Clarification

Actually, it was my car insurance, and that seems to be because of a mutual misunderstanding. I didn't know they wanted me to fill out everything again. This doesn't really make me feel more comptetent, as I think I am actually more likely to need the car insurance than the house insurance, please God, well neither if You don't mind, and I gather I must feel quite guilty about the railings, and I hate self-panickers and now look at me. On the plus side, it's much easier to fix. So a little trip to the insurance company is in line with the trip to Concord today to make appointments at H&R Block and for the car's oil change and checkup. (And buy supplies for the snowstorm. Kitty litter, mostly.)

There are a lot of reasons living in the centuries before the industrial revolution look good, despite the risks of dying practically weekly of plague, famine, and war. And the lack of chemical dyes,the Internet, and digital cameras.

On a happier note, I got the book on the Norse Greenlanders and it is superb. The binding is good, the paper is good, the editing appears to be good, the content is way coool. The pictures (printed on a very fine semi-matte paper) are very clear; there are diagrams of almost every weave discussed, and clear discussions of all the weaving tools found in Greenland and some other Norse sites. Two garments are diagrammed on graph paper (a hood and a dress). The writing is clear and interesting and accessible, and the writers clearly care about the people who were behind the artifacts they are examining. If you are a costumer or a scholar or a fan of weaving in different circumstances from the ones we enjoy now, this is a delicious book. Now I need to figure out why I should make a ten-gore dress.