the bells are tolling ~

update: Goodie Proctor's got My Poppet

Day Ten(ish): did some reading yesterday that yielded some very inneresting things about Mr. Hanty. Like his wife, Mrs. Hanty, who begged him not to take the job, and their squadron of small children (if anyone might have a poppet laying around the house, he'd be the one!).

i also think i have a solid idea for the images of the opening of the book: it's sunday morning. a little boy (like 6 years old maybe) nails a pair of black trousers over the front window of his mother's baltimore home (or washington? i can't decide ~ i'll probably just not mention the city by name). he eavesdrops on his mother and perhaps an aunt who whisper about so-and-so who was shot dead on friday for some idiotic thing.

cut to: the church service where a derelict drunk, a hundred year-old little old lady, and two or three other sad sacks are scatterd throughout the pews. the nervous pastor twitters a little before he addresses the crowd with a very brief remark, then dismisses the lot of them.

cut to: another curch, this one in washington fer shure ~ Reverend Razor is spewing damnations.

cut to: the birthday barge (cue forboding music).

and that's as far as i've gotten. i may actually try writing it this weekend since i don't really need to do anymore research for it.

ooo ~ let the pages begin!

in other news: i've decided not to take the contract job. i don't need the headache and i won't die without the money. thank you, everyone for weighing in and sharing your thoughts. the poll turned out a dead even 9-9 (i added the 10th vote to break the tie).

i forgot to mail my netflix movies yesterday which means i now have no films for the weekend. maybe that's a good thing. i'll get other stuff done. i'm thinking of putting netflix on snooze starting in june anyway. my dvd player is frittering out and i haven't really been watching anything good lately.



a mourning bracelet from 1863 made
from an ambrotype and braided human hair
expect to see a bunch more strange, funereal things crop up here from time to time.

what a week i've had ~

i'm plumb wore out from the "shift" at work. every day schlepping books the width of my own head has tuckered me and then some.

come home, have two glasses of absinthe. starting to feel rather floaty...ahhhh....

no, i'm not "doing" a character, i'm serious here.

and thinking about making spaghetti.

and Mr. Hanty.

and Mr. Hanty's two dead children, buried before he could come home from the war. and a military career sorta on the outs with Czar NastyOwlFace (which would later be redeemed when he was awarded the medal of honor in spite of the mess his regiment made at bull run).

an inneresting picture of Mr. Hanty begins to emerge. Mrs. Hanty says: don't take that job! but he's thinking: if i say no, it's one more black mark on my ticket and i'm a young man with a career still ahead and a couple (or five) kids left over to raise. so he takes the job and tries to do it well, tries to please everyone with his choices. now i see what's tugging on him when the Chammy asks to talk to him and he says "not now". truth is, he eventually goes back, takes a statement, and does the honorable thing by bearing that statement to Czar NastyOwlFace even though Czar NastyOwlFace does nothing with it. he's also one of the "onlies" who kept souvenirs when all was said and done. it must have affected him deeply. he doesn't strike me as someone who would keep those sorts of things for vulgar reasons.

sorry, Mr. Hanty, i misjudged you.

he went on to a long and varied career in politics and more (including a run for the presidential nomination which went to hayes instead). i get the sense he did a lot of good for a lot of people but never really found his place. he fought for unions, he fought for black suffrage. he was a good american.

Mr. Hanty has a pretty impressive statue erected in his honor, but sadly, his grave has been trashed, graffitied, and vandalized in recent years. someone even fired a shotgun at the obelisk that the national guard placed there.

man, sometimes this country just sux.

: o p