This is a post in an ongoing series exploring one family’s adventure through genealogical storytelling. The article below was written by Big Ned, and features an abrupt intersection between personal and political histories.
We had just touched down at the airport in St. Thomas, which is a couple of …
This is a post in an ongoing series exploring one family’s adventure through genealogical storytelling. The article below was written by Big Ned, and features a detailed account of research done ahead of the family’s research trip to St. Thomas, USVI.
We were making plans for a family trip …
This is a post in an ongoing series exploring one family’s adventure through genealogical storytelling. The article below was written by Bri-Bri, and features lists and statements of gratitude.
The plan at the beginning of this year was to post an article by my dad and an article by …
Okay.
When we last left off, we had determined that Robert Milner Morrison was a cousin living in the house of an Alexander Moody and Jessie Stuart along with their children. But we didn’t really know how exactly Robert was related to these people or to whom specifically.
We researched …
Dad’s last post encapsulates a lot of what I loved listening to while he was doing all of that research.
First, it included a lot of the crazy, insane-seeming, ultra-detail-oriented fine-tooth-comb gumshoeing that dad always seemed so good at. Sorting through handwritten census records to find a name that had …
In a previous post we had discovered that my wife’s ancestor Robert Milner Morrison did not have a bust in the lobby of the University of Edinburgh, but we also found out that he had graduated from there and taught at the university for a time in the late 1870s …
Here’s a digression, riffing off of what dad put into his last post.
For me, when I’m thinking about questions like “How did we get here?”, the ones that dad was pondering about in that last blog update, my brain shoots all the way back to the beginning. Not …
So at this point in our adventure we know that my wife’s ancestor Robert Morrison got a degree and a doctorate from the University of Edinburgh (so now we can refer to him as Dr. Robert Morrison). We also know that he was born in St. Thomas, USVI, which stands …
I didn’t really know much about Scotland before we went there. Or I knew what everybody knew. I knew Braveheart and I knew Trainspotting and I knew, what, Macbeth, I guess. I had read Irvine Welsh’s breakout novel in college when it was recommended to me by a friend as …
This post is continuing the story from Ed’s last post.
Our family headed to Edinburgh, Scotland, for a two-week vacation partly to find out if my wife’s ancestor Robert Morrison had a bust in the lobby of the University of Edinburgh. The bust’s existence was according to family lore. The …
So I want to talk all about that Scotland trip—about what it was like and what it meant for me and what I thought it meant for the family—but I think there’s just a little bit more table setting that should be done in terms of how we got …
It all started as a family story from my mother-in-law. Many times she had recounted a family story regarding her former husband’s family. The story went that there was a bust of one of my wife’s ancestors situated in the lobby of the University of Edinburgh.
The story remained nothing …
Going down into my parents’ basement, the stairs go down, then a brief landing, then they go down the other way. Along the walls are displayed a series of maps, photographs, letters, articles, and advertisements that my father has collected over a decade of genealogical research, the images and words …
For me, it was tough figuring out where to start reading the best comics of 2016, where to even start looking for them. I had heard of the Eisner Awards, but I didn’t …
Two series of paintings by British painter William Hogarth done in the 1730s are exemplary of the ways that sequential visual storytelling would eventually function in comics and graphic novels in the 20th century (and beyond!!!).
Past the Page TurnSo the 18th century seems like it …
A 230-foot-long (over that, really) wool-on-linen artifact commemorating the 11th-century Battle of Hastings brings our tour of proto-comics into the second millennium.
Mounted knights and archers were vital to William’s military success. Past…
One of the major monuments to survive the fall of the Roman empire, Trajan’s Column commemorates two wars fought by Emperor Trajan and the Roman armies against the Dacians in what is modern-day Romania. The …
Mayan pictographs are just one blip on a long and still evolving timeline of human efforts to combine images and language. Chinese ideograms, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and Sumerian cuneiform all worked in different ways to translate and transform sound into images and images into sound.
The …
Known in ancient times as the city of Urim and known today as Tell el-Muqayyar, the city that produced the Standard of Ur and many other artifacts was excavated as part of a joint operation between the British …
Santiago Garcia points out in his great book of comics history and criticism, On the Graphic Novel, that people tend to trace the beginning of comic books back to an individual moment, usually either Rodolphe Töpffer’s histoires de estampes in …
For me, it was tough figuring out where to start reading the best comics of 2016, where to even start looking for them. I had heard of the Eisner Awards, but I didn’t think to look there because what I knew of the Eisners …
Covered: Hot Dog Taste Test by Lisa Hanawalt, How to Be Happy by Eleanor Davis
So I can’t remember how I found Hot Dog Taste Test by Lisa Hanawalt. I know it was listed on the Comics Journal’s neverending “best of 2016” list, but I started reading it before …
There was one piece of art that I remember so vividly that it feels like a ghost.
First I drew the landscapes. I was obsessed with categorizing landscapes—plateau, prairie, tundra, mountain, swamp, tropical and deciduous forest.
The picture I remember best from the set was a jungle with tall, slim-trunked …
I spend a lot of time–probably too much time–weighing the speed at which a comic wants to be read. Novels are easy–a chapter per sitting. Short stories are easy–one story per sitting. Even if you don’t live up to your side of that bargain as a reader, that’s still the …
I really didn’t expect to like Spider-Man as much as I do.
I’ve been reading Marvel comics for, say, 27 years. And I’ve never been into Spider-Man. In hindsight, it’s because Spidey as a guest-star is basically a comic relief quip machine. But focusing on Spider-Man as the main character, …
I’ve been feeling a bit overwhelmed keeping up with blogging for the last few weeks. I’ve had an urge to go back and re-read stuff from this and other eras of my comics-reading life, to slow down and really analyze a few books–or a few pages–but I also have a …
Under discussion: Akira 1-6 by Katsuhiro Otomo
Pairs well with: Speed Tribes by Karl Taro Greenfeld; Blade Runner; “Alleys of Your Mind” by Cybotron; the charred wreckage of a bombed-out, burned-down Yoshinoya.
When I try to explain to people why I moved to Japan, I usually talk about it in …
Under discussion: Good-Bye by Yoshihiro Tastumi
Pairs well with: The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka; Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness by Kenzaburo Oe; an antipathy toward modernism; and an 11,000 yen tab at a hostess bar.
Yoshihiro Tatsumi is probably the most famous practitioner of gekiga, a …
Under discussion: Various trades featuring Guardians of the Galaxy from the time between the launch of the Brian Michael Bendis run and the end of Secret Wars, including The Black Vortex, Guardians Team-Up: Guardians Assemble, Guardians Team-Up: Unlikely Story, Legendary Star-Lord: Face It, I Rule, Legendary Star-Lord: Rise of the …
Under discussion: The first five trades of the Brian Michael Bendis Guardians of the Galaxy series including Cosmic Avengers, Angela, The Trial of Jean Grey, Guardians Disassembled, Original Sin, and Black Vortex.
I’m a heavy reader of everything: magazines, books, and–yeah, sure–comics, too. But even so, I really don’t get …
