This is a highly readable book. Although it is pure history, it’s so beautifully written, so lyrical it feels like a novel. Rarely has any book about this remarkable family given me the sense of destiny and the full impact of their influence and the romance of England’s premier ruling family. To a large extent, the Plantagenets defined England — perhaps even created it. This view of the Plantagenets was unique concept for me. As soon as I read it, it made complete sense. That the more than 200 year reign of this remarkable family, with its peaks and its depths continues to define British identity was something I’d never considered. Now it seems obvious, but like so many obvious things, I never noticed it until the author pointed it out.
It was wonderful to read history where the author appreciates not just the facts, but the drama, romance, story and myth. The imprint left by this ruling family on Great Britain is deep, pervasive and affects every aspect of England’s identity, even in the 21st century long after the family has — technically — disappeared. On many levels, this family can never disappear. They are part of the soil, the air, the heart of the island kingdom they ruled.
From its opening words, the book grabbed me and pulled me in. It “had” me before I had finished the preface, much less the first chapter.
Although I was predisposed to enjoy it, I had no idea how much I would enjoy it. This is a book that greatly and delightfully exceeded my expectations. I have read many books about the Plantagenets, both straight history and as literary “docudrama.” I am very familiar with the stories of each of the monarchs, the wars, the scandals, the affairs, the treachery. It could have been old news for me, but instead, it was like reading it for the first time. What a wonderful fresh voice the author brings to material that has been written about — one might think — to the point where you could reasonably question whether or not yet another tome on the subject serves any purpose.
Was anything new uncovered? Not really new information, but in many cases, a new way of looking at stuff I had read in many other forms, other books. Whether or not the information is new to you will depend on how much else you’ve read. There was no news in it for me, but I’ve been fascinated by the Plantagenets and the British Crown since I was a kid.
The debunking of characters like Simon de Montfort that seem to have surprised some readers wasn’t news to me. I have read sufficient French history of the period to thoroughly detest the man and didn’t need any more help. The same goes for most of these characters. It wasn’t new information that made the book so much fun for me, but the presentation and the obvious relish the author took in the stories and characters. His enthusiasm is infectious.
As you might expect, the book includes maps, lineage charts, all the family connections of the Plantagenets. The story covers that period from Empress Mathilda through Richard II’s loss to Bolingbroke. It stops in 1399, rather before the ascent of the Tudors. The author chose to end his narrative before the War of the Roses, leaving that long and ugly battle for England’s throne for the next volume. I look forward to reading that too.
At 560 pages, it is a long book. I had no trouble with its length other than finding enough time to read the entire thing. It wasn’t hard to become engrossed in each of its sections. Nor does it require any prior knowledge of the period, although prior knowledge certainly doesn’t hurt. You could hardly grow up an English-speaker and not have heard of most of the prominent people that strut, gallop or crawl across the pages. If you’ve read any English history at all, you have surely encountered these Kings, Queens, counselors, courtiers, ministers and more.
If you’ve read Shakespeare, you may feel you know this material well, but anything written by Shakespeare is strongly prejudiced in favor the usurping Tudors. It is untrustworthy as fact. Shakespeare is literature, not history and should be enjoyed as such.
I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It is a pleasure to read, whether you are a scholar, history buff, Anglophone or Anglophile, lover of historical novels … or innocently searching for a great read.
It’s available in hard cover, paperback, Kindle and audio. I don’t believe you could go wrong no matter what version you choose.
King Arthur is by far the most popular and most written-about king of England. Legends of Arthur have multiplied not only in the British Isles, but in France, in other European countries and more recently, in North America. Tales of Arthur began appearing in the early ninth century and continued to appear through Victorian times to the present day. In fable and books, around medieval campfires and flickering on the silver screen and TV sets of the 21st century, King Arthur and his Knights of the Round table are ever with us. On the literary scene, recent years have produced a virtually continuous flow of books about Arthur, each “scholarly tome” claiming to have unlocked the truth about the “once and future king.” We apparently have an insatiable appetite for these stories.
The author of Worlds of Arthur is Professor Guy Halsall. Halsall joined the History Department at the University of York (UK) in January 2003. His doctoral research — carried out at York — was on the archaeology and history of the Merovingian region of Metz (north-eastern France and southern Germany), c.350-c.750. It was perhaps inevitable that his researches and the putative world of King Arthur would collide. And so they have, and Worlds of Arthur is the result.
Guy Halsall makes a valiant and largely successful attempt to sort through the evidence — reality and myth — as it pertains to the Arthurian legends. Halsall bravely takes on both the “historical” Arthur — the man waging a glorious but doomed struggle to save civilization from the incoming Anglo-Saxon tide — and the mythical King accompanied by his legendary retinue: Lancelot, Guinevere, Galahad and Gawain, Merlin, Excalibur, the Lady in the Lake, the Sword in the Stone, Camelot, and the Round Table.
Knowing in advance that no one wants their favorite stories debunked, he starts with a cold splash of reality. In all likelihood, ”King Arthur” never existed. In the unlikely event he did exist on some level somewhere, we know zilch about him and thus no one, including the author, is going to reveal any exciting new evidence of Arthur’s existence because there is no evidence to reveal. This position is driven home repeatedly, so if you are waiting for an Arthurian revelation, you are bound for disappointment.
Arthur is a literary and mythological figure, not a real one nor even loosely based on any historical person(s). Halsall states up front that any book claiming to know the real Arthur is bunk. Merlin, Lancelot, Guinevere, Arthur and all his knights did not exist. Guy Halsall makes it absolutely clear and repeats his position over and over: There is no evidence supporting an historical Arthur.
Having put up front, Dr. Halsall sets himself a rather difficult literary task. How can you keep a reader’s interest for the remainder of the book? Before you have gotten a quarter of the way through, he has declared his position, debunked what is currently the only “evidence” on the “proof” side of the Arthurian equation. What is left?
Halsall writes with humor and wit. Academic though this book is, he tries hard to be understandable by those who are not Ph.D. levels in archeology. In this, he is modestly successful. I’m fascinated by archeology and have read a great deal of archeological stuff over the years. I understood most (not all) of the technical terminology. I’ve explored ruins and attended lectures, but this is dense material. No matter how light-hearted and humorously approached, there is no avoiding the essentially academic nature of the book. It’s not for everyone. You need a background in archeology to understand the author and a significant personal interest in the subject to stay with the book to the end.
If you have the interest, then there is much to learn. Worlds of Arthur is a thorough examination of the evidence and more to the point, a thorough dismemberment of what has been called evidence by other authors. Ironically, one of the unintended results of reading this book was that it piqued my interest in reading the material the author is disproving, not because I think it contains “real evidence” but because it sounds intriguing as fiction.
If you are passionate about Camelot, Arthur and the gang, this is a thoroughly researched, well-written book that picks apart all previous writings on the subject with minute care. It belongs on the bookshelf of anyone who claims to be a fancier of medieval British archeology. It’s not a riveting tale with lot of surprises. There is no question about where the author is heading since he lays out what he is going to do in the introduction. The author is a better writer than the majority of academics and makes the going easier with a light touch and a sense of humor. But in the end, this is an academic treatise.
I enjoyed it. Having read many books of this type over the years, I knew what to expect and was prepared to do some mental calisthenics and give my brain a bit of exercise. There are no revelations in the book. From a broad perspective, I knew at the end of the book what I knew at the start — that there never was a real King Arthur or Round Table or any other of the well-loved mythical characters. Since I never believed the characters were real in the first place, it was no shock. There is nothing shocking in Worlds of Arthur.
It allows no wiggle room to find a real Arthur somewhere in archeological or historical data. But if you are genuinely interested in the early medieval period in England, there’s a lot of well-presented information to digest about a time about which little is known and less has been written. The Dark Ages are dark. Worlds of Arthur: Facts & Fictions of the Dark Ages lights a candle in that darkness.
The book is available on Kindle and hardcover. There are illustrations that might benefit from viewing on paper rather than the smaller format of a Kindle, but the Kindle version does include them so the choice is yours. If you’re an armchair archeologist or medievalist … or just fascinated with the world of Arthur, give this a read. It’s worth your effort.
If you are somewhere around my age, you remember the Jonestown Massacre. Even if you were a lot younger, if you were old enough to read a newspaper or watch TV, you could hardly forget it. With fundamentalism enjoying a rebirth, with well-known people urging others to murder or mayhem, it is a good time to remember where this kind of thing leads. These days, disagreements that ought to result in nothing more serious than an argument result in the ugliest kind of hate-spewing rhetoric.
Lest we forget, there was nothing even remotely amusing about this story. There isn’t a word that begins to sum up the sickening reality.
It isn’t rare for fanaticism and hatred to end in death. It frequently leads to a lot of death and almost always, it is the most innocent who pay the butcher’s bill.
The Road to Jonestown
The phrase “drink the Kool-Aid” has become common parlance in American business and politics. Roughly translated, it means “to blindly follow.” It usually carries a negative connotation. The “Kool Aid” references go all the back to the 1950s when it was the typical drink for children on suburban summer afternoons. But the origin of the saying is something else, darker, and different. It has become the kind of bland rhetoric about which we don’t give a thought, but its roots lie in horror.
Before we talk about Kool-Aid, let’s take a brief trip down memory lane to a particularly horrible episode of American history.
Jim Jones, cult leader and mass murderer, was a complex madman. A communist, occasional Methodist minister, he founded his own pseudo-church in the late 1950s. He called it the “Peoples Temple Full Gospel Church,” known in short as the “Peoples Temple.”
The lack of a possessive apostrophe was intentional. The name was supposed to be a reference to “the people of the world.” While Jones called it a church, it was closer to a warped version of a Marxist commune. Initially, it was combined with a hodgepodge of Christian references that he used in his diatribes … supposedly sermons.
Regardless, it was never any kind of church. The Peoples Temple was a straight-up cult. It made serious demands in the way of personal committment and financial support from its members and a level of obedience that is the defining quality of a cult.
Jones was the cult’s leader — and a homicidal maniac — but he had positive attributes. Jones and his wife Marceline were strongly in favor of racial integration. They adopted a bunch of kids from varying racial backgrounds. They were the first white family in Indiana to adopt an African-American boy. Other adopted children included 3 Korean Americans, a Native American, and a handful of white kids. They also had one child of their own.
Jones called his adopted kids the “Rainbow Family,” and he made a name for himself desegregating various institutions in Indiana. Before you get all dewy-eyed about this, note this ultimately climaxed in the murder of these children by their adoptive parents.
The Peoples Temple continued to expand through the 1960s. Jones gradually abandoned his Marxism. His preaching began to increasingly focus on impending nuclear apocalypse. He even specified a date — July 15, 1967 — and suggested after the apocalypse, a socialist paradise would exist on Earth. Where would the new Eden be?
Jones decided on the town of Redwood Valley, California and before the expected Big Bang, he moved the Temple and its peoples there.
When the end-of-the-world deadline came and went without nuclear holocaust, Jones abandoned even the pretenses of Christianity. The cloak came off and he revealed himself as an atheist using religion to give legitimacy to his views. Jones announced that “Those who remained drugged with the opiate of religion must be brought to enlightenment — socialism.” Prophetic words in view of the fact that Jones himself was a drug addict who preferred literal to metaphorical opiates.
As media attention increased, Jones started to worry the Peoples Temple’s tax-exempt religious status was in danger of revocation. He was paranoid about the U.S. intelligence community — probably with justification.
Jim Jones, cult leader
In 1977, Jones moved the Temple and its people again. This was a major relocation, leaving the United States completely and settling on a site that Jones had been working on since 1974. Located in Guyana, a poor South American nation, he modestly named it “Jonestown.”
It was a bleak, inhospitable place on 4000 acres of poor soil with limited access to fresh water. It was much to small encampment, dramatically overcrowded Temple members were forced to work long hours merely to survive.
Jones figured his people could farm the land in this new utopia. He had put together several million dollars before getting to Jonestown, but his wealth was not shared amongst his followers. He barely used any of the money for himself and lived in a small, bare-bones shared house.
All Hell Breaks Loose
U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan visited Jonestown in November of 1978. Rumors of peculiar goings-on were leaking out of Jonestown. Ryan decided to investigate the allegations of human rights abuses in Jonestown.
Ryan didn’t go alone. He took a contingent of media representatives including NBC News correspondent Don Harris and other reporters, plus relatives of Jonestown resident. During his visit to Jonestown, Congressman Ryan talked to more than a dozen Temple members, all of whom said they wanted to leave. Several of them passed a note saying: “Please help us get out of Jonestown” to news anchor Harris.
If the number of defectors seems low proportionate to the more than 900 residents of Jonestown, keep in mind the congressional party had not been able to talk to most of the “fellowship.” The number of those who might have wanted to leave could conceivably been much more but we will never know.
Ryan began processing the paperwork to repatriate Temple members who wanted to go back to the States. In the middle of this, Ryan was attacked by Don Sly, a knife-wielding Temple member. This would-be assassin was stopped before injuring Ryan.
Eventually the entire Ryan party plus the group of Jonestown defectors drove to a nearby airstrip and boarded planes, intending to leave. Jim Jones had other plans. He sent armed Temple members — his “Red Brigade” after the Congressional party These creepy ‘soldiers of the Temple” opened fire on them, killing Ryan, one Temple defector, three members of the media, and wounding eleven others. The survivors fled into the jungle.
When the murderers returned to Jonestown and reported their actions, Jones promptly started what he called a “White Night” meeting. He invited all Temple members. This wasn’t the first White Night. Jones had hosted previous White Night meetings in which he suggested U.S. intelligence agencies would soon attack Jonestown.
He had even staged fake attacks to add a realism, though it’s hard to believe that anyone was fooled by the play-acting. Faced with this hypothetical invasion scenario, Jones offered Temple members a set of choices. They could stay and fight imaginary invaders. They could take off for the USSR. Another tempting alternative would be to run off into the jungles of Guyana. Or they could commit mass suicide as an act of political protest.
On previous occasions Temple members had opted for suicide. Not satisfied, Jones had tested their committment and gave them cups of liquid that they were told contained poison. They were asked to drink it. Which they did. After a while, Jones told them the liquid wasn’t poisonous — but one day it would be.
Indeed Jim Jones had been stockpiling cyanide and other drugs for years. On this final White Night, Jones was no longer testing his followers. It was time to kill them all.
Don’t Drink the Poisonous Fruit-Flavored Beverage
After the airstrip murders outside Jonestown, Jim Jones ordered Temple members to create a fruity mix containing a cocktail of chemicals that included cyanide, diazepam (Valium), promethazine (Phenergan — a sedative), chloral hydrate (a sedative/hypnotic sometimes called “knockout drops”), and Flavor Aid — a grape-flavored beverage similar to Kool-Aid.
Jones urged his followers to commit suicide to make a political point. What that point was supposed to be is still a matter of considerable conjecture. After some discussion, Temple member Christine Miller suggested flying Temple members to the USSR.
Jones was never interested in escape. There was only one answer that he would accept. Death and lots of it. He repeatedly pointed out to his followers that Congressman Ryan was dead (and whose fault was that?) which would surely bring down the weight of American retribution in short order. An audiotape of this meeting exists. It is just as creepy as you’d expect.
Then it was time for the detailed instructions which — still baffling to me at least — the followers did as they were told. I will never understand why. Probably that’s a positive sign indicating I’m not insane.
Jones insisted mothers must squirt poison into the mouths of their children using syringes. As their children died, the mothers were dosed as well, though they were allowed to drink from cups. Temple members wandered out onto the ground, where eventually just over 900 lay dead, including more than 300 children. Only a handful of survivors escaped Jonestown — primarily residents who happened to be away on errands or playing basketball when the mass suicide/massacre took place.
Jones, his wife, and various other members of the Temple left wills stating that their assets should go to the Communist Party of the USSR.
Jones did not drink poison. He died from a gunshot to the head, though it’s not clear if it was self-inflicted. Jones likely died last or nearly so and may have preferred the gun to cyanide, having just seen the horrendous effects of death by cyanide.
What’s With the Kool-Aid?
In the wake of the tragedy at Jonestown, the phrase “drink the Kool-Aid” became a popular term for blind obedience, as the Temple members had apparently accepted their cups of poison without objection. According to various accounts, the primary beverage used at Jonestown was actually Flavor Aid (sometimes “Flav-R-Aid”) — although there is evidence both Kool-Aid and Flavor Aid were used.
Kool-Aid was better known than Flavor Aid . Kool-Aid was introduced in 1927 in powdered form. When Americans thought about a powdered fruity drink mix (other than “Tang”), “Kool-Aid” came immediately to mind.
So, although Kool-Aid and Flavor Aid were both present at Jonestown, the phrase “(don’t) drink the Kool-Aid” has become entrenched in popular lingo.
In her current incarnation, she is Miss Mendon, having begun as Miss Newport. She has been repainted, re-tiled, given an expanded dining area and a new kitchen. She’s had a long life and seen hard times, but despite everything, she has survived with grace and character.
She was assigned number 823 although she was actually the 623rd dining car built after Worcester Dining Cars began numbering dining cars using 200 as the base number.
She debuted on May 16, 1950. She is very much the same as she has always been. Her layout is unchanged from its original design. Her new owners modernized her a bit and added dining space along the side. She sports a professional kitchen.
The seats have been re-chromed, cleaned and restored. Miss Mendon looks as if she was built just yesterday She’s open for business serving good food to the people of the Valley.
You can visit her at 16 Uxbridge Rd, Mendon, Massachusetts, She is open for your dining pleasure every day from 6 AM to 10 PM.
A classic of classics, like baseball, hotdogs, apple pie and Chevrolet…that’s the all-American diner! Often epitomized with an exterior of stainless steel, the diner is unique in its architecture. Then, of course, there is the interior: a casual atmosphere, a counter, stools and service area along a back wall.
The Bendix Diner in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey, is an example of Art Deco style and neon signage.
But, how did it all get started and by whom?
Walter Scott, a part-time pressman and type compositor in Providence, Rhode Island,founded the first diner. It all started around 1858 with Scott supplementing his income by selling sandwiches and coffee from a basket.
Newspaper night workers welcomed the services and by 1872, he had developed a very lucrative business. So much so, he quit his printing work and sold food at night from a horse-drawn covered express wagon parked outside the Providence Journal newspaper office. Walter Scott unknowingly inspired the birth of what would become one of America’s most recognized icons – the diner.
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Empower the Present. Are diners still around today?
The interest in the American Diner continues today. Just ask Guy Fieri of Drive-ins, Diners and Dives! A significant number of vintage diners have been rescued from demolition and relocated to new sites in the United States and Europe. Manufacturers of diner structures are experiencing new orders or remodeling projects in a retro style.
Photo credit: Marilyn Armstrong, author of The 12-Foot Teepee. You can visit Marilyn at her blog, Serendipity, where you will be enlightened by her writing, nature, photography, history, arts, nostalgia, humor and so much more!
Marilyn Armstrong‘s insight:
Diners are uniquely American, our culture incarnate.
Each year, Earth Day is celebrated on April 22 marking the anniversary of what many consider the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970. This was during a time when protest was of the highest order, especially as war raged in Vietnam. Earth Day, however, did shift conscious awareness away from the war opposition and more toward environmental concerns.
The photos of the first Earth Day are courtesy of National Geographic Daily News.
Sharla Shults‘s insight:
The immediate aftermath of the first Earth Day celebration resulted in people looking hung over and litter-filled parks which partly negated the previous day’s environmental message.
"The crowds again are often people looking for something to do or an axe to grind on some other issue. People should practice what they preach."
Half a dozen times during every month of the year, I see the sun rise and hear the birds sing the morning in. It’s not insomnia. I am in the thrall of a good book and I just can’t stop reading. I’ve been a book junkie since I was a very young child and its an addiction I have no interest in breaking. It has been my inspiration and my refuge, my world away from reality, my alternate universe of choice.
It’s my all time favorite drug. It’s not illegal, although it has cost me a lot of sleep and a fair bit of money.
I read. Constantly. I read on my Kindle, I listen to audiobooks. I read regular books. I often read several books at the same time: an audiobook by day, a print or Kindle edition at night in the delicious comfort of my bed.
I’m addicted to books and not just a single genre. I read straight history, with a particular passion for the 14th century, perhaps because it seems to have been the turning point of western civilization, the rise of central government, the creation of free peasantry and what we now call the middle class.
There was the Black Death, the schism the created two popes … one in Avignon and the other in Rome … which for the Christian world was calamitous. There was endless war, brigands who roamed the countryside, burning, raping, despoiling and destroying what pitiful remnants of communities that survived other simultaneous catastrophes. Inflation rendered money worthless. Many regions were effectively depopulated leaving no one to tend fields and grow crops … and famine followed. The 20th century, with all its horrors, could never top the 14th. I find that strangely comforting.
I read thrillers and mysteries and police procedurals. I read courtroom dramas … lawyers, district attorneys, victims, criminals and trials. Then, when the world is more real than I am willing to bear, I read science fiction and fantasy, immersing myself in places that could never be, in futures that might be, and vicariously pursue magic and sorcery. Books are my escape. Take away everything else, but leave the books so if I cannot physically fly away, I can escape in spirit.
Ever since I got my first Kindle, I feel like I’ve been given ultimate freedom. I’ve spent my live traveling with trunks full of books. Now, I can bring a whole library with me to the dentist’s waiting room. And since I got my amazing Bamboosa Lap Log, I have achieved electronic reading Heaven.
I am, for the moment, discovering new favorite authors. All of my previous favorite writers seem to be in that never-never land between the last book and th next in the series. Since they are still creating and waiting has never been something at which I excel, I put these months to good use and seek out more authors to feed my hunger for books, to try to discover a new world, a new voice, a new piece of time to explore. In case you are looking for something to read, here’s an updated bunch of my favorite authors and books. Please feel free to tell me about your favorites because they may very well become mine, too! It’s through readers’ suggestions that I’ve discovered most of the authors I love best. I count on you!
Bamboosa Lap Log with closed Kindle HD in a hard case.
Barbara Tuchman is my favorite writer of history, though by no means the only history author I love. Most of her books are wonderful, but my two favorites are A Distant Mirror and The Guns of August. David McCullough and Doris Kearns Goodwin are rapidly overtaking her, however … especially Ms. Goodwin who writes very serious history, but also some wonderful memories of growing up in Boston with the Red Sox. I always have a special place in my heart for local kids who made good!
Don’t miss the Hollows Rachel Morgan books by Kim Harrison. I think it’s the finest of the all urban fantasy series. If you haven’t discovered Jim Butcher‘s Harry Dresden series – a gumshoe who can throw a mean spell, but takes a loaded gun, just in case — dive in. Check our The Iron Druid series from Kevin Hearne.
And, speaking of time travel, Stephen King‘s 11-22-63 is exceptional. It is not a horror story, but true science fiction. The prose is sometimes so beautiful that it brings tears to your eyes.
In the sometimes grim and gory world of fantasy, take a look at Ben Aaronovitch‘s Peter Grant series, Richard Kadrey whose Sandman Slim keeps me fascinated and also awake at night. Mike Carey’s Felix Castor in a world filled with the dead and demons.
Recently, I discovered Carol Berg. I completed the final of her various series last night … and am now holding my breath in anticipation of her next book.
I love just about everything written by James Lee Burke. If Faulkner had written detective stories, he’d be James Lee Burke. His Dave Robicheaux series is a long running favorite, but his other books are great too.
The writing ofAnne Golon wrote (and is still writing) an amazing series of historical novels about a fictional woman named Angelique. They take place during the time of Louis XIV. This series was one of the significant influences on my life,. Angelique lived a life she chose and never accepted defeat. Her story piques my interest in history and she also inspired me to a personal courage I might not have found without her. The English language versions of the books are long out of print (though you can occasionally find them on Ebay and book search sites) but recent ones — Anne Golon is well into her 80s — are available in French and maybe some other languages too, but sadly, not English.
I cannot close this without referencing two authors that have given me great joy, the incomparable Douglas Adams, and Jasper Fforde whose world I long to enter. I still mourn Douglas Adams. He should have had many more years. Douglas, you died way too soon. Jasper Fforde writes with a similar wonderful lunacy in a fantasy world where fiction is real and reality isn’t.
This doesn’t even begin to cover everything. It would take me days to begin to remember everything … and way more pages than anyone would have patience to read … but this is a tickle for you. Maybe you too are searching for something to fresh to read, a new world to discover. These are some of my favorite places … I’d love to hear about yours!
There are so many way to keep yourself up at night … and I recommend them all. Books are still, page for page, the best entertainment of all because no one can do special effects like you can with your own brain.
Not surprisingly, the Blackstone Valley is full of old mills. Some are very old, some relatively recent. Some of the oldest are the best preserved and a few have been fully renovated and put back to use as housing or shopping areas.
The Crown and Eagle mills pre-renovated.
Renovated into elderly and affordable housing, the old Crown and Eagle mill in Uxbridge is beautiful today.
Thousands of water lilies bloom on the small canal that runs to the renovated Crown and Eagle mill.
Mill on the Mumford. Converted to a liquor store.
Huge brick mill-factory on a large pond. Northbridge. Rain is falling.
Canal between the falls and the small mill, and the former Bernat Mills that burned down five years ago. Uxbridge.
Many mills have been converted to condominiums or mini malls. Some have become office space.
The Brick Mill, built 1826, Whitinsville, Massachusetts (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Many have burned down or been torn down because they presented a fire hazard. Fortunately, many others have been renovated, turned into malls, senior housing, mini-malls and other kinds of commercial real estate.
With camera in hand, exploring European lands, cultures, food, and drink...mostly with a plan, but sometimes enjoying the adventure of just getting lost.
Newspaper night workers welcomed the services and by 1872, he had developed a very lucrative business. So much so, he quit his printing work and sold food at night from a horse-drawn covered express wagon parked outside the 
