Hi y'all.
Here's to you some inspirations 'On History and Writing'. Enjoy.
If you have any questions or comments, please email me.
Until next time - Majken xx
Cow shoes
A shoutout to ‘History from every day’ who posted this fun story:
“During the Prohibition Era in the US, the transportation, brewing and cultivation of alcohol was illegal. Some people brewed moonshine (a type of whiskey) in the middle of a forest or meadow and were often sought after by law enforcement. To reduce the chance of being tracked down and found, they would wear ‘cow shoes’ to cover their footprints.”
Art that makes a difference
Shine Tani is the name of the artist and founder of the Banana Hill Art Gallery. It’s an art community just north of Nairobi, Kenya and I learned about it when listening to the programme ‘My Art, My Community’, in which different artists tell how they’ve made a difference in their local communities.
Shine is a self-taught artist from a poor background. Years ago, he lived on the street, begging and performing as an acrobat with his brothers to survive. “I was thrown out of the family for becoming an artist,” Shine says. They didn’t know that one could make art and have money. So, becoming an artist was a problem. But Shine wanted to do something active about his situation - and about the situation of many of his fellow artists as well. And that is why he created the Banana Hill Art Gallery.
Nowadays, Shine represents over 100 artists from all over Africa. His work has also helped change the status of local art. For instance, more and more companies now have a separate budget for art when constructing new buildings, which is absolutely lovely.
You can look at some of the art yourself or even get a tour around the gallery. Cool stuff!
Ghost Story
The podcast Ghost Story is the story about…well, a ghost, you might think. However, it’s not. Or a big part of the story is not. Anyway, what happens is this: The host, Tristan Redman, tells us how he experienced something weird in his childhood house back in the day. A vase he’d left in one place of the room in the evening had moved to another part of the room when he woke up the following day. This happened several times. Later, he finds out that a tragic event once occurred in the house next door, and he wants to investigate whether his mysterious childhood experiences are connected to this. Perhaps a neighbour ghost was haunting his place?
Quite coincidentally, this neighbour's house used to be the home of his wife’s great-grandmother. Naomi Dancy was her name, and she ended her life most shockingly: she was shot through both of her eyes by her brother and next, he then took his own life by slitting his own throat. In his defence, he was a WWI veteran, and he suffered severely from PTSD.
However, while Redman unravels the story, several details point to an explanation other than the above. A picture begins to emerge, which says that this might not be a story of killing and suicide carried out by a mentally ill person after all, but that the culprit instead was the husband of the great-grandmother.
So what started as a ghost story has now turned into an old-case murder investigation. Also, it’s a story that shakes the foundations of Redman’s in-law family because his findings might reveal that they’ve inherited a false truth about what happened back then. Was the great-grandfather a murderer? And if he was, how does this re-writing of their family history affect them today? Not all of the family members were happy about the podcast, to say the least. Some of Redman’s in-laws starts questioning whether Redman is searching for a sensational story so that he can sell his podcast and make it attractive to the listeners. A potential conflict starts to arise - how does it all end?
My advice is that you listen to Ghost Story yourself. Hand on heart, this is one of the best productions I’ve listened to in this department, and I’ve heard quite a few podcasts in this genre through the years. And P.S., it’s not all blood and murder and family scepticism; there are also some quite beautiful (and some mysterious) moments weaved into the telling as well.
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‘On History and Writing’ is a blog post from me to you in which I share historically rooted real-life stories from around the world - told in exciting and creative ways - along with thoughts that circle the creative process of writing non-fiction texts. I post an email once every fortnight. If you're not already a subscriber, you are welcome to join the list. Thanks for reading! Majken xx
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