The Woman Who Lived a Life in Disguises

 

Sarah Emma Edmonds (1841-1898) was born in Canada to a mother who seems to have doted upon her and a father who may have resented her for not being a boy. When she was 15 years old her abusive father tried to marry her off, so she decided to run away to hide from her family. She went to USA all by herself and then she turned into Franklin Thompson, at first pretending to be a bible salesman and then a bookseller from Michigan.

However, Sarah Emma was a strong supporter of the Union, so she made use of her male "pseudonym", Franklin, and joined the army, at first as a nurse, but later on as a spy.

In order to infiltrate the Confederate camp she once more changed her identity and became Cuff, a black man, by using silver nitrate to blacken her skin. People from the camp soon picked her up for work, but what they didn't know was that "Cuff" was all ears and spying eyes. In a few days she found out a lot about the Army, it's decoys and plans. When she escaped and returned to those she supported she had a lot of useful information, thus proving her worth as a spy. All in all she took part in eleven spy missions, some in new disguises, and at the end of the war (1865) she published a popular fictional account of her exploits as a spy.

 

 

In 1867 she married. At that time she had achieved full recognition and, as the only woman, was grafted a military pension from the Civil War. When she died in 1898 she was buried with honors at Washington Cemetery in Texas.

 

Wikipedia

Skinned Alive

 

OK, animals may eat their prey alive, and we shudder at the thought, but then THEY DON'T KNOW BETTER and Ethics are not part of their being, not even as a pretence. For that kind of ideas we have to go to our own breed: Only humans KNOW that certain actions are against all written and unwritten laws of decency. Actually, that may be the very reason they do the unthinkable as e.g. skinning people alive: It's so cruel that some people like e.g. the Assyrian warriors who are skinning a couple of prisoners in this ancient rendering of the "event" would choose it as their way of execution.

Skinning seems so awful, so unthinkable that it's logical that a man like murderer Ed Gein and his obsession with women's skin stand out. However, his victims were dead which takes the extra cruelty of the torture out of it. Some were not even murdered by him, as he became a sort of grave robber who harvested parts of dead and buried women. Still, it seems exceedingly cruel and demeaning.

As to a modern day equivalent of the Assyrian cruelty there is one instance which stands out: The live skinning of the Polish university student Katarzyna Zowada (1975–1998). She went missing on November 12, 1998, but January 6, 1999, it was known what had happened to her as her empty skin was found. It had got caught in the propeller of a tug boat.

The investigation proved that she had been skinned alive, and that her skin had been turned into a suit that had been worn by the murderer for some time. Many experts - also from FBI - came to Poland to try to solve the case, but it took 19 years to make an arrest. Before that there had been a suspect who had been seen in a mask made of his murdered father's facial skin. He was charged with murdering his father, and many thought that he had also killed Katarzyna, but there was no evidence. Anyway, he was sentenced to jail, but the Katarzyna-case went cold until 2012.

 

Nineteen years after the murder (and torture) of Katarzyna, the by then 52-year old Robert Janczewski was arrested. He knew her and had a history of harrassing women and he also had had a job in a dissecting lab where he dealt with human corpses. 

What made him do what he did? Your guess is as good as mine, as he didn't tell WHY .... I for one would also like to know WHY The Court of Appeal found him NOT guilty on 31st October 2024 thus turning this gruesome case into something VERY confusing. (I suppose it's easier for Poles to find more about the case than for anyone outside of Poland ....)

^{https://allthatsinteresting.com/flaying} 

 

^{https://www.krakow.sa.gov.pl/komunikat-dotyczacy-wyroku-sadu-apelacyjnego-w-krakowie-z-dnia-31-pazdziernika-2024-r-wydanego-w-sprawie-roberta-j-sygn-akt-ii-aka-39223,new,mg,281.html,1181} 

 

^Wikipedia

 

 

 

Warring A Dead Body

I find it very strange that some people use the word "body" or "it" about someone who died. To me it's obvious that each individual keeps his/her identity even though they are dead. As it is I'm not blind to the possibility that this way of dehumanizing someone by changing the way they are described is a way of protecting oneself from the knowledge of one's own mortality. However, some, like e.g. Shayanna Sims, who took it upon herself to "teach the corpse of her husband's ex-girlfriend a lesson", clearly didn't see death as a safe haven for the deceased: The dead woman wasn't protected against her desires for revenge even in her casket at the funeral home. 

The beautiful Tabatha Lynch (to the right) had died of natural causes in 2015 at the age of 38, and Shayanna Sims hated her for (presumably) having an affair with her (ex-)husband, Montie Smith. They had been lovers in their teens before Montie Smith, even met her and he denied the allegations of the affair. Still, Shayanna Sims, went on a revenge spree, slashing the corpse, cutting her hair off, removing body parts and stealing her jewelry after cheating her way into her home. Dead or alive, she was "the enemy"!

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/woman-corpse-face-slash-america-17348604

https://www.newson6.com/story/63fd7b1b012b78736f5c4a0a/woman-back-in-jail-after-being-released-due-to-supreme-court-ruling

https://www.newson6.com/story/618c17266926630c3715cffe/tulsa-woman-convicted-of-desecrating-a-corpse-has-conviction-overturned-by-scotus-tribal-ruling

https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/legally-weird/what-are-the-penalties-for-desecrating-the-dead/

 

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article146492954.html 

 

https://www.pressreader.com/uk/chat/20180913/281599536384013

 

 

The Woman Who Stopped Speaking

Adele Hugo (1830-1915) was the daughter of a very famous author who gave life to literary characters that are loved even today, Victor Hugo (1802-1885). He was very versatile as he wrote in several genres, but today he is best known for his novels, "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame" and "Les Miserables": 

One of his daughters, Adele, met a weird - and sad - fate when she decided to turn her back on the world, so to speak. Her father was famous for his special gift of communication through his works, but she stopped communicating altogether after experiencing an unhappy love affair.

In 1850 she was found in a miserable condition in New York and as she didn't seem to understand questions about her identity, her health, and so on she was hospitalized for amnesia. However, somehow it was found out that she was a daughter of Victor Hugo who had been seduced and then abandoned by the English soldier Albert Pinson. Alone in a foreign country with nothing to sustain herself with she, very understandably, was in shock. Also she, as a woman, felt humiliated which may be the reason why she decided never to communicate again after returning to France: She most likely didn't want to discuss what had happened, not even with her father. For 65 years she kept silent, never looking for another love.

 

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-english-lieutenants-frenchwoman-the-tragic-story-of-adele-hugo/ 

 

Wikipedia

 

 

Money And Fate

Now and then a treasure of age-old coins and jewels is found in the ground, both here in Denmark or somewhere else. Some of these treasures are very rich and the one who buried them in the ground must have set real store by them. Unfortunately, he or she didn't get the chance to retrieve it or to tell about it to someone he or she trusted which means that it will end up in a museum, not even as the first one of its kind, but as one out of several. 

I wonder what happened to the owners of the treasure. Did they perish, e.g. succumb to sickness or get killed in a war? The most likely scenario is full of some kind of violence, either by nature or by humans, something that disrupted the lives of these owners who buried the treasure in order to keep it safe. Anyway, what happened was that the owners buried the treasure in the belief that they would be saved from the catastropies that threatened them, but sadly enough they were mistaken.

 

 

The whole family may have lost their social status once and for all by not knowing where this treasure was hidden. Someone who had lived a life in leisure at the top of society may have ended at the bottom. Perhaps the master became a servant/slave and the mistress became a servant, slave or even prostitute. Oh yes, that happened many times in history as these upheavals dug deep into the social layers, century by century. The rich got poor and thus the master became the slave. We ourselves may be the children of someone who experienced something like this themselves and we may also be the parents of someone who is about to experience the same now or in the future.

 

A friend of one of my late friends was the great-great-grandson of a man who was out of a very wealthy family, but he himself lost most of his money and nobody seemed inclined to help him out because he was such a squandering guy that he seemed quite hopeless. As it is, it turned out that he had his special nest egg, i.e. a lottery ticket which he was sure would come out with a large sum. He set all his hopes to this lottery ticket and when he was disappointed in these hopes he shot himself. That's not only sad, it's stupid, even more sad and stupid than burying one's riches in the ground without telling someone about it. 

Whom Should A Christian Chose To Support?

A beautiful picture of someone who - HOPEFULLY!!!! - is going to become a beautiful human when born

Recently I found one of my older notes from Facebook and it set my brain aflame: Someone - i.e. Pastor Dave Barnhart of the Saint Junia United Methodist Church in Birmingham, Alabama - presumably made a very wise utterance about the obligations of Christians in 2018. In these days of American misogyny when women are left to die of gynaecological causes following new insane rules his words offer a new angle to the subject of Christianity that really is needed:

"“The unborn” are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don’t resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don’t ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don’t need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don’t bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn. It’s almost as if, by being born, they have died to you. You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus but actually dislike people who breathe."

Well put, and as we know, The Bible tells Christians to offer help to "the poor", "the widows", "the orphans", and "the sick" who are people who have been born and live among us .... 

 

Yup, that we should ....

 

Fetus Hero

Well, the fetus, I'm thinking of, didn't know that he or she was born a hero. At the moment of his/her birth he/she just wanted to be alive. The irony is that this new, small Dane most probably wouldn't have had a life had he/she not been born a HERO.

It all started out with the birth of a very sick child who was in grave need of a bone marrow transplant. To succeed the donor should be closely related and very young - I suspect  that it also has something to do with stem cells, but I don't know for sure - and such a donor may best be designed by science if there isn't any which there wasn't in this case. 

I fully understand why the parents of the sick child wanted a cure, but it's a strange situation that child No. 2 is born as some kind of "spare part" of No. 1 and not for his/her own sake. It wouldn't cost the new child his/her life to have his/her bone marrow harvested, but still ....

"Born a hero"? Naaahhh, not without qualifying the word by adding "victim". He/She became a hero-victim ....