Salvaging an old copper light--Before and After and After

The book with the copper stripe on the spine is my first and only copy of

MELVILLE BIOGRAPHY: AN INSIDE NARRATIVE.

Bell and Costner, Bell and Costner

Top: James Robert (Bob) Bell and Alice Jane Costner Bell.
Lower picture: Victor Earl Miles (a Bell) and Doris Edwards (a Costner).
Alice is the aunt of my mother and of Doris Edwards.
Bob Bell is kin to Victor Miles in a profoundly Mississippian way.

Cake brought by the Seydors all the way from Carmel

The Spine says MELVILLE BIOGRAPHY in black letters on a strip of copper

I am ecstatic! What a present for a 77th birthday. You see the dust jacket beside the book. I can probably get a picture of the book that shows MELVILLE BIOGRAPHY on the gorgeous copper strip. This is Marianne Jankowski's design. The interior is as pleasing as the outside.

MELVILLE BIOGRAPHY: AN INSIDE NARRATIVE--A Copy is beside my keyboard

HAPPY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AND DEEP THANKS TO NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY PRESS FOR MAKING THE BOOK BEAUTIFUL.

Akua peeling a Granny Smith apple

I TOLD THEM SO--KOMO News Roach-eating contest winner choked to death

CNN) -- A 32-year-old man who died after downing dozens of roaches and worms last month to win a python at a Florida reptile store choked to death, medical officials said Monday.

Edward Archbold died "as a result of asphyxia due to choking and aspiration of gastric contents," said the Broward County Medical Examiner's Office. It said his airway was obstructed by bug body parts, and ruled his death was an accident.

Archbold was among 20 to 30 contestants participating in the "Midnight Madness" event at Ben Siegel Reptiles in Deerfield Beach.

The participant who consumed the most insects and worms would take home an $850 python.

Archbold swallowed roach after roach, worm after worm. While the store didn't say exactly how many Archbold consumed, the owner told CNN affiliate WPLG that he was "the life of the party."

Soon after the contest was over, Archbold fell ill and began to vomit, the Broward County Sheriff's Office said.

A friend called for medical help. Then, Archbold himself dialed 911, the store said in a Facebook post.

Eventually, he fell to the ground outside the store, the sheriff's office said. An ambulance took him to North Broward Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.

No other contestant fell ill, the sheriff's office said.

Maudie Langston Costner (Mrs. Moses Amariah Costner)--My mother's Aunt Maudie

Boise--in the news because of Ken Burns--Lurid Murder of Costner because of snoring

My mother's first cousin, cruelly murdered while lying beside an oil field roughneck. Her worst sin was not adultery but snoring.

Costners? Can any identify this couple?

The Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede

The Clarksville, Texas, STANDARD OF 23 February 1861 has a long article entitled

 "A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union."

Anything that would save modern Texans from having to think about issues ought to be received as something of a godsend to them.

Happy Birthday Grandfather Henry Hill

GGG Grandfather Henry Hill, 25 November 1776
1 December 1850
Tabernacle Cemetery
Green Hill, Alabama

Elizabeth Warren, after all, reprinted from WBUR site

So Elizabeth Warren has not documented her Cherokee and Delaware
ancestry! And so the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation (pictured on
TV) has been declared by Scott Brown not to look red. Look at him,
Scott Brown said, he's not a person of color! And here Scott Brown has
extended the "Person of Color" category to include us injuns. Well,
that's better than Obama in his inaugural address which mentioned other
colors but not red, to my pained dismay. (I rejoiced that day and wept
because only one person at the ceremonies mentioned Indians.)
Now, let's talk turkey. I always assumed Grandma Parker was half Indian
because she was so very dark and Indian looking. One of her daughters
was always called Blanket because she came out so dark that the family
thought about wrapping her in a blanket and dropping her off at the
reservation. Okie humor. I knew that some of my great aunts as recently
as 1990 were lamenting their failure to be in the Indian rolls, and they
had different explanations which usually came down to people in
Muskogee having to ride a horse or drive a wagon to Waggoner or
Bowlegs--something on the order of what the Republicans are doing in
Pennsylvania this year, where elderly people are being frozen out of the
electorate by arbitrary obstacles which non-mobile people cannot
surmount. I also thought Grandpa Parker was part Indian. He may have
been, but it's not documented at all. Why did his father call his mother
squaw? [I did not learn my highly refined political correctness from
blood relatives.]
Now I know that Grandma Parker had a white Scots father. One of his daughters told me he was a full blooded Irishman--presumably a misunderstanding of how so many Scots were in
Ireland before coming to the colonies. I was able (through misspelling
creatively and through an incisive clue in the 1900 census--the name of a
brother) to trace him back to Arkansas and then his parents to
Tennessee. NOT an Irishman who got off the boat in Indian Territory
somehow in the 1880s. NOT. Just another Scots-Irish guy with red hair.
Yet this Scot bowed his head before meals and said the Lord's Prayer in
Choctaw, and one of my aunts irritably said of her clay-pipe-smoking
child-pinching grandmother, "She was a Chockie"--a Choctaw. Well, part
Choctaw.
But my grandmother was also part Cherokee, who knows how
much? There's on record a story about Uncle Joe Coker being chased in
northern Arkansas by a party of Cherokees because he had taken one too
many Cherokee wives, and some of his brothers must have married
Cherokees. And my Glenns and Tuckers were party to the Jarndyce vs
Jarndyce trial of Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory--a joke to
those who got on the rolls early and often, a joke even in a history
published the year after statehood. The good part, for documentation,
was that cousins of mine testified in the 1880s and afterward before the
Dawes Commission on what they remembered about Indian ancestors in the
1830s and earlier.
I no longer say I am at least an eighth Indian, but I know that being part Indian was a defining
condition of my early life. Because of Grandma Parker and what I
understood about her I identified with her Choctaw and Cherokee
ancestry.
I'm with Liz.
Scott Brown, I have blue eyes and look as white as you, but oh my soul, and oh my
body, they are part Choctaw and part Cherokee. Out of the Senate, Scott
Brown! Make way for my Cousin Liz.

Why I Sound Just Like Jane Austen

Thomas Leigh 1520-1571 & Alice Barker +1603 | | | Alice Leigh 1543-1621 Rowland Leigh +1596/ | | Thomas Coney 1561-1637 William Leigh ca 1585-1632 | | Elizabeth Coney 1592-1617 William Leigh +1690 | | Elizabeth Sharpe 1613-1652 Theophilus Leigh 1648-1725 | | Joseph Isaack 1642-1689 Thomas Leigh 1697-1764 | | Richard Isaack 1679-1757 Cassandra Leigh 1739-1827 | | Mary Isaack 1712-1759 Jane Austen 1775-1817 | Elizabeth Peach 1733-1797 | Joseph W Hill 1750-1806 | Henry T Hill 1776-1850 | Alston Hill 1816-1900 | Frances Emily Hill 1866-1929 | Luther Parker 1887-1969 | Lloyd O Parker 1907-1987

John Camp on Payback and Karma

"Karma's just another word for payback"--Lucas Davenport.

John Sandford, MAD RIVER, p. 126.

James Robert Bell and Alice Jane Costner Bell

 

Cousin Bob and Aunt Alice at rest in Pollock, Texas. 

These 2 are why I have so many double cousins in Northern Mississippi.

Heddy's Turkey Roulade, Early, for the Seydors

John Andrew Jackson Costner

By far the clearest picture I have seen of John Andrew Jackson Costner, a Confederate Private who got as far north from Mississippi as Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.  James Harmon was given the picture by descendants of JAJC who live in Texas.
I knew this man's his son, Edgar Lugene Costner, my grandfather.
JAJC is Kevin Costner's great great grandfather.

Melville the "Modern Boccaccio"--forthcoming intro to Rare Bird edition of TYPEE

Death and Rebirth of Uncle Frank Dougherty in 1868

I Want a "Gift" such as Romney Talks to Donors About

Margaret Danyers 1348
|
|		|
John Leigh		John Savage ca 1370-1450
|		|
Richard Leigh 1446-1508		Mary Savage
|		|
Roger Leigh 1483		William Stanley 1425-1512
|		|
Thomas Leigh 1520-1571		William Stanley 1471-1546
|		|
a		Peter Stanley 1511-1592
|		|
Thomas Coney 1561-1637		Anne Stanley 1561
|		|
Elizabeth Coney 1592-1617		Anne Sutton 1590-1654
|		|
Elizabeth Sharpe 1613-1652		Martha Eltonhead 1625
|		|
Joseph Isaack 1642-1689		Eltonhead Conway
|		|
Richard Isaack 1679-1757		Martha Thacker
|		|
Mary Isaack 1712-1759		Edwin Hickman
|		|
Elizabeth Peach 1733-1797		James Hickman 1723-1816
|		|
Joseph W Hill 1750-1806		Susannah Hickman
|		|
Henry T Hill 1776-1850		Annie Browning
|		|
Alston Hill 1816-1900		George Washington Overall 1820-1871
|		|
Frances Emily Hill 1866-1929		Susan Catherine Overall 1849-1906
|		|
Luther Parker 1887-1969		Gabriella Clark 1877-1966
|		|
Lloyd O Parker 1907-1987		Ruth Lucille Armour 1900-1926
		|
		Stanley Dunham 1918-1992
		|
		Ann Dunham 1942-1995
		|
		Barack Obama 1961-

A simple cousinly birthday card would do.