{"id":490,"date":"2022-04-23T03:05:14","date_gmt":"2022-04-23T03:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lmbanyan.com\/?p=490"},"modified":"2022-05-21T14:46:42","modified_gmt":"2022-05-21T14:46:42","slug":"the-man-the-past-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lmbanyan.com\/?p=490","title":{"rendered":"Blog Post #1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Man, the Past & the Future!<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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Erik Mercier! So just who is he? The book cover of Phantom Future says he was \u201chaunted and hunted\u201d and \u201clived in the underworld of Paris during the mid-1800s.\u201d But beyond that, what was he really<\/em>? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Myths surrounded him, so there are many questions. Was he a creative genius? Was he a cursed madman? Possibly even a murderer? But we know him best by the name that has come down for over a hundred years\u2014the infamous \u201cPhantom of the Opera.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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The Man<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This myth has been interpreted differently by successive generations. At first Erik was depicted as a ghoulish madman, but then the world came to see him as a romantic anti-hero, fated to be alone because of his scarred face and soul. But I wondered, what is the truth about him<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first mention of Erik was by Gaston Leroux in his classic fictional novel, The Phantom of the Opera<\/em>, published in 1910. The opening passages of the book tell of a skeleton being uncovered beneath the Garner Opera House in Paris. Leroux wrote that the discovery is said to have occurred in 1907 when gramophone disks (early recordings) of famous opera stars were being buried there in a time capsule. Leroux had heard about a skeleton being found in the dark basements of the opera house as well as rumors that a ghost haunted the famous building. In his novel he wrote that newspaper reports claimed the bones were from a victim of the Communards who had executed people in that basement during their takeover of Paris in 1871. But the narrator of Leroux\u2019s novel claimed that the bones were the remains of the infamous Phantom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leroux uses some historical facts to ground his story. It is a fact that in 1907 gramophone disks of opera singers were buried for posterity in the subcellars of the Garnier. In fact, that very real time capsule was unearthed a hundred years later! There is an article about it in the Smithsonian Magazine (click the button below and read the full article), published in March 2008. The article has a photo of the men who buried the large metal urns containing the recordings. Leroux was one of France\u2019s preeminent journalists and would have known about the burying of the time capsule. That, along with the rumors of the ghost, clearly triggered his imagination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Leroux\u2019s novel, the skeleton has an unusual feature\u2014it is wearing a gold ring. The book\u2019s narrator believed that the ring proved the remains to be the Phantom of the Opera rather than a victim of the Communards. But as a student of history, that passage triggered my imagination, and I wondered why couldn\u2019t the skeleton be both Erik\u2019s remains and<\/em> proof he met his death at the hands of the Communards? Leroux does not place dates on the events in his book, but it seemed to me that history could establish when Erik lived and died. The Communards actually occupied the Garnier from April to May of 1871 during their rebellion. So that pinpointed a date for Erik\u2019s death in my novel, Phantom Future\u2014at least until fate and the Wheaton\u2019s time travel technology intervenes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The placing of the time capsule in 1907 sparked Leroux\u2019s inspiration for his novel which was published in 1910. In Leroux\u2019s book, the story is told through the eyes of the narrator as he interviews people and gathers documents and bits of rumor to piece together the story of the Phantom which occurred decades before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Leroux\u2019s book covers just the final months of Erik\u2019s life, and only four pages of the epilogue give a glimpse into the rest of his life. So the book does not explain how Erik developed his masterful abilities. The epilogue merely states: \u201cThere is an entire period in Erik’s life that is fairly obscure.\u201d Then Leroux depicts briefly Erik\u2019s stay in Persia, flagging a mysterious period in his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I read Leroux\u2019s novel, so many unanswered questions came to my mind. When was Erik born? He was a master of the violin and organ; a composer; a singer with a hypnotic voice; a magician; and an architect. Those skills require years of study and other masters to teach him. To me, this issue was perplexing. I wondered who were these mentors? How did Erik meet them? Just how did he learn and develop his many extraordinary abilities? What was Erik doing during all those missing years in his life? In the Phantom Future<\/em> series, I delve into these questions and explain not only about his determination and struggles to develop his unique talents, but also the famous, fascinating people who would cross his path and help him!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So who is the real Phantom? On the last page of the book, Leroux wrote this about Erik:
\u201cHe wanted only to be someone, like everyone else.\u2026 And he was required to hide his genius or else play tricks with it. Had he had ordinary features, he would have been one of the noblest members of the human race! He had a heart capacious enough to contain the whole world\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leroux describes Erik as \u201cone of the noblest members of the human race!\u201d<\/em> Declares that he had a \u201ccapacious\u201d<\/em> heart. Capacious means generous and enormous. These qualities seem at odds with the physical qualities and actions that are most often associated with Erik, the Phantom. This, too, made me wonder\u2013what kind of man would Erik have been to also have those qualities? Because of his rejection by society and isolation, it seemed to me that his behaviors\u2014especially his reaction when his mask was removed and his scarred face revealed\u2014were more the result of post-traumatic stress rather than those of a madman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So many questions came to my mind. In The Phantom Future<\/em> series I fill in Erik\u2019s untold life before those final few months that Leroux wrote about. As a retired lawyer, I value first-person, written evidence. So I felt that the best way to record the truth about Erik\u2019s life would be in a diary written by someone at the opera house who knew Erik. In Leroux\u2019s novel, Ad\u00e9le Giry is the box tender at the Garner who helped Erik collect his \u201cwages\u201d from the theater managers. It seemed to me that she was the perfect person to befriend Erik and write a diary that would include important happenings in his life as well as their friendship. In my books her poignant diary entries truly give insights into Erik\u2019s \u201ccapacious\u201d nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an author, I like to get into each character\u2019s own thoughts, feelings and soul, so I write in the unique style of first-person, present-tense. Each chapter is in the immediate perceptions and experience of that person. Leroux tells his story through the eyes of the narrator who never meets Erik. But in the Phantom Future<\/em> series you experience the first-person viewpoints of over twenty people and perceive Erik through the eyes of many. And in Erik\u2019s chapters, his own deeply personal thoughts and remembrances are revealed. As the story unfolds, the many viewpoints disclose the challenges of our future world and the efforts to cooperatively work together and overcome the life-ending fate that hangs over humankind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Erik is indeed a fascinating character and the central connecting thread in the Phantom Future<\/em> series. As a writer, I wondered if Erik were to emerge from legend as a real man, who would he be? How would the turbulent times he lived in affect his life? Would he ever find love? And finally, Ad\u00e9le Giry in her final diary entry asks the question that I most wanted to explore, \u201cI wonder, had they not rejected him, what his life would have meant to the world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Past<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Phantom Future<\/em> series the worlds of the past and future collide\u2014with Erik as the fateful connection. The past is the world of France during Erik\u2019s life. Even if he were in his early 30s when he died in 1871, he would have experienced tumultuous times. He would have lived during the final days of the last French king and the short-lived Second French Republic which replaced him. But Erik also would have been old enough to witness the unexpected return of Napoleon\u2019s nephew who overthrew that Republic and made himself emperor of the Second French Empire. During the last year of his life, Erik would have experienced the privations of the siege of Paris by the Prussians during the cold winter of 1870-71 and the violence of the Commune uprising the following spring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of these historical facts are not just events that are over and done and to be forgotten. These happenings represent the hardships of people who for centuries have struggled to overthrow authoritarian leaders that brought injustice, poverty and war. Events that mirror our own present and future. The past becomes the historical framework that connects my fictional Erik with the real challenges not only in our future, but that we witness unfolding each day in our current world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Future<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the future world quantum computers will be fully developed. Someone like Howard Wheaton will create them and become the new computer guru with fabulous wealth and extraordinary power. But the seeds of that other power\u2014ownership of the internet and information\u2014is already happening, as well as its consolidation in the hands of a mega-corporation. That wealth will also be overwhelming, and the control over what people hear and believe will be turned inevitably into propaganda. In the future these vying powers will each want to control time travel for their own ends. In the Phantom Future<\/em> series, Erik becomes a pawn in their power play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the future also holds the fate of mankind because of natural events. We are already seeing wild fluctuations in our weather. Some say that is man-made. Others say it is a natural climate cycle of the earth. Whichever theory is correct, it is evident that extremes of weather are happening. That is a fact. Floods at levels that should happen only every 500 years are occurring each year now. Extreme heat and draught are already destroying crops. And ice storms in Texas leave people without power and freezing to death. All these impact our food and land and lives. Will humans meet these challenges with action or do nothing until it is too late? A Carrington event, a purely natural phenomenon, occurred in 1859 and will happen again. Will humans be ready for it? What is our fate if we are not? The crossroads of the past and future intersect with Erik and what could become our own phantom future.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Join me here the third Friday of each month for a new, fascinating look into the worlds of the past and our future. And of course, Erik!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smithsonian Magazine article. A Record Find<\/em>, about the 1907 time capsule buried beneath the Garnier Opera House!<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Blog Post #2<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Why Think About History? The Past is Prologue!<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The past is prologue<\/em>, in other words, the past is the beginning of the current story\u2014the world we live in! How do we figure out why our current world has so many problems?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, we can look to history to see how we got here. But we can ALSO look to history to see what worked and what didn\u2019t and use that very valuable information to make plans for dealing with\u2014aka \u201cfixing\u201d\u2014the current problems. Shakespeare wrote \u201cthe past is prologue\u201d over 400 years ago, and those words are just as true today. By the way, it\u2019s why we still keep quoting Shakespeare! The guy was not just smart, he was wise! (That sounds like the topic of a future blog?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The people who inhabit the worlds of Phantom Future and Quantum Verdict are living and functioning in real historical settings and events. As a student of history, I try to be accurate to even small details. So this current blog post addresses this issue of why read or study or give a second thought to history?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, this week on Here and Now, a National Public Radio (NPR) program, they started a new series called \u201cFalsehoods\u201d about beliefs and narratives that experts and ordinary humans got wrong for a LONG time. Eventually these were proven false, but only after many people were harmed or died, AND the ones who got it right were, well, not listened to or respected. If you\u2019d like to hear this entire program, which is very interesting, I\u2019ve provided a button below to take you to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This first program of the NPR series looks at what happened with the medical community\u2019s handling of Covid, and they went back to a similar historic health crisis\u2014cholera and the Broad Street outbreak of 1854! Yes, those of you who read Phantom Future are already ahead of the curve because you are knowledgable about this very deadly epidemic. Erik experienced the painful death of Julian and his wife when they were exposed to an outbreak south of the Thames that actually occurred a year before the Broad Street outbreak. That chapter describes the very sudden onset and the rapid deterioration as the body desperately tries to vacate everything in the digestive system to rid itself of the deadly bacteria. I describe the doctor\u2019s treatment which is also a correct representation of the drugs and methods medical doctors used. That treatment by medical doctors resulted in more than a 50% death rate. Nonetheless, that treatment persisted for decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But something different happened in Erik\u2019s life when the Broad Street outbreak happened a year later. Erik by that time is living with his mentor, Mr. Markham, who comes down with all the dreaded symptoms, but he tells Erik to fetch a homeopathic doctor. As Erik ran to the doctor\u2019s home, he was not only afraid of losing his dear friend, he was terrified that he may be next to die horribly. But the homeopathic doctors had an entirely different treatment, and the death rate after their treatment was less than 10%. Erik administered the homeopathic liquid and Mr. Markham fell into a deep sleep instead of the gruesome final thralls of cholera. Mr. Markham gets well and lives on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The NPR program centers on Dr. John Snow, who is also mentioned in Phantom Future. Dr. Snow was a fascinating doctor, an original thinker. The medical consensus (in other words, generally accepted medical opinion and belief that this must be ABSOLUTELY CORRECT) was that cholera came from miasmas in the air. In other words, foul smelling, stenchy air. Therefore, a person got cholera because of breathing in that air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Dr. Snow had been studying that earlier cholera outbreak from the previous year which occurred south of the Thames. He went from house to house and gathered the data of who got sick with cholera and who didn\u2019t. Interestingly, not all the houses were on the same water systems. Adjacent houses could be getting their water from totally different water companies. So, even if they were next door neighbors, Dr. Snow\u2019s map showed that the people of one house got cholera and the people next door did not. After he mapped each house and where the deaths occurred (this is sometimes called the \u201cGhost Map\u201d), he saw the pattern. The water companies that got their water from the Thames in the middle of the city had the deaths. The water companies that got their water outside of London, before it reached the polluted city, provided water that did not carry the disease. He felt sure that water was the culprit, not miasmas in the air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, the medical community was not about to change its conviction that air, not water, spread the disease. They continued in that belief for decades more. But when the Broad Street cholera outbreak occurred a year later, Dr. Snow again did his house-to-house data gathering, and the map showed that the highest concentration of cholera was around the Broad Street pump. Because its water was cool and carbonated, people would stop by and get the water from that pump to take home, even some who lived farther away, like Mr. Markham and his housekeeper. But the local beer brewery had its own water source, a protected well. Snow learned that the workers there were not only drinking their beer, they also were not getting cholera. Snow took this evidence to the local water board and convinced them to close the Broad Street pump. The pump handle was removed, and the cholera stopped! That pump still stands to this day with a plaque and reminder of lessons learned\u2026or were they?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The NPR program explains how \u201cexperts\u201d can become narrow in perspective and not look outside their preconceptions or first conclusions. They discussed how it took the World Health Organization almost two years before they gave up their initial statement that Covid came on water particles or droplets, so it was communicated through touch (therefore the extensive hand washing advice). Now it is clear that it is communicated through the air, in aerosol form, through the breath. Yep! The miasma theory has come back, only this time it is the correct one!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there is a historical lesson to be learned here: to open-mindedly examine the evidence and not too hastily accept assumptions or preconceptions. Keep the mind open and constantly gather and analyze the facts. For me, the operative word is facts. Be very careful and thorough with the facts. Thinking does make a difference! And often insights into what is happening now is in the past!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For those of you who want to learn more, I recommend this excellent book about John Snow and his courageous fight to find the cause of cholera: The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson. The weblink to it on Amazon is below. It\u2019s a fascinating read!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what are your thoughts?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

John Snow and Figuring out an Epidemic\/BOOK<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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