digital collage with images from CPWC, flickr commons. Mrs A. Baltimore of East Sedgewick took a lover, Mr S Jamison, her literature professor. Jamison was very attentive to her but dismissed her student fiction as ‘elementary, cliched, and dull”. Her husband, Archibald, found the two while in a compromising position in the drawing room at their Manhattan townhome on 31 October 1899 and enraged, drew his revolver mortally wounding Jamison.
It is said that his ghost still haunts the home on 5th Avenue and 91st.
from flickr, posted 10/22/11

My photo albums are basically plastic containers with snap lids. Not all photos make it to the plastic container. Occasionally I come across a stash of photos in a shoe box or some small wicker basket with crap that should have been trashed years ago. My idea of organizing is finding bigger boxes to throw the smaller boxes into and then shove the new box o crap into my closet. My system was working fine until Jessica moved in last June to save a little $ for her road trip to Austin or Nashville. Consequently boxes were moved to make room for her boxes o crap. It was like an episode of Hoarder’s Celebrity Death Match. But lo and behold a photo was found that I had little recollection of and I set it aside for months until I decided to work with it.

Here is a 4×6 mixed media collage of my dad and step mother in heaven. It needs a shrine box but I am having a difficult time finding such an irregular shaped box. I will leave it on my mantle for now with candles and incense. They would have approved of that. Very Roman Catholic.

Sorry I have been missing again. Let’s pretend I was on vacation in Hawaii…I could tell you what’s going on but I haven’t much energy today. I made this 4×6 mixed media postcard the other day when I realized all I ever do anymore is cry and moan and wish I was dead. I was in a car accident in September which was around the same time I found out I need to have knee surgery on both knees for torn meniscus’s. I was going to hold off until after my bariatric surgery but truth is I can hardly walk anymore and going up and downstairs is agony. The car accident caused another whiplash and I am still trying to heal from that while working part-time. I can not sit for long without my neck going numb. I can not look down or tilt my head forward without real discomfort. I have some very strong tape holding my neck straight that the PT placed on there today. It is supposed to keep me from doing the head tilt thing. It feels like the skin is too tight on my neck to move in any direction at all! No one wants to hear any of this…so I just cry instead cause everything is so overwhelming right now especially the pile of bills that keeps getting bigger and the fact that I can no longer binge on ice cream to dull the pain. I am not dealing very well with it at all. I’d slash my wrists but I can’t look down to see where to cut!

One summer evening when the Circus came to town, the ladies from the DAR got drunk at the House of Fun on sarsaparilla and absinthe. Unchaperoned, they denied anything untoward occurring that night. However, nine months later eight orphans appeared on the doorstep of the First Congregational Church in Willimantic with tags that read: “Are you our Mother?” on each well fed baby and also pinned on a two year old girl (who could speak fluent Swedish) a note that read “I am Bertie, please find me a good home”.

The local gossip, Miss  Hermoine  G. Goldfinch, aka The *Iron Maiden* spread a vicious slander about the coincidence of the DAR ladies trip to Mesa, Arizona (to work at a reservation teaching Indian child) being eight months long and the that the orphans were all newborn with clown-like features, similar to the carney’s at the Circus.

Although, the DAR ladies denied such allegations, they were ruined none the less. The orphans remained at the Old Lyme Town Farm.

Below an except from www.poorhousehistory.com