Category: Photography

Photography

Breakfast of Champions

Shelly

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Scrambled veggie eggs with cheddar stuffed into a whole wheat pita. Normally, I’d have added mushrooms, celery, broccoli, spinach, and roma tomatoes, too, but apparently this was a plain old green pepper and onion day.

The peppers, by the way, were the cheapest I’ve seen them since last summer. They must be starting to come into season somewhere. Everything else in the produce department, of course, has gone up in price.

Oh, and Ms. Lea, that is the lone, last lunch plate from your mom’s restaurant. Somehow, my mom ended up with the leftover dishes, and when it got down to one plate, she asked me if I wanted it.

Photography

More Raspberry Leaves

Shelly

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This is the third photo from a couple of days ago. I meant to go out and take follow-up shots of these leaf buds yesterday, to show how much they’ve opened, but didn’t get around to it. Between cat sitting and looking up census records, I didn’t get around to much of anything this weekend. Maybe tonight, if there’s a break in the rain.

Photography

Sun Drawing Water

Shelly

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Crepuscular Rays, New Unionville, Monroe County, Indiana

I took this as I was coming back from cat sitting last night. One thing about living here is that, when you’re driving, the view is constantly changing with every hill and curve. This is one of the few relatively flat areas along this particular stretch of road. It’s also about the only section of road with a safe place to pull over, so when I saw how dramatic the sky had become, I hoped that there’d be something interesting to see when I got there.

I happened to pull over in front of a house where roofers were working. They must have thought I’d lost my mind, because when I got out of the car and started taking pictures, they all stopped working to watch me.

[Sun drawing water is what the ancient Greeks called crepuscular rays. Not exactly how evaporation works, but it does make a certain amount of logical sense.]

Crankypantsing, Photography

Spring

Shelly

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Raspberry leaves unfurling

I’ve got two cat sitting jobs this weekend. At one of the houses, the pussy willows are budding. I’m going to try to remember to take my camera tomorrow. Then, when I took the dog out for her afternoon walk, I noticed that the leaves on the black raspberries are starting to unfurl.

An unfortunate byproduct of Spring is that one of my neighbors has been leaving their little Chihuahua outdoors for long periods of time. The dog shrieks non-stop, and it’s about to make my ears bleed. I feel sorry for the dog, and I’d like to kick the owners in the shins.

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Cemeteries, Photography

Buddie

Shelly

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Buddie 1934-1948
Grave Marker, Dunn Cemetery, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana

Sometimes, the full names, dates, etc. were placed on a central family monument, then simple head or foot stones with initials or just the first names marked the actual graves. I need to go back over to the cemetery and take another look, but I’m pretty sure that there weren’t any family monuments nearby that looked connected to this one. The other side of the stone bears an inscription for Erma Defur, who died in 1902, just after she turned a year old.

So who the heck was Buddie, then? A child? A beloved family dog? Was he a brother of someone in the Defur family?

And who was Erma Defur? There is another monument with her name and dates on it, in the Stewartsville Cemetery. I wonder which grave she’s actually buried in.

Cemeteries, Genealogy, Photography

Sarah and William and Nell and Louis

Shelly

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Graver Marker of Sarah and William Frost
Dunn Cemetery, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana

And on the subject of people’s dead relations… I’ve been running into genealogical road blocks because my great grandmother’s surname is not at all common. I’ve found a lot of Basquills, and they are surely all related in some way, but I can’t get farther back than my great-great-great grandfather, Michael.

I’ve had the opposite problem with my great grandfather’s name. Do y’all know how many Louis Thompsons there are and/or were? Lordy! I finally managed to grab at a thread that lead me to a 1910 census record for his family, though.

1910 US Federal Census
Louis Thompson b. 1904
Fulton County, Georgia
William B. Thompson age 34
Estelle Thompson age 34
Douglas Thompson age 11
Russell Thompson age 11
Beulah Thompson age 8
Louis Thompson age 6
Miller Thompson age 4
Estelle Thompson age 2
Warren Thompson 6/12 (6 months)

Each of those names is another thread that might lead to more information and yet more threads. Most importantly, I now have the names of his parents, along with approximate birth years. If those don’t pan out, I can look for information on his siblings, and see if someone else has traced them backwards.

It’s dry stuff, I know, but it totally made my day.