Anne Hutchinson- My Hero

If you are in my class this semester, we either just talked about Anne Hutchinson or will soon be talking about her (depending on which meeting time you have) and when I saw on my "This Day in History" widget that on this day in 1634, Anne arrived in Boston after her long journey from England, I figured I'd talk a little more about her story.

Anne and her husband were both staunch Puritans. They toed the religious lines- wore black, modest clothes, were in church every time the doors were opened, pointed fingers at their sinning neighbors- and actually were assumed to be saints within the community, meaning that God had predestined them for an afterlife in Heaven.

But Anne wasn't your typical Puritan woman. When she disagreed with what the town leaders were doing in terms of running the community, she spoke out. OK, that was bad because women weren't supposed to be that outspoken, but even though the mayor gave her the side-eye, they let it slide.

Then she took it too far. When Anne disagreed with some of the things the preacher said in sermon, she once again spoke up. During Bible studies she held in her home, she said that the preacher was wrong about certain things and that this was how she would have presented that information. Oh the horrors!!! A woman voicing her opinion!!! Can't have that... it might lead to anarchy or at the very least other women voicing their opinions.

Anne was brought before the town judges on charges of heresy, an offense punishible by death. Every time Anne tried to defend herself in court, she was told to keep her mouth shut, that the learned men of the bench did not need to hear the voice of a foolish female. When they found her guilty and were on the verge of sentencing her to death, a very pregnant Anne spoke her peace. You can't blame her; she had 13 kids at home and if they hung her, the baby she was carrying would die with her.

She essentially told the judges that if they hurt her, God would punish them, their community and all the generations to come. I bow to this woman!!! She spoke with such conviction that the judges still found her guilty of heresy but rather than execute her, the banished her and her family from the Massachusetts Colony. They relocated to the newly formed Rhode Island Colony.

Sadly, Anne's story from there isn't a happy one. The stresses from the trial and from the hasty move to Rhode Island took their toll on the expectant mother and she gave birth to a stillborn child on the way to Rhode Island. The judges in Massachusetts said that this was due to the fact that she was a "monster" and "a woman not fit for society."

It didn't stop there. Less than five years after building a new life in Rhode Island, Anne's husband died suddenly. Anne simply couldn't live there anymore so she relocated to the New Netherlands Colony (which is now New York; at the time it was under Dutch control). But she didn't find peace there either. A few months later, she and 5 of her children were killed in an Indian attack.

But despite her sad story, Anne Hutchinson is still one of my heroes. I love the stories of women who didn't quite fit in with the lot in life that men had given them. We need more Anne Hutchinsons in the world today.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

OK, go outside (yes, even if you are still wearing your pj's), close your eyes, take a deep breath and take in the smell of...the beginning of the fall TV season. Isn't it just wonderful?!?

This is my absolute favorite time of the year. As the oppressing heat of summer begins to fade away and we start to get the first hints of nippy fall weather I get all giddy because new TV has started. I can immerse myself into the fake lives of all the characters that I love and love to hate. Sons of Anarchy and The Vampire Diaries have both started off with a bang. And Supernatural and Nikita are yet to come. The premiere that I'm most looking forward to though is Fringe; I've gone all summer jonesing for a good Walter fix.

On top of all my returning faves, it looks like there's going to be a bunch of good newbies on the block. The Secret Circle piqued my interest and Terra Nova is looking pretty good. But the one that I have high hopes for is Ringer. Identical twins where one "dies" and the other assumes her life? A trite concept, I know, but after watching last week's pilot, I'm anxious to see where they go next. My only question as I watched was, "Hey Buffy, where's Spike?"

I have already resigned myself to the fact that things like prepping for class and writing the next chapter of the book I'm working are just simply going to have to play second fiddle to my old friend the TV right now. If I suddenly go off on tangents talking about Damon and Elena and how I wish I had an identical twin so I could fake my own death, just bear with me.

Remembering 9/11

"Naked and starving as they are
We cannot enough admire
The incomparable Patience and Fidelity
of the Soldier."

George Washington wrote these words in his journal during the horrendous winter of 1777-78 when he and his soldiers fought to survive at Valley Forge. They are now inscribed on the monument at the campsite.

Today, over 2 centuries later, I truly believe that the same feeling applies as we remember the events of a decade ago when this country suffered from its worst attack in recent memory.

On that day, I remember sitting in my car, listening to the radio as I waited to go into the office and start the workday. I had already dropped Caitlin off at school and since traffic was lighter than normal, I had a few extra minutes to kill. When they broke into the music to tell about the first plane hitting the WTC, I ran into the office and turned on the lights and TV just in time to watch the smoke begin to plume from the 2nd tower. In my 28 years, I had never been so scared. Was it an accident? Was it the beginnings of an invasion? We just didn't know and the longer we waited, the worse the fear got. As my co-workers and I watched the footage and saw the Pentagon get hit and then the crash of Flight 93, all I could do was to pray for those who had been lost and those who were trying to help.

Today, as we remember 9/11, I am still doing the same. I pray for our country and its leaders. I pray for all of those who willingly put their lives on the line to serve in our military and keep us all safe. I pray for those who serve on a civilian level, the policemen, firemen, emergency crews who constantly put themselves in danger for us. I pray for us all as I know with all my heart that I am proud to be an American.

God bless America!

It's a Barbie World

Seriously, what toy has had more impact on people today than the Barbie doll? Since today is Barbie's sort of birthday I figured it was a good time to walk down memory lane and relive my Barbie playing days. The reason that I say it's her "sort of" birthday is because Barbie's debut was at a New York toy fair in March 1959 but today is actually the anniversary of Mattel putting the blonde bombshell on toy store shelves so all the little kiddies could partake in the wonderfulness that was Barbie.

Since the rise of the Feminist Movement, Barbie has gotten a lot of flack. If the perfectly proportioned Barbie is supposed to be ideal, are little girls going to grow up and starve themselves and buy some boobs so they can be ideal too? I never really bought into that, mainly because by the time I was deep into Barbie-world, they had stopped doing things like putting a weight loss guide that said "Don't Eat" and a scale set at 110 lbs in with the doll. Was Barbie supposed to be a ditz? I think this got blown out of proportion too. People hit the roof because Barbie said things like "Math class is tough!" I personally agree with her, math class IS tough, it's MATH!!! It's supposed to be tough. Did this mean that Barbie couldn't be whatever she wanted? Not so much. My Barbies were queens of the world, warrior princesses, powerful sorceresses, astronauts, doctors, teachers and mommies. Barbie could be anything which meant that I could be anything!

I did a little research on Barbie's history when I saw on my "News of the Day" that today was the first day Barbie was sold and I learned several surprising things. I knew that the original model for Barbie was a New York girl named Barbara Millicent Roberts but I didn't know that Mattel originally published a series of books based on Barbara's/Barbie's life. I think Ken was made up just so Barbie could have a boyfriend but I never knew that he actually had a last name (Carson) and when Ken and Barbie broke up (Ken severely needed a makeover and attitude adjustment) Barbie got "close" with Australian surfer Blaine. I love that, Mattel actually used the word "close" to describe their relationship.

Despite all the controversies, I personally think that Barbie has made much more of an impact on the life of young girls than anybody gives credit for. I might be a grown up now, but to this day, nothing makes me happier on Christmas morning or my birthday than to receive a Barbie in a long dress with gorgeous hair and jewelry. I think that's something I'll never grow too old for.

Ding Dong the Witch is Dead!

No this isn't a post about the anniversary of the Wizard of Oz (which is also this week by the way) but it is another story about a crazy woman in history obsessed with blood. She and Lady Macbeth should have started a club.

Not many people have heard of Hungarian countess Elizabeth Bathory, or as she would have spelled her name "Erzsebet." For some reason, Eastern European royalty doesn't interest a lot of folks but this one is pretty...umm...interesting. Born in 1560, Elizabeth was quite a catch when she reached the ripe old age of 15. Through her mother, she was related to the King of Poland and the Duke of Transylvania. Her husband actually gave her a castle for a wedding present. At that time, Eastern Europe was engulfed in wave after wave of fighting against the Ottoman Turks and Elizabeth was left to run the castle and its 17 surrounding villages while her husband went off to war. She was well educated- even by today's standards- being able to speak at least 4 languages. She even fought for womens' rights. While she was young, people sang songs about how beautiful she was.

So with a pedigree like that why did I call her a witch???

After giving birth to 6 or 7 children and dealing with the stress of constant war with the Turks, a war which took her husband's life, Elizabeth was no longer the teenage beauty she had once been. By the time she was 40, her temper often got the better of her and one day in a fit of rage, Elizabeth backhanded a young servant girl. Blood from the girl's split lip splashed on the countess's hand and for some reason, Elizabeth thought the blood made her skin look younger.

Yep, you guessed it...all of the sudden Countess Elizabeth was hiring younger and younger maids and they kept disappearing. The strangest thing to me is that folks in Hungary didn't question this for a long time. I'm thinking that if I knew that maids kept coming up missing from Elizabeth's employ, I'm not going to let my daughter go to work for her.

Sooner or later, somebody did complain to the higher up nobles in the area and they launched an investigation. When the 1610 version of CSI showed up at Elizabeth's castle, they found one dead maid and one dying maid. Elizabeth was stringing them up by the ankles over a bathtub, slitting their throats and then bathing in their blood, hoping to regain her lost youthful beauty. It is estimated that Elizabeth did this to somewhere between 85 and 650 young girls. Even at the low end, this makes her the most prolific female serial killer in history.

Elizabeth and 4 of her closest maids- I'm guessing the ones to old to be used for bath water- were all found guilty of torturing and killing these young girls and were sentenced to death. Three of the maids had their fingers ripped off with red hot pokers before they were burned at the stake. The fourth's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment because it was determined that she was bullied into all of this by Elizabeth and the other maids.

And Elizabeth? Well, she was noble, remember, and nobility does have its privileges. The chief investigator convinced the king that killing Elizabeth might not be the best thing for public relations for the Hungarian nobility. So it was life imprisonment for her too. Elizabeth was taken to her own bedchambers, the doors and windows bricked over and only a small opening left to pass food and other things to and from the room. For 4 years, this was the countess's fate. In late August 1614, her jailors noticed that she had not made any noise for several days and when they busted into her rooms, they found her dead.

Needless to say, the stories of Elizabeth Bathory never faded away. They became the stories you told your kids to frighten them into acting right. Forget the Boogey Man, Hungary had the Blood Countess. Lump her and Transylvania's Vlad Dracula together and I'm not too sure that I really want to visit Eastern Europe!

And Then There Were None...

To be honest with you, there are actually very, very few true mysteries in American History. One of the most famous and my favorite mystery has to do with what happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke.

In the years following Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World, the other European empires were jealous of the riches Spain got from these new lands. England, under the great Queen Elizabeth I, decided to establish its own foothold in the New World far north of Spain's Central American lands. Queen Liz gave Sir Walter Raleigh a royal charter to build several settlements along the Atlantic coastline in a colony that he called Virginia in her honor (it's modern-day North Carolina but Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen, was flattered!). The first of these settlements failed but in July 1857, a group of 150 men and women under the leadership of John White settled onto Roanoke Island and began building their own little village.

Life wasn't easy for these settlers. They had to build everything from scratch. There wasn't a Home Depot nearby so to get lumber for houses and firewood, they had to cut down trees. But thankfully they did have good relations with the neighboring Croatan Indians. And even better, John White's daughter Eleanor White Dare gave birth to a daughter, Virginia, not long after the colony set up shop. Virginia Dare is the first documented Anglo-European baby born in the New World.

Unfortunately less than a year into the settlement, the people realized they needed goods from England. John White agreed to head back to Europe, knowing that it would be several months before he got back. He and the colonists made a deal; if the colonists were attacked or had to move off of Roanoke, they would carve a message in a tree to let White know where to find them. (Wouldn't you love to be the person chosen to carve the message while everybody else was fleeing from marauding Indians???)

Actually, it ended up being nearly 3 years before he was able to return to Roanoke. England was at war with Spain over the New World (and other things) and White was unable to get a ship to carry him and his supplies back to Roanoke. When he finally arrived in the colony, on his granddaughter's 3rd birthday nonetheless, he and the other sailors on the ship were shocked to find the buildings and lands of the settlement in perfect shape but no living soul to be found. To this very day, nobody knows what happened to the colonists. But there are several theories...

1. The word "Croatan" carved in the tree meant that the settlers had to leave their homes and move in with the neighboring friendly Croatans. This sounds good but when White made contact with the Croatans, none of the English settlers were found there.

2. The Croatan attacked and the settlers fled to other areas in the Virginia colony. Definitely possible. For several generations, other neighboring tribes had blue-eyed babies but when White checked nearby tribes, he found no evidence of the Roanoke settlers.

3. Disease wiped out the whole population. Personally, I don't think so. If an epidemic had hit Roanoke, White would have found graves and possibly even dead bodies in the settlement but he didn't find anything like this.

4. An Indian tribe attacked and massacred all the settlers. Again, I don't think so. White noted that he found no signs of struggle. In some of the homes, there were plates on the table. An Indian attack would not have been that clean. Even if the rest of the settlers fled, the dude carving "Croatan" in the tree would probably be there.

Regardless, the lack of evidence has made this mystery one of the favorites for American historians and students of history.

If you want my personal opinion, I think the answer is simple... the aliens got them! (Just kidding, just kidding!!!)

Out Damned Spot...Out I Say!

Anyone who's been through a halfway decent English class (and I can definitely say that Mrs. White's English class at Richland was so much more than decent) you have heard that particular line. If you are a senior in high school, it's so cool to say the line as Lady Macbeth slides deeper into insanity. Yes, it's cool then because you get to say a cuss word in class and nobody will get onto you for it. But as time passes, you have to wonder if any of the famous Shakespeare play is true.

The answer to that is sort of...

According to Shakespeare, Macbeth was a young Scottish noble who protected the country from an invasion by troops from Norway and Ireland. As a reward, the elderly king Duncan gives the hero a title. Witches tell Macbeth that he will become king at Duncan's death, so strong a ruler that he would only be defeated by a man not of woman born. They also tell Macbeth's friend Banquo that he (Banquo) will father a long line of kings. When Duncan visits Macbeth's castle, Lady Macbeth can't wait for the elderly king to die and make the prophecy come true so she goads her husband into killing the king so he can take the throne. Banquo doesn't quite believe the husband and wife tale that the guards did it so he definitely doesn't trust new King Macbeth. Macbeth doesn't trust Banquo either because of the prophecy and sets out to kill Banquo and his son, Fleance. He halfway accomplishes this because Fleance gets away. Lady Macbeth loses it because she thinks Duncan's blood is on her hands and she dies, most likely by suicide. The Scottish nobles turn against Macbeth and he is ultimately defeated by the young Macduff. How did Macduff win? Well, he wasn't actually "born;" he was delivered by Caesarean section.

Historically, Duncan was a very young man when he was king. So young in fact that he turned to older, more experienced men to help him rule his kingdom. One of these men was a seasoned soldier named Macbeth. Essentially, Macbeth (who already had a title, BTW) was the power behind the throne. Despite this power, Macbeth couldn't keep Duncan from entering into several ill-planned battles, including one in Macbeth's own territory in Scotland. But Macbeth still stood behind Duncan, advising him to the bitter end. Ultimately, Duncan's penchant for bad battles gets him killed in August 1040. This had nothing to do with Gruoch, Lady Macbeth, so she didn't have to wash out any damned spots. Duncan's queen and 2 young sons are forced to flee Scotland when Macbeth is named the new king. Macbeth actually rules for 17 years but it's not an easy rule. He was faced by infighting amongst his own nobles (if you know anything about Scottish history, this shouldn't come as a surprise) and invasions from England and Ireland. 17 years and 2 days after taking the throne, Macbeth loses it when Duncan's son Malcolm invades Scotland and retakes the title for himself, killing Macbeth in battle.

Where does Banquo fit into all of this? According to Scottish history, the witches' prophecy came true because King James VI (the one famous for the King James Version of the Bible) claimed that he was descended from Banquo. Lesson learned- never doubt Shakespeare's witches.

Did Lady Gruoch Macbeth commit suicide like Shakespeare insinuated? Nobody knows because she simply disappears from history once Malcolm took the throne. But you have to admit, the story is cool and even though it's been over 20 years since I was in an English class, it's still fun to wring my hands and say the line, "Out damned spot...out I say!"