My Grandfather took these shots at the Lake Saranac "Winter Festival" in 1902 in upstate New York.
He lived and worked there for a couple of years with my Aunt Brenda.
(n.b.The audio at the moment is Jackson Browne)
The family rumour was that my grandfather spent some of his time in The States "Prospecting for gold". I really don't know about that! (sounds like bollocks to me!) But who knows?
Uncertainty being something of a family tradition.....
He later became a Barber in Fife:became a Tory Councillor:joined the merchant navy and is buried in Malta.He died in 1953. He saw me once when I was a baby. So anything is possible!
One of a Series of photos taken by some of the Anglo Saxon side of my family in the early 20th century in Lake Saranac in up state New York ..To some extent,I am recycling These previous posts {Me Thinks our ancestors enjoyed & gleaned more fun out of extremities than we do now?Just a Thought........}
Thankfully ,we have had no snow here yet this winter.Here is a photo Chris took up the road last Winter......
I am getting over my recent illness.Saying that, Im not 100% in as much as I get tired very easily still.
I'm now on stronger steroids for my asthma (flutiform instead of beclometasone) A fairly minor ajustment ,& still ,i feel, only moderate in terms of heavy-duty asthma (?).
I'm still not that sure what i would do differently if it happened again?
it was all so quick.
In the space of 48 hours I went from Hero -to-Zero. New Years's revellery to the back of an Ambulance with an Oxygen Mask on......
It was
lower respiratory tract infection {pneumonia?} which in turn triggered a bad Asthma attack.........Hey-Hoy .
My asthma is controlled at the moment ,and I only feel a little hoarse as i type this post...........
[above:Bob Dylan "see you later Allen Ginsberg".Basement Tapes Outakes.]
Here in Calderdale ,we are in the middle of the weeklong Wyrd Britannia Festival.
The festival rolled into Hebden Bridge Library tonight.
Andy Roberts gave a talk on LSD in Britain & the band Magpahi also played.
Andy is a great advocate of the drug.
I took it several times in the 70s and I fully support his plea for understanding
More uploads from my family's historyhere.............more info shortly.........Yesterday,.I met My Brother Zyg with Cathy & my Sister-in-Law Jean at The Bearin Todmorden.We had Lunch &; he gave me several Newspaper cuttings relating to Our Family's presence in North America. (not read them yet!) +137 more photos to share including the one above..........It's kind of tricky sharing & scanning these photos as they are both small & stuck in a photo album.I dont want to damage anything so i will take my time to copy them safely........
Here are the first batch I've uploaded.Something I never knew, My Aunty Brenda was born in Canada. My Grandfather moved there in the early 1900's "looking for gold" :"goldpanning" Whatever........I will give you more detail when i understand it more myself.
I have a postcard from Canada.Later my Grandfather must have moved South, hence these photo from Saranac Lake in upstate New York. .
I have been sharing these photos on facebook with Historic Saranac Lake
Turns Out It's Not Connected with Robert Louis Stevenson.But Interesting,None The Less (just mere coincidence a Family member returned?)......
.Sorry I have been AWOL from blogging .will visit you soon!Check Out Alan's Sepia Saturday for other romps !
post and below is a re-post of mine from 14th January 2010.
Photo from Aunt Brenda's album.
More uploads from my family's historyhere.............more info shortly.........Yesterday,.I met My Brother Zyg with Cathy & my Sister-in-Law Jean at The Bearin Todmorden.We had Lunch &; he gave me several Newspaper cuttings relating to Our Family's presence in North America. (not read them yet!) +137 more photos to share including the one above..........It's kind of tricky sharing & scanning these photos as they are both small & stuck in a photo album.I dont want to damage anything so i will take my time to copy them safely........
Here are the first batch I've uploaded.Something I never knew, My Aunty Brenda was born in Canada. My Grandfather moved there in the early 1900's "looking for gold" :"goldpanning" Whatever........I will give you more detail when i understand it more myself.
I have a postcard from Canada.Later my Grandfather must have moved South, hence these photo from Saranac Lake in upstate New York. .
I have been sharing these photos on facebook with Historic Saranac Lake
Turns Out It's Not Connected with Robert Louis Stevenson.But Interesting,None The Less (just mere coincidence a Family member returned?)......
.Sorry I have been AWOL from blogging .will visit you soon!Check Out Alan's Sepia Saturday for other romps !
frús'trey-ting-lee.........if enlarged ,you can see the faint inprint of a previous letter written over the top of this Xmas card.............................
"lang may yir lum reek "or 'long may your chimney smoke'.............a shortened version of “Lang may yir lum reek wi ither fowk's coal.” ( “Long may your chimney smoke with other people's coal.” )
This is my contribution to Alan's Sepia Saturday .As i told Alan the other week in Union Cross pub in Halifax I have a big box full of old (mainly sepia) photographs I need to scan/preserve.This is one i pulled out at random.The problem with many of these photos is ,although they are connected to my family, I really do not know the detail behind them.My Mum'sside of the family came from Fife & Edinburgh. One of the few things I know about what is a very complicated family tree is that I am related to Robert Louis Stevenson .
The reason it is complicated & why big chunks are unknown to me is that my maternal grandfather was married 3 times .His first 2 wives (including my grandmother) died in childbirth.He had 3 children.One to each wife.My Mum had a half-brother & a half-sister.each of who had different mothers!
Although all the 3 were reasonably close they ended up living throughout the UK.One in the Home Counties of England.One in Edinburgh & my Mum in Yorkshire..My childhood was an endless series of trips to distant half -Aunts and quarter -cousins!
Genealogy has always been an ology-too-far for me .It's just too damn complicated!My maternal grandfather died (in Malta.he was a sailor) in 1951.He kind of abandoned my Mum when she was wee.So she was never very forthcoming on him & his relationships and the finer points of family history.Added to which my Dad's Polish family was even more complicated & distant to me .Astrology has always seemed a better bet!
Anyway this is a series of photos I had passed onto me when my half-Aunt Brenda died in Edinburgh 1985.This was a Christmas Card sent from Saranac Lake in upstate New York.
My guess is it was posted around the late-1800's or very early 1900's.Another guess it was sent to a member of my extended family.Maybe the sender too was a relative? I have several other photos from North America around the same period.I have about twelve from the series.Lots of Snow!It's really frustrating because one is of The Family Dog (with HIS name written on the back).I know the name of their bloody hound but not theirs!
Finally.For This Week.Here is another photo I dug out today.Again I know little.I seem to remember my Mum saying they were Family.and the house is in The Americas.Another mystery............but please look here.You could write a whole historical tv mini-series on the basis of this one photo alone!
Sometimes Life is like getting a 1000 piece jigsaw for Christmas.Then,come January you find out that 743 bits are missing................................
POSTCRIPT: [click ] Coincidence...............after writing the above I went to Wiki and read up on the life ofRobert Louis Stevenson.Turns out he wintered in Saranac in 1887! Of Course my post is probably 99% totally unconnected with this fact..but it does make you think.................
at last, a Protest Song about Afganistan..............
"..............Drawn from Martin Carthy's extensive repertoire, the song is a Napoleonic anti-war ballad about crippled cannon-fodder, brought bang up to date to reflect the toll paid by amputee veterans of Blair's wars..............."INDEPENDENT:
I dont own a hat. I tend to borrow from others........
in 2008 i was a member of Grant's Stag Party in Benidorm.Most of the lads were from an Oldham rugby club .Grant was ,at the time,on St.Helens books. Mick (pictured with me) is an ex-prop forward with Oldham RLFC.We all went as members of Village People ( i was the token Polish Plumber).It was so fucking hot.....I had hold my moustache as the sweat prevented it sticking properly.......see other photos here
2005 in the car park of a shoppimg mall in Northampton,Massachusetts.it was Febuary & freezing...My son, Chris,pictured next to me.We were guests of my good Muslim friend Ayse who was studying in New England at the time.a grand photo i took of Chris & Ayse.https://www.smugmug.com/gallery/n-ff4c2/i-7Q9TK8x/O
at the 2015 Peterloo Massacre Memorial in Manchester.See more photos here .( i took a lot of photos of famous TV & Movie 'faces') Actually that IS my own hat...but I look a bit of a prune wearing it.(Its in a drawer, somewhere.........!)
I may have mentioned it before...the fact that my Aunty Brenda was born in Canada. My Grandfather( with his 2nd wife/ my grandmother would later become #3!) moved there in the early 1900's "looking for gold" :"gold panning" Whatever........I will give you more detail when i understand this more myself........{
I have a postcard from Canada as evidence}. Later my Grandfather must have moved South, hence these photos from Saranac Lake in upstate New York. shown
here are 3 of photos my family took at the Winter Carnival there.
My Polish surname is derived ,I believe, from the word "zimny" meaning Cold,standoffish,bleak,stiff......you get the Drift?
Not a lot of 'personal stuff' (AKA "Real") on here at the moment.Winter is a dreamtime,non? I always dream in a more vivid fashion in winter.......no doubt my hiberation will end eventually!
***
In late January 2003 Me & Cathy went to see The Flaming Lips at The Academy in Manchester.On the Bill,supporting them,was an unknown (to me) band called British Sea Power.I dunno...for whatever reason I took a shine to those young lads.I have seen them several times since & championed them here on this blog.A really unusual combo.
Live they are raw&loud.On recordings they are a melody...they are all over the place.Maybe that's the reason I like them...?
Their hobbies (when not reeling&arocking) are Bird -Watching (the Ornithological kind not the Jimmy Savile kind!) & the poems of John Betjeman! .Turns out they are closet Sepians too! Witness their most recent promotional video! Marvel at all these sepian images!How cool is that Guys&Girls,now then now then..... (jingle-jangle)...
A body is found in the frozen North Dakota woods. The cops say the dead Japanese woman was looking for the $1m she saw buried in the film Fargo. But the story didn't end there.....{read}