I decided a scrambled egg would be a nice change from oatmeal. Does a double yolk on a Monday morning mean this will be a good week?
Puzzle Pieces
In addition to my own family genealogy, I’ve been working on a One Name Study of the Basquill family. In sort, I’m collecting all the Basquills and trying to fit them together. Sometimes it’s easy going, but other times there just isn’t enough information to hold two threads together.
This is the situation I found myself in with the family of John Basquille and Mary Kerrigan. They aren’t “my” Basquills (as far as I know, at this point), so when I hit a brick wall with them, I wrote up some brief notes and let it go.
Today, as I was looking through some of the entries in the Irish death registry, I came across this record for a John Basquill of Lackaun who died in 1898 of influenza. He had been married, with his wife preceding him in death. Do you have any idea how many John Basquills there are in my one name study database? Even just looking at the ones in the Lackaun area with daughters named Bridget, it was impossible for me to figure out where he belonged.
But then I found that note I’d made.
I’d wondered why the four youngest children had emigrated to the US when they did. I didn’t know for sure that their parents had died, but I couldn’t find anyone that fit their description in the 1901 or 1911 censuses. Emigrating seemed like an ill-advised venture, though, given that the kids did not fair especially well once they got here. One son ended up spending time in Willard State Hospital. (Yes, that Willard State Hospital.)
I would need more confirmation before I’d want to unequivocally state that this John Basquill is that John Basquille, but as a working theory, I’m going to go with it.
Irish BMD Register Images
I don’t think I mentioned that the Irish birth, marriage, and death index images are now online and available for free. You can search them at IrishGenealogy.ie. These are just the registry entries, but they have most of the information you’d find in the official certificates. They’re a goldmine, if you have Irish ancestors.
The page above is from the death register and contains the entry for my great-great grandfather, Walter Basquill. If I’m deciphering the handwriting properly, he died of infirmity and cardiac weakness.
Sunrise Over Wright Quad
Again, I couldn’t get even one coworker to get up off their ass and walk ten feet to the window, to look at the sky. I can’t imagine ever taking something so beautiful for granted.
Stinkeye
I trimmed Thomas’ nail today. Just the one. And now he’s judging the hell out of me.
Just wait until tomorrow, when he finds out I’m going to trim another one. And another one, and another one, and another one.
Vive la résistance
I like to think that Thomas ate my cable bill as an act of political protest against our corporate overlords.
Tuesday Butterflies
Hobomok Skippers (yes, two of them)
Monarch Butterfly
Belt of Venus
This was the view to the west this morning, just before the sun rose. A thin band of clouds intensified the pink of the Belt of Venus.
An Early Orionid
I saw an early Orionid this morning. It’s far too early for the Orionids (late October is their season), but there it was, nonetheless.
Thomas was having a serious sniff around someone’s mailbox, and I was looking up at Orion. Like you do. And a meteor dropped from his belt. It was like it just fell straight down to the ground.
There are occasionally perks to getting up at 4am to walk the dog.
And of course I always think of this song, when I see a meteor.
Emily by Joanna Newsom
Pa pointed out to me, for the hundredth time tonight
The way the ladle leads to a dirt-red bullet of light
Squint skyward and listen
Loving him, we move within his borders
Just asterisms in the stars’ set order
We could stand for a century
Starin’
With our heads cocked
In the broad daylight at this thing
Joy
Landlocked
In bodies that don’t keep
Dumbstruck with the sweetness of being
Till we don’t be
Told, take this
Eat this
Told, the meteorite is the source of the light
And the meteor’s just what we see
And the meteoroid is a stone that’s devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee
And the meteorite’s just what causes the light
And the meteor’s how it’s perceived
And the meteoroid’s a bone thrown from the void that lies quiet in offering to thee
Sundogs
Left to right: Harriet the Boxer, Frances the Boxer x Pit Bull, and Thomas the Boxer x Klingon
I got into a bizarre discussion on Facebook with a former animal shelter ACO who believes that folks who live in apartments should not own dogs. She thinks that a fenced yard should be required, and that lack of one is dog abuse. (And weirder, she feels that it’s also abusive to have children in apartments.)
Can you just imagine if the millions and millions of city dwellers in the world no longer had dogs (or children)? We would have to kill even more dogs than we already kill, and for what? The lack of a mythical “perfect” home? That’s kind of monstrous.
So here are the three dogs I’ve had while living in my current apartment. I don’t think they look miserable. Sure, in a perfect world, we’d all have acres of flowered fields and enchanted forests to play in, but that isn’t the world most people inhabit, and that’s okay. Dogs are incredibly adaptable, and lucky for everyone, they mostly just want a chance to play, to go for walks, and to hang out with their people.
red paper boat 