Picturepocket's Blog

Category: history

  • Old Mexico

    Recently, my Netflix algorithm has introduced some Spanish-language content, including a historical fiction based in Mexico. Despite being our next door neighbors, I realized I was a little foggy on the details of the Mexican revolution. To better follow the story, I dug into the history behind the drama.  Like the United States, modern Mexico…

  • Exodus 1: Call the Midwives

    The second book of the Bible begins with a recitation of the twelve son of Israel. Then it reminds the reader that only 70 descendants came into Egypt to join Joseph. The story is now picking up several generations later. The family of Israel has increased during their 400 years of living in Egypt.  The…

  • Genesis 43: High Noon

    Genesis 43: High Noon

    As the famine grinds on, Jacob and his extended family deplete their stockpiles. Jacob tells his sons to go back to Egypt and get more grain. They remind him that they have to bring Benjamin with them.  Jacob, perhaps returning to his playbook for winning back his own angry brother, tells them to make a…

  • 1776

    One of the fiercest battle cries leading up to war of independence from Britain in the American colonies was “no taxation without representation.” America won the war and we will celebrate our Nation’s 250th birthday year. Yet, when our forefathers wrote up the new voting guidelines, they initially only included the English-speaking, white, land-owning Protestant…

  • John 4: Well

    In this chapter, Jesus and his disciples travel by foot from Judea to Galilee. These are districts in Israel, and between them is an area called Samaria. The Samaritans had religious practices that were different than the other areas. They went to Mt. Horeb, the location God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, to pray while…

  • Souvenirs 

    I’ve been working from home as a life insurance field underwriter, and as such I take a tally of people’s medications and prescriptions qualify them for policies. At least once or twice a week, I get someone taking medicine for nightmares, PTSD and depression. Occasionally it’s a survivor of domestic violence, but usually it’s a…

  • A.I.Pocalypse

    I haven’t had a scary dream in years, but I had one recently. It was the kind that had me shook.  I dreamed that a computer virus went through all the files and redid them all in the style of artificial intelligence art and ChatGPT writing. The result was that everything looked and sounded similar,…

  • Of Men & Gods

    If you’ve gotten a glimpse of Netflix’s Kaos and Jeff Goldblum playing Zeus, you’re in for a wild time. It’s a modern retelling of some of the Greek and Roman myths. It would even be a comedy, if it didn’t all feel so familiar. Hera and Zeus live on a mountaintop mansion that looks like…

  • The Clean Up

    In the late nineteen nineties, I did a research paper on Hanford. It was the location of the part of the Manhattan Project where they refined plutonium for the creation of nuclear bombs used against Japan in WW2 and during the build up of the Cold War arsenal. Because of the secretive nature of national…

  • A Prayer for Peace

    I haven’t logged an opinion on the Middle Eastern conflict until now because it’s been so fraught these days. Everyone seems to hold a rock-solid stance and everyone else is being called out who oppose it. Yesterday I saw in the news that there had been “an explosion” at a hospital in Gaza. The passive…