What's Ticking in The Walls

1. On A Hilly Winding Road In Rural Minnesota...

August 1954 is the setting for the first chapter of The Dark Secret of Weatherend (1984), the second book in the Anthony Monday series. This means that Anthony was running around with Miss Eells and Yon Yonson 70 years ago. The book turned 40 in June, meaning there was a 30-year gap between the events of the book and the book itself. How long ago is 30 years? 30 years ago next month was the first Johnny Dixon book Brad Strickland completed: The Drum, the Doll, and the Zombie (1994). And it's been over 30 years since the last Monday book, The Mansion in the Mist (1992). In short, time files. Whether or not you've had fun is your problem.

2. The Color Purple

Bellairs's fans will recognize which character the color purple reminds them of, and Kaleena Fraga's recent article about Tyrian purple (The Bizarre History Of Tyrian Purple, The Ancient Royal Dye Worth More Than Gold) was something else to remind me of Florence Zimmermann:

Tyrian purple dye was first produced in the Phoenician city of Tyre (in present-day Lebanon), perhaps as early as the 16th century B.C.E. The Phoenicians’ legacy is so intertwined with the dye that some historians believe that “Phoenicia” derives from the Greek phoinos, or “dark red.”

To produce the dye, ancient people collected thousands of murex sea snails along the beach and either crushed the snails whole or cut out their tiny mucous glands. ... Tyrian dye was highly sought after by wealthy elites and royals, who draped themselves in purple. In ancient Greece, the right to wear purple was mandated by law. In ancient Egypt, the Ptolemaic queen Cleopatra purportedly used her great wealth to dye the sails of her boats. But no one embraced Tyrian purple quite like the ancient Romans did.

You could call those Romans the purple pros. Or not.

3. Nighty-night, Chad baby!

The headline about a screaming mummy reminded me of Chad Glomus wandering around his family’s estate looking for a will, but instead becoming the first object in the title laying in the third (The Mummy, the Will, and the Crypt, 1983). But the “Screaming Woman” mummy is very real ever since her discovery in 1935, as this article from Live Science ('Screaming Woman' mummy suffered a painful death in ancient Egypt, virtual autopsy finds) reveals:

An ancient Egyptian woman died in so much pain, her muscles instantaneously locked up — freezing her final scream in place for 3,500 years, an analysis of the mummy, dubbed the "Screaming Woman," reveals. 

The researchers also found that the woman had been embalmed in expensive imported substances and had all of her organs inside her body, suggesting a unique way of preservation.

They had to use dental records to identify Chad. One wonders how they found his mouth.

4. The Cheesemen of Doom

I still think Cheesemen of Doom is one of my favorite Bellairs-related typos. I thought of cheesemen recently when I read this article (Archaeologists Have Just Found The World’s Oldest Cheese In An Ancient Egyptian Tomb) about archaeologists discovering the oldest cheese specimen ever found.

The cheese, which is believed to be approximately 3,200 years old, was found while the team was excavating the tomb of Ptahmes, mayor of Memphis, the ancient capital of Egypt. According to Smithsonian, sometime between 2013 and 2014, the team of archaeologists found a few broken jars at the site, one of which had a mysterious solid white mass inside.

The jar was found with a canvas fabric which was thought to have covered the jar. This caused the archaeologists to suspect that the mass was food, Enrico Greco, the lead author of the paper and a research assistant at Peking University, told The New York Times.

However, it wasn’t until the team ran tests on the object that they reached their cheesy conclusion.

Blessed are those cheesemakers.

5. Curses Uncovered

I already mentioned one mummy this month, but why not another? The Daily Mail had a story about a scientist claiming to have cracked the cause of the Pharaoh's curse that was believed to have killed more than 20 people who opened King Tutankhamun's tomb, now over a century ago. 

The study determined the cause was radiation poisoning from natural elements containing uranium and toxic waste that was deliberately put inside the sealed vault.

Exposure to substances could have led to certain cancers, like the one that took the life of archaeologist Howard Carter - the first person to walk inside Tut's tomb more than 100 years ago. 

The theory effectively proves that the tomb was indeed 'cursed' - although in a deliberate, biological way - rather than in a supernatural manner that has been suggested by some Ancient Egyptologists.

However, there is still no explanation for Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.

6. Checking Your Mates

Finally, John Bellairs mentioned chess in several of his novels (did you ever figure out which three Johnny Dixon novels don't mention the game?), and it's always encouraging to read young people learning about it in this day and age. That includes children at a refugee camp outside Goma, a city in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Facilities are rudimentary, with mother and daughter breaking up firewood before they cook a meal outside.

But the chess club gives parents hope that their children can have some form of childhood here.

“Since my children have been learning to play chess I feel very happy, because the children in the camps spend their time doing nothing. They are there, sad, every day, but since this game came, I see that the children are so happy and I am very happy,” says Arusi's mother, Feza Ntwambaze.

The chess club teaches critical thinking and problem solving skills to children traumatised by life in this volatile region.

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