What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done in the name of research?

This is the theme for this weeks open book blog. I haven’t been able to participate for a while due to work commitment but things are improving on the work front and this topic includes my favourite word, research.

Those of you that read my blog regularly know that I love research. Most of my books and short stories have a strong historical setting and flavour and they are all based on true events, even the more modern stories.

My writing does not only involve history; it also involves ghosts. Ghosts are a perfectly wonderful way of introducing history into a book and also a strong and interesting story line. Well, that’s my opinion in any event.

My current research craze is WW1 and I am reading my third book about the entrance of America into the war. I’ve read two fiction books and I am now listening to a 31 hour story about the pilots in WW1. This book covers the famous English, American and German pilots and is completely fascinating.

Crazy research though? That is something else entirely. I take it to mean doing something to learn about a particular topic like skydiving so you can write about a character who skydives.

I don’t do crazy things; I am a chartered accountant, my husband is a chartered accountant, and my sons are computer nerds. Crazy things isn’t in our vocabulary. Both my sons have always been cautious boys and never did anything that could result in severe injury. I’m not sure if that is lucky or not, but I’ve never had a child with a broken bone or snapped tendon.

My idea of conducting research is to visit the places of historical interest to me. One example of this in South Africa is when we went to Fugitive’s Drift Lodge in January this year to see the Rorke’s Drift and Isandlwana battle fields from the Anglo Zulu war in South Africa. We had a great time listening to the stories, exploring the battle fields and related museums and learning a lot about the history of this country. These battles were not well covered when I studied history at school.

Our trips abroad have been similar and we fill our days with tours of fascinating historical places such as the Buried Village in New Zealand, Dover Castle and the hospital in the tunnels, Jorvik Viking Centre in York, and many, many other museums, castles, stone age mines, and sometimes caves and nature reserves. I honestly cannot think of a single thing that would fall under the description of crazy that I have ever done.

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Have you done anything crazy in the name of research?

You can read what other bloggers have done in the name of research here:

https://fresh.inlinkz.com/party/dcd0df93db194da5abca500d6d173ee4

If you’d like to participate, here are the rules:

Rules:
1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

Welcome to Thursday Doors, a weekly feature allowing door lovers to come together to admire and share their favorite door photos from around the world. Feel free to join in on the fun by creating your own Thursday Doors post each week and then sharing your link in the comments below, anytime between 12:01 am Thursday morning and Saturday noon (North American eastern time).

I have missed two weeks of Thursday doors so apologies for those I promised to share pictures of our visit to Anne’ Hathaway’s house near Stratford-on-Avon. Work is settling down now and people are going on holiday for Easter so I am getting this post in early on a Thursday.

Anne Hathaway was the wife of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway’s Cottage is a twelve-roomed farmhouse where she lived as a child. The cottage is in the village of Shottery, Warwickshire, England, about 1 mile west of Stratford-upon-Avon.

The earliest part of the house was built prior to the 15th century and the higher part is 17th century. Anne’s father was a farmer and after his death, the cottage was owned by her brother Bartholomew. It remained in the Hathaway family until 1846, when financial problems forced them to sell it. It was, however, still occupied by the Hathaway’s as tenants until it was acquired in 1892 by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

You can join in Thursday Doors here: https://nofacilities.com/2021/04/01/naubuc-historic-district-thursday-doors/

“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”

~ Elie Wiesel

How is it that the world stood by and witnessed the Nazis deprive thousands of people their freedom, their human dignity, and their very lives? Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, encapsulated the explanation in a single word – indifference.

Wiesel (1928 – 2016) was a Romanian-born American Jewish writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor. He wrote 57 books, written mostly in French and English, including “Night,” a work based on his experiences as a prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps.

I came upon this quote a few days ago, and I have been pondering the meaning ever since. As a high school History teacher, I taught my students about the Holocaust every semester, and I never became comfortable with this unit of human horror. Therefore, I am listening to Wiesel’s words with my heart within this context. As I write these words, I am moved almost to tears.

He points out to us that indifference is the opposite or opposing position to love, art, faith, and life. I understand the dictionary definition of indifference as a lack of interest, or of concern, or of sympathy. We may also say that a state of indifference indicates that something is unimportant.

As I struggled with these concepts, I found these words by Anton Chekhov, the famous 19th Century Russian playwright and author. “Indifference is a paralysis of the soul, a premature death.” His words are saying the same thing that Wiesel expressed almost a century later.

I believe the human soul is the spiritual dimension of a person. It is the seat of our unique identity. It is also the source of our life energy and the repository of our deeply held beliefs and moral guidelines. Chekhov’s words “paralysis of the soul” is truly a premature death. That paralysis snuffs out my spiritual energy. It blinds my belief system and moral compass. I cease to be a person in the fullest sense of the word.

I cannot love anyone in this state of paralysis. I become, not only the centre of my universe, but my entire universe. There is no room for anyone else. Others may be useful – or not, but certainly not loved because they are unimportant. This allows me to turn my back on someone who needs help, or someone who is suffering. Because they are unimportant, so is their plight.

Art, no matter the format of its expression, is the outer manifestation of the artist’s soul. We can see reflections of our own souls in the many mirrors of artistic expressions, be they paintings, music, poetry, plays, novels, sculptures, films – the list is endless. If I am indifferent, the art is meaningless, and I am not moved spiritually, emotionally, or intellectually. I am dead to art and all it can teach me. It cannot nourish me.

Faith can be understood as trust or confidence in something or someone. How often have we heard people say that they don’t trust anyone, or they have deeply seated trust issues? Betrayals can make me wary about trusting others. The presence of evil in the world can make me question my faith in God. If I am indifferent, faith is irrelevant. I trust no one and become totally self-reliant. I have closed myself to the possibility of trust or confidence in anything or anyone.

Wiesel’s final analogy concerns life. If I have stilled my soul, there is no life, even though my body still functions. There is no empathy for the feelings of others, so I can walk right past a person lying still on a sidewalk or roadway. I can shrug when I read about the horrors of the holocaust and perhaps even call it a hoax.

I believe there are degrees of indifference and that it is within all of us. How else do I explain the fact that we still see and allow the evils of intolerance, prejudice, and discrimination to flourish around us? Why do we assume that this is just a normal reaction to fear? Why do we continue to laugh heartily at jokes that are racial slurs or attacks upon a gender – or worse yet, upon those who suffer from a physical, mental, or emotional impairment?

Indifference. It renders the human spirit paralyzed or dead, but indifference is very much alive and well!

To learn more about John, please visit his RRBC Author Page!

Twitter:  @JohnJFioravanti

As a very special treat, please visit WATCH NONNIE WRITE! and FIORA BOOKS BY JOHN FIORAVANTI to sample ONE free reflection and interpretation from the first REFLECTIONS and another sample from the upcoming REFLECTIONS II!  I assure you, they’re both just as amazing and inspiring as this one and will whet your appetite for what’s to come with his new release!

Thank you for dropping by to support John’s upcoming release.  Please be sure to snag a copy of the original REFLECTIONS, on Amazon now for only $2.99 and as a FREE read on Kindle Unlimited!

I’d also like to ask that you leave John a comment below and LIKE the post before leaving.  It would be great if you’d also tweet and Share the page to your social media platforms!

Thank you, Sally Cronin, for this lovely post about my new novel, A Ghost and His Gold. Sally has so many marvelous books and a wonderful magazine styled blog, so do visit her and have a look around.

What Amazon says

Six premium short stories by author Kaye Lynne Booth. Stories in this collection has something for everyone with a mixture of time travel, suspense, humor, origins and speculative fiction.

Last Call – (Time travel science fiction) – Things aren’t going too good for Derek and he thinks his life is over, until he stops in for a Last Call. Will a bar in the middle of nowhere turn out to be his curse or his salvation?

Terror on the Mountain Trail – (Suspense) – It’s a perfect spring day until Kellie and Randy are attacked by a crazed man in the wilderness.

Earth Mother – (Origin Story)

A Turn of the Tables – (Speculative fiction) – Are vampires really invincible? One vampire is about to find out.

A True Hero – (Humor) – Heroes come in all shapes and sizes. This one is heroic indeed.

Man of Her Dreams – (Speculative fiction) – Will what Aaron at first believes to be a curse, turn out to be a blessing? She won’t know until she finds  the man of her dreams.

A Woman’s World – (Humor) – Wouldn’t it be great if a woman could rule the U.S.? Or would it? – Satyrical comment on current affairs of days past.

My review

Last Call and other Short Fiction is a collection of 7 short stories for adults. The stories are varied as to themes and storylines and I thought a few of them were very unusual and clever.

Last Call, this was my favourite story in the collection and the one for which the book is named. Luke is a mild mannered man who is on the run from his bullying ex-partner, Vicky. Vicky’s stalking behaviour and tantrums have caused Luke to be fired from his job and also be requested to vacate his apartment. Luke is depressed and aimless, and having packed his meagre possessions into his truck, and set off on the highway towards and unknown destination. When he pulls into the ‘Last Call Tavern’ he doesn’t even know where he is. Luke’s life is about to change and it will be up to him to ride the wave of change or to continue with is existing dismal existence.

Terror on the Mountain Trail was a well written, tension filled short story about a couple who run into unexpected trouble in the mountain. Are they adequately prepared to defend themselves? You’ll have to read the story to find out.

Earth mother is an imaginative and interesting re-telling of the story of creation. There are some lovely descriptive passages in this story, my favourite being “Her coughing spasms caused hot spittle to fly across the expanse, sprinkling it with billions of tiny sparking orbs from one end to the other.”

A Turn of the Tables is a vampire tale which is quite different from any other I have read. This story has a strong sexual undertone, but it is cleverly done.

A True Hero is an interesting look at the differences in perspective between a mother and her older teenage son. It made me smile as the pair negotiated the minefield of misunderstandings between generations.

Man of Her Dreams is also a vampire story with an unusual twist. This story also has sexual undertones but it is tastefully done. This was another favourites story of mine, I enjoyed how the tables were turned in this tale.

A Woman’s World was a rather interesting idea and a bit bizarre from my perspective, as a mother of two sons. It was, however, an entertaining read and I was intrigued to read the author’s thoughts about a world dominated by women.

Purchase Last Call and Other Short Fiction by Kaye Lynne Booth

Amazon US

One again my blogging friend, Rebecca Budd, has tantalized me with an interesting question about whether photographic portraits are art in the same way as a painting is art. You can read her post here: https://chasingart.com/2021/03/19/fridaypainting-english-photographer-portrait-of-virginia-woolf/

I have always thought that photographs count as art, but that could be because I grew up with photographs. My dad had a camera and we always had our pictures taken. Some were spontaneous and some were posed. He didn’t take as many pictures as people take now with digital cameras, but we still have a fair number .

Are all these photographs art? Well no, I don’t think just any picture is necessarily art, it could be a family memory, but certain photographs capture a moment in time or a setting in a unique way that makes them art in my mind’s eye.

Here are a few pictures of mine that I think of as being more along the lines of photographic art:

Do you think photographs can be art?

Some of you will remember that I am working on a novella called The Soldier and the Radium Girl, but I don’t think I mentioned that I am writing it in the form of letters, journal and diary entries just like my literary hero, Bram Stoker.

I have been working quite hard on it this weekend and thought I would share my beginning. It’s not fully edited yet, but it’s a good start.

Letter from Private Jake Tanner to his fiancé, Kate Henderson

20 October 1917

My dearest Kate

I can hardly believe that it has already been six weeks since I last held you in my arms. So much has happened in this short time, I feel as if a lifetime has passed.

As you know, my troop ship left Harlem Station in New York on the 25^th of September and sailed up the coast to Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Despite the excitement of my fellow soldiers who were singing and laughing and treating the whole ‘going off to war’ experience as a wonderful game, I felt sad when the ship swung slowly past the Statue of Liberty. I watched as this symbol of American freedom faded out of sight and prayed that I would return to you and my family.

At Halifax, my ship met up with a dozen other troop ships and several navy destroyers whose job was to protect us from attack by German ‘Hun’ submarines. The ships formed themselves into a convoy and set off together across the seemingly endless expanse of cold, dark ocean on the 1^st of October. I must confess dear Kate, that the thought of hostile submarines, hiding out of sight beneath the waves and waiting to attack the convey, was disconcerting.

The voyage lasted nine days and it wasn’t an easy one. With so many men being transported, my ship was crowed. The bunks were stacked several layers high and I had only the tiniest of spaces to store my equipment. It was cramped and uncomfortable and each group of men was only allowed to go up on deck once or twice a day for exercise and lifeboat drills.

The ship pitched and rolled and lots of the men were seasick. Some were so bad they couldn’t get out of their bunks for days. I wasn’t that bad, but the endless rocking did make it difficult for me to write in my journal. I am trying to keep a daily record of everything that is happening.

Our convey was lucky. Although a few submarines were sighted on route and one of the ships passed within twenty feet a floating mine, the voyage was uneventful. We were not attacked, nor did we encounter any big storms.

In hindsight, despite the continuous threat of attack by Hun submarines, having to adapt to English food and customs ended up being the hardest part of the trip for most of the troops. We ate nothing but boiled pork and boiled rabbit and you cannot imagine the stuffy pompousness of the British and French officers.

It was a great relief for all of us when, two days out of Liverpool, we were met by a flotilla of English submarine chasers which guided and guarded our way into port.

On the 8^th of October, the Irish coastline was spotted and the next day the coastline of English was sighted. It was an exciting moment for most of us to see our destination at last. A few hours later, the convoy sailed passed the lighthouse at the mouth of Liverpool Harbour. We had arrived.

At Liverpool, my ship was boarded by American staff officers. All of us Yankees were delighted to see their smiling faces and hear their familiar American accents. Some of the men were immediately entrained for Southampton, but I was among the troops who were sent by train to a so-called rest camp at Oxney Camp, Bordon Haunts near Kingsley. My Battalion spent a week there waiting for transportation to Le Harve in France.

Our time at Oxney Camp was informative. We interacted with British “Tommies”, Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders, most of whom had been wounded at the front and were convalescing at the base hospital. The Australians, in particular, are friendly, but they do exaggerate. Their stories about life in the trenches are dramatic and we don’t believe it can be that bad.

We were billeted in tents which would have been alright, but the place was sea of mud. It rained most of the time, apparently this is usual for England at this time of year, and we’ve spent a good deal of time wet and dirty. At night, we go to bed with wet, muddy clothes and sleep on wet blankets. The rain drums down on the tents, runs down the sides, and collects in overflowing moats around them.

There are also ration shortages which have prompted us to explore several of the nearby towns. We don’t have much money, but the people are willing to trade our small trinkets for food, so it all works out well.  

Yesterday, I again found myself on a train, this time travelling to Southhampton Port. I am mailing this letter to you today and tonight I will be boarding a channel boat and crossing the English Channel to Le Havre. The next time I write to you, I will be in France.

This is all my news for now, dear. I hope you and your family are well and your mother has recovered from her illness.

Write to me soon and tell me all your news. I am keen to know everything that is happening at home, it makes you all feel closer to you, somehow. Also let me know if you’ve moved to Orange yet. I have your aunt’s address and will send my letter there.

Your loving

Jake

I came across this song today when I was doing some research. I know bits and pieces of this song from my childhood but I didn’t know it was a WW1 marching song.