From what I've heard so far, the Eben Putnam book is respectable -- in other words, deserving of at least some degree of faith in the truth of what it offers. (I'll know better if I should have warm fuzzy feelings about the book when the LDS film of it gets here.) Also, I have a friend with access to the Hertitage Quest net site where Eben's book is on-line (for a fee). My friend says that Eben covers everyone in the line I am interested in down to the birth of Enos Putnam, who is the one who was the husband of the sister of the wife of the brother of my great-great grandfather Powers. I must confess to a double standard for the genealogy part of things. For my own direct Powers line, I am hard nosed about having copies original documents and am a stickler for proof. But for in-laws of in-laws, like the Putnams, I tend to dislike reinventing the wheel and favor adopting the work of authorities (hopefully like Eben Putnam) if they have a good reputation and if I like the look of their work. Meanwhile, about the witch trials, I am entering my typical confusion-and-annoyance phase. I like to skip around and read snippets here and there at first, to get a feel for the literary territory, kinda like casing the joint. I have read chapters 5 and 6 of "Salem Possessed" by Boyer and Nissenbaum because that part was obviously devoted to the Putnams. I liked the nice, concentrated explanation of the overall Putnam situation at Salem Village. That is most convenient. I was very annoyed by the psychology angle, for example about the Putnams supposedly taking out their frustrations, consciosly or unconsciously, with their stepmother and stepbrother on surrogates by arranging to have them (the surrogates) hanged as witches. That was yesterday, and I still feel a bit steamed. More recently, at the library, I tried to read, I think it was chapters 2 and 9 of "Salem Story" by Rosenthal. The reading area at the library turned into a phone booth, alive with cell phones. More bad mood. I decided that it would have been better if the ancestors of cell phone users should have been hanged before they could have any children, that using all that good rope on alleged witches was thus wasteful. Anyway, in between other people's phone calls, I gather that Rosenthal was making an argument that the whole witch trials story was just one big more or less deliberate fraud. Somehow, I found his arguments for, oh, let's say very bad manners on the part of The Authorities much more convincing than that for The Girls. Rosenthal presented a few modern analogies, as I recall. Too bad he wasn't aware of our infamous McMartin Preschool Trial here in southern California. The McMartin trial would have made a fantastic analogy, as it was all about, roughly speaking, satanism and devil worship. That may have been some time around the 1970s. Very, very, very roughly speaking, McMartin was about adults suggesting to children that their preschool was a den of satanism and satanic cult worship, complete with all the trimmings. The children, in turn, called the cops and turned in their preschool teachers to the law. It was an amazing case, and I remember listening to summaries of the day's proceeding on the radio. I think that was a precursor to, I think, later flaps about actually-implanted "recovered memories" in children used later for other preposterous trials. Anyway, while perhaps Rosenthal might have had a real joyride with McMartin, McMartin still represents unlike people in extremely unlike centuries (Los Angeles 1970s being unlike Salem 1690s, that is).. That's the part that bothered me about what I read of Rosenthal. Too little appreciation for the fact that the Puritans really, really, really did believe in witchcraft. Rosenthal seems to relegate such beliefs to the fringe of that society, leaving the way clear for seeing fraud in the trials, and I have trouble with that. Lester Powers ________________________________________________________________ Sign Up for Juno Platinum Internet Access Today Only $9.95 per month! Visit www.juno.com