Life, Interrupted

Over on the Word Wenches blog, writer Susan Fraser King--who wrote her dissertation study on the iconography of St. George in medieval art--talks about St. George and those dragons. George is on horses, off horses, has patrons, goes it alone, saves princesses, saves villages--and always, there's a dragon.

"George was one of the few saints, perhaps the only one, to cross over into the truly secular arena. He was the movie star hero of his day, killing dragons and rescuing princesses for the sake of chivalry and adventure rather than religious fervor. Very likely the Saxon English responded to him early on because St. George reminded them of Beowulf and Grendel, and the various Viking and Germanic/Saxon tales that include dragons. They understood and enjoyed George, with his dragon and his princess and his many heroic deeds. Newly Christian Britain retained a pagan flavor in their beliefs (and that still exists today). There are plenty of classical ties too—Bellerophon and Chimera, and Perseus and Andromeda, that can be factored in to the mythic origins of this very old tale."

For me, the interest is the dragon.

But that's another story.

You have GOT to go look at this building, sitting like Sleeping Beauty a block from NYC City Hall, hidden for decades. It was one of the "nonburnable" buildings, built of wrought iron, brick, tile -- also an early elevator user, 1882. And the atrium!

The dragons. THE DRAGONS! I **MUST** have copies of the dragons to use as book brackets! I'm sending Design Toscano over here!

UPDATE: Here are the dragons --

http://batcheva.nfshost.com/bat-cheva/data/0000012348.bmp

Apparently the photographer had to take down the pics. Thanks to sheilagh for this info -- she sent another link, but I didn't want to overwhelm that server, so I deleted the post. (It is early and I am spacey, so I trust I did that right...) Since his blog is cool, I'll leave up his address -- I hope these pics are still findable on Wayback or something, because I was thinking about using it in a short story! The place was titled "The Abandoned Palace on Beekman Street, NYC, NY".

http://www.scoutingny.com/