Some Quick Discoveries

I am breaking my promise today to stay away until later next week because I am eager to share a couple of discoveries that I found online after signing up with Stumbleupon.com. Fellower blogger Emma Alvarez of Spain told me about the site in passing. I have such admiration for Emma because she is one of those rare renaissance people: blogger, artist, business woman, wife, intellectual, and so much more I am sure, and a Romantic like me. When I was looking for bloggers months ago to add to my blogroll who were kindred spirits thus being an aesthete like myself, I happen to find Emma's blog.

I nearly missed getting named Emma. My father's mother was named Emma. She died while my parents were courting. There was still very little dating in those days here in America outside the urban areas like it is even now in many non-western cultures. Couples courted, that is they saw each other with either a chaperon or the young man would visit the young woman's house, say on a Sunday, and they would sit and talk with the girl's parents nearby or within earshot. Grandma Emma died about two years before I was born while my parents were still courting. When I was born, my mother felt that I should be named in memory of my grandmother, plus my mother also liked the name. My father thought otherwise. He felt Emma was too old-fashioned, "a slave name," that is a name which a slave master or mistress might have given a female during my country's time of slavery. My father had decided when he was 10 years old that he wanted to name a daughter he might have Sincerae. He got the name from an old western. I will eventually tell about the origin of my name in another post. As it has turned out, Emma is not so out of style. In 2006 it was the second most popular name given to baby girls here in the US. I would be just happy being named Emma, but I also love my name too.

So Emma told me about StumbleUpon. I finally got around to setting up an account on the site this morning, so I could start hunting down all kinds of goodies in my favorite areas of history, art, etc. Already I have discovered this blog called Ze's Page which has such a sweet welcome message. Sometimes you can get the feeling that some bloggers don't want you to come near their pages, but not with Ze. (Please don't leave out blogger bullies and stalkers.) Ze's Page has some wonderful oddities you might want to check out.

StumbleUpon is just that, you can "stumble upon" so many interesting things pertaining to your interests. I read on the BBC website about a recent discovery of Arab coins in Sweden brought there by the Vikings. The article brought back to mind one of my favorite movies, The Thirteenth Warrior which starred Antonio Banderas as an Arab ambassador from Baghdad who reluctantly teamed up with a group of Vikings. One of my favorite lines in the movie was the comment one of the Vikings made about Banderas' character Ahmed ibn Fadlan's horse which was Arabian and much smaller than the horse's the Vikings were familiar with, "Only an Arab would bring a dog to war." Later when the racist wisecrack was made again, Ahmed showed them what his lithe, "little" horse could do. In the end, there was mutual respect and brotherhood between the Arab and the Vikings despite their cultural and religious differences. More wonderful quotes from the movie can be found here.

A third discovery that I have made is this amazingly beautiful video called Istanbul.

Thanks Emma for telling me about StumbleUpon. I see I am going to have a lot of fun with it.

On to my rest so I don't have a stroke:)