It's a damp drizzly Sunday in March. The snow has mostly turned to filthy black ice, and the streets are quiet except for the occasional police or ambulance siren responding to some random act of violence or heart attack.
I'll try in a bit to convince Louise to join me for a sauna. In the freezer there are still a few bunches of young birch fronds that we collected last spring out on Dolman Ridge Road. Nothing beats a little flagellation in a hot steamy sauna to cleanse the body and soul.
In the meantime, here are a couple of books that I am reading and would recommend to anyone looking for some escape from mundane reality. Sailing alone around the world is a real adventure story, told in the first person by Joshua Slocum who circumnavigated the globe solo in his sloop the Spray. That was back in the 1895, so he had no radio, GPS, internal combustion engine, refrigeration, gyrocompass or other modern conveniences to rely on. He met a lot of interesting pirates, society matrons, murderous savages, debutantes, diplomats, sailors, politicians and other rascals along the way, and there was not a day that did not bring some excitement during his cruise. A great story.
The other book I'm reading is The Northern Crusades, by Eric Christianson about the conquest of the Baltic tribes by German military monks like the Teutonic Knights. Around 1100 AD northeastern Europe was still the home of pagan nations like the Pomeranians, Prussians, Lithuanians, Curonians, Polachians, Letts, Livs, Estonians, Vods, and Karelians. They seemed to specialize in pillaging, plundering, and abducting each others slaves and women, but also lived off the abundance of their farms and forests. They had plenty to eat and drink, hunted meat, collected honey, cultivated grains, fished the rivers and the Baltic Sea, wore good furs, prayed to their gods in temples and groves, made elegant jewellry from amber and silver, and lived in comfortable, fortified villages. The Christians came along and introduced civilization in the form of churches, castles, manors, guilds, parliaments and legal codes. These crusades were bloody and cruel, but they did result in an expanded European civilization, which is more than can be said for their counterparts in the Holy Land.
It would be interesting to compare the northern crusades of the Germans to the North American ventures of the Hudson's Bay Company and the Oblate Missionaries. Has anyone tried?
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