by Wendy Hawkin | Sep 7, 2017 | history, journal, mythology
via Photoshop Animation Reconstructs The Face Of Egyptian Queen Nefertiti
This is a fascinating post from Realm of History that offers us the faces of King Akhenaten and Queen Nefertiti via facial reconstruction and photoshop animation. There are actually two videos. Click the link and scroll down to see a facial reconstruction of both the king and queen and read their story.
In this image (a reconstruction by Sven Geruschkat) Nefertiti is wearing a gold broad collar decorated with faience beads similar to the one the archaeologist discovers in my urban fantasy mystery, To Sleep with Stones. The writer also explains the political turmoil and chaos that Akhenaten created when he attempted to change the religious views of the people. My story concerns their daughter, Meritaten.
During the chaos, Meritaten flees Egypt and ends up in Scotland where she loses her gold broad collar. Twenty-five hundred years later, archaeologist Sorcha O’Hallorhan discovers it at the bottom of a well in Kilmartin Glen, a landscape rife with megaliths. Her discovery sets off a chain of events that ends in murder.
SORCHA FOUND IT IN THE MUD. Pried it from beneath a thin flat stone with tenderness and a trowel—a mud-encrusted, green-tinged, tangled mess. Dylan watched, so entranced he couldn’t breathe.
When she popped the trowel back in the faded caddy, she wore tied around her waist, he inhaled at last. Peeling off one glove, and then the other, she let them fall. As she cradled the object in her palm, her green eyes flickered as if it was speaking to her, and his mind flared again. Did she share his gift? Perhaps, have a talent for psychometry? Imagine holding a golden torque in your hand and seeing its tale unfold in cinematic brilliance. Imagine knowing whose head it adorned, where all it had travelled, and how many lives it had saved, or snuffed out.
She squatted, dipped her treasure reverently in a bucket of water; then cleansed it with her bare fingers. Sorcha was a renegade archaeologist who didn’t always follow procedure or stick to the grid. He usually admired that, but today it gave him shivers.
Kai stamped his foot like a nervous horse, and shone the torch. “Gold,” he murmured, with sly elation, and Dylan cringed, knowing he was considering the cash that could be made from the sale of such an artifact on the black market.
“Thank you, god,” she whispered, cupping it to her breast. It was just an expression—the only god she worshipped was fame. Sorcha O’Hallorhan was searching for archaeological connections between the Inner Hebrides of Scotland, where they currently stood, and a land twenty-five hundred miles southeast. Egypt. This artifact was quite possibly the connecting cord; the evidence she needed to prove a legend real and grasp that fame.
“Is it—?” asked Dylan.
“Aye lads.” She fondled the turquoise beads. Faience. Just like the beads that adorned the golden collar of King Tut. “I knew we’d find her.” She was Meritaten, eldest daughter of Egyptian King Akhenaten and Queen Nefertiti. It was the stuff of story, and to prove it true would change the way the world viewed prehistory.
Kai reached out his large rough hand. He wanted to hold it.
But Sorcha drew back, slipped it in her vest pocket and began climbing the rope ladder.
They’d dug down nearly eighteen feet into a pre-Celtic holy well because Sorcha had a theory. People offered gifts to the guardians of holy wells; and sometimes too, they used them to hide things. At this depth, the team had already travelled back in time three millenniums, and unearthed a scattering of bronze axe heads, obsidian arrowheads, jet beads and pottery shards; the skull of an extinct great auk with its long curved bill still intact; the shed antlers of a stag; and sadly, a malformed infant. But that was nothing compared to this.
by Wendy Hawkin | Aug 12, 2017 | healing, history, journal, writing and publishing
This feels like the day after…
The day after the smoke from B.C’s forest fires finally cleared Metro Vancouver. Crouching over the coast like an apocalpytic dragon for the past two weeks, the heat and smoke kept us hiding in our caves. This is the worst fire season since 1958 when 8,560 square km of forest burned; which means, ironically, that this might be “normal” and not a consequence of global warming (though it probably is). Almost 5,000 square km of forest have burned and continue to burn as 148 fires rage throughout the province.
But for the moment, where I stand, the smoke has cleared. White clouds dapple blue skies and I can breathe clean air. I can open my doors and windows, sit outside, and wander the forest and beach. And, for this, I am grateful.
downtrend.com
It also feels like the day after an illness dissipates that’s had you curled and crawling. Like the day after a really bad hangover or a rampaging flu. The day when you feel a sense of hope and everything is just that much sweeter and brighter and richer.
This is the first day in over a week that I’ve felt like myself. I’m still trying to sort out what happened. Was it the final purging of an overwrought nervous system taxed from travel? Fish poisoning from dodgy tuna at Montreal airport? Severe anxiety coupled with a sensitive sensory system? Or all of it combined? All I know is that I feel like I’ve been through an Initiation, like I’ve walked through burning coals and emerged on the other side.
The smoke in my brain is lifting. I can eat and sleep and my anxiety level is dropping. I feel calm and comforted.
And, for this, I am grateful.
by Wendy Hawkin | Apr 28, 2017 | history, journal, memoire, writing and publishing
April 28th was an important day for some men, historically-speaking. In 1770, James Cook, British captain of the Endeavour landed at Botany Bay in Australia. In 1789, the mutiny against Captain William Bligh of the Bounty erupted, led by Fletcher Christian. And in 1905, E.A. VanSickler completed this piece of calligraphy:
I stare at this piece every day. Ernest Albert VanSickler is my maternal grandfather. And, this is the only thing I have that once belonged to him. It’s a treasure. Imagine the hours he spent perfecting this calligraphy; the intensity of detail, the focus of eye, brain, and hand, the discipline to avoid a smudge and perfect each stroke. His energy and his DNA are both trapped behind the glass; though the man is something of a mystery to me. He was born November 7, 1889 in Toronto, Ontario; which means that Ernie was sixteen years old when he completed this work. I wonder: did he ever want to become an artist or a writer or a monk?
Ernie was twenty-two when he married my grandmother, and twenty-seven when he signed up to fight in the First World War on Spring Equinox 1916. He is listed as a roofer-contractor on his attestation papers.
So much for the pen being mightier than the sword.
I don’t think it was entirely his idea. According to my aunt, Ernie and his father went off and got drunk that night and both signed up together. My grandmother was furious. In the five years they’d been married, they’d created four children: Jim, Grace (my mother), and Ernest and Arthur, a pair of delicate twin boys. His namesake Ernest Albert, actually died less than two months later on May 11, 1916. Had he shipped out already? And Arthur (who we called Tiny Tim) was forever sweet and fragile.
I can’t imagine what it must have been like for my grandmother, a twenty-five-year-old woman left with four children to tend while her husband went off to war. Cora was strong. I remember that. And she had her mother-in-law, tiny Annie, who kept her husband in line with an iron skillet; a trick she must have learned during her ten years of maid service (14-24) in England.
Ernie & Cora
We know that Ernie’s father was a drinker, and somewhat tricksy. On his attestation papers, James VanSickler claims his birthdate is August 20, 1871. He was actually born in 1862, but had he attested to the truth–that he was 54–he likely would have been rejected. And the thought of war abroad was too great an adventure to risk that.
James is described as being 5’11”, dark complexion, dark brown hair, and blue eyes. His mother was Tuscarora (the sixth Iroquois nation); his father a Dutchman from a colony in New York. The family homesteaded in Michigan for several years. It was the frontier; a wild, dangerous place. When he was only ten, James’s father was killed in a bar fight. When his mother remarried his killer, James and his younger siblings ended up living with their grandmother back in Ontario.
374 Dupont Street @Brunswick Avenue in Toronto
Later, the VanSicklers, father and son, ran one of the first gas stations in Toronto. They had an auto body and paint shop, and grew mushrooms in the basement. My mother refused to eat mushrooms ever after. The VanSicklers held dances for their customers.
Here they are throwing a party for the returning war heroes. It’s remarkable these two came home unscathed.
I would have loved to live in this house–sleep in that turreted tower. What stories are trapped beneath those shingles?
The pen is mightier than the sword.
These words were first spoken in Richelieu, a historical play written by Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1839. Richelieu says: “The pen is mightier than the sword… Take away the sword; states can be saved without it!”
I think I understand why sixteen-year-old Ernie would choose this adage. I see him as a warm, sweet, sensitive, happy-go-lucky guy–quite unlike his father. I see it in the twirling fronds, in the passionate precision he uses to highlight:
Surely, this was a man of the arts, not of the gas station. Could he have painted something other than cars? Still, country and family come first. I wish I had known him better. Wish I could remember more. I was just a kid when he passed away. But, perhaps he is with me still, whispering in my ear, breathing through his pen.
With Grandpa Van
“
by Wendy Hawkin | Apr 22, 2017 | history, journal, writing and publishing
Goodreads is sponsoring Mystery Thriller Week from May 1-7, 2017.
To celebrate, I’ve joined “Ask the Author” and I’m busy answering questions. Please come by and visit my page. I’d love you to send me questions. One of the questions Goodreads sent to me is this:
What mystery in your own life could be a plot for a book?
I’ve answered it on Goodreads, but I also offer it here, so I can add photographs.
Murder on the Michigan Frontier
My life reads like a mystery; unfortunately, sharing the intriguing bits could get me sued by living breathing characters. It’s too close to now.
But there is another mystery in my life; one I’m most intrigued by, and which is on my list to write. It concerns one of my grandfathers: a man named Thomas.
He is the man I imagine. The one I stalk; or who perhaps stalks me. I wonder…does Thomas want me to unravel his tale? Seek evidence in centuries old documents? Does he demand justice for his murder? For that was always what the family called it: a murder.
As all good murder mysteries do, this one begins with a body: Thomas VanSickler was murdered at age thirty-seven while at a dance on the western Michigan frontier.
He and his wife Lezze moved south from Canada three years before. They’d been involved in the Red River Rebellion in 1869; the year Louis Riel was chosen as leader of the Resistance. Lezze was Tuscarora (Iroquois) and one of her brothers had already fled; a wanted man.
In 1870, Thomas is listed as a labourer, but by 1872 he is farming. He has $500 in real estate, and $275 in personal cash.
In a letter to his brother dated September 8, 1872 (likely the last letter he ever wrote) he says he has planted cabbages, corn, and potatoes, and has seven acres of buckwheat, almost ripe. He bought a three-year-old heifer who gives “a very good mess of milk” and paid $17 for a horse. Things are looking up for Thomas in Freemont, Michigan.
You might sea the boys. i got four now. We had one cume day before yesday, friday morning half past nine o’clock. He was nine pounds and a half. He is smart and missus is smart too. Well i can’t rite much this time for it is late…
Underneath his signature he writes that they named the baby Obadiah (after his father and brother.)
Within days, Thomas is dead.
I wonder now… just how smart is the missus?
Thomas is a jealous man with a bad temper. And a man, no doubt, who likes his whiskey. That night, while the two of them are out at some social event, a neighbour named Simon Mark flirts with Lezze. When Thomas notices, a fist fight erupts, and in the end, he is dead: a battered body on a sawdust floor.
Nothing too unusual there. Men drink, fights break out, bottles crack, knives flash, and heads break…
But…
Lezze marries his killer within eighteen months. And when she dies in childbirth (three years and three pregnancies later) Simon Mark walks that fourth son to the nearest railway station, sticks a label on his chest, and puts him on a train bound for Canada. Obadiah is just seven years old.
Obadiah
It is Obadiah who told the story of his father’s murder to his grand-daughters, who told it to me.
For seven years, Obadiah lived with the man who murdered his father. How would that affect a boy? And, what happened to the other four children? At the time of his murder, Alice was thirteen, James ten, John six, and William three. Did Lezze send them back to their grandmother in Canada because she couldn’t cope? Or was it Simon Mark’s idea?
And why did they always say that Thomas was murdered: a term that implies pre-meditation and motive.
Was Lezze involved with Simon Mark? Knowing of Thomas’s temper, why would she risk any association with another man in public?
Was Thomas drunk enough to rage, but too drunk to fight? Or was it all a tragic misunderstanding? An accident? Self-defence?
Was Simon Mark in love with Lezze, or did he just do the right thing by taking in the grieving widow and a brood of boys that would surely revenge their father’s death.
Did Lezze want to marry her husband’s killer? Was she forced? Or did the two of them conspire to rid the world of Thomas and gain Lezze her freedom?
What do you think? Does the Tale of Thomas have the makings of a historical mystery? Would you like to know what happened that September night out on the Michigan frontier?
by Wendy Hawkin | Mar 18, 2017 | Book Review, history
I’m currently reading Neil Gaiman’s latest book: Norse Mythology. This morning he posted this review on Twitter.
via Review: Neil Gaiman, ‘Norse Mythology’
The reviewer presents a good summary of the book, but I agree with @neilhimself that his review is wrought with Christian perspective. There is a sense that the “reverent kings” did not have blood on their hands like the pagan invaders; that the bible was the answer to the pagan problem. We, in Canada, know very well where that theory led us.
Would I be terrified by the appearance of Viking ships on the horizon? Yes. But, I’d be just as terrified by an invasion by any “other” tribe that was not my own. That’s why I applaud series like The Last Kingdom and Vikings that illustrate there was/is blood on all hands, but also mercy, kindness, and humour lurks in all hearts.
by Wendy Hawkin | Mar 14, 2017 | history, writing and publishing
Today I’m featuring a guest writer: my big sister. Gail writes travel pieces, poetry, and memoir. This was just published in a spring edition of Our Canada, a glossy magazine put out by Readers Digest.
What follows is one her memoirs. As the oldest, Gail has more and different memories than I do of growing up in rural Ontario with our mom and dad.
I feature in this story too. Perhaps, my love for music…and musicians was inspired by Ed Sullivan’s Sunday night performers.
Macaroni Sunday by Gail M. Murray
It was the Fifties when television was still in its infancy and sitting around the living room watching TV as a family actually brought people together unlike today’s technological world of personal devices.
Dad would prepare Sunday dinner casserole – a scrumptious and flavourful mix of elbow macaroni, stewed tomatoes, Bravo tomato sauce and aged cheddar cheese. No store bought tomatoes for us. Mom had grown them in our large vegetable garden, and then spent painstaking hours simmering, pealing and canning them in mason jars to store in the root cellar.
“Bill, what are you doing with my canned tomatoes?” my mother shrieked.
“They’ll add flavour to the macaroni casserole. What are you saving them for?” he said with a wink.
It was true. Rows of canned peaches, pears, tomatoes lined the shelves in the coolest and driest part of our basement, being saved for that rainy day.
Dad had special touches with cooking like adding an egg and milk to our mashed potatoes as he whipped them into a bowl of deliciousness. No stranger to cooking, as the eldest child in his family at age twelve he was expected to have dinner on the table when his parents arrived home from their gruelling factory jobs. Dad had learned to make apple pie, beef stew, poached eggs and the piece de resistance – roast beef with roast potatoes and Yorkshire pudding. As my parents shared the cooking, we were in many ways quite modern for the Fifties.
My mother re-entered the workforce when my younger sister started school making me responsible for dinner at age twelve. This interfered with watching Dick Clark’s American Bandstand and learning the latest dances. Once, while watching a dance contest, I saw flames leaping from the frying pan. I rushed in to save the day just in time. After that I learned to stay with the cooking. I would get dinner started by setting the table, pealing the potatoes, chopping the vegetables. Dad would arrive home from his electrical job and give me pointers, teaching me how to cook. My dad, Bill, medium height wearing his flannel shirt and cotton pants held up by suspenders would peer out from his dark rimmed glasses at the pots and frying pans, making adjustments, frying or simmering. He had big blue eyes, an open smile and a kind heart. To a girl who did not take naturally to domesticity, he was patient and kind and never scolded unlike like my mother. Though we worked as a team, I left the real cooking to him. He knew his way around a kitchen and took pride in his fast and easy macaroni and cheese that we fussy eaters simply devoured.
Completing the casserole, Dad popped it in the oven to merge the flavours. The cheddar made a crunchy, gooey top crust.
Then we all gathered in front of the box to watch our much anticipated Tarzan movie. The station ran these action adventure films every Sunday. No question it was family fare with cheeta the precocious chimp adding humour with his zany antics and Boy (Tarzan’s adopted son) played by Johnny Sheffield, rounding out the jungle family. Though many actors played the Edgar Rice Burroughs’ hero, it was Olympic gold medal swimmer, Johnny Weissmuller, who was the quintessential ape-man.
Each film had swimming sequences and battles with crocodiles but the greatest battle Tarzan fought was with encroaching Europeans trying to ruin the harmony of the jungle by capturing wildlife illegally or harassing local tribes. Each film had Tarzan emitting his distinctive, ululating yodelling yell as he swung through the vines on a rescue mission. Tarzan’s New York Adventure (1942) was my favourite with Tarzan looking uncomfortable in a suit then discovering the “hotel waterfalls” (really a shower) and standing under it wearing his suit. Soft spoken Jane was there to bridge the gap.
During the commercial we would all dash to the kitchen to fill our plates as Dad served us breaking through the crusty cheese topping. As tomato flavours escaped, he spooned the gooey mixture onto our plates. We would sit our dinner on the coffee table or on special TV trays -metal trays with legs – so your knees fit nicely underneath. Imagine creating furniture for this purpose?
Dessert was served as we segued into Walt’s Disney’s Wonderful World of Colour. Earlier in the afternoon, Mom had cut up bananas and oranges into a large glass bowl. Typical kids we craved ice cream, Oreos, chocolate chip cookies, butter tarts, Twinkies. Luckily for us Mom limited sugar consumption. I can thank her today for my love of fruit and my trim waistline.
The crowning glory of Sunday night television was The Ed Sullivan Show. This strange wizened up stone faced emcee, a former New York entertainment columnist, had an eye for talent. His was the longest running variety show in the history of television. To appear on his show was a hallmark of success. If you could sit through the plate spinners, juggling acts, and smarmy crooners you could see “live and on our stage”, the greats of Rock and Roll: Elvis Presley, The Beatles, The Doors, and The Rolling Stones. Ed was the first host to break racial barriers and have African American greats like Harry Belafonte and Nat King Cole perform.
When Elvis performed Hound Dog in 1956 with his reckless gyrations, the teen age girls in the audience screamed and swooned. My three year old sister, Wendy, mimicked them squealing and hurling her little body against the back of the soft sofa in mock faint. My parents got more laughs out of her that night than the stand-up comedians.
When I think of comfort food, it takes me back to those early times with my nuclear family. Grilled cheese sandwiches, hot chocolate and macaroni and cheese lovingly prepared by my dad.
