3 National Monuments and Sedona, AZ

After Petrified Forest National Park, we drove to Sedona, AZ, making sure to visit three nearby national monuments of the northern Sinagua, a prehistoric culture that inhabited the Verde Valley until the 1400s when they suddenly abandoned this area. This is copied from National Park Service flier for these national monuments:


Montezuma Castle and Well are located about 15 miles south of Sedona and Tuzigoot is about 20 miles southwest. The well is a natural cistern that Sinagua used to irrigate their farms by digging irrigation ditches. View slide showhere.

Tuzigoot is located about 20 miles southwest of Sedona. View slide show here.

The views in and around Sedona are breathtaking. People who live there say that it's like living in Zion National Park, we agreed. On our return to Las Vegas to fly home, we stopped at Slide Rock State Park in Oak Creek Canyon: Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon.

No one knows for certain why they left.

Emoticons and water on the moon

Being an iconoclast at heart, I just love it when I stumble upon surprising facts, information that turns my view of something, large or small, on its head. I know that's a big reason why I was so compelled by Richard III when I discovered that the Shakespearean version is mainly fiction and why I read this Cracked article about the emoticon with great delight. Not only did Ambrose Bierce propose them nearly 120 years ago, but according to this article, Abraham Lincoln used them in his personal telegraphs. Who'da thunk!

Which brings me to another surprise, this one rather larger than the origin of emoticons. I had always thought, based on various articles and books that I read, that the moon was basically a lump of rock, devoid of life, and likely never supported life. On November 14, 2009, the New York Times reported that about a month ago, a satellite crashed into a lunar crater near its south pole and kicked up approximately 26 gallons of water that had been collecting for billions of years. Assuming there is a significant accumulation, the moon now appears to be an ideal candidate for a base, since water, and by virtue of the water, oxygen, would not have to be shipped from the Earth.

Views from the Grand Canyon and Petrified Forest

From Bryce Canyon, we drove south to the south rim of the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately, the closest lodging I was able to get at the time was in Williams--an easy hour long drive to an entrance to the Grand Canyon. If you plan to go, I recommend you make your reservations early enough to stay at one of the motels that are just outside the park's entrance. One of the canyon's treats, is a mule ride down Bright Angel trail. We got to the park too late to take one of the rides but did manage to hike down a small piece of it.

Click this link to view some of the sights we saw.

In addition to petrified wood, The Petrified Forest stretches to the Painted Desert with sights of petroglyphs in between. See the views here..

Views from Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks

After we left Vegas, we traveled north and stopped at Zion National Park.
Click here to view slide show.

From Zion we continued north to Bryce Canyon where we stayed at Ruby's Inn just outside the park. If you plan on visiting, I recommend staying here.
Click here to view slide show.

New discussion group

The first chapter of 'Richard III: The Maligned King' by Annette Carson examines Edward IV's sudden death from what his doctors called an "unknown illness" just before his 41st birthday. One possible cause was that Edward IV had been given a lethal dose of arsenic.

This topic has already been discussed at some length on different Richard III discussion groups, but because other topics would intersperse this one, I have set up this temporary discussion group to focus on this theory--to determine if the arsenic could have been prescribed by his doctors to cure an illness and they got the dosage wrong, or if he were deliberately poisoned by someone he trusted.

Link to E4Arsenic and ask to join the group if you are interested in participating in the discussion.

2009 Richard III Society Annual General Meeting

A Week ago Friday, Ed (my mate) and I flew to Las Vegas to attend the annual meeting of the Richard III Society, American Branch. Friday evening we registered and caught up with old friends and met new ones.

After a buffet breakfast Saturday, Kate Skegg presented her theory on what caused the English Sweating sickness. By her reckoning, it's a cyclical disease that's highly infectious, but not easily caught from person to person. Her research strongly points to Tularemia, an infectious disease carried by ticks, although there are other modalities that can spread the disease to humans.

Susan Higginbotham gave the next talk--one befitting the venue of this year's meeting--gambling! Dice were popular from ancient times, as was Backgammon, dating back to Mesopotamia. Even the 14th-century Luttrell Psalter has an illustration of two young people playing Backgammon in the garden. (If you're interested, you can see many images contained in the Luttrell Psalter, including this one, in Google images.) The modern deck of cards are derived from the Tarot deck and while many believe the Queen of Hearts may be that of Elizabeth of York and wife of Henry VII, the connection seems to be one of hindsight.

Following the buffet luncheon, Dr. Sharon Michalove gave the keynote speech on the reinvention of Richard III. Depending on which side of the fence you stand on, you may think of Richard as either a good king or evil as epitomized by William Shakespeare. Interestingly, as Dr. Michalove pointed out, not only has Richard been reinvented through the centuries since his defeat in 1485, but so have the the interpretations given to Shakespeares villain of the same name.

The banquet (buffet of course) followed the business meeting where many of us dressed up in our finest 15th-century style dress and we were treated to a play by Joyce Tumea, What Was That?: a modern medieval murder mystery.

As all things must, this came to an end after the Sunday breakfast, where I had the opportunity to participate in an author's panel with Susan Higginbotham, Maria Elena Torres, Sharon Michalove, and Joyce Tumea. This was my first experience participating in this sort of panel, and I found it a most enjoyable experience. I'm sure it helped that I was among friends.

Ed and I took advantage of a five hour break to drive out to Red Rock National Park, about 20 minute drive out of Las Vegas. I've taken many photos, but hopefully these two images will give you an idea of the magnitude of this park:





Ed and I stayed on with about twenty other Ricardians to attend the Tournament of Kings at the Excalibur Hotel. We had a grand time watching the fabulous horsemanship, and acrobatic show while eating a roasted chicken with our fingers--knives and forks were not allowed to be consistent with medieval times, although I couldn't help smirking at the anachronistic home fried potatoes and steamed broccoli.

Here's a photo of a bit of Las Vegas at night:




We left the next day to tour a few of the national parks and to see some of the southwest. More on this later.

Words and phrases--medieval to modern

I admit--I’m a word whore, from having about a dozen dictionaries (print), and about as many links to online dictionaries, etymologies, and phrases. In addition, I subscribe to “Word a Day” and “Phrase a Week”. Yet, armed with all these resources, I may still have some trouble finding the correct medieval term.

One challenge I had in writing This Time was to know which words Richard wouldn’t know or get an opposite meaning from when he awakens in the 21st- century. For example, early in the story, Richard observes what we would call a sympathetic reaction, but according to The Oxford Essential Dictionary of Word Histories, that word came into use in the mid 17th-century. So, instead of a single word, I ended up writing this paragraph:

“Katarina’s pupils grew large and her lips parted slightly. While Richard would not describe her expression as one of pity, the word that came to mind was in his Latin vocabulary-–misericors—caring heart.”

As it happens, I’m quite pleased with the end result because of the nuance it gave to the entire scene, but that cost me about a half day of research.

Despite my investment in those dictionaries and books on medieval words and phrases, the one thing that I found most frustrating was the medieval terms or phrases were listed alphabetically but there was no reverse lookup. For example, suppose I wanted to name a coned-shaped hat that fashionable women wore in the 15th-century. I would not have been able to find “hat” or “cone-shaped hat” but would need to have known that it was called a hennin.

The challenge for authors writing period pieces is even greater. For example, one can’t just say a horse, because like today, there were different types of horses, but the classifications have changed. The most expensive was the destrier, used mostly for the joust, and followed by the courser used for battle. A rouncey was the least expensive, often used as a pack animal, but also for riding.

My kudos go to those writers who successfully use the medieval terms so that they are meaningful to the modern reader without sounding pedantic.

Partial resource list:
Print:
--A Dictionary of Medieval Terms & Phrases. Christopher Coredon with Ann Williams. D. S. Brewer. Cambridge. 2004.
--NTC’s Dictionary of Changes in Meanings. Adrian Room. NTC Publishing Group. Lincolnwood, IL. 1996
--Medieval Wordbook. Madeleine Pelner Cosman. Checkmark Books. 2001.
Links:
--Ask Oxford (Word a Day)
--Horses in the Middle Ages (Wikipedia article)
--Phrase Finder (Phrase a Week)