Breathing Just a Little

So the whole "a poem every day" idea hasn't really happened, but I am still enjoying doing these when I can. It looks like I will end up with at least 15 poems for the month if the current pace is maintained, which is pretty good! Today is another pair of poems to represent days 17-23, on two similar-ish mysteries of contemporary history that have fascinated not just me but many professional and amateur sleuths over the years. One of them is much better known than the other, which is in itself somewhat interesting. These are the cases of Alfred Loewenstein and DB (Dan) Cooper. Alfred Loewenstein (11 March 1877 – 4 July 1928) was a Belgian businessman. At his peak in the 1920s, Loewenstein was worth around £12 million in the currency of the time (equivalent to £913.25 million in 2023), making him the third-richest person in the world at the time.  On the evening of 4 July 1928, Loewenstein left from Croydon Airport to fly to Brussels on his private aircraft along with six ...

Well, as expected, I did not have time for poetry on my long weekend away in the Yarra Valley (which was awesome - a couple of photos provided for evidence!) Today, I used my work lunchbreak to compose two poems that together represent 5 days.  The first poem for today is based on the mystery of the Mary Celeste . The Mary Celeste was a Canadian-built, American-registered merchant brigantine ship that was discovered adrift and deserted in the Atlantic Ocean off the Azores on December 4, 1872. She was discovered in a haphazard but seaworthy condition under partial sail and with her lifeboat missing (the assumption has always been that the people left on the lifeboat). The last entry in her log was dated ten days earlier. She had left New York City for Genoa on November 7 and was still amply provisioned when found. Her cargo of alcohol was intact, and the captain's and crew's personal belongings were undisturbed. None of those who had been on board were ever seen or heard from ag...

Today's historical mystery poem is about the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. The Ten Lost Tribes of Israel refers to the people removed from the then-Kingdom of Israel after it was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire around 720 BCE. The tribes were: Reuben, Simeon, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Manasseh, and Ephraim. Israel had earlier split into two kingdoms, Israel and Judah (which comprised the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin).  Side note on Judah: it survived until the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem in 587 BCE, and was later re-formed as an autonomous Persian protectorate when Judean exiles returned after the fall of Babylon about 50 years later. Judah became the area known as Judea in Roman times, until the expulsion of the majority if its Semitic population in two waves in 70CE and 135CE. Modern Jewish people are named after Judah, and primarily gain their descent from these people. Back to the ten tribes - the historians' assumption has always been that the c...

Today in mysteries of history poems: the Tunguska event. The Tunguska event was a massive aerial explosion that occurred around 7am on 30 June 1908 over a region in western Siberia, Russia. The explosion registered on instruments worldwide and led to noticeable atmospheric effects for months afterward, as well as levelling trees and burning land over a wide area.  The closest observers were some reindeer herders asleep in their tents in several camps about 30 km  from the site. They were blown into the air and knocked unconscious; one man blown into a tree later died. The scientific consensus is that the Tunguska event was likely caused by a fragment of a meteorite, but there is no conclusive evidence to validate this as no fragments have been found. Some scientists suggest that the cause may instead have been the explosion of a large natural gas reservoir underground, that had been experiencing leaks and that would have blown up due to ignition sources as lightning. Alternati...

This first mysteries of history poem is inspired by the so-called "dancing plagues" that occurred in Europe across the 14th to 17th centuries. It involved hundreds, or even thousands, of people dancing erratically but continuously for long periods of time for no apparent reason, without music (although sometimes music was added in as an attempt to treat the issue), with some or many of them dying from the exertion. While there are many theories about what caused it (the most popular are ergot poisoning from mushrooms and some kind of mass nocebo / mass hysteria effect), no one knows for certain, and it seems likely that we never will. That certainly doesn't stop me from speculating, though :-) Dance if one day you step outside your door and the air     doesn't seem like it did yesterday, and your neighbour          isn't beating out her rugs like she does every day but instead is staring, her eyes fixed,            ...

I have decided to challenge myself to do a mid-year month of poetry (similar to what I do every January with my poetry group, but solo this time!) as I have been feeling the lack of consistent creativity in my life and would really like a stimulus to get that started again. This time, I have decided to set myself a theme to see how that works out for me. I enjoyed writing a recent poem on the Stonehenge builders so much that I have chosen as my theme "great mysteries of history" - relatively loosely defined, but an organising principle at least.  Starting from the position of ruling out unsolved serial murders (no Jack the Ripper, Tylenol Killer or Zodiac for me, thanks), I have a bunch of ideas floating around, but if anyone wants to add anything to the suggestion box, feel free! The key ones I have in mind at the moment are in the list below. NB: I know some of these now have plausible or even probable solutions, but none have been conclusively resolved and all remain fasc...