Betsy-Tacy -- with small quiz

[jkb]

On Thanksgiving Day, Susan and I took the train up to Acton to have Thanksgiving dinner with friends of hers. My first Thanksgiving in Massachusetts -- I have to say that even without going out of my way to visit any Pilgrim-related sites, I still had more of a sense of history here than I remember having before. Anyway, at the end of a lovely

Comments

[oleander9999]

I've read those books and I'm glad you're enjoying them! I think what you're saying about expecting disaster is very interesting. I got trained to think that way not so much from books like these but from a different tradition in children's books (and fairy tales!) which is the tradition in books about wishes and magic that it is to be expected that if you wish for something beyond what a human should possess such as untold wealth or unearthly beauty or godlike powers, you will find that, as Spock once said, "having is not so pleasing a thing, after all, as wanting." Your gold will inevitably turn to dead leaves, your beauty will cause pain, your power will somehow not be what you dreamed it might be.

I do find it restful that so much of life in Deep Valley (while not entirely uneventful!) allows for a few more dreams to come true.