Category Archives: Writing

Everything writing related from feathers to soaring

D is for Donibane

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A2Z-BADGE-100 [2017]

My 2017 theme is “The History of Kanata”, the parallel world that is the setting for “Eagle Passage, and the theme reveal is here. I also wrote about this world in my blog post ‘This could be Kanata.

D

D is for Donibane: The firm of Migisi Rederi have decided to attempt winning the Daily Mail £10,000 Flight Across Atlantic prize that is on offer to the first person to make the trans-Atlantic crossing by air in seventy-two hours. This substantial prize is open to pilots of any nationality, and machines of foreign or Albion construction, so the Kanatian freight company builds a hundred and six-meter semi-rigid airship, Dajoji. On 14th June 1914, the airship leaves Donibane, Vineland with its crew of seven including Juhán Allekuk, Arto Brune, and Janna Migisi.

27 hours later, Dajoji reaches Galway, in Ériu [Ireland], ahead of their competitors; although, they have rescued the French aviators from the downed Blériot Aéronautique plane. The Migisi Rederi achievement heralds a new dawn for airships as the principal means of air travel since their fleet of small airships is already carrying goods within Kanata.

The problem of flammable gases like hydrogen had been significantly reduced by the discovery of vast quantities of helium under the central Great Plains area of both Kanata and the Dixie States in 1903, following an oil drilling operation.

 

R34

Landing of British dirigible R-34 at Mineola, Long Island, N.Y. 1919 – Photo: United States Library of Congress

 

In our timeline: Wikipedia – In April 1913 the London newspaper The Daily Mail offered a prize of £10,000 (₤887414 in 2015) to

“ “the aviator who shall first cross the Atlantic in an aeroplane in flight from any point in the United States of America, Canada or Newfoundland and any point in Great Britain or Ireland” in 72 continuous hours”. ”

The competition was suspended with the outbreak of war in 1914 but reopened after Armistice was declared in 1918. The possibility of transatlantic flight by aircraft emerged after the First World War, which had seen tremendous advances in aerial capabilities.

During 14–15 June 1919, the British aviators Alcock and Brown made the first non-stop transatlantic flight in a Vickers Vimy IV. The Vimy twin-engined bomber was converted for the long flight by replacing its bomb racks with extra petrol tanks.

Pilot John Alcock and navigator Arthur Brown flew the modified Vickers Vimy, powered by two Rolls-Royce Eagle 360 hp engines. It was not an easy flight, with unexpected fog, and a snow storm almost causing the crewmen to crash into the sea. They made landfall in Galway at 8:40 a.m. on 15 June 1919, not far from their intended landing place, after less than sixteen hours of flying.

The Secretary of State for Air, Winston Churchill, presented Alcock and Brown with the Daily Mail prize for the first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean in “less than 72 consecutive hours”. There was a small amount of mail carried on the flight making it also the first transatlantic airmail flight.

The first transatlantic flight by rigid airship, and the first return transatlantic flight, was made just a couple of weeks after the flight of Alcock and Brown, on 2 July 1919. Major George Herbert Scott of the Royal Air Force flew the airship R34 with his crew and passengers from RAF East Fortune, Scotland to Mineola, New York (on Long Island), covering a distance of about 3,000 statute miles (4,800 km) in about four and a half days. The flight was intended as a testing ground for post-war commercial services by airship (see Imperial Airship Scheme), and it was the first flight to transport paying passengers. The R34 wasn’t built as a passenger carrier, and extra accommodation was arranged by slinging hammocks in the keel walkway. The return journey to Pulham in Norfolk, England, was from 10 to 13 July and it took 75 hours.

The two primary lifting gases used by airships have been hydrogen and helium.

Hydrogen is the earth’s lightest element, and it can be obtained easily and inexpensively, but its flammability makes it unacceptable for manned airship operations.

In addition to the famous Hindenburg disaster, dozens of hydrogen airships were destroyed by fire, and no American airship has been inflated with hydrogen since the crash of the U.S. Army airship Roma in 1922.  The use of hydrogen as a lifting gas for passenger airships was completely abandoned by the late 1930s.

Helium’s non-flammable nature makes it the only practical lifting gas for manned lighter-than-air flight, but it is scarce and expensive, and the use of helium can reduce a rigid airship’s payload by more than half. The USS Shenandoah ZR-1 made its first flight on September 4, 1923.  It was the first ascent of a helium inflated rigid airship in history.

After an oil drilling operation in 1903 in Dexter, Kansas, helium was found concentrated in large quantities under the American Great Plains, available for extraction as a by-product of natural gas. However, it was not available in any quantity until the 1920s.

Could airships have ever out-performed planes? Was the earlier discovery of helium as a lifting gas the catalyst?

 

 

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Important Links for the A to Z Challenge – please use these links to find other A to Z Bloggers

Website: http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/atozchallenge/

Twitter handle: @AprilAtoZ

Twitter hashtag: #atozchallenge

C is for Cristóbal Colón

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A2Z-BADGE-100 [2017]

My 2017 theme is “The History of Kanata”, the parallel world that is the setting for “Eagle Passage, and the theme reveal is here. I also wrote about this world in my blog post ‘This could be Kanata.

C

C is for Cristóbal Colón: On 12 October 1492, the three ships of Cristóbal Colón are met off the Bahamas by two well-armed vessels that echo Viking longships with dragon prows, but with caravel features like three masts and lateen sails. Although the Spanish are armed so are the ‘Vikings’, who also have swivel cannons on their ships. The Norse commander says that he is, “Njal Migisi, follower of Thor, here by the blessings of the people of these islands. The Lukku-Cairi are under the protection of the Kanata Konføderasjon.”

Cristóbal Colón orders his men to stand down and the Spaniards are granted anchorage and re-supplied from an established trading port, but then sent away. The Kanatians know that the Spanish will try to settle on the mainland, but will face a Mesoamerican alliance that is prepared for Europeans, their weapons, and diseases.

The Spanish do establish settlements but are forced to co-operate with the Mesoamericans, although with consequences for their neighbours.

 

Columbus Day 2012 watermark

This is how Courtney imagines things would have happened in 1492 if Simon and River were present. Copyright and more at http://bunnies-and-sunshine.blogspot/2012/happy-columbus-day.html

 

 

In our timeline:

“In fourteen hundred ninety-two
Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

He had three ships and left from Spain;
He sailed through sunshine, wind and rain.

He sailed by night; he sailed by day;
He used the stars to find his way.”

Do I need to recite the rest of the poem, or remind people of all the controversy surrounding Columbus’ arrival in the New World and how the continent was settled by Europeans and other nations? History  is a good starting link for the Columbus story, and then there is the view from the other perspective that some might call revisionist. Although, this is a 1992 article, the movement keeps growing, especially on Columbus Day. Personally, as a historian and of Chilean origin, I lean heavily towards the indigenous rights viewpoint, as will become clear as Kanata evolves.

But if Leif Eriksson and the Vikings had stayed in Newfoundland and spread inland, would the First Nations have fared any better, although Eriksson had converted to Christianity? I have chosen a Saami shamaness as my catalyst for change, but what would have been needed to avoid the terrible mistakes made by the later Europeans?

 

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Important Links for the A to Z Challenge – please use these links to find other A to Z Bloggers

Website: http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/atozchallenge/

Twitter handle: @AprilAtoZ

Twitter hashtag: #atozchallenge

B is for Bouvines

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A2Z-BADGE-100 [2017]

My 2017 theme is “The History of Kanata”, the parallel world that is the setting for “Eagle Passage, and the theme reveal is here. I also wrote about this world in my blog post ‘This could be Kanata.

B

B is for Bouvines: 1214 – A dynasty of Norse-Anglo-Saxons has ruled Albion [Great Britain] for over one hundred and fifty years after some settlers from Kanata ensured the dynasty of Cnut the Great continued. King Arthur II of Albion and his allies in Normandy and Anjou face a claim by Phillipe of France on their French territories. On 27 July 1214, backed by the Holy Roman Emperor, Otto IV. the Albion infantry along with the might of their Mjölnir Militia and the Norman cavalry, prevails at the Battle of Bouvines, leaving the French struggling for allies. Bouvines shifts the balance of power in Europe, but can the nation states avoid war sweeping across the continent or can the extensive Norse trade network from Kanata to Constantinople hold sway?

Mjölnir is the hammer of Thor, worn as an amulet by many Viking warriors, although the bow symbol of the goddess Skaði was favoured by her followers. The Mjölnir Militia arose in Kanata to protect the trading settlements not as Viking marauders. The militia had a strict code of honour and indigenous warriors joined their ranks willingly. A detachment of the Mjölnir Militia was instrumental in ensuring that Cnut the Great’s dynasty continued in 1036, having amalgamated with the legendary Jomsvikings at the request of Magnus I of Norway.

 

712px-St_Pol

Stained glass inside St. Peter’s church, in Bouvines, Nord. France: Saint-Pol endangers the Flemish army. Photo – Copyright Benjamin Smith / Wikimedia Commons

 

In our timeline: Wikipedia – The Battle of Bouvines, which took place on 27 July 1214, was a medieval battle which ended the 1202–1214 Anglo-French War. It was fundamental in the early development of France in the Middle Ages by confirming the French crown’s sovereignty over the Angevin lands of Brittany and Normandy.

Philip Augustus of France defeated an army consisting of Imperial German, English and Flemish soldiers, led by Otto IV, Holy Roman Emperor in the north…and King John of England, Otto’s maternal uncle and ally. Allied with Philip was Frederick II Hohenstaufen, who controlled the southern Holy Roman Empire and afterwards deposed Otto.

Philip returned to Paris triumphant, marching his captive prisoners behind him in a long procession, as his grateful subjects came out to greet the victorious king. In the aftermath of the battle, Otto retreated to his castle of Harzburg and was soon overthrown as Holy Roman Emperor by Frederick II, who had already been recognised as emperor in the south a year and a half prior.

King John obtained a five-year truce, on very lenient terms given the circumstances.

Philip’s decisive victory was crucial in ordering politics in both England and France. In the former, so weakened was the defeated King John of England that he soon needed to submit to his barons’ demands and agree to the Magna Carta, limiting the power of the crown and establishing the basis for common law.[19] In the latter, the battle was instrumental in forming the strong central monarchy that would characterize France until the first French Revolution. It was also the first battle in the Middle Ages in which the full value of infantry was realised.

Philip conquered most of Plantagenet’s continental possessions, namely Anjou, Brittany, Maine, Normandy, and the Touraine, leading to the effective end of the Angevin Empire.

 

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Important Links for the A to Z Challenge – please use these links to find other A to Z Bloggers

Website: http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/atozchallenge/

Twitter handle: @AprilAtoZ

Twitter hashtag: #atozchallenge

A is for Aquidneck

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* A2Z-BADGE-100 [2017]

My 2017 theme is “The History of Kanata”, the parallel world that is the setting for “Eagle Passage, and the theme reveal is here. I also wrote about this world in my blog post ‘This could be Kanata’.

A

A is for Aquidneck Island: On 28th September 1638, Samuel Hopkins and his congregation of Separatist settlers are welcomed by the Migisi clan mother, Klasina to discuss their needs, including land requirements. Klasina has called a gathering of local sachems or chief from various indigenous tribes. The Migisi are attempting to stop the spread of firearms. The Vikings, guided by the goddess Skaði, have learnt about the dangers of armed factions from their experiences in Europe, as well as encounters with the Iroquois League and the Council of the Three Fires. The native alliances acted as a nonaggression pact that provided their closely related bands or tribes with peace in their backyards but allowed them to fight outsiders. However, occasional unresolved disputes erupted into wars that the Migisi clan wish to restrict while encouraging the trade in goods that help the tribes thrive.

Samuel and his fellow Congregationalists are offered hospitality and invited to participate in their harvest celebrations. Samuel is stunned to discover that Klasina’s father was a Dutch trader that married her Migisi mother. When his religious morality questions this pagan-Christian alliance, he reminds himself, “If the church-burning Vikings have learnt to live with the natives, even inter-marry, then I must adjust my attitudes.” But will his soul be moved by the clan mother’s daughter, Kateri who wears a pagan bow pendant?  When he discovers that the bow is the symbol of her goddess Skaði that guided the Vikings to settle in Kanata, he is forced to remember that some Christians wear a plain cross around their necks. But that is not the way to show one’s faith.

 

Miantonomoh_Monument_2

Photo of the Miantonomoh Monument – Karen L. Houle (Wikimedia Commons)

 

In our timeline: Wikipedia – English colonists first settled on present-day Aquidneck Island in 1638 in the region called by the natives “Pocasset” (meaning “where the stream widens”)… At one time, Aquidneck Island was controlled by the Wampanoags, whose leader was Sachem Massasoit. Traditionally, Massasoit greeted the Pilgrims at Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1621… A group of European settlers engaged Roger Williams in 1638 to negotiate the terms of their purchase of the island from a sachem named Miantonomi.

Aeon – In early Quebec, Jamestown and Plymouth, colonists held an advantage in firearms only for a handful of years before Native people began building their own arsenals… Except under the rarest circumstances, no one state authority had the ability to choke Indians off from guns, powder and shot… Native tribes competed furiously to control emerging gun markets. They knew that firearms were the new key to military and political dominance, and if they did not seize the opportunity, their enemies would. As a result, indigenous arms races erupted across North America… Indians saw the colonies as potential trade partners, especially for firearms, and new, powerful allies to direct against their Native rivals. https://aeon.co/essays/how-did-the-introduction-of-guns-change-native-america?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=77c10692cb-Daily_Newsletter_13_October_201610_12_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-77c10692cb-68908769

In our timeline, the Europeans encouraged the conflicts between the tribes, in certain cases resulting in tribes being decimated and their lands acquired often by Europeans.

Could an early Viking involvement, led by traders, not warriors, have influenced the ways that the indigenous people settled their disputes, especially 500 years before other Europeans arrived?

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Important Links for the A to Z Challenge – please use these links to find other A to Z Bloggers

Website: http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/atozchallenge/

Twitter handle: @AprilAtoZ

Twitter hashtag: #atozchallenge

 

A to Z Challenge Theme Reveal

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 thmrevel

After my complex and demanding theme in 2016, I’m reverting to the approach that I took in 2014 and 2015 – a theme related to a ‘work in progress’.

So, my theme is “The History of Kanata”, the parallel world that is the setting for “Eagle Passage, and if there are more books, “The Manitou Mark” series. I wrote about this world in my blog post ‘This could be Kanata’, and that was a good summary of where the project was mid-December before I did more research.

The main plot of the novel is set in 2020 Kanata – the name originates from a St. Lawrence Iroquoian word, ‘kanata’ meaning village or settlement. This novel is alternative history with a dose of mystery, thriller, and a touch of spirituality. Spirituality as the heroine, Torill Migisi has latent shamanic powers that have been passed on for generations down the matrilineal line that leads her clan.

Torill’s great-grandmother, Chepi, appoints Torill as the next Matriarch to head the Migisi clan and the family’s successful trading corporation, Migisi Rederi, from Stadacona [Quebec City].  However, she puts off her calling, agreeing instead to transport a mysterious cargo for her brother, Andor, by high-tech airship. Airships are the primary means of global travel and planes are less advanced.

 

Torill discovers that the cargo is a jet plane dredged from Lake Gichigami [Lake Superior], and then someone murders her great-grandmother. Torill and her airship’s crew are forced to escape the authorities who believe she is the killer and is smuggling illegal arms that could trigger a continental war. Why has the plane got the star markings of their neighbour, the Dixie States? This can’t be the plane that Chepi crashed in Gichigami in 1945. What can Torill do if this jet was Chepi’s plane?

The main plot intersperses with stories about the Migisi ancestors involved with the development of the Kanatian world. I will blog each day in April on a key historical event that changed our world into Kanata. For now, I will give you the initial event that set this alternative timeline in motion.

 

In December 1000 AD, Leif Eriksson is wintering in the settlement called Leifsbúðir on an island he has discovered west of Greenland. A Sámi slave, Arnbjörg notices that Leif’s old foster-father, Tyrkir is missing and searches for him. Fearing that the old retainer is in danger, she alerts Finnr, the bard presumed to be her father, and he tells Leif. Tyrkir is eventually found, drunk from eating the ‘grapes’ he has picked from some vines. Arnbjörg and Tyrkir identify the fruit as a variety of lingonberries. Leif calls the island Vineland, but his most aggressive followers advice fighting the natives and leaving.

However, Arnbjörg has a shamanic vision in which the goddess Skaði shows her what the land could yield if the Vikings stay and co-operate with the indigenous people. Skaði gives Arnbjörg her divine bow, with which she can convince Leif to remain.

A year later, when the settlers are establishing a trading post at Stadacona, Arnbjörg meets and marries a Chippewa native, Misko Etchemin of the Migisi clan. She becomes the spiritual leader of the Migisi clan and a driving force behind their trade ventures. The rest is history – or rather alternative history.

So, please follow my ‘History of Kanata’ next month in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge 2017.

Important Links for the A to Z Challenge – use these to find other A to Z Bloggers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fahrenheit 451 – a review

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One of the books on my ‘To Review ‘list is one that I read many decades ago, then decided to re-read recently. Most of you may know of ‘Fahrenheit 451’ in some way, but here is the Goodreads blurb as usual.

Fahrenheit451_17880067

Fahrenheit 451

by Ray Bradbury

The terrifyingly prophetic novel of a post-literate future.

Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to burn books, which are forbidden, being the source of all discord and unhappiness. Even so, Montag is unhappy; there is discord in his marriage. Are books hidden in his house? The Mechanical Hound of the Fire Department, armed with a lethal hypodermic, escorted by helicopters, is ready to track down those dissidents who defy society to preserve and read books.

The classic dystopian novel of a post-literate future, Fahrenheit 451 stands alongside Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World as a prophetic account of Western civilization’s enslavement by the media, drugs and conformity.

Bradbury’s powerful and poetic prose combines with uncanny insight into the potential of technology to create a novel which, decades on from first publication, still has the power to dazzle and shock.

 

Review ****

I read this novel many decades ago during my early twenties when I devoured endless sci-fi by all the masters, including Ray Bradbury. Yes, it’s a classic novel but being honest this was never my favourite Bradbury – that would be Something Wicked This Way Comes.

I’ve recently re-read the book and re-discovered its depth and complexity. I was pleased to re-discover elements that I had forgotten, like the Mechanical Hound, probably because it scared me as it did Montag as he fled from it and his old life as a fireman burning books. However, the concept of a world where books were burnt and the media controlled people has become frighteningly true. The concept of people finding a way for books to survive resonated with me, and has drawn me to similar books since. Therefore, I had to relive the horror of a ‘bookless world’ that Ray Bradbury captured in his words. The danger is real and always there; although we have reached the point that the media is controlled as well.

The story never lets up and the writing keeps pace with the nightmare. I felt that there was no hope for the wife he leaves to her drugs, fake friends, and shrinking lives – echoed in so much all around us today. As a reader, I became Montag and desperately prayed for his escape, unable to remember the ending.

It was also good to read some of Bradbury’s background and thoughts on the book in the prefaces, written over the years. He explains how the book was created and that it was written in a very short time at the beginning of his career. So, is four stars me the jaded adult being mean? Not when I would give his later books five. Am I still doing the master a disservice?

Or perhaps I am letting another version of Fahrenheit 451 colour my vision – Francois Truffaut’s 1966 film, which focuses on elements of the book. However, I always feel that in the short time available that a filmmaker cannot capture all the complexity of a novel, so to me Truffaut did an excellent job. The film became a separate creation – a remediation.

Fahrenheit 451, the book will always be where the horror and the warning began. 4.5 stars then.

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For another excellent blog post on Fahrenheit 451, visit: http://www.lucyvhayauthor.com/book-versus-film-fahrenheit-451-5-ways-the-book-is-better/