What's Happening?

Thursday Roger and I were complaining about the 80 degree weather. Today it's 88 and climbing. We are in for a week of heat. My friend Carol put in an inexpensive mister and said it helped. She is supposed to make me a sun shade for my bedroom window when I get her the measurements, but I don't think I will let her in my bedroom until it reaches at least 98. Letting her in my bedroom would involve dusting. Yikes!

Jean told me the swim trip to Greenleaf was too damn hot and everyone went home early. She didn't say how hot.

Ian is out running around in the heat, Christian is working in the heat, Stephanie is exercising in the heat, Roger is biking/running/climbing/hiking in the heat, I don't think Connor notices the heat, and Jan is dreaming of cool days, cooler nights and the company of Jean and Cathy come September. I have plans. How does the Textile Center and Museum in Tillamook, Oregon sound? And I guess I'll dust for you guys.

I fixed my toilet with a paperclip, maybe. I am amazed at the handyman I am not. We'll see if it lasts a week or two. How long do paperclips last in water before they rust away?

I had two Salem witch books semi-recommended, they both sound interesting. The recommending person had just found them and hadn't actually read them. So who knows if they are good or not.

Book 1: The Heretic's Daughter by Kathleen Kent

Synopsis

Martha Carrier was one of the first women to be accused, tried and hanged as a witch in Salem Massachusetts. Like her mother, young Sarah Carrier is bright and willful, openly challenging the small, brutal world in which they live. Often at odds with one another, mother and daughter are forced to stand together against the escalating hysteria of the trials and the superstitious tyranny that led to the torture and imprisonment of more than 200 people accused of witchcraft. This is the story of Martha's courageous defiance and ultimate death, as told by the daughter who survived.
Kathleen Kent is a tenth generation descendent of Martha Carrier. She is also a natural-born storyteller, and in her first novel, she paints a haunting portrait, not just of Puritan New England, but also of one family's deep and abiding love in the face of fear and persecution

And Book 2: Salem Witch Judge: The Life and Repentance of Samuel Sewall by Eva LaPlante

Synopsis

In 1692 Puritan Samuel Sewall sent twenty people to their deaths on trumped-up witchcraft charges. The nefarious witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts represent a low point of American history, made famous in works by Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne (himself a descendant of one of the judges), and Arthur Miller. The trials might have doomed Sewall to infamy except for a courageous act of contrition now commemorated in a mural that hangs beneath the golden dome of the Massachusetts State House picturing Sewall's public repentance. He was the only Salem witch judge to make amends.

But, remarkably, the judge's story didn't end there. Once he realized his error, Sewall turned his attention to other pressing social issues. Struck by the injustice of the New England slave trade, a commerce in which his own relatives and neighbors were engaged, he authored "The Selling of Joseph," America's first antislavery tract. While his peers viewed Native Americans as savages, Sewall advocated for their essential rights and encouraged their education, even paying for several Indian youths to attend Harvard College. Finally, at a time when women were universally considered inferior to men, Sewall published an essay affirming the fundamental equality of the sexes. The text of that essay, composed at the deathbed of his daughter Hannah, is republished here for the first time.

In Salem Witch Judge, acclaimed biographer Eve LaPlante, Sewall's great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter, draws on family lore, her ancestor's personal diaries, and archival documents to open a window onto life in colonial America, painting a portrait of a man traditionally vilified, but who was in fact an innovator and forefather who came to represent the best of the American spirit.

Like I said, they both sound interesting.

Also interesting and for your reading entertainment a few more Food Rules from Michael Pollan's book by the same name.

Eat foods that your great-grandmother would recognize as food.
Avoid foods that you see advertised on television.
Eat foods that will eventually rot, real food is alive and will eventually die, except honey. Honey has a shelf life measured in centuries.
If it came from a plant eat it, if it came from a plant where everyone wears surgical caps don't.
It's not food if it arrived through the window of your car.

Eating healthy is hard work. Being healthy is hard work. Exercising is hard work. Good luck to Jean and Cathy and their water aerobics. What's happening with everyone else?

Love,