Category Archives: History

The Untold History of Zines… Alex Hubbard and Dan M on “The Removal Technician”

By Mark | February 29, 2020

About a year or so ago, when I was done interviewing Sean Tejaratchi, the man behind Crap Hound, for my History of Zines project, I asked him who else I should be talking with from Portland’s golden age of self-publishing, and he suggested that I try to track down Dan M. and Alex Hubbard, who […]

Also posted in Art and Culture, Mark's Life, Uncategorized | Tagged Alex Hubbard, Alvadore, anthropology, bellboy, big death, Bill Brisko, brushes with death, Chloe Eudaly, clip art, cot, coworkers, Crap Hound, dead bodies, Death, donuts, Drawbridge Inn, Ford Galaxy, funeral home, funeral homes, Glenn Dixon, hearse, History of Zines, Joe Snell, Kalon Cream, Kinko's, Lewis & Clark College, Loewen, magnets, minivan, mortuary science, photocopying, Portland, Reading Frenzy, Sean Tejaratchi, Six Feet Under, the death industry, The Removal Technician, The Untold History of Zines, theft, zines | 7 Comments

Finding my family’s version of “Little House in the Big Woods”

By Mark | February 4, 2020

Quite often, I find myself thinking things like, “If not for this one thing having happened, I likely wouldn’t be where I am today.” I wonder, for instance, if my father hadn’t gotten into an accident that kept him from shipping off for Vietnam, how my life might have turned out differently. Or I start […]

Also posted in Mark's Life, Uncategorized | Tagged 1900, 1918, 1918 flu, adoption, Bessie Roberts Wise, biscuits, Carrie Wise, census, Charles Maynard, Church of Christ, Cleve Wise, crackers, Curt Florian, Curtis Florian, Edgar Emerson Wise, Edgar Wise, family history, farming, feather bed, feathers, flu, food preservation, foster parents, Franklin County, geese, geneology, Georgetown, Gladys, Gladys Florian Phillips, Grover Cleveland Wise, Hattie Wise, horses, Jefferson Davis Wise, John Calhoun Wise, Kate Wise, Kentucky, land bounty, land warrant, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods, log cabin, Ma Florian, Mark's ancestors, Matilda Gill Wise, Mattie Belle Wise, Mattie Wise, midwife, Mimi Gladys, Minnie Florian, Minnie Wise, Minnie Wise Florian, Minor Branch, Minorsville, natural childbirth, old maid, orphans, Owen County, Pa Florian, poverty, public education, Sarah Catherine Emerson Wise, Scott County, smoking, spring house, Stamping Ground, subscription school, teaching, tobacco, War of 1812, Wise, Woodlake, Wythe Thomas Wise | 10 Comments

My friend, Ned Cartledge, on the liberation of the Wöbbelin concentration camp

By Mark | January 25, 2020

With everyone talking about the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, my mind went, as it often does when thinking about the Nazi extermination camps, to my friend, the Atlanta folk artist Ned Cartledge. Cartledge, as I may have mentioned here before, saw the horrors of the Nazis firsthand toward the end of the […]

Also posted in Art and Culture, Mark's Life, Uncategorized | Tagged 1945, 82nd Airborne, 89th Chemical Mortar Battalion, Atlanta, Auschwitz, cesspool, concentration camps, Dwight D. Eisenhower, folk art, Gardelegen, Gardelegen massacre, genocide, Germany, holocaust, holocaust denial, KKK, Ku Klux Klan, Kurt Vonnegut, Lorrie Mell, Ludwigslust, Nazi, Ned Cartledge, Neuengamme, never forget, propaganda, racism, scapegoats, starvation, torture, Unitarian, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, war, war crimes, Wöbbelin, World War II | 7 Comments

A defiant Donald Trump, emboldened by his support within the Republican-led Senate, admits to obstruction of Congress at Davos

By Mark | January 22, 2020

It’s over two hours long, but, if you haven’t made your way though it yet, I’d encourage you to watch or listen to all of Congressman Adam Schiff’s opening argument, delivered this afternoon at the outset of Donald J. Trump’s Senate impeachment trial. It was an incredible performance, and it really got to the heart […]

Also posted in Politics, Uncategorized | Tagged Adam Schiff, criminality, Donald Trump, impeachment, obstruction of Congress, obstruction of justice, Senate, Val Demings, Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelensky | 10 Comments

It looks as though my great, great, great, great, great grandfather, Clark Wise, may have been with Washington at Valley Forge

By Mark | January 13, 2020

While I’m tempted to make the case that my family’s Wise line goes all the way back to Colonel John Wise (1617-1695), who is thought to have arrived in the Virginia Colony from England in 1635, I think it’s probably more likely that the first Wise in my family to step foot in America was […]