The family and I have spent the last four days in the Maine woods, where my aunt and her husband had rented a cabin so that our extended family could celebrate my father’s 75th birthday together. Aside from falling in Maine’s largest lake while completely clothed, having to scrub vomit from the upholstery of a […]
Posted in History, Mark's Life, Uncategorized | Also tagged 1870, Arlo, birthday presents, birthdays, Cairo, Cassius Marcellus Coolidge, catsup, Charles Maynard, Civil War, clocks, Curtis Florian, dogs playing poker, Doug Skinner, drinking, falling in water, family history, family values, farming, fire, Frankfort, gambling, Georgetown, guns, hidden guns, horses, Illinois, John W. Cannon, Kentucky, legends, Little Mister Frankfort, lobster, lobster rolls, Louisville, Maine, Mark's ancestors, Mark's aunt Betsy, Mark's lips, Mark's relatives, Maynard-Lao Archive, Minnie Florian, Mississippi River, Natchez, New Hampshire, Ohio River, paddle boats, pandemic, Piggy Wiggly, poker, Pony Express, Rabbit Hash, Robert E. Lee, Sebago Lake, speed, statues, steamships, sunburn, The Robert E. Lee, theft, Thomas P. Leathers, tobacco, tuberculosis, vacations, vomit, White Sulfur, Wild Bill Cody, William Zanzinger, Woodlake |
Today is the birthday of one of my favorite actresses of all time – Myrna Loy. My plan was to mark the occasion by re-watching The Thin Man, but, after a half hour or so of jumping around the web, reading about her life, I’ve decided to watch this 1973 interview with her instead. I […]
Posted in Art and Culture, Other, Uncategorized | Also tagged 1973, Boris Karloff, Day at Night, James Day, Myrna Adele Williams, Myrna Loy, racism, Spanish flu, The Mask of Fu Manchu, Thin Man, W. S. Van Dyke, yellowface |
By Mark | September 9, 2009
My friend Pete Larson, a brilliant musician who turned his back on rock and roll in order accept his fate and become a scientist, just returned from Japan, where he wrote the following. I thought some of you with mask fetishes might enjoy it. While the 2009 H1N1 flu has been written off by the […]
Posted in Health, Ideas, Other | Also tagged 25 Suaves, antibacterial, antiseptic filter, bathroom cleaners, bird flu, Bulb Records, burqa substitutes, Dorf, ebola, flu, H1N1, herbal aroma, Japan, Japanese products, Kobayashi Pharmaceuticals, Malawi, mask fetishes, Napoleon, Osaka, Pete Larson, public health, rock opera, school closure, science fiction flavors, swine flu, the oral cavity, throat disinfectants, virus, Washlet |
Some of you may remember Laura Bien. Up until about a year ago, she blogged as the YpsiDixit. Well, I’m happy to report that she’s come out of retirement. Laura has launched an engaging new site dedicated to the research of local Ypsilanti history, mainly though the exploration of surviving first-person narratives. The site is […]
Posted in History, Ypsilanti | Also tagged 1830, 1874, 1919, Allie McCullough, blogging, calomel, Carrie Hardy, Cholera Wars, City Archives, debility and suffering, diaries, Dusty Diary, eland tuberculosis sanitarium, facial and jaw deformities, hair and tooth loss, History, history of medicine, inadvertent discoveries en route to something else, Laura Bien, mass graves, mercury, mercury poisoning, neurotoxic, storytelling, Tom Dodd, Twitter, WWI, YpsiDixit |
I’ve been sucked into a TED vortex. I’ve probably watched five lectures already tonight. I was going to post one of them here about orgasms, but, at the last minute, I decided that, instead, I’d throw out this 2007 presentation by Pulitzer Prize winning science author Laurie Garrett on the lessons of the 1918 flu. […]