Don Massenzio writes crime stories and thrillers. He has a very popular blog, which you can find here. He frequently invites other writers to make guest posts on his blog. He also interviews other authors and posts the transcripts of the interviews on his blog. He has an interview with ME that he will be posting on Friday, June 24. 😊
Please take a moment to read the interview and then take a look at Don’s books on the “author–book page” of his website.
Charles IV is best known today for the Charles Bridge that unites Prague across the Vltava River.
Charles IV, king of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor, celebrates his 700th birthday on Saturday, May 14! He made Prague the cultural and political capital of Europe and the Beautiful Style that he championed made Prague the artistic center of Europe for nearly 100 years. There are several events in Prague to celebrate Charles’ 700th birthday!
Charles IV wanted his stone bridge, built in 1357, to be a masterpiece of occult workmanship to protect his beloved city of Prague.
He is best known today, however, for the magnificent stone Charles Bridge which he had built to span the Vltava River in 1357 to replace the original wooden Judith Bridge which had been washed away by a flood in 1342. In order to protect the city, Charles ordered massive amounts of magical reinforcements to be incorporated into the bridge as it served as the principal means of crossing the Vltava for several hundred miles in either direction and helped make Prague one of the most important business centers in central Europe.
Construction began on Charles Bridge at 5:31am on 9 July 1357 and Charles IV himself laid the first stone. This exact time was very important to the Holy Roman Emperor because he was a strong believer of numerology and this specific time, which formed a numerical bridge or palindrome (135797531), reinforced the bridge’s strength. He had eggs used in mixing the mortar, partly because their chemical composition made the mortar stronger and partly because eggs were so important in alchemy. Charles had a brief poem, each line a palindrome, inscribed on a watchtower on the Old Town side of the bridge in order to confuse any devils that might be lurking in the shadows and waiting to cross the bridge:
SIGNATESIGNATEMEREMETENGISETAUGIS
ROMATIBISUBITOMOTIBUSIBITAMOR
“Reveal yourself as a sign in the sky though in vain you reach for me,
your desire.
Rome, the motion of the stars suddenly brings you love.”
Prague has escaped the ravages of time and history nearly unscathed: no major fires or epidemics, no with hunts, no battles or bombings. The magic of the Charles Bridge seems to have worked!
Click here for events in Prague this year to mark the 700th birthday of Charles IV.
The witches of Crowhaven Farm gather to confront Hope Lange, a modern woman who still owes them for a favor they performed for her in a previous life.
This screen shot opened the MOVIE OF THE WEEK episode every Tuesday and Wednesday evenings on ABC — back in the days when there were only 3 networks, plus PBS!
When I was in middle school, one of the scariest movies I have ever seen was broadcast as an ABC Tuesday night made-for-tv Movie of the Week. (Looking over the list of films shown during the run of the series, I still recognize many of them!) But the most riveting was Crowhaven Farm.
First broadcast in the autumn of 1970, Crowhaven Farm starred Hope Lange (known for the series The Ghost and Mrs. Muir) and Paul Burke (known for the television series Twelve O’clock High). As one horror review blog puts it:
“The writers of this show clearly understood horror, they understood that fear is in the mind and that nothing terrifies people more than their own imaginations. Contemporary television shows too much, it tells too much. Crowhaven Farm is spooky, scary, downright terrifying, simply because it makes you think.”
The movie tells the story of a modern woman, played by Hope Lange, who still owes the local witches for a favor they did her during a previous life during the 1600s. Too cowardly to give the witches what they asked for, in both her previous and current lives, she forces them to resort to other methods to be rewarded for the favors they did for her as well as exact revenge for how she cheated them in the 1600s. It is a remarkably subtle movie, with nuances and foreshadowings. It does not rely on slashing-and-gashing to frighten the viewer and many of its most frightening images, which appear here for the first time, later became clichés of the genre.
I heartily recommend that you spend an hour-and-fifteen-minutes to watch this classic movie, which is available here on YouTube. Send me your comments about it, especially if you have never seen it before or have not seen it since you were in high school yourself — I still get chills, just thinking about it!