Things I learned by reading books -- Garbo

 -- When choosing from the limited menu of a local inn in a small English village, stay away from the "cold collation."

-- If a girl is about 12 or 13, and for a first time ever a little spot of blood appears from inside her body, she is not dying. It's normal. 

-- Don't give the government or an internet giant all the information it wants about you, if you can possibly help it.

-- In the Age of Sail, the captain of the ship was like a king, and if he didn't like the quality of your work or your attitude, he could kill you. Also, people used to send cow hides for making shoe leather from California all the way around Cape Horn and back up to Boston, where the shoes were made in factories. Then the finished shoes were sent all the way back around South America and up the West Coast again for people in (what would be) California to buy. 

-- Before starting a chicken farm, you should put up the pens and fence the yard and then you order the baby chicks. 

-- Want to get a conversation started with someone you don't know? Don't talk about yourself, ask them about their interests. 

-- If you kill somebody and you don't want anyone to know it, change out of the shoes you were wearing and dispose of them immediately. That's how they catch you: the distinctive wear-pattern of the soles, a missing nail on the heel plate, a speck of AB-negative blood hiding in the crease between the upper and the sole,  a color of tennis shoe they only made in one factory a month before you bought yours. 

-- Wanting something badly enough, like to be a scientist, is almost enough by itself to become a real thing. You can make it happen even if, during your childhood, the government takes your father away as a political prisoner, and you have to work as a governess to support your family and the college won't let you formally enroll in classes because you are female so you have to sit in a chair in the aisle at lectures. 

-- When making leek-and-potato soup, take the time to thoroughly wash the leeks, as they are grown in sandy soil. If you don't, your soup will have fine grit in it. 

I know even more than this, actually, but I don't want to intimidate others with my level of expertise so I'll stop here.

In the future, I'll do a Part 2 for sure. Maybe a Part 3? Part 4?

Garbo

Gio to next C7 post