Author: admin
Henry Füseli: Fear and Desire, The Nightmare in Eighteenth Century Art.
Searching Salem
Last month I went on an East Coast tour. It started after flying into Boston, renting a small economy car and two thousand miles later and ten days later, ending in the same spot. This was one of the best trips ever! Though I missed the beauty of the leaving changing colors in Vermont and viewing moose in north Maine, this trip definitely did not disappoint. When asked what I saw on the trip, I always end saying the same thing: Salem was great! I did not think that I would like Salem as much as I did. It was the last stop before flying out of Boston and I did not get to spend much time there, only one day, but this little town was absolutely fantastic. The history of Salem attracted those interested in the rich history of this three hundred year old town. The witch and ghost history brought the Halloween fans, ghost fanatics and even Harry Potter addicts to stroll through the cobbled stoned streets on the cool nights.
Christians and Dragons
This fall, I am taking one art course and so far, its a great one, Byzantine/Medieval Art! It is exactly what I thought it would be, full of fantastic stories of epic battles, cultural mingling and the best part of all, monstrous beasts, dragons. As I have enjoyed these dragon tales, I have decided to research the dragons I have read about. Though my paper does not have a proper title yet, I will be intensively researching the influence Christianity has imposed upon Medieval society, with its use of dragons as the antagonist. These creatures are much more abundant in the Middle Ages than I once realized. My research has led to many different cultures and religions, who all had the common belief in dragons.
The mystery and romance of the Middle Ages has inspired generations throughout the world with swaggering tales of brawny knights, beautiful princesses and hideous monsters lurking in dark spaces. The world, captivated by Game Thrones for almost a decade, can attest to this obsession with Medieval Age romantic knights and ladies. The combination of mystery and romance in Medieval folklore most often always has a common ending: the dreadful monster slayed, the brawny hero prevails in full possession of his lovely princess bride and of course, the village is saved from death destruction and disaster. While our modern interpretation of the Middle Ages is often humorously romanticized, life was not romantic and usually it did not end with the characters trailing into the sunset to live happy carefree lives. Life for Medieval people was most often rough and unforgiving.
Though we as modern people know so much more about history than ever before, the mystery that is still surrounding our ancestors is extraordinary.
Marie-Antoinette and I.
23 and Me provides its DNA customers with their perspective Haplogroups. What does this mean? Well, as I am still new to deciphering the DNA jargon, as far as I have researched so far, each person is assigned a Haplogroup as determined by their maternal line or paternal line. Women only possess the H group for their maternal line, as they do not carry the paternal chromosome. Men, however possess both a maternal and paternal H group as they inherent a paternal line from their fathers.
What does this mean. It means that humans are able to trace their ancestry back through these lines, as the H group does not change. Women receive their mother’s H group who received their H group from their mother and so on, all the way back to the beginning of time. Men receive an H group from both their mother and father and can trace those back through history. Women who are interested in their paternal Haplogroup can receive their results from either their father or brother.
My maternal Haplogroup is H3. This is a common Haplogroup found within Europe and because of the abundance of the H group, it also common in the royal houses across Europe. The H is the originating group of the H Haplogroup and is followed by several variations of the H Haplogroup (H1, H2, H3….). Nicolas Copernicus was an H MTDNA Haplogroup member, as was Marie Antoinette. What does this mean? Well, so far in my DNA research, this means that at some point within history, I am related to both Nicolas and Marie as our Haplogroups match. It is unclear of when our shared ancestor may have lived, but it is exciting to know that is entirely possible to trace this history. Don’t call me royalty…just yet.
Cited works: Bogdanowicz, Wiesław, Marie Allen, Wojciech Branicki, Maria Lembring, Marta Gajewska, Tomasz Kupiec, and Alan Walker. “Genetic Identification of Putative Remains of the Famous Astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 106, no. 30 (2009): 12279-2282. http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.uta.edu/stable/40484127.
wandering life.
I have always loved to go to new places and see new things. My first plane ride was when I was two years old and though I don’t remember all of the nine-hour flight, I do remember small parts of the Lufthansa flight. The stewardess (1980) was surely annoyed with my inclination to run down the aisle only to turn and run back to my mother again. Her solution was to give me a pair of plastic junior pilot pin on wings and a basket of chocolate and small toys. I do not remember that visit to Germany but the trip definitely left an impression on me.
I have travelled many airlines, from California to New York and London to Dubai. Ships have provided transportation between exotic islands from Mexico, the Bahamas and the Maldives. I even spent the night on the Nile in Egypt on a small boat! Old fashioned travel on modern trains carried me to historic spots across Europe and across the United States. Cars, cars have been one of the best forms of transportation all over the world. In a Citroen, I zipped across Europe in ten days seeing the Eiffel Tower to the casinos in Monaco and the gothic spires in Prague. Wandering has led me to to many great places, some of which I will definitely need to return to, to discover how these places have affected my heritage.
Hot Cheap Suit!
photo taken in Luxor, Egypt in 2018.
A bus ride away from the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, carved in the mountains, lies the Valley of the Queens. Once decorated with vividly colored designs and hieroglyphics, the mammoth monument is now mostly a sandstone color that easily blends in with its mountainous background. I was very interested in this temple as I wrote a paper on Queen Hatshepsut for one of my history classes and found her fascinating! This queen, turned ruler intrigued me. What must it have been like to rule such an accomplished nation while only standing 4 foot 9? She did it, but not without criticism. Her own step-son eventually gained the throne and openly rebelled against her and her successful reign. He was eventually able to wipe a majority of evidence of her from Egypt, including from her temple! Fortunately for us, though there were changes to the temple, Hatshepsut’s legacy survived. Amun Ra must be proud!