Brick House

  My daughter’s fourth-grade class is on a field trip today to the Eight Square School House in Ithaca where they’ll be experiencing a day of old-school school, having their knuckles r...

http://pulaskibrickhouse.blogspot.com/2012/05/my-living-history-project.html

The crazy, word-hoarding pace of Nanowrimo does something to rewire the psychology of writing, and after churning out 50,000 words I didn’t really have time for because there wasn’t time t...

http://pulaskibrickhouse.blogspot.com/2011/12/write-like-kid.html

Who are these winsome frontier lassies? I did a lot of digging around in old things when I was in Pulaski at the end of the summer, and there are a number of unsolved mysteries I have yet to ...

http://pulaskibrickhouse.blogspot.com/2011/10/paranormal-investigations.html

Good nighty night, ladies and jets -- I mean, gents. I am so good happy to speak to you this day on the change purse of the Headache People. In Washington. From the tingly part to the shame labyr...

http://pulaskibrickhouse.blogspot.com/2011/08/migraine-interlude.html

Comments have been streaming in (Can't see them? Make sure you have your preferences set to "View Invisible Comments.") about how William Blake's picture of Cronos eating his children is not ...

http://pulaskibrickhouse.blogspot.com/2011/08/by-request.html

Literary inspiration does exist, only it isn't the divine gift you read about. The muse isn't a comely nymph with classical features, nor even an immortal roller skating babe (before the Classics...

http://pulaskibrickhouse.blogspot.com/2011/04/muse.html

Do you know the low feeling, about a third of the way through a big project (a novel, say -- or a wallpapering job, or a knitted sweater), when the pile of glittering good intentions with which ...

http://pulaskibrickhouse.blogspot.com/2011/03/marietta-holley-song.html

BEFORE When the clutter is knee deep on the ground, when the books are in laundry baskets because there is no room for them in the bookcase, when the file drawers are so jammed with relics fro...

http://pulaskibrickhouse.blogspot.com/2011/02/relics-archives-memorabilia-souvenirs.html

Here is a daguerreotype image of the Reverend William Watson, young and roguish, with his cheeks faintly colorized by the photographer's brush. He is my great-great-great grandfather, father of...

http://pulaskibrickhouse.blogspot.com/2010/11/grandpa-watson.html

I taxed my brain and my circulation this morning by following a twisty trail of questions deep into the internet. I knew I wanted to write a scene about Marietta Holley thinking religious thoug...

http://pulaskibrickhouse.blogspot.com/2010/10/revelations.html

With love from Google -- a drive-by of Marietta Holley's estate just south of Adams. View Larger Map

http://pulaskibrickhouse.blogspot.com/2010/09/street-view-of-bonnie-view.html

A few memoirs have crossed my desk this year (which is a fancy way to say, they’ve gathered dust on my night table until I read them) – Mary Karr’s Lit, Mennonite in a Little Black Dress b...

http://pulaskibrickhouse.blogspot.com/2010/09/memoir.html

I should have created a vacation message to cover the summer months: "The blog you have dialed could not be reached. Please check the address and try again when fall has arrived and the author ha...

http://pulaskibrickhouse.blogspot.com/2010/09/out-to-lunch.html

Poppy was paying attention at the Women's Rights National Historic Park in Seneca Falls after all. (Note the squirmy kids in the back.)

http://pulaskibrickhouse.blogspot.com/2010/09/elizabeth-cady-stanton-reads.html

Driving down route 14 to Elmira this morning, around the crack of dawn, I saw an elemental. It was a pocket of fog or low-hanging cloud suspended in the most sharply chiseled part of the valley,...

http://pulaskibrickhouse.blogspot.com/2010/06/shape.html

Here is a picture of Marietta Holley's fictional alter-ego, Samantha, aka "Josiah Allen's Wife", from the frontispiece of Samantha Among the Brethren (1890). Note the substance of her figure ...

http://pulaskibrickhouse.blogspot.com/2010/05/twins-separated-at-birth.html

Now, to get this blog back on track, let's talk about something really sexy. Here is the sexiest topic around, sexier than, say, Rupert Friend as Chéri . Sexier than Mr. Darcy . Sexier than Jem...

http://pulaskibrickhouse.blogspot.com/2010/05/birds-and-bees.html

Speaking of grief, there is something perversely funny about the low, sad moments in life. Windows are opened and looked out of, then closed when the shivers set in. 1. The Russian Soul ...

http://pulaskibrickhouse.blogspot.com/2010/04/melancholia-greatest-hits.html

When I was booking up the 101 away from Grandma's funeral in San Luis Obispo, I thought, good, now I can lie down and cry for a week. There never was any good time to let it all out. I could hav...

http://pulaskibrickhouse.blogspot.com/2010/04/good-grief.html

Marietta Holley was a dyed-in-the-wool North Country local who made a name for herself in literature. It seemed farfetched, even in the mid-nineteenth century, that the daughter of religious rur...

http://pulaskibrickhouse.blogspot.com/2010/04/marietta-who.html

Grandma Wilder gave me this red patent leather purse when I started graduate school at Berkeley in 1992, and I carried it with me everywhere. Picture an undernourished grad student with bags un...

http://pulaskibrickhouse.blogspot.com/2010/03/red-purse.html

I was just noodling around on Google Maps looking at Northiam, England – home town of our illustrious ancestor Grandpa Watson, who emigrated in the 1850s to further his career as a Methodist mi...

http://pulaskibrickhouse.blogspot.com/2010/02/great-dixter-house.html

And then Great-grandpa Mahaffy wrote his brother to say that he was on the list to go overseas. Camp Taylor, Ky. Oct. 31, 1918 Dear Brother Dick; Four months ago tomorrow I left home f...

http://pulaskibrickhouse.blogspot.com/2010/01/his-name-was-on-list.html

Yates Mahaffy, Sr. wrote this letter home to his brother during WWI. Camp Taylor Ky. Oct. 13, 1918 Dear Brother Dick; I received your letter last night, but it came too late for me ...

http://pulaskibrickhouse.blogspot.com/2009/12/grandpa-yates-mahaffy-reports-on.html

My dad called to tell me that there has been a new find.  Apparently a Pulaski doctor was cleaning out his old house, and he happened on a marriage certificate from the Mahaffy family.  The hou...

http://pulaskibrickhouse.blogspot.com/2008/08/news-flash.html