Again, the trees are gray with sleep. A handful of tiny brown birds flutters around a dark tube of seed, but the sky is heavy, weary. Clouds press on the tips of the firs. Downstairs, in the kitchen, the radio chatters over a hot griddle. Something is burning--toast or firewood or temper. I wish my feet were warm and the sun would shine and the radio would play Joe Strummer instead of Rick Santorum. Instead, I am looking at a catalog cover that features a dress I can't afford to buy. This is hardly better than Rick Santorum. Perhaps Samuel Pepys can help me today. A glance into volume 7 of the Diary brings me this news from April 1666:

To Sir George Carteret's and dined there, and many good stories at dinner, among others about discoveries of murder, and Sir J. Minnes did tell of the discovery of his own great-grandfather's murder, fifteen years after he was murdered. Mrs. Turner came to my office, and did walk an hour with me in the garden, telling me stories how Sir Edward Spragge hath lately made love to our neighbour, a widow, Mrs. Hollworthy, who is a woman of estate, and wit and spirit, and do contemn him the most, and sent him away with the greatest scorn in the world; also odd stories how the parish talks of Sir W. Pen's family, how poorly they clothe their daughter so soon after marriage, and do say that Mr. Lowther was married once before, and some such thing there hath been, whatever the bottom of it is. But to think of the clatter they make with his coach, and his owne fine cloathes, and yet how meanly they live within doors, and nastily, and borrowing everything of neighbours.

Well, it is difficult to argue that this gossip is better than idle catalog desire or bluster about Rick Santorum, but it is certainly funnier. And can Pepys's Sir W. Pen be our Sir William Penn? The Big Quaker as skinflint father-in-law? Yes, a random dollop of unreliable Diary is always a good idea.