A word to the wise

I like to get feedback from those who take a peek at this blog. I really do. And so, normally, I reply to every comment, and, when appropriate, I encourage people in various venues to visit. I do not want to have to moderate comments, if I can help it, and, so far, most people have been good. However, my last post, about medieval English diets --- a serious and perfectly reasonable subject, given the nature of my Great Science Fiction Masterpiece With Neandertals --- generated an advertisement for some diet plan. And I didn't like this at all. This is an "ad-free" zone. It is also open to anyone who wants to comment about something I've said, the links I've posted, any resource material I may use, reviews of my books, etc., etc. It is not open to people who want to try to sneak ads for whatever product they're selling.

I am not, for the moment, going to put any restrictions on who can comment. I think that would discourage people, and I don't want that. Besides, I will usually answer any comment that comes through. I like to see that this blog is of interest to somebody. And I have deleted the comment which linked to the diet plan. But if I get many more "false" comments like this, I may have to take sterner action. So, all potential spammers --- be warned! Do not try this trick again!
Anne G

Another nice book site

Gateway: A World of Books has an interview with Elizabeth Chadwick, the author of several books on medieval historical people. It seems that her writing process is a lot like mine, though her "favorite books" is not. But everyone's taste is different, so I don't mind.
Anne G

Anthropologists make good writers!

I have a degree in anthropology. It's from long ago, and not very "useful", in the "real world", but. . . if I hadn't had that degree, I wouldn't have had the slightest idea of where to begin to start researching the "Neandertal" part of my Great Medieval Science Fiction Masterpiece With Neandertals! And I wouldn't have had the slightest idea of where to continue. The "medieval" part was harder, at least until I decided I was looking at a time and place where the culture was different from ours, but could be looked at in the ways anthropologists look at other cultures(and our own, current one, too). Once I did that, the writing wasn't easy, but I had a framework.

All of this is just a lead-in to the latest John Hawks blog. He interviewed Anne Weaver, the author of a delightful-sounding children's book, The Voyage of the Beetle. It's interesting sounding and relevant, because it's a children's book from the point of view of a beetle that sailed with Charles Darwin on the famous Beagle. I haven't read it, but I hear that kids enjoy it. And the author started out as an anthropologist!

I thinkk there's hope for all of us,
Anne G

The "healthy" Middle Ages

It seems that medieval English peasants were generally much healthier than most people today. Or at least their diets were generally better: lots of vegetables and some fruit, plus a fair amount of fish and meat when they could get it. Which, apparently was oftener than one might suppose. Of course they had to work pretty hard, and sometimes they went "short"(generally in July, just before harvest time), and nobody seemed to live terribly long. But they didn't get things like coronary disease --- probably in part because people in medieval times got lots of exercise of one kind and another.

I note all of this, because, as I have mentioned, my Great Science Fiction Masterpiece With Neandertals is set in medieval England. Furthermore, it's set in a particularly "healthy" period for most people, namely the so-called "medieval climatic optimum" which lasted from about 800 to 1300 CE. Oh, maybe that's a little generous for the length of time, but, interestingly, this time period more or less coincides with the so-called "Viking era", which, as the Gentle Reader might guess, was the time when people in various parts of Europe became familiar, one way or another, with the Scandinavian people. Which is also, in a way, an important background to my Great Science Fiction Masterpiece With Neandertals. But if the Vikings invaded England, and formed the so-called Danelaw, at least the people already there were a healthy lot.
Anne G

More "holiday" stuff!

Over at Greg Laden's blog, there's a funny little quiz about what movie your Christmas is most like. Mine came out like the Brady Bunch, though I often feel more like Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, which is my favorite Christmas movie/book/play/whatever of all time, bar none. Try the quiz. You might be surprised.
Anne G

Medieval holiday cheer

Just to keep things in the holiday spirit, so to speak, and to remind you that my Great Science Fiction Masterpiece is set in medieval England, I would like to direct you to Living the History, Elizabeth Chadwick's blog. She has a "Twelve Days of medieval Christmas" piece there. It has a nice little cartoon and even a "William Marshal Christmas", if you're interested. It's kind of fun!
Anne G

Wars on Christmas and other nonsense

This isn't about writing, but over on Greg Laden's blog there is an entry that, in my view, is extremely appropriate for this time of year. It's about the supposed "war on Christmas". Every year, it seems as if certain segments of the population(in the US, at least), declare some "war on Christmas". This year, according to Laden, there are bloggers who have declared that Richard Dawkins, the famous atheist evolutionary biologist who wrote The God Delusion earlier this year, actually sings Christmas carols! Jeez! Horrors! How terrible! An atheist singing Christmas carols! What desecration, according to these bloggers.

Now on this blog, I almost never interject "political" material. This is primarily a writer's blog, after all, and I'm more interested in publishing my own struggles with my writing, plus the science that inspired it, where appropriate. I have not yet, but probably will, comment on some of the historical material which inspired what I'm currently writing. I am extremely firm about keeping "politics" out of it.

But the idiocy(again in my view) of these bloggers claiming to have some "handle" on the one, true, and right way to celebrate Christmas(or any other important religious or secular holiday for that matter), just totally boggles my mind. Because Dr. Laden's family basically sounds a lot like mine. For that matter, Dr. Laden's family sounds like an increasing number of American families in this day and age. In other words, as generations pass and children grow up and form families of their own, there is an increasingly wider pool of traditions, religious and secular, to draw from. In my own family, there are people who were born in Mexico. There are people of several different "races". A cousin of mine adopted children from China, when this was still possible. And so on and so on. This kind of thing is getting more and more common, as immigrants come to this country, often from places we barely knew existed when we were growing up, and traditions, religious and otherwise, are quite different from anything my generation knew. And Christmas has never been quite the "sacred" time that these bloggers seem to imagine it once was. Any social historian can easily tell you this

But this doesn't stop these bloggers from pronouncing on who can "celebrate Christmas" and who can't. I suspect that, by their own standards, they could not have "celebrated Christmas" 200 years ago, right here in the infant US. But again, logic and historical/social records are of no concern to these people. They're far more interested in chipping away at tolerance and inclusiveness(for their own reasons, none of them, again in my view, particularly good ones), to pay attention to that. What's even worse is, at the time Jesus lived, I have a horrible feeliing that they would not have been able to find room at any inn for Mary and Joseph, and later, when Jesus was a grown man, they would have been exactly the kind of people who sided with the Romans. Ugh.

Have a better Christmas than that and a New Year full of happiness and peace,
Anne G