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The words of a traitor cut deeper than any blade, forged by the hand of man. – DeWayne Kunkel, Blackthorn
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a story scene or poem about betrayal.
Journaling Prompt: Write about a time when you felt betrayed. How did you cope with it?
Art Prompt: Traitor
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write about an historic betrayal.
Photo Credit: jin.thai on Flickr
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The streets of San Francisco were jammed. A frenzy of cars, trucks, wagons, and every other imaginable form of conveyance crisscrossed the town and battled its steepest hills. Porches, staircase landings, and sidewalks were piled high with boxes and crates delivered on the last possible day before transporting their contents would become illegal. The next morning, the Chronicle reported that people whose beer, liquor, and wine had not arrived by midnight were left to stand in their doorways ‘with haggard faces and glittering eyes.’ Just two weeks earlier, on the last New Year’s Eve before Prohibition, frantic celebrations had convulsed the city’s hotels and private clubs, its neighborhood taverns and wharfside saloons. It was a spasm of desperate joy fueled, said the Chronicle, by great quantities of ‘bottled sunshine’ liberated from ‘cellars, club lockers, bank vaults, safety deposit boxes and other hiding places.’ Now, on January 16, the sunshine was surrendering to darkness. … -Daniel Okrent, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a story set on the eve of Prohibition.
Journaling Prompt: How do you feel about drinking alcohol?
Art Prompt: Prohibition
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write about a political decision made during your lifetime that you believe will turn out to backfire. Compare and contrast with Prohibition.
Photo Credit: dewarsrepealday on Flickr
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History is often shaped by the stories of kings and religious and military leaders, and much of what we know about the past derives from official sources like military records and governmental decrees. Now an international project is gaining invaluable insights into the history of ancient Israel through the collection and analysis of inscriptions — pieces of common writing that include anything from a single word to a love poem, epitaph, declaration, or question about faith, and everything in between that does not appear in a book or on a coin.
Such writing on the walls — or column, stone, tomb, floor, or mosaic — is essential to a scholar’s toolbox, explains Prof. Jonathan Price of Tel Aviv University’s Department of Classics. Along with his colleague Prof. Benjamin Isaac, Prof. Hannah Cotton of Hebrew University and Prof. Werner Eck of the University of Cologne, he is a contributing editor to a series of volumes that presents the written remains of the lives of common individuals in Israel, as well as adding important information about provincial administration and religious institutions, during the period between Alexander the Great and the rise of Islam (the fourth century B.C.E. to the seventh century C.E.).
These are the tweets of antiquity. -Science Daily
Writing Prompt: Write a story, scene or poem based on some ancient graffiti OR write a story, scene or poem where one of your character’s tweets is discovered in the future.
Journaling Prompt: What will your descendents discover when they read your journals?
Art Prompt: Tweets of Antiquity
Nonfiction / Speech Writing Prompt: Write about your favorite historical period and show how the “tweets of antiquity” has revealed information about it to us.
Photo Credit: Retlaw Snellac on Flickr
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