Historical Tidbit: The Origin of Common Figures of Speech

Did you know... that most of our weird figures of speech actually do have their origin in historical truth? It's true!

Let me start with a disclaimer. I didn't write this. At all. One of my best friends posted it on Facebook and I knew I had to share it. But I posted the entire thing as is. Here's where it was originally posted so you can try and trace it back to the original source if you want. I didn't bother. 

This is pretty much a list of common idioms and their origins. Who knew figures of speech could be so historically fascinating?

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Thanksgiving Funnies!

Hey Everyone, 

I'm taking this week off to focus on Thanksgiving. Wish I could post more, but I just started a new job and I've got a lot of cooking to fit into my schedule. I hope everyone has a wonderful, happy, and safe holiday! Here are some fun holiday images for you. Hope they make you smile. I'll be back next week. (All pics courtesy of Pinterest.com unless otherwise linked.)

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Funny Friday: Grumpy Cat

Welcome to Friday Funnies! Because everyone needs a good laugh on Friday.



I love grumpy cat. He's just so sour I can't help but laugh. Hope these make you smile (and that you're a bit more optimistic than he is). All pictures courtesy of pinterest.com. **Disclaimer: there are a couple of curse words in them. Sorry. You've been warned.** 

There are plenty more where these came from, but they're my faves. Hope they gave you a laugh. Have a great weekend! :D

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Thoughts for Thursday: Belief

Thoughts for Thursday is a feature hosted by Musings on Fantasia and LKHill.  In this meme, we share thoughts or quotes that we know or have recently come across. Each week there is a specific subject or theme. These can be quotes from books, quotes by famous people, (quotes by YOU, perhaps ;D). Anything from anywhere is game, though we do ask that you keep your quote to a few sentences at most. Don't quote, for example, entire passages of a book or essay. These can be funny quips, cool sayings, hair-raising antidotes, movie lines, any kind of quote you can think of!

Just have fun, collect awesome sayings by awesome people, and try to be inspired!

This week's theme is Belief. Check out my other blog for more quotes.

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If God does not exist, everything is permitted. --Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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Historical Tidbit: Romeo and Juliet of the Bronze Age

Excavation in Russia (Source)

Did you know...that a Romeo and Juliet of the Bronze Age was excavated in Russia in 2008?

It's true. While trying to start construction for a hotel at "the crossroads of Postovaia and Sedin Streets of Krasnodar," (Source) builders came across the burial site. A vertical shaft, closed off with a damper plate, leads to a sepulchral  chamber. 

Inside, they found a man lying on his back and a woman beside him, holding him lovingly. The couple--both around sixty when they died--were dubbed "Romeo and Juliet of the Bronze Age. 

Dolmen (Source)

The tribes who inhabited the area at the time are almost completely unknown to modern archaeologists. From the looks of things, they had the cult of fire, which just means they used it as purification, perhaps even worshipped it. It was a big part of their lives. They also may have been the people who built the dolmens--"...single-chamber megalithic tomb, usually consisting of two or more upright stones supporting a large flat horizontal capstone." Source

The woman's wrists are adorned with bracelets of bronze beads, which is very atypical for what they do know of tribes in the area.

Who the couple was and why they were buried that way is a complete mystery, one which may never be completely transparent to us in modern times. But it would make for a great historical story.

Source     Source

Would you be interested in a story like this? Would it make a great ending? Beginning? What do you think?

I'll be signing copies of Citadels of Fire at the Layton Barnes and Noble on December 11 from 7-10 pm. Check out the synopsis below (there's a reason this Russian-set excavation mystery caught my eye) and if you'll be in the area, come and see me. Books always make great Christmas gifts. :D

In a world where danger hides in plain sight and no one aspires to more than what they were born to, Inga must find the courage to break the oppressive chains she’s been bound with since birth.

As a maid in the infamous Kremlin, life in 16th-century Russia is bleak and treacherous. That is, until Taras arrives. Convinced that his mother’s death when he was a boy was no mere accident, he returned from England to discover what really happened. While there, he gains favor from the Tsar later known as Ivan the Terrible, the most brutal and notorious ruler ever to sit upon the throne of Russia. Ivan allows him to take a servant, and to save Inga from a brutal boyar intent on raping her, Taras requests Inga to stay in his chambers.

Up against the social confines of the time, the shadowy conspiracies that cloak their history, and the sexual politics of the Russian Imperial court, Inga and Taras must discover their past, plan for their future, and survive the brutality that permeates life within the four walls that tower over them all, or they may end up like so many citizens of ancient Russia: nothing but flesh and bone mortar for the stones of the Kremlin wall.

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Teaser Tuesday: Towers of Midnight

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

This week's teasers come from Towers of Midnight by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. We just started it, which means our read-along is nearly finished! We've been at it for nearly two years now!

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Perrin looked down at Aram's body. "I should have taken that fool sword from him the moment he picked it up. I should have sent him back to his family." 

Does not a cub deserve his fangs? Hopper asked, genuinely confused. Why would you pull them? 

"It is a thing of men," Perrin said. 

Things of two-legs, of men. Always, it is a thing of men to you. What of things of wolves?

"I am not a wolf."

What are you reading this week?

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Crime Tidbit: the Death of Michael C. Rockefeller

Michael Rockefeller, not long before he disappeared.
Source

Did you know...that the heir to the Rockefeller fortune may have been killed by cannibals?

It's true, Michael C. Rockefeller, the fifth child of Nelson Rockefeller graduated cum laude from Harvard with degrees in history and economics. He joined a film crew to film a documentary in New Guinea in 1961. 

Now, this may not be exactly a crime tidbit. It's more of an unsolved mystery, but it's still interesting. 

On November 1, he and anthropologist Renee Wassig were trying to study the Asmat tribe of Southern New Guinea when they're double pontoon boat was swamped and overturned. After drifting for some time, Rockefeller decided to swim for shore. It is estimated that he was nine miles from shore. Wassig was later rescued, but Rockefeller was never seen again. 

Nelson Rockefeller (in the white shorts) and Michael's
twin sister Mary looking around the area where he
disappeared. (Source)

Most people, including the Rockefeller family, believed he had either drowned or been the victim of a shark or salt-water crocodile.

However, at the time there was a great deal of unrest in New Guinea, and many of the tribes in the area he would have come ashore around were practicing cannibalism.

Several leaders of Otsjanep village, where Rockefeller likely would have arrived had he made it to shore, were killed by a Dutch patrol in 1958, and thus would have some rationale for revenge against someone from the "white tribe." Neither cannibalism nor headhunting in Asmat was indiscriminate, but rather were part of a tit-for-tat revenge cycle, and so it is possible that Rockefeller found himself the inadvertent victim of such a cycle started by the Dutch patrol. (Source)

Though the family has never said they believed the cause of death was anything but drowning, Mrs. Rockefeller did pay a great deal of money to a private detective who went to New Guinea to investigate the death, and returned with 3 skulls he'd obtained from the natives, one of which he believed to Rockefeller's. 

Several books and documentaries have been done about the disappearance, which made news world wide when it happened. Just recently in 2014, "Carl Hoffman published the book Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art where he discusses researching Rockefeller's mysterious disappearance and presumed death." (Source) Also see this website, which has quite a few gruesome details. 

What do you think? Was Rockefeller murdered by cannibals or did he simply drown? Will we ever know?

If you're interested in unsolved mysteries and crime drama, check out Dark Remnants, book 1 of Street Games. The e-book is currently $3.99 on Amazon.

In the most dangerous city in the country, one controlled by a sadistic gang called the Sons of Ares, Kyra Roberts is searching the deep places for someone…

Kyra has come to Abstreuse city to find someone she’s lost, but walking the underbelly—a dark alley system residents call the Slip Mire—even in disguise, is rife with dangers. Kyra must stay on her toes if she intends to live. After crossing paths several times with the same detective, she wonders if his work and hers might be connected.

Gabe Nichols has worked homicide in Abstreuse for three years. Dead prostitutes and gang violence are part of the night shift. When a woman who looks like a street junkie but acts like an intellectual saves his life, he’s intrigued. Another woman shows up at his crime scene, and Gabe’s instincts kick into high gear when she clams up. Two cases involving strange women who won’t tell what they know are too coincidental.

If Gabe and Kyra can’t find a way to collaborate, they may not live to see the sunrise. Doomed, like so many others, to become gray, unmarked graves in a forgotten fracture of the Slip Mire.

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