Letter from home

I’ve been sitting in bed having breakfast - a home made hot cross bun (thanks Dave) and Yorkshire tea - listening to Dave recount multiple reports from a coroner working in West Yorkshire in the latter part of the 19th century.

Dave was initially looking for the graves of his great grandparents but it’s led him down a long winding road of research, which originally centred on graveyards in Castleford. He has since researched the work of local clerics, child mortality, the Burial Act of 1880, and now he is reading the reports from a coroner who worked in the area for 48 years and kept meticulous notes. So much of what Dave has worked on has nothing to do with the original quest: he is simply captivated by the relevant/irrelevant details.

I completely understand his fascination with social history, but I have to say that hearing a litany of coroners reports ( eg boys killed by runaway coal trucks down the mines, and babies crushed while sleeping with their parents) does not make for a cheerful start to my day. 

He has now left the house to help his sister with a list of practical jobs that need doing around her house. 

I, meanwhile, will be reading the latest daily email bulletin called Letter from an American, written by Heather Cox Richardson, an American historian and academic at Boston College. She writes about current events in the USA in the context of American history. Her bulletin is very readable. And chilling.

At present an innocent man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, has been deported to a notorious terrorist prison in El Salvador and the Trump administration has accepted that it was a mistake, but despite numerous court rulings they are refusing to bring him back.

If detention and deportation to a violent prison can happen to a person who is totally innocent of any crime (and who is married to an American citizen and who has three American children) what might the authorities do to anyone else?

Rebecca Burke, a young British woman travelling between Canada and the USA, was detained for three weeks over a visa mix-up, and the British authorities had to intervene to get her sent home.

Then there is the case of Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian with a green card who has been arrested and detained for organising protests in support of Palestine and against the US support for Israel’s genocide. And the case of Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian green card holder who was arrested at his citizenship interview this week for organising protests against the genocide.

Back to the trivia of the home front, do you remember the new expensive Aga Rangemaster cooker we bought 16 months ago? And which Dave hated with a  passion? On Monday the induction hob fused with a loud pop, while I was cooking soup. This does not bode well for the future.

We have to wait two weeks to have it fixed (thankfully under warranty) so I am working hob-less. This is doable when it’s only me I am cooking for (Dave eats yoghurt and other cold foods) but a week tomorrow is our Refugee Hospitality Day and I have some last minute cooking to do for that as part of my contribution. I am so thankful I made the two large veggie lasagnes and froze them much earlier; and Dave boiled some eggs on the top of the log burning stove the other night, so perhaps I will manage.

The only other thing to say is- Aren’t the trees sublime at the moment?

“Spring light”
Large acrylic painting by me