Lenora Rogers's Blog, page 102
March 17, 2016
The Old Town Clock
From All that Remains, Volume 1 of Tales of Old Ipswich by Harold Bowen, I was watching the workmen install the new electric clock in the bell tower of the First church on the hill, and I thought i…
Source: The Old Town Clock
Mrs. Truman and the Housekeeper
First Lady Bess Truman.
Bess Wallace Truman would not tolerate any disregard to her authority.
Bess Wallace: Homebody
Bess Wallace (1885-1982) was the granddaughter of a well-to-do flour mill owner from Independence, MO. Her mother, Madge Gates, was a spoiled and self-centered woman, who had insisted on marrying David Wallace over her parents’ objections. Wallace was handsome and affable, but not up to the Gates’ “snuff.” His drinking and lack of financial success...
Fossil Valley, Twiston Near Downham, Lancashire
Rock with Crinoid Fossils From Twiston, Lancashire.
OS grid reference: SD 8090 4444. Something of a curiosity this one, maybe.In the wall along a stretchof the lane that runs throughthe long, narrowvalley between Twiston and Downham, at the north-western side of Pendle Hill,in Lancashire,are lumps of locally quarried ‘Fossiliferous Limestone’made upof crinoid and coralfossils, which datebacksome 500-300 million yearsto the Carboniferous period in Geological hist...
A Walk Among Storied Tombstones: Some Irish Dead in National Cemeteries
Irish in the American Civil War
In 2014 I was fortunate enough to walk a number of the Eastern Theater battlefields of the American Civil War. I took the time to visit some of the National Cemeteries along the way, at places like Cold Harbor, Glendale, Fredericksburg and Antietam. Military cemeteries are fascinating places. The National Cemeteries created out of the American Civil War stand to rival anything I have seen on European battlefields. Their scale and uniformity impart the cost of...
March 15, 2016
The Curse of Salem: A Hocus Pocus
“The spiral that we saw in Salem is the same one that spurred the Red Scare, and the same one that causes paranoia in parts of our society today. Perhaps the innocent women and men may find t…
Source: The Curse of Salem: A Hocus Pocus
The boy who fell beneath the ice, March 19, 1802
The Rev. Joseph Dana served the Second Congregational Church at the South Green from 1765 until his death in 1827 at age 85. His tombstone in the Old South Cemetery reads: “In memory of the R…
Source: The boy who fell beneath the ice, March 19, 1802
March 14, 2016
Parallelism in Ferdinand Hodler’s Symbolist Painting
Ferdinand Hodler, Self-portrait, c. 1900
On the 14th March 1853, Swiss painter Ferdinand Hodler was born in Gürzelen, canton of Berne. Hodler’s friend, Symbolist poet Louis Duchosal described him as “a mystic and a realist, a duality which disconcerts and disorients …. He excels in rendering the things of the past or of the dream and the realities of life.” (‘Le Salon Suisse’, Revue de Genève, 20 October 1885). The artist began his training in the 1870s, as a realist painter of...
Sorrow Mountain: The Journey of a Tibetan Warrior Nun – Ani Pachen & Adelaide Donnelley
Last year I wrote about Ani Pachen, an incredible shero who was, as the title of this book indicates, aTibetan warrior nun. Her life intrigued and inspired me, and I wanted to know more, so I ordered her biographySorrow Mountain,which I’ve just finished reading.
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What happened this month in history?
If It Happened Yesterday, It's History
In the days just after the Nazi surrender Winston Churchill was moved to warn President Truman, a year before he famously used the metaphor, that an ‘iron curtain’ was drawing upon Europe. The seeds for this warning were arranged at Yalta, in February 1945, where the division of Europe was sealed and that of the postwar fate of Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Convoys of tanks carried...
The Life of Catherina Pitcairn
Today we take a more detailed look at one of the people mentioned in our recent biography of the eighteenth-century courtesan, Grace Dalrymple Elliott, An Infamous Mistress.
Our subject today is Catherina Pitcairn who was first cousin to Grace; Elizabeth Dalrymple had married John Pitcairn, a man who rose through the ranks of the marine regiments.Grace’s elder sister, Jacintha, was especially close to her Pitcairn relatives, and spent some time living with her aunt, uncl...
