This dull, mostly gray and damp Sunday afternoon doesn’t encourage any outdoor activity. The sun struggles through the clouds for brief moments and retreats again. At least we do know it’s still up there! It is a good day to find a good book and settle in for the rest of the weekend.

I did just that and got comfortable with a book my friend Jay from Minnesota loaned me – Native Roots, by Jack Weatherford, which embraces the topic “How the Indians Enriched America.” He also wrote Indian Rivers. The St Paul Express said about this book “America is a banquet prepared by the Indians – who were forgotten when it was time to give thanks at the table.”

Topics highlighted in this small volume include “How the Fur Trade Shaped the American”; “The Tree in American History”; and “The Naming of North America.” A very lengthy chapter concerns “Women (and a few men) Who Led the Way.” I was especially surprised to learn that a number of not well-known Indian women helped shape our early history. Perhaps best known in Sacajawea, the Indian guide who was an important member of the Lewis and Clark explorers.

An Aztec woman, Malinche, was a guide and interpreter for Hernando Cortez and she knew many languages, one reason why she acquired his confidence and became his chief negotiator. Many early explorers kidnapped Indian women, and some men also, and made them their guides.

Women several times provided a medicine to explorers to conquer outbreaks of scurvy among their ranks. They also were adept at tracking. They had many valuable skills about weather patterns and the use of materials to make clothing and prepare native foods.

Anyone interested in the early history of our country would enjoy this book. It is a Fawcett Columbine Book, published by Ballentine Books.

The bottom drawer in the vanity in my bathroom is a “catch all.” It has a small hairdryer which I never use, a blue rubber duck, a very small funnel, an empty Bandaid® tin, a plastic ball that floats, and several other bathtub toys. When I went looking for something the other day, I thought of the assortment of playthings I had acquired when my granddaughter Megan was a baby and used to come and visit for a weekend.

That was about 16 years ago when I fist moved to the Village. Last night she attended the special dance for the eighth grade class at her school in Burlington – my right of passage into High School. Where do the years go?

Last weeks the quote at the end of the column was by Abigail Adams from a letter to her husband John Adams, in 1776.

Who said “If the people don’t want to come out to the park, nobody’s going to stop ‘em”?