Vacation Pictures: Patricia, Edith, Leslie

Florence

By Patricia Winton

I’ve just returned from a visit to Florence, a city I know well. Some of the things I revisit from time to time are the more than a dozen murals of The Last Supper to be found there. The one above (top), by Andrea del Sarto, has been called the most beautiful painting in the world. Unlike in most others, including Leonardo da Vinci’s, here Judas sits at the right hand of Jesus instead of across the table.

As I continue to look at these murals, I’ve become obsessed with the tablecloths. In the del Sarto one, the cloth hangs in soft folds in a natural manner. Left (Mateo Rosselli) The cloth has been ironed with all the folds pointing out—an ironing impossibility. Center (Domenico Ghirlandaio—Ognisanti) Elaborate embroidery graces both ends of the tablecloth. Right (Andrea del Castagno) Here the slightly patterned tablecloth hangs rigid and narrow with no folds or pleats and provides an ample view of the diners’ feet.

My current work in progress gives a nod to The Last Suppers of Florence. You can keep up with my progress on my website www.PatriciaWinton.com or on my blog at Italian Intrigues

Ralighvallen, Central Suriname Nature Reserve

By Edith McClintock

It is the setting I loved most in my first mystery—the rainforest, the wildlife, and a place called Raleighvallen (Raleigh Falls) in the Central Suriname Nature Reserve.

I think my protagonist, Emma, expresses it best:

“Even with all the frustrations, I fell completely and irretrievably in love with the rainforest that week — the deep rich smells of dirt and decay and teeming, thriving life; the warm soft light of the rocky moss-covered paths hidden beneath layers of climbing and tumbling lianas and roots; soaring tree trunks wrapped in colorful bromeliads, orchids, moss, and lichens; and the canopy of leaves of every conceivable size and shape. Each day was a new adventure, new wildlife (some good, some terrifying) and ever changing forest, from the sunlit traveling palm groves to the dense, swampy marshes near the river; to the rocky, open forests with the towering trees the spider monkeys loved.” —Monkey Love and Murder 

Living in Raleighvallen was hot, itchy, and scary, but also spectacularly beautiful. Something I’m grateful to have experienced. You can experience it too, minus the mosquitos and deadly snakes. Pick up Monkey Love and Murder and enjoy a rainforest adventure from your couch. 

You can also follow my future travels on my blog A Wandering Tale or visit my author website. 


National Parks

By Leslie Hsu Oh 

Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve

I grew up rafting, hiking, spelunking, and riding on horseback through nearly all the national parks in the United States and Canada. On the forgiving banks of Lake McDonald in Glacier, I mourned the death of my mother and brother a few days after I turned 21. At the foot of Denali, beneath the gentle fall of snow, my husband got down on one knee and proposed. 

When my mother died, she asked my father to take me to Alaska and finish visiting all the parks. My father never made it to Alaska but my husband tried his best to complete her wish. While he drove me to Kenai Fjords and Denali many times in the seven years that we lived in Alaska, the other parks were much more difficult to visit due to logistics and finances. A few months before we had to leave Alaska, we captured this shot of the four of us, outfitted in crampons (including the two-year-old), traversing a crevice in Wrangell-St. Elias. I hang this photo in my living room because it encourages me to pursue my dreams no matter how hard it might seem and how many people tell you it’s impossible.

Whenever I feel overwhelmed by my life, like I’m being blown off course or things aren’t going my way, I find strength from the photograph of my daughter in Canyonlands. For my 40^th, my dear friend Keilah Frickson, found matching bracelets, each with an aphorism that spoke to us at the moment. This photo reminds me of mine: “Storms just make you stronger.” Stay tuned at www.lesliehsuoh.com. 

Canyonlands National Park

An Ancestral Gold Rush

By Edith McClintock

Addiction came on fast and strong this week. It started with the arrival on Saturday of my great uncle John S. McClintock’s 1939 book, Pioneer Days in the Black Hills. I’d known vaguely of his history: he’d joined the gold rush of 1876 in the South Dakota Black Hills, settled in Deadwood, and run a stagecoach line for twenty-five years.

But I didn’t know my uncle wrote a book until last month, or that my mom had an original copy. She mailed it to me and I dug in immediately, indulging in his first-hand tales of Wild Bill Hickok (“a man killer”) and Calamity Jane (drunk, kind, and wildly untruthful), stage-coach holdups, Indian scalpings (yes, bad, I know), gold mining, land grabs, confidence games, and corrupt and immoral city leaders. Pretty much what you’d expect of Deadwood in the late 1800s.

The book was fun, but it also stirred my appetite, which is where the trouble began. On Sunday morning, I logged onto Ancestry.com for a 14-day free trial, and have barely come up for air in days. I’d tried Ancestry.com about five years ago and found it a hard slog. But since then, my relatives have been quite industrious (as befits our Puritan heritage), starting with my Uncle Wayne who was kind enough to trace the McClintock line back to another John McClintock who arrived in Pennsylvania in the early 1700s, on back to Northern Ireland in the 1600s, then Scotland in the 1500s, where that line stops. For now.

The McClintocks, however, became irrelevant when I hit my own gold vein of sorts, this one spewing King Roberts of Scotland. I was so swamped with earls and kings and princesses, my arrogance turned heady. Until it turned complicated. Contested, in fact. My Virginia Alexanders were usurpers, fraudsters possibly, despite being American pre-revolutionary "aristocracy". George Washington was not enough for them. They wanted a king of Scotland. Or five. An emperor. Charlemagne himself. Embarrassed, I deleted the line.

Charlemagne, aka Charles the Great,
King of the Franks, Imperator Augustus,
and Holy Roman Emperor

But I didn’t like Charlemagne being ripped from my blood. My DNA screamed in protest. Plus, I’d notified my sister of our exalted status and she was already dialing Duchess Catherine to schedule drinks at Buckingham Palace. There had to be a way back to the crème de la 1% of history. In my denial, I went so far as to read the source material, to see if those naysayers (aka Wikipedia) could possibly be wrong. Instead it grew worse - my connection to the exalted Virginia Alexanders disappeared completely.

Could it be that my ancestor George Alexander was important for nothing more than accusing poor Mary Randall of witchcraft in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1691? Was that what my illustrious heritage had come to? Not even a Salem witch trial? Mary didn’t even get staked, just spent some time in jail, although I did get excited at the thought of a cursed bloodline. I decided if I couldn’t have a European emperor, it would have to be Jamestown or the Mayflower. American royalty. I had standards now, and I’d find those ancestors.

And so I set upon my quest to trace every direct line of my family (excluding my probably peasant relatives that hadn’t yet been documented by distant cousins and would involve actual research work). Line after line, branch upon branch, I crawled back with a click of my mouse, finding founding fathers of Virginia, Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and even North Carolina (and yes, a few slave owners, sorry).

But it wasn’t until the bottom of my tree, the family of my maternal great-grandmother – the Parks of Farmington, Missouri – that I hit a new vein. It spread across Virginia: Puritans, Jamestown settlers, a colonial governor, a founder of the Virginia Company. A veritable panoply of Revolutionary Patriots (as I will henceforth refer to my family). But even better, a connection to the House of Plantagenet and all those King Henry’s of England though the Waller family who arrived with William the Conqueror and fought at the Battle of Hastings. Not fool’s gold this time. I’m quite sure. Charlemagne all the way.

So there you have it. My golden heritage. The hardest part will be deciding what coat of arms to nail above my bed. And if it’s all wrong, blame my fifth cousins thrice removed for their poor research and ancestral avarice, because they did all of the work. And although I’m not done, I have to stop. I have to stop. I will stop. Before I find out none of it’s true.

For my Uncle Wayne, who passed away recently. He had the fever.

For more, visit my author website and/or personal blog, A Wandering Tale. Even better, order a copy of Monkey Love & Murder on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or the Book Depository (free shipping nearly anywhere in the world).

A Wandering Tale

By Edith McClintock

A few months back, I was in a five-week training course where we spent a day on Myers Brigg team-building exercises. For those of you who may not know, Myers Brigg is a psychological test that measures how people perceive the world and make decisions. My classmates and I had all taken the test online during our first week of training, but only the trainers knew the results (although a few of us, including me, did know our “types”).

For the last activity, the trainers asked four of us to leave the room. We waited in the hallway for about ten minutes while the rest of the group did something—we weren’t sure what. Then we were asked to come back in the room, sit in front of the group, and, together, plan a trip.

Backpacking, Florence, Italy, 1990s

So we did, contemplating oceans and mountains, deciding why not have both, riffing off each other, laughing, wandering down byways. Everything fun and flexible. Nothing too thought-out or well planned. We ended up sailing for Croatia, stopping at various sites along the Albanian coast, ending in the ancient city of Dubrovnik.

No one discussed booking tickets, passports, packing appropriately or reading travel guides.

The four of us, it turned out, all scored high on perceiving in the Myers Brigg judging/perceiving (J/P) typology. Before us, the trainers had asked a group of high judging classmates to also plan a trip, and the result was very different—obviously much more structured.

I’d like to note that judging does not connote judgmental, nor does it have implications for one’s level of organization. Judgers simply prefer a planned or orderly way of life. They like to have things settled and organized, to bring life under control as much as possible. Perceivers prefer a flexible and spontaneous way of life, to understand and adapt to the world rather than organize it. They like to stay open to new experiences and information.

So what does this mean for how I like to travel?

It means I don’t like to read guidebooks. I don’t like to have a plan or particularly know where I’m going. I like to wander, to explore the random and unknown. I like to get lost.

Priene, Turkey

You can imagine this doesn’t work well with strong judging types, which I learned on my first big trip—backpacking through Europe with my sister and two friends when I was nineteen. One friend showed up with a plan for the entire month of travel, a day-by-day, nearly hour-by-hour schedule—with listings of museums, restaurants, even our scheduled wake-up time each morning. Some of it was useful information, true, but the idea of a detailed breakfast schedule on vacation was incomprehensible to me—still is.

She was, I have no doubt, high on the Myers Brigg judging scale. Two of us were high perceivers. My sister is probably somewhere in between. We didn’t make it through the trip. There was yelling at the Naples train station. Three of us went to Germany with no plan. The other stayed in Italy.

That’s not to say I’m not perfectly happy if someone wants to sort out monotonous details for me—important sights to see, bus schedules, country crossings, visa details. That’s lovely, and I can do that too, if necessary. I can even enjoy it sometimes. What I can’t do, or hate to do, is travel with a schedule or stick to a plan when there’s a random brown sign on a map, maybe indicating a castle off the highway. Sure, it’s not what we had planned, we don’t know any details, possibly we don’t have enough gas or a spare tire, but why not take a look? I prefer to travel with someone who says, “Sure, why not?”

Bay near Dilek Peninsula National Park

We did this in Turkey when I was traveling with another friend. We’d rented a car to visit the ancient ruins of Priene, Miletus, and Didyma scattered along the Aegean coast. But we saw that brown sign and headed off the highway to follow a dirt road surrounded by cotton fields. After several turns, helpful pointing in the opposite direction from a farmer, followed by a long, rocky road through more fields, we found ourselves confronting an unimpressive ruin of a castle on a tiny hill.

There was a reason it wasn’t listed in our guidebook. We took a few pictures that will never be shown to the world, scurried back to the car at the first sign of a barking dog, and were soon back on the highway and en route to exploring the guidebook-approved sites, only two hours delayed.

Doğanbey, Turkey

We rushed through dusty, archeological sites under a baking sun, and by late afternoon, I thought we should try a new route back through a national park, maybe take a swim somewhere along the coast. We again followed winding roads, stopping first at a beautiful deserted bay, where the water was too shallow and warm, the bottom mucky, and we decided to find something better along the way. Unfortunately, there was no other way. The road ended.

We turned around, making several more attempts to find a road through the park, but instead we kept ending up near what looked like a ghost town nestled in the side of a small mountain. It was there we found a visitor center and learned there were no roads through the park from the south. Problem solved, we’d have to backtrack.

But in the meantime, why not explore the ghost town? We followed the narrow, cobbled roads, past crumbling stone houses snuggled next to restored, boutique cottages, catching glimpses of sparkling bay through gnarled olive trees and draping bougainvillea. Just cats and silence.

Doğanbey, Turkey

The town, we discovered, was renamed Doğanbey from Domatia after the 1923 population exchange when Turkey gained its independence and ethnic Greeks were pushed out of Turkey (as were Turks living on Greek islands). Doğanbey was left to crumble for many years—until the parks department acquired several buildings, and wealthy foreigners looking for seclusion bought others.

Today, it’s a perfect, sleepy village. And not in any guidebooks.

But that is essentially how I like to travel, whether it’s by car, foot, plane, or train.

Sometimes you get a dusty cotton field and boring ruins, sometimes a spectacular desert cave outside Petra with no toilet or running water, other times a visit to the Valley of the Kings with no tourists.

You never know. But that’s the fun. 

For more, you can visit my author website and/or personal blog, A Wandering Tale. Even better, order a copy of Monkey Love & Murder on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or the Book Depository (free shipping nearly anywhere in the world).

Book Giveaway: MONKEY LOVE AND MURDER

I’m giving away two autographed Monkey Love and Murder promotional books this week to a random selection of people (pulled from a hat?) who like my Facebook Author Page between now and January 31^st. The winners will be announced on Facebook on Feb. 1, 2013 and I’ll contact you for your address through Facebook. I’m open to shipping anywhere in the world.

Points system:

Like Facebook Page: 1 entry

Like Facebook Page & Amazon page: 2 entries

Like & tweet the contest: 2 entries

Like & promote the contest on your Facebook page: 2 entries

Like & promote the contest on your blog: 5 entries

Details: leave a comment here or Facebook and let me know if you’ve done anything beyond the Facebook like and I’ll add in your additional points.

Reviews for Monkey Love and Murder

Library Journal:

“This romantic-suspense debut is perfect for those seeking adventure mixed in with their mystery. McClintock creates a vivid jungle environment, a perfect venue for a closed-room mystery. Her characters run a little larger than life, making the story feel like a reality TV show. With a bit of Scott Smith’s tone, this would work for Hilary Davidson fans too.”

Kirkus Review:

“This debut from McClintock, who served in the Peace Corps and worked on a monkey research project, has the ring of authenticity, along with romance and a mystery that keeps you guessing.

You can download the first chapter of Monkey Love and Murder, or even better, order a copy from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or The Book Depository.