My #4 Daughter bought me this book for Mother’s Day. Is anyone surprised? Anyone?

It’s a feel-good book, relentlessly upbeat, so don’t expect it to touch on anything like the bleakest, most shameful parts of the history of the continent after the coming of the brewsters. The barest mention of maltreatment of the Native Americans, so far just passing references to slavery. It’s bizarre to read about sugar and rum, with not even a hint of the Triangle Trade. To read about Virginia’s “plantation culture” with only a shadow of what that culture represented to the enslaved people who shouldered it. Hucklebridge does emphasize the contributions of African brewing customs to the development of Southern brews, when the barley and hops that thrived in the north withered and died in the Southern heat.

So, if you want a feel-good book, relentlessly upbeat, this book’s for you. It’s informative, especially with the kind of trivia I love. I learned that Martin Van Buren was, to date, the only president whose first language wasn’t English — It was Dutch. Dutch was still spoken inland in the territory formerly known as New Netherland into the twentieth century.

Here are my nails this week, all cozy and tea-ish:

A WRITING PROMPT FROM ME TO YOU: Write about tea.

MA