ursulav

Every now and then, synchronicity rears up and clocks me in the head. Often with a wombat.

Some of you may remember, wayyyy back when Digger was updated whenever I was in the mood, when I put up a page of our intrepid wombat heroine eyeing some cave paintings. And the next day, there was a report from Australia of new petroglyphs being found, including a hyper-rare cave painting of a wombat.

This isn't nearly so impressive. As coincidences go, that was a one time shot and I don't expect to replicate it any time soon.

However, the Digger that went live today features a reference to someone named "Heron the Elder," a fictional historian I cooked up, who was supposed to be the same sort of travelling historian sensationalist as Pliny or Herodotus. The name, in fact, came from those two--"the Elder" after Pliny, and Herodotus in usual Ursula free-form "Her...hero...her...heron. Hmm, storks are neat!" And thus, Heron the Elder, denounced by our librarian character as a terrible liar, was born.

I did this page a coupla weeks ago and thought no more about it. Today it went live.

This evening, as I flipped on the History channel, the word "Heron" catches my eye. And faith and begorrah, there really WAS a famous Heron, of Alexandria, an inventor of absolutely staggering devices for the ancient world. Including a lot of items for temples. He was an inventor of, among other things, mechanical cons of amazing sophistication, used for faking oracles and what not.

So there really was a Heron in the ancient world, who really was a sensationalist and, in a roundabout fashion, terrible liar. I'll be damned.

Since I am a hard-headed rationalist for the most part, (or like to pretend I am, nevermind the foo dogs and Money Frog) I'll chalk this up to "Must have heard about it in college and forgotten about it, but was subconsicously influenced by it," but still, the timing is bizarre.

Also, I sold two paintings today, which is completely unheard of on a non-Con day. So my deep gratitude to my buyers--my hat is off!--a shiny new quarter for Money Frog, and obviously the planets are aligning or whatever the hardheaded rationalist equivalent is.