break
I’m thinking about taking a break from the blog. Spoke with my cousin a few days ago and she’s worried that I’m putting too much of myself “out there.” The internet can create a false sense of intimacy, and I definitely don’t want some psycho latching onto me because of what I write on my blog. But I also don’t want to feel like I can’t be myself online…to quote June Jordan, “Who the hell set things up like this?” Not me. I’ve got novels to write so maybe taking a break isn’t such a bad thing. Right now I’m reading Vincent Hubbard’s Swords, Ships & Sugar: History of Nevis to 1900. And I had to stop and blog because I just found a possible clue—in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Nevis used silver coins issued by France for use in their Caribbean and South American colonies. These coins—”sous”—were also called “black dogs” by locals. If the enslaved woman I discovered in the 1817 slave register was 60 years old at the time, she would have been born around 1757. Could her unusual name somehow be linked to these coins? So many possibilities…
Just booked my last trip of the summer, but will keep that to myself for now. Back to the book…
