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WHEN MOORS RULED IN EUROPE

The title of this post as indicated above is also the title of a great documentary movie which should turn the heads around of most people who think they know European history.

To begin with black people ruled one of the greatest societies Europe has known. I said BLACK PEOPLE RULED ONE OF THE GREATEST SOCIETIES EUROPE HAS KNOWN.

Just as startling to most would be the fact that when Spain’s King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella on behalf of the Catholic religion burned all the books of the Arabic people they were burning all the books about themselves as well as the books about everybody else in the world. In both cases they burned books of science, philosophy, history. They burned everything. They sent Columbus to the new world to destroy anything anybody in the new world had written or created. Then they brought back the new world’s gold to smear on all the statues and what not in all the Catholic churches in the world.

Being at times quite interested in profit motive and such, I used to sit in the “Cathedral” in Segovia and think. One of the things I thought about was how I could possibly remove all the gold from that church and take it back to south america and help rebuild some of what the Spanish world had done to “latin” america, not to mention Utah. Wow! Could I come through with a torch and melt the gold off the statues? How many people would I have to bribe to turn their heads while I heisted, hefted and hauled ass?

If you have read my novel, NINE ELEVENS, or any the posts and promotional materials about it on this site, then you know that I talk much about al Andalus, the Andalusia that existed before the vicious Vassals of dark ages posing as Christian saviors of Europe invaded northern Spain with the intention of destroying southern Spain in the name of Christ and the Holy Roman Church – but mainly the church.

The truth about the books is that the more than seventy libraries in Andalusia established by the Islamic rulers is this. The Chinese print mills coming into existence were used to make those books. The first mill went to Baghdad. The second went to Cordoba the capitol of Andalusia.

WHAT WAS IN THOSE BOOKS?
Well, the people of al Andalus, Andalusia, more or less collected copies of all the books ever created in Europe. Then they translated them to Arabic. So, the knowledge of everything was essentially in Arabic libraries. They were created by the Islamic invaders, the Jews, and the original Christians of southern Spain.

But where did the black part of the Islamic people come from? The etymology of the word ‘moor’ means black.

So al Andalus had the vigor and courage of the black moors of north Africa, the math and science of the Arabic world, the embedded Christians, and the Jewish people who remind me of Minnesota because in Minnesota I saw that attitude of “you betcha, we can work with that.” And many of those jews in al Andalus were fantastic translators especially Sahrah, the mother of the novel’s voyager hero Phoenix. The Phoenician Jews, if you will, were the family that controlled the largest commercial shipping enterprise the world had known.

The more I learn about Spain the more I realize that most countries are several countries. In Germany are essentially the north and south and very different and glad of it. Spain is Galicia, Asturia, Pais Basco, Catalan, Murcia, Andalusia, Castillia and let us not forget the tiny little northern country of Andorra.

Perhaps this post will help make it clear how important it is that Alhambra stay important and still stands where once stood one of the greatest civilizations that ever existed.

Annnnnnd, well, how can I put this? Maybe …
Go stuff yourself, Columbus!

When Moors Ruled Europe

 

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Serendipitydooda or WayCool Phone Thing

This is about fixing the problem of seeing images well enough on a phone or fixing images because you know users of your site will have trouble seeing them well.

Know too that I as many … probably – are tardy in realizing it might be a good idea when designing a site to essentially design two versions: 1) for mobile, 2) for bigger screens.

More tardily, maybe it might NOT be a good idea.

From all that, you may gather I  took the road more taken, the NOT fork. Not wanting to lay the serious knitting down to write a mobile version of a web site, I installed a popular app, WPtouch. Things got worse. Images became way too big for mobile screen because they were not being resized by the system software. Worse yet, all the images now had a dull orange patina. All images began looking like poorly retouched versions of ancient western movies.

So, I scurried into the bowels of WordPressHostdom to deactivate WPtouch. As my screen pointer approached the ‘deactivate’ button my other eye caught glimpse of the word ‘update’. Yup! Yip! Yay! Want to install the update? Yep!

Back on the mobile, I started looking at my site again. WOW! Horrible patina gone gone. Images much better especially with a little screen rotation. But the letters on my digital poetry event flyer still looked like a tiny tiny tiny ant revolution.

And here come the important watermelons, y’all!
When I two-finger-spread the image: no expansion.
I one-finger-pressed and held the image: voila: a dialogue box.
“Open the image?” asked dialogue.
“Yes, please and thank you.”
The image opened and allowed me to two-finger spread it!
Eureka!

And really, an entire post that though big is not too big to perhaps stop someone from embedding a hurled phone in a wall or a painting on it.

Whoopee! The two finger spread lives to bring vigor to another generation.

And, darn, think of all the peeps who will find when and where and who about the poetry event they are supposed to be hosting. Not to mention the phones which will avoid an early death.

*end of post*

 

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NINE ELEVENS “SEQUEL”

First, understand that the novel NINE ELEVENS has nothing to do with the catastrophe of September 11, 2001. The novel’s title is a clue to how things work. Except for wrinkles in time, it is relatively normal to assume that the presence of sinister in life only exceeds by a smidgin the imagination of the monstrous holograph of whoever or whatever cooks life’s books.

The novel uses the sinister reality of date trails. The possibility of trails of the date 9/11 and its relation to catastrophic and meaningful events is the question I posed to the internet search engines simply because that possibility arose in my imagination.

As I dug into it I realized I was on to something. The trails began to materialize. One of the trails was of particular interest. Some of the dates in that trail appear in the book cover photo. For some of the dates it takes a moment for the importance of the date and its catastrophe to sink in.

For example, even Eduardo Galeano, author of Open Veins of Latin America (1971), was surprised when his book received an unexpected publicity boost in 2009 when Hugo Chávez, president of Venezuela, thrust a copy into the hands of the US president, Barack Obama, at a summit meeting in Trinidad. Obama read it. The date of 9/11/1973 is a date most people now easily recall as the date on which the legitimate government of Salvador Allende, socialist president of Chile, was overthrown and Allende died horribly. To the thousands who were “disappeared”, tortured, murdered, expelled from Chile that date was an important one.

“So, Anyway” as John Cleese entitled his memoir, the trail of dates was suddenly so provocative to me that every time I looked at one of the dates in the trail, another novel began to form in my head. A year later I was delightfully researching the story of al Andalus, having grown accustomed to delightful research studying the Maya people of Central America. As I say that my eyes come to rest on a book: Breaking the Maya Code by Michael D. Coe. I realize again what an incredible experience that was and how remarkable that a study of the Maya would lead me to make a couple of them the first to navigate to Europe from the Caribbean – with the aid of a 500 pound turtle who was headed that way “Anyway”. And wooden shoe know those two Maya lovers would discover, and become part of,  al Andalus, a society almost as advanced as their own.

Al Andalus was not fiction, friends. In al Andalus, the physical land of Andalusia, jews, arabs, and christians lived in harmony as they created the most extensive library the world had known. Cordoba received the second magnificent print mill exported by China. The first went to Baghdad. 70 libraries were sprinkled across southern Spain as al Andalus translated all the books of the world into arabic. Of course my fictional Maya heroes helped.

“So, Anyway,” what about any of that would provoke a sequel to my novel? Welllll!!! What would not!?!? Here is a clue. One of the things that has grown to interest me more is this. The Jewish people were almost exterminated. Most of them left Israel in the diaspora(?s) of the latter half of the first century CE before, during, and after having been nearly annihilated by the Romans. OK, I get that. But, how did they survive? THEY were the refugees of their time. Yet, they have not only survived. They have thrived. How? They have been scattered among the countries of the world. They maintained their integrity as a people. They developed the skills necessary to live among all kinds of societies and all kinds of people. OK, that is the simple answer. Yet, that answer just provokes more questions.

Some might suggest the first possibility is good government? Anyone really awake today in the USA, or Israel,  would be quick to reply to that suggestion with the suggestion that  governments do NOT resemble their people, especially in the USA and Israel. Others might suggest that the laughter generated by that suggestion would probably lead to laughter becoming the leading cause of death.

But, anyway, the question that provoked those suggestions was supposed to be the subject of this post. But, I have spent the equivalent of a couple of long posts just getting to the question.

So, the question becomes this. Can I answer the question adequately in another post this size or is it going to require a s-e-q-u-e-l????

Stay tuned!

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Mobile Works

I will be continually updating the site as I strive to make it state-of-the-art and better for mobile users. Users should have no concern as to the site’s integrity.

First understand that the financial side of processing orders is done by PayPal. I have been using PayPal on my sites for 15 years and they have never messed up. SO SHOP!

I am concerned however that the site looks good and behaves well for mobile users.
Without doubt, online shopping is growing like crazy.
Without doubt the volume of shopping done via mobile devices is growing even more crazily.

But most important is reliability and integrity.
YEAH, WE HAVE THAT!

*end of post*