The gap this time ...

... is purely from frustration and my reluctance to swear on line.

The problem with Henry is that I never know how far he's bending reality to his own whim (I can't say purpose since it seems unlikely that some of these lies serve no purpose at all) or if it is faulty memory or general cussedness.

Now I have another factor to deal with. It seems that his original ghost writer may have been an active participant (collaborator, victim, or dupe) in some of these events. I was curious the first time his unusual surname cropped up in the book, but it now appears that he must have been well acquainted with Henry and his friends over a long period. This makes me wonder if there is an additional agenda. Is Tash lying about Henry's lies? Is he providing further complexity to obscure other events?

Perhaps that will become more clear as I plow ahead through Tash's turgid text.

In the meantime, the problem I face is trying to find out when or if Henry married Sally Judd. All the records that I've seen suggest that Henry has her father's name wrong, her brother-in-law's name wrong, and the date wrong (child brides were not uncommon and Henry is a reprehensible person, but I still have a hard time believing that he would have married a 12-year-old or that her father would have offered her younger sister in marriage).

Another explanation for my tardy posting is that I have been getting ready for winter. I've stacked a half cord of wood, harvested from the garden ... all those little chores that come with the season.

I've also done quite a bit of reading and have a couple of recommendations for anyone interested in colonial and revolutionary history. Both of these books are surprising since they provide a significantly different view of the period. I spent much of my time going "WHAT!!", "WAITAMINNIT!", and "NO ... Really?".

The first is Eric Burns' "Infamous Scribblers". Burns explains how the lies and misrepresentations of the highly partisan colonial newspapers were just as excessive as the British government's errors in judgment and mistreatment of the colonies. It is a thick read but fascinating, witty, and delightful.

The other book is Sarah Vowell's "The Wordy Shipmates", a cheerful and nicely irreverent view of the puritan settlers. The material is based on their own writings, but Sarah does a bit of interpretation and extrapolation.

As usual there are whiny reviewers on Amazon  kvetching about both of the above books, but there complaints can be summed up as "this book isn't boring enough to be history".

I recommend both of them.

OH! A word to the wise. Amazon sells a number of books that look like paperback reprints of old books but aren't. They are distinguished by their plain black and white covers and low price. In many cases there is no publisher listed.

What you get if you buy these books , at least in my experience, is a book that has been scanned in using OCR but without any quality checking or editing. This results in such horrors as

"COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE CUSTOMS"

being rendered as

"COUKTSHIP AND MAEEIAGE CUSTOMS".

Other travesties include: "An Extraordinary Cold Storm of TVind and Snow", "alchymyloralcamyne, oca- my", "New England Earities" ... but then there's my favorite:

"Dr.  Uriah Rogers, Jr., of Norwalk County of Fair- field takes this method to acquaint the Publick & particularly such as are desirous of taking the Small Pox by way of Innoculation, that having had Considerable Experience in that Branch of Practice and carried on the same bet season with great Success : has lately a cited a er.$TT::eTit Hospital for thai r:tos just wtxin the Jurisdiction Ioe of the Protinee of Xew York about sine mOes distant from X. T. Harbour where he intends to ... "

Obviously the problem is enhanced by the fact that the books I use often quote heavily from colonial sources with the usual pre-Websterian ingenuity in spelling. Frustrating and irritating as these badly published books are, it is good that most of them are already properly digitized and on line.

So don't waste your money.