the end of february, and i'm sitting here exhausted. i've started swimming; i went for the second time today (went yesterday as well) and that leaves me sore but happy. happy in an exhausted way. i know i'll sleep well. i haven't worked out the details - where to put my hearing aids when i swim, etc. - but i've found my place. the water is nice, people are good.

i finished reading a rough set of stories and handed up a review. then i turned to some other reading on my plate, and it was rough too. i was having trouble following. one problem is i'm spending a lot of time on cotton mather. he was an interesting guy but people who quote him and talk about him have problems being understood; at any rate, by now, i'm drained. the craziness of it has gotten to me.

an explosion of information on the web explores not only his mind, but also that of the girls, and even the others involved in the witch trials. people are still looking for answers, how it could have happened. i don't have answers. i am looking for lost relatives. they seem to have been in and out of wenham, near salem, in that era.

specifically one woman who we thought we'd lost, appeared in wenham in 1713 marrying a guy from a prominent family. he'd been married to the sheriff's daughter, i believe (a sheriff who was involved in the witch trial, sheriff herrick of wenham) and she'd died, leaving him three small children. our ancestor stepped right in there and married him. how did she get to wenham in 1713? perhaps she was already there, or in nearby ipswich? or she went up to visit someone?

a village of only about 500 people had to pull itself together after the witch trials, and patch up relations that had gone sour. the state paid a few people compensation for being wrongly accused, and forced to pay jail fees for crimes they hadn't committed. it was wild, but it was in 1692. our relative didn't get on the books until 1713. anything could have happened in that 21 years.

the growing up of a certain kid, is one thing that could have happened.

the possibility that my family could have been connected to the witch trials has fascinated me and got me into looking into that whole sordid tale.

it turns out that it was more than just nineteen unlucky people who got hung or killed for various aspersions made by people pretending to be in a trance or claiming that they were possessed by the devil. in fact it seemed kind of like it was turning into a mass movement, with more than 150 accused and likely to die if the whole thing weren't suddenly cut off by the governor, who suspected that half of the accusations were being made up.

among those 150, the ones who were pardoned, there are some interesting people. massive research has been done on the 19, in hopes that clues could be dug up about the times, and the motives, particularly the motives of the girls whose spells caused so many deaths. but now research is being done on the 150 aa well. who were they? how did they live? what was at the bottom of these accusations?

we had a relative who disappeared up in that area at about that time. she would have been about eighteen at the time of the witch trials and she very well could have had a child with her. she seems to appear in salem sixteen years later marrying a guy, and then dying in wenham a few years after that. it's the baby, if there is one, who is most interesting, as he seems to marry a mary whittridge in 1710. there's a mary witherage among the 150, convicted, imprisoned, then released. she would not be the same mary; she remarried a proctor.

nonetheless even the hint of a connection got me pretty excited. it wasn't all that huge an area, not so many people altogether. an incredible number of them just seem to have disappeared, including our relatives.

The Mary Whittridge of 1710 named her first daughter Phebee, and I thought that was a clue, given the fact that there aren't so many Phebees around. Unfortunately, Phebee is like Whittridge - there are several spellings - so it makes it hard to google birth records. A dead end so far. Where could she have gotten that name? there was a phoebe, caught up in the witch trials, one of the 150, maybe that's who the daughter was named after. who knows? it seems like a foggy world up there, with accusations flying around like hail in a sea squall.

all just a diversion, and i'll have to move on.

late afternoon and i'm full of stress, mostly issues of kids not going to school, or just not caring about school, all of which is for a different post. the sun sets on my reconfigured chair; i have a new view now, and see a bit of the street that i never did, albeit through very light curtains. the dogs of course have been guarding that very street. it's stressful for them too.

the book biz makes slow but steady progress as i try to balance marketing with writing, and it's very easy for me to let marketing win. marketing is, after all, just checking facebook sites constantly, and reading others' work, which i sometimes do without really even understanding it. there is a lot of fantasy in this world, and i must say i have trouble keeping track of it sometimes, and wish these guys would just stick with the facts. but if they do take me off into the world of their imaginations, i find it somehow like talking to my kids when they've been out there a little too long. let's get real, i feel like saying.

illinois februaries are a bit long even though the are generally only twenty-eight days. this one is already dragging a little. it's quite pleasant to walk the dogs, because it's not too cold, though my legs are stiff from a recent fall. but i like it out there on the streets. i see lots of christmas deco still up, lots of lights and balloons that really should be blown up if they're going to sit out on the yard all winter, or maybe they're a one-season thing. i enjoy the unraked leaves. my dogs glory in the smells and the other dogs' poops that have now been around a month or two. then i come to this one corner and there's a flashing neon sign, spirituality.com. i don't know what that is but it strikes me as a little ironic for some reason. spirituality to me is noticing the fresh air, the grass, the living things - to them it's some website, i guess, trying to draw you into christian science. whatever, there's a book in there, or at least a story.

i keep a healthy distance from churches. the larger they are, the more they have to lose, and the less likely they are to call someone out when they take advantage of some kid. not my kids. i'm one of the hundreds of millions of americans who are avoiding the whole scene, i guess, though i have cloud quakers, and haven't given up on god altogether.

now it's february. many of my goals for january didn't pan out, among them family pictures (click on january; some are there, below). my goal there is to organize all the pictures in the bowels of this blog so that, if one were determined to see all ten of my chidren, or brothers and sister, or cousins, one could do it. i have pictures. i just have to make the system good, so that people who know, can find them, but people coming in from outside don't necessarily know who they are.

another goal is to stop flailing around with my writing. we are in a position where we could use the money. and yet i write what i want, a kind of non-selling book, short stories that people don't snap up. the market for short stories is elusive, at least for me, and here i am talking about income again but it's come to that; we're retired, incomes shirinking, kids as dependent as ever, and getting in trouble to boot, and i'm thinking, if only i could spin off a few novels just to keep the cash coming in. but i'm out of the habit of making novels. i haven't been succeeding in that regard. i can, i'm quite sure, but i haven't been.

it's bitter cold here, but about to let up. i think the groundhog might have seen his shadow, which i believe, is good, it means it will ease up a bit. i believe february is one of those months when anything can happen. down in southern illinois i saw three ice storms one february. so i'm a little wary now and not so eager to just sign up for travel.

it's a battle on every front. money, kids in school, medicines, losing weight. the latest is my heart. i'm hoping it keeps ticking, of course. i'm sixty-eight, and there's always that chance that it doesn't. i have some friends who didn't make it as far as i have.

stay calm, stay cool, and write. i still have things to say.