Happy Birthday to Me :)
I thought about mentioning that 43 is the median life expectancy of the women I’ve surveyed in the Middle Ages, but that is WAY to morbid for today! I don’t seem to have my baby picture scanned in, but you’ll have to make do with 14: This is my husband and me looking dorky in 1983. At Koobi Fora Field School, Kenya (in the back, just to the left of the middle post) At Stonehenge with friends in 1988 (third from left) My eldest and me in 1991. In Belize in 1994. 2000 Akka, Israel, 2008 20 seconds ago
Nationalism and Wind farms
I found this while doing research on Pelagius, believe it or not. It comes from this page: http://welshpatriot.blogspot.com/2011/07/congratulations-to-pobl-powys-on-your.html I can’t decide how I feel about this, in part because we are having the very same discussion in Oregon, though it is less the Umatilla Tribe that opposes windfarms than people who live in the Columbia River gorge who don’t want their view spoiled. I have never heard the building of wind farms framed in terms of nationalism, but it’s all over the web for Wales: This one attests that the white eagle’s habitat is being destroyed. Wind farms were blamed for eagle deaths in Norway: http://www.socme.org/may06downloads/birds0506.jpg Though my son points out that more birds are killed (by a magnitude of a hundred fold) by glass windows every year than wind farms. “Building window strikes may account for 97 to 976 Read more…
The Pelagian Heresy
The Pelagian heresy is an important part of any discussion of religion in Wales during the era formerly known as the Dark Ages. Pelagius was a British monk, born around 350 AD, who moved to Rome and was a contemporary of St. Augustine. His crucial fault was that he believed that the notion of original sin–that all men were condemned because of the actions of Adam–was false. Unfortunately, our primary source of his writings are not the writings themselves, but the reaction to them on the part of his opponents. He was condemned as a heretic by Augustine, whose teachings became predominant in the church. http://www.brojed.org/IE/pelagius.php; for a list of primary sources: http://www.earlychurch.org.uk/pelagius.php The two differing paths are: Augustine: 1. Death comes from sin, not man’s physical nature; 2. Infants must be baptized to be cleansed from original sin and those who die without Read more…
Cold My Heart: Sample Tuesday!
In a fit of I’m-not-sure-what, I lowered the price of Cold My Heart to 99 cents across all platforms (though it will take a while for Smashwords to distribute it to Apple, Barnes and Noble, etc.). Meanwhile, you an buy it at Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/67v6cfl Amazon UK: http://tinyurl.com/5vxrm67 and Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/52673 And here’s the first chapter and a bit . . . (Translated from the Latin) To Archbishop Dafydd: We must speak of the evils wrought upon us by my nephew Modred and his Saxon allies, how the peace formerly made has been violated in all the clauses of the treaty, how churches have been fired and devastated, and ecclesiastical persons, priests, monks and nuns slaughtered, women slain with children at their breast, hospitals and other houses of religion burned, the Welsh murdered in their homes, in churches, yes at the Read more…
Medieval Life Expectancy: Muslim World verses Christian World
What was the life expectancy of those in the medieval Muslim world compared to Christian Europe? It is taken as given in this day and age that people living in Europe in the Middle Ages didn’t bathe much, if at all, had no real knowledge of science or medicine, and their high mortality rates were a consequence of this general ignorance. Neither of the these assertions are, in fact, true, but the average human life span in the Middle Ages was significantly lower than the modern one nonetheless. I have discussed this in several places on this blog. Here: https://sarahwoodbury.com/life-expectancy-in-the-middle-ages/ I discuss the life span of the royal house of Wales and the Marche. Eliminating individuals who died before adulthood completely from the equation, the mean life expectancy for women was 43.6 years, with a median of 42/43; for men, it was a mean Read more…
Great Writing Quotes
I am off the grid for 6 whole days! No cell phone, no internet, nada. This to keep you entertained while I’m gone . . . “Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” –E.L. Doctorow “The first duty of the novelist is to entertain. It is a moral duty. People who read your books are sick, sad, traveling, in the hospital waiting room while someone is dying. Books are written by the alone for the alone.” — Donna Tartt “You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” — Jack London “I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I Read more…
Over at Love Thy Author Today!
Here’s the link to what they’ve got going about my book. . . Go check it out 🙂 http://www.lovethyauthor.com/ Happy Fourth of July!
Books on Sale at Smashwords!
In honor of summer, and my trip tomorrow going off the grid for six whole days, all my books are 50% off at Smashwords, through July 31! Here’s the link! http://www.smashwords.com/books/search?query=woodbury%2C+Sarah Enjoy 🙂
Killed by a ref . . . in ancient Rome
I had to repost (and link) to this story because of the number of times I’ve listened to my husband shout at the screen while watching soccer. This is part of an article about the discover and translation of a tombstone of a Roman gladiator who died in Amisus, on the south coast of the Black Sea in Turkey: “The tombstone . . . shows an image of a gladiator holding what appear to be two swords, standing above his opponent who is signalling his surrender. The inscription says that the stone marks the spot where a man named Diodorus is buried. “After breaking my opponent Demetrius I did not kill him immediately,” reads the epitaph. “Fate and the cunning treachery of the summa rudis killed me.” The summa rudis is a referee, who may have had past experience as a Read more…
Historical Fantasy in Dark Age Wales
Set in sixth century Wales, Cold My Heart tells the story of Myrddin and Nell, a journeyman knight and a former nun, who share a vision of a terrible future—one which encompasses the death of their King and the loss of their country. . . Writing historical fantasy set in dark age Wales combines the need for research that goes beyond the world building of epic fantasy, but carries with it similar characteristics since what we know about that era in Wales is very slight. As an author, there’s just some things you have to invent. In Cold my Heart, I start with the knowledge that the Saxons (in actual fact, a combination of several Germanic groups) did invade Britain after the Romans abandoned the island in 410 AD. King Arthur, if he existed, would have been born around 480 Read more…
Arwystli
Today is a guest post from Brynne Haug, history major at Whitman College and co-conspirator in the study of all things Welsh. Thanks for stopping by! _________ Arwystli seems an insignificant place—just a small piece of land in the middle of Wales, bordering on the northern kingdoms of Gwynedd and Powys. But Arwystli became instrumental for Wales’s survival in the War of 1282. In February of 1278, when Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, prince of Gwynedd and Wales, faced down King Edward I of England, on the surface he asked only for Arwystli. Although Llywelyn had agreed to cede it to Gruffudd ap Gwenwynwyn, the lord of Powys, when Gruffudd swore fealty to him in 1263,[1] he later laid claim to it on the grounds that Gruffudd had given up his rights when he betrayed him to the English Read more…
Red, Black, and White Books
In Lord of the Rings, Frodo leaves Sam the Red Book of Westmarch, in which to record the goings on of Middle Earth after he is gone. Tolkein himself says that his inspiration for the fictional book was the Red Book of Hergest in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, which he knew well. In Wales, there were three such books of which we know: The Red Book of Hergest The Black Book of Camarthan The White Book of Rhydderch The Red Book of Hergest was written between 1375 and 1425 by Hywel Fychan fab Hywel Goch of Fuellt, for his employer, Hopcyn ap Tomas ap Einion of Ynys Tawe. In it are some of the most famous Welsh texts, including the Chronicles of the Princes, The History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth, The Ruin and Conquest Read more…
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