Category: History/Trivia

10 Things About St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital

On By K. S. WattsIn 10 Things on the 10th, History/Trivia, Southern StuffLeave a comment

Last weekend, I ran the St. Jude 10k. I never really thought I’d do it before, but this year I started running and since the race went virtual, even an introvert with social anxiety couldn’t say no. I’m glad I did it. I love to support St. Jude and this is one of their biggest fundraisers of the year.

I was never much of a runner before this year. But 2020 has done weird things to a lot of people. For me, I started running. And soon after I started, I knew that I would want to run for St. Jude. My husband has run for St. Jude for years, but he’s naturally athletic and built to run. Me, not so much. Still, I wanted to try. When the race went virtual, meaning I wouldn’t have to be in the midst of roughly 26,000 runners (based on previous years’ numbers), I decided to go for it. So I ran a 5k and then a 10k for a dual race challenge.

Why was a non-runner like me so keen to run so much? St. Jude. I love their mission and I love supporting what they do. I don’t live terribly far from St. Jude and I know plenty of people who work there, but I’ve also met many families of patients there. St. Jude is a special place and I hope they continue to do amazing things for generations to come.

What’s so special about St. Jude? It’s not just a children’s hospital. It’s a place where families of pediatric cancer patients go to find hope. Let me tell you a little more. Here are 10 things you might not know about St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

  1. Danny Thomas, born Amos Muzyad Yaqoob Kairouz, was an American comedian, singer, actor, producer and philanthropist. He founded St. Jude after his career took off. He said that in the early days of his career, when work was hard to come by and he wasn’t sure he could truly provide for his wife who was pregnant with their first child, that he prayed to St. Jude Thaddeus. One night, in a church in Detroit, he begged the saint for help and vowed that in return, he would build a shrine.
  2. St. Jude Thaddeus is known as the patron saint of desperate cases and lost causes.
  3. Shortly after that pivotal moment in the entertainer’s life, things began to pick up. He would eventually be a household name. And by the 1950s, he was ready to make good on his promise. He turned to Cardinal Samuel Strict, the man who confirmed him into the Catholic church as a boy. Cardinal Strict hailed from Memphis, Tennessee and suggested Thomas start there. Thomas knew he wanted it to be a children’s hospital, but his vision was for something bigger than a general hospital.
  4. In the mid-1950s, the childhood cancer survival rate was barely 20%. The survival rate for ALL, the most common form of childhood cancer, was only 4%. When Thomas enlisted the help of several Memphis area businessmen to help fund his hospital project, he declared that “no child should die in the dawn of life” and the decision was made that St. Jude was focus specifically on pediatric cancer care and research.
  5. That decision made, Thomas had another declaration to make. He wanted to remove the burden of the cost of treatment for patient families. No St. Jude family would ever be turned away for lack of insurance, nor would they ever receive a bill. They would forever be free to focus on their child during a critical time. That’s still true today. No family at St. Jude is ever billed for treatment, travel, accommodations, etc. Other charities partner with St. Jude to provide housing for families from out-of-town so they are not met with hotel costs. Meals are provided, and, of course, world class medical care.
  6. Funding the hospital without ever billing a patient is a major endeavor even today. But before it was even built? Thomas and his group of original donors knew they were going to need more help. Once again, Thomas knew where to turn, his fellow Arab Americans. In Chicago in 1957, 100 representatives of the Arab American community met to discuss the prospect of funding St. Jude. The American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities (ALSAC) was founded during that meeting and is still responsible for 80% of the hospital’s funds. It is America’s second largest healthcare charity.
  7. On February 4, 1962, St. Jude opened their doors. They stayed true to the vision of Danny Thomas to never turn away a family based on race, religion, or financial status. St. Jude was an integrated hospital from the very first day, making it the first such hospital in the South. And it wasn’t just the patients who were integrated. At a time when many “white” hospitals refused to hire Black doctors, St. Jude hired an integrated medical and research staff.
  8. Since the opening of the hospital and research center, the way childhood cancer is treated has changed in many way thanks to scientific breakthroughs made there. The childhood cancer survival rate is now 80%, and the ALL survival rate is 94%. The research teams there have also made strides in treating sickle cell anemia, found a cure for “bubble boy disease”, and recently announced a discovery of how to successfully treat COVID-19.
  9. In 1996, Peter Doherty, PhD–the Immunology Chair at St. Jude at the time–won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
  10. The child Thomas’s wife was pregnant with when he first made that desperate prayer to St. Jude Thaddeus would eventually be known to the world as Marlo Thomas, an actress, author, social activist and the current National Outreach Director for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. If you’ve ever seen a St. Jude commercial asking for donations that she or any of her celebrity friends star in, the kids around them in the clips are actual St. Jude patients in Memphis.

St. Jude race weekend is one of the hospital’s biggest fundraisers of the year. This year 15,000 people participated, down from over 26,000 last year. And while so many people are not in a place to be able to donate during the pandemic, childhood cancer doesn’t care. I had the means to donate a small sum, solicit additional donations, and to run, so I did. I’m proud of myself for running the distance, but I’m more excited to be even a miniscule part of what goes on at St. Jude.

Because I agree with the late Mr. Thomas, who passed away in 1991. No child should die in the dawn of life.

10 Things About Birthday Celebrations

On By K. S. WattsIn 10 Things on the 10th, History/TriviaLeave a comment

My eldest son recently turned seven years old. We don’t usually do big birthday parties, but we do like to take weekend trips to fun (and generally educational) places. Last year his obsession with dinosaurs began in earnest, so we took a day trip to a museum where he could see fossils and learn more about the types of dinosaurs discovered in our region. He loved it. But as you can imagine, the pandemic prevented us from continuing that tradition this year.

Sure, some places are open. No, we aren’t in lockdown at the moment. We are all healthy (knock on wood). But it just didn’t seem prudent. The fact that we were even able to make that decision based on practicality and not financially instability is something I recognize as a huge privilege in the uncertainty of 2020. I am grateful for that.

Luckily, my son had a great time anyway. Knowing there was only so much we could really do, he was over the moon at what we pulled off. I made him a dinosaur shaped cake, we took him to the local Lego specialty store (we were all in our masks) and let him pick out a new set–it was dinosaur related, and we took him to a restaurant to sit outside on the patio and let him order some of his favorite foods. He was all smiles and laughter the whole time. He didn’t seem some big birthday tradition of museums, zoos, or aquariums. He just wanted to have fun with his family.

I’ve been pondering that. I know it sounds like we go over the top for birthdays. And maybe we do. But I have found that it is easier and cheaper to take a day trip to a museum a couple of hours away than it is to prepare and host a room full of children. Even so, we make a big deal out of it.

Growing up, my family didn’t make a gargantuan deal out of a birthday. Maybe we had a party. Or maybe we went out to dinner. There were always gifts, to be sure, and there was no lack of love. But since my birthday was very close to a major holiday, a lot of the time if there was a party, it wasn’t for me. It just happened to take place on my birthday. It never bothered me. In fact, I never thought all that much about it except when I joked about how big some of the parties were. “Look at this place. These people really went all out for my birthday!” “These people” of course being people I probably had only met a handful of times, if that, and were acquaintances my parents knew. It might not have been for me, but those parties were often pretty fun and certainly on a bigger scale than any one event has any right to be. On more than one occasion, I got to ride in a limo or even a private plane on my birthday at someone else’s expense. I didn’t care it wasn’t specifically for me, it was cool. But my husband grew up in a family where birthdays are a big deal. He very fondly remembers birthday traditions in his childhood and wanted to pass that along to our children. We agreed to do so and I have no regrets. I find it’s more fun to celebrate their birthdays than it is to celebrate my own.

With so many birthday traditions in every culture being affected by the global pandemic, it got me thinking about where some of our traditions originated. Obviously traditions can vary from family to family, and certainly from culture to culture, but everything starts somewhere. Research target fully locked, I began combing through sources to find the answers and found a few interesting* snippets along the way.

*Interesting is in the eye of the beholder. I’m a nerd who likes history and random trivia so take my evaluation of the aforementioned snippets with a grain of salt.

And so we have it. 10 Things about Birthday Celebrations:

  1. Most sources cite Ancient Egypt as the first observed birthday celebrations. Pharaohs celebrated their coronation dates as their birthday because it was thought that when a person became a pharaoh, they were reborn as a deity. It was more of a sacred observance than anything and no mere mortal celebrated their own birthday.
  2. Historians believe the tradition of candles on a birthday cake stems from the Greeks. Like the Egyptians, they celebrated the birthdays of deities, not mortals. To honor the birthday of the goddess Artemis, it was common to make a moon shaped cake with a candle in it.
  3. The Ancient Romans are credited with taking the tradition of a celebrating a deity’s birthday and expanding it to the common man. Man, of course, is the key word there. In Rome, *only* men celebrated their birthdays (the first celebration of a woman’s birthday in the Western World that we have record of isn’t until the 12th century).
  4. A set of slabs made of “wooden leaf fragments” from 100 A.D., prepared by Claudia Severa, are believed to be the first birthday invitations. She prepared them for her husband, Roman Commander Aelius Brocchus. Discovered in Northern England, the invitations are part of the collection of Vindolanda Tablets that were unearthed in the 1970s. The invitations are thought to be the oldest surviving writing in Latin by a woman.
  5. Evidence of gift giving is also found in the Roman tradition. However, it was not guests who brought gifts to the birthday boy. The man being celebrated was expected to provide gifts to his guests. The gifts were meant to represent his thankfulness to his friends and family that he did not have to live his life in isolation (especially in largely agrarian areas where people lived great distances from each other).
  6. The “Happy Birthday” song is actually a rip-off. The tune was written by sisters and Kentucky school teachers Mildred and Patty Hill in 1893. They wrote it as a song to start of the school day. “Good Morning to All” was the original song. Patty wanted a song easy enough for her youngest students to be able to sing and remember. Mildred was a gifted pianist and composed the music. The newer lyrics pertaining to a birthday were first published in 1912 and in the 1930s a copyright was filed by The Summy Company. Years later that copyright would be challenged first by the Hill sisters and then their estate. They won, but had to split the royalties with the company. The copyright was challenged again in the late 1980s after another company bought up The Summy Company and increased royalties on the song. Eventually the decision was that the copyright really only ever applied to a specific piano arrangement of the tune, never the words, and that it should have expired anyway. The song is now in the public domain in the US and UK.
  7. The concept of the birthday cake as we know it today can be traced by to the early 1700s in Germany. Children, both male and female, celebrated their birthdays with “kinderfeste”. Instead of sweet bread, German bakers began making sweet cakes for such occasions. Unfortunately, at that time the ingredients it took to make a sweet cake with sweet icing were still fairly astronomical in price so only the rich could afford such a luxury. That wouldn’t change until the Industrial Revolution.
  8. The Chinese birthday tradition of “longevity noodles” dates back to the Tang Dynasty (618-907 A.D.). I had never heard of this before, but it sounds pretty delicious. Golden Egg Noodles are consumed and the longer the noodles, the longer the person’s lifespan will be–never, ever cut someone’s longevity noodles. I am given to understand that this is also a common dish at Chinese funerals to celebrate the deceased’s long life.
  9. There are cultures and religions that still refuse to celebrate birthdays. Early Christianity associated the celebration of birthdays (apart from the coming of age celebration of a bar mitzvah that many early Christians still celebrated) with pagans. It was sinful to celebrate one’s earthly birth because each person is born a sinner. This could be tied to why saints are celebrated on the day of their death (their birth into heaven) instead of the birthday (their birth into sin and a sinful world). In any case, sometime around the 4th century, the church began annually celebrating the birthday of Jesus* and it quickly lead to the celebration of everyone’s birthday.
    *Since the actual birthday of Jesus was not specifically mentioned in the Bible, it is unknown. In fact, most evidence suggests it is much more plausible that he was born in late summer or early fall. However, choosing to celebrate his birthday near Hannukah and also near Saturnalia was thought to make it easier for new converts to adjust to the different celebrations of Christianity.
    **I give this information without judgement. I am a Christian and do not see historical accuracy as a threat to my beliefs, nor do I see the efforts of the early church in this matter as inherently awful. Moreover, it is not my place to judge anyone’s religious affiliation or lack thereof. If you do not know and love my God, why would I hold you to the same standard as those who claim to do so?
  10. Sir Henry Cole is credited with the invention of the Christmas card in 1843 in England because he had too many friends sending him Christmas letters thanks to the new “Penny Post” system and it was considered impolite not to respond. He had an artist draw up a picture that he described (a family around a dinner table flanked by renderings of them serving the poor) and then had a printer make him 1,000 copies with a generic message on each–“Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you.” All Sir Cole had to do was write the recipient’s name and attach postage. This idea immediately took off and birthday cards (and subsequently other types of greeting cards such as “Get Well” cards) evolved from the idea shortly thereafter.

So while birthday celebrations are very personal–one family goes big, while another chooses a smaller celebration–our modern idea of a birthday celebration is really the result of several different ancient traditions (and a few more not so ancient ones) put into a blender. I find this interesting both from a trivia standpoint, but also from a worldbuilding one. In fiction, when we create our worlds and cultures, even if we don’t feature a character’s birthday, perhaps thinking about how their birthday would be celebrated might help us round out the character a bit more.

10 Things About Scary Stories

On By K. S. WattsIn 10 Things on the 10th, History/TriviaLeave a comment

When I was younger, I used to love ghost stories, scary movies, haunted house attractions–the works. If it could make me jump out of my skin or lose sleep, I loved it. This changed at some point in my life. I don’t remember the exact moment that I stopped enjoying them, it may have been more of a gradual thing.

Now I don’t care much for scary stories. Maybe it’s because as an adult (with anxiety) I have enough things keeping me up at night. I don’t really know, but I still have fond memories of being scared out of my wits as a kid with horror movies and ghost stories told during the wee hours of an October sleepover party. I’ve even called for Bloody Mary in the mirror.

These days I’m much more interested in the origins of the scary stories we all know. All stories start somewhere. And with Halloween just around the corner this seemed like as good a time as any to dive into the history of a few famous ghost stories.

Here are 10 things you might not know about scary stories.

  1. The oldest (known) ghost story *written* in *Western Culture* (these are my disclaimers because I have heard some spine tingling things from Eastern cultures and have no idea how old they are, and because even in the West, so much was passed by word of mouth for so many centuries that who knows how old some of our favorite ghosties really are) is credited to Pliny The Younger of Ancient Rome. He wrote of a house in Athens that, though large and luxurious, had to be rented out of cheap because anyone who stayed there was tormented by spooky sounds and menacing whispers throughout the night. It was said one could hear chains rattling if you listened closely enough. Finally, one determined fellow waited for the apparition to appear and marked the spot where the ghost stood. The next morning, he had a crew come dig up that area of the floor. They found the decomposing body of an emaciated man in chains. They gave the unknown man a proper burial and the ghost was never heard from again.
  2. The Headless Horseman. In Washington Iriving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow we meet an apparition who stalks a particular road through the woods looking for a head to replace the one he’s missing. Some think that this story evolved after rumors of a Revolutionary War soldier losing his head to cannon fire in upstate New York being seen post mortem. However, if you look back far enough, you can find a character in Celtic Mythology–The Dullahan–who rides a dark horse and carries his own head under his arm. He is also said to stalk the night terrorizing the unwitting.
  3. The Exorcist. Before Linda Blair spewed green gunk across movie screens in the the mid 1970s, she spun her head around in a book. That book was based on an account of an actual exorcism in the late 1940s. A young boy that the records call “Roland Doe” because they would not record his true name, was said to scream, speak gibberish, and suddenly have terrifying powers manifest. His mother called priests who thought he must be possessed by demons and tried to exorcise them to save the boy. It wasn’t pretty. The Catholic Church admits this happened, though they’d rather people forget about it, and agrees that it was the wrong thing to do. In hindsight, it is believed the boy may have suffered from more than one psychological disorder and needed an entirely different kind of care.
  4. Ghost stories have been translated from Egyptian Hieroglyphics that could be even older than Pliny the Younger’s 1st Century A.D. story. The inscription was found in Luxor and parts of the story are missing or too damaged to read, but it is definitely about a ghost.
  5. The Mummy. A lot of the inspiration for this tale of a tomb raiding releasing the powerful mummy spirit comes from the discovery of King Tut’s tomb. The world was fascinated when the tomb was found and followed the story of it closely in newspaper accounts. However, very shortly after the tomb was opened, one of the team members died of a sudden and unidentified illness. One member was poisoned, another smothered by his own father who was then so distraught over what he’d done that he committed suicide. Even one of the first visitors of the tomb, who wasn’t involved in the actual opening of it, was shot by his wife shortly after returning from the site. All of these events may have been explained away, but at the time it caused rumors of ancient curses and vengeful spirits.
  6. Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Silence of the Lambs were all inspired by the same, very real murderer. Ed Gein of Wisconsin. In 1957, some of Gein’s crimes came to light when authorities discovered he’d been snatching women’s bodies from local graveyards and making “trophies” out of their skin and bones. He also admitted to the murders of two women, but was declared legally insane and spent the rest of his life in a mental health facility.
  7. Amityville Horror. Ronnie DeFeo murdered his entire family while living in this New York town. He claimed during his trial that “the voices” made him do it. The Lutzes soon bought the house, not so surprisingly at a really good price since nobody else wanted to live there. Practically before they were done unpacking they claimed to experience terrifying and dangerous things they couldn’t explain. They called in famous paranormal investigators, The Warrens (yes the same couple mentioned from above) who agreed the house had way too much paranormal activity and was absolutely haunted. However, what The Warrens, and most of Amityville, didn’t know was the the Lutzes were working very closely with DeFeo’s lawyer to try to help him get a lesser sentence. It didn’t work. No other family who has lived in the house since the Lutzes moved out has mentioned any unusual happenings.
  8. The Exorcism of Emily Rose is based on a young German woman named Annelise. While today it is believed she suffered from epilepsy, during her own lifetime her parents and the local priests thought she was possessed. The poor girl went through not just one, but numerous exorcisms, and died less than a year after the last of them was performed. Some think that all of the exorcisms weakened her, but the records claim her death is the result of parental neglect. Since they thought she was possessed, they didn’t think taking her to a doctor would do any good.
  9. Dracula, and by association the German knock-off Nosferatu (because the film company couldn’t get the rights from Bram Stoker’s estate), is based on European pagan folklore. It was basically how people explained deaths by plagues, heart attacks, pretty much anything they couldn’t understand with the limited resources and knowledge the average peasant had at the time. Some say Stoker based Dracula on Vlad the Impaler of Wallachia in Romania. And while Stoker’s research notes mention that “dracula” means “devil” in Wallachian, there is some doubt about whether the connection goes further than that. I’d argue that it does, but I’m not a scholar or a historian, I’m just a nerd with a website and a heavy dose of skepticism. But I digress. In any case, by the time Stoker’s vampire came to life, so to speak, vampiric novels, epic poems, etc were already rising in popularity throughout Europe, some written by his own friends.
  10. La Llorona, or the Weeping Woman, about a woman who murders her own children and then is so overcome with grief that she commits suicide and her ghost wanders the night wailing over the loss of her offspring (and in some recitations, taking or killing other children to replace her lost ones), traces all the way back to an Aztec earth goddess tale. Meaning she predates the use of Spanish as the primary language in Latin America, but I cannot seem to find the name the Aztecs used.

In any case, each of these stories, both the ancient and the horrifyingly more recent, shows that scary stories, especially those about the afterlife, have existed all around the world since the days of old. Some scholars argue that this is merely evidence of the humans’ persisting and inherent fear of death, but others argue that the apparitions and monsters have more often been used to critique something about society, while thinly masking the message behind a “campfire tale” in order to escape retribution from society, or authority. Is Frankenstein’s monster really any more frightening than a doctor and scientist who is willing to disrespect the dead enough to use them like jigsaw puzzles? In the exorcism stories, is it the unhinged actions of the “patient” that are so scary, or the fact that the person is suffering from something unidentifiable and instead of really listening to their needs, everyone around them chalks it up to demons? Is Dracula a threat because he’s a vampire, or because he has the power to lure otherwise “virtuous” maidens into his lair with suggestions of a pleasure they aren’t supposed to even know about?

Happy Halloween.

10 Things About Nail Polish

On By K. S. WattsIn 10 Things on the 10th, History/TriviaLeave a comment

Today is Mother’s Day, my vegetable garden has been planted, and I sprained my calf and cannot do my interval workouts for a few days, so I decided to turn to something else that brings me peace–painting my nails. I’ve always liked to paint my nails, but quite frankly I’m not great at it, so I don’t do it terribly often. But I recently discovered nail stamping, and now with just a swipe and a press I can showcase my love for books, pretty flowers, Sci-Fi and Fantasy franchises, or even create dinosaur designs that my kids love. There’s nothing quite like stamping a triceratops on your nails and then having your three-year-old look upon you with awe and declare, “Mama, you SO beautiful.”

But where did the tradition of painting our nails even come from? The answer is actually pretty hard to pin down other than to call it widespread cultural appropriation. I did give it the old college try, though, and learned several interesting things along the way. So here are 10 things you might not know about nail polish.

  1. While some sources claim the tradition of pigmenting one’s nails began circa 3,000 BC in China, others claim there is evidence of soldiers from Babylon using it circa 3,200 BC. Still others point to mummified pharaohs with pigmented nails and say it all began in Egypt. However, I find the most plausible place of origin from all the different arguments to be India. Henna had been used to create intricate designs on the hands for thousands of years. And from India, the use of such a pigment could easily have geographically expanded to China, Babylonia, and even Egypt where–spoiler alert–henna was used to pigment the nails of the upper classes.
  2. While Babylonian soldiers used kohl to color their nails and lips before going into battle (there is also archaeological evidence that they also spent time curling their hair before heading out, which leads me to call BS on many modern gender norms), Chinese women painted their nails to show their class. Women of the upper class, and especially of the royal family, wore specific colors that women of lesser classes were not allowed to wear. They also created intricate designs and even wore long, claw-like tips to protect long nails on two fingers of each hand. It was to show others they didn’t have to use their hands for manual labor.
  3. During the Rennaisance, the trend of coloring nails and then buffing them to a shine spread to Europe. However, the available colors were few and sometimes toxic. And in Victorian England, for example, simple, clean, nude nails were seen as a sign of moral purity and good upbringing (nevermind mind the abrasives and processes they used to make their nails look “naturally clean”).
  4. Towards the end of the 19th century, French women began re-popularizing the use of colored pigment on nails. And the turn of the century saw suffragettes in both England and North America don make-up and colored nail pigment to outwardly showcase their rebellion against the status quo. Some went so far as to wear bloomers (gasp) or even, dare I say it, pants. The horror.
  5. In 1916 Cutex developed a clear lacquer to paint over nails to make them shine so that women no longer had to spend hours breathing in chemicals from the abrasives they used to buff their nails to a shine. It revolutionized the nail industry. Mary E. Cobb studied how French salons manicured the nails of their clients, both men and women alike–a tradition dating back to King Louis Philippe. She also spent years watching her husband who was a podiatrist and a cosmetics manufacturer. She divorced her husband, struck out on her own, moved to New York City, and opened the first nail parlor in America. “Mrs. Pray’s Manicure” was the official name of the service and it was a runaway hit.
  6. In the 1920s, Michelle Menard watched the automotive industry develop shiny, brightly colored paints for cars. She made some changes to the formula, and voila, modern liquid nail polish was born. Of course, her employer owned the rights to her invention and patented it himself. And in 1932 Ms. Menard’s invention flooded the shelves. We can still find it there today, but alas Ms. Menard’s name isn’t on it. Instead, it bears the name of the company started by the man who patented her formula: Revlon.
  7. Since 1932 was still during the Great Depression, it might make you wonder how a company based on a luxury cosmetic item could survive. The answer is that it wasn’t that much of a luxury. A bottle of nail varnish in the early 1930s was about thirty-four cents in the United States. While that still put it out of reach for large swaths of the population, many women deemed it an item worth buying to lift their spirits during tough times. However, during WWII as many women entered the workplace and embodied Rosie the Riveter, painted nails became impractical. Women didn’t give up painting their nails altogether, it just became more popular to paint them with clear lacquer.
  8. In 1957 Frederick Slack changed the nail game again. Dr. Slack was a dentist who had the unfortunate experience of badly chipping a nail during his workday. A resourceful gentleman, he used tin foil and dental acrylic to create a fake nail to cover his chipped one. It looked so real and so natural that he decided to collaborate with his brother to turn his invention into a marketable venture. The result? Acrylic nails. It would still take until the 1970s for acrylics to become widely available.
  9. With strong colors once again en vogue by the 1970s, it sometimes made it difficult for make-up artists and designers to find a way to paint the nails so they wouldn’t clash with clothing during runway shows with multiple wardrobe changes. In 1976, Jeff Pink (who founded Orly) created a new type of nail design that wouldn’t clash with the outfits and was understated but adored the moment it debuted in a Paris fashion show. Today we call it the French manicure.
  10. Today the nail polish industry is a multi-billion dollar market and lacquers, varnishes, dips, powders, and polishes come in different price ranges, color schemes, and even ingredients. The most expensive bottle of nail polish available though is created by crushing black diamonds which gives the formula a one of a kind sparkle. Of course, at $250,000 there would need to be a genie in that bottle before I got too close to it.

From ancient traditions to battlefields to politics to wartime factories, the history of nail polish gives an interesting insight into changing values and ideals for women. With each new trend or available product line coinciding with women taking a step away from the societal norms of their day, it is an art that tells a story all its own. A sign of the struggle for equality. Beautiful war paint.

Maybe that will clear out the pandemic induced cobwebs and spark an idea for a new world to build. If not, don’t beat yourself up. The creative juices will flow again at some point. Until then, cut yourself some slack. You’re in the middle of a major historic event. It’s okay to be off your game (I’m really saying this to me because I haven’t written any salvageable material since school closed).

As for me, I’m going to enjoy my Mother’s Day and paint my nails.

Happy Mother’s Day to you. Whether you are a pet mom, a biological mom, an adoptive mom, a step-mom, a pregnant mom, a legal guardian, caretaker, or someone desperately wanting to become a mom, Happy Mother’s Day.

10 Things About Trampolines

On By K. S. WattsIn 10 Things on the 10th, History/Trivia, SportsLeave a comment

Like most of the world, my family is staying home and distancing ourselves from non-essential spaces, activities, etc. I have two sons. If they can’t play with their friends at school or have playdates at the park, they need to get their energy out somehow. Plus, they are young and while we have talked about the virus and the reason we have to stay home right now, I don’t want them to live in fear.

Just as the virus was ramping up in the United States, my younger son had a birthday. I found a mini-trampoline that could be used indoors (a major plus considering the epic amount of rain this winter), but I could also toss it out in the yard and let them turn it into a dinosaur nest, part of an obstacle course, and flying superhero training pad, or whatever else their little imaginations could produce. It’s not the same as a big trampoline, but it fit in my budget at the time and it has provided them with a blessed amount of stimulation.

Despite its size and ease of use indoors, it has become an outside toy for two reasons. The first is that they like to have it there to be part of their imaginary games of dinosaur, superhero, American Ninja Warrior contestant, etc. The second is that somehow when indoors the idea of using it to propel oneself against a wall as hard and fast as possible seemed like a capital idea.

Still, they have loved every second of having it around and for that I’m grateful. They are already campaigning to get a bigger one. My husband is against it for a plethora of safety reasons. I can’t blame him, but I also have to remind him that most of the common injuries on a trampoline are caused by things our generation did on purpose when we were young. Elder millennials are the reason they now sell nets to go around the outside of backyard trampolines. We tried to bounce each other off on purpose. It was great fun.

Anyway, it got me to thinking, where did this ridiculous and fun contraption even come from? And ta-da, a 10 Things post is born.

Here are 10 things you might not know about trampolines:

  1. Long before the modern trampoline, the Inupiat (I hope that is the correct term, please forgive and correct me if it is not), a group of Alaskan Natives, would toss dancers into the air from taught walrus skin as part of the whaling festival in the spring.
  2. There is also evidence of this type of activity–involuntarily bouncing a person from a cloth tightly held by a group of people–being used as a type of punishment in Europe before it became a tool used by firemen to catch people who jumped from burning buildings.
  3. In the early 19th and 20th centuries, circus performers used springboards sometimes called trampolines and “bouncing beds” in acrobatic routines and comedic performances.
  4. What we know as the modern trampoline is an invention credited to George Nissen and his University of Iowa gymnastics coach Larry Griswald. Nissen is said to have first gotten the idea as a teenager watching acrobats use their safety net as a part of their routine at the circus to wow the audience. At some point, he even took apart his bedframe at home trying to create a smaller-scale replica of the bouncing safety net. When he was in college, his gymnastics coach helped him create a new prototype and in 1934 they filed for a patent. They named their invention a trampoline–a purposely anglicized version of el trampolín, a Spanish term for a diving board.
  5. Trampoline was originally trademarked. The product’s generic name was a “rebound tumbler”. However, when the term trampoline lost its trademark, the term became synonymous with the generic product.
  6. During World War II, the United States Navy began using trampolines as a training activity for pilots. The rebound tumbler was a way for the pilots to get a more accurate feel of orienting themselves in midair, a skill often needed during air fights and bombing raids. It was also one of the tools first used by the newly developing space program after the war ended.
  7. As far back as 1959 and into the 1970s, outdoor trampoline parks popped up across North America. George Nissen often spoke out against this type of use, little supervision or training and with practically no safety regulations, of his invention, but could do little to stop it. He believed in the power of his invention as a training tool, exercise equipment, and even a platform for sports, but thought that safety should always be a primary concern.
  8. In 1962 trampolining was officially recognized as a sport by the International Gymnastics Federation. It was introduced as an Olympic event in 2000 in Australia. George Nissen was there to witness the moment.
  9. He was also, at 94 years of age, able to “test” the trampolines at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. He died two years later in 2010, but his daughter–who now runs a trampolining academy in California–says it was a true highlight and an unforgettable moment for him.
  10. Competition trampolines are made with slightly different materials than the recreational backyard version. A competition trampoline can help an athlete reach heights of approximately 33 feet (10 meters). Recreational trampolines can be expected to serve up about 1/3 of that height. Thank goodness.

It should also be noted that the added nets around the outside of a trampoline haven’t actually caused a big decrease in the number of trampoline-related emergency room visits. Kids will find a way to hurt themselves.

So if you have a backyard trampoline, or just a backyard to play in, get out in the fresh air and have some fun. If your stay-at-home orders are more stringent and don’t allow outside play, or perhaps you don’t have an outside play space, nobody is going to judge you for the amount of screen time you allow your child right now.

Remember, during this time you are not homeschooling your child. You are providing educational triage. You are not simply parenting. You are parenting through a global pandemic, something the What to Expect series never prepared any of us for. Cut yourself some slack, and cut your kids some slack too. Most of them don’t know how to appropriately express their fear or anxiety. Reach out if you need help or your kids need help. There are teletherapists that can consult with you over the phone, there are food banks to help those without a paycheck right now, there are organizations that exist to help you. Let those of us who want to reach out a hand do so. Please. Like the old song says, no one can fill those of your needs that you won’t let show.

We’re all in this together no matter how far apart we are.

Happy Good Friday, everyone.

A 10 Things Repeat About Flu

On By K. S. WattsIn 10 Things on the 10th, History/TriviaLeave a comment

I’ve never straight up repeated a post (that I’m aware of), however back in the fall I wrote a 10 Things post that seems super apropos right now. The world is concerned about a type of influenza. It doesn’t matter if you think the world is overreacting, if you feel the need to stockpile supplies, or if you are just taken aback by the seemingly overwhelming number of people in your town who apparently weren’t washing their hands before this. Seriously. If you are privileged enough to have ready access to clean, running water and AREN’T already washing your hands after EVERY bathroom visit I have serious questions. But I’ll ask them from over here because I don’t want to get too close.

Anyway, if you’d like to see the original post, I’ll post the text below or you can visit it at its permalink here.

The following was posted back in September:

I thought about doing a post about the traditions and origins of Homecoming Week, but I realized that I’ve done a lot of posts about sports-centric or sports-related topics. But while I was contemplating a post on Homecoming, I came across a piece of trivia that steered me in a new direction. Most of the homecoming celebrations for colleges and universities in the United States that try to lay claim to the longest celebrated tradition almost all have a gap in 1918 and/or 1919.

Why is not a great mystery to any world history nerd, or Twilight fan for that matter. The Influenza Pandemic of 1918 killed millions of people worldwide. Hospitals were overcrowded with sick patients, so universities and colleges (and churches, high schools, community centers, etc) were often converted to makeshift clinics. And since the flu is, as it always has been and continues to be, highly contagious, you can imagine why people might have wanted to avoid crowded sporting events and the like.

When people think of an illness that killed millions and affected world history, most conjure up thoughts of the Bubonic Plague. However, the “Spanish Flu” affected more people. And a single virus that makes its way around the world could give a writer a lot of ideas about how something as simple as a cough can shape the worlds we build.

10 Things About the Influenza Pandemic of 1918:

  1. An epidemic is an outbreak of disease that spreads quickly and across multiple communities, but a pandemic spreads throughout the world. Both words are Greek in origin and epidemic means “among the people”, while pandemic means “all the people”. The people part can also be translated as “district”, but since I have a less than rudimentary grasp on Greek, I’m just going to roll with it. The Influenza Pandemic affected most of the world, including remote islands and the Arctic. It killed somewhere between 3% and 5% of the Earth’s population at the time.
  2. Afraid of mass panic, many countries coming out of the war censored how widespread the flu was as much as they could for as long as they could. However, Spain had been neutral in the war and had no wartime censorship in effect. Other countries felt free to report on how the disease was ravaging the Spanish population, including the king. This misled the general public to believe that the flu originated in Spain, and that Spain was hit particularly hard by it. In truth, scholars and historians still aren’t certain where it began. So it’s called the Spanish Flu because of how newspapers reported it, not because it actually has any tie to Spain itself.
  3. It was not any more aggressive than previous influenza strains, or most since. However, a combination of crowded medical camps and hospitals, poor hygiene, and malnourishment helped it spread quickly. Many of the lives lost during the pandemic were actually from bacterial infections that patients got because their immune systems were so weak from fighting the virus.
  4. The reason for overcrowded medical camps and malnourishment had a lot to do with World War I. If the war had never happened, the pandemic might not have either. That’s not to say that the flu originated in Europe at the time. Different researchers have claimed the spread of this strain of the flu began in China, Southeast Asia, North America, and Europe. There is still great debate about where the spread of the disease began. But as travel modernized, the disease could be carried quicker and more efficiently than ever before.
  5. It has been dubbed “the greatest medical holocaust in human history”. It killed more people in twenty-four weeks than AIDS killed in twenty-four years. It also killed more people in a single year than the Black Death killed over the course of 100 years. Think about that the next time you pass on getting a flu shot.
  6. The pandemic was truly worldwide and not just “Euro-centric World”, “First World”, or “Developed World”. There was not a single region of the globe that was unaffected. 3-5% of the world’s population died, but that was only somewhere between 10% and 20% of the people who contracted the flu at the time.
  7. While typical flu epidemics tend to be more dangerous for the very young and the elderly, the 1918 pandemic was different because it actually killed mostly young adults. Half of the fatalities were between ages 20 and 40.
  8. Because of secondary infections, symptoms such as bleeding from the ears, coughing up blood, and bloody stools, the flu was misdiagnosed as a number of other conditions early on. These included dengue, cholera, and typhoid.
  9. It came in two waves, but disappeared almost as quickly as it appeared. The first wave of flu during the pandemic wasn’t much worse than the usual flu season numbers. The second wave was the deadly pandemic. However, less than three weeks after the largest spike in death tolls, many cities were reporting that the illness seemed to be disappearing. There are many theories about why this is, but the prevailing one seems to be that the virus began to mutate (which is common) to a less deadly strain.
  10. Even after the flu died down at the end of the pandemic, the havoc wasn’t over. Studies showed that babies who were in utero during the outbreak were more likely to exhibit physical abnormalities or disabilities at birth and in the long-term were less likely to achieve the same socioeconomic status or educational milestones as the generation before or after.

The Pandemic of 1918 changed how we study the flu, how we classify the flu, and how we treat the flu. Generations were affected and populations decimated. All from a “simple” respiratory illness. There are a lot of plot and world-building possibilities in that concept.

Also, flu season is rapidly approaching. Get vaccinated.

One more time for the people in the back.

GET. YOUR. FLU. SHOT.

And if you are running a fever, stay home if at all possible.

10 Things About Hadrian’s Wall

On By K. S. WattsIn 10 Things on the 10th, History/TriviaLeave a comment

I’m not a runner. Generally, if there isn’t a scoreboard involved, you can’t make me run. I need a goal. Running marathons isn’t about winning (I know they have winners, but I’ve never met anyone who actually expected to be victorious in a marathon). They were named for a legend in which a man ran roughly 26.2 miles to Marathon, Greece to deliver a message and then dropped dead. Recreating that event for fun is madness to me. But I digress. My husband is a runner. He runs for St. Jude every December and usually has at least one or two (or more) other, shorter races throughout the year to help him train. He’s starting to collect quite a few shiny medals.

Shiny medals are something I can get on board with. My competitive streak has slowly awoken from her slumber and is now staring at those shiny medals. She’s rubbing her hands together like Gollum and saying, “Must get a medal, precious!” But I can’t just attack the nearest 5k from nothing and expect to not embarrass myself. It’s not that I have to be able to come in first. I need to be able to finish. Preferably not last.

Plain speak: I’m out of shape. Way out of shape. But I’m competitive. It’s a strange combination. I want to win a race medal, but I don’t want to run alongside skinny people who ARE in shape. That’s not my idea of fun. That’s masochism. While I was contemplating this for the 100th time, a new kind of race challenge appeared on my newsfeed in that creepy way they do these days. A virtual race.

Wait. Virtual? A race that I run on my own. By myself. On my own time. I’m competitive, but I’m also an introvert and that means that I was immediately intrigued by this concept of a virtual race. And the one I saw was for a course near Hadrian’s Wall. I’m a history nerd who can’t afford to travel. But this challenge would give me a shiny medal if I finished AND give me 360-degree views of my spot on the course along the way? Sold.

It’s a ninety-mile challenge, so it’s not meant to be finished all in one day. But Hadrian’s Wall is…not ninety miles. It is, however, a UNESCO World Heritage site so maybe it’s worth a look.

10 things you might not know about Hadrian’s Wall:

  1. Julius Ceasar first sent Romans to what is modern-day England in 55 B.C., but in an ironic turn of events, an island that would basically come to be synonymous with colonization was full of people who were determined not to allow Roman colonization. Eventually, the Romans decided the island wasn’t worth it and went home. They wouldn’t come back until 43 A.D. and spent the next thirty years solidifying control over what is now southern England and Wales.
  2. In 117 A.D. Emperor Hadrian came to power in Rome (under some shady circumstances that made even the Roman Senate raise their eyebrows, by the way). He decided that the Empire was big enough already and didn’t need to keep expanding. This was great news for the troops in Britain. They were having trouble with a particularly stubborn group of tribes (Picts) that refused to be conquered in what is now Scotland. Suddenly, all they had to do was hold on to what they had instead of forging into a land of angry, hostile, guerilla warfare.
  3. The wall’s construction began in 122 and took six years to finish. It was approximately 80 miles long, had forts built at intervals and was additionally protected by a large ditch on one side. The dimensions were not uniform, but it was generally 10 feet wide and 16-20 feet high.
  4. Scholars don’t agree on the exact reason the wall was built. Some say it was to protect against attacks from the Picts. Some think it was more of a way to control immigration, smuggling, and customs. Logically, the second explanation makes a lot more sense given the population density (or lack thereof) along the wall. Though the Picts did still raid Roman land after the wall was completed.
  5. After Hadrian died, his successor returned to the previous policy of constant expansion. Under his orders, troops once again marched northward. They made it 100 miles before deciding to just build another wall. This wall was never actually completed because after the Emperor died, the next Emperor decided Hadrian’s wall was just fine as a border because the Picts were too savage to control.
  6. Today, the parts of the wall we can see are only remnants, about 10% of the original. Much more would have been lost if not for the efforts of John Clayton in the 1800s. When he realized that much of the wall hadn’t just been lost to time, but dismantled in order to build roads, cottages, and farm fences, he began buying up as much land around the wall as he could. He established a large farming operation on the land in order to pay for restoration work. After he died, the successful farming operation, the land, and the wall section all passed to relatives who subsequently lost it all while gambling (or so I’ve read). Eventually, the National Trust stepped in and acquired the land.
  7. In 1987 it was designated a World Heritage Site. There is a path for tourists to walk along the wall, however, it is suggested to only use the path during summer.
  8. In 1990, excavations of a milefortlet (a small fort built as part of the wall according to Roman mileage measurements) shed light on what life was like for the garrisons assigned to the wall.
  9. There are bathhouses that have been excavated along the wall that have the best-preserved Roman toilets in all of the United Kingdom. There are also some stones along the wall with the name of the Centurion in charge of the construction of that portion of the wall carved in them. That’s a pretty old “Lucious was here.”
  10. George R. R. Martin has stated that a visit to Hadrian’s Wall served as inspiration for The Wall built by Brandon the Builder in Game of Thrones. Because of this admission, many believe that the Romans’ descriptions of the Pictish people are also what inspired the Wildlings.

Are there weird archeological sites in your fictional world? Do they serve a purpose? Does it have bearing on the story itself? Are you envisioning your own Wildlings/Picts?

And if you’re wondering how my challenge is going the answer is that I’m ahead of schedule, but my knees are super angry about it. But I WILL earn the precious  finisher’s medal.

10 Things About Santa Claus

On By K. S. WattsIn 10 Things on the 10th, History/TriviaLeave a comment

It’s that time of year. Parents are rushing to and fro, whether from store to store or website to website, to find the perfect gifts for their children. And children are making lists for Santa. They will write letters and make pleas for all the things their little hearts desire and mail them to a “jolly old elf” clad in red and white furs who lives at the North Pole.

But wait. Santa Claus is also known as St. Nick. And Saint Nicholas didn’t call the North Pole home. He lived in modern-day Turkey. So when did Santa move to his new arctic digs? And just how old is he?

Let’s follow the evolution of the legend and see what it can teach us about world-building. Here are 10 things you might not know about Santa Claus.

  1. Nicholas, who would later be canonized as Saint Nicholas, was born sometime around 270 AD in a town that was at the time a part of Greece, but today is part of Turkey. He lost his parents at a young age, but was left with a large inheritance. Nicholas decided to dedicate his life to the Christian church and used his inheritance to help those in need whenever he could. The most famous account of this is when Nicholas secretly gave money to an indebted father of three daughters so he would have the money to pay their dowries. That meant the daughters could marry instead of becoming prostitutes to support themselves. The story goes that Nicholas, on three separate occasions (once for each daughter as she came of age) threw a small bag of gold through an open window into the family’s home during the night. The bags landed in shoes or socks that had been hung by the fire to dry. It didn’t take long for the story to spread and children began hanging up their socks to see if they, too, could wake up to life-altering gifts.
  2. Nicholas was made Archbishop of Myra and served the post at a time when Rome was persecuting Christians. He was no stranger to imprisonment, and possibly even torture, but refused to abandon or renounce his faith. When Constantine came to power, he invited Nicholas to Nicea where he was part of the council that gave us the famous Nicene Creed.
  3. Nicholas died on December 6th, 343 AD. Hence the reason December 6th is his Saint day. In fact, December 6th is still the day that many cultures exchange gifts–instead of Christmas Day. Fast forward to modern times and forensic scientists have been able to use his remains to create new models for what Nicholas actually looked like. Spoiler alert, it’s not the chubby, red-cheeked guy that pop culture depicts. It’s a man with dark olive-toned skin, deep brown eyes, and a gray beard. While the forensic picture the scientists came up with had to take some artistic license based on probability and common features of people in his area during his time, it still seems much more likely than the Scandinavian looking, blue-eyed version we know. What they can tell is that Nicholas had a crooked nose from a bad break that didn’t heal correctly (possibly from his tenure in prison courtesy of the Romans).
  4. After Nicholas passed, the stories of his generosity lived on. The tradition of secretly leaving gifts during the night around Saint Nicholas Day became increasingly popular throughout Europe. The prevalence of the celebration continued to spread until a man named Martin Luther nailed 95 Theses to a wooden door. After the Protestant Reformation, celebrating saints largely fell out of favor in Europe. However, by then people didn’t want to give up the St. Nick traditions, so they secularized him.
  5. Depending on which part of Europe we’re talking about, the new secular St. Nick took many forms. In some countries, he had taken on the abilities of old pagan deities/legends such as flight and immortality. In others, he not only delivered gifts in the night but also possessed the power to guide the hand of parents in disciplining their children whenever they misbehaved. In some areas, though, they dropped St. Nick altogether in favor of the “Christ Kind” or Christ Child giving gifts on Christmas day. However, the holy child didn’t seem one to be mean and discipline children, so he was given an accomplice who threatened to kidnap and/or beat bad children who didn’t deserve presents. What’s up, Krampus? In any case, and an ironic twist, the Germanic term Christ kind was eventually anglicized into Kris Kringle–another name for Saint Nicholas/Santa Claus.
  6. As you can imagine, as Europeans traveled the globe (and colonized everything they touched) they took their traditions regarding St. Nick with them. The Dutch took Saint Nicholas or Sint Niklaas, often shortened to Sinterklaas to the “New World”. This too was eventually anglicized into, you guessed it, Santa Claus.
  7. When the Dutch brought Sinterklaas to American shores, Christmas celebrations were not the family-friendly affairs we think of today. Unless you’re picturing rowdy and raucous holiday parties with heavy amounts of alcohol and at least one big bonfire. Then you’re totally on the right track. However, in the early 1800s it became the fashion for poets and novelists to write about Santa Claus and promote a much more heart-warming holiday. In 1809 Washington Irving gave Santa Claus a pipe and had him flying over rooftops in a wagon. In 1822, Clement Clark Moore, an Episcopalian minister and father of three young girls, wrote a poem for his children, “An Account of a Visit From St. Nicholas”. The minister was very hesitant to have the poem published because of its whimsical nature, but his family adored it and pushed for him to do it anyway. It was instantly popular. We better know the poem today as “The Night Before Christmas”. It is in this poem that we first see Santa with a sleigh, reindeer, sliding down chimneys and being jolly.
  8. In 1881 Thomas Nast, a political cartoonist, gave us a rendering of Santa Claus in his now-iconic red color (though this depicted long johns instead of fur robes) with a fluffy white beard, an armload of toys and a red hat. The image was published in Harper’s Weekly and quickly became the accepted image of Old St. Nick. During the 1930s a man named Haddon Sundblom took the concept Nast had drawn and ran with it. He replaced Santa’s long johns with red and white fur and replaced his pipe with a bottle of Coca-Cola. This image had been commissioned by the soft drink company as part of their holiday ad campaign and has been in use ever since.
  9. During World War II, American soldiers took their concept of Santa Claus with them across the ocean and the idea of a white-bearded, chubby, laughing, red-fur wearing Santa spread like wildfire. For a time, the Russian government even tried to bury Santa under the blue-fur wearing, New Year’s gift-giving, completely devoid of religious sentiment Grandfather Frost, but St. Nick persisted.
  10. As for Santa’s home at the North Pole, it has been a little harder to trace, but from I can tell it seems to stem from a set of letters that J.R.R. Tolkien wrote to his children from St. Nick (and sometimes his side-kick North Polar Bear). The letters were eventually published and there was great detail about how the North Polar Bear once wreaked havoc on Santa’s workshop through a series of accidents that almost ruined Christmas. The bear even wrote to the children in “arctic” and they had to decipher the language since it was too difficult for the bear to become truly fluent in English.

And that’s how a Turkish Archbishop gained immortality and moved to the North Pole. Is there a legend that the people in your fictional world believe? Perhaps it, too, evolved over time from something real to something fantastical. It might affect the way people celebrate or don’t celebrate something. Or it might add a touch of magic and evoke emotion. That’s why the Salvation Army began using Santas to ring bells to gather donations near Christmas. The tradition began in the early part of the 20th century when the organization needed to raise money to help pay for the meal they provided each year for families in need. They hired homeless and/or unemployed men to dress as Santa and ring bells on street corners to get attention. It was such a successful campaign that it continues today, though the bell ringers are now volunteers.

A man who became a tradition. A tradition that became a poem. A poem that became an image. An image that became a legend. A legend that became an icon. Never underestimate the power of a person with a good story to tell.

Happy Holidays.

10 Things About Nutmeg

On By K. S. WattsIn 10 Things on the 10th, History/TriviaLeave a comment

food white seasoning spices
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

There is a cold front hovering over the northern part of Mississippi right now. It’s definitely colder than usual for this time of year and will get even worse over the next couple of days before the front moves on. But while it’s cold, I’m indulging myself by making my favorite fall treats. Apple cake, wassail, mulled cider. I love the way they smell and the way they taste. It’s hard not to feel warm and fuzzy while drinking mulled cider and smelling apple cake.

That’s the key, really. The smell of it all is what calms me and puts me in the right frame of mind for sweaters and fuzzy socks. Y’all can harp on skipping Thanksgiving all you want (I like Christmas movies and carols, dang it. Get off me), but when I start to smell nutmeg on a regular basis, it’s time for warm fires, thick blankets, and saccharine holiday movies.

That’s my signal: nutmeg. Everyone always mentions cinnamon, but in most of my faves nutmeg is the star of the show. I love cinnamon, too, but nutmeg is the fragrance I adore. So, this month, I’m showing love to an underappreciated spice. Because, after all, our characters should be using all their senses to draw the reader into their world/experience. Smell is closely associated with memory. Wars have been fought over access to spice routes. And some of the things in your spice cabinet today, probably aren’t as innocuous as you think–and the same is true of your characters.

10 things you might not know about nutmeg:

  1. It comes from the ground up seed of a type of evergreen called “true nutmeg”. The seed covering is also used to make a spice. True nutmegs are native to a small island in Indonesia.
  2. The islands around where nutmeg grows are known as the Spice Islands and Indonesia still has a 75% market share of nutmeg exportation worldwide.
  3. Indonesian traders would trade with merchants in India and the Middle East. Those merchants would then carry nutmeg to European ports, but wouldn’t divulge the origin of the spice. It wasn’t until the Portuguese invaded the islands that it was discovered (in 1512).
  4. In medieval Europe, nutmeg was thought to be a treatment and a preventative measure against the plague. Though today researchers say it has no medicinal properties, it made the spice quite lucrative at the time.
  5. Though the Portuguese were the ones to invade the Banda Islands (the part of Indonesia where nutmeg grows naturally), they weren’t able to completely conquer them. It wasn’t until the Dutch East India Company came a-colonizin’ in 1621 that the islands lost a monopoly on the spice (along with so many other things).
  6. In the 17th and 18th centuries, unscrupulous and desperate merchants would actually fake the look of nutmeg by grating wood and selling the shavings. “Wooden nutmeg” eventually became a common term for many types of business fraud.
  7. There are other types of trees that also bear the name nutmeg (the California Nutmeg, for example), but they are not closely related and do not produce the same flavor of spice.
  8. In small amounts, nutmeg makes a fragrant and flavorful addition to culinary dishes. However, in its purest form, or in large quantities, nutmeg is a toxin and psychoactive substance. Common symptoms of nutmeg intoxication are chills, anxiety, delirium/hallucinations, nausea, dizziness, headaches, and amnesia. It may take several hours for such symptoms to begin, but they can last for several days.
  9. When a new nutmeg tree is planted, it takes approximately nine years before the first harvest of nutmeg seeds can occur. The tree reaches full production after about twenty years.
  10. While we (and I mean “I” because I can’t really speak for anyone else) most closely associate nutmeg with the smells of the holiday season (pumpkin pie, etc), it can also be used to make industrial lubricants, toothpaste, and cough syrup.

What plant or spice is native to the world your character lives in? How does its cultivation/exportation affect the character’s world and/or life? What is it used for? You may not use all of those details in the story, but if you know the answers to the questions, you’ve already made your world more unique and identifiable.

10 Things About Halloween

On By K. S. WattsIn 10 Things on the 10th, History/TriviaLeave a comment

It’s October. Cue the Monster Mash and start (erroneously) bashing the taste of candy corn. Seriously, there are worse candies out there. Candy corn isn’t half bad in small doses, it’s just too sweet to binge.

ANYWAY, much like I have for other holidays throughout the year, I thought this month I’d scrape up some trivia about Halloween. Holidays all start somewhere, and many evolve over time. This could be important for the world you’re building in your writing.

But I’ve said this over and over in previous posts, so I’ll skip the lecture this time and jump right in. Here are 10 Things About Halloween.

  1. Most scholars and sources trace our modern observance of Halloween back to a Celtic practice 2,000 years ago. At the end of the harvest, the Celtics celebrated Samhain, a day in which they believed the veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead was at its thinnest. They believed the dead could return to the land of the living on this one night. It was common to leave out offerings for loved ones, bonfires were lit through the night to guide the spirits, and sometimes disguises were worn to avoid confrontation with ill-intentioned spirits.
  2. While most scholars credit Samhain as the starting point for the evolution of what would eventually become Halloween, I find that it would be myopic and rude not to point out the holiday that would eventually become Dia de los Muertos had a similar origin with the Aztecs and other Nahua people groups another thousand years before the Celtics began observing Samhain. The Aztec believed that once a year, also in the fall, the veil or border between worlds grew thin and the dead could return. They also believed that when someone died and entered the land of the dead, they had to complete many different challenges to get through different “levels” of the land of the dead before actually getting to the final resting place. This process could take years and so leaving offerings for a loved one who you believed was still forging through the challenges as a way to encourage them was common. This belief would eventually blend with medieval Spanish beliefs and Catholic traditions to become what it is today, which IS NOT MEXICAN HALLOWEEN. It’s different. However, to not point out the similarities between the original celebrations and what they have become seems remiss.
  3. The Celtic tradition of Samhain would eventually get tangled up with the Roman tradition of Feralia when the Romans invaded, as they had a tendency to do. Feralia was a day, generally in October, the Romans set aside to remember and honor the dead.
  4. In 609 AD Pope Boniface IV established All Martyrs’ Day to celebrate those who died defending and spreading the Christian faith. However, All Martyrs’ Day was in May. Pope Gregory III chose to expand the holiday from all martyrs to all saints and moved the celebration to November 1st.
  5. Sometime around 1,000 AD the Catholic celebration of All Saints Day and the Celtic celebration of Samhain collided in the British Isles. Celebrations bled from one into the other. In Middle English, All Saints Day was said Alhalowmesse. Eventually, that became Hallowmas. The night before Hallowmas was Hallow’s Eve. Add several hundred more years, mix in different dialects, throw in a case of lazy mouth and we get “Halloween”.
  6. As Europeans, especially the British, colonized North America, they naturally brought their beliefs and celebrations with them. However, in most of the early Puritan settlements, Hallow’s Eve was strictly discouraged. It was, however, more commonly celebrated in the southern colonies (pretty much everything from southern Maryland down through Georgia). There is was further mixed with the celebrations and practices of several different Native American nations and became more of a harvest celebration/autumn festival.
  7. During the Irish Potato Famine in the late nineteenth century, Irish immigrants brought over their Halloween traditions and they quickly spread throughout the nation. These traditions included souling, guising, and innocent pranks. Souling was the practice that had the poor knocking on doors of their more affluent neighbors and offering to pray for the souls of their loved ones in exchange for loaves of bread. Guising was the act of wearing a mask and going door to door asking for food or coin in exchange for singing, dancing, recitations of poetry, or other performances.
  8. Over the years the innocent pranks portion of the tradition evolved into something more like vandalism. Where today we think of toilet papering houses and throwing eggs, at one point things got so bad that businesses began bribing the adolescents and young adults of the communities with candy or treats to keep them from damaging their stores. By the 1930s, it was pretty common for teenagers to go to both businesses and residences asking for these treat bribes. Anyone who refused got pranked. Trick or treat. Your choice. The definition of extortion.
  9. By the 1950s the holiday tradition had become more kid-friendly and the tricks a little less threatening. Now the adorable little princess or superhero at your door wasn’t actually threatening to bust out your windows or slash your tires, they were just asking for some free goodies using a mild threat they didn’t even understand. Ah, how precious.
  10. Today, Halloween candy, costumes, and decorations represent a more than $6 Billion industry with the vast majority of celebrants not knowing or caring why they wear masks (to hide from evil spirits), bob for apples (to celebrate a Roman goddess and to divine the future), or eat copious amounts of sweets (again, a history of extortion). They generally do know why they drink, they just might not know when to stop.

So there it is. The Celtics get all the credit, the Aztecs get overlooked, most Native American nations get left out of the story altogether, the Catholic church gets to name it, and lots of money gets spent. Halloween.

For kicks and giggles, I’ll end this post with a funny family anecdote. When I was very young, we lived in a tiny town where the Halloween tradition dictated that the more popular you were in school, the more likely for someone to roll (or toilet paper) your house. My older siblings were quite popular, but our house never got rolled.

Why?

Because when my eldest sister first got old enough for her friends to try to roll the house, my dad hatched a plan. He dressed in all-black tactical gear and hid in the bushes in front of our house alongside our completely black German Shepherd and armed himself with a super soaker filled with gentian violet–a generally harmless substance that stains the skin purple. When the kids showed up in our yard, he and the dog leapt from their hiding spot, already terrifying the poor lot, and sprayed them all.

Y’all.

It takes a few days for that stuff to fade away.

The HOMECOMING QUEEN had to accept her crown that year with a not-quite-faded purple streak across her face. Her mother was LIVID.

Nobody EVER rolled our house.

Trick or Treat.