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Is August too soon for ghost stories?

One of my former students, I learned yesterday, is beginning her new job as a reporter in Savannah. Great city, of course. The Yankee and I were married there. We visit often. And I’m excited for my young journalist friend. It should be a great market for her to start polishing her skills.

The day before yesterday I learned another former student has just begun a job reporting at NBC in Chicago. Her third stop in the business is number three in the Nielsen rankings. Only New York and Los Angeles are bigger markets, of course. In the media, the dues paying a young employee does sometimes means starting in smaller newsrooms, or in smaller markets, or both. Over time the successful worker bee moves up the ladder. Courtney, who is now in Chicago, started in market 138, moved to 35 and is now in market number three. To make it that high, that early in her career is a testament ~~to my innate ability~~ to her incredible talent and superior networking skills. Success stories are successful for a reason, and I’m always so proud to see my friends continue their success.

I keep a map of where my former students are. They’ve spread out across the country, of course. But I know, from my map, that four of them are working in Chicago. A few are working abroad. The problem is that I’ve been doing this long enough that inevitability some people fall off my radar. I only catch so much on LinkedIn. (I updated four of those map locations last night, for example.) So please keep me updated with your success stories, my friends.

Someone I met 15 years ago in my first year on campus went out into the world, and then law school, and is now teaching classes at a law school. That’s the one that aged me.

Today’s errands put a few new lines on my face too, I’m sure of it. I took the garbage to the garbage taking place, because, again, no one picks up garbage in this neighborhood. Despite two companies which pick up garbage in the neighborhood. I have witnessed it and taken photographic proof. Monday, a truck stopped at the house across the street. A gentleman stepped off and grabbed our neighbors’ discarded materials and drove off to … wherever garbage trucks go when they’re through on your street.

We had a little chat with our neighbor yesterday. A wonderfully pleasant and cheerful man. The sort that knows everyone, and talks about them like they’re all old friends, and you are too. I should have asked him about the garbage truck. Probably he owned the company, or the person that does owes him some not insubstantial favor.

Anyway, in and out at the convenience center, as it is locally called. And, except for the location, it is convenient. Of course, if that isn’t too convenient, or at least upwind, that’s OK, too.

From there I went to the Tractor Supply to inquire about peach baskets. They have no tractors, a thin selection of supplies, and no peach baskets. The woman I spoke with there suggested I go to the Coal and Ice, which is a local hardware store that has kept it’s name, if not it’s original products. The Coal and Ice does not carry peach baskets. (I wonder if I can make a gag of renaming that store everything they don’t have. This would be unfair, it’s a small store. And it would become a long gag pretty quickly. For example, so far it would be the Coal and Ice, and Digital Deadbolt, Sliding Glass Door Lock and Peach Basket. They do carry, however, weather stripping for basement doors. I have to be fair about this inventory gag I won’t pursue.)

A nice lady at the Coal and Ice suggested a farm market. Produce stands on the side of the road. That was, actually, my next option. They’re ubiquitous, and that’s lovely. But most of them are all stocked and sold on an honor system, which is charming. I needed to talk with someone, but no dice.

So I set out for a distant grocery store to buy Milo’s. They did not have Milo’s. So I visited a sister store to try my luck again. I think maybe the delivery guy has been under the weather or something, because I went oh-for-two. I need that driver to get back on the road, quickly.

My next stop was a Lowe’s, but on the way there I ran across a place called Bloomer’s Garden Center. A big, sprawling, someone-has-to-water-all-of-these-plants-daily place. A place with a water garden wing, and another bird sanctuary wing. Everything smelled of rich nitrogen soil. These people are in the business of selling things to people who want to grow things. The woman there had no idea about peach baskets. I think they must appear from the very air.

So I went to Lowe’s. I looked there for peach baskets. No luck, of course, because that’s a pretty small, and obviously obscure, item for a box store. I did get two garbage cans, because see above, and a spool of weed eater string. You could purchase this in spools of one or three. I had the three-spool pack in my hand, considered my traditional weed eater habits and opted for the smaller, less expensive version. Rolled my two garbage cans to the self-checkout, and then out to the car.

Next to the Lowe’s there was a Dollar Tree. I walked in there. No peach baskets. But I did find small plastic baskets that are about the proper size, have a big breathable basket type pattern and a convenient handle. I got six of them. Paid eight bucks, which is probably close to how much gas I’ve spent on that search today.

Picked up some Chick-fil-A for a very late lunch and then drove it the 20-some minutes back to the house. Whereupon I learned that one of the two garbage cans I picked up … doesn’t have a lid.

So I’ll go back there tomorrow.

We went on a bike ride early this evening and it was obvious almost right away that I had no legs. My lovely bride waited on me twice, but finally I waved her on. No need for her to slow down if I can’t speed up. This is a training ride for her, anyway.

I just turned mine into a scenic experience. Here’s today’s barn by bike.

The last four miles on this route are uphill, which is to say, have a gentle, gradual slow ascent. There’s nothing bigger than a roller, but you gain the same 70 feet a few times over and over. Also, I was developing a soft rear wheel. I titled the ride “Slow leak, Slower legs.”

Tomorrow’s ride will be a bit better. But I have to allow for a few minutes to swap out that tube. Some first world problems feel insulting even to the concept of the first world problems meme.

For dinner, we took some of these tomatoes from the backyard …

And some of these peaches from the front yard …

And mixed them with some things we purchased at a nearby grocery store to make a tasty little peach salsa.

It complimented everything nicely, but the cilantro and the onion muted the peaches just a bit. Anyway, we’ll have plenty more opportunities to try this concept. We might also soon be eating peaches as an entree. I mean, aside from breakfast and midday snacks.

And I have those baskets now, so we’re now important produce power players, locally speaking.

I have started tracking down the local historical markers. New county, new goals and all of that. I found a site that lists 115 markers in this county, so there’s a ton of easy content!

This is the second installment. You can find them all under this brand new blog category, We Learn Wednesdays. What will we learn about today?

This is a place called Seven Stars. Built in 1762 by a man named Peter Lauterbach, it is architecturally significant, and there are important bits of social and military history inside those brick walls as well. The side features Flemish patterned brickwork, which was once a common thing here, and will come up again in a later post. In this case, the pattern carries the initials “P-L-E” for Peter and Elizabeth Lauterbach.

Their son John Louderback changed his name and lived in the tavern during the Revolutionary War. The British came through and raided the tavern, looking for him. He had a price on his head because he was thought to be giving food to the Americans. Louderback and his family hid in the woods. And, a few years later, he marched with a unit out of Pennsylvania. Earlier he’d served under Casimir Pulaski.

Peter, the father, died in 1780. John lived to see the country independent, and died in 1802. His mother lived until at least 1806, which is where historians find her name on a church roll. She also voted in 1800, presumably because of the property she held, inherited from her husband or otherwise. During that period, depending on where you were, it is estimated that between seven and 25 percent of the tallied votes were cast by women. (A state law that was billed as progressive at the time disenfranchised women and Blacks in 1807.)

Seven Stars has a lot of ghost stories attached to it, as well. In the early 20th century, the residents claimed seeing figures on horseback riding up to the tavern window, that small one to the left of the door, which was where people got their orders. Someone is said to have seen a ghostly figure checking on a baby. Supposedly Peter roams the ground looking for valuables he buried during the Revolution. Another spirit is said to be a spy for the British who found his end at the end of a rope in the attic. A Halloween-type site says loud footsteps and scuffle sounds can sometimes be heard in the attic. A pirate is thought to be a frequent haunter, as well. Be as skeptical as you like, but someone also needs to go camp out and see if the ghostly ghosts and their ghostly horses trot up to the tavern window.

It is now a private residence.

In the center of town you’ll find this wonderful bit of signage. There’s a lot going on there, because, for a small town, a lot has gone on there.

I’m sure we’ll pick up on some of those themes again in future installments. For now, here’s the door to that bank, which is still standing, sturdy and beautiful as ever.

Some day, I’ll go back and photograph the whole of the building. When I was there for this, it was small-town rush hour, and people have to get where people want to go.

(Update: A few weeks later, I had the opportunity to improve on the shot. Here’s the First National Bank.)

Which is what you should do, right now. Go to the next place. But come back here tomorrow. There’s going to be a lot more fun to discuss here tomorrow.

adventures / cycling / errands / history / photo / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
18
Jul 23

A full day’s worth

This morning we took The Yankee’s car to a mechanic. It was a planned event. She needed an oil change and, I suspected, a radiator flush. She searched around, found a place that got great reviews, and made an appointment so, literally, a planned event.

I followed her over, we met the guy, sitting three rooms deep into his shop. Large fellow, sleeveless shirt, bandana on his head. Hunting paraphernalia on his desk. There were fishing rods in the corner, a Dale Earnhardt flag hanging on the wall. I felt like I understood him right away.

We left the car, which he said would be ready this afternoon. We headed back, stopping off at the grocery store for a few lunch supplies. The afternoon passed easily enough. I believe I was finishing up a bit of reading and writing on LinkedIn when she said the mechanic called and her car was ready. So we went back over, the first half of the short trip entirely by memory. And the car was ready! Windows rolled down. Key in the ignition. Inside, she paid the fellow. Cash. He made change, from his pocket. He said the radiator flush was the right call. Said he tested it. So we established I knew what I was talking about, that he’d work on both of our cars, his prices are fair and, possibly, he doesn’t hold up progress by slow-walking maintenance work.

If that’d been it, that would have been a day’s worth, right there.

At the house, she said, there was something she wanted to show me. Turns out, we’ve got a peach tree.

Five varieties of peaches grow here. Now we have to become peach experts.

There are also some tomato plants out back. Do you know who is a tomato expert?

And there’s a corner of Lactuca sativa. Funny, you just don’t think of growing your own lettuce.

This is something called clammy goosefoot, an herb from Australia. I don’t know what you’d use it for, and I have yet to find a site that screams “You simply MUST put this on your pasta.” So probably I won’t.

But we also found some chives …

Nearby was the oregano.

And, of course, the sage.

We’re going to have to determine the schedules for all of these plants now. And, if that had been it, that would have been a day’s worth. But no.

For, you see, we went to join this running club. But, for the second week in a row, they no showed. They are, in fact, running away from us.

Which is fine, because ~~I need someone to chase~~ I wasn’t going to run this evening anyway. It usually works like this. I think Rest day? Schmest day! And then, the next day, I realize the error in that thought, and the wisdom in a rest day. So today, I did not run, or anything else, because I had eight days of workouts (be they ever so humble) in a row, and 11 days in the last 12.

Tomorrow I’ll … exercise … or something.

Instead of running, we got milkshakes. Dinner. We got dinner. And also milkshakes. We carried that back to the house and watched today’s stage of the Tour de France. And here’s the thing about the Tour … it’s 21 days of racing and this is the 110th edition and that means there’s a lot of history and trivia and wonderful anecdotes and a lot of it, until recently, wasn’t kept with baseball statistic precision. We did know, coming into this stage, that this was the third-narrowest time differential (10 seconds) between first and second place riders after 15 completed stages. We knew that because the TV producers made a fine graphic telling us about it.

Also, you know, it’s a bike race. Real roads, differing technologies and external circumstances and terrain and routes and all of that. It’s hard to compare the apples and pears of the time differential in this year’s race with the leading comparable statistic, which was four seconds between Jos Hoevenaers and Federico Bahamontes in 1959.

Bahamontes wound up winning, Hoevenaers finshed eighth, down 11-plus minutes. But everything about the style of the race was different then.

It also seems difficult to compare the tight affairs of this year’s Tour with the legendary 1989 race, which was a 50-second race on the last day, ultimately won by Greg Lemond by eight seconds. Someone put together the Lemond and Laurent Fignon time trial side-by-side.

Evolving cycling technology is coming into play here. Lemond, on the left, has aero bars and a new teardrop-shaped aerodynamic helmet. He only used the disc wheel on the back. Fignon ran two disc wheels, which leaves you more susceptible to crosswinds. Also, Fignon road a conventional style. It got so silly after the fact that people also speculated that, had he cut his hair, Fignon would have avoided eight seconds of air drag.

I’ve heard Lemond say, more than once now, that he was told Laurent Fignon was haunted by that race for the rest of his life. That he walked around counting eight seconds. Fignon, in his autobiography, wrote “You never stop grieving over an event like that.”

Anyway, that was the closest finish in history, but after 15 stages, the difference between them in first and second was 40 seconds.

It’d be a bit easier to compare the technology of today to the second closest, the 2008 edition, where Frank Schleck, of Luxembourg, was leading Australian Cadel Evans by eight whole seconds after 15 stages. (Also, bikeraceinfo.com reminds me that Austrian Bernhard Kohl was in between them, down only seven seconds to Schleck. Kohl later confessed to doping, so he disappears from the official records.) Eight seconds! Neither of those guys won the Tour.

At least that looks familiar. Modern. It’s only 15 years ago, and those riders have all retired, but the names are familiar. Indeed, I remember that particular tour. The technology and nutrition have jumped significantly ahead in the generations hence. Even the way they race, in terms of strategy and tactics, has been evolving since then. It’s the same, but different, remember.

But this year’s tour will be difficult to forget. Today …

Time trials aren’t usually very interesting to me, but I’d love to know how this ranks historically. The guy in second place, two-time Tour winner Tadej Pogacar, started the day down 10 seconds, and he had an incredible ride. The only problem was the guy behind him, his rival, the defending champion and current leader, Jonas Vingegaard, had an incredibler ride. A gobsmacking ride. Watching the time gaps grow at the checks was something that strained credulity. You could tell he was riding hard, working for it, riding well. It was in the body language right away. But that stage was a deconstruction. This is a place I actually want more statistics. Has a time trial ever done such a thing to an evenly matched opponent? SBS offered a slightly more technical comparative look of the two rivals.

What started the day as a tense, 10-second race finished a mind-boggling one minute and 48 second race between the two best road racers in the world. This will be hard to forget. And there are more mountains to come.

If that’d been it, that would have been a day’s worth, but no.

Because I also updated and upgraded a deadbolt. I only messed up two parts, and it only took several more minutes than the directions promised. But, it is installed. It is square. It matches the door knob. And, importantly, it is functional.

Each entry and exit through that door will now be reported to the ninja barracks out back, via a military grade wifi network, so that they can monitor and approve of all of the comings and goings.

When they aren’t worrying over that oregano.

history / Indigo Girls / music / photo / tabs / video — Comments Off
13
Jun 23

‘We are fortunate ones, fortunate ones, I swear’

That time I got to hang out with Charley Pride in Nashville.

The reason The Ryman is called the mother church of country music, Wikipedia will tell us, is, in part …

The auditorium opened as the Union Gospel Tabernacle in 1892. Its construction was spearheaded by Thomas Ryman, a Nashville businessman who owned several saloons and a fleet of riverboats. Ryman conceived the idea of the auditorium as a tabernacle for the influential revivalist Samuel Porter Jones. He had attended one of Jones’ 1885 tent revivals with the intent to heckle, but was instead converted into a devout Christian who pledged to build the tabernacle so the people of Nashville could attend large-scale revivals indoors. It took seven years to complete and cost $100,000 (equivalent to $3,257,037 in 2022). Jones held his first revival at the site on May 25, 1890, when
only the building’s foundation and six-foot walls had been completed.

Now, Samuel Porter Jones is from a small patch of nowhere in Alabama, on the Georgia border. He grew up in Cartersville, Georgia, a small quiet town north of Kennesaw, which is north of Atlanta. I spent some Saturdays in Cartersville in 2006, wandering around taking pictures of the aging downtown while The Yankee was teaching her first classes. We were even younger then than we are today.

Anyway, the other reason they may call The Ryman the mother church is because it still feels like a church, from the pews to the faux windows to the classic mid-century church light fixtures.

So this building was inspired by the Georgian Samuel Jones — who could be coarse, who was outlandish, and who was one of the most popular revivalist preachers of is day.

But … do you know who else is from Georgia?

The bummer of this, one of the less recalled power songs from “Swamp Ophelia” is that my alarm went off in the middle of the song. And, it turns out, that when the alarm goes off the video recording stops. The last 30 seconds or so aren’t here, but the best of it, and the best of it, are here.

“Swamp Ophelia” is their fifth album, and, they played four songs from it, counting “Fugitive,” in this show.

On the record, this is one of those tracks that has a symphonic accompaniment, but it comes to life in the live show. I guess it just got lost for me on the record, but then along came the 2010 live album, “Staring Down the Beautiful Dream.” It included a masterful version of the song from a 2009 New Jersey show, a powerful, urgent version that is not at all easy to dismiss. So, hearing it live now, still feels new. And anytime Amy Ray sings her heart out, I’m happy to hear it.

Which is going to make the next several videos a lot of fun.

It is time for a Tuesday tabs feature. Tabs, they sure do add up. Bookmarks cost nothing, but some pages just don’t seem to rise to that level. And, yet, some pages are too valuable to simply press the little X. So they just sit there, open for ages. But, instead of keeping them up, I’m memorializing a few of those sorts of sites here, just on the off chance I do decide to look that one thing up again one day.

I’ve always enjoyed this idea. I wonder what the neighbors would think. I wonder if you could just do sections of your property. Replacing your lawn with wildflowers has loads of benefits

To prove it, a team at King’s College has broken a long-held tradition. In 2019, they stopped nearly half of the college’s iconic Back Lawn from being mown for the first time since it was laid in 1772 and planted a wildflower meadow mix in the topsoil of this region.

A sprinkling of poppies, cornflowers, and oxeye daisies later burst into life. According to new findings, the football field-sized patch of color now supports more than 3.6 times as many plants, spiders, and bugs as nearby lawns.

In fact, the biomass of invertebrates living in the meadow is 25 times higher than what lives in a regular lawn, including twice as many species in need of conservation.

Researchers say the meadow supported about four times as many declining plant species in 2021 as it once did as a lawn.

I clicked this one thinking I’d nail it, but I was surprised by what I read. It lands here because it seems obvious that it’d be good to adapt some of these approaches. Harvard-trained psychologist: If you use any of these 9 phrases every day, ‘you’re more emotionally secure than most’:

Emotionally secure people are empowered, confident and comfortable in their own skin. They walk the world with authenticity and conviction, and do what is meaningful to them.

As a Harvard-trained psychologist, I’ve found that this sense of self-assuredness makes them better able to navigate conflict and be vulnerable with others, mostly because they aren’t looking for external validation.

But takes a lot of work to get there. If you use any of these nine phrases, you’re more emotionally secure than most people:

I’ve seen one of these, but the rest will just have to go on the list of things to get around to watching one day. 6 must-see World War II documentaries:

Numerous documentaries have ventured to convey the seemingly insurmountable odds confronted by ground, air and naval forces, and the immense sacrifices that resulted.

As such, we compiled a list of five comprehensive World World II documentaries that best tell these harrowing stories.

OK, if you insist. Ireland self-drive tour – Your 7-day to 14-day itinerary:

Whether travelling for one week or two weeks, our itinerary provides all the major highlights of the beautiful Emerald Isle.

On this scenic drive, see ancient historic sites and monastic ruins set in the beautiful Irish countryside. The stunning sheer cliffs of the coast hide secluded bays and sheltered beaches ready to explore.

Best of all, meet the locals in their friendly towns, small and large, that define the island.

When do we leave?

cycling / history / Monday / music / photo / Re-Listening / video — Comments Off
12
Jun 23

I just won’t move fast

Got a bit of back lockup syndrome. I’ve been fighting shoulder aches and muscle spasms for about two weeks. It’s been the try a different way to sleep sort of thing. A get a household massage every other day sort of thing. A take a muscle relaxer and try to sleep it off sort of thing. Only, now, moving things around the house, it’s become a sit very still sort of thing.

It’ll pass in good time.

Fortunately, I can still do this. A little. For a time.

We had a nice ride on Saturday. The first 18 miles were great!

But after that first hour, my shoulder started sending the familiar signals. And then my back started sending new information to the brain, too. And so I found myself slowing down.

This year, a new bit of information has been passing through the ol’ central nervous system. It involves the tip of the middle toe on my right foot. It’s a contact thing.

I googled this on all of the cycling sites. They suggest my equipment might be getting old, but there’s only 3,500 miles on these Specialized Torches, which I purchased in February of last year. (But do you see the big paint scrapes on that pedal arm? I may need a new bike.) They also suggested my shoes might be too tight, but I checked them before this Saturday ride, and they are not.

There’s not a clever punchline or wrap up to that story, which, I’m sure, means it comes down to technique.

We saw The Indigo Girls at the Union Gospel Tabernacle, the mother church of country music. The former home of the Opry. The Ryman Auditorium.

Somehow, this was my first time at The Ryman. And I have video. I’m going to stretch this out for a while. So, for today, here’s the opening act, Aaron Lee Tasjan and his band.

Some New York writer once said Aaron Lee Tasjan had a unique take on what the author called “indie folk grit.”

I don’t know what that means.

But I did see Arlo Guthrie in this performance. You will, too. And if you caught the whole act, there’s a modern day John Prine emerging in that act, too.

Opened in 1892, the Ryman was famously the home of the Grand Ole Opry from the 1940s to the 1970s. It was, by then, a building showing it’s age. The performers didn’t like it. The audiences were hard on the venue. And so the Opry moved to the amusement park. Roy Acuff, who had a big stake in Opryland, wanted to raze The Ryman. He probably imagined his hand on the plunger. A big public effort, though, kept the building alive. It got exterior renovations in 1989, the interior was lovingly improved in the early 1990s. In the late 90s the Opry came back for special events and for an early-winter schedule. (They’re still doing the legendary old show over at Opry Mills, even though the amusement park itself is now long gone.) More work was done on The Ryman in the teens. Last year they opened a Rock ‘n’ Roll wing, and so all of this is fitting, to me.

I think I can get about two weeks of videos out of what I recorded at this show. It was great. But we’ll get into that.

Here’s a very quick installment from the Re-Listening project. Regular readers know I’m listening to all of my old CDs in the order in which I acquired them. We’re in 1999 right now. This is a soundtrack, and to a show I never watched or liked. If I say I’ve watched five complete episodes of South Park I’ve come in high. But the Chef songs were, at the time, kind of funny.

Problem is, what was kind of funny to me then is sub-sophomoric now. This thing went four-times platinum in Australia, and was also certified platinum in New Zealand, Canada, the UK and here in the States. It ended 1999 at number 65 on the year-end U.S. Billboard 200, so I’m willing to accept I have the minority opinion. You’ll just have to accept that I’m correct.

The songs that aren’t dated and insincere comedy, by and large, just don’t appeal to me. This is the only song I looked forward to.

Tomorrow, there’s no Re-Listening project. We’re all caught up! But there will be a great Indigo Girls song and some other almost equally amazing content. Also, my back will feel better.

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30
May 23

A photo in tin

I didn’t know this photo existed, but when we stopped by to see my grandfather, who is always full of surprises, he fished this image out of a stack. There were a handful of photos of him as a little boy, posing in a studio with his beautiful mother, and even some of his grandmother, who I knew.

Think of it. I have real memories of a great-great-grandmother who died, at 92, when I was in high school. I also had a great-grandmother who died when I was in college, and another great-grandmother who lived until I was 28. But this isn’t about those remarkable people. This is about this new-to-me photograph.

These people are my mother’s mother’s parents, my maternal-maternal great-grandparents. She died when I was three, but I don’t have any memory of her. He died when I was five, and I have a few glimpses of him in my mind’s eye.

Here, he’s holding my great-aunt. We estimate she’s about three years old in that photo, putting him at about 24 and his wife at about 21. She’s holding a great-uncle I never knew. But look how young!

My great-grandmother here looks like my grandmother. And from a few photos of this young woman I can see traits of most every woman in my family.

Earlier this month my mom texted me a photo of when she was a child, some four decades after the picture here. It looks like a vacation photo. She’s in oversized glasses, with her parents and her grandparents, the ones pictures here. Behind my mother is her grandmother, a mid-century grandma out of central casting. Her daughter, my grandmother, looks impossibly young in that way that never makes sense when you’re only accustomed to seeing someone in a different stage of their life. My grandfather is there, short sleeve button down, shiny watch, comical shorts (though I never knew him, I never think of him wearing shorts) and shin high dark socks. Now, except for those socks, it all works, because he has the mod haircut of the time and he’s wearing the best sunglasses 1960s technology had to offer.

Behind them all is my great-grandfather, my mother’s grandpa. That guy above. Long pants, long-sleeved shirt with a large windowpane print, with a neat little banded fedora on top of his head. He’s holding a cup with a straw in his left hand. They all look like they’re posing for a serious rock band photo, or as if something important has happened in front of them just as the photo was taken. They weren’t ready for a modern posed photograph, except for my great-grandfather, who is smiling just a bit.

He’s probably, let’s say, mid-early-60s in the image I just described. I remember him as an even older man, of course. Here he is, with two of his great-grandchildren. (He’d have 15 or so great-grandkids, but he wouldn’t get to meet the all. The best one is standing to his left, anyway.) He’s sitting in a creaky old lawn chair in his daughter’s lawn. I remember those chairs, and I spent a lot of time in that grass, beneath the kitchen window, around the little well building, and in front of the giant shop building.

He’s been posed in front a big building for both of those photos. It’s rather poetically symmetric in a way.

Trying to find a way to wrap up this post, I looked up some of that young woman’s lineage. With a few clicks, I was able to trace my great-great grandmother’s ancestors back five more generations, to when her great-great-great grandfather immigrated to South Carolina from Ireland aboard a vessel called the Lord Dunluce in 1772. He was 17-ish, came over alone, and had 100 acres coming to him, somehow. He got married, at 19, in 1774. He died in 1808, and is buried in South Carolina. Another part of her family, the Internet tells me, came from North Carolina after crossing the Atlantic at some point in the middle of the 18th century. That branch can be traced back, with no effort on my part, to the 16th and 17th century and places like Aarau and Zurich, Switzerland. Still others came over to Massachusetts, seemingly from England, in the early part of the 17th century.

But I’m going to wrap it up this way. My great-grandmother, in that first photo above, was picking cotton one morning. She was full-term, and, the story goes, delivered one of her children around midday. In the afternoon, she was back out in the field picking cotton again.