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Bookman and I were planning to go to another community sing last night but we were under a heat advisory because it is so darn hot and humid and we decided not to go. The air is so thick with humidity I wish I had gills. We stayed home in the air conditioning instead, put on some music, ate homemade vegan ice cream and played cribbage. I won both games. *gloat* There is another sing at the end of August and it has a theme! Songs written by women. It had better be cool enough to go to that one or I will be very sad.
In one of those delightful moments of reading synchronicity, I was reading Crisis of the European Mind by Paul Hazard and he mentioned William Temple, husband of Dorothy Osborne whose love letters to Temple I recently read. I do believe I figured out why Dorothy’s family wasn’t very keen on Temple. He was a Freethinker.
There were different sorts of Freethinkers and Temple was among the English sort rather than the French sort who were much more, um, free. Temple was more for the quiet, Epicurean life. The basis for Freethinkers however, was the belief that logic, reason and empiricism should rule rather than authority, tradition and religious dogma. In Temple’s time (17th century), the Freethinkers stood in opposition to the Church and a literal interpretation of the Bible.
Now something Dorothy said in one of her letters makes total sense. Dorothy’s brother, who didn’t like Temple and tried to keep her from marrying him, had been insulting Temple in company for being an atheist who wanted to destroy the Church. Not true of course, but Europe was not long past the Reformation and Counter-Reformation and religious matters were in a precarious balance.
So there we have it. An indirect and serendipitous discovery of why Dorothy’s family was not pleased with her selection of husband.
I so love when stuff like this happens! And it seems I have read a number of blog posts around the book blog world of late in which others are having similar occasions of bookish alignment. The book gods must be in a good mood and feeling playful or something.
We went from cool and rainy to hot and humid recently, but I like hot and humid when I can dress for it (the costumes for The Music Man made us appreciate modern summer fashions).
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Jeanne, ugh, I hate hot and humid. I much prefer cold and snowy! Oh I bet the costumes combined with stage lighting had you all close to boiling!
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The weird thing was that we were dressed for a 1912 Iowa fourth of July…how people wore all those layers in the summer I’ll never know!
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Maybe summers were cooler back then 😉
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Love your “gills” comment, Stefanie! Also love that you play cribbage. Not that I do, bit it’s a game my parents love and that my children have often played with them over the years. It’s been their thing. Once upon a time Mr Gums and I would play Backgammon. I’ve been thinking lately that we should do it again. The main “game” we do together is (are?) Cryptic Crosswords. I have a book in my bag and we always do them when we are out having coffee.
Love this post too for the Reading Synchronicity. I love it when that happens. One wonders how many connections we miss just because of the order we read things and/or the gaps between them in our reading.
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whisperinggums, thanks. Know where I might be able to pick up some gillyweed ala Harry Potter? 🙂 I love cribbage, have been playing it since I was a kid. My dad taught me and my sister and Bookman’s dad taught him. We like backgammon too. Bookman is better at it than I am, he had hours of playing with a relative when he was a kid whereas I learned from a friend and only played once in awhile. But I can still win at it enough to make it fun.
I too have wondered how many connections I’ve missed because of order and gaps. It can get a depressing though so I try not to think about it very often!
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No, best not to think about it … just enjoy, and wonder over, the ones we catch I reckon.
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I do love it when reading synchronicity happens. (and I love the word “synchronicity” and intend to make it my word of the week; will attempt to work it into a sentence. Silly little game I play all by myself.) Speaking of games, my daughter taught me how to play Mancala and I just love it! Only she always wins when we play. I never learned cribbage, although it can be traced way back in time – didn’t Ramses’ queen play it with her Pharaoh father-in-law? I think according to Hollywood they did, but I’ll have to watch The Ten Commandments again to find out for sure.
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Grad, have you succeeded in using synchronicity yet? I don’t think it is a silly game at all! I’ve never played Mancala before. It seems like fun though. I looked up a history of cribbage and it isn’t quite as old as Ramses. It dates from the early 1600s and is derived from a game called “Noddy” which dates back to the late 1500s. So I think Hollywood took some historical liberties 🙂
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I do love synchronicity. Last week I was looking at a wonderful drawing by Whistler from the set he did about the Thames, a set I didn’t even know existed, only then to find a reference to them in the new S J Bolton novel the following day. Now I have to see if there is a publication about them where I can see all twelve.
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Alex, what a wonderful Whistler alignment! Even better that it has sent you off on a detective mission to find the whole set of twelve drawings.
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I, too, love it when books you are reading (that seem so unlike) cross paths like that–one throwing light on something you read about somewhere else! One of the many things I love about reading! I am in need of a little nonfiction–I am reading about Elizabethan England–all good stuff, but it is a hardcover and so I can’t really carry it around with me much and most of my reading is not done at home, so I don’t seem to be making good progress. I am so tempted to find some short book of nonfiction to dip into….I know I shouldn’t but….the Hazard is paper, but chunky and it looks a little formidable–not something that does well reading a few pages at a time (or am I wrong there?). It’s hot and humid here, too–hate that sticky feeling–having to peel off my clothes when I get home from work. Just your usual July/Aug Midwestern summer, right? I know it really could be worse, but I still need to complain a little anyway.
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Danielle, there is something so permanent about a hardcover book but I don’t like actually reading them. Much prefer paperback so I don’t blame you for not wanting to drag your Elizabethan England book around. Hazard has lots of text breaks that encourage short reading spans but unless you come back to him frequently enough to remember where you left off, I would recommend longer reading stretches. I am glad I didn’t know about the humidity when I moved here. I might have changed my mind. But then maybe not. Earthquakes of humidity? I’ll take humidity please 🙂
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I love book synchronicity! Somehow it always helps to make the reading that much more interesting. Too bad you guys couldn’t go to the singalong but hopefully next month!
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Iliana, it does make reading more interesting, I agree. Yes, I think next month the weather will be better and more hospitable to our attending the sing.
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I love reading synchronicity also — it’s always so great when you discover that unexpected link.
As to the heat, it’s been pretty stifling here as well. Perfect for staying inside in the a/c and playing crib (one of our favourites too, along with Scrabble). The game that the Pharaohs played was probably Senet… http://www.discoveringegypt.com/senet.html
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Melwyk, sorry to hear you’ve been hot there too. But hot spells are good since they start making me think winter isn’t so very bad 🙂 Bookman and I used to play Scrabble a lot but he always beat me because I go for words and he goes for points and points wins. So I refuse to play Scrabble with him anymore. Yup, I’m a sore loser 🙂 Thanks for the link to the Senet game. It looks really interesting.
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