June 2020 Open Post

This week’s Ecosophian offering is the monthly (well, more or less!) open post to field questions and encourage discussion among my readers. All the standard rules apply — no profanity, no sales pitches, no trolling, no rudeness, no long screeds proclaiming the infallible truth of fill in the blank — but since there’s no topic,…

A Prophet and a Loss

A word or two about history before we proceed. Two weeks ago, in response to my discussion of John Chapman aka Johnny Appleseed, I fielded the inevitable comment from the inevitable reader who insisted that Johnny Appleseed was a Bad Person because he played a role in the westward expansion of the United States. When…

In the Company of Angels

So far in our exploration of the hidden history of American magic, we’ve talked mostly about people whose place in this nation’s history has been forgotten—or, to be a little more frank, erased.  The one exception, John Winthrop Jr., is tolerably well known by those who have some reason to recall the history of colonial…