Tag Archives: Magic

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Roma Walkaway

Europe Push Against Gypsies
May Set Dawn of New Diaspora

Em France,police forced some 160 of them out of a Marseille camp, in anticipation of the coming presidential elections.
In the U.K., 80 families have been fighting eviction from the Basildon district’s Dale Farms for almost a year now.
Elsewhere in Europe, the Romanies, or Gypsies, or British Travelers remain vilified and marginalized as they have been since their origin, which can be traced back to the Indian diaspora in the tenth century.
There’s something about these “Egyptians” and their nomadic lifestyle that strikes deep-seated suspicions and fear at heart of the mainstream of the European society. Continue reading →

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Hallowed Ground

Houdini’s New Grave
& Poe’s Bronx Cottage

Perhaps no other two public figures are more intrinsically connected with Halloween than Harry Houdini and Edgar Alan Poe. Fittingly, there seems to be always fresh new stories about them too.
Houdini, who died 85 years ago tomorrow, famously promised to give us a sign, proving there’s life after death. We’re still waiting.
And Poe, who preceded him to the great beyond by 77 years, will be forever attached to tales of the macabre, even though his claim to literary immortality comes from his detective stories.
Hungarian-born Houdini, escape-artist extraordinaire with a Freudian relationship with his mother, was skeptic about the supernatural, but inspired a generation of then-called occultists.
Poe, who was found delirious on the streets of Baltimore and died on Oct. 7, 1849 without ever regaining consciousness, was a true believer in the afterlife, but his name’s often mentioned along that most rigorously of law-enforcement sciences: forensics.
Lastly, both will be forever connected to New York, by the way of Continue reading →

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Harry Who?

Invisibility Silk Cloak to Be
Used for Defense, Not Magic

For all its fight for justice and the eternal quest from the truth, the superhuman struggle to avenge the violent death of his parents without abdicating his unalienable right to grow up as a healthy human being, for all the evidence that evil is lurking at every dark corner, ready to jump and reign on earth and only him, Harry Porter and his ragtag gang of dedicated friends, stand on the way, what really touched and moved people throughout this multibook, multi-billion series was the invisibility cloak.
Never mind the wand, the humble origins, the destiny for greatness. What transfixed most readers of the hundreds of languages the series has been translated to so far, is something depicted only for a few pages, worn a handful of times, and completely unrelated to the highly anticipated grand finale when the once boy, now young man wizard will finally Continue reading →