a.d. elliott - Take the Back Roads

 Dear Henry, The last few weeks have been an interesting dive into places I'm tired of visiting. You see, I would love to get a regular following for my blogs and continually read tips, tricks, and all sorts of books about how to get your blogs noticed. The last book I picked up swears that writing your own book is the way to do this.  This isn't the first time the suggestion of writing a book has popped up. I've lived a long time for someone who has had the physical trauma I had with "the accident" and the subsequent pregnancy ( read about that here ), and I am "surprisingly healthy" for my history. Many people feel this is the making of a good success story and think I should tell the tale. After reading this latest suggestion, I seriously began to do the groundwork of writing a book about my miraculous survival and how I navigate daily life. But then I got into the research.   I picked up a few books about those who had miraculous survival experiences...

Dear Henry, Lately, because of my time spent with the story of the Old Lick Cemetery , I've learned more about historic burials and the legalities behind cemeteries than I ever imagined. More specifically, I've learned about the handling of indigent burials, and that is heartbreaking knowledge. The grounds of the Old Lick Cemetery were actually two separate cemeteries. One portion belonged to the African American congregation of the First Baptist Church, and the remaining grounds were a city-owned free burial ground for the local African American community or, in other terms, a potter's field. By all accounts, the free burial ground was, before being razed for I-581, a ghoulish place, and learning of the conditions roused me to research indigent burials in the United States.   What I've learned is even more ghoulish. Before the 1950s/1960s, indigent burial grounds nationwide were all terrible places. Graves were reused several times,  there was little to no recordkeepin...

 Dear Henry, Book Six, Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound, of the Bucket List Book Adventure ( read about that here ) is done! So let me tell you all about it. Prometheus is my favorite Ancient Greek deity. Prometheus is also the one that most correspond to the Judeo/Christian concept of God.  Despite seducing many of them, Zeus didn't like humans and worked very hard at the beginning of his reign to destroy them. However, Prometheus felt sorry for the poor humans and, contrary to Zeus's orders, helped humanity by giving them fire, agriculture, technology, and the ability to form a civilization.   Oddly enough, before this, Zeus and Prometheus were allies and friends. Prometheus aided Zeus during the war to overthrow the ancient gods and establish Zeus's place as king of the gods. But Zeus deemed helping humanity unforgivable and sentenced Prometheus to be chained to a rock (some believe it is in the Caucasus mountains) to have his liver eaten out daily by an eagle because...