The local temperatures in Hammond, IN and the whims of nature have conspired to keep me indoors for most of the week. With no adventures to speak of, I feel compelled to report on two selections from my lite summer reading list: The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England, by Carol F. Karlsen, and Wicked Girls: a Novel of the Salem Witch Trials, by Stephanie Hemphill (on Kindle).
I was able to read them both this week while mostly trapped in the house. ...Devil...starts by summing up New England witchcraft beliefs, most notably this: most witches were girls. It sets up some demographic and economic hypotheses about WHY most witches were girls, covers some theology, and dedicates a chapter towards the end of the book to the identities of the accusers and their relationships to the accused. Because Karlsen includes the stories of real-life alleged witches, complete with misspellings-and-all excerpts from their trials, ...Devil... is fascinating: a crime novel, except historical and nonfiction. Dwelling on the fact that most witches were girls may have been an important contribution to the field in 1987. Or, perhaps, when it comes to history (especially long-gone eras like the 1600s), we get so used to the "givens" that we hardly ever ask what circumstances may have set the "givens" up. I'm glad I read Karlsen's book before reading the much shorter, lighter, and fictional Wicked Girls.
Wicked Girls is a book written in verse which took me five hours in total to read. It follows seven fictionalized "bewitched" or "afflicted" girls through the course of the Salem outbreak of 1692-93.
Following is my brilliant plan, assuming that I will one day teach U.S. history again (feel free to use it if you can, it's 'open source,'): I will devise a 10-minute lecture on the witch trials, take a "math break" and have students draw many of the same conclusions Karlsen draws based on tables and charts from her book, and then the whole class will read together Wicked Girls. This plan assumes that I will have a class set of Wicked Girls that I won from a grant. A girl can dream.
On a mostly unrelated matter, I must confess that I am using a calorie-counter app on my Android. The calorie-counter app is almost as fascinating as the Salem Witch Trials, because every day it sends you an e-mail telling you whether you met the previous day's calorie goal. In the e-mail, it tells you what nutrients you're missing, what you may be getting too much of, and what you should either eat more or less of in order to balance your diet. The calorie-counter app is called The Daily Burn, and there's a free version.
Anyway, on Friday I attended my long-awaited geocaching event, MsHendrix's Twisted and Rainbow-Sprinkled Social. Despite the 97-degree weather, it was fairly well attended and went over like a charm, considering it is the first caching event I've ever planned. There were many travel bugs to be discovered, and much fun conversation. I named the event after my favorite ice cream treat: the twist cone with rainbow sprinkles. I have resolved to get three this summer: the one that I got shortly after arriving to Indiana, the one that I ate at the ice cream social, and the one I plan to eat after Pierogifest next weekend.
On Satuday I received an e-mail from The Daily Burn, saying I should limit my intake of "soft serve chocolate and vanilla ice cream." Haha. Be that as it may.
Speaking of geocaching...I'd like to do some today if the rain clears up.
Otherwise, perhaps I'll have more adventures to share next week. Be well.
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