one of the great colours of history. It may not be a rare colour, and it doesn’t jump out at us visually, but it has so much depth and nuance. Let’s give it the recognition it deserves, as it warms us, soothes our souls, houses us richly, clothes us elegantly and feeds us well. And in a few weeks we can become children again for a while as we romp through piles of crackly brown fallen leaves!

Shuffling through fallen leaves on a gorgeous fall day

Stunning formations in Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico

Breathtaking browns and greys against a piercing blue sky in the Andes mountains in Peru

All photos in this post were taken by the author, or are in her collection, and none may be used without my express permission. E. Jurus.

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Published on September 12, 2023 19:00

September 5, 2023

Beware the Headless Horseman! — Sleepy Hollow Country in NY State

My childhood was shaped by an eerie scene of cattails alongside a road that were beating, in the rising wind, a tattoo like ghostly hoofbeats upon a dark and lonely road.

I’ve loved Disney’s The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949), an animated adaptation narrated by Bing Crosby, from the moment I first watched it on television, and viewing it every October is now an annual Halloween tradition. Despite the light-hearted ambience, the animated short very effectively captures the ghostliness of Ichabod Crane’s ride home through the haunted woods of Sleepy Hollow and his terrifying encounter with the Headless Horseman. (I now have it on DVD and can watch it whenever the mood strikes.)

“On mounting a rising ground, which brought the figure of his fellow-traveller in relief against the sky, gigantic in height, and muffled in a cloak, Ichabod was horror-struck on perceiving that he was headless!— but his horror was still more increased on observing that the head, which should have rested on his shoulders, was carried before him on the pommel of his saddle!” Washington Irving. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Well that would creep me out too!

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is writer Washington Irving’s most famous and most beloved work. There’s something about Ichabod’s arrogance, brought down by a wild chase on a dark night, and the spectre of the rearing black horse and the apparition hurtling its head at Ichabod that has created a lasting impression on our collective imaginations.

Irving set his story in the Hudson River Valley of New York State, an area that had been embroiled in the American Revolutionary War. There was the Battle of White Plains in October of 1776, after which the countryside thereabouts was occupied by the British forces, while the Americans dug in north of Peekskill. In between the two, Westchester County was a lawless wilderness.

Among the various combatants and mercenaries, there was a group of Hessian Jägers, sharpshooters and horsemen from Germany who fought for the British. The character of the Headless Horseman in Irving’s short story was said to be one of those Hessian soldiers who was decapitated, and it may have been loosely based on the discovery of a real Jäger’s headless corpse in the locale of Sleepy Hollow and later buried by the Van Tassel family. The Van Tassel family existed in real life – you can see their graves in Sleepy Hollow cemetery – and Irving borrowed the name for the wealthy family in his story.

Additional inspiration for the Headless Horseman came from Irving’s travels through Europe, where headless horsemen often appeared in stories from Ireland to Germany to Scandinavia. In the tales, these horsemen usually afflicted people who were arrogant and scheming – just like Ichabod Crane in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, who liked to get himself invited to his students’ homes for free meals and angled to marry the pretty Katrina Van Tassel for her father’s wealth. Irving wrote The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.,which included the famous ghost story, while he was staying in England, and clearly drew on all of these various influences.

Irving actually lived in Tarrytown twice in his life. His family was from Manhattan, part of the city’s merchant class. His mother named him after George Washington, and when Irving was six he even met his namesake when the president was living in New York city after his inauguration.

Irving was apparently an unenthusiastic student who loved adventure stories and regularly snuck out of class to go to the theatre. When he was fifteen there was an outbreak of yellow fever in Manhattan. Yellow fever no longer exists in North America (it wasn’t original to our continent but had come over from Africa with the enslaved), but at the time it was considered one of the most dangerous infectious diseases, and so Irving’s family sent him upriver to stay with one of his friends in Tarrytown.

During that stay he took the opportunity to explore, making several trips up the Hudson River and through the Catskill Mountains that were to become the setting for Rip Van Winkle. He also became familiar with the nearby town of Sleepy Hollow and all its local ghost stories, and the entire area inspired him profoundly. “Of all the scenery of the Hudson”, he later wrote, “the Kaatskill Mountains had the most witching effect on my boyish imagination”.

He began writing when he was 19, under the pseudonym Jonathan Oldstyle, starting with a series of letters to the New York Morning Chronicle that were commentaries on the city’s social and theater scene. Still worried about his health, his brothers sent him on the tour of Europe for a while. When he returned, he began studying law in New York City, but still made an indifferent student and barely passed the bar exam. In the meantime, he’d begun socializing with a group of literate young men and created a literary magazine that was a moderate success, spreading his name and reputation.

And here’s an interesting little tidbit: it was Washington Irving who gave New York City the nickname “Gotham”, in the 17th issue of his magazine, from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning “Goat’s Town”.

Not long after, he began writing books, and the rest is, of course, history.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is the tale of a rather ridiculous man named Ichabod Crane, a schoolmaster from Connecticut who was already extremely superstitious by the time he arrived in the secluded glen of Sleepy Hollow, near the Dutch settlement of Tarry Town. Sleepy Hollow was renowned for its haunting atmosphere and numerous ghost stories. Residents claimed that the area had been bewitched during the early days of the settlement, and they often experienced various supernatural and mysterious occurrences. The most infamous spectre was the Headless Horseman, the “commander-in-chief of all the powers of the air,” who “rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly quest of his head”.

Of course, all of this fed into Crane’s imagination, and he loved to visit the Old Dutch wives and listen to their eerie stories. None of this would possibly have led anywhere were it not for Crane’s rivalry, with a rowdy local hero named Abraham “Brom Bones” Van Brunt, for the hand of 18-year-old Katrina Van Tassel, the only child of wealthy farmer Baltus Van Tassel. Whatever Brom’s motives may have been, Ichabod saw dollar signs in a potential marriage to Katrina.

Brom, unable to force Ichabod into a physical fight for Katrina, ended up playing a series of pranks using Crane’s superstitions. Things came to a head one autumn night when everyone attended a harvest party at the Van Tassels’ homestead.

Throughout the evening Crane did his best to claim Katrina’s hand in marriage, but failed. Depressed, he left the party to ride home on his plodding mount, a plough horse named Gunpowder, through the woods between the Van Tassels and the farmhouse in Sleepy Hollow where he was staying. His progress was slow through the murky night, and after all the spooky stories he’d heard at the part, he grew increasingly apprehensive with each noise he heard. (If you’ve never experienced the almost absolute darkness of the countryside without electric lighting, I can tell you from personal experience that it is intensely unnerving.)

The journey took him past several famously haunted spots, including a lightning-stricken tree where the ghost of British spy Major André was said to hang out. As Ichabod neared the bridge adjacent to the Old Dutch Burying Ground, he was stunned to see a cloaked rider missing its head. Even more terrifying was the sight of the head perched on the rider’s saddle.

This could only be the spirit of the dreaded Headless Horsemen, and Ichabod’s only salvation would be to reach the bridge over the Pocantico River, which, according to legend, the spectre couldn’t cross.

“ “If I can but reach that bridge,” thought Ichabod, “I am safe.” Just then he heard the black steed panting and blowing close behind him; he even fancied that he felt his hot breath. Another convulsive kick in the ribs, and old Gunpowder sprang upon the bridge; he thundered over the resounding planks; he gained the opposite side; and now Ichabod cast a look behind to see if his pursuer should vanish, according to rule, in a flash of fire and brimstone. Just then he saw the goblin rising in his stirrups, and in the very act of hurling his head at him.” Washington Irving. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

I won’t elaborate any further in case you haven’t read the story or watched any of the many film adaptations. Irving’s original story leaves it open to debate whether the spectre was real or another hideous prank by Brom Bones. The whole tale is so evocative that it has inspired numerous productions on film and television, including my favourite (the Disney version); the rather strange 1999 horror movie by Tim Burton that strayed pretty far from the original plot; episodes of Charmed and Ghost Whisperer; and a horror series I really enjoyed, Sleepy Hollow (2013 – 2017), which delved deeply into the Revolutionary War and Ichabod’s ‘actual’ role as an operative for George Washington, then getting resurrected in the modern day and battling the supernatural forces of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Several years ago I was thrilled to discover that quite a few of the locales in Irving’s story actually exist, and can be visited. The entire Hudson River Valley is permeated with Washington Irving’s legacy and spirit, and makes a marvelous road trip in the autumn, when the entire area pulls out all the stops with Halloween-themed events.

When my hubby and I visited the first time (we loved it so much we repeated the trip just a few years later, and it’s within an easy drive from southern Ontario where we live), we based ourselves in Poughkeepsie, which is fairly central to all the interesting attractions. The valley itself is beautiful in October, with the Hudson River threading through all kinds of charming, well-preserved towns, magnificent turn-of-the-century estates and glowing fall colours.

Irving returned to Tarrytown (modern spelling) later in life and built his own home called Sunnyside (he was multi-talented). You can tour the house and grounds, and also participate in a variety of delightful Halloween programs for children and adults.

Within the vicinity, visit the actual town of Sleepy Hollow. You can stand on the Sleepy Hollow Bridge and wait to see if you hear ghostly hoofbeats, as well as take a tour of the Old Dutch Church and Burying Ground. Irving himself is buried in the cemetery, along with the real Van Tassel family and, more contemporary to us, quite a number of famous people like the infamous hotel queen Leona Helmsley. Apparently the real headless Hessian soldier is also buried somewhere there, in an unmarked grave. The cemetery had just begun offering tours the first year we went, and the tours have grown enormously in popularity ever since.

There are numerous lavish and/or historic estates, from the Gilded Age ‘cottage’ of the Vanderbilts to exotic Olana (the home of famous Hudson River School artist Frederick Church) to Clermont State Historic Site, dating back to the mid-1700s. The Livingstone family that built it was involved in the Revolution, and when we were there the estate held a recreation of a 1920’s Halloween party for the children, where the ‘spirits’ of deceased family members made a guest appearance both inside and out on the evening ghost tour.

Frederick Church, one of the most famous painters of the Hudson River School, incorporated Middle Eastern accents seen on his travels when he built Olana in Greenwood, NY – photo by E. Jurus, all rights reserved

One of the most fascinating places to visit, even for we Canadians, is the lifelong home and estate of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the town of Hyde Park in Dutchess County. There’s an enormous amount of history there, and the house had many famous visitors, including Queen Elizabeth II and Winston Churchill. Out back you’ll find the Peace Garden, which holds two pieces of the Berlin Wall carved into silhouettes. The grounds are extensive and great to explore, and as Canadians we were amused to see a very large flock of Canadian geese taking over the front lawn.

The valley is peppered historic small towns (including our personal favourite, Rhinebeck) filled with beautiful old homes, cool shops (the town of Hudson is renowned for its antique stores) and interesting places to eat (see the Beekman Arms in Rhinebeck, a pre-Revolution inn with a delightful tavern and good food).

There are wonderful farm markets to explore as you drive around (we had the best chocolate milk ever from the Wayside Stand of the Montgomery Place Orchards, operated by the gorgeous Montgomery Place Estate, which houses Bard College). In the autumn, look for any place with piles of pumpkins for sale!

All of the estates have gorgeous rolling properties along the Hudson where you can spend hours strolling, so do wear hiking-worthy clothes and shoes, and bring your camera!

The haunted offerings are plentiful. Two of our favourites (more have sprung up since we were there) are: the Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze at Van Cortlandt Manor in Croton-on-Hudson, where more than 7,000 illuminated carved pumpkins light up the night in various configurations on a night-time stroll through the property (there’s also a fabulous gift shop at the end!); and The Headless Horseman Hayrides and Haunted Attractions in Ulster Park on the west side of the river. The Headless Horseman is the coolest haunted attraction hubby and I have ever been to – 65 acres of: haunted corn maze, a superb 20-minute hay wagon ride through the creepy woodland trails and lots of scares, several haunted houses, several incredible shops filled with some very stylish Halloween merchandise, refreshment stands and more. You’ll need to book tickets and an entry time before you arrive, but once you’re inside you can stay as long as you want. The theme changes every year, so you won’t see the same thing twice. This place is very highly-rated and I can’t say enough about it. Cameras aren’t allowed inside, so I can’t show you any personal photos, but you can get a very good idea on the website.

If you’re a fan of the original 1960s television series Dark Shadows, Lyndhurst estate will be a mecca for you: it was used for the exterior shots in the two movies, House of Dark Shadows (1970) and Night of Dark Shadows (1971). The lavish mansion at different times housed some of the cream of early-20th-century New York society, including mayor William Paulding, merchant George Merritt and railroad tycoon Jay Gould. You can take tours of the house and explore the grounds. This year in October Lyndhurst is hosting a Dark Shadows Meet & Greet with two of the stars of the tv series, Kathryn Leigh Scott, who played “Maggie Evans” and “Josette DuPres” and Marie Wallace, who played “Eve”, “Megan Todd” and “Jenny Collins”.

There’s so much going on in ‘Sleepy Hollow country’ in NY State that even with two visits my hubby and I haven’t come close to seeing everything – which just means we’ll have to go back for a third In fact, there’s too much to tell you about in this post, but there are numerous sites where you can do some research to make your own shortlist for how ever long you’re able to be in the area (see below). I’ve provided links to many of our favourites, but I suggest you sit down one afternoon with a cup of tea and maybe a pumpkin scone and do some armchair exploring online.

Visit Sleepy Hollow I Love NY, Hudson River Valley Hudson Valley Tourism Hudson River Valley Heritage Sites Lonely Planet – Hudson Valley Trip Advisor

Whenever you decide to go, have a hauntingly good time!

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Published on September 05, 2023 19:00

August 29, 2023

Fall adventure: road trips

Crisp fresh air, the colours and scents of autumn, funky small towns and eateries you wouldn’t discover any other way – it’s hard to beat a fall road trip for an all-encompassing travel adventure.

Post-pandemic, there’s not much planning required for a road trip – decide the general area, throw some clothes in a bag, plug in the GPS and head out on a gorgeous fall day. However, I like to plan our route and book accommodations ahead of time; it’s a general preference so that I don’t have to worry about anything when we arrive at one of our stops, although we rented a car in New Zealand a few years ago and drove around off-season without prebooking much.

I wouldn’t attempt free-wheeling your lodgings in peak season anywhere. When we arrived in Innsbruck, Austria late into the evening one August years ago (after sloshing our way through a storm in the Alps), I was very grateful we’d booked our hotel in advance, as every single piece of lodging was booked up and we watched several hapless tourists search in vain for a place to stay. (Same in Killarney, Ireland in October; a honeymoon couple was SOL, not sure where they ended up.)

When I think of it, the majority of our trips, both here and abroad, have been road trips. The freedom of the road is a powerful enticement, and the flexibility to stop where and when you want. Friends of ours once did a similar trip to England to ours, but using a rail pass, and regretted not being able to get to some of the out-of-the-way castles and other sights that we’d been able to drive to.

If you feel like enhancing your road trip a little, packing a picnic is a fun way to start out. There are two caveats to this: a) make the food easy to prepare and eat, or pick up some food along the way, and b) don’t forget that you have to clean up any dishes/utensils/thermoses/etc. that you use and store them somewhere throughout the drive. But if you’re willing to do both of those, there’s nothing quite like a fall picnic in a park, in a wooded area or along a river to really make the most of the golden weather.

And if you’re really lucky, you can combine all three elements in one location. On a road trip to northern Ontario, across the top of Lake Superior and down through Michigan quite a few years ago, hubby and I headed out before dawn to avoid morning traffic jams and pulled off for a late breakfast at French River, a small community where my family always stopped on our own road trips when I was a child. At that time, there was a very rudimentary picnic area with just a wooden table (potty breaks were in the woods); now there’s a visitor centre detailing the history of the area and with actual washrooms.

We prowled around until we found some lovely flat rocks under the trees and overlooking the river. The sun was out and the air was clear and cool as we spread out a well-used ochre-and-grey plaid picnic basket and some pretty fall-themed paper napkins. There was a thermos of tea, some very easy baguette sandwiches made with Western-style eggs, cheese and bacon (no utensils needed), and pumpkin whoopie pies for dessert. Glorious weather in our aromatic mid-Ontario woods, good food!

I discovered the joys of whoopie pies a number of years ago, and have been madly in love with them ever since. They don’t sound like much – a creamy filling sandwiched between two layers of a cross between a cake and a cookie – but if done well they’re heaven on a plate. They even feature in my first novel, Through the Monster-glass, at a bakery called Catspaw with a mysterious owner in the fictional town of Llithfaen that my heroine moves to. I’m including the recipe for the fantastic pumpkin whoopie pies I made in this post – do try them out!

My hubby and I have made fall road trips through several part of Ontario (our home province), New York State (one of our favourite places to go – see Sleepy Hollow details on this blog in two weeks), New England, down to Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, through large parts of England, and all the way down to New Orleans and back up through Alabama on the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail. Fall is shoulder season, so there are far fewer crowds, the weather is usually great and prices for accommodations and food often drop off considerably (unless you’re going to a leaf-peeping area, in which case fall is more like peak season)

Top tips for road trips if you’re a novice:

Do map out a general route to keep you on track without wasting too much time. If you have a lot of time you can be more freeform, but if you’re keeping to a schedule of sorts, a preplanned route can still allow you some flexibility when you come across something interesting.For the most part, I like to pre-book accommodations, but not always. Clusters of hotels and restaurants can be found all over the place these days, with signs along highways pointing them out, so it’s much easier to find spur-of-the-moment places to stay. I use Booking.com, which has a very useful phone app for just such cases. And sometimes things happen on the road that require an abrupt change of plan, so having access to a site like Booking.com’s extensive list of available lodgings in the area comes in very handy.You may have your own preference for finding accommodations; as long as it’s reliable and priced well you’ll be in good shape. A lot of people go camping; that’s never been our thing, but we have gotten rather envious lately of our neighbour’s custom-fitted camper-van.Make sure your vehicle is in good working order. I do know people whose cars have broken down en route, which results in a huge waste of time just getting things repaired.I like to throw some comfort items in a bag in the back seat – bottles of water, maybe a thermos of hot tea, snacks, a small pillow for naps, lap blankets (I get chilly when I’m sitting still for any length of time, and if the air turns cooler I can snuggle under one without cranking up the heat on my hubby while he’s driving). I even bring seasonally-themed lap blankets for atmosphere.I do recommend having two drivers so that the secondary driver can give the primary a break as needed. My hubby and I both love to drive, but he likes to be the main driver on road trips while I navigate (which I’m very good at), and I do a lot of scenic photography while we’re rolling along. But on longer stretches he’ll ask for a break and I’ll take over behind the wheel for a while.A good GPS is a godsend to avoid traffic jams and unexpected construction. I love to read maps, but they can’t always give you enough information in real time.Don’t panic if you get turned around a little or find yourself on a road you’d rather not be on. Our GPS seems to like to take us places where we hear banjos starting to play. Stay calm, zoom out on the GPS screen and find your next best option.If some of your drive is lengthy, audio books or vintage radio programs can help pass the time. You can search on your phone for stations that air old radio shows in a variety of genres. It helps if you can sync your phone to your vehicle’s audio system; just make sure you have your charging cable handy, as listening to radio shows for a few hours can drain your phone’s battery.Build in time for potty breaks, leg stretches and a good meal. Your body will need it, and it’s fun to explore area diners and sights. In New Mexico I insisted on stopping to take a photo of the World’s Largest Pistachio – it’s just something you have to do!Do be adventurous and try out local food places. Local people can be a goldmine of information about good places to eat…

… even if the restaurant looks a little sketchy when you arrive. At a golf course in Alabama, the gal behind the clubhouse desk suggested a little place called Hickory Pit Two (not sure where HP One was) for dinner, and “if you see the Piggly-Wiggly you’ve gone too far”. Well, we found HP Two without overshooting, and it wasn’t a place I would have ventured into without a specific recommendation. A small diner on the side of the road, some of the patrons were ‘interesting’ (bringing their own backwoods knife to cut their meat), but it was clean, friendly and had good southern BBQ; we thoroughly enjoyed it.

In Yorkshire, England, we were late stopping for lunch one day, and pulled into the first likely-looking pub we came across. Their grill had already closed until dinnertime, but the owner very kindly offered to make us tea and sandwiches while we played with their big, friendly dog; it was delightful.

On the road across Northern Ireland from the east coast to the west, in the middle of nowhere we came across a little food truck on the roadside selling just sweets and coffee or tea. The owners must have had enough traffic to make it worth their while, and we enjoyed the most delicious frosted cinnamon rolls we’ve ever had (pillowy soft, not too sweet) sitting at a picnic table in the blustery weather overlooking a picturesque valley below.

If you need a break from life and don’t feel like planning or paying for anything too extensive, think about having fun with a road trip. It’s a slower, more intimate way to go exploring, with all the character and quirky charm that hitting the road entails. No jostling in airports, squishing into airplane seats and worrying that your luggage will show up – just you and the open road

Pumpkin Whoopie Pies with Maple-Marshmallow Cream

A good whoopie pie has cookie-cakes that are tender inside but firm enough to hold being sandwiched together with a luscious fluffy filling. This recipe is from Bon Appetit magazine, and you’ll find a printable version on their site. The filling is very rich, so I suggest making the cookie-cakes a little smaller than the recipe recommends so that eating the assembled ‘pie’ isn’t overwhelming. The filling keeps well and you can make enough for a couple of days on the road if you choose. If you’re heading out early in the morning, as we did, you can make the pies the evening before and chill them, then let them warm up a little on the drive for the filling to soften to eating consistency. Makes about 2 dozen; if just for two of you, freeze extra cakes and only make enough filling for the total number of pies you’re taking on the road.

Filling

1 cup powdered sugar, sifted
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 7-ounce jar marshmallow creme
2 teaspoons maple extract (I used maple syrup)

Cakes

3 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 & 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 & 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
3/4 teaspoon ground cloves
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
3/4 cup sugar 1/2 cup vegetable oil
3 large eggs 1 15-ounce can pure pumpkin
1/2 cup milk
Nonstick vegetable oil spray

Make the Filling

Using electric mixer, beat sugar and butter in large bowl until fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add marshmallow creme and maple extract; beat until blended and smooth. DO AHEAD Can be made 2 hours ahead. Let stand at room temperature.

Make the Cakes

Sift first 7 ingredients into large bowl. Using electric mixer, beat butter and both sugars in another large bowl until blended. Gradually beat in oil. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating to blend between additions. Beat in pumpkin. Add dry ingredients in 2 additions alternately with milk in 1 addition, beating to blend between additions and occasionally scraping down sides of bowl. Cover and chill batter 1 hour.

Arrange 1 rack in bottom third of oven and 1 rack in top third of oven; preheat to 350°F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment; spray lightly with nonstick spray. Spoon batter onto baking sheet to form cakes (about 3 level tablespoons each; about 12 per baking sheet), spacing apart. Let stand 10 minutes.

Bake cakes until tester inserted into centers comes out clean, about 20 minutes, rotating sheets halfway through baking. Cool cakes completely on baking sheets on rack. Using metal spatula, remove cakes from parchment.

Line cooled baking sheets with clean parchment; spray with nonstick spray, and repeat baking with remaining batter. Spoon about 2 tablespoons filling on flat side of 1 cake. Top with another cake, flat side down. Repeat with remaining cakes and filling. DO AHEAD Can be made 8 hours ahead. Store in single layer in airtight container at room temperature.

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Published on August 29, 2023 19:00

August 22, 2023

The 100 greatest children’s books of all time

“Folklore, legends, myths and fairy tales have followed childhood through the ages, for every healthy youngster has a wholesome and instinctive love for stories fantastic, marvelous and manifestly unreal. The winged fairies of Grimm and Andersen have brought more happiness to childish hearts than all other human creations.” L. Frank Baum. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

***

These words formed the start of L. Frank Baum’s introduction to his first novel in his Oz series, and he understood children very well. He was a prolific writer, producing 14 Oz books in total, 41 other published novels, 83 short stories and over 200 poems. The Wizard of Oz was adapted for film in 1939, and although the movie changed a number of things (in the book, the shoes of the Wicked Witch of the East were silver not ruby, for example, but Hollywood’s choice became iconic), it remains one of the greatest film classics in history.

I know many adults today who reminisce about how much the flying monkeys terrified them when they watched the movie as children, and there’s so much nostalgia for the entire film, from all the wonderful actors to the vivid sets and the magic of it all. Children’s literature has the power to enchant us, long after we’ve technically outgrown the category, and earlier this year the BBC ran a poll asking 177 experts – authors, critics and others in the publishing industry – from 56 countries to vote on what they considered the 10 greatest children’s books. Their answers were then scored and ranked to produce the Top 100 list. The results may, or may not, depending on your own personal preferences, surprise you.

The top 10 on the list are:

Where the Wild Things Are (Maurice Sendak, 1963)Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll, 1865)Pippi Longstocking (Astrid Lindgren, 1945)The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1943)The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkien, 1937)Northern Lights (Philip Pullman, 1995)The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (C.S. Lewis, 1950)Winnie-the-Pooh (A.A. Milne and E.H. Shepard, 1926)Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White and Garth Williams, 1952)Matilda (Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake, 1988)

The BBC has also posted articles with commentary from the various voters about why they made the choices they did.

Personally I’d never read Where the Wild Things Are, for example, until I saw the Top 100 list and took a look. I think it’s cute, and the illustrations are delightful, but I have no idea how I would have reacted if I’d read it in my childhood. I did read Alice in Wonderland, though, and loved it, but that’s the only book on the top 10 list that I was exposed to. I didn’t read The Hobbit until I was a teenager, along with Lord of the Rings, and immediately fell in love with both of them.

J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books didn’t make the top 10, surprisingly to me at least, as I think they’re wonderful stories. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone came in at number 13, so it is pretty high on the list. However, since it was only published in 1997, none of the voters would have actually read it as a child, so they were voting from an adult perspective. The poll certainly had lots of limitations, and even a poll among children about their favourite books would only include a handful of books they’d already been exposed to.

But the point isn’t as much which books made the cut and in what order, as it is the impact that great children’s books continue to have on our lives. These books, from mostly illustrated to mostly words, introduced us to enchantment at an early age, and on top of that, studies have shown that reading books has quite a few other really important benefits – all for a single reason, that they create empathy in readers for the characters. Books are the only format that allow us directly into the minds of the characters, so we understand what they’re feeling and thinking.

In The Wizard of Oz, we’re introduced to Dorothy, a cheerful child living with two hard-working relatives who’ve been so worn down by the dry, cracked plains of Kansas that they’ve become just as tired and grey as the soil. Aunt Em has never known what to make of Dorothy’s laughter, and Uncle Henry never laughs either, always taciturn and stern. But the book goes on to tell us:

“It was Toto that made Dorothy laugh, and saved her from growing as gray as her other surroundings. Toto was not gray; he was a little black dog, with long silky hair and small black eyes that twinkled merrily on either side of his funny, wee nose. Toto played all day long, and Dorothy played with him, and loved him dearly.” L. Frank Baum. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

When Dorothy finally arrives in the land of Oz after a wild ride in the cyclone, she can’t believe all the wonderful colours, lush surroundings and sparkling streams of water – such a contrast to the drabness of life at home. But she still dedicates all her efforts to getting back to Kansas, telling the Scarecrow, “No matter how dreary and gray our homes are, we people of flesh and blood would rather live there than in any other country, be it ever so beautiful. There is no place like home.”

Researchers have found that reading is not only a form of escapism but also an exercise in mental agility. Reading a novel improves brain connectivity and empathy, especially around language comprehension and sensation. For children, whose minds are still in the formative stage, reading books then becomes a critical activity to improve their brain’s responsiveness as well as their understanding of others. When we read, we embark on a journey with the heroine/hero, laughing as well as crying along with them.

You can see the entire Top 100 list on the BBC website’s Culture section, as well as the other articles associated with the poll. It’s a fascinating read. The Gruffalo, published in 1999 (long after my childhood), came in at number 57, and I had to look up what the heck Moomins are. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle (1962), a book I did enjoy very much as a youngster, made number 34. I remember reading all of Hans Christian Andersen’s tales (number 12, so still a good ranking even today), but I also got into H.P. Lovecraft and some of the other writers who added to his world of the Elder Gods – quite eerie adult stuff not on the list at all.

The Narnia books didn’t make my reading list until I was well into my teens – I was never aware of them until that point. I read Gone With the Wind though, when I was nine years old; my mom loved the book and the movie, so one day I gave the book a shot. (It was a lengthy read and I much preferred the movie, to be honest.) I fell in love with another large book in my mother’s collection, though: Katherine by Anya Seton, set in England during the War of the Roses. Neither of those were children’s books, but my parents took me to the public library regularly, and I maintained a very eclectic reading list combining children’s literature, young-adult and adult.

Reading so much at an early age gave me a large and precocious vocabulary that impressed all of my English teachers (so, bonus!) and an ingrained knowledge of grammar that has helped me to this day. The things you learn as a child stay with you – let’s give children’s literature the credit it’s due and give children all over the pleasure and inherent education of reading. Check out the list and let me know what your favourite books were as a child.

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Published on August 22, 2023 19:25

August 15, 2023

Primeval, beautiful, dangerous water lilies

The Great Devourer, as she’s known by all, prowls towards me, leaving no tracks and casting no shadow. She stops in front of me and says, I am here for you, Nenuphar. Apep has given me until the end of the Seventh Hour to cross the sands.

I can’t absorb all her words. But how can he do that? His powers are weakened by his chains.

He is free, she replies, and roars as she lunges toward me.

I scream.

*** From Through the Monster-glass, Book 1 in the Chaos Roads Trilogy

The ancient Egyptian name of my novel’s protagonist, Romy Ussher, is Nenuphar. Through a series of dreams, she learns of her heritage, and gets a sense of her destiny.

Nenuphar exists today, and has existed for millennia, as one of the most ancient flowers on the planet: the water lily. Fossil evidence suggests that they first evolved over 100 million years ago.

We know them as the rather spectacular flowers that widely decorate ponds and reflecting pools. They live in temperate and tropical climates around the world, rooted in the mud at the bottom of shallow bodies of water, with leaves and flowers that float serenely on the surface. The family contains about 70 known species. There are a range of colours, from the white Nymphaea lotus and the blue Nymphaea coerulea that were so revered in ancient Egyptian culture, to pink, yellow, crimson and purple.

Their beauty, the way they grow, and their chemical properties have given them significance around the world.

The Mayans, who were adept at obtaining drinkable water, used them to check if their water supplies were clean enough – where the water lilies grew, the water was safe. They began to incorporate water lily iconography into their artwork and hieroglyphic writing, even in settlements where the water supply wasn’t good for the growth of the flowers. Religious figures as well as aristocrats wore masks and headdresses that had water lilies and/or water lily symbols on them during special events. It also appears that the Maya consumed the plants to create an altered state of consciousness because of the opiate alkaloids in them.

To the Egyptians the water lily symbolized Upper Egypt and was used together with the papyrus flower, the symbol of Lower Egypt, to depict a united country. The blue variety was sacred, representing the sun and rebirth. They called the plant ‘lotus’, or seshen.

Nefertem was their primeval god of the lotus blossom, painted wearing a lotus blossom on his head, and of perfumes, which were used heavily in their society. In daily life, lotus/water-lily blossoms were worn in garlands and woven into hair, as well as making a popular theme in jewellery. The flowers were cultivated in ponds to offer to the gods, as the sun god Ra was believed to have emerged from one of their flowers, and were found in tombs of the pharaohs. You don’t get any greater product endorsement than that.

In other religions as well, water lilies had great importance. They’re mentioned in the Old Testament, representing purity, innocence and love. In Buddhism and Hinduism the flower still symbolizes the potential to ‘rise above’ and achieve enlightenment.

However, their genus name, Nymphaea, came from ancient Greek lore of nymphs, beautiful yet dangerous water spirits who were prone to drowning people who visited the creeks or ponds they protected.

And so, the name of Nenuphar as Romy’s earliest incarnation was a very significant one, not just a reference to a beautiful flower. Romy herself is beloved, as well as beautiful and deadly. If you haven’t read the book, you’ll need to do so to find out more

Today, the symbolism around water lilies is all positive: chastity, innocence, peace, beauty, rebirth, resurrection, enlightenment. You have a short window to catch a water lily blossom – only about four days before it sinks to rot under the water. Typically, though, there are multiple flowers in a pond or garden, so you’re bound to see at least a few in their glory, any time between July and September.

The painter Claude Monet was so enamoured of water lilies that he painted them in over two hundred pieces of artwork. I love taking photos of them, in all their colours and faces. I hope these few have captured your imagination with their eons of history and meaning.

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Published on August 15, 2023 20:30

August 8, 2023

Liminal spaces – fascinating thresholds

Apparently “liminal spaces” are having a moment.

I’ve been aware of them for a long time after reading a lot of Celtic mythology. The ancient Celts believed that there were many liminal places, thought of as ‘thin’ spaces, where the veil between worlds was fragile and we could sometimes get in touch with those beyond. They were mystical places in their culture, meant to be treated with respect.

The entire British Isles feel like one big liminal zone – so many places, once you get away from the cities, that seem to be thresholds to the Otherworld. I remember when my hubby and I were driving through the countryside at dusk towards Bath in England, and a mist was creeping down the hillsides between thickets of trees. It felt like a faerie would surely come traipsing out of the woods to dance on the grassy slope.

In Ireland we walked through a green-shrouded woods that looked straight out of the land of Faerie – so much so, in fact, that I used one of those photos to represent a liminal place in my novel, Faun Forest.

I’m not as interested in liminal states of mind as I am in liminal spaces and times – when two different states of matter/being meet and we stand at the threshold, like the shores of a lake, with water lapping up onto the beach. Along the water’s shifting edge, any spot on the sand or pebbles could change from moment to moment, almost like Schrödinger’s Cat. Your feet could be either dry or wet within seconds depending on where you’re standing.

I love foggy days. They’re perhaps the ultimate liminal condition, blurring the lines between reality and the fantastic as the fog shrouds what’s visible and turns the landscape into the boundaries of Faerie, or a land of spectres or monsters. Reading a good novel is best done on a foggy day, when the indistinct landscape gives the mind’s eye much more room to roam. A hot cup of tea is an unobtrusive accessory to a perfect afternoon, and if rain starts to fall softly, even better.

I also love dusk, that far-too-brief transition from day to night, when the harshness of daytime is softened, the edges removed, the shadows extended and with them the possibilities. When sunlight is bleaching out all the hidden spaces, nothing can exist outside of it…but when the light begins to fade and the shadows grow, all the magickal creatures we love to imagine could be waiting to come out.

Liminal places are where the magic lives, where strange creatures lurk, waiting to enchant us, trap us, terrorize us. They’re where a lot of authors live, imagining crime and seduction in the growing darkness, ghosts and ghouls straddling the worlds of the living and the dead, unicorns and hydras meandering just within sight if we only look hard enough.

Like airplanes, trains and boats are also intriguingly liminal spaces. Interesting dynamics happen on them because of that time-pocket feeling that ensues over several days instead of a few hours. Temporary friendships, fleeting romances, maybe tension that explodes into murder – all become the perfect fodder for novelists.

The classic murder mystery on a train is Agatha Christie’s’ Murder on the Orient Express, where the train is in double-limbo: as a liminal space itself, travelling from Istanbul to Vienna, and when time stands completely still while the train is blocked by an avalanche. Hercules Poirot has a very short space of time in which to decipher whatever clues are on the train before the mountain pass is cleared, while the murderer surely feels just as trapped – they can’t escape from the site of the murder, and are aware that every moment in the brilliant detective’s vicinity exposes them to unwanted scrutiny. They must behave in a way that throws Poirot off the scent while trying to hold their nerve. If you’ve never read the book or seen one of the movies (I highly recommend the version with David Suchet as the inimitable Poirot, as part of the Masterpiece Theatre Mystery Series), I won’t spoil the ending for you.

Cemeteries are icons of liminality – resting places for the recently departed, and many people continue to visit their deceased loved ones for years and decades as if the grave or mausoleum is a conduit to the afterlife. A lot of people find cemeteries very spooky, a crossover point for the shades of the dead after dark. There’s something about darkness and liminal places that makes for a potently creepy combination.

Storms also make great liminal scene-setters for mystery and horror novels because they completely alter our world for their duration, whether it’s a passing thunderstorm, crashing and flashing all around us, a blizzard that cuts us off from the world for several days, or a hurricane that can leave a wake of destruction behind it. People react to storms very differently, and apart from all the storm’s dramatics, the characters may do outrageous things.

Labyrinths are very liminal. In ancient times they were considered to be paths for ritual dances, helping participants commune with higher dimensions, or alternatively traps for malevolent spirits that couldn’t navigate the twists and turns. It was believed that sometimes tricksters or demons would live inside a labyrinth. In more modern times, people usually walk labyrinths to enter a place of calm and perhaps reach a higher stage of consciousness. They can often be found inside or around churches, although very conservative Christians consider them to be too pagan. Whatever one’s reason for walking a labyrinth, it’s meant to be enable transition or transformation of some kind.

Liminal places can be multi-dimensional, which is what makes them so fascinating to me. Recently my hubby and I were crossing a bridge over a set of railroad tracks that ran alongside a harbour. As we stood on the bridge, we could see the threshold between land and water, and between us and the sky above, as well as the highly transitional tracks below us. When a train went by underneath us, we were partially drawn into the space of the train as it crossed the threshold between the station it had left from and its destination somewhere beyond, where the tracks disappeared into the trees farther ahead. All we would have needed to catapult us into a crazy metaphysical realm is for someone to have jumped (or been thrown, if this was a murder mystery) off the train onto the tracks.

Why do liminal spaces make many of us uncomfortable? It’s the uncertainty. Sometimes, even when we should feel safe, as when we’re inside during a storm, the sensory impact still bothers people, removing that sense of protection.

Phobias are the extreme end of uncertainty in the face of situations that don’t normally present a threat. My best friend during university had a snake phobia, and couldn’t even step inside a lab with a snake inside a terrarium, even though the possibility of the snake getting out and bothering her was essentially zero. However, because her brother had once thrown a snake at her, his act psychologically removed the ‘safe distance barrier’ and engraved into her psyche that no place with a snake anywhere in it was secure.

Psychologists have noted that we move through many liminal spaces throughout the day and generally don’t notice them – hallways, empty rooms, stairwells, elevators. But we notice when something about such a space becomes abnormal. The example they give is one of walking down the same city street, but after dark, when no one else is around, and you can hear your own footsteps echo eerily. We find ourselves struggling to keep going because the uncertainty about what might now be lurking in the shadows becomes overwhelming and exhausting. In the darkness we no longer ‘fit’ into the same space we did in the middle of the day.

Is it any wonder that such a change of a space’s psychological texture has become a classic device in suspense and horror novels?

Cultures can view what’s liminal/transitional differently, and how we should approach these spaces, which often are not to be taken lightly. Think of a parent’s warning to a young child to be careful around a rushing stream, or a swimming pool – or talking to strangers. Liminal places can be dangerous to the unprepared.

Hence the long-standing practice of preparation rituals – initiations into the unknown future. In decades past, for example, a couple getting married likely were given the ‘honeymoon sex’ talk by each of their parents. Even when I got married, our church had a panel of married couples discussing arguments, finances and other things we’d be facing as newlyweds – a ritual of information-sharing.

Thresholds are places to watch and guard. Doorways are kept locked in this day and age (in my childhood they weren’t) and along with alarm systems people now have electronic spies at the door, watching and recording everyone who comes near. Churches, shrines and temples have entrance ‘rituals’ – in Egypt and other parts of the Middle East. and farther eastward, shoes are considered unclean and must be either left at the door or, as my hubby and I found out in a mosque in Cairo, covered up with little rented slipcovers.

Sacred places are extraordinarily liminal – they’re our connection to the divine. They are the quintessential ‘thin’ space, where people often feel very close to their belief system. But there are many ‘thin’ places in the world, sometimes where we least expect to encounter them. An article I was reading, Thin Places and Liminal Spaces, posed this question “Have you ever been in a geographical location where you felt inexplicably close to the divine presence?”, and I was startled to be able to answer that in the affirmative.

A number of years ago, when my hubby and I were in the remote Samburu region of Kenya, we’d gotten out of the safari vehicle with the others and were walking around a clearing of sandy reddish ground surrounded by palm trees and thorn acacias. As far as the eye could see, an arid plain moving with giraffes and elephants spread before us, and bluish-lavender mountains rolled away to the horizon. There wasn’t any sound other than the wildlife and the light wind, and overhead an impossibly vast blue sky sheltered us.

Standing there, I was overcome by a feeling of having stepped back in time, thousands to perhaps millions of years, to when the world was newly formed and God walked the earth checking His handiwork. I’m not overly religious – don’t go to mass on Sundays or read the Bible – yet this was one of the most profound moments I’ve ever experienced. The writer of the article would say I’d encountered a ‘thin’ place, and I have no other explanation for it.

For novelists, when humans are in a state of flux, they’re out of their comfort zone, perhaps floundering in waves of uncertainty, and they might and can do anything to survive. Liminal areas and situations are such great places to put our characters into, to see how they react.

Special liminal places are always quiet – no transcendence to be found in the noisy city, but maybe on the shores of a nearby lake that few other people go to, or a night spent camping under the stars. On a recent trip to New Mexico we found many places that felt liminal, and the Indigenous people would certainly back that up; to them, the world has many more thresholds to other ‘worlds’ than we think it does. I liked their philosophy.

Liminal places may not be easy to get to, and sometimes should be approached with caution, but they can be places of wonder as well as terror. Storytellers like me will continue to explore how they get into our characters’ heads, and should you decide to explore a few in real life, just make sure you’re prepared, both physically and emotionally.

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Published on August 08, 2023 20:00