December 23, 2017 FINISH WHAT YA STARTED

YIPPIE. Finally completed the 1000 CHALLENGE. It was touch and go for a while with the injury and all. Not sure I'll do it again next year but it was a good resolution and DEFINITELY held me more accountable. I always seem to rise to a challenge AND it was good to have a long term goal. Even though I'm on the mend, I'm only at 70%. I'm feeling SO out of shape too. I was running 25-30 miles a week and now I can BARELY run 15-- I'M HURTING--AND SOOOO SLOW. Been trying not too run too much though--trying to mix it up with the gym.  Hoping that this is just a passing phase. Hoping too that with the New Year I'll start feeling EVEN better and REALLY enjoy my runs again. That's really ALL I want for Christmas--wish I had remembered to send Santa a letter with my list!! Pretty sure the residents of Salem, Massachusetts, didn't write letters to Santa in the seventeenth century because they were too busy writing a list of the suspected witches in Arthur Miller's play The Crucible. 

Miller wrote this play in 1953 in the wake of the McCarthy hearings. Miller, himself, was a suspected communist who went in front of the Committee for Un-American Activities. He later spent time in jail for contempt because he refused to name names. He was one of several celebrities ostracized for his communist activities. Interestingly enough, after accusing over 200 people of communist activities--McCarthy fell out of favor and was actually censured by Congress in 1954.  He died of alcoholism in 1957. In this allegory of McCarthyism, Miller takes us back to Salem, Massachusetts, to the witch trials. Miller spent time in Salem researching the events, residents and history of the trials so his play is factually based and includes the actual people involved.  After young Elizabeth Proctor is accused of witchery, she confesses and the town falls into mass hysteria as Elizabeth starts accusing her neighbors of witchcraft.  Neighbors are pitted against each other in this rigid Puritanical society where religion is the law. In the end, 200 people were accused of witchery--and 20 were actually put to death by hanging or torture in the name of God. This is a story of paranoia, adultery, and so much more. The play itself is only about 140 pages--a 3 mile run--that will have you reevaluating history and the mob mentality.