Today shall be the last dry and freezing day for a while, I see from the forecast, which promises a week ahead of rain and much warmer temperatures. Right now it’s 26 degrees and I am looking ahead at a day of meal-planning, shopping, and also reading.

I have lately picked up “John Adams” to read again. The first time I did was waaaay back in 2009 so as you can imagine I don’t remember a lot about it and at the time I did not have the fascination with that time period that I now do. Now that I have read several different perspectives, it’s interesting to see how one historian paints a picture totally differently from another. For example, while he was president, Adams and his wife were deeply prejudiced against Hamilton, for reasons personal and political (the quote in my title is from Abigail Adams, describing Alexander Hamilton’s eyes, which most people described as unusually captivating), so he is viewed through that lens in this particular biography — in contrast to the account described by Ron Chernow, which is of course very sympathetic to Hamilton and critical of the Adamses. It is all subjective, of course, and there is no “right answer.” None of us were there, after all. We take what we can get from fragments of mostly biased documents, and then put together as many facts as possible.

Oh and huge pet peeve lately, and one reason I decided to abandon Tumblr: people who project modern, contemporary morality and ideology on to people of the distant past. I really do not understand the logic in that. I suspect that those who engage in this the most are still quite young. At least I hope that’s their excuse.