Cooling down

Today the weather cooled off significantly, which was a relief. It was windy with scudding clouds and falling leaves flying around, just like a fall day should be. It's reassuring when the weather does what it's supposed to do at the appropriate season. Later in the afternoon, we had a cloudburst.

I had a quiet day at home. For reasons I won't go into, I didn't go to church, but I did turn on a Catholic mass on EWTN and heard a homily on obedience to God, based on today's lectionary. I did a load of laundry.  I went out on my deck and looked at my flowers. I made some sandwiches for my lunch this week. I ate piece of apple pie with ice cream while visiting with my parents.

I finished reading The Tudors: The Complete Story of England's Most Notorious Dynasty on my Kindle. It was a decent enough book. I disagreed with some aspects of the author's reading of Elizabeth I's character (I admire her) and I felt he put forward some sensational rumors as facts--e.g., saying that when Elizabeth had smallpox it ravaged her skin and caused a lot of her hair to fall out so that she had bald patches. For some reason there was a belief floating around for a while (sort of like an urban myth, but about history) that Elizabeth was bald when she was older but pretty much every biography of her I've read (and I've read many) refutes that. Elizabeth Jenkins, author of my favorite Elizabeth biography (Elizabeth the Great), suspects that it arose because Elizabeth I wore wigs a lot when she was older, but she did find references to Elizabeth's actual hair at various points in her later life. Also, all the biographies I have read agree that Elizabeth was fortuitously spared disfigurement by smallpox although her lady in waiting and good friend, Mary Sidney, caught it from her and was disfigured. Anyway, this author, G.J. Meyer, believes Elizabeth was indifferent to the welfare of her people and concerned only with her own survival. At the end he seems to blame poverty in England from the time of the Tudors up to and including the Victorian age a couple centuries later on the Tudors, but particularly Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. That seems a bit much. But it was interesting to revisit that time and read through all of the rulers' reigns.

When I read several biographies of the same person, which I have done mainly with Elizabeth I, it's interesting to me to see how different biographers take the same information and events and read them differently so that they get different takes on what Elizabeth was really like.

Back into the work week tomorrow. Hoping for low doses of stress this week, not high doses.