The inhabitants of Seattle drink more coffee than in any other American city, and we also boast more independent coffee houses than other American city. The trend began when Starbucks opened its first store in Pike Place Market in 1971, and really began to take off in the late 1980s and early 1990s. As a …
I still can’t get enough of Salome and her yen for peacock feathers. There were other powerful women in the Good Book, some judged as “wicked” by past moralizers: Jezebel, Delilah, Herodias. Others acted just as strongly, but because they weren’t pagans, were forgiven, like Deborah and Judith. Judith in particular has inspired as many …
No matter how you feel about God, you have to admit the Bible contains a lot of interesting proper names. Some are used today, like David and Joshua; others belong to previous centuries, like Uriah and Nimrod. Some, like Chushanrishathaim, may never be popular at all. But they fairly easy to imitate, which is what …
There are the cheery, upbeat elves who help Santa in his workshop, then there are those other kind. The ones no one talks about. Both came from the same roots, yet one creature was sanitized, the other morphed into Krampus and the servants of Krampus. Here are some names for them. Santa’s Bad …
Hard as it is to believe, Santa Claus did not always have elves for sidekicks. That tradition came from 19th century Scandinavia and drew on the deeper pagan roots of Northern Europe. Elves, pooka, fairies, and the like were all part of a greater folklore of diminuitive, humanlike creatures that lived alongside humans, often in …
This places looks like the stuff of fantasy, but it’s 100% real. Water parks got their start in the 1970s, 1977 to be exact, with the opening of Wet n’ Wild in Orlando, Florida. From the beginning it boasted a lazy river and a pool with an artificial wave generator and served as the template …
Everyone knows about Atlantis, right? In popular culture, it’s most often Grecian, a place sunk by some cataclysm to the bottom of the sea. People may or may not still live in it. Often it’s inside a dome, and just as often, the Greek-like culture is an advanced one powered by crystals with rayguns and …
Why write a whole YA book when you can query by title alone? Feel free to nab any of these. Evocative YA Titles The First and Darkest Throne Above Clouds of Illusion A Pure Sea of Dragons Haunted Breath Godsmoke Unlike Promises of Glass The Fangling Starflame A Mortal Yet Heavenly Prince Among the …
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