My list of the five best hard-boiled private eye novels. No. 1 you’ve heard of, hopefully seen the movie — the book is better!– but even pulp fiction fans may not have heard of No. 2. https://shepherd.com/best-books/hard-boiled-pis
No. 2, five novels on psycho killers. https://shepherd.com/best-books/psycho-killers True classics! If you don’t know Big Jim Thompson, Patricia Highsmith, George Pelecanos, well, now’s a good time to get acquainted.
Ah, the Beringia theory: That the Americas were populated by folks from Asia crossing the Bering Strait land bridge from Siberia to Alaska. Well, it is and always was a myth. Here’s the latest evidence they got here by sea. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/mar/28/footprints-sand-scientists-prehistoric-canada-british-columbia?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
Nice multi-media piece in Vox Magazine March 8, 2018, on the 200th anniversary of Smithton, renamed Columbia in 1821.
Check out these and more photos from my recent trip to Iceland in my Facebook timeline posts from Feb. 24 to March 5, 2018. The scenery raves you’ve heard are not exaggerated.
Cahokia was the center of Mississippian culture (~600-1400 AD), a civilization that stretched from Wisconsin to Florida, Kansas to Virginia — different peoples, different customs, one culture. The first united states.
Mound 72 is a ridgetop mound. Instead of a rounded or flat top, it rises like a peaked roof. In the mound, two men were buried, one atop the other. The man on the bottom was covered by a two-inch layer of 20,000 shell beads, a blanket, cloak or cape in the shape of a thunderbird or falcon six feet long. The man buried on top was face up and the body on the bottom was face down and turned at a 180 degree angle from the first body.
The mound also contained about 200 more bodies, some with heads and hands removed.
Many Midwest and Plains tribes’ folklore includes the story of two brothers, one a great leader and the other either a rival or a helper. Were these two men the origin of these myths?
That’s a thunderbird. Photos by Neal William Fandek
Neal W. Fandek, Author 