50 things

Celebrating a birthday makes one look backward as well as forward. I thought it might be nice, if a tad self-indulgent, to jot down some favorite memories, or things that have made me smile over the years. If you can't be self-indulgent around the time of your birthday, when can you? These don't get overly personal or intimate — I like to keep that sort of stuff to myself — and are in no particular chronological or prioritized order, except #1, of course.

1. The birth of my daughter.



It doesn't get much cuter than this.

2. Deciding to go to art school/move to New York City.
3. My asking to play the Middle Billy Goat Gruff in 1st Grade, a part that had been originally intended for a boy. Our teacher presented the roles in the school play as boys will be billy goats and girls will be flowers. Then she went around the room and asked who wanted to play what part. I was familiar with the story and knew that I wanted to be one of the three leads. It was probably the first time I really sounded off for myself, and tried to grab a bit of the spotlight. The pattern was formed.



My grandmother made the costume. The tinfoil horns were genius.

4. Starting my blog. It's led to so many good things for me, for my mind, for my well-being.
5. The homemade ice cream at T-Cone in Shipbottom, Long Beach Island, in New Jersey. I loved their strawberry, but the blueberry was out of this world and my absolute favorite.
6. All of the wonderful people I have met in my life so far. Thankfully things like the internet have helped us keep in contact, or reconnect after many years.
7. Appearing off-off-Broadway at the Henry Street Settlement in George C. Wolfe's Return to Glutten, where I got to act (and sing!) on stage.
8. Getting a sell-out crowd for two nights for a performance piece I co-wrote, Flesh, in New York; and a positive review in The Washington Post for my role in a dance/performance art piece I co-produced, Hammer.
9. Happy cocktail hours with good friends — with my daughter in tow — in Washington D.C.



The greatest opening that I ever attended at MoMA.

10. Getting dressed up for the Warhol opening at MoMA and bumping into Steve Martin, who, said "Excuse me!" He was hanging with his friends Julian Schnabel and Paul Simon.
11. Hanging out in the East Village and beyond in the '80s with friends — Dojo's, the Blue & Gold, the Holiday, the Kiev, the Pyramid, Danceteria — the list goes on and on.
12. My junior year at Parsons was wonderful. I had great teachers and was given the freedom to express myself and worked in all media — painting, drawing, sculpture, performance, you name it. The following year, my senior year, was unfortunately oppressive and just a countdown to graduation.



Rutger Hauer from Blade Runner facing out, and Mary and me on the right

13. Plastering New York City with posters publicizing Guilt Free Enterprise, a company, or more accurately, a state of mind, formed by my friend Mary and myself. My brother, on a weekend leave from the Navy, helped us guerrila-decorate.
14. Lying on a blanket in the middle of Central Park in the summertime, with wine, bread, cheese, and friends, and staring at the stars while a Metropolitan Opera star sang Puccini.
15. Running out of candy on Halloween night when I was in 3rd grade — my dad set up his telescope and gave looks at the full moon to the late trick-or-treaters and my brother and I got to stay up, too.
16. Seeing a movie in seventh grade science class about Stonehenge and saying to myself that one day I would go there. And being able to make that dream come true many years later on a trip with my mom to London.
17. Being lucky enough to get my 11th grade English teacher Mr. Brown, who recognized how much I loved to read and just made me want to learn more and more.



A large-scale photo collage I did for drawing class

18. Painting and drawing while my record player blasted Sandinista.
19. Having an "aha" moment, whether in relation to something in a meeting at work, in front of a blank piece of paper or screen, or just walking somewhere peaceful, where my mind can open up and receive new ideas.
20. Holiday celebrations with my family, where I'd get to see my cousins and aunts and uncles and eat Grandma's amazing food.
21. Turning 20, visiting home in New Jersey from New York, and lying outside in the front yard, looking at the stars at midnight. It was a nice feeling being separate from my family, but having them nearby, while being one with the universe. It seemed a fitting way to bid goodbye to my teenage years.
22. Visiting Venice during acque alte.
23. Getting my first car, a golden Acura Integra.
24. Requesting a lemon cake with orange icing for my fifth birthday — and getting one (and then many years later, having a friend try to replicate that cake again for me).
25. Writing a story about a little red fish for school when I was in first or second grade — my dad was so impressed with it he took us out after dinner and bought us a fish tank, full of tropical fish — and a red platy, which I named after my character, Redert.
26. Flying to Palm Beach, Florida on my own, at the age of 14, to visit my grandmother. She took me everywhere, introduced me to all of her friends. I had my first vichysoisse, went to Lion Country Safari, saw polo, and rode on an elephant. And now I live here.



A very serious, or very tired, 14 year-old

27. Buying my first legal drink, at 18, at the Lone Star Cafe, across the street from Parsons School of Design, and just around the corner from where my dorm was on Union Square.
28. The first time I was on an airplane, at age 8, visiting my grandmother in La Crosse, Wisconsin. I'll never forget the thrill or the feeling when the plane's wheels left the ground.
29. My first taste of my Grandma's sfincioni.
30. Visiting Greece with my mom, seeing so many places I had read about for as long as I could remember, like the Acropolis and Delphi, and being surprised and amazed by the difference in terrain as we moved through the country — hot in Athens, snow in Meteora, temperate in Corinth.
31. The frescoes in the Palais des Papes at Avignon.
32. The Botticellis at the Uffizi in Florence.
33. Having the ocean so close, the feel of sand under my toes.



It's hard to beat that view

34. Impressing my mom and cousin Ann and Aunt Paula with my Italian while we were traveling in Italy. I really just had enough to get by, but they loved that I could converse with the Roman taxicab drivers and get us around the city.
35. Staying up late and whispering with my brother, debating when Santa would come.
36. Visiting Mont St. Michel and staying out on the plain after we returned to the mainland from the city — we were waiting to see it in the sunset, not realizing that in the summer the sun doesn't set until long after 10 p.m. — but the sight was well worth the wait.
37. The Gainsboroughs at the Frick in New York.



"The Hon. Frances Duncombe," by Thomas Gainsborough, Frick Collection, N.Y.

38. Spending enough time in Florence to really feel that I could live there, that I knew the city. Maybe someday ...
39. Inheriting my dad's insatiable curiosity and life-long student status. There is always a topic of interest that I want to research and know more about.
40. Traveling to Paris by myself and day-tripping all over the place — Versailles, Chartres, Giverny, and the medieval walled town of Provins.
41. My mom making me feel that I could do anything, achieve anything, and that she would always be there for me.
42. My mom's idea of a lullaby for my brother and me — tucking us in as the Beatles' Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds drifted up from the stereo downstairs.



Probably waiting for Roy White or Thurman Munson to come to bat.

43. Going to see the Yankees games with my dad, from childhood to adulthood — just the two of us went one time, while I was living on my own in New York.
44. My first glimpse of the Pyramids.
45. Having a sense of humor, in pretty much all circumstances.
46. TV shows, books, and movies that have moved me or entertained me that I can share with friends and family, and being able to talk about them later over dessert, which helped hone my critical skills.
47. Going on a road trip to Kentucky with my cousin Ann, and the millions of other journeys we took together before and after the birth of my daughter.



Celebrating at Obama's Inaguaration



The kid took this picture of Ann and me at The National Arboretum, one of our favorite haunts in D.C.

48. Being able to share my love of family with my mom and other relatives. My mom, daughter, and I recently took a trip to Salem, Massachusetts after I discovered one of our ancestors was one of the first to be accused and executed as a result of the Salem Witch Trials. History is amazing and always brings us back to human nature.
49. Any opportunity that I get to sing.
50. Knowing that if I put my mind to it, this list could go on and on and on. I've got lots of fun things to remember and share. I'm sure we all do, if we sat down and thought about it for a while.

march is women's history month — my great-great grandmother mariette

The Smithsonian is featuring photos of some very cool ladies on its flickr site in honor of Women's History Month. They have inspired me to feature some great women from my own family history this month. First up is my great-great grandmother, Mariette Nichols.

Mariette Nichols lived from 1847 to 1930. What a life. A young woman during the Civil War, middle-aged in the Gay '90s, a grandma during the First World War, and old lady during the Roaring '20s. The character that Maggie Smith plays on Downtown Abbey is just about the same era, if you need some pop culture context.

Mariette, like many other young ladies of her age, was lucky enough to travel to the continent with her older sister and her family, post- Civil War, c. 1870. On her travels she met a (quite) older man, Gysbert van Steenwyk, and the two became engaged. They were married in Berne, Switzerland. Despite the great difference in their ages (Gysbert was in his upper 50s, Mariette in her late 20s), they were definitely a love match, and had three children, Walter, Ella May, and Gysbert, Jr.

Mariette's family was from Danbury, Connecticut. Gysbert had come to the United States in 1848 from the Netherlands to learn to speak English and stayed. He was soon made a commissioner of immigration for the states of New York and Wisconsin. He later became a bank comptroller for Wisconsin, and eventually opened a bank in La Crosse, Wisconsin. They lived in La Crosse after they married, and Mariette stayed there until she died in 1930, 28 years after Gysbert's death in 1902.

Although Gysbert was quite successful and they seemed to have had a good life together, they also knew tragedy. They lost their youngest son, Walter, to pneumonia, at the age of eight. The romanticized family tale is that he died making "angels in the snow," but it is clear that his death left his parents heartbroken. My family never throws anything away, which is a boon for a family genealogist, and I found this poignant news clipping:

Walter's parents definitely doted on him, as there is also an adorable baby picture, another where he is sporting a Little Lord Fauntleroy-type get-up, and a formal portrait probably taken not too long before his death. A posthumous painting was made based on this picture, which we had in our living room while I was growing up. There is also this amazing ambrotype. He looks about three or four, so it was probably taken c. 1883 or 1884.

My grandmother Mariette was named after her grandmother Mariette. It's through Mariette Nichols that my family can trace its line back through the Revolution, Colonies, Salem Witch Trials and beyond. I think the family love and interest in genealogy may have started with Mariette, who was a member of the D.A.R. I'm also lucky enough to have a Civil War-era family photo album which belonged to her. I intended this post to focus solely on Mariette, but it really is impossible to write about a woman without also writing about the people she loved. I'm very grateful to have such a strong and fascinating woman in my family tree.

the afflicted girls

Article first published as Book Review: The Afflicted Girls by Suzy Witten on Blogcritics.

The Salem Witch Trials have always held a fascination for me. I've had a hearty dislike for Cotton Mather ever since reading The Crucible in junior high. It's difficult for me to relate to a learned man who can be forward-thinking in relation to disease, by encouraging inoculations against smallpox, but be so backward-thinking when it came to witchcraft in Puritan New England. It's hard not to think that there might have been a misogynist angle to his attitudes, as Mather called one of the accused, Martha Carrier, "A rampant hag" and reporting the trial of Bridget Bishop in his Wonders of the Invisible World, he wrote "John Louder testify'd, that upon some little controversy with Bishop ... he did awake in the Night by moonlight, and did see clearly the likeness of this woman grievously oppressing him; in which miserable condition she held him, unable to help himself, till near Day. He told Bishop of this; but she deny'd it, and threatened him very much. "

Mather is just a shadow figure in The Afflicted Girls, but the petty neighborly conflicts that Mather took such copious notes of that were at the root of a lot of the evil goings-on in Salem Village in the late 17th century are well-described in this fictional account. The author, Suzy Witten, takes her time building up the very large cast of characters and their layers of history, jealousy, and petty grievances in the daily life of Salem Village, and does it well. She has done her research, incorporating the threats of disease, Indian raids and poverty that also were factors in what happened. A real sense of the hard choices facing a young woman, no matter what social strata she belonged to, is also well-delineated. A daughter of a prosperous merchant or gentleman may not have to perform the menial household tasks of an indentured servant, but she had about as much freedom as did Mercy Lewis in the male-ruled Puritan society.

Witten takes an interesting tack, even a risk, in making her protagonist nineteen year-old Mercy Lewis. Thanks to the internet, the Salem Witch Trial transcripts can be read, and original documents even viewed. One can quickly learn that it's a big departure from history making Mercy a heroine, as she was one of the most frequent and vocal accusers of witches in the trials. I had a real shock of sadness and excitement when I discovered last year that I was actually descended from Sarah Averill Wildes, who along with Rebecca Nurse, Elizabeth Howe, Sarah Good and Susannah Martin, was hanged as a witch in Salem on July 19, 1692. Since I found our Salem connection I have been cruising the internet, visited Salem and its environs, and read quite a few books on the subject, fiction and non-fiction, to try and learn as much as I could about my ancestor. One of the things I discovered was that Mercy Lewis was one of the accusers of my ancestor, Sarah Averill Wildes. But no hard feelings. I don't mind the author's angle, and I liked Mercy as a character in this book.

House of Ann Putman Jr, Off Dayton Street, Danvers, MA, where Mercy Lewis was indentured, ca. 1891

The real Mercy Lewis lost her family to an Indian raid when she was just a child in Maine. In fact it is believed she may have seen them all killed and carried that gruesome memory with her to Salem. An orphan, the only way she could survive was to be indentured as a servant, first to the Reverend George Burroughs, who was also executed in Salem as a witch, and later the family of Thomas Putnam, where she met Ann Putman, Jr. (Lucy in this book). She had virtually nothing and could only survive on her wits and her employer's good graces until her term of indenture was over, which typically lasted seven years. She would have no prospects for marriage until she was free. If she had a child while indentured, her length of term would be increased. Witten endows Mercy with herbalist and midwife skills and introduces the possibility that what happened with those crazy Salem kids might have been drug-related (from a hallucinogenic plant). It's not a bad twist to take. Her hypothesis may be right or wrong, or possibly partly the truth. Why Salem still fascinates—it's about human nature—the not-so-nice side of people. It didn't take much for fear and accusations to take root, whether drug or mischief-fueled.

I had some major historical questions and quibbles while reading The Afflicted Girls. Witten changed the most well-known of the accusers, Ann Putnam, Jr.'s, name to Lucy—maybe to differentiate her from her mother, who also was an accuser? But it actually made it more confusing for me, waiting for the real Ann jr. to show up. Also, a scene at Gallows Hill had a cherry-picked assortment of the people who were accused, not as they actually died. And there was a daring jail escape was beyond fictional, but in the realm of fantasy, considering how meticulously she had tried to depict the Village in earlier chapters. The author's note stated that the book started as a screenplay, so some of these changes may have been made in that light, to bring her most flamboyant "characters" together in one big scene. In fact, sometimes it felt as if there were parts that were written for the book, and scenes which were put in to sex things up.

Deposition of Mercy Lewis v. Susannah Martin

Which brings me to my major bone of contention with the novel. It's probably easiest to use the movie Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd as a similar example. Sweeney Todd had beautiful music and great acting by Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, but that was all but drowned out for me by all the endless, repetitive decapitations — one after another after another after another. The sex scenes had the same effect in The Afflicted Girls. It's not bodice-ripping romantic novel sex. It's repeated, multiple scenes of rape and unpleasant coupling by unpleasant people. Salem Village surely had its share of horrible men and women, but were they all sexually messed up or predators? Witten may be trying to comment on the Puritan ethic and attitudes toward sex, but the reader is the one who gets degraded too many times along with poor Mercy. I'm not sure it would have been appropriate to make her a feminist hero, either, but she is victimized or sexualized by basically every man who meets her, and she doesn't become much more than a victim, buffeted about by the claustrophobic and brutal world she inhabits.

Unsavory sex aside, there are some interesting aspects to The Afflicted Girls and I definitely felt like I was back in Salem Village, it's just not a nice place to be.


Book #8 in reading challenge Cannonball Read 3, sponsored by Pajiba

Full disclosure: The author sent this book to me after reading another book review I had written for The Heretic's Daughter, also a book about the Salem Witch Trials. I'm very thankful to be considered a critic of books, movies and other pop culture and I will continue to be fair in my reviews.

Related articles

• Book Review: The Heretic's Daughter by Kathleen Kent (blogcritics.org)
• Famous Trials: The Witches of Salem (neatorama.com)
• Book Review: The Heretic's Daughter by Kathleen Kent (seattlepi.com)

who do you think you are

Article first published as TV Review: Who Do You Think You Are - Season Premiere on Blogcritics.

There is something about the show Who Do You Think You Are? that hits an emotional chord and makes the viewer really connect with the discoveries made by the featured celebrities searching for their ancestors. I guess it's that history is so much more interesting and affecting when you hear the stories of individual lives. Most of our ancestors have had an impact on history and participated in events we may or may not have read about while in school, but we never knew their names or their stories. That's why I love genealogy—I might get a chance to uncover some of these untold stories.

This long-form advertisement for ancestry.com had this geneaology geek front and center. I enjoyed the first season, which featured producer Lisa Kudrow, Emmitt Smith, Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker, whose quest led to the discovery of a family participant in the Salem Witch trials.

I went on my own journey to discover my family's roots last summer, after I found out that one of my ancestors, Sarah Averill Wildes, was one of the first people tried and hanged as a witch in Salem on July 19, 1692. I came across this unknown bit of family history while searching on ancestry.com. Some interesting stuff can be found on the website if you're willing to go on a hunt. To access most vital records, ancestry.com is not free, but hiring a professional researcher or genealogist isn't either.

My grandmother hired a genealogist to help her trace her roots in the '60s. To become a member of the Colonial Dames she needed to perform extensive family research to prove and document our connection to a Revolution-era ancestor. But she didn't need to go as far back as the 1690s, so she never found out about this more infamous slice of our history. Parker's Salem ancestor had like mine been accused of witchcraft, but had a better ending. The court of oyer and terminer was dismissed before she could go to trial, so Parker's relative escaped execution.

The new and second season of Who Do You Think You Are? started off with Ugly Betty star Vanessa Williams, who wanted to go farther back on her father's side of the family. What she was able to find was pretty amazing. Luckily for Vanessa, her family lived in the same area of New York for over 100 years, so she was able to start her search in a cemetery which included headstones of many generations. Her great-great-grandfather from Oyster Bay, NY was married to a white woman, which in itself was interesting and unusual for the time, mid-1800s. He had been born a free man, or, as he had written on one of the documents she found, "Never a slave." He enlisted in the Union Army in 1864 and received a bounty of 300 dollars for serving in the colored regiment, which he immediately invested 200 of to buy land for his family. What is even more lucky is that her search to find out what he did in the Civil War unearthed a tintype photograph. A find like that must have been unbelievably thrilling for her and her family, and also proved that good looks ran in the family.

As if that weren't enough, she followed another line on her family tree and found that her other great-great-grandfather was a schoolteacher, justice of the peace, and also one of the first black legislators in Tennessee, serving from 1888-89. Another American history lesson for me—from 1888-1965 no more blacks served elected office in Tennessee. As a Civil War/reconstruction backlash, the KKK and Jim Crow laws squeezed out blacks from public life in the early nineteenth century. Williams discovered her forebear's pioneering and proud history, but also how his strides were almost negated by the not-so-proud history of segregation in the South. Stories like her family's definitely led to the civil rights movement and Williams's own triumph as the first black Miss America in 1983.

The show may gloss over all the hard work involved in tracking down one's ancestors. But it does mange to capture the obsession that grips folks once a connection to the past is made. Vanessa Williams's episode did show the enormous amount of travel and all the different individuals—archivists, librarians, local government employees—that a person might need to consult to really find out details about their own family tree. All of these people can help a person researching their family and what's more, would like to, if you're interested enough to ask. I've had an ongoing correspondence with an archivist in Connecticut to help me dig a little deeper into one of our lines; who is always on the lookout for something that might help take me a step further in my search.

So many more of these records are now available via the internet, where before a researcher might have had to travel and book time at a library or archive to wade through roll after roll of microfilm. Ancestry.com is a good place to start on an internet genealogy search. Whether a viewer decides to start digging into their own family's past or not it's hard to resist getting hooked on the fascinating stories that are uncovered on Who Do You Think You Are? I'm looking forward to seeing the next show in the series and going on a vicarious journey with Tim McGraw as he searches for answers to questions he has about the past. Who knows what he might turn up and what little bits of history might be learned along the way.

Related articles

• TV Review: Who Do You Think You Are - Season Premiere (blogcritics.org)
• Ancestry - Ancestry.com (itunes.apple.com)

the heretic's daughter

Article first published as Book Review: The Heretic's Daughter by Kathleen Kent on Blogcritics.


If you are interested in one of the most fateful chapters of early American history and want to experience the Salem witch trials from the viewpoint of a young girl, there is much to like in The Heretic's Daughter. It's hard to fail with a story about the events that happened in and around Salem in 1692. The fact that a bunch of girls, whether hysterical, spiteful, misguided, or a combination of all of the above, could bring a town and then a region to its knees with accusations of witchcraft will forever be fascinating. That so many people suffered and died as a result of their behavior will always be tragic. That we should never forget how easy it is to become party to a witch hunt is instructive.

Title page of "Wonders of the Invisible World," 1693, by Cotton Mather, John Dounton, London, 1693.

The drama is already built into The Heretic's Daughter, which tells the story of one of the victims, Martha Carrier. What is interesting and different about this book is that it is told through the eyes of Martha's daughter, so the focus is on how her predicament affects her family. In the atmosphere of fear and accusation that characterized the Salem Witch Trials, anyone who was connected to an accused witch was subject to the same suspicions and danger. As family members were carted away to trials and prison, the necessary duties of life—gathering food, protecting the homestead, and caring for children were jeopardized.

The book starts off well, with author Kathleen Kent bringing to life the 17th-century town of Andover, Massachusetts and its daily life. Andover, a neighboring town to Salem Village, was still not far enough away to escape the atmosphere of fear and finger-pointing that started there. Kent does a good job of introducing factors that led to a general feeling of paranoia, dread and depression in the Massachusetts winter of 1691—the threat of Indian raids, smallpox outbreaks, bad harvests.

Her depiction of the claustrophobic and beyond-unsanitary conditions of the prisoners in Salem Jail is also well-done. It's a little known fact, or at least, not as frequently written about, how long the accused spent in the Salem jail. Some, even after they were exonerated for witchcraft, had to remain in prison because their families couldn't afford to pay their fees. The victim was expected to pay the costs of his own imprisonment.

Somewhere about halfway through, however, the book loses its way a little. Kent's narrator, Sarah Carrier, tells the story in increasingly florid metaphor, which gets progressively harder to slog through. "A child is like an early spring bulb that carries all the resources needed within its skin for the first push through the soil towards the sun. And just as a little bit of water can start the bulb to grow, even through fissured rock, so can a little kindness give a child the ability to push through the dark."

Passages like this one repeatedly use the farm and harvest to make a point. We get it, farming was life to these people. "But then, as I lay sweating in bed, restless and prickly, it came to me that to harvest a field of corn one does not wade into the dark middle of things and cut the stalks from the inside out. It is best done starting with the outside ears and working inward, stalk by stalk, keeping the light of the sun always at one's back so that its rays can illuminate each ear of corn, be it whole and sweet or black and blighted. And in this way does one make a meal that feeds a starving body back to wholeness."

The book is being told from the perspective of an elderly Sarah telling her granddaughter her childhood memories of the events of Salem and Martha Carrier. Surely her life had expanded a little beyond the hard life of the farm by her dotage? Or at least, she could tell it like it was, rather than constantly reverting to metaphor? "I believe many of us would peel ourselves away from our immortal selves as easily as the skin from a boiled plum if it meant we could remain on the earth for awhile, our bellies full and our beds warm and safe at night."

It's not that Kent is a bad writer or that the imagery is bad—it just gets a bit much. The author is a descendant of Martha Carrier, so I'm sure all of the flowery phrasings were her attempt to do justice to her ancestors. Her recently published book, The Wolves of Andover, which I haven't read, is a story about Martha Carrier's meeting her husband Tom, and his life before coming to America. His shadowy past was one of the weaker aspects for me of The Heretic's Daughter, as Kent could never adequately explain why the father was able to escape the persecution most of the rest of his family was subjected to.

Memorial to the victims of the Salem witch trials, Salem, Massachusetts

I applaud Kent's interest in her family's history and her attempts to bring it to life. I am a descendant of Sarah Wildes, one of the first five people hanged as a witch in Salem. So many of the people who were targeted as witches were strong thinkers, or just plain ornery, or had some quarrel with neighbors, which were used against them later as the hysteria spread from town to town. Kent does a good job in showing the petty resentments and small-town prejudices that made the perfect seeding ground for such accusations to grow. Now she has me plying metaphor as well.

I wish her characters had a stronger reaction when told of the first executions. There is a scene where they mention Bridget Bishop, the first person who was hanged in June. But surely people must have realized how seriously crazy things were getting when they hanged five women—Rebecca Nurse, Sarah Good, Elizabeth Howe, Susannah Martin and my ancestor Sarah Wildes on July 19, 1692. Kent's characters all seem so stoic, thinking that reason or the distance from Salem to Andover will protect them. Kent is entitled to her interpretation. Maybe for many it was like walking through a bad dream until the blow finally came.


Book #7 in reading challenge Cannonball Read 3, sponsored by Pajiba

Related articles

• 'Wolves' revisits Colonial America, losing its way in the wilderness (boston.com)
• Famous Trials: The Witches of Salem (neatorama.com)

cunning women

After a summer trip to New England to research my own bewitching Salem roots, I was happy to borrow a copy of The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane and see what the author brought to the endlessly fascinating and heartbreaking history of the Salem, MA witch hysteria in 1692.

Hmmm. It is a first novel, so I don't want to be too harsh. And there are some very enjoyable aspects to the story, especially the budding romance the protagonist Connie has with a handsome, punky steeplejack named Sam. The setting of Connie's grandmother's house in Marblehead, MA was also well-drawn, as were some of the glimpses into the past of divers women in Salem. So, there is quite a bit to enjoy.

However...there is also the annoying and inconsistent attempt to phonetically spell out the New England accent. Enough, already. And for a circa 1991 Harvard grad student, I'm afraid Connie is hopelessly dim. She has no insight into just about everything—animal, vegetable or mineral, which make up the plot—most of which is fairly obvious, at least to this reader, as soon as Connie steps into her grandmother's house.


But I quibble. It's still a fun read, although I'd wait for it at the library, or until it hits paperback, if you want to make a purchase. With all its faults, it screams movie adaptation, as most of those could be tightened up in a sharp screenplay. We'll see. It's also a fun glimpse not only into the past, but into our society just under twenty years ago, before cell phones and the internet made a lot of Connie's isolation and running around looking for clues unnecessary. Some generations take huge shifts to change, if at all, while other changes can come quickly, in under a quarter of a century. I do agree with Connie on a few things. Sam is an attractive character and human history is always incredibly fascinating.

here I come to save the day...

Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA

bewitched, bothered, and bewildered

Why are there so many Dunkin' Donuts in New England? It seems every corner has one—Starbucks syndrome!

We have been passing them by—not exactly avoiding them—and tonight decided that we would finally indulge—but after some Salem sightseeing—horrors! The D.D. was closed at 9 p.m.

Oh well, there's always tomorrow...

hotels, highways, and rest stops

We're packing a lot in...lunch break at Old Sturbridge Village...walking tour of the Salem waterfront...tomorrow, who knows?

bewitched

"The internets" is an amazing place. I recently discovered through ancestry.com that one of my ancestors was one of the first women executed at what would come to be known as the Salem Witch Trials, Sarah Averill Wildes. I wonder what my maternal grandmother would think. She did extensive family research many years ago to prove a connection to a Revolution-era ancestor in order to become a member of the Colonial Dames. But this bit of history goes back farther than that. Sarah, at age 65, was hanged on July 19, 1692.

I remember having to read something about the trials in English class and being pretty bored with all the"Goody this" and "Goody that" characters. It must have been The Crucible, unless it was another popular fictional account. As interesting as the subject matter was, the Salem witch trials came most alive for me in two fantasy shows from my childhood.

In a two- or three-part episode of Bewitched, Samantha goes back to Salem. I always loved that show and Elizabeth Montgomery, but especially liked how they took what had been a fun, fluffy, fantasy and special-effects show and combined it with some real history.
In one of my favorite episodes of The Avengers, "Murdersville," Mrs. Peel goes to visit a friend in his new home and runs into a village full of twisted, crooked individuals. In an extended scene she is hunted and then imprisoned in a chastity belt, and then later placed in the dunking stool, which is a torture device that was also used to ferret out "witches." What human beings will do to one another is astounding. And in the name of religion, too. This scene of public humiliation and torture to a modern, athletic, kick-ass woman brought the horror of how a crowd can be deadly and how a strong woman can be perceived as very threatening.

I have some more research to do, but various accounts of Sarah and her fate suggest that she may have been difficult to get along with, and her disputes with a neighbor woman over something as mundane as the borrowing of a scythe may have contributed to the accusation and her execution. It's difficult being a strong woman in any era, but terrifying to contemplate how a weak-minded herd could result in this sad chapter of history.