Creative History

  The Vicar stands at the pulpit and addresses the packed congregation inside the cathedral.  It is sweltering.  The midsummer sun beats down on the stained glass windows.  Many, early on that Sunday morning, nearly swoon from the heat.  Already, just a few hours past dawn, the temperature has risen well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. He reads, in Latin, from the Book of Deuteronomy: “Take heed to yourselves that your heart be not deceived, and ye turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them; And then the LORD’s wrath be kindled against you, and he shut up the heavens, that there be no rain, and that the land yield not her fruit; and lest ye perish quickly from off the good land which the LORD giveth you.” -Deuteronomy 11:17-18 KJV All across Europe that Sunday in July of 1540 this scene repeats itself.  In churches, Protestant and Catholic, Vicars, Priests, Reverends and Christian holy men of all sorts and denominations read from scripture and l...

            The evil queen commands the huntsman, “Kill her and as proof that she is dead bring her lungs and liver back to me.” The huntsman doesn’t kill her.  Instead, he sets out into the forest and slaughters a wild boar.  He brings the liver and lungs of the boar back to the evil queen and his ruse works. Greedily, the evil queen devours the entrails that the huntsman brings to her in a frenzy of cannibalistic ecstasy. In a few years, a magic mirror tells the queen that she has been deceived by the huntsman, and she sets out once again to kill the young maiden.  This time she believes she has accomplished her goal after pretending to be a farmer’s wife and convincing the maiden to eat a poisoned apple. But the queen has been fooled yet again.  The girl did not die.  The poisoned apple has only caused her to lapse into a sort of coma after becoming lodged in her throat.  Her seven companions, all suffering fr...