Weekly Photo Challenge – All-time Favourites
For the non-bloggers amongst MB’s many legions of followers who will not be aware, this is the last Weekly Photo Challenge set by the blog website, as they reorganise and move in a different direction. The king is dead, long live the king; and all that.
MB has made many online friends through this weekly challenge over years past and thanks all for the comments, interactions and general banter which he has enjoyed immensely. MB is grateful for the forbearance shown, noting that all followers, to a man & woman, have not much minding that MB is just generally spoofing and telling tall tales under the guise of showing his photos. Much much appreciated.
But regardless of what the website may do, MB will continue to churn out a weekly photo challenge of his own to keep the punters happy. Hopefully, other bloggers will follow suit and the world…
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Knitting Challenge May 30, 2018
Here’s a challenge. I’m trying to think of a way I can express an idea in knitting. In weaving this would be easy. But how to create or suggest an idea or an image through knitting. I like to emphasize colors or rather I prefer to use greens and browns.
Thinking out loud – I suppose some of the lace stitches or cables could be used.
One idea – an image suggesting mushrooms in the forest
Genealogy Compulsions
my ancestor count – it’s over 14,000 now and I keep finding more – they are coming out of the woodwork
annotated list of immigrant ancestors – I am adding both names and annotations to this list also I currently have identified over 300 
following up on clues – some surprising, some misleading, some leading to further treasures,
background reading – immersing myself in American and English history
p.s. not genealogy but knitting is another compulsive activity – here is my latest in my series of hats 
maybe I could try to find out how many of my ancestors were knitters
A Short Analysis of Emily Dickinson’s ‘As imperceptibly as grief’
‘As imperceptibly as grief’ describes the passing of summer, which happens so slowly and subtly that it is almost missed. But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing: it happens ‘as imperceptibly as Grief’, suggesting that something is coming to a close but brighter times are just coming into view. An unusual take on the onset of autumn, admittedly, but one of the many reasons why Emily Dickinson’s poems repay closer analysis: they avoid the obvious take on things, and offer a strikingly individual perspective on the natural world.
As imperceptibly as Grief
The Summer lapsed away –
Too imperceptible at last
To seem like Perfidy –
A Quietness distilled
As Twilight long begun,
Or Nature spending with herself
Sequestered Afternoon –
The Dusk drew earlier in –
The Morning foreign shone –
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sweet blue face Leicester lambColorful Travels with Victoria Finlay
Robert Antoine Pinchon, The Ile de Croise with the Colors of the Sun, 1908. Private collection. Photo via the-athenaeum.org (Public Domain).
In Victoria Finlay’s Color: A Natural History of the Palette (New York: Ballantine Books, 2002), you’ll learn dozens (if not hundreds) of facts about colors and where they’ve come from throughout history. The book is a sort of color-based travel narrative. Finlay went all over the world to find the sources and stories of history’s main color pigments. She went to some pretty great lengths in her quest, venturing far beyond what the typical tourist would ever dare to travel.
I might dedicate a fun facts post to one of the things I learned in the book, but you’ll have to read it for yourself to find out the rest. Just be prepared if you do. The stories behind a surprising number of common color pigments are quite unsettling, and a…
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Memories of World War II May 28, 2018
March 1943 – a visit with my brother training to be a Navy pilot
Thank God for the Hens of Ireland May 27, 2018
It’s high time the hens of Ireland were given due recognition. Yes, indeed. High time.
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Remembering My Mother
Note the photo of my graduation from Middlebury College.
I’m remembering my mother especially today – Dorothy Friend born on April 7 in 1912 in Minneapolis Minnesota. She lived a full life and passed away peacefully at home in Maui Hawaii in the year 2000. May she rest in peace.
1912, a baby photo in Minneapolis
Omaha Nebraska, growing up
1936, newly wed
1943, Mother and me on the left
1958, Middlebury College, a proud mother of a proud graduate
family reunion, 1977?, Mother is the happy woman wearing the blue cardigan
more photos to follow as time and searching permit
Janet's thread 