October 2010 – Page 3 – red paper boat

Tired Dog Is Tired

October 16, 2010January 8, 2016 Shelly

Harriet is happy to be home, too.

Apparently, when I said “blogging will be light,” I actually meant “blogging will be non-existent.” But I’m back from Minnesota and have a ton of photos to go through. Most of the pictures are from visiting cemeteries. I also found some old cabinet cards in a junk shop, which I need to scan.

But first, a nap. Or two.

Photography

Writing on the Wall

October 6, 2010January 8, 2016 Shelly

4th Floor, East Tower, Herman B Wells Library, Indiana University

The only explanation I can think of for people doing math on the wall is that there’s a photocopier right under this area. I wonder if people are tying to figure out how many copies they can make with the money they have left?

Blogging will probably be light for the next few days, as I am going to be on the road.

Photography

Peanut Butter Contains Peanut

October 5, 2010January 8, 2016 Shelly

I don’t know whether to be skeptical that it contains just the one peanut, or amused that such a warning would be deemed necessary in the first place. I mean, what on earth would peanut butter be made of, if not peanut(s)?

Ladybusiness

Harriet Talcott Buckingham Clarke

October 4, 2010October 17, 2015 Shelly

All the diarists mention the Indians they meet on their journey. Most of the women’s descriptions fall somewhere between thoroughly ignorant and deeply racist. This passage is one of the few I’ve read that contains even a hint of awareness of the affect the white settlers’ movement westward was having on the peoples living on those lands.

May, 1851

Crossed the Missouri at Council Bluffs, where we had been a couple of weeks making the final preparations on this outskirt of civilization

The weather has been mild, and we have walked evry day over the rolling hills around — one day found a young physician and his wife who were interested in examining the numerous skulls and human bones that were found near the surface of the ground. After much speculation the fact was elucidated that, large tribes of Indians from the middle states had been pushed off by our government to this frontier region to make room for white settlers, and had here perished in large numbers by starvation consequent upon removal from familiar hunting grounds: they had been buried in large trenches with heads to the east. Skulls were thick: of peculiar shape differing from the Anglo Saxon type.

Clarke, Harriet Talcott Buckingham, 1832-1890, Diary of Harriet Talcott Buckingham Clarke, May, 1851, in Covered Wagon Women: Diaries & Letters from the Western Trails, vol. 3: 1851. Holmes, Kenneth L., ed. & comp. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.