To the utter relief of the Parlor, Tropical Storm Hilary has come through with destruction surprisingly minimal.
Unfortunately, the storm has caused flash flooding and landslides as it moved inland from the coast of Southern California. In the Pacific Northwest, we are only minimally acquainted with earthquakes and temblors, but hurricanes and tropical storms? Not so much.Unfortunately, we do happen to be familiar with flash flooding and landslides. Usually, they are a result of things like heavy precipitation and/or disasters such as forest fires and wildfires. Did you know that the risk of forest fire actually increases if the previous winter was quite rainy?
Fuel (like underbrush) grows more during extra rainy seasons. That's a constant risk in a region with four seasons: Rainy, Rainier, Rainiest, and Construction.
It's not uncommon for flash flooding to happen after a catastrophic wildfire, or landslides for a variety of reasons. Now that the tropical storm/hurricane has gone through, this flash flooding and risk of landslides are what is happening in California right now. Both have a very high potential of being deadly, so for those of you in those regions, please be very, very careful. Evacuate if you have to, but stay put if you don't.
Above all, the Parlor is grateful that Southern California has made it through this "hurriquake".
New Pages of the Parlor
When you look at the list of pages on the Parlor under World of the Witches, it will look slightly different. For many years, there has been a very tiny gallery of images at the bottom of Art, History, Music and Literature of the Mayfair Witches. The images have been moved to other pages and the title of the page is now Art, Music and Literature of the Mayfair Witches.
This is because the images have been moved to two new pages on the Parlor. I've begun a new page under The Talamasca Files, some history on the Salem Witch Trials. Why this page is just now beginning, I don't know. It really should have been here a long time ago, but...better late than never?
That is one of the new pages. The other new page is under World of the Witches. It is about the Mayfair Witches on Saint-Domingue and their plantation, Maye Faire.
Maye-what?
That's okay. This is a part of The Witching Hour I really don't see a lot of discussion about, to be honest. Maye Faire was the name of the plantation operated by the Mayfair Witches from Charlotte to Marie Claudette Mayfair on Saint-Domingue.
Saint-Domingue was a French colony that became what is now Haiti. It was the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) that drove Marie Claudette Mayfair to gather as many Mayfairs and belongings as she could and escape to Louisiana. Fun factoid: the Louisiana Purchase occurred in 1803, the year before the Haitian Revolution came to an end.
Of course, these events of 1803 and 1804 coincided with the expedition of Lewis and Clark and the beginning of the Oregon Trail. Before this, in the French colonial era on Saint-Domingue, the planters made their fortunes in sugar and from slave labor. This describes Maye Faire.
Of course, I've begun to wonder what a sugar plantation like Maye Faire might have looked like. There is no way to even casually research this period in history on Saint-Domingue without coming across the complicated history and events of the period. So this, like any other page, is definitely a work-in-progress.
I couldn't help but note that the colonial planters who became wealthy were only able to become as wealthy as they did because of slave labor. Planters increased their wealth on Saint-Domingue very much as planters did in the American South before the Civil War. This makes it no surprise when you consider the rise of plantation economy in America.
As with any page on the Parlor, they are always a work-in-progress. Moving the history to a different page is something I have wanted to do for a while now. The page the images of historical events in the Lives of the Mayfair Witches were on already has a tremendous amount of content on them. I plan to separate them to a certain extent in the future as well...