here's an out there kind of story. i just about finished a book about my great-great grandfather, who grew up near quincy illinois, went up to warren illinois, got married, and then got horses and wagons to go out to pike's peak to do some gold-digging. on the way they cut their trip short and became pioneer settlers in southeast nebraska, near kansas and missouri, out on the prairie. because this was the civil war, jayhawkers and bushwhackers kept coming through killing people and burning things up, so they bailed, and went back to warren.

it was the end of the civil war, but he enlisted, even with three children under four, and fought down in mississippi and alabama. upon his return he got a job in the warren independent, a newspaper, which then changed its name to the sentinel and still exists today. this was maybe 1865 and 6 going into 1867.

a woman just sent me pictures of some of these newspapers (they were weekly). amazing! i am now steeped in computer photos of ancient newspapers from those three years. i am trying to discern what exactly he might have written, and what he has to say about life in warren after the civil war.

it is really out there, to go back a hundred and fifty-five years, and see what constituted literary writing.

more news on the general travel front. the teens need to get out there. we are pushing back. we need to not be driving them to our deaths. the covid is coming close to home as my favorite towns, iowa city, ames, lawrence, and carbondale are all being very hard hit. i of course knew some of those people, in those towns, who might be most vulnerable. all us old hippies are now about 65, and in varying health depending on how much damage we've done over the years. lots of us are dead already i'm sure. if this covid ever ends, we're going to have one big huge music festival.

but in the meantime, there are kids to raise, lives to save, and it's rough out there. i feel for the people out there who are being evicted, losing their homes, suffering in one way or the other. in contrast, we have it lucky. we are still alive and healthy.

i delve into history, in order to avoid the rest. if i survive, i myself will become history, and maybe you will read this.

had a big fight tonight about whether teens could go to town on a friday night, and they won; i took them; they stayed, both in sleepovers. sleepovers we consider to be very high risk. the good news is that both are with friends who are already in our so-called bubble, and the one who has extra friends actually had them tested. seems like everyone who is involved, is clear.

nevertheless, what an ordeal. we are well aware that they are not really keeping their words about masks, distancing, etc. it doesn't seem like you can ask teens to do that. we consider ourselves lucky to be in a tiny town where we basically know everyone and, if they've been clear this long, hopefully they will stay clear. the town is 87,000 feet - lots of fresh air, and thin oxygen. when we go to town we have to go up to 87,000 from where we are (~73,000), then back down over ridge to about 76,000 again, and then up into the town. lots of deer out there.

tonight after deciding to leave them there, i drove home slowly. a big moon was out; few clouds, a wide open valley. my cousin says i'm blessed to be out here in the mountains, and she's right - there are so few people, if covid comes around it'll be pretty obvious. we did have a case or two but it seems like they pounced on them and most of the people - it's the kids i'm worried about of course - are clear.

up over the ridge, which has a rather steep gravel road, people bring big motor homes, most with texas plates. it was friday night. leaving texas, i'm sure they felt like i did when i left, that these mountains, with their thin air and all, are paradise. lots of stars out, and the fields all green with the yellow flowers just coming out. the aspens have the white trunks, and bright colors - but the best thing is the temps - it's moderate all hte time. cool in the day, cool in the night - winter's tough, but they'll be long gone by then.

coming down over the ridge you watch out for little ground squirrels that cross the road. i try not to hit them. it ight be harder, lugging a motor home, but then i would be riding the brake anyway. there are cows around, and they are used to being wild, in the road, wherever they want, taking up the lush grasses. they're the ones who give you the feeling it's paradise. of course, i'm sure they will someday become hamburger, and maybe they know that, but in the meantime they are living a great life.

maybe i should revise my outlook. at one point tonight, i yelled, "i don't want to die!" i especially don't want to drive my teenage children to a place where they could pick up the covid. but with a changed outlook i could be thinking: i am where i want to be. the grass is green and beautiful. if the covid comes way out here to get me, then i guess it's just my time to go.

now late at night, the puppy is on my lap. the moon is finally behind a tree - it's been right above me all night. i'm out on the porch. i can never distinguish night sounds from what i hear in my ears anyway. it's ok - puppy and me are ok with the world.

 

i get lost, sometimes, in the stories of my ancestors. there are thousands of them, up there, who lived out their lives in the boston area or in some cases out on the hard plains. i got up to about 1908 with them, and now, i'm kind of curious how many got caught up in the pandemic. it's not always clear how they died. lots of the relatives died early - married and then died, or had their first baby and then died. it's not always a nice story.

somehow they got by by cranking out the children. this one family had eleven - two died - a couple more died young or something. this family was definitely lost in the late-eighteenth century and people didn't know much about them. sometimes i get the feeling that dates that they've collected - even the names of the people, might be something that someone made up, and they aren't real people. but they are - and they were living in places like cambridge, or chester, vermont, or maybe brookline. just living their lives. maybe cranking out the babies, maybe not.

if they had a lot of babies, that made it more possible that they got to where i am today. it's just statistically more likely. we are at a point where we have what, three hundred million in this country, and coronavirus will take maybe one million. by and large the human population is shrinking - women are having less than two - and gradually we may ease down to a point where the earth can actually handle us and heal itself. as for me and mine, i'm like my dad - i had four biological children, but don't hold out much hope for the long haul. i'll have descendants, but they won't populate the earth. we white folks are in a funk when it comes to cranking them out.

and no wonder. it's hard to know what's going on in this earth, not to mention in this country, and not feel badly about bringing another soul into it. here you go, you can inherit this mess. climate change, rich people ran off with all the goods, massive corruption, inability to work together - you can have the whole schtick.

and then other times i have hope. the virus wipes out some traffic, and a few factories. the flowers bloom again. the air is so fresh, you can see the mountains.

if i were a kid i'd say, the virus is coming, let's have kids like there's no tomorrow.

The Story of My Life

Autobiography of the Treasurer of Hillsdale College, 1862-1877

Paperback - On Amazon, $4.69 + postage
Kindle - Only $1.05

Lorenzo Reynolds was my great great grandfather. That's why, when I found this typed document among my genealogical papers, I felt some obligation to get it out to the public. But as a writer, I'm very impressed by his crisp style (while I have, myself, fallen into sloppy tortured sentences at times). He's clear, powerful, and strong, and he has a grudge against a certain character at Hillsdale College, in Michigan. He tells his story thoroughly and carefully.

He was the Treasurer right through the great fire, and through some very important times. His pioneering, and his family, are also of interest. Whereas he has gotten his story of the college out already, this is the first that I know where he has told his life story. It's worth it.

the ancestors really lived in an amazing world. no internet, no phone, no cars, not even bicycles. well, they got bicycles and cars maybe, after a while, but at first, nothing. they were big on horses. they knew how to saddle them up, get a team, and go a few miles. in all kinds of weather.

the guy below (next post), was my great great grandfather, on my great grandmother's side. his family came from new york state, and settled in central michigan, in the grand river valley. he had an interesting take on things. i typed out his life story and i'm about to publish it. there are several issues related to it.

one is that i feel a little bit like i'm capitalizing on his good writing. he was a powerful writer, very strong and clear, and by typing out this document (The Story of My Life) i am putting it out there for generations to read. such things as what he wrote are public domain now, no question it is ok for me to do it. besides that, i'm his great great grandson, so i have some right to just print it up and make it available, i feel. but it feels kind of strange anyway, and i can't get over it.

there are people who do this just as a kind of cottage industry. they find things in the public domain, and just print them up as books. they figure that if they get even one or two sales, it's worth it. but beyond that, if they own the printed word, they own something going into the future. they have that work, associated with their name, and they are the ones that can print and make it available. it's interesting, as a cottage industry, but there's a problem with these books too. they're ugly. they all look alike. there is nothing individual about anything that they print.

i took out the old picture that had been handed down to me (below) and put a version of it in the book. now, he's looking out at me. it actually doesn't make it any easier to print out his autobiography.

he was an interesting man - treasurer of hillsdale college, he had a grudge against some people there, and used his eloquent powerful style to show how they'd wronged him unfairly. one wishes, upon reading, to get the other side of the story. but he has personal details too, and that's what is most interesting to us in the family i think. his daughter became our great grandmother. his fixation with a small midwestern college i especially found interesting.

i will pull it together when i have the chance, and just put his story out there. someone has to do it, and it seems like that would be me. i got the manuscript, don't know what to do with it, and have too many people to pass it along to. better to just pull it together, put pictures in it, and let it represent him in the annals of history.

my typing is not perfect, and neither is my interpretation of his history. i may be criticized for the way i put the book together. but all books, these days, are going by the wayside. it's the kindle version that will matter in the end. and when i get to that, i will do the best i can with it, and go with it. i'm making history, by making history.

i am so grateful that i am basically retired. my four children remaining at home are all back in school, with some variation of success; the youngest loves it the most. the older ones are grateful to have something to do, no matter how much they disdain it. i am grateful to have active help in watching them go forward. my wife wants me to be involved but feels like she needs to keep track as i will get too busy and let things slip. and besides, with my own kids, i tend to believe what they say. bad idea.

some righteous thunder and gentle rain are coming through. they seem to be coming from the east, which is unusual, as that's the dry part around here. but it's still monsoon season, you can say, so rain is not entirely unexpected. i was trying to organize a fire for a while there. i figured i'd get one more big burn before tonight's rain. but we got caught up in going to town and getting supplies, and it started raining when i returned, while i was unloading the groceries. there goes the fire. maybe later.

i've become obsessed with the fire. that's because, to me, piles of straw and brush like what we have sitting around, not only in the front but also in the back, are just fuel waiting to burn. you can haul it out to the slash pile, which urban as well as country people use, and that's free, but that costs a tank of gas per truckload and is inconvenient to find the time, unload it, etc. most country people just burn it.

but burning it, there are two different ways. one is to do it all at once. you get the fire people involved, and you make sure it's clear all around it, then, boom, bonfire. i chose against that this year. i decided to do a little at a time. one campfire every three or four nights, right before it rains. with a campfire i burn a big pile of sticks and buckets of straw, pine straw. the pine straw is sitting around in piles. it took me a while to figure out it wasn't going anywhere unless i did something about it.

there are people who do this kind of thing for a living. they just take someone's slash, back to their wild territory, and burn it down. not me. we've got way more than i can handle as it is. i rake the yard, and i have a big pile of pine straw. it sits there for a while, and finally i figure i ought to do something about it.

the rainy season is short; it's almost over. i got a slow start; i let a couple of rains come along, without jumping on the opportunity. some other folks had big fires; they just took advantage of their opportunity when it came by. i dawdled around a bit until i figured out that now was the time to deal with it.

on the school front colleges and high schools are closing and going online. we have a disaster in our own high school; small as it is, it seems to have gotten it. they are going to try to carry on. the son who is in high school really needs supervision to get himself to do the work. now that almost everyone has gone home this may be hard for him to get. we'll have to see how it works.

sometimes when i burn a fire, i feel like i'm letting go of the past. it's enormously gratifying, even a small campfire, a bucket of straw going up in flames. it's easier than writing my autobiography. it's getting rid of the dead stuff.

meanwhile the cows and deer love our yard; the more we clear out, the better the grass grows, and the more attractive it is to these grass-eaters. they are doing us a service, and leaving us some poop to make fertilizer out of and grow some more.

the cows don't seem to mind the thunder. my wife, though, wants me to come in while it's rumbling, as she doesn't want me hit by lightning. my daughter was out playing in the rain the other day, splashing in the puddles and getting wet, and got sick on one school day - i think it was because of rolling in the puddles too much. my wife says that's a wives' tale, that getting all wet makes you more likely to catch something. but we all, paranoid of covid as we are, watched her closely. it seemed like a garden variety sickness. yes but we watched closely anyway.

then today she jumped out of the car to give an older girl a big hug. i was horrified. ok, now this girl is part of our family, at least for fourteen days. whatever she's got, you've got, then i've got, and all your brothers and sisters too. the price of a hug. maybe it'll be ok, since it was outside, and only for a couple of seconds. but i have no faith, i'm very suspicious.

the thunder, having passed by overhead more or less, has been replaced by a steady, gentle rain. i'm loving it. new mexico is usually so dry, so intense with the sun and the desert heat, that i feel like i have to go outside during this entire monsoon season, and soak up every drop. some people measure it and know that, out of maybe ten or twelve inches we'll get all year, most of it is coming now. this is it. this is all we'll get. and if that's true, i want to be there for every drop.

 

the girl would have been eighteen this year, like my son, graduating during a pandemic. i don't know if she's still in the area or what happened to her. she was three when this happened, in 2005.

her mother's boyfriend, a white supremacist, shot her mother and stuffed her in a closet. the girl was there at the time. the mother was pregnant, so the girl was crying about her mother and her sister when the police arrived.

two policemen arrived; one went around back. the white supremacist guy went to the back and killed him, too. now he'd killed three people. but on his way back to the front the policeman in the front got him. he handcuffed him so he could go check the scene.

when he saw his buddy killed in the back, he lost it, and came back, and shot the guy. so now the policeman was a murderer too. meanwhile the three-year-old girl saw all this. she was still crying about her mother and her sister.

people in town had sympathy for the policeman. he was well-liked and popular. most people could understand his reaction to seeing his buddy dead on the back porch. they even felt it was justified as self-defense.

but in the trial, it was decided that he was guilty, and he was given a minimal sentence. you have to pay for that kind of stuff, even if you're a policeman and everyone knows why you did it.

a rally was held for him in town, supporting him. but he went off to serve his time. the question is, what happened to the girl. she was orphaned that day; she lost her mother, and her sister, and she went off into the world somewhere. only to graduate in a pandemic, i presume.

i will get on here with pictures as soon as possible. it is rainy season, wildflower season, and green season in a place that is usually bone dry and harsh with the sun. i've been making a lot of fires but not taking pictures of them. i've been trying to build things too with less success, like stairs for a crooked threshold.

ah well but i set my mind to moving all my wood, from a prominent place right in front of everyone, where i had this big pile that attracted lizards and snakes, back to a place behind the house where it will be more out of sight. it will be closer for me to use it, and still a little out of the way for those who are afraid of snakes and don't want to see big piles of scrap wood all over the place.

so i set up this system of a very small pathway, over a rock wall in a kind of cutback way, so that it was like cutback pass, but it went past a couple of wildflowers and eventually made a little trail there. all this was basically to move scrap lumber out of the way. i got a good suntan and lot of exercise, but my total accomplishment was mostly landscaping.

when i make the fire i gather wood from all over the place. my goal is to get rid of all of what we call fuel, pine needles and sticks and stuff that will burn like crazy in dry season. now that it's wet season, it doesn't burn like crazy. but it burns, and that's what i want. i've decided that in a place with very high anxiety the best thing i can do is reduce the amount of fuel we are standing around looking at as we live our lives. we look off to the southwest, and that's where the monsoon rains are coming from, but we also look toward where the wind comes from generally, so if we see fuel off that way, that'll raise the anxiety level. same with the woodpile. best put it behind the house, where if it all burns, it'll burn up the hill, instead of toward the house.

we have this little compound now, with two trailers, a shed, a main house, another shed (my work shed, with a washer-dryer & pump), and what we call the bunk house, where the girls and the teenage boy, and the two cats, live. that bunkhouse has two rooms and a bathroom, and i'm thinking, if they get too crowded, they might be wanting to move into one of the trailers. but first things first. might have to get electrical for one of the trailers.

anyway i'm walking along this path and there are wildflowers now. i sometimes stop to pick the weeds which of course have been flourishing, what with the rain and all. i do some weeding, and it's very therapeutic.

that reminds me, our small town got its first case yesterday. nobody knows anything about it. but it's a mighty small town and it's only a matter of time, pretty soon we'll know who, where, when, how, how many, everything. there is no news outlet here. people use facebook a lot but the moderator wouldn't allow the post that said it. she figured it would start a huge fight. maybe she decided to ban the whole topic.

and people might die, and nobody knows about the possibility?

seems to me, it's best to just tell 'em.

 

i'm in a bit of a logjam as i now have at least eight active projects, and a few more inactive ones, and being a-d-d and all, the ones i am most excited about are the brand new ones, whereas actually finishing what i've started is much harder. but research into one leads me to believe that i have an entire book here, and another book here, and that i really need to write about them all.

this happened really as i decided to type up my relative ellen's account. ellen i think you would say was a cousin, several times removed, single, lived in brookline in a fine old house, grew up episcopalian, and never married, at least as far as i know. but when my other cousin frank the geologist, who walked from ames to madison one time, wrote her about leverett ancestors, she had an unusual response.

it was she who like me felt that you have to pay attention to the women's side and the women's ancestors. with every woman who marries into the family you get a couple thousand ancestors, if you go eleven generations up, and each one of them contributes to the child who is born with the name of the father. but since most children are born with the name of the father, we tend to look at the family name, and go all the way up on the family name. in other words, even with the woman, we look at her father, his father, his father, etc. because they were the ones that brought the name down through the generations. think of the names that have been buried! starting with hers - having married, she'll lose it - but her mother's too - having married, she also lost hers. a lot of names get buried in the drama.

but back to ellen - she simply recorded who the mothers and their mothers were. she got lots of good people going all the way up, and that's how i know, now, that i am related to lots of interesting people. she set me off on a trail to explore real lives of the west boston/newton/dedham/needham area.

so i started exploring some of these people, and was determined to write a book about the owners of the powder house rock, and purgatory swamp, and all these places around dedham where my ancestors were tromping around. but i didn't want to omit the massachusett tribe who had lived there before these guys even showed up.

and then i ran into lots of other side facts, which ultimately convinced me that i have another, yet another book about the era wrapped up in the praying towns and the tragedy that befell them.

i first encountered the praying towns when i found out that it was governor leverett who ordered that they be removed to deer island during king philip's war. this was entirely tragic and is no doubt worth a book of its own. but how had they come to live in villages such as nonantum and natick? john eliot had convinced them. he had come, praying, offering a new way involving faith and investment in the western culture. they now lived in praying towns, but, unfortunately, they were scorned on both sides. the massachusett who were still wild scorned them for selling out. the english didn't quite trust them completely. so, their fate was sealed.

so, to my book about powder house rock in dedham, i add a new one, a book about nonantum, natick, and the selling out of the massachusett. the pequot, i think, got sold out first, and maybe that's part of the story. but it may be another day's story.

so here are the ones i am actively working on:

powder house rock - i simply cannot give up doing research on the early seventeen hundreds. at this time there was a guy, an ancestor, who went crazy. this is the essence of the story i want to get into. he's the one who lived out in purgatory swamp, and they don't know when he died. his sons sold out the land he owned, powder house rock, but i have to be careful here because i misrepresent information sometimes. i have to know more, that's all there is to it.
prairie leveretts - almost finished with this story, the story of ancestors who lived through the civil war by holing up on god-forsaken land in the nebraska territory. the territory kept voting against statehood even though it was inevitable. jayhawkers and bushwhackers came through doing random wanton violence since it was wartime. they ended up living in wisconsin, south dakota, kansas and missouri before it was over.
the story of my life - this one would be easiest to finish, since basically all i did was type up my other great-great grandfather's account of his own life. it seems to be my fate to decide what to do with this yellowed 80-page document written very strongly and clearly in a 1915 style. he had an interesting life involving being one of the first pioneer settlers of lyon county, michigan, and treasurer of hillsdale college, but his complaints against the college have already been published, basically taken up and digitized in the digitizing of the university of michigan library. i find that what's left, the family account, is still worth publishing, and i intend to put it in book form, with a couple of pictures, so that his life looks presentable and attractive. being 105 years old, i think i can just publish it and not worry about the money; i will make it available cheap if not free to others.
just passing through: true stories from out there is my autobiography which i've been trying to finish for years. the problem is that my life keeps getting more complicated, and adding chapters. i am now at fifty - representing one for every place i've lived - and i've got past the hurdle of whether to include parts that are embarrassing to me. of course i will include them. and tell all. but, with a nod toward all the genealogy writing - make it so birth dates are entirely accessible. i don't actually know all the relevant birthdates, but i can at least collate the information so that i can make it one of the genealogical series about my family.
quaker plays for grownups - as i get drawn more into quakerism, and being a kind of leader of sorts of an informal national network of quakers, i feel the responsibility to know a little more about the schisms in their history, and about famous quakers in general. on top of this was a good drama out in nebraska (see above) where a quaker got drawn in to the native expulsion from the plains, and there was a natural play there. in this particular book i have about four plays written, have good ideas for about three more (including nixon) and need maybe ten or twelve to make a good book. i can't say it's even half finished. but it's getting there.
my iowa novel - now put aside, pains me greatly since i see iowa totally devastated by a derecho, and all my friends and family cleaning up an enormous mess. i know what a derecho is all about, having lived through one in may of 2009 (?), but the worst part is that because most people don't know what a derecho is, they look at the news and fail to latch on to the seriousness of the tragedy. my novel is a kind of romance. but really i'm more in love with iowa and the culture itself, than any one particular woman. i am not sure i'm a romance novelist. i have kind of been sucked into the reality of ordinary lives - the old ones - and that's where i'm stuck at the moment.
esl reader - this is based on the fact that making good esl reading exercises is what i'm good at, what consistently sells, and is not only fun but interesting. unfortunately, retiring after 34 years brought on a wave of tiredness of the whole mess. i just have trouble conjuring up the energy to go to work, which is what i would have to do to finish this. it's easy and interesting, as i've said, to make these exercises. but it's work.
mcdonalds stories i have written twenty three - not sure if that's enough. sometimes i feel like i should wrap it up, put a cover on it, and publish. with a burst of inspiration i will. it's really really almost done. its tentative title is comin''round to lovin' it - twenty three stories out of 99 billion served...the stories need a good craftsman's going over. in the art of writing short stories one must never give things without purpose, or distract from the story with language that is too flowery. i've gotten sloppy. and tired. and i was primarily a short story writer for years, with seven or eight volumes out there, and still now i look at them and think i could make them better. it's possible that i'm just too tired here. i want to finish when i'm in a good mood, and feeling crisp and sharp. so it's entirely on the table now. just sitting on the table.
vowels in an elevator - when i make a list of the ones i want to finish before i die, and realize that i might die at any minute (with a few months of covid hell first), this book falls near the top of the list, along with just passing through. i need this book to be part of my legacy, even if nobody reads it. it wraps up a lifetime of watching carefully how languages relate to each other in the minds of people who are trying to use them. but more importantly it explains language change in a scientific way so that we can clearly see that linguistics is a science, in spite of being ruled in some cases by people most whimisical impulses. ah, this is where it gets interesting.
you will notice that there is no haiku in here. i've also neglected to include my first two novels, interference (story of illinois, st. louis, and sports), and texas hold 'em (story of guns, obsession, and chance). both of these are about half done, and indefinitely shelved. i've been drawn into reality, since my imagination is resisting simply making things up. and also, since the sheer reality of early lives led in obscurity, i find, is infinitely fascinating.

a little bit of a historical detour sent me way back to the early 1600's again, when i unexpectedly found a family which struck me as unusual although it may have been relatively normal at the time. i have a general policy that when i can find some of the people who made me what i am, and find out anything about them, i'm going to learn it. they don't have to have the same last name as me. if you go that far, to the early 1600's, there are over four thousand of them, ancestors, people who had babies who had babies, until my parents had me. one of these was Dr. Comfort Starr. I am going to capitalize the names in this passage, because they are quite unusual, and that is a little out of ordinary for me.

Comfort was the second son of Thomas Starr II, who lived in Kent,England, and who was born in the late fifteen hundreds. thomas and his wife had seventeen children altogether, and had them all in Kent, where they lived. but in the early sixteen hundreds a movement gathered steam to move everyone to Massachusetts, and of their kids, quite a few went, and quite a few ended up in Massachusetts.

Comfort was second; first was Jehosaphat. Then, in order, came Nostrength Strength, Moregifte, William, Mercy, Suretrust, Sinetinot, Thomas III, Standwell, Judith, TruthShallPrevayl, Joyfoole, Constant, Anne, Mary, and Beloved. In some cases it's hard to tell the boys from the girls, but the boys seemed to come early, whereas the girls came later. They were born over a period from 1587 (Jehosaphat) to 1617 (Beloved), and all were born in Kent. Comfort, my ancestor, was born in 1589.

In 1634 Comfort decided to take the ship the Hercules to Massachusetts. It was actually called the Hercules of Sandwich because it sailed out of Sandwich, which was near Kent. He took his wife and three of his children, presumably the first three, as the others weren't born yet, or would come later. One of these was a son John Starr, who would also be our ancestor. But he also took three servants. And one of these was TruthShallPrevayl.

Now I have to admit that that was the name that struck me the hardest, of all seventeen. I tried to imagine what it would be like to have a name like that. There are some I didn't understand, like Sinetinot, and some i had to admit were spelled funny, like Joyfoole, but hey, it was sixteen hundred, and spelling varied. TruthShallPrevayl, by the way, would have been thirty at this time, while Comfort was more like forty-five, well established as a doctor, or to be more specific, a chirurgeon. But there's a reason you would make your younger sister a servant on the ship rolls. And that is, to assure everyone that she was protected and taken care of, and going for the right reasons. Comfort had to do all this stuff for himself, and his wife and kids: he had to do paperwork before setting off on a transcontinental journey. He had to assure them that he and his family would be ok in Massachusetts.

The Hercules of Sandwich appears to have made it to Massachusetts without incident. It was noted that this ship carried a lot of tonnage and so it was undoubtedly carrying supplies as well as its people. Most of the Starr family ended up in Charlestown, which was just a little north of Boston. 1634 was early though; they were among the first settlers in the Great Migration of Puritans in the early 1600's.

No sooner did Comfort Starr arrive than he was sucked into service in the Pequot War, which was right around that time. He was a chirurgeon. Of his siblings, Moregifte, Suretrust, Sinetinot, Thomas III, and Constant also ended up in Massachusetts. Some could have come over and then returned to Kent, but if they did, I haven't learned that yet. Also Comfort's parents, I believe, ended up in Massachusetts. Life was tough, but that's what people were doing. They were settling in the new land.

Their names raise eyebrows these days, but they weren't really all that uncommon. I'm not sure if they carried any meaning in and of themselves, like they indicated that the family was religious. In general, settlers in the Great Migration were religious. But their pattern really was more that they had seventeen so that some would make it. Comfort and John made it, and their descendant, Mary Starr, was ultimately to marry into our family.

TruthShallPrevayl disappeared, though. They don't know where she died, or how. It's something I might come upon eventually. With a name like that, it seems people would at least remember what happened to you.

i like to say, if you go up twelve generations, over four thousand people are your direct ancestors, and go into who you are today. now it so happens that for simplicity sake we tend to go up through the men, because they have all the same last name, and therefore i have been exploring twelve generations of leveretts going all the way up or as far as i can though there are several holes in the line, in the witchcraft trials and in the revolution.

but it so happens that at every woman they marry, there is a whole bunch of tree going straight up into those four thousand. for example, when my dad married my mom, she contributed a couple thousand right there, assuming we are willing to go up twelve generations and notice them all, her parents, their parents, their parents, etc. etc.

i have an inherent interest in all four thousand, too, regardless of their names, and now that i have done the leveretts going through the seventeen hundreds, i'm a little better prepared to understand what some of these other families went through in that era. families of nine, eleven, thirteen were quite common. these were trees that got very wide very fast.

i had a relative about five generations back who was into this as well and, frustrated that the leveretts themselves were somewhat murky, looked into the wives' side and traced some of the ancestors going up from there. for example, one leverett stumbled into needham, mass., and married a local woman, lydia fuller, and i knew her father, captain fuller, or perhaps it was lieutenant fuller, had served in the revolutionary war. he was from needham, and was in the lexington alarm guard, so was one of the first to answer the call. but his mother was named sarah eaton, and the eaton fuller alliance provides its own interesting story, the story of powder house rock.

powder house rock is a tiny little place in dedham, mass., that is a little off the beaten path but very interesting. it is interesting partly because it starts with a slab of rock that overlooks the charles river, a little west of boston. on this rock is built a sturdy little house which was to be used for gunpowder around the time of the revolution. this little house was apparently built by captain fuller, and is the oldest standing building in dedham.

now what is interesting to me is that the land it is on was owned by the eatons for many generations. the eatons were a family in dedham which had many generations of johns, but around this time, something happened to the oldest one, who was john, and the land ended up in the hands of william. Well, not exactly. There was one john who helped build a footbridge over the charles, but his son John was mentally ill. nobody knew that john's wife's name; she was alice; she was generally considered competent, but that john, well, he couldn't handle his own affairs, apparently. and his oldest son john is the one who we lose track of. he had another son william, and william eaton married mary starr, and their daughter sarah eaton married robert fuller right before the revolution.

in any case, this rock had been owned by the eatons, and came to be owned by the fullers, who probably had lived there, and at some point coming up into the revolution one captain fuller, who could be robert, or could be his son william, i'm still not sure, built this little powder house.

and the remarkable thing is, the powder house still stands. it's kind of tucked away. the city has expanded way around it. it's just a little brick building on a big old rock. overlooking the charles.

someday, i'm going to go visit.

i got sick for a few days, and it was similar to previous times - the dizziness was really my clue that it was coming on, and it was just a quick, non-covid kind of thing. actually i suspect the mayonnaise on a meatloaf sandwich, because our mayo tends to hang around too long waiting for meatloaf, and once it comes out of the refrigerator, it has a hard time going back in.

but one result of that was that i went out, harvested some greenthread, and made tea out of it. under my wife's direction i ground the stalks and leaves in a kind of mortar and pestle, put a whole bunch of them in a single pot, and made a single two-cup pot of navajo tea. it was delicious! i was proud of myself as i had been growing the stuff faithfully for about a year. and i'd let it blossom into flowers and stalks in a little patch that i've fenced in. it's about all i've grown, besides a few fruit trees. but it made me one quiet afternoon of thick healing tea.

now it's back to coffee. my general problem is that because i drink five or six cups a day, i never quite get in the mood for tea, unless i'm sick, or it's raining, or both. yesterday it was both. it was a good break.

it's rainy season here, which makes it harder to burn a good fire. i want to burn the fire, because i have all these piles of pine needles and sticks, and if they sit around for another cycle, they become fuel for a deadly fire. in a household of high anxiety and high covid stress, i don't even want to look out my front window at a pile of sticks and straw. so i've taken to waiting until it dries out, and then burning it, one boxful at a time. no shortage of either, sticks or straw. in fact what i should do, or be doing, is to make a series of manageable fires until i have the brush piles down to a more reasonable height. it's either that or pay someone to haul them away.

not surprisingly the local fire brigade is sensitive about the way it's done. and some people are clearly more prone to the bonfire style, where you just burn it all at once, big huge pile, telling the fire chief or not, as according to their nature. i think you are supposed to tell the sheriff in the case of large bonfires, so that when they spot the smoke from the ridge they don't fire off the alarm and bring all the trucks to put it out. but a lot of these country people are averse to calling authorities of any kind, and will just set their bonfire whenever they're ready.

i also am averse to calling the authorities, but that has led me to a much smaller-scale strategy - make campfires, so i don't have to, make them in the rainy season, so i'm allowed to, and make enough of them so i can keep down the rapidly growing piles of needles and brush that i so desperately want to get rid of.

in my dizzy haze of sickness, i'm back to coffee, and back to noticing the gentle rains on the pine needles and grass that are strewn about the place. the deer have sure noticed, and they are all over the place, keeping the grasses down. the grasses have been having a good time what with the cleared trees, and we also cleared some stumps, so there's really a lot going on out there. the cows and deer poop out there regularly enough that everything has a nice bright sheen, and it serves to attract all the more wildlife.

today a bold deer came right up to the porch. the puppy of course goes bonkers when he sees it. the deer looks like he wants to get at the garbage we've dropped by the front of the porch. from the porch i actually spoke to the deer and asked her what she thought she was doing walking right up to the porch like that. she looked back at me impassively and said nothing, like it was the most normal thing in the world. she even took another step toward the porch. but she could tell i was getting a little agitated. actually i don't mind if she eats the grass from the driveway itself, and i don't mind in general as long as the dogs don't notice and she doesn't get into the garbage, which i really think she was not into. the coyotes, yes, and the cows too, they'd probably get into the garbage, but the deer, they like to stick to the grasses and flowers, some of which pop up right in the middle of the stone driveway.

oh but the greenthread, i think the deer are the main customers for that greenthread, and i think they like to pull it out straight from its roots, and eat the whole thing, leaving me nothing, unless i am a master fencer. i am developing my fencing skills, but i still have a ways to go. i do have enough greenthread for myself, though, and anyone who visits. it will be my first year of having an actual greenthread harvest. and the next step - buy another packet of seeds, and expand the fenced-in area.

nobody knows how long this pandemic will be, how many of us it will take, whether it will come back worse than it is now, or fizzle after a good vaccine is developed. our children - their lives already permanently altered - may live or not, depending on how healthy they are anyway, and how careless they are about interactions. i suspect, ours are not so careful. but it's not like they haven't been warned. if they get the virus, and bring it home, they just have to live with the consequences.

one thing my relatives were saying is, sometimes you can be careful, and still get it. in one story, some guy is standing in a doorway, and his friends walk by. friend gets the covid from saying hello as he walks by the doorway. sometimes you can't avoid it. it's there in your path.

it's a cool, rainy day way out here in the mountains. because of the rain, we've been burning. here's the story. piles and piles of what we call "slash," old trees, sticks, leaves, pine needles, are sitting around all through the dry season, just being fuel. one spark and it could set the mountain on fire. not only "could," but also "would be likely to," or "has done it before." you got too much dry stuff hanging around, you got trouble. so now it's rainy season. it rains every day, or every couple of days. sometimes things are soggy, but sometimes they dry out between rains, and that's a good time to burn what you can. quick before it rains again, get rid of some of these piles of straw.

i noticed that my neighbors were doing it when my daughter told me of her friends having a "bomb fire." i thought, well, i should be having a bomb fire myself. instead i've been opting for smaller campfires - don't warn the sheriff, just keep it small, do it now when there are no fire restrictions, and burn about a fire full every time. it would be easier to burn the whole darn pile at once, yes, but it would also be a much bigger production, and if i keep it small i feel like i have a little more control.

it's the dry straw i really love to get rid of. the sticks, yes, they are fuel too, and there are too many of them, so i say, be gone. but the sticks on some level can create heat in a wood stove. the straw, on the other hand, just sits there waiting for a match. in piles. be gone with you! it's not like i'm going to make a straw mat out of it. just thousands of pine needles sitting in a pile, making everyone anxious every day through a long ten-month dry season. fortunately we don't have a lot of cigarette-smoking drivers along our road.

did a blog report - this here blog is my number one of about forty blogs. lots of them are long dormant - you're talking ten, fifteen years - but they still seem to gather in some views. i'm not sure what constitutes a "view," if half the time they take one second to figure out it's not what they are looking for. but sometimes, i fancy that they stop and look at the blog, read the template, notice stuff. i'm not sure. this month, 11,625 "views" altogether, 1926 on this blog alone. last month, only 7,037. but that's better than what i get on twitter. i'm mulling over going commercial. i've always kept the blogs off the commercial realm. but of the forty, there are probably some i could make commercial. not this one of course - this one will stay what it's always been. but it might be interesting to just boldly go commercial - go for the "hits," and see if it will help as a marketing plan.

of my six projects, unwritten things, or in some cases written but not produced, i consider ordering them in terms of importance. namely, if i catch covid tomorrow, and i'm finished, what do i want to be already finished? my present priorities are based on this: what can i get off my table as soon as possible. or, what am i really most wanting to work on? unfortunately the answer to all three questions comes out different, every time. and half the time, i just want to start a new project. but then there would be seven, because you know i wouldn't finish that one either.

last month i managed to update only eleven of my forty or so blogs. my general campaign, though, has meant that i've updated more than half of them in a few months, and that's what accounts, probably, for my rising numbers. you come up higher on your google algorithm, if you have a "current" "live" blog, and as pointless as some of them are, they are at least "alive" and that's partly 'cause i haven't kilt 'em yet. it's nice having a remote outpost in cyberspace, that represents one of your aspirations, or ideas, or projects. no reason to abolish such things, except that, in a sense, it's like a kid on a street corner, sit there long enough, trouble will find it. a general campaign of awareness is called for here. i'll keep you posted. that way, when i die, you'll know my intentions.