Where does the phrase ‘cold turkey’ come from? | Merriam-Webster
It may be that the original cold turkey was a combination of cold (“straightforward, matter-of-fact”) and the earlier talk turkey, which dates back to the early 1800s and refers to speaking plainly. Regardless of its ultimate origins, the phrase manages to vividly capture the initial dread and discomfort that comes from immediately quitting something that’s addictive, from drugs to dating apps.
Signed up with a dietician to try to lose that last stubborn 20-30lbs. Spent a week keeping a food log and sleep log and now food is all I think about and my sleep has been terrible. What the …???
3 Places to Discover North Carolina’s Moonshining Past | Our State - As housing estates and communities were being built along Route 42 in Wake and Johnston counties over the last 30 years, they found hidden and abandoned stills all in the woods.
📚 Purchased from a gift/souvenir shop in Chester, N.S. Sadly, I cannot recall the name and cannot find it in Apple Maps.
Of all the books I got in Nova Scotia, this was the most powerful. The Expulsion of the Acadians – also called the Great Deportation – which occurred from 1755-64, is one of the great scars of history on this beautiful place, perpetrated by the brutal British colonial government on a peaceful agrarian population whose crime was that they spoke French. The Expulsion echoes still in this region and its local culture.
There are a great number and variety of books on the topic of the Great Deportation; the Grand Pré Visitors Center had books covering all aspects of the event, ranging from academic histories to fictional retellings. Longfellow’s poem “Evangeline” exists in many different formats.
But this book felt different. Acadian Driftwood, despite its slim profile, is packed with thorough research and scholarship, imaginative storytelling using the known facts, and a deeply personal exploration by its author, Tyler Leblanc.
Leblanc did not even know his ancestors were Acadian until he traced his genealogy back to Joseph LeBlanc (his great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather). The book tells the separate histories of Joseph and his 10 siblings who were expelled from their homes and lands and quite literally scattered to the four winds. Each chapter follows the trail of an individual sibling, where they ended up, and how they possibly fared. Some of them died at sea, others who made their way to France, England, Philadelphia, and yes, Louisiana, and even some who hid out and escaped the clutches of the British soldiers. The book describes the type of life and living conditions Leblanc’s ancestors would have found in these unsafe and openly hostile environments, so different from the green and peaceful Acadia they had known.
A short, powerful book that tells you what you need to know factually about the Great Deportation and what you should know emotionally, personally, about how that event played out in these individual lives. And then ponder how the world treats refugees today and ask yourself: is it any better? Is it any different?
Acadian Driftwood - The Band - YouTube
Acadian Driftwood - Wikipedia (background on The Band’s song)
📚 Purchased from the Grand-Pré National Historic Site Visitors Center. The Center has lots of CDs of Acadian and traditional music, and many books on Acadian history and culture, with a focus on the British government’s deportation from 1755-62 of the Acadians from Grand-Pré. The Center also has lots and lots of versions and retellings of Longfellow’s “Evangeline,” which I really must get to one day.
These Good Hands by Carol Bruneau
From the bookflap: “Set in the early autumn of 1943, These Good Hands interweaves the biography of French sculptor Camille Claudel and the story of the nurse who cares for her during the final days of her thirty-year incarceration in France’s Montdevergues Asylum.”
Still on my to-read shelf. I bought this early in our trip thinking I’d get back into reading a real book (by which I mean, a good novel). Even though the novel does not have anything to do with Nova Scotian or Acadian culture, I loved the description of the book from its flap and that’s why I bought it.
Minnie of the Maritimes by Judith Tait
Also not a book with Acadian themes, but it sweeps from one end of Nova Scotia to another, and is a fine first novel. The author’s bio on the last page says this:
Investigating her ancestors led to the fictional life of a real person, Minnie Healy, born in 1864 outside the village of Port Williams in Kings Co., Nova Scotia. No other details of her life were recorded.
Set in the late 19th and early 20th century, the book follows young Minnie as she is cast out from her family’s home. Her pregnancy has cast shame on her family in the community and so she is sent to Montreal, where she delivers the child in a Catholic-run facility for unwed mothers – who are not allowed to keep their children. From there, she lives on Prince Edward Island with her aunt’s family, marries and moves to Halifax, and then ends her days in Wolfville.
It packs a lot of incident for a short book, and there are tinges of melodrama here and there. But the descriptions of those times – along with vintage photographs of the era that help inform the book’s atmosphere – are bracingly physical with great details. Minnie’s train ride to Montreal, the cold stoniness of the Catholic facility, the summers and winters of PEI as she grows to young womanhood – there are so many lovely episodes that the book is a joy to read.
But it’s not just nostalgia for a lost time. I’d heard about the Halifax Explosion but Tait’s description of its aftermath, as Minnie wanders through a neighborhood scorched and scraped bare, was unsettling. The book may appear to be a cozy, but its report has claws.
A small book, maybe a minor book, but a perfect little gift of a book for anyone who loves Nova Scotia and wants to know what life 100+ years ago felt like.
Finished reading: Growing Pains by Emily Carr 📚
The bedtime book I read to Liz before lights out. We knew nothing of Emily Carr; this was a used book I picked up in Annapolis Royal and it proved to be wonderful. Carr’s descriptions of her early life and her times in San Francisco and London as an art student are brisk and readable. She exhibited such strong character, and withstood such vicious and determined opposition from her family and neighbors, that her occasional lapses of collapsing self-doubt are really heart-breaking. That she powered through so much opposition to make her work and suffered several bouts of what she calls nervous exhaustion (but were likely heart attacks) make it easy to understand why she stopped believing in herself. Until the pictures she’d made brought the world to her door. A remarkable life and this – her last memoir, finished just before her death – covers the sweep of it with unsparing anecdotes.
Magic Eight Ball Answers | All About Responses of The Magic 8 Ball - Magic 8 Ball - Plus, what’s inside a Magic 8 Ball.
Finished reading: The Cursed Hermit by Kris Bertin (Writer), Alexander Forbes (Artist) 📚
A sequel to the duo’s previous The Case of the Missing Men though that isn’t strictly needed to appreciate this adventure. The story is not as bonkers as Missing Men but is still deranged and unhinged, with a deeper look at Pauline’s character. She showed hints in the previous book of second-sight, and she goes on a deep personal journey in Hermit.
Found myself going back to the beginning, going back to specific pages and sequences (that paint smudge over Pauline’s eye in the early pages! the kaleidoscope patterns!).
The art by Alexander Forbes is jaw-droppingly detailed and brilliant. I spent several minutes just studying the cross-hatching, shading, brushwork on the trees and cliff faces and rocky outcroppings. His landscapes and nature drawings have a solidly real look, while the fantasy images use that realism to unsettling effect. His character-acting is also great, especially during Pauline’s visions; the inhabitants of Hobtown all look dulled, dumpy, uncaring – and Bertin’s story explains why that is.
I don’t know how many hours and years it took them to create this book, but I will happily wait however long it takes for them to create another. This one really hit my sweet spot for comics, spookiness, character development (Pauline and Dana’s relationship felt real and caring).