Pilgrims Progression

Caught a lecture tonight from Mayflower author, Nathaniel Philbrick at the Carter Center in the hopes of not needing to buy the book but frankly I was enthralled. The period from 1620 to 1675 was almost idyllic, sure plenty of intrigue but not much civ-threatening violence. Then all hell breaks loose with King Philip's War. The losses were stupendous! Of 70,000 total people in New England they lose a higher percentage than were lost in the American Civil War. The English settlers were more than "decimated", most villages burnt, and survived by the luck of Benjamin Church who had been living happily with the Indians in today's Rhode Island. Fascinating stuff and like Philbrick said, I didn't know much between "The First Thanksgiving" and 1776. So, anyways, I guess I'll have to get the book!

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Five Theories of Book-Buying

The Fisherman's Theory of Book-Buying : You will never regret the book you bought, but you will always regret the one that got away. The National Debt Theory of Book-Buying : You will never have read all the books you own, but any given book will be read eventually. The Chemist's Theory of Book-Buying : Books obey the laws of gases: they expand to fill all available space. The Gardener's Theory of Book-Buying : No matter how much you weed a book collection, it will always grow back. The Pharaonic Theory of Book-Buying : Build a pyramid and read them all in the afterlife. This was from the December 2006 issue of NYRSF by Darrell Schweitzer I've been culling and culling the books for five years now and while it's getting more manageable and more narrowly focused, there's still a lot of cruft floating around :) A third or so is on Librarything

The Yale Shakespeare

I've had this set of Shakespeare volumes since the late 1980's. Super-portable at 7" by 4.5" with nice, readable font size. Well footnoted for vocabulary and extensive note apparatus at the end of each volume. I'm surprised there's not much more on this set than various auctions and used book listings — looks like they still fetch $80 for all 40 books. Mine is a printing from 1954 edited by Tucker Brooke I found this review of the series from when it first came out. Very critical, but wanted to capture it, since this has been my reference edition for over 30 years

Funny phone call

Funniest thing I've read today (OK, I'm running behind) was this post from the fine folks at the Wren's Nest which includes two pretty interesting phone calls [that blog post from 2012 is long gone, here's a copy] Then, I got a weird phone call: LAIN: Good afternoon, the Wren’s Nest! GRANDMOTHER: Hi, I’m a grandmother. LAIN: Okay. GRANDMOTHER: And I would like you to pay my electric bill. LAIN: (scrambling for an answer) That’s …not really what we do here. GRANDMOTHER: (sounding dignified) Yes, but I’m a grandmother. I’m raising my grandchildren. I just need some help with my electrical bill. LAIN: I’m sorry, but we’re a house museum. A non-profit house museum, and we’re hurting as well. GRANDMOTHER: You don’t understand. I’m a grandmother. LAIN: Ma’am? GRANDMOTHER: (hangs up) ….. Then, I dialed a wrong number and got this message: ANSWERING MACHINE: This is about pimpin’! And that means money! And if you ain’t got no money, you ain’t g...

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