Winter hasn’t loosed its hold on us yet. It was down to 38° last night, though it’s a pleasant 65° today. Down into the forties tonight, with highs in the sixties and seventies for the next several days. I can live with that.
I got almost everything done that I wanted to do this weekend. I got three short stories back into submission and also sent off my essay for the 2012 SK Library calendar. Updated my Public Lending Right Commission documentation, too. Now if only I could get inspired to tackle a new short story, my checklist would be complete. Not sure that’s going to happen, though. I don’t feel ready.
I’m not a great cook by any stretch of the imagination, but I don’t shy away from the kitchen, either. Anticipating last night’s cool weather, I decided to smell up the house with cooking. I had a turkey carcass in the freezer that was turned into a yummy turkey soup. I also made bread, but with the machine that’s pretty much a no-brainer. I love homemade bread, though. Especially with molasses. The thought of molasses also got me thinking about molasses cookies, which I haven’t had in forever, so I made a batch of them, too. I wouldn’t call them a complete success. They’re a little uneven in thickness and consistency. Cookies definitely aren’t my forte. They’ll do in a pinch, though. Did you know about the great molasses flood of 1919 in Boston? Click on the image for more. I first heard about it in Dennis Lehane’s excellent historical novel The Given Day.
We watched several more episodes of Deadwood on Friday and Saturday night. Only two more to go in the first season. We agree that the most intriguing character is Doc Cochrane, who we now know has been charged with grave robbing not once or twice but seven times. He seems above the fray. He lives at the edge of town and his position allows him to speak his mind when he thinks it’s called for. He is smart and insightful, and just a little bit creepy, with his hunched stance and beady eyes (reminding us that he was, after all Grima Wormtongue). Good to see Titus Welliver strolling into the series, and the episode with Mister Wu had the funniest bits yet. Calamity Jane strolls off into the sunset. I hope we haven’t seen the last of her.
Did some reading up on Wild Bill and Calamity Jane to see what the real story was. Apparently it’s not altogether clear. In her diary, Calamity Jane claimed that she and Bill were married before they came to Deadwood and that she agreed to divorce him so he could marry another woman. There is little documentary evidence to back up her claim, but a woman named Jean McCormick claimed to be their daughter and produced a diary as proof. There are contradictions in all the stories, so who knows what the truth is? This brief account of Jean McCormick’s story makes interesting reading, though.
