The Foolish Friend

There's nothing wrong with trusting your friends, as long as you don't entrust them with responsibilities they can't handle. A certain king learns that lesson the hard way when he sticks his neck out a bit too far in "The Foolish Friend", a folktale from India.

But rather than just tell what happens from beginning to end, we start after the big blunder and do some detective work to piece together what happened. Yes it's "CSI Bombay", our retelling of the story modeled after the hit TV series "CSI Las Vegas", which Zephyr is obsessed with these days. (CSI stands for "Crime Scene Investigation").

We're coming to you from Nickerson State Park out on Cape Cod, where we're taking advantage of one of our favorite biking trails. The campground has rebuilt and regrouped after the disastrous fire that destroyed the historic headquarters building the last time we stayed here.

We just left the historic city of Salem, where we had a return engagement at the library. But we've enjoyed many other visits to this colorful town as well, a town where history seems to seep out of every crack in the pavement and clapboards.

The city is best known for something that actually happened a few miles up the road: the infamous witch trials of 1692 actually took place in Salem Village, or what is now Danvers. Nonetheless, it is the city of Salem that has become associated with the ugly episode in the public ,mind, and Salem has returned the favor by erecting a monument to the victims, and by establishing many tourist attractions commemorating the tragic events.

We have the fondest memories of being in town two years ago for Halloween (a holiday for which this town pulls out all the stops); and thanks to Zephyr's passion for "haunted house" attractions, all three of us were hired by Witch Village to help handle the onslaught of revelers.  Zephyr scared the wits out of people in a "haunted house". Kimberly helped hold down the fort at the information booth. And Dennis escorted candlelight ghost walks, exploring some of the reputedly  REAL  haunts of Salem. When work was done well after midnight, we'd hop on our bicycles and ride to our campground on Winter Island -- in the snow one night!

It doesn't take a forensic investigation to realize that delving into the mysteries of Salem's past can be a very memorable experience.

Happy Listening!
Dennis (Investigator), Kimberly (Queen and Darwin), and Zephyr (Investigator)