Hellos Hiatus, My Old Friend

Despite my best intentions, the blog is on hold for a little while. I am finishing up my thesis and getting through my third semester of graduate school. With my thesis out of the way, next semester should be much calmer and I hope to resume my blog then. Meanwhile, I am going to attempt to write a few reserve posts so that I can keep the blog going through my busier times. I'm also trying to build up a Pinterest and Tumblr following, so I should still be active on those sites. I am hoping to update some of my old posts with pictures from my trips and I'll be posting those, at least.

I have a lot of ideas for different things I want to talk about. Dance is really on my mind at the moment, as well as the cultural uses of accessories (like fans). I also need to finish up/continue the series I have going on the mythical origins of writing and on astronomical mythology. So when the blog comes back, it'll be better than ever!

I am hoping to continue the Share Spotlight, so hopefully that will start up again next week, just to keep content going on my blog.

Share Spotlight: The Emancipation Proclamation

Read The Emancipation Proclamation

Since the Battle of Stones River has so much to do with the Emancipation Proclamation, in fact the only reason it happened was that Lincoln wanted a victory before it went into effect, I thought it would be a fitting Share Spotlight.

Now the Emancipation Proclamation didn't free a single slave (seriously, it "freed" slaves in territories not controlled by the Union) but it did provide for the raising of Colored Regiments, which meant that those enslaved people who freed themselves when the Union army came to town had a place to go and a way to fight to keep their freedom. When you see USCT on a Civil War era headstone, that's a US Colored Troop, many of whom built and are buried in the Stones River National Cemetery.

The Most Important Civil War Battle You've Never Heard Of

I’m doing a summer internship at the Stones River National Battlefield, so of course I have to do a post on the battle!

The Battle of Stones River (as the Union called it, apparently they loved naming things after rivers, including their armies. It’s the 2^nd Battle of Murfreesboro for the Confederacy) occurred from December 31^st, 1862 to January 2^nd, 1863. Those dates are pretty important because they tell you that something weird is up with this battle. If they can at all help it, armies don’t march in the winter. The reason this one did has to do with a document that should be pretty familiar to my readers, The Emancipation Proclamation.

A Typeset Copy of the Emancipation Proclamation signed by Abraham Lincoln (Wikimedia)

The EP went into effect on January 1^st, 1863 and the Union hadn’t won a battle since Lincoln had announced it. Since the EP was issued under Lincoln’s authority as Commander in Chief of the US Army, the Army kind of had to be winning the war for the EP to mean anything.

Lincoln also knew that the war was losing favor with the public in the North. Midterm elections hadn’t gone well for the Republican party and people were getting to the point where they were willing to let the South go if it meant the war would end. Lincoln needed to win some battles to boost Northern morale and regain support.

Finally, England and France had been making motions like they were going to come in on the side of the Confederacy. If that happened, it would be nearly impossible for Lincoln to reunite the country. So he also wanted a victory to show England and France that the North would be winning the war and there was no reason for them to get involved.

So Lincoln sent General Rosecrans and his Army of the Cumberland (like the river, remember what I said about the Union and rivers?) out to find the enemy, in this case, General Bragg and the Army of Tennessee.They found them just north of the town of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, a flat area made up of a patchwork of cedar brakes and crop fields.

My own picture of the Stones River Battlefield

The Union would very nearly suffer a devastating loss on the first day of battle. Luckily for Lincoln, they were able to hold on and over the next couple of days make it difficult enough for the Confederates that Bragg decided he would rather retreat than try to hold on to the field.

Thus Lincoln gets his victory, the EP goes into effect, Northern morale goes way up, England and France stay out of it, and the American Civil War continues for another two and half years.

Pretty important battle, right?

Share Spotlight: Lilo and Stitch - Main Title (He Mele No Lilo)

Since we were talking about Hawaii last week, I thought I would share a good representation of both traditional Hawaiian music and hula dance. Disney really did their homework for the Lilo and Stitch movie.




Traditional Hula always tells a story, often about the Hawaiian gods and goddesses, including the daughters of Haumea, several of whom are given credit for the invention of Hula.
Schools for Hula are making a comeback in Hawaii, teaching both traditional Hawaiian Hula and a new style that is fusion of traditional and the more modern version created for the tourist trade.

Dwarf Planet Haumea

Haamea is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt (a band of space objects out beyond the orbit of Neptune) that was discovered in late 2004 by CalTech astronomer Mike Brown and his team and in 2005 by Jose Luis Ortiz Moreno and his team in Spain. (There is some controversy there, but it outside the scope of this post.) Objects in the Kuiper belt are named after creation deities, so Mike Brown’s team’s name, Huamea, was accepted over the Spanish team’s name for the Dwarf Planet. They named the object Huamea after the Hawaiian goddess, in honor of the place where they had first observed it.

Artist rendition of Haumea and its two moons (A. Field via StScI)

As with many myths, Haumea is associated with many names and stories. Some stories equate her with Papa (also Papahānaumoku), giving Papa as her human form to the spirit form of Haumea. Papa, with her husband Wakea, is often said to be the origin of the Hawaiian people, or sometimes the entire human race.

As Huamea, she is said to have given birth to a number of children, not in the normal way, but from various parts of her body. Pele, the goddess of volcanoes, sprang from her thighs while other children sprang from her mouth or her forehead. She is considered the goddess of Childbirth and Fertility.

This giving of herself to make her children is also the reason her name was picked for the Dwarf Planet. The DP Huamea was part of a collision long ago, which resulted in Huamea’s moons, Ki’iaka and Namaka, named for two of her daughters, and the dwarf planet’s oblong, rather than round, shape.

The goddess Huamea was also said to have been able to change her shape and age with the assistance of a variety of magical objects, some of which she obtained in return for assisting people with births. Huamea is often associated with the Kalihi Valley of Ohau, where she is said to have lived with her husband Wakea, once saving him from death by hiding them both in a breadfruit tree. The Kalihi Valley is now part of the suburbs of Honolulu and these local stories are only remember by a few people.

Share Spotlight: How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had it Coming

How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had it Coming

This week's Share Spotlight is a book by Mike Brown, the astronomer who made the discovery that resulted in the new category of Dwarf Planet and Pluto's expulsion from Planethood. I wrote about the book in one of my Book Roundups a while back, but since it really was the inspiration for the new Astronomical Mythology series I'm working on, I figured it deserved its own Share Spotlight.

The book is funny and moving. I never would have believed that a scientist could write so well. This is how science writing should be done. Just read the book and you will understand. Once you do, tell me what you think!

Mike Brown also has a sort of sporadic blog called Mike Brown's Planets that is well worth a look.

Astronomical Mythology

This week I’m starting on a new series on the Mythology surrounding the figures the different things in our Solar System (and maybe out of it) are named for. We’ll start off with how they get their names.

Everyone knows the names of the 8 (formerly 9) planets in our Solar System. Most of us even know where their names come from, Greek and Roman mythology. But what about all the other bodies in the solar system?

Turns out there are pretty specific rules that govern what a discoverer can call something, based on what sort of thing it is. For example, the moons of Uranus must all be named after Shakespeare characters while the moons of Jupiter must be named after Zeus/Jupiter’s lovers or children.

The four Gallilean moons of Jupiter, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. (Wikimedia)

Some bodies, such as the first four of Jupiter’s moons back in the 1600s, were named by the people who discovered them. When the formal naming process was created, these names were confirmed and others were made to follow in their mold. Others held a scientific notation, such as Jupiter VI, until the official rules were created.

But who decides what these rules are?

In the 1970s, the International Astronomical Union put together a taskforce to deal with what things should be called and now decides on the “unambiguous astronomical nomenclature” (read How Space Things Are Named So No One Confuses Them with Something Else) that results in the names used for various types of astronomical objects. The IAU is an organization of thousands of astronomers and other cosmologists from around the world that get together every year to decide on important issues in astronomy. They’re the ones who decided that Pluto was a Dwarf Planet back in 2006.

Astronomers, professional or amateurs, must submit their discovery and proposed name to the IAU for scrutiny before it becomes official. They make sure that the name is not already taken and that it accords with the rules for whatever has been discovered.

Curious what all of the rules are? Check out the International Astronomical Union’s website.

Updates

Hey everyone!
Sorry for the lapse in posts. All of my final projects caught up with me and I did not have a good stockpile of posts like I should have. I'll be working on making sure that I have a few reserve posts for when life gets crazy, but I thought I should give everyone an update on what's going on with me and what you can expect from the blog in the next few months.

I've finished my first year of Graduate School! Yay! I've started on my thesis and completed most of my research. This summer I will be working on writing it up, turning in a draft in the fall.

Meanwhile, I am spending the summer as an intern at Stones River National Battlefield in Tennessee. I'm working in the museum a bit, but also working the front desk and giving tours! I really enjoy it, so I'll have to create at least one post, probably two on my experiences here.

In the future, I will continue to try to tighten up the theme of this blog. It's a bit all over the place, mainly because my interests are all over the place. I'm working with an international theme that includes culture, folklore, language, history, and current events. If you have any requests for topics or particular culture areas, let me know and I'll see what I can dig up.

I'll be trying to stick to the same schedule I have been, a new post on Friday and something interesting for you to check out on Tuesdays. Starting next Friday, I should be back on schedule, so look for a new post then.

Thanks to everyone who actually reads this blog. I know that I do it almost exclusively for my own enjoyment, to practice my writing and give myself an outlet for all those other topics that I love but will never make it into a school paper, but I have to admit that seeing that people are actually seeing my posts makes me warm and fuzzy inside. So thank you everyone.

Meanwhile, enjoy some recent pictures!

Share Spotlight: Viking women, warriors, and valkyries

This week's Share Spotlight comes from the British Museum's blog.
Viking women, warriors, and valkyries

The British Museum opened an exhibition on Vikings last month, called Vikings: life and legend. Their blog post this weeks covers a little discusses aspect of the Vikings: their women. Viking women certainly were a more diverse group than most of their continental counterparts. However, the idea of warrior women among the Vikings is something Jesch, the author of this post flatly denies.

So, how to explain the Valkyries? Jesch contends that they are simply "creatures of fantasy rooted in the experience of male warriors." The Valkyries certainly wouldn't be the first. Athena in Greek mythology would be a similar figure.

What do think? Can such a pervasive mythological figure exist without a real life model? How do you think that such figures are created?

Share Spotlight: Lincoln Rejects the King of Siam's Offer of Elephants

This week's Share Spotlight comes from the Civil War Trust.
Lincoln Rejects the King of Siam's Offer of Elephants 

After last week's post about the White Elephant in Thailand, I thought I would share a related story. During the Civil War, the King of Siam offered to send elephants (though not White ones) to President Lincoln. You can read President Lincoln's response in today's Share Spotlight post.

What do you think of Lincoln's diplomatic refusal? How do you think Elephants could have been used in the Civil War? Does this change how you see the global perspective on the Civil War?

The White Elephant

We're in Southeast Asia again this week, this time for the story of the royal symbol of Thailand.

In Thailand, as well as Siam, Thailand's predecessor, the White Elephant is a symbol of the royal line. All White Elephants belong to the king and are ceremonially presented to him.

White Elephants, also sometimes called Pink Elephants or Auspicious Elephants, are not actually white. They are generally a light reddish-brown, sometimes turning pink when wet. The elephants are not actually albino and the determination of a White Elephant is made by palace experts.

A White Elephant at Naypyidaw's Uppatasanti Pagoda (Wikimedia)

White Elephants are found almost entirely among Indian Elephants and are extremely rare or nonexistent in African Elephants. 

Despite the English use of the phrase White Elephant, there is no evidence to support the idea that the King would give a White Elephant to someone in order to bankrupt them. In fact, all White Elephants belong to the King, so one would never have been given away.

To the people of Thailand, these White Elephants are priceless. A White Elephant even appeared on the flag of Thailand from 1855 to 1916, over 60 years.

The Flag of Thailand, 1855-1916 (Wikimedia)

In Buddhism, the dominant religion in Thailand, the Buddha's mother dreamed of a White Elephant on the night before the Buddha's birth. The White Elehphant is a symbol of wisdom and purity in Buddhism and of prosperity and good fortune throughout Southeast Asia.

The current King of Thailand owns 10 White Elephants, six males and four females. The male and female elephants are kept in separate facilities, since they are not allowed to breed.

There is currently only one confirmed White Elephant living in the wild. Called Sudu Aliya, which means white elephant, she lives in Sri Lanka. She is currently being monitored by the Center for Conservation and Research of Sri Lanka and was last seen in 2012.

I found the website of the Thai Elephant Conservation Center very helpful in writing this article. The Conservation Center cares for all of the royal White Elephants.

Share Spotlight: The Story of One

This week's share spotlight is a BBC documentary.
The Story of One

Something a little different this week for the Share Spotlight: a documentary. This documentary is a bit silly, but still one of my all time favorites. Terry Jones, a former member of Monty Python (which explains the silliness) takes the viewer through the journey to our modern number system. From notching marks on  a bone to the binary system that underlies all our modern technology, this documentary explains the major steps in the history of numbers.

My only real complaint is that Terry Jones fails to mention that the zero was actually invented twice. Once in India and once in Mesoamerica by the Mayans. The Mayan number system is fascinating and on my list of things to write about.

Other than that, what a great way to bring a little bit of History into Math! As much as I love math, this documentary really helped me get a good handle on why we use the numbers we do.

What did you learn about the history of numbers in school? What do you think about bringing a little bit of History into Math? Or vice versa?

Letters from the Seams of a Skull

Devanagari is one of the widely used scripts in the world

Devanagari is used for Hindi, Sanskrit, Marathi, and Nepali languages and so is used all over the Indian subcontinent and the surrounding areas.

Devanagari is an abugida alphabet or alphasyllabary, which means that there are distinct vowels and consonants, but that vowels are also used to modify the consonants, which unmodified have a certain syllable sound.

Devanagari is most easily recognized by the bar that runs across the top of the script, from which all the letter seem to descend.

Some consonants in Devanagari. (Wikimedia)

Devanagari has been used from about the 12th century CE. There are about 50 letters in the Devanagari script, not counting the numerous derivations caused by combining the consonants with vowels. Devanagari is read from left to right.

The Vedas, the Hindu scriptures are generally written in Devanagari and the word "Devanagari" derives from deva, deity, and nagari, city.

In Hindu myth, the Devanagari script comes from Brahma. When Brahma went to write down his teachings, he found that there was no system to record them with. In order to share his teachings, he invented writing, using the seams of the skull as a pattern for the letters.

In some forms of the myth, it is Sarasvati, Brahma's wife, who invents the letters. Sarasvati (sometimes Saraswati or Saraswathi) is the goddess of knowledge, music, and arts, so writing would fall within her purview.

Svarasvati, holding a string of crystals, a book of the Vedas, and playing the veena (Wikimedia)

For the first post in my Writing Systems series, see The Beginning of History.

Share Spotlight: Understanding Ukraine

This week's Share Spotlight comes from the Vlogbrothers.
Understanding Ukraine: The Problems Today and Some Historical Context

The conflict between Ukraine and Russia keeps rolling on. Frankly, I've lost track of what's actually happening. But here's John Green, author and all around amazing person to give you a quick summation of the background of the conflict in Ukraine.

And, as a bonus, here's Mid-Revolution: Ukrainian Museum Updates from The Uncataloged Museum, which is from a month or so back and talks about the particular challenges of being a museum on the front lines of a revolution.

What do you think of everything that's been going on? Have you been keeping track? What do you think the best outcome is at this point?

March 2014 Book Roundup

It's been a crazy month, so my roundup is a little slim. I hope you'll give me some new ideas for books now that I have some time to read again!

Barefoot Season by Susan Mallery
This is a novel of old friends torn apart and forced to find their way back together. While there are definite romantic elements, the women's relationship takes center stage. I found my self rooting for both women, who are forced to reexamine their pasts and what they will take forward into the future. Both women are far from perfect, but they acknowledge their faults (eventually) and really strive to be better people.

Steadfast by Mercedes Lackey
This is the ninth installment in Mercedes Lackey's Elemental Masters series, based on the story of the Steadfast Tin Soldier. All of the books are fabulous and this one is no exception. I have really enjoyed that the later books in the series have moved away from the all powerful Masters toward the less powerful Magicians. It means less reliance on power and more on wits to win the day, which I find refreshing in a fantasy novel.

Found any great books recently? Let me know in the comments!

Baba Yaga

Every culture has a being used to scared children. In America, it's the Bogey Man. In Russia, it's Baba Yaga.


Baba Yaga is a witch common in the folklore of Eastern Europe and Russia. Baba means grandmother, but is probably better translated as old woman or wise woman, since Baba Yaga is far from grandmotherly.

Baba Yage is generally depicted as an old crone who lives in the woods. Her house stands on chicken legs, spinning shrieking constantly until the magic words are said. The house's windows are often characterized as eyes and sometimes a fence made of bones encircles the house.

Baba Yaga herself travels in a mortar, using a pestle as a rudder and sweeping away traces of her presence with a silver birch broom.

Baba Yaga traveling in her mortar and carrying her pestle and silver birch broom. Painted by Ivan Bilibin. (Wikimedia Commons)

Baba Yaga is a complex figure in Eastern European and Russian Folklore. She is often the antagonist of the story, preventing the hero from reaching his goal and misdirecting people in the woods. However, she is also known to share her wisdom when approached correctly.

One of the most well known stories involving Baba Yaga is that of Vasilisa the Beautiful. Similar to the Western European Cinderella, Vasilisa finds herself at the mercy of her step-mother and two step-sisters. When all of the lights are extinguished, she is sent to Baba Yaga to get coals to relight the fires. After numerous tests, and with the help of a doll given to her by her mother, Vasilisa receives a skull full of coals from Baba Yaga. When she returns home, the skull burns up her step-mother and -sisters and Vasilisa lives happily ever after (in some versions she become Czarina of Russia).

Vasilisia leaving Baba Yaga's house with the skull full of coals. Painted by Ivan Bilibin. (Wikimedia Commons)

Baba Yaga has made several appearances in popular culture, including Bartok the Magnificent, the much less well known but still adorable spin-off movie from Anastasia, where she sends Bartok to complete impossible tasks before she will help him with his own quest.

Share Spotlight: China's Foot Binding Tradition

This week's Share Spotlight comes from the podcast Stuff You Missed in History Class.
China's Food Binding Tradition

Another pretty cool podcast this week, this time from the girls at Stuff You Missed in History Class.
Foot Binding occurred in China for around a thousand years. That, as Holly and Tracey mention, is far too long to consider something a "fad."Although painful and debilitating, foot binding proved difficult to stop and there may still be women alive today with bound feet, since the process survived into the 1950s. The practice was eventually stopped largely due to the response of Christian missionaries, who found the process horrifying.

How do we as outsiders look at this and other cultural practices with an objective lens? As Holly and Tracey ask, where do we draw the line between what we find distasteful and what is actually harmful?
(Though no argument here, this was definitely a harmful practice.)

The Beginning of History

While time may stretch forever, history has a very definite starting point: the invention of writing.

Think for a moment about what you are reading. Words made of 26 little characters that allow me to convey my thoughts to you, despite our distance in time and space.

Writing makes this possible. And that is why the start of "History" is also the start of writing, anything prior to writing is Prehistory.

Before writing, clear communication beyond the person standing in front of you was impossible. Once writing took off, communications could be read hundreds or thousands of years later with only minimal loss of meaning.

Historians rely on primary sources, those that come directly from the people who said them. Without writing, historians would need a time machine to talk to each person who was involved in or experienced an event. Without writing, there would be no history.

Writing has been invented in several places around the globe and every system is a little different.

Wikipedia in scripts around the world.  (Wikimedia Commons)

There are three main types of writing systems.

Alphabets are the most familiar to the readers of this blog, as that is what they are using to read it now. In an alphabet, each symbol stands for a sound. There are separate vowel and consonant symbols and they average between 12 and 50 letter symbols.

Syllabaries have symbols for a combination of a consonant and a vowel. So "ba" would be one symbol while "be" would be another. These systems average between 50 and 400 symbols. Ancient Mayan hieroglyphics are generally considered to be primarily a syllabary, as are the Hiragana and Katakana in the Japanese writing system and the Cherokee writing system.

A Stop Sign written using the Cherokee syllabary. (Wikimedia Commons)

Logographies use symbols to stand for words. Since each word has to have its own symbol, these systems can have hundreds or thousands of symbols. Chinese entirely uses and Japanese mainly uses a logographic writing system. Reading Chinese requires knowledge of 3 to 4 thousand characters.

Japanese uses all three of these systems, which makes it a great example.

In Japanese, the word for

(red)

in Romanji (alphabet): 

aka

in Hiragana (syllabary): 

あか

in Kanji (logography):　

赤

Share Spotlight: The Green Show

This week's Share Spotlight comes from BackStory with the American History Guys.
The Green Show

I found BackStory Radio through one of my classes. They American History Guys trace a topic through the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries of American History.

This week, in honor of St. Patrick's Day, they did an entire show about how the color green is important in American history. They are always entertaining and the podcast is perfect to listen to on a busy commute or while preparing dinner. And better yet, you learn something in the bargain!

What do you think is the most important Green thing in American history? (Don't forget to add it to their comments as well.) What podcasts or radio shows do you enjoy listening to?