I took the afternoon and poked at county history, will take Friday and will go play in the woods with my niece. Hopefully that will help.
I used a UV flashlight outside in the moonlight on Tuesday morning - absolutely fascinating to see occasional fluorescence and color shifts. Violet leaves are a dark dark magenta-burgundy, brassica leaves' dusty bloom fluoresces blue, and there's something on the dying stems of miniature roses that fluoresces orange.
I went out in the evening and tried to take photos with my phone. Unsurprisingly it responds a little differently than my eye-brain system and overwhelmingly just recorded purple.
This morning when i went out i was quite startled by the hoot of an owl. Single loud hoots -- not the familiar who-cooks-for-you-ish rhythm. I didn't let the cats out; Carrie barked once in her startlement.
I made a natural deodorant yesterday: baking soda and my mint glycerate. The glycerate is OK to add to water as a flavor and sweetener, but i think the ice cubes with mint seem a more agreeable delivery. It didn't take much glycerine to mix in with the baking soda to make a paste with the consistency of the average deodorant. So, no big chunk of plastic -- but, boy, do i miss the delivery system of that big chunk of plastic. It looks like cardboard tubes are available to fill and use as a push-from-the-bottom delivery system. I have established its reasonably effective for me, so i think i will buy the tubes and see how well it works over time.
Regarding my speculations from public records: i've become interested with the idea of a "novel" from fictionalized public records. Whether the records would be in facsimile (and art book, like Griffin and Sabine?) or it would be simply text, i don't know. I did come up with a fictional county & county seat -- Beauford, Norfield County named for Earl of Norfield, of the County ---, George Beauford. I don't know what County in Great Britain he should live in. The Earl of Chatham was from Kent. I decided my fictional county seat would be at the fall line of the Cape Fear, where Moncure is now, but fictionalize the confluence. The "port" might make for a more interesting alternative-history with a bit more records about early arrivals and departures.
The plot line -- it's harder to come up with something other than the usual two family lines and how they shift politically through history. A Quaker family from the Revolution and Civil War whose scion is now an adamant "[Confederate] Flagger," a wealthy aristocratic settler whose scion is a progressive community leader, an enslaved person whose descendants have become local politicians. This is why an artbook with reproductions could be more interesting than a novel.....
This is also posted at https://elainegrey.dreamwidth.org/775176.html .
