The Borgia Codex

 With Nancy J. Farrier

Remember those days studying history in school, when all the dates seemed to jumble in your mind along with the events ascribed to those dates? Maybe you wished history books came in comic book format so you only had to look at the pictures to understand. I know that was me. (I’m not sure my history teachers would believe I now write historical books and enjoy history.) 

Plate 1: 1st page of 
260 day calendar

In doing some research, I discovered the Borgia Codex, which is almost like a history tome in graphic novel format, except there are no words. You have to decipher the meaning from the pictures because there is no one left to interpret the accurate meanings. Still, this is a fascinating book and many interpretations have been made.

 

The Borgia Codex comes from Mexico before the time of Cortez and the Spanish invasion in the early 1500’s. The belief is that Aztec priests made this Codex to show happenings and predictions of what was to come. The Codex is not a book like we have with pages to turn but more of an accordion file that unfolds and shows the pictures inside.

 

Plate 10: Page 2 of Deities

Most of the Aztec and other cultures in that area had their writings destroyed by the Spanish invaders or by priests trying to rid a culture of paganism. Somehow the Borgia Codex made its way to Italy where it was acquired by Cardinal Stefano Borgia. Borgia left the Codex to the church upon his death in 1804. Thus, the name Borgia Codex. The original is still in the Vatican Library in Rome.

 

The Codex images are painted on a deer skin, prepared and covered with a foundation similar to gesso or stucco to show a better image. When unfolded, the Codex is 34 feet long. There are 39 sections and when folded up, the Codex is about 10.6 inches square. Each page is painted on both sides except for the end pages, so there are 76 pages of images. Most of the Codex remains in good shape even after all these years.

 

Plate 25: Five directions

Those who have studied the Codex believe it is tonalámatl, an almanac of destiny. It contains such information as when to plant and harvest, good omens, bad omens, medical prescriptions, and details about sacred places. Most of the deities are shown in detail.

 

There are other codices that are similar in style and time period, but they are rare. Codex Rios, also referred to as Codex Vaticanus A, is considered a “rosetta stone” for deciphering the Borgia Codex and others like it. Codex Rios is also found in the Vatican Library.

 

Plate 50: Page 2 of five
directional trees: North

The Borgia Codex gives historians a rare glimpse into civilizations that were nearly wiped out. The artwork in the Codex is phenomenal and the artistic value is immense. Almost all of the images for the Codex can be found and studied online.

Because I'm a history nerd and love to study the mesoamerican cultures, I have a copy of the contemporary book, Codex Borgia. It is fascintating with more information that I could possibly put in this post. The first plates show the calendar they used, followed by plates that show the 20 Deities from the 20 Names Days. Their calendar was a 260 day calendar and many of the predictions are based on that. 

Plate 71: Sun, moon
and 13 birds.

There are plates on marriage, life and death, supernatural beings, and nature. All of the symbols have a meaning and there is a chart in the book I have to show which symbols represent what day on the calendar. The drawings are intricate and detailed, difficult to take in and understand because the images have such meaning. 

 

Have you ever seen any of these images or heard of the Borgia Codex? How would you like learning history from an image? I’d love to hear from you. 

 

Today is my birthday. I would like to do a giveaway of one of my books. Please respond to this post by 11:50 PM PT today and I will put your name in a drawing. Please be sure to include your email so I can contact you. I will let you choose the book you want after you win. You can see the list of my books on my website. 

 

Nancy J Farrier is an award-winning, best-selling author who lives in Southern Arizona in the Sonoran Desert. She loves the Southwest with its interesting historical past. When Nancy isn’t writing, she loves to read, do needlecraft, play with her cats and dog, and spend time with her family. You can read more about Nancy and her books on her website: nancyjfarrier.com.

POPCORN!

By Mary Davis

Mmm! Popcorn! Can you smell it? Can you hear it? 

October is National Popcorn month. Americans consume 17 billion quarts of popcorn a year and rising, with the average American eating forty-three quarts. We grow and consume more popcorn than other countries.

Several pieces of popped corn are called popcorn, but a single piece is called a kernel. When a kernel is popped it is called a flake. Popcorn bursts into two general styles of flakes, mushrooms (ball shaped) and butterflies (irregular with several protruding “wings”).

Mushroom                 Butterfly

But where did popcorn come from? When did people fall in love with this tasty treat?

I think of popcorn as more of a modern commodity. That man engineered it from regular corn. But not so. People have been popping corn for millennia. Popcorn could be the world’s oldest snack food.

Pre-Columbian indigenous people domesticated the popcorn variety of maize by 5,000 BC.

The oldest known popcorn is 4,000-5,600 years old. In 1948 and 1950, ears of popcorn were discovered in the Bat Cave of west central New Mexico. In the coastal deserts of North Chile, popcorn found in burial grounds was so well preserved that it still popped after 1,000 years. So what is with our wimpy short expiration dates?

Over 2,500 years ago (or earlier according to the Bat Cave find), popcorn made its way to the American Southwest but wasn’t found growing east of the Mississippi until the early 1800s due to agricultural limitations.

In the 16th century, popcorn was integral in the Aztec culture. Besides a great food source, it was used in ceremonies, decorations for ceremonial headdresses, necklaces, and ornaments on the statues of their gods.

As colonists came to the New World, they adopted the indigenous people’s popular snack food. The natives likely brought it to the first Thanksgiving. Colonists also made popcorn with molasses creating something similar to kettle corn. Not only was popcorn made at home in the 1800s, but it was sold at general stores, at concession stands, at circuses, and at carnivals.

This one looks like a poodle!

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, popcorn was a popular breakfast food. Much like our cold cereals that we pour milk on, people used to pour milk or cream and sugar on their popcorn and eat it with a spoon. (I don’t think I would like this as I don’t care for soggy popcorn.) Also at this time, popcorn balls were a highly popular confection, given as gifts and used to decorate fireplace mantels, doorways, and Christmas trees. By the turn of the century, most cookbooks had at least one recipe.

With talking pictures solidifying the presence of movie theaters in the 1920s, a lot of theater owners refused to sell popcorn as it was too messy. But industrious popcorn venders sold popcorn in nearby shops and on the street to movie goers as they went into the theater. Soon some of the theaters installed popcorn popping machines. Theaters who didn’t went out of business.

They come in all shapes.

During the Great Depression, a bag of popcorn at five-to-ten-cents a bag was one of the few luxuries a down-and-out family could afford. While other businesses failed in the 1930s, popcorn boomed. Or should I say exploded?

With sugar being sent overseas during WWII, there wasn’t much of it left at home, and so three times more popcorn was eaten than before. When televisions became popular in the 1950s, people went to the theaters less and popcorn consumption dropped. A resurgence occurred when people started cooking popcorn at home and eating it in front of their TVs.

Early on in my research, I ran across popcorn on the cob! How cool! I had to get me some and try it.

Though it had minimal flavor, it did taste good. I did burn some of it. It seemed to have popped some of the kernels right away, then slowed down, and popped vigorously. I think those initial ones are the ones that burned. =0(

So I figured if the ear popped dry, why couldn’t I put regular popcorn in the bag and throw it in the microwave. It worked! I still burned some. =0(

Then I made some popcorn the tradition way in a pot on the stove.

And again, I burned a few. I think I try too hard to get every kernel to pop, that I don’t take it off or out of the heat soon enough.

I know the dry popcorn is probably better for me, but there is something about oil that adds to the flavor. The oil also helps to stick the salt to the flakes.

From the top clockwise: Stovetop, Popcorn on the Cob,
and Regular Popcorn in the Bag.

Remember the air poppers that popped the corn while dry and then we added butter. It always seemed silly to swap one oil for another. Then in the early 1980s came microwave popcorn.

Which do you prefer? Stovetop or microwave popcorn? Do you have a favorite specialty flavor? I loved Cracker Jacks as a kid.

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THIMBLES AND THREADS: 4 Love Stories Are Quilted Into Broken Lives

When four women put needle and thread to fabric, will their talents lead to love? 

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“Bygones” Texas, 1884
Drawn to the new orphan boy in town, Tilly Rockford soon became the unfortunate victim of a lot of Orion Dunbar’s mischievous deeds in school. Can Tilly figure out how to truly forgive the one who made her childhood unbearable? Can this deviant orphan-train boy turned man make up for the misdeeds of his youth and win Tilly’s heart before another man steals her away?

MARY DAVIS is a bestselling, award-winning novelist of over three dozen titles in both historical and contemporary themes. Her recent titles include; "Holly and Ivy" in A Bouquet of Brides Collection, The PRODIGAL DAUGHTERS Series, The Widow’s Plight, “Zola’s Cross-Country Adventure” in The MISSAdventure Brides Collection, The Daughter's Predicament, and "Bygones" in Thimbles and Threads. She’s an ACFW member and critique groups. Mary lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband of thirty-four years and two cats. She has three adult children and two adorable grandchildren. Find her online:

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Hoosier Hysteria and the History of Basketball

by Ramona K. Cecil

About this time of year, an odd malady strikes my state of Indiana. No, it’s not influenza, which is also prevalent now. I’m speaking of Hoosier Hysteria, the moniker attached to the fanatical excitement exhibited by crazed fans of basketball, especially high school basketball.

I must confess, while cheering for my favorite team I’ve never once mused about the origin of this excitement, or even the sport itself. But in a quieter moment I wondered, how did it all begin?

Actually, the ancient Aztecs in Mexico invented a game sometime before 1400BC that had some of the basics as our modern game of basketball. Called ollamalitzli, this sport was not a game for the faint of heart. Often brutal and even fatal, ollamalitzli resembled modern basketball only in that the object was to get a rubber ball through a metal ring at each end of a court. This was accomplished by basically a no-holds-barred free-for-all in which the loser might have to face a sacrificial dagger. Yikes! And we think the NBA can be rough!

Aztecs playing ollamalitzli

The invention of our modern game of basketball is credited to a man named James Naismith, who had never heard of the Aztecs game of ollamalitzli. 

In 1891, James Naismith was a young physical education instructor at the International Training Institution in Springfield, Massachusetts. The physical education department had been charged with developing some sort of physical game the students could play indoors. When the more senior PE teachers failed to come up with such a game, Naismith took a crack at the problem. 

James Naismith with soccer ball and peach basket

At first he envisioned some sort of indoor football, but nixed the idea fearing it would be too rough. He then considered a form of boxball, where players would pitch a football into boxes affixed to either end of the gymnasium. When he asked the janitor for boxes, all the man could produce were some peach baskets. After some trial and error, Naismith settled on baskets nailed ten feet above the floor at each end of the court and a round soccer ball instead of a football. He developed thirteen rules for the game, twelve of which are still in use.

Naismith's original 13 rules for the game of basketball

The next day he introduced the game to his eighteen student, dividing them into two teams of nine.

Naismith in center surrounded by 9 of his students

Basketball being played with basket in 1892

The game was an instant hit, though it remained plagued by some pesky problems. The peach baskets took a beating, so had to be replaced often. This problem was eventually remedied by replacing the baskets with sturdy metal rings to which nets made of cord were attached. But whether played with peach baskets or nets, another problem still remained. Each time a player made a “basket,” someone had to climb a ladder to retrieve the ball.  



                           Early nets that replaced peach baskets. Note the attached

                           string that opened the net to allow the basket to fall through.

Five years later, in 1896, an anonymous player on a semi-pro team got fed-up with this frustrating aspect of the game and simply cut a hole in the bottom of the net. A real game-changer!

But we’ll back up a bit. How, you ask, did basketball come to Indiana and become such a rage in the Hoosier state? Reverend Nicholas McKay, a Presbyterian minister who had been assigned to head the Crawfordsville, Indiana YMCA and had met Naismith and learned about his new game, brought basketball with him to Crawfordsville in 1894. Hungry for a game kids could play indoors during it's cold winters, Indiana was a fertile field for the game of basketball. Baseball and football had never caught on in the mainly rural state where youngsters’ summers and autumns were filled with farming chores. But winter brought more leisure time and basketball fit the bill perfectly.

James Naismith himself is quoted as saying "Basketball really had it origin in Indiana, which remains the center of the sport."

The first basketball game in Indiana was played in the Crawfordsville Terminal Building March 16,1894. In this perfect Hoosier environment, the game took root and grew like weeds in a fallow field until it has become a near religion in the state. 

Crawfordsville, Indiana men's basketball team Circa 1923

Decatur, Indiana girl's basketball team 1920 - 1921

It's hard to imagine anyone growing up in Indiana after 1894 and not having their life touched in some way by basketball. The 1986 movie Hoosiers in which a small rural team battles a much larger school for the 1954 state championship, expertly depicts how the game has woven itself into the fabric of Indiana.

So as Hoosier Hysteria breaks out across the state again, I pause my cheering for a moment to remember how it all began and to pay homage to James Naismith, Nicholas McKay, and yes, even the Aztecs although I’m glad that if my team loses, they won’t be required to pay with their lives.

Ramona K. Cecil is a poet and award-winning author of historical fiction for the Christian market. A proud Hoosier, she often sets her stories in her home state of Indiana.

  

Check out her website at www.ramonakcecil.com

                                                                                                             

Hand Over the Chocolate and I Won't Hurt You

Chocolate History 

Martha Rogers

Most people, except those who may be allergic, love chocolate. I had no idea it had been around as long it has. The origin of the word goes back to the Aztec word “xocoatl,” which is a bitter drink brewed from cacao beans. 

The Latin name for the cacao tree is Theobroma cacao and  means “food of the gods.” Chocolate has been around at least 2000 years, but some historians suggest it may be even older.

The exact time chocolate was born is hard to pin down, but no doubt about it, it was cherished from the start. Cacao beans were even valuable enough to be used as currency in pre-modern Latin American. One hundred beans could purchase a turkey and a tamale could be had for one bean according to a 16^th century Aztec document.

Legends abound around chocolate and one of them is that the Aztec king Montezuma welcomed Cortes, the Spanish explorer, at a banquet where he served a chocolate drink because he mistakenly thought Cortes was a reincarnated deity instead of a conquering invader.

Pure chocolate is bitter and didn’t suit the taste buds at first, but after they added honey or cane sugar, chocolate became popular throughout Spain. By the 17^th century, chocolate had become a popular drink throughout Europe, but only enjoyed as privilege of the rich until mass production became possible in the late 18^th century.

The chocolate drink was served among the rich in a chocolate pot like this one.

Here are some dates of the more familiar chocolates for us:

1852: Ghiradelli established his first chocolate factory in San Francisco

1861: Cadbury created the first heart shaped box of chocolates for Valentine's day.

1872: Baker’s Chocolate began using the chocolate girl painting as its trademark

1875: Daniel Peter and Henri Nestle combined chocolate and milk powder to create the first milk chocolate bar.

1879: Rodolphe Lindt produced a chocolate that melts on the tongue with a machine called a Conch that stirs the liquid chocolate to break down any lumps. He called it fondant.

1894: Milton Hershey created his first candy bar and also made baking chocolate, cocoa and chocolate coatings for caramels.

1899 Jean Tobler begins a chocolate factory in Berne Switzerland

1905 Merger of Anglo-Swiss Milk Company with Henri Nestle to form Nestle's company.

All of these are familiar names to chocolate lovers. Whether it’s dark chocolate or milk chocolate is a matter of taste, but dark chocolate may be the best for good health. It contains flavanoids that are good for our health as well as anti-oxidants. A small amount two or three times a week can be good for your heart. In addition, it can increase blood flow to the brain, can help keep blood vessels healthy and helps control blood sugar, contains antioxidants and help free the body of free radicals which cause damage to the cells, contains theobromine which has been shown to harden tooth enamel, and contains minerals like potassium, copper, magnesium and iron.

Remember that chocolate does contain fat, so keep track of the calories and the amount. A little goes a long way, especially when it has added sugar.

One last thing: Take my money, take my credit cards, but don’t touch my chocolate!

If you're a chocolate lover, leave a comment and tell me about your favorite chocolates...brand and type. Are you a dark or milk chocolate lover? Your comment will put your name in a drawing for a chocolate package with your favorites in it.

Short Bio for Martha Rogers

Martha Rogers is a free-lance writer and the author of the Winds Across the Prairie and Seasons of the Heart series as well as the novella, Key to Her Heart in River Walk Christmas and . Christmas at Holly Hill. Martha also writes a weekly devotional for ACFW. Martha and her husband live in Houston. She is a retired teacher and lives in Houston with her husband, Rex where they enjoy spending time with their grandchildren and attending football, baseball, and basketball games when one of the grandchildren is playing or performing.

www.marthawrogers@sbcglobal.net