Barbara Woods

The icon indicates free access to the linked research on JSTOR. In the pinelands of eighteenth-century New Jersey, as the story goes, nothing grew—except children. After one Mother Leeds had given birth twelve times, she found herself pregnant yet again and beseeched God, “If I have a thirteenth child, let it be the devil.” Lo and behold, she delivered a healthy baby and laid it in a cradle near the fireplace.

Originally appeared on the Red Cross Gold Country Region blog. It might seem that Joe Avila doesn’t have a lot to be grateful for, after losing everything he owned — including 2,000 books from his library and all the music and instruments he used to teach music — when his hometown of Paradise burned to the ground in the Camp Fire on Nov. 8.