#2: Hey Ma look what I found!
Okay. Last Blog post before I return to school and yet another year of telling amazing stories to young minds. God I love my job!
But before I tell you a story, don’t forget that the giveaway for my e-book Neither King Nor Country is almost over. (A few more days.) Go to this link if you want to sign up and scroll down until you see “Giveaway”:
Neither King Nor Country
So, here we go…
Are you curious? Adventurous? Do you like to learn? Do you like to explore?
I did. Still do. Love it in fact.
When I was a kid, I used to love to go on hikes in the woods. I loved to get lost, get as far away from the house, go exploring. I would take my black and gold German Shepard Collie named Alfie with me and we would just wander. Now this was up north of course. Not in Florida where there are snakes and alligators around every corner. The woods up north, for at least 6 months of the year, are more dead than alive. The trees are bare of leaves which lay dead on the ground. There are no sounds of animals and it easy to walk through the trees, or over the rocks and across the occasional stream.
To my pre-teen/teenager mind, filled with curiosity and naiveté, it was a world of wonder. Who knew what was beyond those pine trees or buried beneath those old dead brown leaves? I still remember the day when, after a half hour or so of hiking, my dog suddenly stopped and poked his nose around in the leaves. Within seconds his claws were whipping up the old dry dirt as I ran up to see what he uncovered. “What is it Alfie? What did you find boy!”
Bones! A skeleton buried just beneath the surface. My imagination went wild. I was terrified and exhilarated all at the same time. How did this skeleton get here? How long had it been buried? Was I the first to discover it? I instantly snapped my neck backwards and forwards looking for the murderer who must be somewhere nearby!
Of course there was no murder. The skeleton wasn’t even human. It was just some dead armadillo or raccoon or something. To this day, I never figured out what it was. But in that moment of discovery, a world of possibilities opened up in such a powerful explosion of emotion that I still remember it 40 years later.
What’s it like to discover buried treasure? Or uncover a secret lost to the ages? We read all the time about dinosaur bones being discovered but can you truly put yourself in the shoes of those grave diggers, even for a moment? What an incredible emotional high! No wonder they spend hours and hours and days and years looking for it.
So what must it have been like last week, when archaeologists discovered pieces of the uniforms from Napoleon’s soldiers underneath the floor of a destroyed synagogue?
Check this out!
https://www.foxnews.com/science/napol...
I read that story with wonder! I tried to imagine what it must have been like to pick up a human bone and realize that this was a soldier who knew Napoleon and even fought with him: talk about exhilaration! Did he ever talk to him? Did he have a drink with him? Did he see the look on Napoleon’s face when he realized the Russians burnt their own capital to stop him?
This isn’t the first story I have read about a discovery of Napoleonic soldiers. I read them all the time in my line of work. They are obviously still finding them. Did you know there were so many killed in the Napoleonic wars that an entire business blossomed using the dead teeth recovered from the corpses? They were called Waterloo teeth and they were used by dentists all over the UK.
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-330...
Wait a minute! Did you say a destroyed synagogue?
Yeah. I did. It’s amazing what you can miss in all the history being told. It was one of the greatest synagogues in Eastern Europe and possibly the world. And boy do I have another story to tell you!
Another time.
For now, check out the link below on the synagogue and if you want me to tell you the unknown story of the Jews in the holocaust and Russian Civil war, let me know!
Have a good week!
Alan N. Kay
https://www.foxnews.com/science/hebre...
But before I tell you a story, don’t forget that the giveaway for my e-book Neither King Nor Country is almost over. (A few more days.) Go to this link if you want to sign up and scroll down until you see “Giveaway”:
Neither King Nor Country
So, here we go…
Are you curious? Adventurous? Do you like to learn? Do you like to explore?
I did. Still do. Love it in fact.
When I was a kid, I used to love to go on hikes in the woods. I loved to get lost, get as far away from the house, go exploring. I would take my black and gold German Shepard Collie named Alfie with me and we would just wander. Now this was up north of course. Not in Florida where there are snakes and alligators around every corner. The woods up north, for at least 6 months of the year, are more dead than alive. The trees are bare of leaves which lay dead on the ground. There are no sounds of animals and it easy to walk through the trees, or over the rocks and across the occasional stream.
To my pre-teen/teenager mind, filled with curiosity and naiveté, it was a world of wonder. Who knew what was beyond those pine trees or buried beneath those old dead brown leaves? I still remember the day when, after a half hour or so of hiking, my dog suddenly stopped and poked his nose around in the leaves. Within seconds his claws were whipping up the old dry dirt as I ran up to see what he uncovered. “What is it Alfie? What did you find boy!”
Bones! A skeleton buried just beneath the surface. My imagination went wild. I was terrified and exhilarated all at the same time. How did this skeleton get here? How long had it been buried? Was I the first to discover it? I instantly snapped my neck backwards and forwards looking for the murderer who must be somewhere nearby!
Of course there was no murder. The skeleton wasn’t even human. It was just some dead armadillo or raccoon or something. To this day, I never figured out what it was. But in that moment of discovery, a world of possibilities opened up in such a powerful explosion of emotion that I still remember it 40 years later.
What’s it like to discover buried treasure? Or uncover a secret lost to the ages? We read all the time about dinosaur bones being discovered but can you truly put yourself in the shoes of those grave diggers, even for a moment? What an incredible emotional high! No wonder they spend hours and hours and days and years looking for it.
So what must it have been like last week, when archaeologists discovered pieces of the uniforms from Napoleon’s soldiers underneath the floor of a destroyed synagogue?
Check this out!
https://www.foxnews.com/science/napol...
I read that story with wonder! I tried to imagine what it must have been like to pick up a human bone and realize that this was a soldier who knew Napoleon and even fought with him: talk about exhilaration! Did he ever talk to him? Did he have a drink with him? Did he see the look on Napoleon’s face when he realized the Russians burnt their own capital to stop him?
This isn’t the first story I have read about a discovery of Napoleonic soldiers. I read them all the time in my line of work. They are obviously still finding them. Did you know there were so many killed in the Napoleonic wars that an entire business blossomed using the dead teeth recovered from the corpses? They were called Waterloo teeth and they were used by dentists all over the UK.
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-330...
Wait a minute! Did you say a destroyed synagogue?
Yeah. I did. It’s amazing what you can miss in all the history being told. It was one of the greatest synagogues in Eastern Europe and possibly the world. And boy do I have another story to tell you!
Another time.
For now, check out the link below on the synagogue and if you want me to tell you the unknown story of the Jews in the holocaust and Russian Civil war, let me know!
Have a good week!
Alan N. Kay
https://www.foxnews.com/science/hebre...
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