by Roseanna White | Feb 6, 2013 | 17th-19th Centuries, Remember When Wednesdays
You know what I love most about the Culper Ring? That I set about to learn about them a year and a half ago expecting high adventure, cloak and dagger, James Bond meets Jason Bourne kind of action. But what I found weren’t specially trained super-spies. They were people. Shopkeepers and farmers, fishermen and soldiers.
They were you. They were me.
They didn’t have special training. Heck, the code they developed was amateur at best and could have been cracked in about an hour had it ever been intercepted. But they had the safety of invisible ink…which one of the brothers Jay developed solely for fun before the Revolution began. While in England, no less. He wasn’t some chemist working at a top-secret facility, he was a basement scientist.
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| Haymaking by Winslow Homer, 1864 |
That’s what I love. That these were just people who didn’t believe in embracing limits. Who lived in a time when discovery meant going out and doing instead of sitting and typing in a command in Google. (Not to knock Google–I love me my search engines! LOL). That these folks got up each day, not with a mission from headquarters, but with a down-to-their-bones need to help their country. To serve their brothers. To obey their God.
Sometimes, I look around this world with its this-crisis and that-crisis…with its millions of people who say, “I deserve this”…with its millions more who shrug and say, “Nothing I can do.” I see the dangers, the crime, the hatred, the total lack of understanding between opposing views. And I think, We need the Culpers. We need someone willing to take a few risks to do what needs done.
And then I realize…they’re out there. The people who don’t just go out of their way to do the right thing, but who make it their way. Maybe they don’t know they’re a Culper. Maybe they don’t encode their work and send it to anyone in charge. But they’re there. People who get up every day and say, “Show me what to do today, God. Show me how to help.”
And to whom He replies, “Keep your eyes open. Someone’s going to cross your path soon…”
These are the people–like you, like me–who change lives. And who can, I truly believe, change the world.
Let’s change it with them. Let’s honor them for their quiet labor and start something together. Let’s form a not-so-secret society of do-gooders. Let’s make it our way.
Do you know someone worthy of being a Culper? Tell me their story, and I’ll send them one of these custom-made challenge coins. No, actually, I’ll send them two. One to keep as a token and reminder, and one to pass along to someone they know who fits the bill.
The story of the coin: The path is straight, and it’s narrow. But sometimes, looking at it as it leads toward the city on the hill, we see the undulation of the landscape and think it’s pretty twisty. Pretty difficult. But oh, how beautiful shines that place of rest! There’s only one way to get there, though.
“Nostra via est facere bona” … “Our Way is To Do Good.”
How? Well, that’s where the reverse of the coin comes in. Let’s embrace the spirit of the ash tree–a symbol of sacrifice, sensitivity, and higher awareness.
Let’s be Culpers.
by Roseanna White | Feb 4, 2013 | Word of the Week
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Peasants Brawling by Abraham Diepraam
(A ragtag collection, to be sure) 😉 |
I had the pleasure of going over edits on Whispers from the Shadows last week, and my editor and I got to laugh about some of the not-in-use-yet words that slipped through. =) A few were difficult…I still don’t know what I’m going to replace them with! But this was kinda funny.
I had my British character sneering at the very thought of a ragtag collection of farmers defeating the British (again, ahem) with their pitchforks and shovels. Only, as Kim pointed out, “ragtag” was still a decade away from use. Le sigh. Apparently this phrase in reverse, “tag-rag and bobtail” has been in use since 1650, but not switched around. That didn’t make its appearance (and again, paired with “bobtail”) until 1820.
I would have been left scratching my head over that “bobtail” part, gotta say, if the etymology dictionary didn’t specify that bobtail meant “cur.” Apparently tag and rag was also a popular phrase in the 16-17th centuries.
When we first went over these edits, I had no handy substitution for ragtag. But later that afternoon, if you heard me randomly shout out, “Motley!” that would be why. 😉 When next I spoke with my editor, I happily told her my epiphany, and she made the substitution. And motley has been around since the 14th century, with even its newest meaning of “fool” from 1600.
But in looking up motley to check it, I saw another “rag” entry! Apparently at the same time that ragtag was coming into use, rag-bag made its debut too–though apparently literally, at first. It took on the figurative meaning, however, by 1864.
And now I get to shift my thinking up to that very time period. =) All set, I am, for the world of 1865. Where ragtag is acceptable, if I have an occasion to use it, LOL.
by Roseanna White | Jan 31, 2013 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized
For Christmas, my little guy got some Legos. He’s got great fine motor coordination and will sit there and happily build some fun things. But last week, he just couldn’t get the pieces to stick together like he wanted. And from happy builder he turned into wailing child.
I, in my infinite wisdom, (ahem) said something along the lines of, “Rowyn baby, I know you worked hard, and I understand that it’s frustrating, but you don’t have to cry over it. It’s only blocks.”
My logic did little to help him, gotta say. But it sure resonated with me.
What do you think we look from heaven, toiling away at our lives? Building our castles, our kingdoms, our empires? All our grand plans, all our hard work, all our building and growing and planning? To us, it’s everything. It’s our world. It’s our focus.
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| A Lego building at NASA’s KSC |
But to God? I can imagine him watching us with a fond smile, just like I like watch Rowyn snap colored blocks together. I can imagine him sitting up a little straighter from time to time, opening his mouth to point out a better way to do something–but we, stubborn children that we are, shake our heads and say, “No. I want to do it myself.” I can imagine him sighing when that way doesn’t work and our little world we’ve built comes tumbling down.
And oh, that hurts us. How we cry and rant and rage and sometimes even rail at Him for not making it all better, conveniently forgetting that we refused his guidance because our vision was just so perfect.
That, I think, is when God gathers us into his arms and whispers in our ears, “You don’t have to cry over this, baby. I know you worked hard. I know it’s frustrating when things don’t turn out like they should. But they’re only blocks.”
Still, we can’t quite accept that, can we? Those blocks, those tools, are all we have to work with. And we so wanted to build that thing we imagined…
And so God pats our back and says, “I know. And I want you to build it too. Let’s do it together, okay? Let me help you fix this problem right here…”
That might require undoing some of the other work we’ve done to get at the flaw. And we might cry a little more when we see that. But then he’ll fill the hole, line up the pegs, shift it all away from treacherous ground, and hand it back over.
And sometimes, we might greet his aid with a new tantrum and toss it all aside. But most of the time, I hope, we learn from him. We see where we went wrong. And we smile up into our Father’s eyes and say, “Thanks, Abba.”
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| A Lego model of Trafalgar Square, London |
Because even if it’s only blocks, he still cares. He still claps when we create a masterpiece, he still feels our pain with us when it doesn’t turn out right. He still helps us perfect it, and then pats us on the back in paternal pride. Toiling at it is still something he wants us to do.
But let’s remember what it is we’re working with. And whose advice we should take while we’re building away. He’s got a better vantage point up there than we do here at eye-level. And a whole lot more experience with fitting those blocks together.
by Roseanna White | Jan 30, 2013 | 17th-19th Centuries, Remember When Wednesdays
This past week, I’ve been reading everything I can get my hands on about the Knights of the Golden Circle and Baltimore during the Civil War. It is, you see, time to dive into the third book in the Culper Ring Series. Yay! I’d read some overviews before, so I knew some of the far-flung basics about this group and their agenda.
The KGC is one of several groups called collectively “The Copperheads”–all Southern-sympathizing societies that, at the time of the Civil War, were bent on expanding slavery, putting a halt to what they termed the tyrannies of the North, and preserving the agriculture-based way of life that they felt was crucial to America. Most of them didn’t seem to want war or succession per se–but they saw the election of Abraham Lincoln as a final straw, a slap in the face, an injury that couldn’t go unanswered.
One of the best books I’ve found on the subject is the diary of John Surratt, called a co-conspirator of John Wilkes Booth. He tells a tale of plot upon plot, most of them foiled by incompetence (much to his frustration), but also because of spies everywhere they turn.
Roseanna is rubbing her hands together in delight. =)
As history goes, this is the stuff I just love to discover for the type of book I’m writing! No matter which side you’re looking at, North or South, they’re both telling the same story–one of spies among them, hindering plans and stealing goods, plotting destruction and betrayal.
And yet, it’s such a sad story in reality, and that’s something I also have to try to capture. My story will be set in Baltimore, which was a true house divided at the time. Maryland had always been considered a Southern state, but because of its proximity to Washington D.C., the Union held much of it in a state of Martial Law for most of the war, determined not to relinquish it. But so many of the politicians, police chiefs, judges, newspaper men were Confederate at heart. Surratt tells a tale of most of them belonging to the K.G.C. And every history book expounds on how violence regularly erupted in the city. So regularly, it was called “Mobtown.”
I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to be a part of all that turmoil at the time . . . but it’s the perfect backdrop for my story of espionage and betrayal, of broken bonds of blood and the sacrifice of love. Because this is me, you can be sure there’ll be a happy ending. But before they get there, my poor characters sure are going to have to run the gauntlet! (Mwa ha ha ha!)
by Roseanna White | Jan 28, 2013 | Word of the Week
Just for the record, I really hated to post something new today and push
my lovely book trailer down the page. 😉 But alas, it is Monday, so time to educate! Today we’re delving into the world of science.
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| Lavoisier, considered the father of modern chemistry |
Though I don’t recall when, I semi-recently tried to use the word
catalyst in my 1814-set
Whispers from the Shadows, in the way we today often use it–figuratively, meaning something to cause a change. But my wordy-sense (sorry, watching
Ultimate Spider-Man even now, and he keep gets a tingle, LOL) had me looking it up, and sure enough…
Catalyst is of course a chemistry word, which I knew. But I hadn’t recalled that it wasn’t used to mean a “substance which speeds a chemical reaction but itself remains unchanged” until 1902. So I certainly didn’t realize that the figurative sense didn’t come about until 1943.
What I really didn’t know was that it came from another, similar word, catalysis. This formation had the same meaning as catalyst since 1836, and before that meant “dissolution.”
Either way, not working in my book, LOL.
Hope everyone has a good week! My plans are to wrap up my main research for the third Culper book this week, and start writing next week–yay! =)
And in case you haven’t swung by lately, you may have missed my announcement that
Ring of Secrets is available from ChristianBook.com!
Click Here
And of course, don’t miss the aforementioned, totally giddyifing (sure, that’s a word) book trailer I got on Thursday!
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Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.