Badass Women of History- Zenobia

 

Zenobia 

The Conqueror 

 

Zenobia of Palmyra by Gambargin

 

A descendent of Cleopatra, Zenobia was a tenacious leader and tactician who challenged the Roman Empire.

 

A native of Syria, Zenobia was born long after her homeland had been made a Roman province. 

 

Well educated in classical philosophy, she spoke at least four languages and at an early age was placed in charge of her rich family's estates and cattle herds.

 

In 258 CE she married a Roman Senator who went on to become the Governor of Syria. Though she had at least one son with him and several daughters the marriage may not have been a happy one as Zenobia refrained from sleeping with her husband except when they wanted children.

 

Six years after their marriage, her husband and his eldest son from another wife were murdered by a nephew. Since her son was still a minor, Zenobia took over as regent of Syria on his behalf.

 

Situated on a profitable trade route and inheriting a large army from her late husband, Zenobia was well placed to break with Rome.

Desiring greater independence for herself and encouraged by ambitious courtiers and philosophers at her capital, Palmyra, Zenobia decided to throw off Roman rule and create her own Empire. 

 

With Rome gridlocked in a power struggle over who would be the next Emperor, Zenobia was free invade Roman Egypt with her armies. Initially unsuccessful, her soldiers drew the Romans north into Syria where they were annihilated on her home turf.

With Egypt and Syria under her control, Zenobia continued her aggressive expansion adding modern day Palestine, Jordan and parts of Turkey to her Empire taking away almost a third of Rome's territories. 

 

Zenobia's Conquests are in Yellow

 

 

Unfortunately for Zenobia, her luck went south in 272 CE when a Roman general, Aurelian, succeeded in becoming Emperor. 

 

A career military man who had started as a simple foot soldier, Aurelian ended the political power struggle which had kept Rome from focusing on Zenobia's insurrection. 

Crossing into Syria from the north with Rome's entire military might, Aurelian confronted Zenobia in two pitched battles driving her back to her capital. 

 

Hoping to flee into Persia across modern day Iraq, Zenobia and her entourage were captured by Aurelian's cavalry before they could escape and her Empire was brought to an end. 

 

 

Zenobia by Wildweasel339

 

 

Zenobia's ultimate fate varies somewhat according to the historical texts. 

 

Most accounts agree that she was brought back to Rome as a prisoner by the Emperor and that after being put on trial she was placed under house arrest in a villa in the city for the rest of her life. 

Some accounts also indicate that she may have married a Roman merchant and that one of her daughters went on to become Aurelian's wife as part of  deal to keep Zenobia's people from rebelling in the future.

Zenobia's brief but highly successful campaign against Rome inspired future women monarchs like Russia's Catherine the Great. 

 

Today, she is most remembered for being an ambitious queen who proved more than capable of going sword to sword with one of the world's greatest empires.

Statue of Zenobia in Latakia, Syria

 

Gay Propaganda of WWII

With the recent SCOTUS ruling making gay marriage officially legal in the US, I've been reflecting on how far the States and many other countries have come in LGBT rights. 

 

It's also been a time to reflect on how cultural attitudes regarding homosexuality and notions of what we consider homoerotic have changed. 

 

During World War II all sides produced propaganda to rally their forces. What's interesting about some of the material however is how homoerotic it seems to contemporary eyes. 

 

However, many people of the time would have seen these posters and pamphlets and not drawn that conclusion. It's particularly interesting when you consider that at the time gay people in most countries were deeply closeted, couldn't serve openly in their nation's armed forces, risked imprisonment if they were open about their sexuality, or in case you were under Nazi rule, risked being sent to a Concentration Camp.  

 

These are some of the more explicit pieces I've come across. 

 

 

1) American 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2) Soviet 

 

3) Japanese 

4) German 

 

 

 

 

Don't Tell Me How Good I Look- Inner Conflict Over Weight Loss and Body Image

Exercise. It's a good thing. We all know it. Yet there was a period of time where I let my fear of what others thought stop me from doing it. However, it's not the sort of fear you're thinking of. 

I wasn't afraid of people thinking I was fat. I was afraid of what people would think once I was thinner.

My weight has fluctuated a lot throughout my life. I've been through periods of being very slim to overweight to pudgy; though I've never been obese.

I've never really exercised much either, not consistently anyway, until recently. 

About two months ago I began doing cardio about forty to seventy minutes a day and I've notice that I've begun getting slimmer and feeling more energetic. 

My writing has also been flourishing. 

Now, for many people the story ends there. Not for me. 

Because there's something about exercise in our culture that's always bothered me. 

This issue many times stopped me from developing a serious exercise routine and was always at the forefront of my mind. 

The truth was, I didn't want to lose weight because I didn't want others to judge me more favorably. 

Something about the idea of getting compliments like 'You've lost weight, Sean!' annoyed me.

I was open to the idea that exercise could make me healthier but the thought of losing weight and the way this would change how I was seen in the eyes of others bothered me. 

I didn't like the idea that simply by getting thinner I would suddenly become a more valuable person. 

I didn't want my shape to define who I was and so I didn't exercise regularly until a very severe bout of depression prompted me to start moving as a way to get endorphins firing. 

My new routines have helped a lot and yet as I'm beginning to get thinner I can't help but shake the feeling of discomfort.

The fact that our society judges people so much based on physical appearance alone, has always driven me a bit nuts. 

Whether its clothing, abs, waist lines, breast sizes, hair color etc. we live in an age that I feel is incredibly superficial and shallow. 

For many people. Image, looking good for the camera in their phone is the only thing that matters. 

Idealized and unrealistic bodies are everywhere in our media.  Most of the pictures floating around social media are selfies and body shots. Much has been written about how women and young girls have been negatively affected by media pressure to conform to a certain body image.

However, while this might be a more intense pressure for women, men are also facing more and more pressures to have perfect Ryan Gosling and Channing Tatum bodies and this is creating more and more eating disorders among teenage boys and men.

The emphasis on so many amazing physiques is ironic when you consider how obesity rates in the US and many other developed countries have exploded in the last decades, meaning a significant portion of the consumers looking at these images don't resemble their images. 

Now, I'm not advocating for people not engaging in exercise or trying to lose weight. Being active is good. However, I think as a culture we need to get away from placing so much of our value and the value of others on physical appearance. 

 

We need to focus on promoting the idea of exercise as a way to improve one's health not how you look in the mirror. 

 

We need to have realistic expectations for our own appearance. Image is important but it's one component of being human. 

 

Above all we need to be okay with who we are regardless of how we look and we need to know that we are all more than an image, more than a profile picture or an Instagram snapshot.  

We are all complex, imperfect, eternally changing and evolving beings and we cannot ever be defined by something as simple as our skin, waist line or face. 

We are so much more. You are so much more.

The Captive Inside Me- Self-Hatred and Self-Love

Self-Loathing by Princess-Hanners

 

I've thought of my self-hatred/depression in many different ways over the years. 

 

I've envisioned it as a cloud, a rain storm, a sadistic woman with white hair and a wide smile. I had a nightmare once where it manifested as a mental asylum with deformed inmates shackled to walls. I watched myself in the dream, as if from a CCTV camera, pounding on a door to the institution with my fists. All the while I screamed 'Why won't you let me leave!' 

 

Yet until a few weeks ago I had never thought of it as a victim. An enemy? yes; a terrible force of nature? For sure. 

 

But I had never tried to truly humanize the struggle inside me not until I tried to emerge from my longest and darkest bout in many years. 

In mid May, I got back to Kansas City after spending a few weeks on the road. I saw family in Ohio and reconnected with a number of friends in DC. While traveling I released my first self-published book on Amazon and by the time I got home, over thirty people had bought copies. 

 

The trip and the sales made me feel great but within the first week of being back familiar feelings of anger and self-deprecation appeared. 

An onslaught of negativity began inside me. It was so relentless that for days I was unable to leave my bed for very long. 

 

I stayed up late until the night unable to find respite from the voice that once again tried to strangle me from the inside. 

 

For almost every minute, of every day for four weeks I was in the grip of thoughts like these:

'You don't matter! Nothing you've ever done has mattered!' 

 

'You're worthless!' 

 

'You've wasted your life!' 

 

'You've done nothing important!' 

 

'You should have killed yourself years ago!' 

 

'You have no talent!' 

 

'Everyone is better than you and they always have been!' 

 

'You are a sack of shit! You should set yourself on fire!'

 

'No one can love you!'

 

And on, and on, and on it went. 

 

Eventually, I reached out to the wider world. The kind words of friends near and far gave me space to breathe. While I still suffered daily I had room enough inside my head to truly think and address my demon.

 

I started to take steps to strengthen myself. I downloaded a book on depression and anxiety. I started exercising again and taking my Zoloft regularly. I poured over articles about self-hatred and depression. I read and reread blog-posts, psych articles and Tiny Buddha entries hoping that I could find something that could bring me out of the dark.  

 

I discovered helpful information and testimonials. 

 

None were silver bullets but it was in the midst of scouring this information that I came to see my battered soul and the destructive voice of self-hatred in a new way. 

It came to me late one night after reading an article that talked about how hateful inner voices often say things to us that we would never dream of saying to others. Often, we treat ourselves worse than we treat those around us. 

 

I thought: What if I gave a human shape to my beleaguered soul? 

 

My imagination kicked in. I gave my inner self hair, eyes, ears, a nose, a mouth and a bruised and cut body. I saw my battered, injured soul as a person. A tortured individual who had been locked away and attacked for years within me.  

 

In my imagination, I saw myself walk to this poor man's cell, unlock his door unfasten his shackles and embrace him. 

 

'I'm sorry,' I told him. 'I should have come for you sooner.' 

 

I now had a face and a body for my pain and I had a new way of seeing what had been going on within me for years. 

 

Now, when I feel a surge of negative emotions coming on I turn to the nearest empty chair or space and visualize my hurt self in that emptiness. In my mind, I ask if he is alright and if he needs anything. I treat him as a friend in need. 

 

I've been coping better with self-hatred by envisioning my inner self as a beaten and maimed person who needs to be nurtured and healed. 

 

I've also come to see the part that hates me as another tragic figure. 

 

An enemy? Perhaps, but a wounded enemy acting out of uncertainty, doubt and lack of confidence. I am wary of him but I do not hate him. I can't allow myself too. 

 

He is me. I am him. In my experience, hating ones own self-hatred does nothing but empower it. 

 

Sometimes, when I hear him attacking my long suffering self, I tell him firmly to stop. I explain to him that he has no place here and tell him that while I am obliged to stop him I won't allow myself to despise him as I used to. 

 

This is usually enough for him to leave us alone and he departs with his head hung low. 

 

Since I've adopted this approach, my world has become considerably brighter. My wounded soul is bruised still but his cuts have closed. He's scarred but he smiles more and the hateful self has not been able to shackle him again. 

 

I have no doubt the darkness will come again but the next time he decides to try and dig his claws in I won't be alone and my soul will be more prepared to endure. 

 

If you read this, and you feel that you are in a similar struggle I hope my words provide insight and comfort. You may not believe it now, but you are not alone. There are many, many others who experience your pain and there is will inside you to live and thrive.

 

Get help, talk to someone call a hotline. There is a way to pull out the black claws from your heart. 

 

There is a way to heal. 

 

Deep down there is precious jewel inside you. It may be caked in the filth of self-loathing and self-doubt but it is hard and glimmers waiting for you to dig it out.

What I Learned While Driving 25 Geckos to Oklahoma

 

 

 

1) Transgender people can still be kicked out of the US military

Yep, I learned this while listening to NPR as we drove through rural Kansas. While my scaly travel companions clung to their artificial tree branches, I learned that don't ask don't tells repeal only made it ok for openly gay men and women to serve in the US military. Apparently, it's still fine to boot out openly transgender men and women.

 

2) There are people in Kansas who actually listen to NPR (well, three anyway) 

 

Yes, NPR exists in a conservative state like Kansas and people do listen to it...well at least three do. I listened to the station for about four hours during my trip and they played separate recordings of the same two people for their customer testimonials. Still, it's quality programing and I'm sure the Geckos appreciated getting a well rounded look at today's current events.

 

3) People in rural Kansas shoot off fireworks in corn fields

 

This probably isn't too surprising given how isolating life in some of the six home, one gas station mini-mart towns must be. While driving back from Oklahoma I passed through four separate towns where young people were shooting off fireworks in cornfields. Granted, it might be practicing for fourth of July celebrations next weekend.

 

 

4) Taco Bueno is better than Taco Bell but isn't Mexican food

 

For the uninitiated, Taco Bueno is a fast food Tex-Mex chain. It's best described as a better version of Taco Bell. The portions are larger the quality is slightly better and you don't feel like your digestive system has been ravaged once you've had your last bite. None of that makes it great Mexican food but after three hours in a car with no one to listen to your renditions of Pink but 25 confused lizards, it manages to hit the spot.

 

5) Bluegrass is perfect music for driving through an endless sea of corn and wheat

 

I'm not a country fan. However, I have a soft-spot for old school folk and bluegrass. Both types of music are awesome to turn on when driving through an area that has nothing but farm fields. The downside is it also contributes to graphic fantasies of hillbillies emerging with shotguns from the cornrows.

 

 

6) Kansas City's main mix station can't be lost easily

 

I don't have an MP3 player and I'm do lazy to burn CDs (You know, cause that's so time consuming). This means I usually listen to a local mix station 102.1 when driving around Kansas City. What I didn't know was that you can drive almost two hours south of the city and still pick up the station pretty clearly. This means I can listen to my favorite station play the exact same songs from about ten singers over, and over, and over, and over again...ah, American Pop Culture.

 

7) A ton of cars in Oklahoma have Cherokee Nation License Plates 

 

The Cherokee people were forcibly relocated to Oklahoma by the US government during a tragic event known as the Trail of Tears. Several thousand Cherokee died in the forced march from the Appalachian Mountains. Today, a large number of Cherokee live in the State and as such you see a number of cars with Cherokee nation license plates.

 

 

8) Oklahoma State troopers' cars need a new design 

 

Don't worry I wasn't pulled over. However, I did get a look at the cars of the Oklahoma Highway Patrol Cars. Let me tell you, they have the absolute worst paint scheme of any highway patrol cars I've ever seen and I've been in a number of States. The cars are all white (as are the troopers) and have a black outline of the state of Oklahoma on the side...that's it. I think these officers need to do some consulting with the fashion police.

American Shame- Race and Our Realities

Today, I am ashamed to be an American. I am ashamed of my pale skin and the privilege and legacy it contains. We are a nation plagued by a sickness- that sickness is racism and we have to treat it. 

Dylann Roof may have been a maniac, but his mania was nurtured and cultivated. It was encouraged and ratified by voices from our past and present. And now, nine innocent people in Charleston have paid the price.

For all the strides America has made since 1964 there is still so much work to do. This attack has been only the most recent example of how African Americans in this country are still second class citizens. 

 

I am sick of reading stories about black men and women being abused by police. I'm tired of seeing the difference in how whites and people of color are treated differently by the authorities in so many matters. 

My soul is cut every time I hear of yet another young black person being gunned down and the indifference or hostility that comes from White Americans who refuse to see that Jim Crow is not yet dead.

We need to address race in this country. Something has to change in our society so that we can continue to build off the legacy of the Civil Rights movement of the 60s. We need an America that is truly for all Americans, free of random acts of mass gun violence, with justice for all regardless of skin. We need this and we need to talk about how to do it.

Even getting to that stage, however, is difficult in our current environment.

All too often we lack the ability to have good, honest respectful debate and discussion. We spend too much time in our own political, and social realities often defined by what we find online. And the more we listen exclusively to others like us, who repeat again and again that our world is the greatest and our problems are the worst, the more likely we are to ignore the pain of the others outside our reality and perhaps even hate them as Dylan Roof did.

Too many of us in White America are not capable of living with difference or with ambiguity. We are fearful. 

And I don't just mean on matters of race. We fear political difference, religious difference, philosophical difference.

Above all else we fear being challenged, we fear having our beliefs, our worldview altered by the reality of another. Rather than entertain the notion that what our views on taxes, social welfare or President Obama are not gospel we fail

No more is this clearer than the realm of social media, where all too often we share stories that reinforce our worldview and interact with others who believe the same things we do for the same reasons.

We come to love our home, our culture, our ideals, our front lawns, our sexuality, our cars, our sport's team. Not only do we fail to see the lives of other around us, we fail to value their reality. We fail to see that their path's struggles, different and at times more severe than our own, are just as real.

It's this failure at trying to understand the other (no matter who that other is) that is reinforced by and reflected in American media outlets like Fox and MSNBC.

Our race problems and so many other issues America is wrestling with stem from this. Our inability to look beyond our favorite news stations, our most trusted websites and Facebook groups and break from whichever parallel universe we inhabit even if just for a little bit.

When we lose the willingness to sit down with someone who's belief and background differs from ours and attempt to understand their perspective we are more likely to find ourselves incapable of respecting anyone who doesn't do as we do and think as we think.

We have to break this. We have to learn respect for whichever other we are not a part of. Until that happens, these types of attacks will continues and they will be our shame to bear as the rest of the world watches.

GOT- Why Season 5's Finale is the Most Depressing Episode Yet

Will he return?

 

Another season of Game of Thrones has come and gone...and damn did it go out with a bloody bang.

I've been a huge fan of the TV and book series for a few years. I've loved the dirty, uncompromising portrayal of Medievalist politics and war in a fantasy setting. I've been through it all: Ned's Stark beheading, Winterfell's burning, Khal Drogo's death, the Purple and Red Weddings.

Yet Season 5's finale, which aired yesterday, may have been the toughest episode I've ever had to sit through. That's saying a lot. Especially when in Season 3 an entire wedding party was massacred and unsavory acts were done involving decapitation and a wolf.  (Here comes the King in the North!)

 

There's a few reasons why this season's finale was as depressing as it was. First, practically all the story-arcs needed to be tied up in one episode. In past seasons, the pattern was to have a final battle or traumatic event in the ninth episode. The last episode of the season was then used as a climax or resolution in the aftermath of the previous week's event. This gave the viewer time to process and come to terms with what had happened. This season, however, broke the mold. Instead, not only did we have several important character deaths, other characters suffered new traumas or were left in precarious positions. Oh yeah, and on top of all this there was a massive battle at Winterfell. 

All of these events happened in rapid succession without any time to absorb the emotional impact of what we were seeing. And we saw a lot of heavy stuff.

Even for a book reader like me, who knew where each story was likely to end this year, it was difficult to watch so much horrible stuff happen in a fifty minute time period. It's one thing to read all of this in a book, it's quite another to see it happening in front of your eyes. Watching Cersei's walk of shame, Sansa's desperate leap from the wall and hardest of all, the possible death of Jon Snow was like getting hit by several different cars one after the other.

 

What made it harder was the fact that there was no silver lining. Usually in past finales at least one of the story lines ended on a positive or slightly uplifting note. In Season 1- Dany rose from the flames with her dragons. Season 2- Robb married Talisa and Dany recovered her dragons, Season 3- Astapor's slaves were liberated, Season 4- Arya sailed into the horizon after escaping the Hound. 

Season 5's finale had no such ray of sunshine in an otherwise overcast world. The closest we came was Tyrion reconnecting with Varys. Everyone else is either dead, likely dead, or in a far tougher spot than they were before the episode. 

Now, all of this is not to say I will stop watching the show. This isn't a 'I'm done' rant like the many I've seen on Twitter. Game of Thrones remains one of the best TV series ever created and I intend to keep watching until the series concludes.

 

This is only meant to say, damn I wish there could have been some ray of hope somewhere to help offset the trauma.