Electric Blue Eyes

Electric Blue Eyes

It was a face built of contradictions: hawk’s nose and finely sculpted cheekbones. Strong stubborn jaw with a mouth that seemed almost too small and lips as this and sensitive as a poet’s. She kept her light hair long enough to cover her eyes, and liked to throw it forward to conceal her large forehead, which bothered her, even though men called it distinguished.

The eyes: electric blue, brilliant, vital. The eyes of an eagle, a flier, probing incessantly, never still, never satisfied, but wary, guarded, the eyes of a woman who had never been defeated or banished. The yeas of a woman who wanted to be alone and live in a deep forest, but found herself smothered in the responsibilities of commanding a space-station that plodded along a calculated and fixed orbit.

She was really beautiful. And she realized that she was in danger of losing not only her own life, but of destroying the world. By a single and tiny mistake.

(Extract from The Rain, the famous SF novel by Elena and George B.)

Young woman in an abstract world. Image: Copyright © Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

Divert the Danger From the Earth

Divert the Danger From the Earth

Norma turned her attention to the calculations she had been working on just prior to the explosion in the Cloud and birth of the sphere.

She called up the program she had written to create a suppression beam. Half of the emitters in the cockpit didn’t work, and it took her over a minute to find a portable field emitter, which she stationed as near as she dared to the core. With shaking hands she coded the beam.

Her initial intent was only to stop the sphere’s progress, but now Norma realized, she had to do more than that. No one, least of all she, had understood the Cloud’s most destructive weapons were the Cloud itself. The small sphere approaching contained a quantity of water sufficient to destroy the ship. Her job now was not only to contain the sphere but to alter harmonies of the sphere and the energy shell surrounding and divert it from the Earth.

(Excerpt from The Rain, the world acclaimed novel by Elena and George B.)

Norma against the most destructive weapon, © Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

Yearning

Yearning

Holding on to your loved one is an important stage in the difficult process of accepting that they have gone. In various ways we give ourselves time to gather the strength required to finally let go,

The yearning can leave you feeling exhausted. You may be angry or frustrated; you may become depressed. The effort of mourning is not easy and takes all the energy we can muster.

We review the events of the death and perhaps share a few memories. We recount the circumstances of the death and our memories of the person who has died. 

Above all, recognize that you are not crazy. If you find yourself searching, if you feel a sense of your loved one's presence, if you think for an instant you see them or that they have returned, these reactions are normal.

Every time you search and do not find, you take one more step closer to the inevitable  realization that your loved one has indeed gone and will not return.

The repetition of the events surrounding the death is healthy and a helpful part of the grieving process. But we are generally left alone to get on with our mourning.

In the weeks and months ahead you want to talk repeatedly about the same things. But others may not want to talk, and very few may be willing to listen.

As you constantly review those final days and moments, the people around you may become frustrated. However, each story told, each memory relived, each feeling expressed represents a thread in the relationship that must be unravelled one strand at a time.

Each thread, good or bad memory, has to be remembered and felt, sometimes more than once, before it can be cut. Repeating the same stories is a way for us to get a handle on the situation.

We try to understand what has happened, to make some sense of it, thus gaining a little more control in an uncontrollable situation.

In our grief, we often question "why". Why did my loved one have to die? Why does my life have to be one of suffering and sorrow? 

We feel anger because there are no answers to many questions. What has happened does not seem fair.

One way we express yearning is by identification.  We comfort ourselves by doing things and going to places that were favorites for our loved ones.

Most people don't like to talk about grief, or be reminded of their own losses by its manifestation in someone else. So they avoid the subject altogether.

Life is not always fair. Someone has said that "why" is not so much a question as a cry of pain. When we feel powerless, finding more questions than answers, our response my be one of anger.

After the death, sometimes we are irritable and short tempered with well-meaning people. Other times, however, we feel rage and resentment because we could do nothing to control or change the situation.

Sometimes anger is regarded as an unwelcome intruder in our lives. We are told we should not be angry, we should simply accept things. We may be encouraged to passively submit to the will of God.

Anger is often a protest against loss. Because of the loss, we feel helpless: we are not in control of the circumstances.

When we are powerless to do anything to change the finality of what has happened, we are angry. This explains why we become irritable with friends and family: they cannot give us what we want most, the return of our loved one.

The greatest problem with anger is that it tends to be transferred to the wrong people. We may feel angry at the doctors or medical staff who perhaps missed something, or whom we feel could have done more. We may feel anger toward the funeral director, the minister, children, relatives, and indeed anyone else who has the misfortune to run across our path.

Be careful. Recognize the real source of anger. You are angry because you have been left. You have every right to feel angry, but make sure you focus the anger in the right direction in order not to hurt yourself or others.

Anger is normal and needs to be expressed. But the word a caution is in order: healthy anger involves more than merely letting it out. Simply venting our anger and letting off steam can actually lead to a more deeply entrenched anger. Anger needs to be focused on helping gain a sense of personal control over the situation. Anger channeled into determination has the constructive purpose of helping us choose what we will do in the situation.

The Devil’s Gold

The Devil’s Gold

(By Steve Berry)

Within hours of Hitler’s suicide, Bormann donned the uniform of an SS major general, crammed paper into a leather topcoat, and fled the Fuhrerbunker. On the Weidendammer Bridge he encountered bazooka fire, but managed to flee the scene with only minor injuries. He commandeered a stray vehicle and drove to another underground bunker constructed in secret by Adolf Eichmann, equipped with food, water, and a generator. He stayed there a day, then slipped out of Berlin and headed North, dressed as a forest warden.

Across the Danish border he found a rescue group stationed there weeks before. He had prepared himself for the journey months earlier by burying two caches of gold coins, one in the north, the other in the south. He’d also secreted away banknotes and art treasures that could later be converted into cash. His political position gave him access to Lufthansa, cargo ships, and U-boats, and he’d utilized that privilege in the early months of 1945 to transport out of Germany all that he might need in the years ahead.

By the end of 1945 he was in Spain. He stayed there until March 1946. His face remained obscure until October 1945 when, after he was indicted for war crimes, his picture was posted throughout Europe. It was then he decided to leave the continent, but not before dealing with Eva Braun.

They were in many ways similar. During the war she was intentionally kept in the background, denied the spotlight, forced to remain in the Bavarian Alps. Only those in Hitler’s innermost circle were familiar with her, so it was easy for her to meld into the postwar world.

She’d returned to Berlin against Hitler’s orders on April 15 to inform him she was pregnant. Hitler took the news calmly, but delayed fourteen days before finally marrying her. During that time he arranged, through Bormann, for her escape. By April 22 Hitler knew that he would never leave the bunker alive. Braun objected to surviving. She wanted to die with Hitler.

But he would not hear of it, particularly with her being pregnant.

A female SS captain was chosen by Bormann, one who possessed a build and look similar to Braun’s. The woman was proud of the fact that she would be with the Fuhrer in his final moments. She entered the bunker on April 30, an hour before Hitler and Braun were to lock themselves away for the final time. In the confusion of the day no one noticed her. People were routinely coming and going. With Bormann watching, she bit down on a cyanide capsule and ended her life. Her body, clothed in a blue dress identical to the one Braun would be wearing, was kept in an adjacent anteroom.

Bormann was the first to enter the bedroom after Hitler died. He sheathed Braun’s body on the pretense of protecting her dignity. He realized all focus would be on Hitler, and he was correct. Braun’s task was to lie still and be dead. It was Bormann who carried her from the bedroom, and after being called by a guard he momentarily deposited her body in an anteroom. That was not prearranged, but it provided Bormann an easy opportunity to make the switch, leaving Braun hidden in the anteroom while her substitute was burned with Hitler in the Chancellory garden above. In the chaos that followed, Braun, her physical appearance altered and dressed as the SS captain who’d arrived hours earlier, left the bunker.

She was flown out of Berlin to Austria on one of the last flights. From there she traveled by train to Switzerland, no different from thousands of other displaced women. Her journey, using new identity papers and money provided by Bormann, was easy.

Eventually, she made it to Spain, and there they stayed until the spring of 1946, under the protection of a local fascist leader. Transportation to South America was arranged on an oil transport by a Greek sympathizer, so they traveled to Chile. Nazis had congregated there since the war, most in heavily fortified estancias south of Santiago. Bormann felt crowded, so he and Braun settled near the Argentine border in the lake district until the lure of Africa drew him back across the Atlantic.

…

Bormann never let Eva Braun forget that she owed him her life… he loved to retell the story of her survival, and the part he played. It was his way of asserting superiority, making sure she knew that he was the only reason she still breathed…

They were married in Africa… She was pregnant again, and he wanted the baby to be legitimate…. Theirs was a difficult relationship. Her dead husband, the man she truly loved, told her to rely on Bormann. She tried to follow Hitler’s will, but Bormann was difficult. It helped that, before the war ended, their initial disdain of each other had somewhat faded. Bormann was the one who provided her with money. Took care of her needs. She respected his power.

Strange was his personality… capable of murdering millions, yet concerned that his off-spring would be called a bastard…

Braun gave birth in January 1946. The baby was robust and healthy. That occurred while they were still in Spain. They did not arrive in Chile until early 1947. The child did not make the journey. Bormann took the baby at birth. He was tasked by Hitler with taking care of Braun and the child. But that never happened… Eva Braun bled to death giving birth to Bormann’s child. That was in 1954.

The Jefferson Key

The Jefferson Key

By Steve Berry

He zeroed in on a few websites and learned what he could about Nova Scotia, a narrow Canadian peninsula barely connected to New Brunswick, surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean. Three hundred miles long, 50 miles wide, 4800 miles of coastline. A mix of old and new with craggy coves, sandy beaches, and fertile valleys. The south shore, from Halifax to Shelburne, contained countless inlets, the largest of which was Mahone. Though the Frencn had discovered the bay in 1534, the British took control in 1713…

During the American Revolution colonial forces had occupied the region, attempting to make Canada the fourteenth colony. The idea had been to woo the many angry French still living there into becoming allies against the English, but the move failed. Canada remained British and, after the Revolution, became even more so, as Loyalists emigrated northward, fleeing the newly formed United States.

Mahone Bay became a haven for pirates.

Shipbuilding developed into an industry. Thick fogs and sinister tidal marches provided ideal cover for several hundred islands. The locale was not all that dissimilar to Port Royal, Jamaica, or Bath, North Carolina, both of which had also once been notorious pirate dens.

Oak Island, which lay in Mahone Bay, appeared on many of the websites, so he read what he could. Its history began on a summer day in 1795 when Daniel McGinnis, a young man in his early twenties, discovered a clearing where oak trees had been felled, leaving only stumps. At the center of the clearing lay a circular indentation, maybe twelve feet wide. A large branch protruded over the depression. One version said that a ship`s pulley had been attached to the branch. Another stated there were strange markings on the tree. A third account noted that the clearing had been blanketed with red clover, which wasn`t native to the island. No matter which version accepted as true, what happened next was beyond dispute.

People started digging.

First McGinnis and his friends, then others, then organized treasure consortiums. They bore down nearly two hundred feet and found layers of charcoal, timber, coconut fibers, flagstones, and clay. If their accounts could be believed, they unearthed a strange stone with curious markings. Two ingenious flood tunnels tied into the shaft, designed to ensure that anyone who dug deep enough would encounter nothing but water.

And that was exactly what they found.

Flooding had thwarted every attempt to solve the mystery.

Countless theories abounded.

A bay. Photo by Elena

Some said it was a pirate cache, dug by Captain William Kidd himself. Others gave ownership to the privateer Sir Francis Drake or the Spanish, as an out-of-the-way place to stash their wealth. More pragmatic people suggested military involvement – pay chests concealed by the French or English in their see-sawing struggle to control Nova Scotia.

Then there were the far-outers.

Antediluvian Atlanteans, interplanetary travelers, Masons, Templars, Egyptions, Greeks, Celts.

Several men lost their lives, many their fortunes, but no treasure had ever been found.

Oak Island wasn`t even an island any longer. A narrow causeway, built to allow heavy digging equipment to easily pass back and forth, now connected it to the mainland. One recent Canadian news article mentioned that the provincial government was considering buying the land and turning the place into a tourist attraction.

Now that would yield a treasure, he thought.

He located a few mentions of Paw Island, a few miles southeast of Oak. About a mile long, and half that wide, shaped like its name. Two coves indented its center facing north, while smaller ones cracked the remaining shoreline. Its rounded west side was covered with trees, while rocky cliffs dominated the east and south shores. The French had explored it in the 17th century looking for furs, but the English had built a fort, which they dubbed Wildwood, that faced the Atlantic and guarded the bay. He read how Nova Scotia was generally devoid of ruins. Nothing was ever wasted. Houses were dismantled timber by timber, the hinges, door handles, nails, bricks, mortar, and cement all reused. Twenty-first-century boards, driven by 18th-century nails, over 19th-century joists, was how one site described it.

But the limestone fort on Paw Island stood as an anomaly.

And history was the explanation.

In 1775 when the American Continental army invaded, seizing control of the British forts, Wildwood was taken early and renamed Dominion. But the Americans were soon defeated at the Battle of Quebec and withdrew from Canada in 1776. Before leaving Paw Island, though, they torched the fort. Nothing was ever rebuilt, the site abandoned to the elements, the fire-blackened walls left standing as a reminder of the insult.

Now only birds occupied them.