My 2 book cents pt. 1

The Barbarous Years has me in its clutches. I’m a little surprised that 500 pages of our colonial pasts first century has me quite so mesmerized. I’m not surprised by the summary but the details are well described by author/historian/Pulitzer winner Bernard Bailyn.

I just finished the chapter on the early years of Maryland first set up as a place of refuge for British Catholics under the cover of permitting religious tolerance for the Protestants who had taken over England after Henry VIII had to get his marriage annulled. All this began to unravel during the Puritan rebellion led by Oliver Cromwell. I have a think book or two on him but I’ve never dug into them for the decades they’ve gathered dust on my shelves.

The thing I love about periods in my life where I get into reading are the felicitious moments where the contents of one book bump into those of another or something I learned in a documentary. As I washed dishes a lot of these thoughts and others related to books and writing swirled in my head just like the soapy water I swirled in last night’s dirty wine glasses. I feel impelled to connect some of the dots here.

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