Day: May 6, 2018

Xena– A Warrior Princess

My regulars know that I enjoy many subjects among which is archeology and history especially the history of war and there are none better than the Vikings….these warriors were feared around Europe….and everyone has an image of a large blond or red hair warrior with axe in hand, right?

Well it has been possibly proven that not all the warriors were male……

The remains of a powerful Viking — long thought to be a man — was in fact a real-life Xena Warrior Princess, a study released Friday reveals.

The lady war boss was buried in the mid-10th century along with deadly weapons and two horses, leading archaeologists and historians to assume she was a man, according to the findings published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

Wrong.

“It’s actually a woman, somewhere over the age of 30 and fairly tall, too, measuring around [5 feet 6 inches] tall,” archaeologist Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson of Uppsala University, who conducted the study, told The Local.

https://nypost.com/2017/09/08/viking-skeletons-dna-test-proves-historians-wrong/

The Vikings are fascinating and as time goes by we are learning more and more…..speaking of which there is more on tap about the Vikings…stay tuned.

Must Read “Papa”

A Sunday in the garden and is well……

Last weekend I wrote about how they were trying to replace some classics with more modern books.  As an avid reader I do not agree with this…..I mean they wanted to take Hemingway off the “must read”…..Hemingway!  Probably the only way some Americans would be exposed to the horrors of World War One and the Spanish Civil War…..

Granted Hemingway’s books seldom have a happy ending….the protagonist does not win the girl and live happily ever after or he dies in the end….

For those that may not be privy to Hemingway and his life then I can help……

At the time of Hemingway’s graduation from High School, World War I was raging in Europe, and despite Woodrow Wilson’s attempts to keep America out of the war, the United States joined the Allies in the fight against Germany and Austria in April, 1917. When Hemingway turned eighteen he tried to enlist in the army, but was deferred because of poor vision; he had a bad left eye that he probably inherited from his mother, who also had poor vision. When he heard the Red Cross was taking volunteers as ambulance drivers he quickly signed up. He was accepted in December of 1917, left his job at the paper in April of 1918, and sailed for Europe in May. In the short time that Hemingway worked for the Kansas City Star he learned some stylistic lessons that would later influence his fiction. The newspaper advocated short sentences, short paragraphs, active verbs, authenticity, compression, clarity and immediacy. Hemingway later said: “Those were the best rules I ever learned for the business of writing. I’ve never forgotten them.”

http://www.lostgeneration.com/ww1.htm

A fascinating life well lived….something we all aspire to and seldom do not find the niche we need to accomplish our desires……

Time for a glass of wine and some cheese in the garden…..enjoy your day and I will return with more stuff.