Like everyone else, my long weekend was a mixture of work and play.  Our canine guests enjoyed a weekend of sunshine and kiddie pools. We enjoyed friends and family at various picnics, parties and my son's regatta at the West Side Rowing Club.  After three days of party food, cocktails and sunshine I definitely need one more day for recovery. In reality, the dogs began arriving at 7:00 this morning.  We will also likely experience what I call Post Holiday Intestinal Distress Syndrome.  After a weekend of being fed party scraps, we will have more than a few canine guests suffering from this syndrome.  I have one very important rule in doggy daycare: If you eat it at home, you must poop it out or barf it up at home.  Sadly, this rule is seldom adhered to!

I find that I am feeling pretty overwhelmed after a three hour strategy meeting at UB on Saturday.  We have commitments for chapters in two edited volumes as well as writing our own book based on the symposium we presented in Calgary a few weeks ago.  The first chapter is for an edited volume on autopsy and dissection during the nineteenth century (sadly many poorhouse inmates who were not claimed for private burial  after their death were sent to medical schools for dissection in the mid to late nineteenth century).  The second will discuss the Erie County Poorhouse in the context of poor relief policy in the United States throughout the nineteenth century.  Our book as yet lacks focus.  We could go the scholarly route and elaborate on the research to date, which largely deals with the health and mortality of the inmates and patients who died at the Erie County Poorhouse and its associated facilities (it also included a hospital and an insane asylum).  We have so many historical documents (facility ledgers, municipal reports, new paper articles) that most of us feel that a scholarly discussion of health and mortality alone does not adequately tell the story of these individuals and their experiences. A bit more discussion is needed before we settle on a plan.

On the literary front, I am finding myself more intrigued by the woman who suffered from chorea.  If it was Huntington's Chorea, the detailed family history becomes more interesting because the disease was not well defined until 1872 (nearly 30 years later).  I am in hot pursuit of any mention of this woman or her family in any period medical journals.  I really think I can build a character around her.  The question is how does she fit into the Sloane sister's saga.  She had a surviving child as of 1854, so there is the possibility of building in a story about her struggle between keeping her only surviving child and her wish to shield him from the types of experiences she had as a child, witnessing her own mothers demise as a result of the disease.  Should she make an appearance in book two as a child and continue her story as an adult in book three?  If you have an opinion one way or the other, please feel free to share it!