Week of Wonders

Last things first: Yesterday my friend Jean sent me notice and a few excerpts from David Sedaris's latest book, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary, every single fable of which that I have so far read has so delighted me that I can only compare it to the similarly and exquisitely poised-between-beast-and-human verse fables of Jean de la Fontaine. So far my favorites have been the first, 'The Cat and the Baboon,' and 'The Mouse and the Snake.'



And the day before yesterday I finished reading, virtually in one sitting, John Vaillant's The Tiger -- about, well, a man-eating Amur Tiger (the Russians call man-eating tigers "cannibals"), and about all the many, many things that have to do with Amur Tigers in the Modern World....

And then, four or five days ago, I discovered that, through no fault of my own, I am directly, father-to-son descended from Nicholas Snow, "Old Comer" to the Plymouth Colony, and husband of Constanta Hopkins, daughter of Stephen Hopkins, original signatory of the Mayflower Compact: Kiss my ass--I am a Mayflower Madam by every bit as much right as Sydney Biddle Barrows! What's funny is that, twenty years ago, the physical resemblance between me and Ms. Biddle Barrows--as well as our similarly (Do NOT detain me!) aristocratic attitude--was evident to my friends (and, frankly, to me too), and was several times remarked on. Good bones, and good Puritan genes, I guess. What's also funny is that the other descendants of my Great-Grandather Madison Marion Snow, my father's cousins and uncles--though well-to-do, and prominent in local politics in Latah County, Idaho, and rather splendid Alumni Emeriti of the University of Idaho--they appear not to care a fig or a rat's patootie about the illustriousness of their Real Original Americanness--and none, according to the official Historian of the Mayflower Society in Idaho (with whom I have corresponded) has thought it worth the $245 enrollment fee in the Mayflower Society, or the bother of tracing and documenting the lineage from Samuel Snow (5th generation descendant of Nicholas Snow); through his son Freeman Snow (B: About 1752, Eastham, Barnstable, MA); through his son Cushing Snow (B: 14 Aug 1790, Sandisfield, Berkshire, MA); to his son Madison Marion Snow, aforementioned. But all that aside, what's been truly wonderful in this search for 'Roots' has been the unexpected, and riveting, revelations of the personal character of my forebears--hardly any of whom seem to have behaved like 'Puritans,' and who certainly don't seem to have thought of themselves as such. Of which more anon.