Angel Grave Decoration, Mount Gilead Cemetery, Bloomington, Monroe County, Indiana
This, and several other decorations and flower arrangements, were sitting on the back sides of their headstones. I think that’s a little odd, but there must be a reason for doing so.
Mount Gilead Cemetery, Bloomington, Monroe County, Indiana
It was supposed to rain today, but the weather ended up being gorgeous. Highs in the 50s and only partially cloudy. Since I’ve been a little cabin fevery, I decided to run out to Mount Gilead and take some more photos. Besides, I haven’t really had a chance to play out-of-doors with my new camera.
Altogether, I took about 60 photos, and only a few were real duds. I’m well pleased! This one, of a lone, plastic (not even silk!) daisy near a plain, little headstone, is one of my favorites. This graveyard was established in 1845, so it’s not all that old, but some of the oldest stones–like this one–have already been worn smooth.
These are the same roses I photographed a few days ago. They’ve fallen off the stems and are pretty much dried through. I took this one yesterday, so I’m cheating, but I didn’t have a chance to take photos today. I got sidetracked dying paper for a new journal.
My hands are now stained a disgusting shade of brown, but the paper is cool looking, and that’s all that matters. I hope my idea works. We’ll know tomorrow, when it’s dry. Right now, it’s layered between sheets of waxed paper, in my high-tech press (a large hardback atlas and an iron skillet).
And now, it’s time to go watch Survivor and Lost.
I hate phones, but I have nonetheless joined the ranks of the cellularly afflicted. My mom keeps nagging me to come see them, and aside from impending car repairs (which will be done soon, damnit!), I’m really not keen on going on road trips with no emergency safety net. So, I ordered one of those pay-as-you-go phones. I’m not at all the sort to chat on a cell phone, and if I become one of Those People, I can upgrade. For now, though, it’s $10 for 30 minutes of air time, and it’s good for 90 days. That seems reasonable to me. The coverage map shows that I should have decent reception between here and my mom’s house (assuming I go through Indy), as well as excellent coverage at my house.
I don’t know why this weirds me out so much, but it does. Aaack!
That is all. As you were, comrades.
My Favorite Birthday Book
Grosset & Dunlap, New York, 1945
Illustrated with Persian Miniatures by Mahmoud Sayah
7 1/8 x 14 1/4 inches
I started scanning this last January, and I meant to post the pages for each month throughout the year. Better late than never, right?
Holy crap! There’s a copy of it on eBay with a “buy it now” price of $100. Alibris has a copy listed for $50 and AbeBooks has copies going from $38-$99. Those are all, I think, unmarked copies, which mine is obviously not. I think I’d rather have a well used copy with no intrinsic value. It’s more interesting to me.
And an unbagged sink, no less! I don’t know what they clean our sinks with, but it’s super abrasive. Steel wool, maybe? Not only is the older hardware scratched and oxidizing in spots, but there are areas where the base metal is patinating.
This sink was bagged a couple of weeks ago, then unbagged after a couple of days. This morning, it was bagged again, only this time with duct tape securing the bag to the sink. I have no idea why. Does the Rogue Sink Bagger think the bag will cop an attitude and run off? (More sinks in bags here.)
Three Pears (detail, in progress)
oil on canvas
32 x 48 inches
The background drapery is only about half done. I also need to do some tweaking to the fold that goes behind this pear. And add the stems. And do the platform they’re sitting on. It’s getting there, though.
Oh, and it’s raining again, which will probably mean more ice by morning. Fun.
So I spent literally all weekend doing genealogy research. A good chunk of that was trying to sort out a couple of weird puzzles. There’s a Nicholas Basquill b. 1825 (according to 1880 US census) who married an Eliza Hogshough (b. 1842 according to 1880 US census). Now, I had an inkling that Eliza’s last name had a more standard spelling, but I couldn’t figure it out, and since I had no information about her other than an estimated birth date, there wasn’t much to go on.
That was last spring, and I put the puzzle away, because I was at a dead end.
Then, this weekend, while looking at another pocket of Basquills, I came across an Honoria Hawkshaw. The name rang a bell. Aha! So I started looking for Elizabeth Hawkshaws, and lo and behold, there she was, along with siblings, a mother, and a father. Not bad.
However, I got to looking at three different sources I found, and they all had Eliza’s husband’s birth date as 1816. That would make him 26 years older than her. Not impossible, but unlikely. It would also be an odd error to find on a census form. Yeah, some of them are off by a few years, but 26? I don’t think so.
One source also stated that Nicholas b. 1916 came to the US with his brothers Michael and John, and that he later returned to Ireland, married Eliza, and brought her back to the US. It’s possible.
Another source I uncovered states that Nicholas b. 1816 is the father of Nicholas b. 1925. Did they even think about that for a minute? It’s not absolutely impossible, but it’s so unlikely that it may as well be. So something is fishy there. I think there are two different Nicholas Basquills. I think the 1880 census is correct, and that references I’ve found listing Nicholas b. 1816 as Eliza’s husband have gotten hold of the wrong one.
And now, I’m wondering, were Michael and John brothers of the 1825 or the 1816 Nicholas? And if they are actually brothers of Nicholas b. 1816 (assuming he actually existed), could that Michael be the father Walter (my great-great-grandfather)? I wish I had enough information to connect those two chunks of Basquills, but I don’t.
This was taken indoors, on a table in front of the window. With onboard flash. Please to notice that the lovely back-lighting was not swallowed up by the aforementioned flash, nor is the foreground washed out. It’s not a great photo, but for illustrative purposes, it’s just about perfect.
The point? Somewhere, I came a cross a link to DIY Photography. There’s an article there on how to use a business card as a flash bouncer. I used one of those fake cardstock credit cards, because I didn’t have a business card handy. Any piece of heavy, white, stiff paper that’s roughly business card size will work.
You can use the same basic principle with any point-and-shoot camera, but you’ll have to either hold the card at an angle with your hand or use Scotch tape. Just don’t get it too close to a high-powered flash, especially if the paper has a plastic coating, because it might start to burn. Trust me on that one!
red paper boat 