Grape Migrations

By Heidi Noroozy

 

For years I’ve been telling friends this story (usually over a nice glass of red wine): Gaspard de Stérimberg was a thirteenth-century crusader who took a wrong turn on his way to the Holy Land. He ended up in Shiraz, the Persian city known for its blooming gardens and lyrical poets—and for its wine. Gaspard took such a liking to the local vintage that he slipped a few grapevine cuttings into his saddlebags before returning to his home in France. There, he planted the cuttings, turned the mature fruit into a full-bodied wine, and named his new vintage after the city of its origin. A few centuries later, the Shiraz grapes went wandering again and put down roots in Australia.

Nice story, right? Too bad it’s not true.

In 1998, Dr. Carol Meredith, a researcher with the University of California at Davis, tested the DNA of grapevines and determined that the Shiraz variety is native to France and did not originate in Persia at all. Other details of the story don’t hold up under scrutiny, either. Chevalier Gaspard was a real knight, but there’s no evidence that he ever left France, let alone traveled to Jerusalem or Shiraz (which was never the target of a crusade anyway). Our valiant knight had joined the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathar heretics in the French region of Languedoc.

In another version of the story, the Greeks brought the Shiraz grape to France in 600 BC and planted the vines in their colony of Massilia (present-day Marseilles). Centuries later, Gaspard de Stérimberg encountered the vintage in this region on his way home from the crusades and transplanted some cuttings to his Rhône vineyards. There, he recovered from terrible wounds sustained in the fighting and lived out his days as a hermit—and presumably a gentleman vintner.

This story is more believable, for although Marseilles isn’t in the Languedoc region, it’s not far from it and the grapes could have easily migrated over the course of nearly two millennia. And the city of Shiraz has been part of a major wine-growing region for thousands of years—until the Islamic Republic banned alcohol in the 1980s. But the stickler this time is this: the wine grapes grown in Shiraz were white, while the present-day Shiraz grapes of Australia and France (where they’re called Syrah) are red.

So what is the true story? I doubt anyone will ever sort out these wrinkles in history. But the Shiraz mystery aside, Persia is likely the place where wine originated. Archaeologists uncovered the earliest evidence of winemaking in the residue clinging to 7,000-year-old pottery shards at Hajji Firuz Tepe, an excavation site in the Zagros Mountains of northwestern Iran.

Iranians have another story about the origins of wine: The legendary King Jamshid was fond of grapes. He filled his castle cellars with the fruit so that it could be brought to his table whenever he felt a craving coming on. One day, he sent two servants to fetch a basket of grapes, and when they failed to return, he went to see what was taking so long. He found the men collapsed on the floor, overcome by the fumes from a barrel of bruised and fermenting grapes. The king decided the grapes had turned poisonous and warned everyone to avoid them.

Later, one of Jamshid’s mistresses was feeling sad and neglected and decided to kill herself by drinking the liquid left by the poisoned grapes. But instead of dying, the woman soon felt elated and climbed the cellar steps singing and dancing. The king realized that this miraculous juice had the power to turn despair into joy. It’s probably a good thing he never asked her how she felt the next morning when the hangover hit, or perhaps we wouldn’t have wine today.

This story brings us back to Shiraz because Jamshid is believed to have lived in the site that later became Persepolis, the palace of the Achaemenid rulers, which lies just an hour’s drive from present-day Shiraz. Even today, Iranians refer to Persepolis as “Takht-e Jamshid,” which means the “Throne of Jamshid.”

Science may have proven that the Shiraz grape has a French accent rather than a Persian one and that winemaking originated in the Zagros Mountains and not in King Jamshid’s cellar, but I still prefer the legends. I’ll happily lift a glass to old Gaspard, the French hermit, as I picture him wandering among his vines, or to King Jamshid on his throne at Persepolis, sipping a white Shiraz.

Salamati!

Off the Beaten Track: Mixed-Up Luggage Leads to Mystery and Mayhem

We’re delighted to welcome three guests this week. Mystery novelists Diane Vallere (http://www.dianevallere.com/), Kendel Lynn (http://kendellynn.com/), and Gigi Pandian (http://gigipandian.com/)are the three authors of OTHER PEOPLE’S BAGGAGE (http://henerypress.com/books/other-peoples-baggage/), a new collection of three interconnected mystery novellas (Henery Press, December 2012).

Diane is the author of PILLOW STALK: A Mad for Mod Mystery, which Library Journal called “a tremendously fun homage.” Kendel is the author of BOARD STIFF, an Elliott Lisbon mystery, which won the Zola Award for Mystery/Suspense, coming April 2013. Gigi is the author of ARTIFACT: A Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt Mystery, named one of the Best Books of 2012 by Suspense Magazine.

Thanks for having us! It’s very fun to be here at Novel Adventurers, because the thing that connects our mystery novellas is travel. The three main characters of our mystery series are on their way out of town when a storm and resulting computer glitch swaps their luggage. We thought we’d each share an interesting tidbit about the settings in our travel-themed collection that planted the seed for our individual stories.

DIANE: Carmel-by-the-Sea, California

Because my Mad for Mod series features a character who has modeled her life, style, and business after Doris Day movies, when it came time to send her out of town, it was natural to send her to Carmel-by-the-Sea, the town where Doris Day resides. (Sorry the photo isn’t from the interior of her hotel; I was too afraid of looking like a tourist had she popped around a corner!) I’ve always thought a tourist town would make a good backdrop for a mystery, because it would be easy for criminals to go unnoticed. Once I decided to make this a prequel, I knew I could play around with the breakup that’s hinted at in Pillow Stalk, and lay the groundwork for the life Madison is about to begin in Dallas, Texas.

KENDEL: Little Oak, Texas

As a recent Texas transplant, the volume of shopping and restaurants in Dallas truly astounded me. It’s a dazzling mecca of glitzy shops, posh boutiques, and mega gallerias, plus a zillion eateries, from saucy BBQ joints and smoky steakhouses to buttery bistros and creamy guacamole on every patio. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I’m from LA, so that’s saying something. But drive just outside the metro area, in any direction, and flat lands stretch out for miles. Ranch fencing follows the landscape and round hay bales line up in rows. Always in the distance, a cluster of small houses sits tucked behind a copse of lonely trees. It’s calm and glorious and I always wondered what life might be like for those folks, living in the big state of Texas, yet in a land all their own. And naturally, I just assumed someone would end up dead.

GIGI: Edinburgh, Scotland

I spent some time in Scotland as a kid, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival made a big impression on me. The event is the largest performing arts festival in the world, because everyone is welcome to perform (as long as you can afford the venue and registration fees). Most of the shows are theater and comedy acts, but other performing arts are featured as well. Because the shows don’t go through a selection committee, the quality may vary; but lots of them are fantastic, and many famous actors have performed there in the past, including Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson, Stephen Fry, and members of Monty Python. Edinburgh is such a mysterious city to begin with—it has an old castle looming above the center of the city and small medieval alleyways branching off the most modern of streets. With all the added crowds and commotion during the festival, I thought it would be a great backdrop for a locked-room mystery.

We came up with the idea for this collection of novellas after we’d been critique partners, reading each other’s draft mystery novels and learning that we liked each other’s work. It occurred to us that our characters would get along, and also that if a reader liked one of our mysteries, they’d probably like the other two. But since our characters are based in different cities, how could their lives intersect? When we realized they all had good reasons to have the same vintage suitcase, the rest fell into place. It was a lot of fun to weave the contents of their mixed-up suitcases into each of our stories.

The Power of One, the Ripple to Many

By Supriya Savkoor

During World War II, when the Allied powers wanted information about their enemies, they had to get creative about their research. After all, the Axis powers were savvy enough not to blare national headlines about the toll the war was taking on its resources or its troops. So the Allieds had to follow other clues. Instead of reading Germany’s big metro papers, for example, American intelligence workers read small-town, lower-circulation community papers. Buried below those big stories about war “triumphs” and patriotism, were the local obits and statistics such as how many factories were having to close down. Any tiny but instrumental indicators of what was really happening in the country. Neat way to spot a trend, right?

I’ve been thinking about that research strategy a lot lately, whenever I read or hear the news, in fact. If you follow the mainstream news, the world is a real mess, and getting worse by the second. As a former journalist, though, I know the worse the calamity, the bigger (and consequently the better) the story. And that’s why the news puts so many of us off. Our gut instinct might be to tune it out or turn it off. But when we do that, doesn’t what’s around us seem not quite so bad? At least, it does to me.

In fact, much seems to be moving in a positive direction these days. Wars ending, affluence growing, opportunities rising, innovation increasing. Most of all, individuals who are inspiring the rest of us by making a difference. I know it's not all good, but it's not all that bad, is it? Am I looking through rose-colored glasses, or perhaps basing it on where I live, perhaps anecdotal stuff from people around me?

In fact, everywhere I look these days, there's a lot of good stuff happening. There’s the couple who lives near me that organize community events around the country that gets entire neighborhoods to come together to package thousands of meals for the hungry—and in a matter of just hours. (We’ll be sharing their incredible story here on our blog later this month.) Another husband-and-wife team, both dentists, spend holidays in their native Vietnam, providing free dental care to those who need it most, including performing surgery on children born with birth defects such as cleft lips and palates. The woman in my community living with muscular dystrophy and who, despite having to wear leg braces to be able to get around, volunteers full time at our county’s only free clinic for the poor, mobilizing resources and other volunteers to keep the clinic going; she does all this with much humor and good cheer. Our friend and contributor, Lanice Jones, a physician who serves the refugee population in her own Canadian community then spends her vacations in rural outposts such as Laos, Sudan, and Pakistan, providing medical care to the underserved and teaching physicians at local hospitals.

These are some of the many heroes I’m so lucky to know.

I also keep stumbling across little news stories that keep me optimistic about the future. The high school kid who researched cancer in her spare time and may have come across a potential cure. The 14-year-old who came up with one of the most innovative new techniques to clean water. The young Stanford graduate who designed a cool series of toys and books to get girls interested in engineering. The teenager from Sierra Leone who created batteries to power his community using material he found from, no kidding, the garbage can. What about Uruguay’s president, the world’s “poorest” leader, designated as such because he gives most of his income to the poor and to small entrepreneurs?

Everywhere I look, things are looking up. Of course, I might have missed some of these “little” stories if it weren’t for folks cross-posting them on Facebook and social media outlets such as Upworthy or the Good News Network, sites that highlight positive, progressive news. So cool how the hard work and brilliant ideas of one individual today can ripple out to inspire the rest of us, isn’t it?

Keep the ripple going. Who inspires you in your community? Do share!

Seeing the Light

By Alli Sinclair

I’m a glass is half full kinda gal and I like to believe there are more good people in the world than bad. Travelling has always been a great way to test my theory and I’m happy to report, my theory of more good people than bad holds up. I’ve met many, many people willing to give up their time and comforts to go and make a difference in people’s lives, especially in developing countries.

If you asked me to name the most inspirational person who has done wonderful volunteer work and changed the health and welfare of entire communities, there would be no argument--Frederick “Fred” Cossom Hollows wins, hands down.

Born in New Zealand in 1929, Fred Hollows studied ophthalmology and moved to Australia in 1965 where he became an associate professor of ophthalmology at the University of New South Wales. His interest in charity work had been sparked while studying in New Zealand, and when he moved to Australia, Fred travelled to outback Australia and worked with Aboriginal communities. During his time there, he grew concerned about the high incidence of eye disorders amongst the Aboriginal people, especially trachoma (a condition that can be treated with medication).

Fred, his mother, and others set up an Aboriginal Medical Service in Redfern, a suburb of Sydney with a high indigenous population. From this success, they set up similar clinics throughout Australia. He organized the Royal Australian College of Ophthalmologists to establish the National Trachoma and Eye Health Program. Between 1976-1978, Fred and his team visited more than 460 Aboriginal communities, treating 62,000 people. As a result, 27,000 people were treated for trachoma, and another 1,000 received necessary eye operations.

Fred travelled to Nepal in 1985, Eritrea in 1987, and Vietnam in 1991, training local technicians to perform life-changing surgery in remote regions. He organized intraocular lens laboratories in Nepal and Eritrea to provide lenses at cost (around USD9).

Many of the people in these countries suffered blindness that could have been fixed with simple operations. They couldn’t work because they couldn’t see, and it was impossible to travel to large cities to obtain the help they so desperately needed. So Fred and his team visited them and found many of the patients had cataracts that could be removed and the patient could quickly return to work and earn money for their familes. Eye infections were cleared up with short doses of antibiotics and within a short while, Fred and his team changed the lives of many people, and in a lot of cases, entire communities.

In 1992 the Fred Hollows Foundation was formed but unfortunately, only five months later, Fred passed away from cancer. But thanks to the work of his wife, Gabi, and friends and family, the Fred Hollows Foundation has grown to the point where they now work in over 40 countries around the world including the continents of Asia, Australia, Europe, and Africa.

To give an example of the work they do, in 2011 (taken from the Fred Hollows Website), people working with his foundation have:

* performed eye operations on 282,714 people

* supported training for 10,757 medical and support staff

* examined 1,604,802 people

* delivered $3.38 million of medical equipment

* Built or upgraded 50 eye health facilities

This man’s kindness, knowledge, and undying belief that everyone has a right to health has changed countless lives and communities for the better. Even now, years after his passing, Fred’s team are and giving millions of people the chance to see the world and their loved ones and gain back their independence and self-esteem.

The world could do with more people like Fred and Gabi Hollows. I can only imagine…

If you want to find out more about The Fred Hollows Foundation or get involved, please click here:

http://www.hollows.org.au/our-work

Lives of Conscience—A Family Tradition

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
by Elisabeth Fuchs-Kittowski

By Heidi Noroozy

Activism, our topic this week, is something of a tradition in my family. Our clan is filled with people who’ve dedicated their lives to social change, fighting oppression, and improving the lot of those less fortunate, sometimes sacrificing everything for their ideals. But while others may want to put a label on this kind of life journey, for us it’s all about following your conscience.

Our family tradition began with my grandfather, Emil Fuchs, a German theologian who became politicized as a young man while working with the desperately poor and dispossessed in the slums of London. He later joined the religious socialists, a group of faith-based activities who emphasized the social justice tradition in Christianity and its role in bringing about social change. I’ve been told that this philosophy, including some of my grandfather’s writings, formed the basis for liberation theology, which has swept Latin America in recent decades and interprets Christian faith as a movement to liberate the poor and oppressed.

During the 1930’s, when fascism rose in Germany, Emil held strong opinions about the evils of Nazism and didn’t hesitate to express them publicly. In 1933, he was dismissed from his professorship at Kiel University, imprisoned, and later kept under Gestapo surveillance.

After the war, when he chose to live in East Germany, my grandfather was equally outspoken about what he considered wrong-footed policies adopted by the new socialist state. Unlike the Nazis, though, the Communists listened to him, and he was able to influence some of their decisions. Due to his efforts, Christian churches were tolerated, if not supported, by the atheist regime.

Emil’s kids followed their father’s example, although without the Christian faith. My mother’s three older siblings, Gerhard, Elisabeth, and Klaus, all joined the Communist underground during their student days.

Elisabeth, an artist, worked with an underground cell and used her talents to create anti-fascist, political posters. One of her drawings depicts the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, symbolizing the ominous spread of fascism in the form of the Nazi party. She died in 1938 under circumstances that are still debated within our family. The facts are sparse: On a trip home from a secret meeting, she fell, jumped, or was pushed off a moving train. Officially, her death was ruled a suicide, and many of my relatives accept that conclusion. My mother never believed it, partly on the grounds that Elisabeth could surely have found a less horrible way to end her life.

A cousin and I once speculated on a version of the story that accommodates both sides. Perhaps she knew the Gestapo was on to her and threw herself off the train to avoid arrest. Some years earlier, she’d spent time in a Nazi prison and had seen first hand the brutal methods employed to extract information from prisoners. Death might have seemed a more acceptable alternative.

I blogged about my Uncle Klaus earlier this year, (you can read the post here). Most of the world knows him as Klaus Fuchs, Atom Spy, because he passed secret information about the American and British work on the first atom bomb to the Russians while working on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, New Mexico. His actions were prompted by conscience not greed—he felt that if both superpowers had the bomb, fear of mutually assured destruction would prevent them from using it.

My mother, Christel, the youngest of the Fuchs siblings, never joined the Communists, although her political leanings were always far to the left. When I was a child during the Vietnam War, she’d drag me to antiwar demonstrations, especially the silent vigils organized by the Quakers on Boston Common. What I remember most is being bored out of my skull as we walked, stopped, and walked again around the square. At ten, I had only a vague notion of what it was all about.

Decades later, she talked me into joining her on a march from Washington to Moscow to protest the nuclear arms race. No, not that Washington nor that Moscow, but two towns with the same names in Vermont. The march covered a distance of about 40 miles and took three days. We camped in fields at night and attended rallies along the way. I could barely walk in the end, my feet were so sore, but I’ll never forget the experience.

In her eighties, my mother spent five months in war-torn Nicaragua helping establish a book bindery in Matagalpa. She’d learned bookbinding as a young woman in Germany and later worked in my father’s bindery in Boston, so she had a skill she could contribute. As supporter of the Marxist Sandinistas, who had wrested control of the country from an oppressive dictator, she felt the new regime was the Nicaraguan people’s best hope for ending eternal cycles of poverty, and she wanted to help out.

It’s a tall order to live up to this family legacy. And I have to admit the strength of conviction that propelled my aunt and uncles to follow their consciences lost much of its power by the time it reached me. It’s true that I live in less extreme times—and does any of us know how we will react in such situations? I like to think I’d follow in my relatives’ footsteps and stand up for my beliefs. But the coward in me would rather find a safe hole somewhere and wait until the danger is over.

With luck, I’ll never have to find out which option I’d choose. But after growing up in this family of activists, with a lifetime of listening to their stories, I have a lot of respect for people who follow their hearts and do what they feel is right, no matter the consequences. A life of conscience is a life well lived.

Off the Beaten Track: The Lost World of Archangels

This week’s Off the Beaten Track contributor is the wonderful Christina Ashcroft. Christina Ashcroft is an ex-pat Brit who now lives in Western Australia with her husband and three children. She is owned by three cats who graciously allow her the occasional spare moment to write hot paranormal romance for Penguin/Berkley Heat. Christina also writes hot historical romances as Christina Phillips for Berkley Heat and Ellora’s Cave.

Thank you Alli and the lovely ladies here at Novel Adventurers for allowing me to take over your blog today!

There are so many places in the world that I’d love to explore – the Pyramids of Egypt, the Roman Colosseum, the Mayan ruins in the Yucatan Peninsula to name just a few. History has always fascinated me and I get ridiculously excited when archaeologists unearth another long buried secret from ancient times.

I’ve also always been fascinated by the myths and legends of a lost continent. What’s not to love about the idea of an ancient civilization that we know next to nothing about? This fascination was fed more than twenty years ago when I read something that pointed to evidence that the pyramids and Sphinx are thousands of years older than we’ve been led to believe.

But is it just a myth? Is it possible that back in the mists of time there really was a technologically advanced civilization, one that could rival our own today, one that had studied the movement of the heavens for countless generations and possessed an understanding of mathematics that we’ve believed was only relatively recently acquired?

And if such a culturally rich civilization did once exist, what happened to it?

When my awesome editor encouraged me to write a new series about sinfully sexy archangels, I was thrilled. I’d had this Alpha Archangel lurking in the back of my mind for years, being all moody and smokily silent and I was dying to discover his secrets. It took a while, but eventually he opened up enough so I could learn of the world of his wild, untroubled youth.

And I discovered that he had lived and loved millennia ago, when a vast and technologically advanced civilization had flourished.

I was delighted that, at last, I would get the chance to explore this mythical world that had haunted my imagination for so many years. I discovered this advanced civilization was inhabited not only by human scholars and archangels but also gods and goddesses and their numerous offspring. But it was a civilization that, for all their great learning and understanding of the celestial cycle of the heavens, carried a devastating burden.

This world of the Archangel Gabriel, where he met and fell in love with his soul mate, vanished long ago. But to me it’s as real as the world I see when I look outside my window. I guess that might seem strange, but to me it’s perfectly normal. I’ve lived inside my imagination ever since I can remember, and sometimes I must admit it’s hard to leave (As my poor family will attest, I am ace at burning dinner because I forgot I put something in the oven!!)

So while I have yet to visit all the wonderful places in the world that are on my never-ending To Do list, the worlds I explore with the help of my muse keep me on my virtual toes. There’s no knowing where I might end up next, such as a decadent sex club in a dodgy sector of the Sextans Galaxy!!!

Archangel of Mercy is the first book in a new series of fallen Archangels and the women who capture their hearts, coming from Berkley Heat on 4th December.

Destined to fall… destined to love

When Aurora Robinson attempts to open a rift between dimensions to embrace her true heritage, an arrogant Archangel is the only one who can save her from the jaws of hell. And while she owes Gabriel her life, she’s determined not to fall at his feet-despite the desire she feels whenever they’re together.

After his wings were brutally destroyed millennia ago, Gabriel has no compassion for humans like those who ruined him and betrayed the ones he loved. But when he inexplicably finds himself defying ancient protocols to rescue a woman from a fate worse than death, he is shocked by the searing attraction he feels for a mortal.

As the ancient forces that seek to punish Aurora for her actions close in, Gabriel offers the tempting woman protection at his private sanctuary. But as they both succumb to their desires, they discover an even deeper connection-one that threatens to consume them.

You can find Christina and her books at:  Christina Ashcroft’s Website, The Book Depository, Barnes & Noble

Amazon, Twitter, Facebook

And now for the giveaway! I have an e-copy of my erotic paranormal romance, FORETASTE OF FOREVER (w/a Christina Phillips) and some gorgeous Archangel swag to giveaway to one lucky commenter. Just leave a comment or let me know what’s your favourite place in the world (or the universe!) and why?