Just a quick note as I’m on my way to Barbados for a few days to visit James’ family. Hope you enjoyed the Tuscan trip. Graduate school is pretty much hell from beginning to end, isn’t it? People are always telling me that I have such a cushy life working in the Caribbean but really, what could be worse than having to write a literature review when the sun is shining and there’s a rum and coke with my name on it that I can’t have for another two hours? I’m writing, drivel mostly, but something to satisfy the powers that be.

I asked a friend on St. Kitts to revisit the Stoney Grove question and she called yesterday to say that she’s found some info. Basically, SG was a sugar plantation, started in the late 17^th century by an Englishman named Rawlins. His heirs owned it until the 1840s, when they sold it and moved back to your side of the Atlantic. Apparently it was one of those dynastic things-lots of sons and son’s sons lined up across the years to exploit the place. The house is long since gone—just a name and the ruins of a mill at the edge of town. She’s sending me some stuff in writing about it. Hope it helps.

Well, the plane, and James, await. Don’t forget to fill me in on the hermit.

Love ya,

Amy