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Bettie's Books
A Stuga On the Cusp of the Orust Riviera, tucked away next to a hobbit hole in the woods.
Drinking Water: A History by James Salzman
bookshelves: e-book, nonfiction, published-2012, tbr-busting-2015, history, microhistory, dip-in-now-and-again, skim-through, environmental-issues, politics, sciences, under-100-ratings, summer-2015, mythology
Read from January 02 to June 02, 2015
G B Ep
01:06:2015: Having put this on the back burner for a few months, it is time to resurrect it. The reason? I have spent the day reading about water in Victorian Old Town Edinburgh, and Victorian era Tibet. *shudder*
I am lucky to have my own well fed by a 35m deep icy cold water table; unfortunately it is not a Fountain of Youth, which seems to have been covered extensively in the art world...
Dante's Phlegethon
River Archeron
River Cocytus
To HeatherOpening: IN THE WINTER OF 1512, JUAN PONCE DE LEÓN HAD IT ALL. Two decades earlier, he had set off for the New World as a raw seventeen-year old deckhand on Christopher Columbus’s second voyage. When Columbus returned home, Ponce de León chose to stay on and seek his fortune. As his biographer later described, Ponce de León was a fierce fighter, hard and ambitious: “a man spirited, sagacious and diligent in all warlike matters.” These were valuable qualities in Spain’s emerging empire, where fabulous wealth was waiting to be taken, and they assured his rapid advance. He led the conquest of Puerto Rico, claiming the island for Spain, and was appointed governor in 1509. With lands and wealth to his name, he had officially arrived.
01:06:2015: Having put this on the back burner for a few months, it is time to resurrect it. The reason? I have spent the day reading about water in Victorian Old Town Edinburgh, and Victorian era Tibet. *shudder*I am lucky to have my own well fed by a 35m deep icy cold water table; unfortunately it is not a Fountain of Youth, which seems to have been covered extensively in the art world...
'INTERESTINGLY, MANY CULTURES HAVE A STRONG MYTHIC TRADITION that presents the very opposite of the Fountain of Youth and spiritual rebirth. Rather than drinking water to provide eternal life, water now provides the means and a balm for death.Rivers serve as the crossing point between life and afterlife in many cultures. In Greek mythology, for example, the spirits of the recently deceased must cross five rivers. The River Styx is the first boundary between earth and Hades, the domain of the Underworld. It was guarded by Phlegyas, and gods made oaths upon its waters.'
- page 26
Dante's Phlegethon River Archeron River Cocytus
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