(not my photo) I’ve been watching the play behavior of “gang” of young adult crows in my back yard. At first I took it for aggressive behavior, that the crows were establishing status within the group, or vis a vis…

 From the Rip Payne Collection at the Hysterical Society.  All rights reserved. From Rip Payne’s 1940s

  The lady of the house where we used to buy organic eggs, poultry and meat allowed me to take a picture of the family’s aprons out to dry on one warm, breezy afternoon.  The Yoders were (they’ve moved since,…

From south carolina fieldwork photos This is a striking roadside memorial near Newberry, South Carolina in 1988.  I photographed the angel during folklife fieldwork I was then doing in the “Up Country” for the South Carolina Arts Commission.  From what…

Another letter in my family’s hidden trove: this from my great-great-great-great-grandfather John Guthrie in 1800 to his father-in-law, Bethaniah Hodgkinson of Burlington, New Jersey. Hodgkinson’s father, my fifth-great-grandfather, was a clergyman from Dublin, Ireland named Peter Amis Hodgkinson.

This is my great-great-grandmother Virginia Turner’s far prettier little sister Betty, who married Robert Granger. The Grangers were Douglas and Virginia’s closest friends in Zanesville, Ohio. The Day’s eldest daughter, born in Zanesville, was named Annie Granger Day. She seems…