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Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Movie Kisses Series 3/13/2024 African Queen #prairierosepubs #moviekisses

 


Here we are at the third installment of my year-long look at The Kiss in historically-set movies.

January Kiss –The Phantom of the Opera 
February Kiss – The Princess Bride 

This month, let’s look at three kisses from the Humphrey Bogart | Katharine Hepburn classic movie, The African Queen.

What I really like about the first kiss between the scruffy, grouchy, curmudgeon Charlie Allnut and the prim and proper, yet desperate to be free of her brother’s and society’s hold over her independence in order for her true self to blossom Rose Sayer is that their first kiss:

1) is awkward
2) is spontaneous
3) and blindsides both Charles and Rosie for how it opens up feelings they had no idea they had for each other. It’s adorable, and we love it.

First Kiss Set-up: They have just survived going by the German stronghold on the river. Watch from the beginning of the clip through 1:06.


This first awkward kiss sets emotions in motion for the real kiss that happens after they’d had time to share laughs and become comfortable with each other.

Second Kiss Set-up: This is The Kiss. They are sharing a few moments of admiring the beauty of where they are, and Charlie casually puts his hand on Rosie’s shoulder. Rosie can’t look at him as she puts her hand over his. She’s a conflicted mess of a puritanical upbringing that is telling her feelings for Charlie are inappropriate, but her woman’s heart is in love with him. The Kiss is at 1:28 and fades to black in the movie (and in the clip). If you’ve read the book, there is more intimacy in this scene. After the fade to black in the movie, we are left to surmise what that intimacy was, but we figure it out from the subtle hints.

 


I just love this kiss. They are an older couple who have gone through life not only alone, but lonely, and love has found them as equals in their desperate flight down a river during which they have to depend upon each other for survival.

Third Kiss Set-up: Rosie and Charlie are facing execution by hanging, and Charlie asks the ship’s captain to marry them,  “Because it would mean so much to the lady”, and then Rosie’s shy, but absolutely delighted and touched, gaze-lowered expression is too wonderful. The kiss is at 1:08 in this clip. If you've read the book, you know there is an amusing twist about this marriage that is left out of the movie due to what was deemed acceptable at the time in history this movie was made (1951).

 

I simply love this movie and the romance between Rosie and Charlie.


See you next month for more kisses from the big screen.

Kaye Spencer
www.kayespencer.com

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

Spring Forward, Fall Back

Spring Forward, Fall Back

C. A. Asbrey

C.A. Asbrey



March is the month when those participating in Daylight Saving Time change their clocks, and do so to the old maxim, spring forward, fall back. Many countries simply don't bother as there's no benefit to those countries closer to the equator, but even in countries where they do change the clocks, some regions rebel and refuse to play. Hawaii and most of Arizona don't participate and neither do most of the US overseas territories like Guam, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the United States Virgin Islands. In Canada, Saskatchewan and the Yukon refuse to play. In Eupope, only Russia, Iceland, Belarus and Turkey stay on the same time all year round. 

A common misconception is that Benjamin Franklin invented the idea, but the piece he wrote about saving times was actually satirical. After being wakened at the ungodly hour of 6 a.m. by the summer sun, he wrote an essay stating that Parisians, simply by waking up at dawn, could save the modern-day equivalent of $200 million through “the economy of using sunshine instead of candles.” By the time he was a 78-year-old American envoy in Paris in 1784, the Founding Father who espoused the virtues of “early to bed and early to rise” absolutely did not practice what he preached. He did not like being wakened by the sun. History notes, Franklin wasn't even suggesting the idea of Daylight Saving Time. He was doing was making fun of the French, and suggesting they get out of bed earlier.

William Willett - It's all his fault!

So whose idea was it? Lots of people think it was the farmers, but they were, and are, dead against the idea. Animals work to a body clock, and cows expected to be milked at roughly the same time every day. It was said by some to conserve energy, but studies have shown that it has minimal, or no, affect. Other studies showed that energy usage increases when the change takes place in the autumn. George Vernon Hudson, an entomologist, published that he changed his clock in New Zealand in 1895, and that it gave him an extra hour to collect bugs in the summer. He suggested that other do the same, but it was dismissed as too complicated. Englishman William Willett was actually the first proper exponent of the idea, publishing a pamphlet 'The Waste of Daylight' in 1907. He actually proposed advancing eighty minutes in monthly increments of twenty each time, reversing it in the Autumn. He was a wealthy builder and suggested that it made it more productive for those working outside. He lobbied parliament, but didn't live to see it enacted. It was brought in during WW1 in 1916, first in Germany, then in the UK. The Defence of the Realm Act introduced it as a wartime production-boosting device to save on lighting and increase productivity. Many countries then followed suit. 

The idea that it was good for productivity has been thoroughly debunked. In fact, it decreases it, mainly because of the impact on people whose sleep patterns are disturbed. Costs save in lighting in the morning are simply transferred to the evening, and a 2013 study found the lost hour cost the U.S. economy around $434 million. The losses are temporary, but happen every year. There are even studies that show that sentences are harsher for those facing court in the days after the clocks go forward.   

That loss of sleep in the spring has real effects on people's health. It has a similar impact to jet lag, and for many people, it throws out their circadian rhythms. Most people recover within a week, but for some people it can take far longer. The result is a measurable increase in heart attacks, ischemic stroke, 5.7% increase workplace injuries, and traffic accidents as people's. 68% more work days are lost due to injury around the time of the March clock change. Time changes can impact appetite, hormone levels, mood, and attention span, so it's not surprising that there's an increasing move to stop adjusting the clock in many states and countries. On a positive note, crime falls at the change of the clocks in March, and many systems change the time automatically nowadays. Every little helps. 

The time changes at 2am to minimize the impact on bars and places of entertainment, and not all countries change on the same dates. Most people are asleep when the time actually switches, but it does mean either shorter or longer shifts for those working overnight. That has implications on how those people are paid, with some places simply ignoring the extra hour as something balanced out in the long term. Others treat it as overtime, or make individual arrangements.  

It's fair to say that changing the clocks isn't universally popular, but it sparked it once sparked an actual riot. In 1997, students in Athens, Ohio were not pleased at their bar being closed an hour earlier. When I say, 'not pleased', I mean over a thousand people had to be dispersed by police in full riot gear using rubber bullets and nightsticks. It made headlines all over the United States, and some protestors were quoted as marking the time change as a factor in triggering the violence. 

Salvatore “Sam” Cardinella.

It did throw up a few interesting legal cases too. One man managed to evade being drafted to Vietnam. He had a relatively low draft number due to his birthdate, and at that point a complex lottery was being used to draw tickets. The unnamed draftee was able to successfully appeal based on the fact that he was born just after midnight. However, his state did not change the clocks, and he was born the previous day in his state, but the next day using Daylight Saving Time, as used where the lottery was drawn. That meant that where he lived, his birthdate should not have been entered in the lottery. He won his case. 

Another legal case centred around the execution of Salvatore “Sam” Cardinella. He was sentenced to death for the murder of a saloon keeper, but was suspected to have been involved in 20 murders, 100 armed robberies and 150 other burglaries. He successfully argued that the changing the clocks was costing him an hour of the life he was sentenced to lose, and while that didn't seem like much to anyone else, it could be an hour in which a reprieve could come through. The case was successful and Cardinella won his extra hour of life. No reprieve came through. The governor did not change his mind. He was hanged sitting in a chair as he was apparently unable to stand.  

Chris Martin

The debate will rage on between those who like the clocks changing, and those who don't want it, and those who do. You may be able to tell I'm not a fan. The one take away I can offer you is that Coldplay's Chris Martin is the great-great-grandson of William Willett, the man who lobbied Winston Churchill to change the clocks. Don't hold it against him. It's not his fault.

 


Sunday, March 3, 2024

Helen Rood Dillon - The 2nd Wife

Post by Doris McCraw

aka Angela Raines

Evergreen Chapel, Evergreen Cemetery,
Colorado Springs, CO.
Photo(C) Doris McCraw

This month's post on Civil War Wives is Helen Rood Dillon. Links to last month's post and the Civil War Veterans on another blog will be posted at the end.

Helen was born Helen Rood on May 27, 1827, in  Broome, New York. She was the second wife of Chester H. Dillon of Pennsylvania. Little is known of Helen's family and even less is known about Chester's first wife Delilah S. Hicks. I still hold out hope more records about each woman will eventually appear online but until then I work with the information available.

When Helen's husband, Chester, registered for the draft in 1863 he was a class II, which meant he was married with children and would only be called to duty if all other eligible men had been called up. By 1864, Chester was required to report for duty.

This left Helen to care for their two children John and Elma. It also left her to deal with any business matters that her husband would normally have dealt with. Chester was only on active duty for about one year. Upon his return, the couple remained in Pennsylvania until about 1875.


Photo (C) Doris McCraw

By 1880 the couple moved to Colorado Springs, CO. where they lived until Helen's death. (Chester preceded her by four years.)

Their son John married Florence Crawford in Jefferson, Iowa in 1885. He also resided in Colorado Springs.

Their daughter Elma married Andrew Green a man twenty-three years her senior in 1896 at age thirty-eight. 

Helen died December 25, 1897, of pneumonia and heart disease. She is buried in Evergreen Cemetery, Colorado Springs, Colorado next to her husband.

Virginia Strickler - Prairie Rose Publications Blog

Henry C. Davis - Western Fictioneers Blog

Chester H. Dillon - Western Fictioneers Blog

For anyone interested, I have a monthly substack newsletter: Thoughts and Tips on History


Until Next Time: Stay safe, Stay happy, and Stay healthy. 

Doris



Monday, February 26, 2024

Friar Tuck and other Medieval Warrior Clerics

 

Friar Tuck and other Medieval Warrior Clerics

 

 

Figure of Friar Tuck, Scott Monument, Edinburgh, by George Clark Stanton


 

Friar Tuck is famous in the Robin Hood stories, one of Robin’s Merry Men who lived in Sherwood Forest. He is shown as  jolly, fat, a bit of a glutton and a tough fighter, the equal of Robin himself. He is described as a curtal friar, meaning that his gown was curtailed or tucked up. This may also be the reason for his name Tuck.




There is no evidence that such a cleric existed, and stories about him do not appear until the 1400s. However the tradition of fighting clerics was very real and the name Friar Tuck was used as an alias by the chaplain Robert Stafford in 1417 to cover his own violent criminal activities. Earlier in the middle ages, in 1066, Odo, bishop of Bayeaux, fought at the Battle of Hastings with his half-brother William. As clerics were not supposed to draw blood, Odo is depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry wielding a club or stave. Odo died in 1097, on the way to the Holy Land to fight in the first crusade.

Odo had been a bishop and bishops were seen as part of the secular world, often part of the king’s regime. So in 1295, Anthony Bek, bishop of Durham, was with King Edward the First when the king fought in Wales and again the year after when the king invaded Scotland. Bek even attacked his own cathedral, following a dispute with Durham’s Prior, leading to this contemporary verse:

 

"From boyhood Bishop Anthony
Had learned to fight most readily,
And in violence trusted more
Than in the texts of canon law.".

 

           Canon and church law was in fact confused on the issue of fighting clerics.


From 1049 to 1079 twelve church synods said clerics should not bear arms—suggesting that many clerics did so. At the same time, the military order of the Knights Templar, created in 1119 to protect pilgrims in the Holy Land, was avidly supported by the Christian mystic and Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux. In 1289 Pope Nicholas IV allowed the Franciscans the right to bear arms “with the permission of their ministers.” By the late fourteenth century canon lawyer Giovanni da Legnano gave examples when it was appropriate for a priest to fight and even to kill. This included the priest defending himself if attacked whilst baptising a dying child (lest the child, unbaptised, was sent to purgatory) and also the priest killing someone in self-defence during mass.

The middle ages could be very violent!

 

 

You can read more about my own medieval stories if you visit my Prairie Rose Publications author page:

http://prairierosepublications.com/authors_2/lindsay-townsend/

 


Happy Reading!

 

Lindsay Townsend

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Movie Kisses Series 2/14/2024 This Kiss Leaves Them All Behind #prairierosepubs #moviekisses #princessbride

What better movie kisses to highlight on Valentine’s Day than the kisses in The Princess Bride?


Buttercup and Westley's kisses melt our hearts in different ways. The first kiss is against the sunset, which is symbolic for endings and separations. This kiss is their first since Buttercup realizes when Westley says As You Wish, he really means I love you. This kiss occurs when they part.

Westley is off to seek his fortune in order to return to Buttercup with the financial means to marry her. Buttercup must stay behind. This is a tender and poignant, heart-squeezing kiss of true love.

The next kiss follows a minute later. This is the kiss that seals their pact that he will return, and she will wait for him. We needed these kisses to sustain us (and Buttercup and Westley) until they’re together again.

The first kiss happens in this clip at 1:56.




Then Buttercup gets word that Westley is dead.

Our lip quivers. All hope seems lost.

But TA DA!

Westley returns five years later in the guise of The Dread Pirates Roberts aka The Man in Black, and we just know there HAS to be a reunion kiss. We wait. We watch. And then it happens after Westley and Buttercup tumble down the steep ravine that leads into the Fire Swamp. We breathe a sigh of relief. Love is still strong between them. For a few moments, our movie world is at peace.

The reunion kiss begins at 0:38 in this clip.


But wait! There’s a bad moon
  rising, and it looks as if Westley and Buttercup will be parted forever…really forever… this time. We feel the grandson’s angst when he asks his grandfather, “Wait, what did Fezzik mean ‘He’s dead?'”

Still, we cling to a thread of hope for a happy ever after ending, and Miracle Max helps us hang on to hope when he determines that Westley is only mostly dead, which means he's slightly alive. Then we recall that Westley promised Buttercup that Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while. This is means it's inconceivable to give up all hope just yet.

Then, whew! Love conquers all, and we learn that we don’t mind kissing parts at all, especially since the invention of the kiss. There have been five kisses rated the most passionate, the most pure. This one left them all behind.


*****

This website is guaranteed to bring a smile and maybe even a good old fashioned chortle: Count Rugen

*****

January Movie Kiss - The Phantom of the Opera (2004)

See you next month for more kisses from the big screen.

Kaye Spencer
www.kayespencer.com



Tuesday, February 6, 2024

What the Heart Wants

 What the Heart Wants

C. A. Asbrey


It's the month of Valentine's Day, a celebration of lovers and all things sensual, and people either love it, or love to hate it. Our screens will be full of romantic movies, authors will be showing us their romantic credentials, and restaurants will be hoping to tempt us in for intimate dinner-for-two in some glamorous location. 

Those who make money from such events seem to have it all down to a fine art, but do they ever get it wrong? Even slightly? I'm thinking of the occasions where a leading man has been chosen with the full expectation that he'll ring that primal bell in the audience's soul, only to find that a secondary character sweeps in from behind to steal the show, as well as the movie.

These are never heroes, but they're not the villain either—twinkle-eyed rogues who'll steal your money, your love, and your heart. These anti-heroes have flaws. They are often prepared to steal, cheat, and lie; but they do have boundaries they won't cross. Their moral code doesn't drive them—they are protagonists who will do the right thing, but only if they lose too much if they won't, or if it gets them what they want anyway. And sometimes casting directors are just so busy looking at the leading man, they totally overlook the charisma of another actor.

Arguably, the most famous example of this was Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow in The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. The popularity of Captain Jack apparently took the studio bosses by surprise. Famously modelled on the drug-and-drink raddled rocker, Keith Richards, Depp played such a heightened, and pantomime, version that they were worried that he really was drunk. Of course, he wasn't. It was such a genius performance that it stole the limelight from Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightly, and he became the standout star of the series. What really took the studio by surprise was women being drawn to Depp's sex appeal in such a bedraggled, erratic, and amoral character. 

A similar tale is that of Harrison Ford's depiction of Han Solo, who totally swept the attention towards himself, any time he appeared on screen. That's not to take anything away from the other actors, but the studio intended that Luke Skywalker was to be the standout romantic hero. The audience thought otherwise. They saw the humour, sex-appeal, and sarcasm of the flawed person Ford was portraying, and loved him for it. This was especially summed up in the scene where Princess Leia confesses her love for him, and he simply replied, "I know."

Those two simple words carried a lot more than their literal meaning. the lines were not in the script, and were improvised between Ford and Irvin Kershner, the director. Carrie Fisher played the scene, but she wasn't expecting it. Her surprise is real, but to the audience it showed that Solo was a man with big emotions that he was unable to express, and who hid behind humour and sarcasm.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood starred both Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio, but the prevailing opinion is that Pitt stole the movie from DiCaprio with his engaging, macho, individualism. Tarantino said of the real life person who inspired Cliff Booth, "Yeah, there’s a guy — I can’t say his name, I won’t say his name — he was a ‘60s-era guy, into the ‘70s,” says the writer-director. “I had a couple of actors tell me about this guy and I found him a very fascinating character. Then, I’d meet old stunt guys, and I’d bring him up, and they all knew that guy. He was just this dangerous dude. You know big tough actor cowboy-types, who don’t show weakness in front of other men, he scared even them. There was just something scary about the guy and he was kind of indestructible. He could do stunts that nobody could. He had this killer aspect to him and that’s why he ultimately scared people."

People found their natural sense of justice stirred when Booth's character was seen dealing with a version of The Manson Family, performing an act everyone else was too scared to carry out at the time, and which meant that innocent victims were saved in a way we'd have loved real life to go. Audiences loved it.
Another infamous scene stealer we cannot resist is Alan Rickman. In Hollywood movies he's normally cast as either an anti hero or a villain, and his lambent performances fill the screen in numerous roles. Be he appearing as Die Hard's Hans Gruber who exudes scoffing delight at taking people hostage, or as in costume as the brilliantly self-aware Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, who threw around withering one liners, he was a delight to watch. And in my humble opinion, made those movies. Another charismatic performance was the gloomy, sometimes casually cruel, and ultimately heroic, Severus Snape in the Harry Potter Universe. Viewers loved to hate him in the beginning, but then we came to know the pain he carried, and the sacrifice he made when the woman he loved died. Rickman dripped it all out perfectly, driving us away, before pulling us back in further than we would have gone with a less nuanced performance. Surely, Rickman is the winner in any contest to be the anti hero we love to love—even when they're bad. 
 
So my question is; who is your scene-stealing anti hero?      
     

     

    

Sunday, February 4, 2024

Virginia Strickler- Wife of Civil War Veteran Wm. Strickler

Post by Doris McCraw

aka Angela Raines


Evergreen Chapel, Evergreen Cemetery,
Colorado Springs, CO.
Photo(C) Doris McCraw

The start of this series on the wives of Civil War Veterans buried in the local cemeteries in Colorado Springs is the wife of Dr. William M Strickler, a Confederate soldier who made his mark on the region as a doctor, rancher, farmer, and politician. Her name was Virginia and this is her story, at least as much as I have been able to find so far.

Born Virginia Lipscomb in Prince William County, Virginia. Her birth year has been listed as 1828, 1833, and 1836. Her headstone lists it as 1829.

Not much is known about her early life. According to census records, her grandfather, Philip Lipscomb was a slave owner, so the probability is her family had money before the war although Philip died in 1821. Her parents, Robert and Ann died in 1858 and 1857 respectively.

At the time of their deaths, their son William would have been twenty-four. Ann, Mary, Betty, and Virginia were all older, so the running of any property would have probably fallen to all of them. In fact, her brother, William, served in Company H of the 15th Virginia Calvary, having enlisted as a private in the Confederate army in 1861. He finished as a lieutenant and in 1864, according to Civil War records, he was a POW.

Virginia met Dr. William Strickler at the second battle of Manassas (Bull Run) in 1862 while he was treating the wounded on the battlefield. He enlisted as a surgeon's assistant in 1861 and served in Companies F & S of the 52nd Virginia Infantry throughout the war.

Photo by Ron West from Find a Grave


Virginia married William in 1865 and by 1868 the couple had moved to Colorado City where William served as a doctor. By 1874 the couple moved to the new city of Colorado Springs. There the couple remained until 1906 when they moved to Denver. William died in 1908. Virginia remained in Denver where she passed away in 1915. Her death registry states her cause of death as senility.

Both she and William are buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Colorado Springs. So far no images of her have been found.


Amazon

Until Next Time: Stay safe, Stay happy, and Stay healthy. 

Doris