Master Jack

Born in Knickerbocker, Texas around 1876 to a German mother and a Native American father, she met outlaws William Carver and Ben "The Tall Texan" Kilpatrick when she was just a teenager. 

Knickerbocker was a haven of outlaws and Laura's own father was a bank robber, so it came as no surprise when the young girl followed a life of crime. When she was just 15 years-old she began a romance with Will Carver, who had been married to her aunt until she had recently died. Carver often worked with Black Jack Ketchum robbing trains before he moved on to Utah and hooked up with Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch, where Laura ultimately ended up too. 

Somewhere along the line, Laura transferred her affections to Ben Kilpatrick, who cast his lot with the Wild Bunch in 1898. Laurie Bullion often helped the gang by fencing goods and money for them and was known to the group as Della Rose and often called the "Rose of the Wild Bunch."

Having taken part in several train robberies with the Wild Bunch, Kilpatrick and Bullion returned to Texas with William Carver, where Carver was ambushed and killed by lawmen on April 1, 1901. Bullion and Kilpatrick then fled to to St. Louis, Missouri, where they were arrested on November 8, 1901. Kilpatrick was found guilty of robbery and sentenced to 15 years in prison, while Laura was sentenced to five. 

After serving 3 1/2 years, Laura was released from the Missouri State Penitentiary at Jefferson City, Missouri, on September 19, 1905 and lived the last years of her life in Memphis, Tennessee, under the name of Freda Lincoln, making her way as a seamstress and a dressmaker. She passed away on December 2, 1961 and is buried in Memphis under a tombstone that reads, "Freda Bullion Lincoln—Laura Bullion—The Thorny Rose." 

She never saw her lover Ben Kilpatrick again. Kilpatrick, on the other hand, was released from prison in June, 1911 and immediately returned to a life of crime. While trying to rob a Southern Pacific express near Sanderson, Texas , on March 13, March, 1912, he was killed with an ice mallet.

Source

Posted by Jedi Jack at Monday, November 30, 2009 | 0 comments Read More  
Labels: History, Modern History

In the wild world
I would love you
without guilt
I would call you
trembling,
I would seduce you
with words,
eyes, hands, lips
careless as wind,
I would speak
all the names
of your hidden desires
and give them to you,
day after day
until you are breathless,
aching
and burning for my touch.

J.L. Stanley

Posted by Jedi Jack at Tuesday, November 24, 2009 | 0 comments Read More  
Labels: Love, Poetry

Posted by Jedi Jack at Tuesday, November 17, 2009 | 0 comments Read More  
Labels: Music

Today we have the benefit of hindsight. We know, as fourteenth-century people suspected, that the mortality caused by the bubonic plague of the Black Death was the worst demographic disaster in the history of the world. 

We also know that the mortality came to an end in the first outbreak soon after 1350; contemporaries could not have known this would happen - so far as they were concerned everyone might well die.


Some treated each day as if it were their last: moral and sexual codes were broken, while the marriage market was revitalised by those who had lost partners in the plague.


We also know that the plague returned regularly, first in 1361 and then in the 1370s and 1380s and, as an increasingly urban disease, right through until the Great Plague of 1665 in London. But by around 1670 it disappeared from England for over two centuries until a number of outbreaks occurred either side of 1900.


It was not until these modern outbreaks that the bacillus was identified and connection between rats and plague discovered. Despite all their best efforts people in the historic period had no remedy against the mysterious plague, except as 
Daniel Defoe put it, to run away from it.


Full Article

Posted by Jedi Jack at Monday, November 16, 2009 | 0 comments Read More  
Labels: History, Medieval History

Geoffrey of Monmouth introduces Guinevere, "the loveliest woman in all the island" with her marriage to Arthur. He proudly states that she "descended from a noble family of Romans and reared in the household of Duke Cador" implying a fair match. Monmouth's interests lie primarily in the legitimizing effect of Guinevere's Roman blood.

Yet her ancestry earns no forgiveness when Guinevere breaks "the oath of her prior nuptials" by becoming queen to the usurping Modred. Earlier accounts, in accordance with the attitudes of the early Latin texts discussed above, assumed that

Guinevere accompanied the throne as Queen, as spoils to the victor. Monmouth, however, attributes her newfound allegiance not to her situation but to "unconscionable lust" (91). Rather than see Guinevere as a "mere pawn of political events," Monmouth paints her as Modred's accomplice.

Even before Chreitien introduced Lancelot, Guinevere's reputation caught up with her. Just as she
finally became a noteworthy character, Guinevere shouldered some of the blame for the fall of Camelot through her betrayal of Arthur, continuing the Welsh tradition of her traitorous nature.


Source 

Posted by Jedi Jack at Thursday, November 12, 2009 | 0 comments Read More  
Labels: Ancient History, Mythology

Buto was a cobra-goddess whose original home and cult center was in the Delta of the Nile at Per-Uatchit. In time she became a prominent protectress of all of Lower Egypt. As such she was routinely connected to the goddess of Upper Egypt, Nekhebet. Together, they appeared in many pieces of art as symbols of the Two Lands, a united Egypt.

Posted by Jedi Jack at Thursday, November 12, 2009 | 0 comments Read More  
Labels: Goddess, Mythology

A story is told of an inhabitant of Unst, who, in walking on the sandy margin of a voe, saw a number of mermen and mermaids dancing by moonlight, and several sealskins strewed beside them on the ground. At his approach they immediately fled to secure their garbs, and, taking upon themselves the form of seals, plunged immediately into the sea. But as the Shetlander perceived that one skin lay close to his feet, he snatched it up, bore it swiftly away, and placed it in concealment.

On returning to the shore he met the fairest damsel that was ever gazed upon by mortal eyes, lamenting the robbery, by which she had become an exile from her submarine friends, and a tenant of the upper world. Vainly she implored the restitution of her property. The man had drunk deeply of love, and was inexorable; but he offered her protection beneath his roof as his betrothed spouse. The merlady, perceiving that she must become an inhabitant of the earth, found that she could not do better than accept of the offer.

This strange attachment subsisted for many years, and the couple had several children. The Shetlander's love for his merwife was unbounded, but his affection was coldly returned. The lady would often steal alone to the desert strand, and, on a signal being given, a large seal would make his appearance, with whom she would hold, in an unknown tongue, an anxious conference.

Years had thus glided away, when it happened that one of the children, in the course of his play, found concealed beneath a stack of corn a seal's skin; and, delighted with the prize, he ran with it to his mother. Her eyes glistened with rapture -- she gazed upon it as her own -- as the means by which she could pass through the ocean that led to her native home. She burst forth into an ecstasy of joy, which was only moderated when she beheld her children, whom she was now about to leave; and, after hastily embracing them, she fled with all speed towards the seaside.

The husband immediately returned, learned the discovery that had taken place, ran to overtake his wife, but only arrived in time to see her transformation of shape completed -- to see her, in the form of a seal, bound from the ledge of a rock into the sea. The large animal of the same kind with whom she had held a secret converse soon appeared, and evidently congratulated her, in the most tender manner, on her escape. But before she dived to unknown depths, she cast a parting glance at the wretched Shetlander, whose despairing looks excited in her breast a few transient feelings of commiseration.

"Farewell!" said she to him "and may all good attend you. I loved you very well when I resided upon earth, but I always loved my first husband much better."

More Legends

Posted by Jedi Jack at Tuesday, November 10, 2009 | 0 comments Read More  
Labels: Love, Mythology

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you

~ Kahlil Gibran ~

Posted by Jedi Jack at Monday, November 09, 2009 | 0 comments Read More  
Labels: Love, Quotes

The Angel


I dreamt a dream! What can it mean?
And that I was a maiden Queen
Guarded by an Angel mild:
Witless woe was ne'er beguiled!


And I wept both night and day,
And he wiped my tears away;
And I wept both day and night,
And hid from him my heart's delight.


So he took his wings, and fled;
Then the morn blushed rosy red.
I dried my tears, and armed my fears
With ten-thousand shields and spears.


Soon my Angel came again;
I was armed, he came in vain;
For the time of youth was fled,
And grey hairs were on my head.


William Blake

Posted by Jedi Jack at Sunday, November 08, 2009 | 0 comments Read More  
Labels: Poetry

Posted by Jedi Jack at Saturday, November 07, 2009 | 0 comments Read More  
Labels: Quotes