“He was the bravest man I’ve ever seen in my life.” – Captain John L. Testrake
SW2 Robert Stethem preparing for a dive while part of UCT-1. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons. Click for further information.
On June 14, 1985, US Navy diver Steelworker Second Class (DV) Robert D. Stethem was returning home from Greece when his flight, TWA 847, was hijacked by Hezbollah terrorists. Early on, one of the hijackers screamed, “Americans die!” and their behavior terrorized passengers from the beginning. They diverted the flight path to land in Beirut, held the plane on the tarmac, and demanded the release by Israel of hundreds of Lebanese and Palestinian terrorists. When they failed to achieve this, they picked military members Stethem and another diver, SW2 (DV) Kenneth Bowen, out from the passengers and beat both men.
Another demand had been fuel, and the terrorists attempted to use Stethem toward this goal. They continually beat him, at times holding the microphone to his mouth so the air traffic control would hear his screams. However, he refused to scream or beg for fuel, knowing that if the plane departed, their chances of rescue would decrease. Chief Flight Attendant Uli Derickson later testified that Stethem “never made a sound.” Captain John Testrake testified that Stethem was beaten severely but refused to make a sound, and that another diver was also tortured.
Autumn Colors in Denali by Tim Rains, NPS ~ courtesy Wikimedia Commons (click image for more detail)
With fall – finally sweater weather!! – having begun in the northern hemisphere on September 22, and winter to take the stage on December 21, it’s not too far off the mark to place ourselves roughly at the midway point between these two transitions. And you know what that means? Yes, you guessed it – Halloween is upon us ~ Many of us have already decorated our homes with golden leaves, apples, and other symbols of harvest, and as we moved further into the season this week, the pumpkins began to pop up.
Most of us are familiar with the custom of carving pumpkins and creating jack-o-lanterns, but do we all know where these activities originated? I’ll give you a hint: it wasn’t America! A number of tweaks – out of necessity, convenience, or happenstance – occurred on the shores of the new country, but many traditions go way back to the old. And because I love our ancestors and learning more about the why behind the ways they lived, I’m here today to take you back a tad to have a glimpse at the practices of ordinary people who shaped our society.
As with so many other historical yarns, that of carving out pumpkins dates back to tales of a deal between a wayward human and the prince of darkness. In this case, first recorded in the 1600s, so certainly descended from an even earlier event, an Irishman called Stingy Jack shared a few drinks with the evil one but didn’t want to pay for them. Following a series of tricks and Faustian deals, Jack finds himself, at his death, locked out of heaven but banned from hell, essentially sentenced to roaming the earth forevermore. Those tricks really must have gotten someone’s goat, but still he tossed up a burning coal for light, and the enterprising Jack carved out a turnip to use as a lantern, with which he was observed by many who later nicknamed it a jack-o-lantern.
Perhaps it was reading Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market that drew me in, for it is so that many of the topics that interested me as a teenager were happened upon in connection to others I had read about. Rossetti’s brother Dante was a founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of English artists whose works are recognized by millions not only from the paintings themselves, but also facsimile in the form of greeting cards and other commercial products.
The Pre-Raphaelites, as they were later known, were not fond of the academic style of art taught at the time, which focused on strong light matched by dark shadows. Instead they favored bright color and great attention to detail. My eyes marveled at the massive amount of fine line and brilliant color; it would take days, weeks to “read” such paintings and drink it all in, for consuming it was what one did.
It is difficult to decide which painting could possibly be the best, for the group deliberately avoided any sort of dogma that would inhibit the individual artistic interpretation of its members. Later growing from the original three—Rossetti, Millais and William Holman Hunt—to seven, with the addition of Rossetti’s brother William, James Collinson, Frederic George Stephens and Thomas Woolner, the group inspired such artists as Edward Burne-Jones and John William Waterhouse.
Nevertheless, there were some I particularly favored, including Burne-Jones’s The Beguiling of Merlin, given my lifelong affinity for the wizard. Spotting the image on a book cover led me to being a reader of the novelist A.S. Byatt, and I made the connection after reading Possession (which itself is filled with an abundant amount of detail), that just as reading an entire book gives you a greater appreciation of its story, so too could the taking in of a painting. I recall learning in class about how an image is meant to draw your eye to one portion, a center of interest. For me, however, that point alone left the painting’s story untold; the narrative unfolded as more of the canvas was explored.
Archangel Michael Defeats Satan ~ Guido Reni, c. 1630-1635. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons ~ click for more detail.
To appreciate the culture forged by descendants of the famous Viking ‘Northmen’ requires more than digging backward into a bygone millennium; it also demands a journey into the very heart of the Norman spirit. As I delved deeper into the life and society that shaped William FitzOsbern, my attempt to grasp that understanding brought another: Such a voyage would not find history recorded only in charters and chronicles but also inscribed on the landscape itself. As a new prince on the northwestern edge of Frankish Gaul, FitzOsbern’s ancestor Rollo reportedly made a declaration of land and devotion to St. Michael the Archangel and expressed desire that the warrior angel might “deign to rally to my aid.”
Indeed, the ferocity, faith, and ambition of Rollo’s descendants was never divided into the spiritual and the temporal: as a very real force in the daily lives of the Norman elite, God showed His favor with victory and success. As a guardian of that pathway, the Archangel was venerated at sites across the Norman world – and far beyond it —a celestial path their own conquering footsteps would one day trace.
This seven-part series explores one of the most striking manifestations of this devotion: the legendary “Sword of St. Michael,” a spiritual and geographic alignment of seven monasteries dedicated to the Archangel that stretches from the rocky fringe of Ireland to the holy shores of the Levant. Today we begin at the sword’s hilt, where it meets the sea on a desolate rock in the North Atlantic.
Food as a means of communication has brought people together for millennia, offering a rich language of exchange. What was served to facilitate such linguistics spoke not only to what could be gathered or hunted—but also to trade networks, cooking traditions, status, and spiritual observance. In eleventh-century Normandy, religious piety echoed profoundly at the table, even amongst the highest elites.
Saffron (an ingredient in the dish discussed below) in history: A detail from the “Saffron Gatherers” fresco of the “Xeste 3” building in the Bronze Age settlement of Akrotiri on the Aegean island of Santorini. It is one of many depicting saffron preserved at the excavation site.
Rabbit, for instance, gained the popularity in Normandy it did not in England, and by the sixth century, French monasteries, which did not consider the critters as meat, permitted its consumption on meatless days. Yet, as noted by English Heritage, rabbits were a high-prestige foodstuff, so the eleventh-century table of a magnate such as William FitzOsbern could communicate its elite status while simultaneously observing its piety.
William the Conqueror lifts his helmet to be recognized on the battlefield of Hastings. Image courtesy Wiki Commons. (Click for further information.)
So, as I mentioned here not too long ago, I had been in the process of writing a historical fiction novel set in the England of 1066, when in walked William FitzOsbern, cousin and long-term (and exceedingly important) advisor to the duke who was to become king of England, known to history as William the Conqueror.
I may have eyed him suspiciously, but he was having none of it, reminding me that a stage filled only with English actors cannot truly tell the story of the Conquest.
“Well…” I began lamely.
His confident air stripped away my reluctance. “You need us.”
Pragmatic. That was my first adjective for William FitzOsbern, and I was later to find it fit. In order to accomplish what he did, there wasn’t space for extraneous actions, especially given the challenges that sprung up in the wake of the first wave of conquest.
But before I got to that phase, I began looking into this man, whose name I had read before, but of whom I knew very little. At a certain point I decided to employ my go-to action: grab his biography.
Ask a modern student about eleventh-century Normans, and he or she is likely to call up William the Conqueror, even if that same student knows very little else about him, such as his long planning of the invasion and the justifications he cited for his entitlement to the English throne. Long before all this, however, his grandfather Richard II paved the way forward for the unprecedented expansion of Norman power that William would one day effect.
Richard II, “the Good,” Genealogical Chronicle of the English Kings. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons. (Click for further detail.)
When Richard succeeded Count Richard I the Fearless, he “inherited” a treaty his father has been party to in 991, along with Æthelred II (the Unready) of England. Viking raiders at the time had not only returned but had also been plundering English lands with greater ferocity, afterward finding shelter in Norman ports, resulting in conflict between the two lands. The subsequent treaty required, in part, the elder Richard to cease and desist providing succor to Æthelred’s enemies.
Rollo, as depicted in the 13th century. Image courtesy Wiki Commons. (Click for further detail.)
Many of you have heard of the famous Viking Rollo (c. 835/870 – 933), but if you’re anything like me, you’re not exactly sure when you first heard of him. He just seemed to always have been around…not unlike the rest of those constantly invading Vikings themselves! I also remember being surprised to learn – I think I might have been in high school – not only that his days didn’t go back quite as far as I had imagined, but that he was also an ancestor to William the Conqueror. At that time, you see, I hadn’t quite made the connection of the Normans being descended from Vikings.
More recently, however, from sheer curiosity, and perhaps answering to some whispers through time, I began to look into the specifics of the familial connections. The family trees on the inside front covers of books such as biographies and non-fiction history have never been very useful to me as I find them rather confusing. Typically, as I read a book, I keep notes on the side and whenever someone is mentioned as being “the mother of So-and-So” or “Such-and-Such took her as his wife and she bore him a son, What’s-His-Name,” I create my own outline. As it happens, in so doing I also tend to absorb their stories into my being, an involuntary process that often results in seeing beyond people’s status as mere distant historical figures, allowing me to witness their humanity. Part of this is learning of their likes and dislikes, considerations, refusals, where they came from, snippets of their lives, and so on. Sometimes we are lucky enough to see in there the sides of them we can relate to, even if the scenarios or their ambitions don’t quite match ours.
Les Normands vont traverser la Manche avec leurs chevaux en bateau – Normans crossing the English Channel with their horses. Bayeux Tapestry image courtesy Wiki Commons (click for further info).
In the 1066 histories currently passed down in modern education, the name of William FitzOsbern should be known more than it is. As several historians have pointed out, however, the figure of King Harold Godwinson himself remains unknown to many. Even William I becomes more recognizable only when the appellation William the Conqueror is applied.
Mt. Susitna as viewed from the Tony Knowles Trail in Anchorage, Alaska, looking across Cook Inlet. When I’m down in Anchorage, I love to go to Point Woronzof to breathe in the salty air and look across the inlet at Sleeping Lady. Image courtesy Sanchom via Wikimedia Commons ~ Click for further deails.
Good morning ~ Good evening, All, and may your weekend have been simply wonderful.
Today I am not writing very much, as I have a quick couple of updates to provide, one in particular I’m very excited about and hope you will be too.
The first one is really just some housekeeping and maybe not all that exciting but pertains to the presentation of the blog. It’s kind of a disaster. Tags are so wrong, images that I needed to replace never got replaced, my tabs are a hot mess, and on we go. So, with the exception of a couple of recent posts, I took everything offline and will be cleaning them up and putting them back online one by one. And as much as I love my Sleeping Lady (Mount Susitna) image at the top of the blog’s main page, it may also be time to change up the look a tad so it will be super refreshed!
I think the dates will remain the same, though I’m not entirely sure about that. I’m also unclear whether, when I put posts back online, if this will trigger notifications. I will try my level best to figure out a way to not let that happen, but if the system sends them, I humbly ask you to bear with me. I do promise that it will only be a temporary thing. If I have to slow down so people aren’t getting multiple notifications per day, I can do that too.
Having gotten that out of the way…
The coat of arms of William FitzOsbern, based on the design found on the stained glass window at Winchester Great Hall. Image courtesy Jakednb via Wikimedia Commons. (Click for further information.)
Back in March I finally got fired up to return to a historical fiction novel I had previously begun – it’s set in 1066 and involves English main characters. I was working so diligently on it when in stepped a high-ranking Norman – you know, kind of like he owned the place.
“You are rather perpetuating a stereotype,” I retorted.
“You know the English cannot make this novel work without us Normans.”
He kind of had a point. Very pragmatic.
In the interest of being completely honest, I’ve never really liked William the Conqueror, and by extension never had much love for the Normans in general. That didn’t actually change just because William FitzOsbern, one of WTC’s most important lieutenants, suddenly waltzed into my novel. But the reality was, he was correct: an entirely English cast could not tell this story. I needed Normans, and I needed him.
So, I started researching FitzOsbern and it became quite the ride. Of course, Harold and WTC’s names are bigger than his, but he was still pretty important. I’ll get into that in some more detail at a later date, but suffice to say, he became a fixture in my days. And a funny thing happened…very quickly it became extremely important for me to represent him authentically. Of course, I needed to represent all my other characters with the same amount of realism, it’s just that he stood out because he was a real historical figure. And, you know, I really didn’t want the cousin to the Conqueror pointing fingers at any misstep on my part.
“It’s kind of strange how his presence evolved,” I recently told Paula Lofting. Paula has been a great supporter of my writing endeavors and was just the person to talk to regarding this. “I was a bit miffed at first, especially having to admit he was right. And it went up and down at how much I actually even liked him. I didn’t want to like him.”
That’s just the thing, though, you know? When historical people show you who they are, almost always it’s never what you thought. And because I had to dig deeper, in more than a few sources having to tease him out, I started to see sides of him I really didn’t expect – and my own responses surprised me as well.
Stay tuned!
Attributed arms of William FitzOsbern, 1st Earl of Hereford. Image courtesy of Llywelyn2000 via Wikimedia Commons. Click for further information.
See Lisl Madeleine’s William FitzOsbern, Earl of Hereford FB page here for updates and other bits about 1066 history, philosophy, and poetry (including pre- and post-1066). Follow and like for notifications and thank you so much for reading!
"Summer is the Season of Inferior Sledding" -- Inuit Proverb. Martha Ann Kennedy's Blog, Copyright 2013-into perpetuity, all rights reserved to the author/artist.
.jpg)
.jpg)
before the second sleep 
