by KarenEssex | Aug 28, 2011 | history, life in london
“Well, I think it’s male, a great age, unpredictable, it’s diseased, it’s impatient, it’s energetic… that’s it.”
This is how one of my living literary heroes Peter Ackroyd describes London. I’ve just taken an hour-long walk under that city’s ominous gray skies, heavy with the answer to London’s daily mystery: will it rain? And like the cantankerous old man Ackroyd says London is, it would not give an answer. ![Ackroyd](http://www.karenessexblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Ackroyd.jpeg)
Also known for not giving answers is Peter Ackroyd himself, who has written many books set in this city, as well as the massive and brilliant London, a Biography. Now he has taken on a three-part history of the city from its inception to the present. ... Read more.
by KarenEssex | Aug 18, 2011 | books, dracula in love, other adventures
More missing sheep, this time in Tuscany! Call it a panther if it makes you feel better…but we know the truth!
Tuscany Trembling over Big Cat
Phantom Panther Gives Italians Paws for Thought
By Hans-Jürgen Schlamp in Massa Marittima, Italy
The village of Massa Marittima in Tuscany, Italy.
A large black cat believed to be a panther is stalking the fields and forests of southern Tuscany, striking fear into residents and holidaymakers. Hunters have angered animal rights campaigners by offering to kill it, but the debate is academic — “Bagheera” is running rings around its pursuer. ... Read more.
by KarenEssex | Aug 14, 2011 | books, dracula in love, history, other adventures, travels
Believe it or not, people often ask me, “Karen, was Vlad the Impaler really a vampire?” I finally decided to make a trip to Romania and Transylvania to investigate. The next few posts will be about that journey.
We’d set out for the Carpathian Mountains in Transylvania from Bucharest in the morning, encountering a tempestuous rainstorm so severe as to be deafening, lashing the vehicle and obscuring our sight. In the brutal rain teaming from a blackened, ominous sky, it became easy to imagine why Bram Stoker set his novel Dracula in this countryside. ... Read more.
by KarenEssex | Aug 1, 2011 | dracula in love, other adventures
For the next week or so I will be lurking around Bucharest and haunting the Carpathian Mountains. If you need me, please send your falcon, note attached, to Bran Castle in Transylvania. I’ll post an immediate reply.
![images-1](http://www.karenessexblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/images-1.jpeg)
by KarenEssex | Jul 30, 2011 | BLOG: Women, History, Sex & Power
My previous post, “Take Back the Tit,” elicited some very interesting, insightful comments. I received the following response as an email, and I am publishing it with the author’s permission because I think it brings up some controversial ideas.
In my post, I suggest that it is sometimes the female voice that tyrannizes other women. This writer responds:
“As a child of the seventies, I never quite “got” the whole women’s movement ethos. I was reared in the deep South in a house full of women, my father having died when I was three, and went to a girls’ school from the 7th to the 12th grade. I never DIDN’T see women in positions of authority and was stunned to learn that our sex was so miserably oppressed. The more I observe and the older I get the more convinced I am that women have always been deeply complicit in their own destinies, and if they’re put-upon doormats, the vast majority of them have no one to blame but themselves. My grandmother, born in 1898, would never have allowed herself to be treated disrespectfully by anyone, man, woman, or child. Most of the disagreeable social and cultural “rules” complained about so vociferously by women, seem to be established by women themselves. What’s up?
I read a funny, accurate novel years ago by Florence King called When Sisterhood Was In Flower. It’s probably out of print now, but I highly recommend it.” ... Read more.