Here are three things I know: 1. The Puritans were weirdos. Everything with them was witches. Everything. My notes are missing. IT WAS A WITCH. My daughter is moody. SHE’S A WITCH. My dog barfed on my rug. WIIIITCH!!!!! 2. The airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow (European) is roughly 24 miles per hour. 3. I did not like this book. I really don’t want to spend much time talking about this book because, a) I started (and finally finished) it so long ago that […]
I have seen Goody Proctor speaking with the Devil!
We’ve all heard of the Salem Witch Trials. In 1692, fourteen women, five men, and two dogs were convicted of witchcraft and put to death. Another man refused to confess and was crushed to death, probably within earshot of his wife, also imprisoned for witchcraft. In his classic “The Crucible,” Arthur Miller referred to this time as the “coming madness,” a warning to us of the chaos that can envelop a community when paranoia and persecution intersect. It started with the kids. Puritan children in […]
Spoiler: She dies at the end.
“It is not difficult to understand why Caesar became history, Cleopatra a legend.” I heard of this book thanks to The Daily Show. I love bios about royal women and the author is obviously super-smart. So I went out and bought the book, and I promptly left it unread for a couple of years. (That’s a bad habit of mine.) The whole kerfuffle over Sony’s film adaptation brought it back to my attention. Stacy Schiff gleefully debunks everything you thought you knew about Cleopatra. No, she wasn’t Egyptian. Not only was she Greek, she came from the same Macedonian stock […]