They've Already Told This RICIMER Tale

The histories have already SPOKEN, the story-tellers have already HAD their say, the documentaries have already been DONE, and the movie-makers have ALREADY addressed the issue. The verdict is in.

All I'm doing is presenting a different point of view (and a fictional one at that), not arguing with the experts.

Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, in their right mind, in any of those industries is going to want to touch this story's point of view with a ten foot pole, not in the world in which we live in today.

At the very beginning of writing the books of SONG I thought I might make the Catholics and the Baptists mad but so far they've not been critical of the 'truth' as it seems to me: by definition you CANNOT have a Father and a Son without a Mother - so how can that third Person of the Holy Trinity be anyone except the Mother? It's pretty obvious who a person's mother is at birth. There have been cases where fathers' identities haven't been all too clear, though. Female lineages are a lot more clear and easier to track, if you ask me. That's a scientific fact: mDNA is way easier to work with. It's consistent and accurate, relatively speaking. Point being that women are at least as important as men. If you find that threatening in some way, oh well.

Be that as it may be, I take the Mother's place in the Trinity as a given, something patriarchal ideologies could take exception to so I guess I'm lucky to be ignored.

And the women of Celt ancestry still bow to no-one. Ever.

So there's that to not worry about.

Not being overly fond of ideologies that go around trying to shove their beliefs down people's throats, and separating said throats from bodies and heads if opposed, yes I've taken a dim view of Rome's usurpation of the Faith they could not manage to eradicate in 300 years of trying. That they then weaponized it while denying half of the human population equal representation doesn't set too well with me, either. Being a descendant of the ones who held out, never gave up, never gave in, and won in the end, maybe it's something in my DNA that refutes the right of any to dictate to any other, let alone all.

Maybe it's because the church came to its senses in the end, after too long a time and too much brutality, that my condemnation of the early practices of the Roman church isn't being lashed out about.

Maybe it's because the peoples of Europe did, in the end, form themselves into strong independent nations once Rome's boot was off their throats - again, not quickly and not easily and with too much brutality - but they did it. And the very peoples who had held Europe for millennia before Rome came calling were back in control of their Continent. Fussin' and fuedin' an't nothin' new, folks. The factions of the Celts had been perfecting it for thousands of years already. That they'd HAD thousands of years TO perfect it says something about the stability of their culture, appearances to the contrary be damned. They were fussin' and fuedin', not trying to own everybody else body and soul.

So there are two more things to not worry about since who's gonna argue with what's already done and over with, right?

Right.

So far, so good.

The kicker here is that while I'm writing all this stuff about the past, there are a few things going on in our present that are liable to become obviously connected to said past. That's what's gonna keep me safe from media, from politics, from religion, and from invasive ideologies. Ain't nobody gonna want to go out on THAT limb I tell you true.

Writing fiction about ancient times is one thing. Connecting it incontrovertibly to current events is not gonna fly. So it's a good thing I just want to tell the Story and am not ambitious.

Because what motivates Ullin of Iona, RICIMER, and all the rest of our Characters is what lies at the heart of our current situations.

These Circles mean something:

That center Circle is FAITH

The rest of them represent

FAMILY

FRIENDS

FREEDOM

FUTURE

They're our Legacy.

This symbol, which you haven't seen as much of, means something too:

It's a pretty design, this is true.

It's also a warning.

This is the way it is NOT supposed to be.

It will not work.

Here is a representation of the underlying design by which our world is governed:

I call it the Father Phi Spiral.

That's for a couple of reasons.

One is that the line through the middle makes the Spiral look more like the symbol we recognize as PHI.

Phi is the blueprint of our world.

You can look it up if you doubt me.

The second reason is that it's one of the oldest of all symbols preserved by humankind. 

It means something.

It has always meant something.

It has always meant the same thing.

CREATION

GOD

1.618

BALANCE

And you know what the building blocks of the Spiral consist of?

TRIANGLES

What I'm about to suggest might make every religion except for maybe Buddhism and Hindu mad as hornets but I don't particularly care.

[WARNING: SIDETRACK]

Because it's not 'just' that the Holy Trinity has to have a female function if creation is to continue to procreate, which it most assuredly will, with or without humankind.

It's not 'just' that I find it personally offensive, what has been done in the name of 'religion' for all this time.

As a matter of fact it doesn't have much of anything to do with 'religion' at all, because people get to choose what (if anything) they want to believe.

What it has to do with is that attempts to twist the Spiral out of balance have caused, are causing, and will cause literal harm to innocent folk.

Half of us can't be heading in one direction and the other half heading in the opposite direction, and any of us expect balance to be maintained. It hasn't worked yet and it ain't gonna EVER WORK. Our universal - literally - governing principles will not allow it. [sidetrack inside sidetrack: speaking of governing principles, the Constitutional Republic government of the United States of America is fundamentally based on PHI.]

Look again at this warning symbol:

Say you're on one side of this 'twisted spiral' thing and I'm on the other, just walking along.

Where are we going to end up?

We'll either hit a dead end

or collide in the middle.

Either way we lose.

Plus, that spiral ain't gonna stay twisted like that because by design it CAN'T stay that way.

One side or the other is gonna flip back around so it's all in balance again.

So what in the heck do we think we're DOING?

May as well stick with the PHI thing and not lose our balance in the first place, if you ask me.

Which I realize you didn't.

[END SIDETRACK]

I think that maybe, just maybe, the significance of triangles and spirals and such clear back as far as we can track humankind has to do with something we ALL instinctively KNOW somehow.

There's no conflict between Science and Faith. They're the same thing.

Which is another thing to not worry about because Science is zipping right along to prove it and Faith is plodding reluctantly to accept it.

So what's the worry?

Me, I'm not worried because I'm just a little old lady with no real stake in much of anything - nothing to lose that I haven't already lost or don't care if I do lose.

But there are folks in our world who would likely not appreciate having people's attention drawn to parallels between historic fact and current events.

The divisions caused by 'identity politics', for example, mean that twisted Spiral is already out of balance. And I don't have to tell you who's been pushing that for a while now. I doubt they know what they're doing, but maybe they're hoping that when the time comes it will be the other side of the twist that will swing around and the Spiral will balance itself in their favor.

On the other end of the spectrum, but on that same side of the twisted Spiral, are the folks trying to shove the EU down the throats of the peoples of Europe. They don't want anyone reminded of how that ended when Rome tried to do it - twice - once via military and once via ideology. Neither ended well for Rome although Europe, once recovered from the ravages inflicted by the attempts, came out of it with those strong independent nations that Ullin and RICIMER and the others were betting on. Rome struck out twice trying what they're trying now.

Yet another loser in this equation is an ideology that can't seem to wrap its head around either the Holy Trinity OR that a Mother is required if there are to even BE a Father and a Son - OR that what they're trying to do has already failed more than once.

None of those people want to be challenged to explain how on earth they think they're going to take two failures and turn out a success by trying the exact same things. It's not like math where two negatives can produce a positive.

Honestly.

What did they do, look at history and say, 'Hey, check this out! This thing here FAILED spectacularly, and that thing over there FAILED just as spectacularly! Let's put them together and they'll be GREAT! We'll rule the world!'

Considering that the goal of both examples had been to 'rule the world', and both FAILED spectacularly, success by combining the two doesn't exactly seem very promising.

My point here, and in the books, is that our fictional folk (some not quite all the way fictional) SUCCEEDED in what they set out to do, not because they themselves were masters at what they did (although they were) but because their goal was WHAT THE COLLECTIVE, INSTINCTIVE, WILL OF THE PEOPLES AFFECTED WANTED.

So the moral of the Story is: the EU is doomed, and so is that invasive ideology. One is trying what Rome tried first; the other is trying what Rome tried second. Against the exact same populations of people. For that matter, some folks in the States are trying to do do what Rome also tried: pitting folks against each other. That, if you recall, resulted in something called the Barbarian Conspiracy, which didn't work out so well for Rome in the end did it?

Mamm of Dunnottar, fictionally speaking, asked Attila, "How stupid are you?!?"

Me, I would never think of asking anyone any such thing.

Out loud.

I might wonder it to myself, though.

If you're going to try stuff, you might want to first do a little homework so you know a little something about the people you're up against.

Not to be a spoil sport or anything, but at least three quarters of the citizens of the United States of America are probably descendants of the peoples Rome FAILED against - twice. The percentage in Europe is likely higher yet.

Fussin' and fuedin' is one thing Rome thought was more than it was.

Leave off the crap and leave our Legacy alone. 

Our instincts are still intact.

Believe me.

Go play in the rest of the world, and quit tryin' to mess with our Circles.

RICIMER MIGHT COME BACK.

And see how you like them apples.

*laughing* While We're At It ...

Since we're focusing on the books of SONG for the moment, we may as well go the whole nine yards.

Here are the Alianora Books: COME HELL AND HIGH WATER

What with one thing and another, the natural disasters of 2017 seem a lifetime ago.

Yet, as they unfolded I almost pulled HELL AND HIGH WATER from the 2017 publishing list. The events in the books were just hitting too close to home, so to speak.

Then it dawned on me what I was seeing before my eyes.

For many, 2017 was a time when push came to shove, when bad went to worse and from there right on to worst.

So what was I seeing that grabbed my attention?

Nothing.

NOTHING got in the way of people stepping up and helping other people.

That's what I saw.

I didn't see folks giving a hoot about color, didn't hear them asking about religion, or social status, or lifestyle choices. For a time the 'identity politics' we've all become so familiar with flat out did not exist.

So, besides the NOTHING, I saw HOPE.

I bet a lot of those video news clips are still available on line. We should all go watch them.

Meanwhile, ponder on this for a bit: WE are the descendants of the folk who survived that other time of HELL AND HIGH WATER. Apparently a lot of us have inherited at least some of what got them through those times.

Did the regular folk of Earth back almost 13,000 years ago know that their world was going to literally explode under their feet and over their heads?

No.

Did the advanced culture in the middle of the North American Continent think for an instant that their technology would be rendered useless in the blink of an eye? Did their Star Folk see anything coming ahead of time?

No.

When a new Keeper of the Faith was born in the year 500 CE (AD) did Alianora and Drustann of Dunnottar know what they were getting themselves into when they wanted to assure themselves that the Faith they cherished was still on the right track - and arrangements were made for them to go back in time to find out for themselves?

No.

The Story, and the Warning, they bring back with them changes a lot of things.

Meanwhile, we have our own version of the Arthurian Tales going on. The battles that Hart fights are based on those tales (easy enough for an Arthurian Scholar to figure out) but are also purely our own interpretation. Gotta love fiction!

Did the regular folk of Earth in the 500s CE (AD) have any inkling of what was about to descend on them? A few did - and their choices, their actions, made all the difference.

ANCIENT SYMBOL IS PHI SPIRAL

This symbol represents the concept of Creation, Life, Death, Eternity. It is a symbol for the part of the Song of the Holy Trinity that is Sung (generally) by the Voice of Danann of Dunnottar.

More specifically, it is a PHI Spiral symbol and has been around since who even knows when. It is found in the earliest 'art' of humankind. Odd that, some may think, because we're only just now unveiling some of the mysteries connected to the science behind it.

The Spiral is literally ubiquitous - it is maybe the fundamental LAW that defines and maintains our entire world. A friend of mine uses the word 'fractals' and as it suits I'll try to explain it to you. A fractal is a small part of a bigger whole that, in and of itself, is identical to that bigger whole. At least that's the way I understand it. Keep that in the back of your mind.

It's become clear that everything in our world, the things we know and those we don't yet know, are all - ALL - comprised of Energy. Energy, which can be neither created nor destroyed, which 'definition' also just so happens to apply to God, the Creator, which may or may not be coincidence. Be that as it may be, Energy is eternal with no beginning and no end, and it is continually changing forms - from waves to particles and back again.

Then there's this phenomenon called entanglement. Einstein referred to it as 'spooky action at a distance' and wouldn't even 'go there'. Since his time people have 'gone there' and confirmed it. Entanglement is when two bits (electrons in the case of the experiments) of the same substance (e.g. the same atom) are separated by a distance, and even the minuscule amount of energy generated by the simple act of observing ONE of the electrons causes it to reverse its rotation, causes a simultaneous reversal of rotation in the OTHER one, although it is far away and not being observed (only electronically monitored). The two, having once been part of a larger whole, are permanently entangled. What affects one affects the other.

Going back to Energy for a moment, we know that it makes up Everything, including of course our little electrons that were snagged from the same atom. Over the course of Eternity past, present, and future, Energy has been, is, and will be Everything. Over the course of Eternity, the forms taken by Energy have absolutely NO limits to the ways they can combine, separate, recombine. Those two little electrons, their Energy, may well have been entangled from ANY part of Eternity, not necessarily just connected via the particular atom they were removed from for experimental purposes. Maybe at one time they were part of an atom in a cell of a mammoth, or a dinosaur, or a meteor, or anything else we can think of. In between they may have been Energy in wave form rather than particle form. We have no way of knowing, at least not yet.

Returning to fractals: every bit of the Energy in our world is a fractal of the all-encompassing design of the Spiral. That design is THE design of Everything. No matter how small we seek to discover, no matter how far we range into space ... the pattern simply repeats and repeats and repeats. Energy ALWAYS adheres to the perfect balance of the Spiral, no matter what, no matter when, no matter where. Everything is a fractal of the larger design pattern. Regardless of how different our perception of specific items are, they are bottom line identical, made up of Energy and adhering to the design of the Spiral - which we identify as Phi - 1.618... And the Spiral is made up of triangles, always, always, always. Which, again, brings us full circle, so to speak, back to God, the Holy Trinity, and to all of the more ancient belief systems that incorporated triangles into their teachings, the triangle frequently representing 'female'.

And we're only just now beginning to grasp the whole concept involved here.

How in the world does a symbol representing such complex (to us) concepts come to be so very ancient?

As for the line running through the center of the symbol, I reckon it's likely there for a good reason, probably to keep the whole thing in balance. I've made scores if not hundreds of spirals out of all kinds of stuff. Only recently have I begun trying to incorporate the 'Phi Line' into them, but I'm discovering that it is a stabilizing force that keeps the spiral from sproinging or unwinding. Ancient spirals abound around the globe, and that 'Phi Line' is present in many of them although not all.

Speculation continues as to the meanings or interpretations of the ancient symbols, and I think that a lot of them are probably 'right' even though they may not seem to agree with each other. Over the course of time, different 'meanings' may well have been ascribed to the same symbol, so that symbol may have been used in different ways. We flat don't know.

What we DO know is that they're ancient, and everywhere. Cultures all over the place, at different times, at the same times, with connections, without connections that anyone can identify ... so what is it about the Spiral, the PHI Spiral, that resonates and has resonated over a time span longer than we can wrap our heads around?

This symbol represents Mystery and at the same time the solving of all Mystery ... if we can only just unlock its secrets.

MELODY OF PHI ... COMING RIGHT UP ... THE QUEST BEGINS

For now I'm just pleased as punch to have gotten myself a little toy keyboard ... what I wouldn't give to have that old piano back that I had so very long ago!

Even so, just getting the melody planted into my head, at least the order of the notes, is a step in the right direction.

It's been a long time since I've done anything musical (it's not my forte) except sing along when there's a song playing that I know and like, so it's a change of pace for me. Will I even remember full, half, quarter, eighth notes? Hopefully it will all come back to me as I go along.

At any rate, lest I lose my train of thought, and the sequence of the notes, here are the introductory 'notes' of PHI, with 1 being middle C just because it's easiest for me ... they're also arranged, for the moment, into sets of four, for the same reason.

1618

0339 8874

9894

8482 0458

6834

3656 3811

*laughing* 

I found a site and copied the sequence as far as said site took it - 37 pages solid of random numbers, barely a drop in the bucket of the infinity of PHI.

I'll be doing good just to get these first 36 memorized, along with the notes I've assigned to them. 

Then will come the fun part - arranging them in a melody with variations in tempo and note lengths and all that stuff I don't have the right language for but will recognize the combination/s when I hear it/them.

Trust me on that.

Rather, trust our Characters because this after all THEIR SONG. They might be MY song, but even that isn't a given as the Mother has first claim always. Either way, the Song of PHI is the Song of our Characters, and of our world  when it comes right down to it.

My sister reminded me that according to archaeological and historic records the musical instruments of 'back in the day' would not have had our eight note musical scale ... but for our purposes that doesn't matter. For one thing it's fiction and our Characters are clever souls. Plus the only instrument we ever have involved in the Song is the Queen Harp whose strings can produce any sound she wants. And vocals have always had a huge range. So there you have it. The Song of Phi is timeless.

We're going to do our best to weave it into something that's hauntingly beautiful, and dangerous.

The only thing that's not negotiable is the order of the notes - because that's like the most immutable Law of our world.

For the rest, we shall see what we shall see.

For the SONG itself, the arrangement has to lend itself to being a repeated melody suitable for being sung in rounds by eight different Voices.

Mamm's Voice begins with her Song of Choice. She is a soprano.

Next comes Danann with the Spiral. He is a bass.

Sidhelagh Sings of Peace. Her Voice is second soprano.

Alianora and Drustann Sing of Faith - first soprano and tenor.

Sass Sings of Healing - she is a contralto. When Thann comes into the Story Line, he's a bass.

Caileen and Talorc Sing of Hope - alto and whatever's between tenor and bass.

Aine and Kalann sing of Love - they are second soprano and tenor.

Ullin of Iona Sings of Unity with the Queen Harp - his Voice is bass; hers is whatever she wants it to be.

So we've got all these Voices coming into the round as the SONG progresses.

That there are no words helps. All we have to do is make sure the notes don't clash.

AND we can range the Voices per part by octave. Mamm will go an octave above middle C while Danann will be an octave below. Hypothetically. Once I get my hands on a full piano keyboard I can at least do some fiddling and see if it's going to even be possible. Because the notes repeat randomly, it might be *difficult* to find a place for the Voices to come into the melody without causing discord.

Ah well. 

The quest is on for a Theme Song for SONG.

Regarding COME HELL AND HIGH WATER

This is the postscript from the three books that will be COME HELL AND HIGH WATER.

The Extinction Level Event (ELE) that took the mammoth, most of the large mammals, and many other species really did happen. Our fictional Aduan did not, of course, cause it. Neither did anyone else; it was a fluke of nature, ‘one of those things’.

The presentation of the event is definitely fiction, but the sequence set in motion by such an impact is not. I have in no way exaggerated what is likely to have happened back on that day. I have, if anything, minimized it.

The temperatures generated; the velocity at which those big rocks, heightened even more by Earth’s gravitational pull, hit the crust of this planet; the amount of raw energy unleashed by the backlash, and what was forced into the ground; the magnitude of the earthquakes triggered; the effects of fiery impact infernos fueled by forest and plain, hot enough to create their own winds to drive them onward and outward with nothing to slow them; the volume of volcanic ash in the air and metres deep on the ground, on top of the ashes left by surface fires, and toxic gases released to create a havoc of their own; the ravaging of coastlines and far inland done by tsunamis ten times larger than we have ever seen; the steam rising above ice caps (glaciers) as the temperatures and velocities of those hyper-heated rocks hit them; the ice-melt breaching barriers, creating outlets for glacial Lake Agassiz (for example) resulting in an overland tsunami; an atmosphere so thick with steam, ash, noxious gases, and smoke that sunlight could not make its way through; particles of sulfur in the upper atmosphere turning back said sunlight; ultra-hot winds carrying raging electrical dust (and ash) storms for months, perhaps years, perhaps decades on end; intense heat and bitter cold, meeting in thunderstorms that send water vapor down in torrents that cause their own floods … it’s too much, and too big, for me to be able to wrap my head around.

Not a gradual progression over centuries, or decades, or years, or even weeks – but an abrupt onslaught with no time for rhyme nor reason, let alone recovery from one before the next hit. 

And that was just the beginning.

Atmosphere blocking sunlight means no photosynthesis, no growing plants putting oxygen into the air, nothing for herbivores to eat. Dying prey feeds predators only until the prey is gone. Drought brings famine; famine brings disease; disease brings death; death brings more disease and death and despair. Despair brings desperation brings war brings more death brings more disease … and the vicious cycle goes ‘round and ‘round for a real long time.

Waters sealed by ash; waters whose saline balance is disrupted by an influx of fresh water ice-melt; waters whose surface becomes way too hot; waters clogged with dead and decaying plants and animals … how could they support their own life forms, let alone contribute to the rest of the world?

The same thing happened to the dinosaurs millions and millions of years ago. Nobody caused that one, either. It just happened. Earth did not die; a whole new set of life forms (with but a very few exceptions, the rare survivors whose descendants live today among us) rose to take their place. Compared to that one, what happened 12,800 years ago (give or take a couple of thousand years) might be considered but a bump in the road.

But if ‘Something Happened’ today that was even a fraction as bad as that bump in the road … uffda … that’s the only word that comes to mind.

When it comes to the technologically advanced city of Phi in the middle of North America, that’s pure-dee fiction. Not that something like that culture might not have existed, mind you. I have no idea. Neither do you, for that matter. Nobody knows and none of us are likely to ever know. Whatever was on North America at that time is now a part of a black mat of carbon well below our feet. Anything that might have survived was in for more of the same, although on smaller scales, as time went on.

With our own technological advances soaring right along, in terms of finding the biggest and the smallest we can manage, in just the past few decades – it’s not beyond the shadow of a doubt that someone before us might have gotten to and beyond where we are now. We are not as invincible as we like to believe.

The world of my grandparents will seem as ancient to my grandchildren as we think of when we talk about the Iron Age, or the Bronze Age, or the Stone Age. Our young ones will never know life without electronics, as we will never know life the way our grandparents knew it. The ‘learning curve’, only a few generations instead of thousands of years, is accelerating rapidly, faster than most of us are even aware of. We have among us a lot of very smart people. Relatively speaking, it won’t be long before ‘Hiving the Stars’ might become a part of the lives of our young folk.

Who knows?

Not me.

But if that time should ever come, I hope they will carry with them the Circles of Dunnottar and the SONG of PHI.

Someone up there out there might recognize them.

Something Happened

Part One 

(Click)

Roughly 12,800 years ago, give or take a couple of thousand, Something Happened and life on Earth changed dramatically.

This is a book of fiction and not intended to be exactly a textbook about either ancient times or quantum physics.

But Something really did Happen right about that time, back in the long-ago days, and it was darned dramatic.

I almost stopped writing the book when I found out where all the inexplicable research I had been doing was leading me. I write fiction. I don't write 'actual stuff'. 

But our Characters ... well ... if you know them you know they generally have good reasons for what they get me into. And they're notorious for the phrase 'Never Give Up and Never Give In'. Arguing the point is a waste of time so I may as well just write the Story as it comes.

This particular one started just after I got Danann written almost a year and a half ago. In between the Younglings and a couple three books of short stories and poems, the research kept taking me in the totally wrong direction - back and back and back instead of ahead like it was supposed to go. I was too fascinated (and curious) to quit the Search.

There had to be a reason I was looking at really ancient stuff, so I started actively looking for something that had to do with ancient North America. 

Learned a lot, I did, as 'new' findings were coming to light even as my research was carrying me along that path. There were people here before there were supposed to be people here, did you know that? I hadn't either, except rumors. They were here a LONG time before our Native Tribes arrived across that Bering Land Bridge from Asia. In the days of the mammoth, not just at the tail end of those days. Some of our Tribes have ancient legends about the people who were here when they got here. Hadn't known that, either. 

And just exactly who were the Clovis people? About all we have left of them are some spear points - which are nothing like anything Asian or Native. The closest anyone has been able to come were a people they call the Solutreans, in France. 

Then comes the question: where did the Clovis people go? And what about the ones who were here before them, the really Old Folk?

See, the thing is that archaeologists and such have a fairly clear picture of the past few thousand years, and they have a pretty good idea about the Dinosaur Days and right up to when the large mammals like the mammoth and mastodon went extinct. 

But there's this thing in between the 'newer' days and the 'older' days. 

They call it 'The Black Mat' or 'Brady Soil' and it's a layer of compressed carbon that represents maybe a thousand years worth of carbon based life forms. In some places they've found bits of burnt bone embedded in that Black Mat - burnt at temperatures that indicate a heat source a whole lot hotter than a cook fire or a forest fire. 'Something Happened' back then.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences presents a pretty clear explanation of the Black Mat, Younger Dryas, etc. Here's a quote:

"Of the 70 sites in SI Table 2, 56 (80%) have skeletal elements of the Rancholabrean megafauna directly underlying the YD black mat (Table 1). Approximately 38.6% have mammoth remains, 37.1% bison, 8.6% horse, 7.1% camel, 2.9% mastodon, and 8.6% other extinct-species remains, all on the Clovis-age surface, and only bison remains appear in the overlying YD black mat."

Nature Geoscience has a bit about Brady Soil. Look it up; here's a quote:

"We identify high levels of black carbon, indicating extensive biomass burning. In addition, we found intact vascular plant lipids in soil organic matter with radiocarbon ages ranging from 10,500 to 12,400 cal yr BP, indicating decomposition was slowed by rapid burial at the start of the Holocene."

Again, 'Something Happened' - for example in southwestern Nebraska.

Loess is super-fine dirt, maybe ground to 'powder' by glacial movement, that's carried by winds and then falls and accumulates when the winds die down. It shows up mainly in the form of dunes. It brings to mind a horrifically more extensive version of the notoriously horrific dust storms the people who lived through the 'Dirty Thirties' (few and far between now, those folk) tell us about. Extrapolate from that to the tune of at least several hundred years, maybe a thousand. No wonder nobody can seem to find much of anything from right about then. There ain't nothin' left but burnt carbon in/under the loess.

Meanwhile, other scientists were developing better ways of obtaining and assessing things like core samples of ancient ice. Core samples are cylinders of ice (in this case) that go back a very long time; the deeper you drill, the older. They can date and test the ice samples to see what was going on in the world, a sort of timeline of temperatures and 'events' that left residue in the ice and such.They found some interesting stuff, including the fact that 'Something Happened' around about 12,800 years ago, give or take a couple thousand.

Erratics are rocks located sometimes far from their point of origination. 

North Dakota Geological Survey has a good description of erratics. They are deposited by glaciers - but (fictionally speaking for the moment) might also have been carried in a flood ... Something Happened to get them from where they were to where they are.

And I'm learning new stuff as we go along here. Bear with me or click out; I'm gonna see where this takes me.

GeorgiaBeforePeople is a WordPress blog mentioning the effect of Lake Agassiz's ice-melt on the east coast of North America.

While that's significant, for our purposes the southern 'outlet breach' is more so. 

Lake Agassiz was a glacial lake, forming at the foot of the glacier that covered pretty much everything north of it. The lake was bigger than all of the Great Lakes combined. 

Fictionally speaking for the moment, think of the effect of 1) breaching the southern shore of that lake, combined with 2) massive additions of glacial ice-melt triggered by unimaginably hot asteroids exploding into the glacier. The equivalent of an over-land tsunami would have been a not-good thing. The impact of that much water moving that fast would have been plenty, but there was stuff in that water besides H2O.

Our (fictional) city of Phi (which we've 'located' near Kearney Nebraska on the Platte River) would have been directly in the path of both the fire spreading from 1) asteroid impacts throwing burning debris and starting fires; and 2) the powerfully over-heated atmosphere itself igniting everything in a kind of spontaneous combustion - and that mega-tsunami flood from both the breaching of the southern outlet area of Agassiz and the ice-melt from the glacier.

Uffda.

Yes.

Uffda.

And I'm not even Norwegian unless from over a thousand years ago or so, that I know of.

Catastrophic Glacial Lake Outbursts are discussed by Kehew and Lord at a site about geomorphology.

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Figure 5. Exposure of coarse gravel deposited by glacial lake outburst flood. The deposit lacks bedding and large clasts are surrounded by sand-size matrix, suggesting hyperconcentrated flow conditions.

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• Catastrophic glacial-lake outburst spillways: form and process relationships.
  http://serc.carleton.edu/vignettes/collection/36631.html

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Just looking up all this stuff is enough to give a person chills.

I live in central North Dakota USA, although I might move to Minnesota one day, or Colorado. Right now I'm in North Dakota.

The Red River Valley was part of the lake bed of Agassiz - it's got maybe the richest darned dirt in the world, very deep and very black. Amazing stuff. Then there's us - breaking equipment every which way from Tuesday on Canadian rocks. One of these days I'll take a little road trip around our county and take photos of some of our rock piles. A lot of them have gone as rip-rap to protect the shores of our lakes and rivers, but ... you know ... there seem to always be more rocks. Now we know how they got there. Something Happened to put them there. On the positive side, we've got some great gravel pits.

Not to change the subject or anything, but I just found something I hadn't really paid attention to before, not being all that interested in SLOTHS to be honest. But the link has information that I find handy. Here's a quote:
"A well-preserved ungual of a pes documents the presence of Jefferson's ground sloth (Megalonyx jeffersonii) at the end of the Wisconsinan in North Dakota. This is the 1st report of M. jeffersonii in North Dakota, and one of few records from the upper Great Plains. An accelerator mass spectrometer radiocarbon age of 11,915 ± 40 years ago was obtained from the specimen, suggesting that the sloth resided in North Dakota during the Rancholabrean Land Mammal Age, just before extinction of the species. Palynological records from sites near the sloth occurrence and of the same age indicate that it resided in a cool, moist, spruce-dominated forest habitat in a riparian setting along the Missouri River. Its presence in that setting corroborates the notion that Jefferson's ground sloth was a browsing inhabitant of gallery forests associated with rivers. It is likely that M. jeffersonii used river valleys, such as the Missouri River valley, as migration routes. ...  Kihm (1987) noted the scarcity of Ice Age mammalian fossil records in North Dakota and listed mammoth, horse, stag-moose, and bison as being present in the North Dakota Ice Age megafauna. A recently discovered skull of the giant bison (Bison latifrons) from Mountrail County near New Town with an age of >47,500 years ago was reported by Hoganson (2003)."

And now we know, kind of, what it was like around here back in the day.

Kinda makes me want to dig a really deep hole in my back yard just to see what I can see.

To make a long story even longer, at the same time I was going back and back and back in time I was also studying quantum physics and learning about stuff like entanglement, and nano transistors, and particle vs wave vs both, and possibly inhabitable planets 'nearby', and the meaning of PHI (1.618...) and what shows up when you take a picture of two of the tiniest bits of 'matter' we can isolate whamming into each other at breakneck speed (phi) while our space vehicles are sending back photos of the immensity of our universes (shaped like spirals - phi again), and lunar/solar 'clocks' that are twice as old as any such thing is supposed to be (let alone where no such thing was supposed to have been possible), and that Canadian kid 'locating' an ancient site using logic and star maps and site maps, and the Progression of the Equinoxes, and yada yada.

It was both encouraging and kind of creepy to get scientific 'validation' for concepts I'd already written into our story lines but I'm getting used to that so I'm not quite as freaked out by it as I used to be.

Eventually the disparate lines of research came together, fictionally speaking. I first designed the city of Phi's physical lay-out, with its circles of out-lying Settlements and thought Hey that makes sense. Then I ran across Atlantis stuff and had to scrap that design as it had already been kind of taken - too close for me to want to use mine, that's for sure. 

I wasn't looking for Atlantis or even thinking about it, but when a person runs multiple searches for both ancient days and advanced technology type stuff ... eventually the two are going to meet if there's any kind of possible connection at all. So Atlantis popped up, along with a bunch of other weird stuff involving stone carvings and such that I might or might not use.

The point is that obviously I'm not the first one to think that there might have been 'advanced cultures' a long time before our own. The concept was well in place clear back in Plato's time for cryin' out loud. It's not a new thought by any means.

Neither is time travel. Neither is the colonization of other planets. Neither is blinking your eyes and being somewhere else, or sometime else. Neither are a lot of the things our Characters do. For me, the fact that I was getting 'new' scientific information that directly relates to that stuff is what almost made me just drop the whole thing.

Then I ran across another time that 'Something Happened' and I really wanted to just stop right there.

Apparently it wasn't enough that Alianora and Drustann had traveled back in time and found themselves in the ELE that took out the large mammals.

Noooooooo.

So I have to write the Story. COME  HELL AND HIGH WATER, I have to write it.

So be it.

What has been will again become; what now is has been already and will be again ... the wheel goes 'round and 'round ... and our world is founded, maintained, and progresses under the rule of PHI - the Spiral and the Perfect Balance.

Again I'll say it:

Uffda.

All because the next Keeper of the Faith was born.

Good grief.

Alianora Is The Keeper Of The Faith

And it is her Story that is supposed to come next in the SONG series. 

This image is of a 'later' Alianora character ... her time is not yet in our story line but it's coming ... I just like this picture.

At any rate, considering Alianora's timeline is 500-800 CE, I was kind of appalled to find myself deeply immersed in research that falls into a timeline that SONG was never intended to explore - so what the heck was up with the fascination for times LONG past? Like WAAAAAAY back, and I mean far into the past of even the first of the Mamm Books.

Finally, after months of wondering, it dawned on me.

Alianora is the Keeper of the Faith.

She and Drustann take their responsibilities seriously, as we all know if we know these two Characters at all.

While the 500-800 story line moves itself along with all kinds of stuff happening every which way from Tuesday, this pair is also taking everyone along with them on their quest to make absolutely sure they know exactly what their job consists of - what their Faith consists of.

They are well aware of the Circles of Dunnottar:

They also well know the Voice of the SONG of the Holy Trinity which is theirs to Sing. Theirs is the Voice of Faith among the Voices:

Choice

The Spiral of Creation, Life, Death, Eternity

Peace

Faith

Healing

Hope

Love

Unity

But what does their Voice really signify?

Alianora and Drustann will have to Walk the Spiral to make sure of their path, and we are going to Walk it with them. 

Now we know what all that research was getting us into. 

And we're getting an inkling about the meaning of having to go back in order to go ahead. Exactly how FAR back we'll have to go is anybody's guess, but the journey is about to begin.