The Lure of Useless Information

Instead of showing you another pink blob of the Chinese Lace Pullover, Highly Modified, I decided to talk about what I've been reading. Let me first preface this by explaining that I have a vast collection of information bouncing around in my head that the majority of society (and even knitters) would term "Useless Information." My BA is in Art History, which could just as easily be called Useless Information With an Emphasis of BS and Some Art to Make it Acceptable as a College Degree. But that just takes too long to say when someone asks you what your major is. It's also rather disheartening as a degree title to explain to your parents when you call to tell them you've changed your major. Again. For the fourth time and you're 3 1/2 years into the whole college thing. (Although Daddy's response when I told them I was going with Art History was, "What are you going to do with that?" For some reason, "I have no idea" wasn't particularly helpful to his way of thinking.)

Anyway, I have a well developed taste for useless information. This is probably why I find the Internet and Libraries so wonderful. (I could happily spend days just clicking on links in Wikipedia entries and wander all over the place as subjects go!) The other day we were at the book store and I was looking through the History section and I found In The Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and The World It Made, by Norman F. Cantor. Yep, I'm reading about the Black Death. It's actually an interesting book and while it discusses the diseases that were probably the cause of the event we call The Black Death (yes, it was more than one epidemic), it primarily emphasizes the changes that came about as a result of the plague in the mid fourteenth century and how those affected both Medieval society (particularly focusing on England) as well as the effects we still feel today. For instance, property law as it is practiced in the US today (being a former British colony, we kept many British ideas, even after The Revolution) was defined in large part in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, as a result of the devastation of the plague. Specific deaths of plague, and the results of who inherited what after these deaths, set events into place for the War of the Roses. As you can see, the interrelatedness of so many things and how they were affected by a devastating epidemic is just right up my alley. If you enjoy exploring the depths of useless information (which is nevertheless pretty interesting), you should check this book out of your library sometime.