another victorian family photo album

from an 1839 family bible

From a civil war era family photo album

A mid - late 19th century photo album came into luncheonette library that's filled with a family and its branches from New York, Illinois, and parts beyond.

 Filled with tintypes and cartes de visites, and most of the people identified. Where a person wasn't known, there's a question mark in the same penciled hand.

 My favorite photo. Sisters, I think. Look at the hand resting on the shoulder, the slightly tinted pink cheeks, the tight waists and curly hair.

Luncheonette Library

 Softly, as they say, the door opened. Okay not the door, the shop. Softly the shop opened. The problem is I somehow feel duly bent to read all the books before listing them.

Or stare at the photos, reading stories right into them. I had no idea, when I was 10, that all the postcards and pictures I kept in that Louis Sherry candy box were called ephemera. To me they were lives lived that I had to know about. I was always reporting on make believe.

All the books, all the birds, all the words

Headline news around the farmstead:

Really excited about a new project that has to do with that photograph and a whole trove of old cabinet cards, books, maps, and, yes, ephemera. That word. More on that soon. The luncheonette is branching out.

The aim is to finish my own book by early fall. Wish me luck and good writing. Have to thank some of the people keeping me on track. Thank you, people keeping me on track. I promise to not get too sidetracked by the chickens.

Lucy, my main mama hen, has gone broody again, so there will be more new chicks on the farm.

This is what happened to the grey chick that used to like roosting on his mama's back. He's three months here. He's a mutt, but we call him a Speckled Greentailed Nutjob. A new breed. He comes from bird man Barry down High Falls way. Or his egg did. If you want to know about feathered things, visit his site. It's addictive.

The yellow chick is tamer and is probably a rooster as well, but likes to follow me around the pen as I pick up rocks — there are worms under them there rocks. For some reason we didn't try to define this one. It/he/she doesn't seem so novel, so odd. Metaphors and chickens go together so well.

Some plumage on this one. His tailfeathers are starting to flow irridescent green. He has bell bottoms. I know there's a term for leg feathers. Shall look under some rocks for it.

walking the newfoundland

It was unusually cold today. Raining, then wind rolling the treetops around, all these big maples flipping the green leaves up into a flinty sky. The newfoundland was ready for her walk despite, or perhaps because of the weather: she's a newfoundland after all. Probably felt like, finally. I love our walks.

Number crunching

The hens laid 4 eggs.

The orchid bloomed 7 flowers.

The 1960s dress is one crazy psychedelic abstract coffee house wonder and is 25% off.

The 2 peace sign pendant necklaces really are from the sixties and have never been outside til now.

From the family album

Proton, daughter of Quax and Maya, in the field, May 2010

Maya teaches Proton all about the water, same day.

Pups from the Quax and Maya litter pretending to be pups in a Japanese woodblock print, around May 2010

German shepherd play in the back room, involving lots of mutual teeth clacking and other forms of bonding, 2010

Quax as he appeared on the TOC of Field and Stream magazine