Bunny was in the backyard so I went and got her some apple slices and spinach.

BUNNY!

She was very excited to smell apple and she ran up and I grabbed her. Then she came in to visit with Mummy. Snowball was very jealous- he ran up and tried to get in my lap. Afterward, we went outside for a little photo shoot. She is soooo soft. She ran away to hide (I think she lives in the compost heap in the backyard). It was nice to see her.

I thought we were done with winter but it is supposed to be in the 20s at the end of the week. Mummy will be very displeased with this. She would like my house to have central heat, but there is no money for that right now.

I have been walking the Catholic cemetery, looking for all of the gravestones older than 1909.

Angels.

The current cemetery opened in 1907, replacing an earlier cemetery that finally closed in 1909. Sometime this year I will be running an archaeology project beneath a street in the old cemetery. I am collecting as much information on the people buried there as I can find.

Sleeping lamb.

Some of the bodies and tombstones from the old cemetery were moved to the new one.

Praying angel.

But most were not, and the graves now lie beneath vacant lots, streets, and homes.

Lamb.

I found about 50 or so early stones, some carved by an artist with a distinctive style. I wonder who that person was.

Dove.

I have been uploading photographs and brief biographical information to the Find-A-Grave website.

Many of the more recent graves have bronze markers, many of which once had small urns for flowers, most of which have been stolen by people who sell them to scrap dealers. Now if I was a scrap dealer and a meth addict showed up with a bunch of small urns, wouldn't I be suspicious?

I still have one more section to walk, wonder what I will see there.

Ready for his close up.

Puff.

My great great grandfather was named Isaac. He was born in 1855 in Williamsburg, Ohio and died in 1936 at Pearl Lake, Michigan.

Sometime between 1875 and 1880, Isaac went to a photography studio, probably with a friend and had the following tintype photograph taken. Barely visible are the metal stands that held their heads still for the long exposure.

Isaac, seated.

The backdrop fascinates me. If you click on the picture it enlarges and you can see how detailed it is. It depicts a three-dimensional scene- looking into a room, up a short flight of stairs, toward a bench placed in front of a window. It would have been painted onto a cotton fabric by an artist and photography studios often had several different backdrops.

The backdrop resembles 2nd Style frescoes found in the Naples area, buried in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

Fresco from a villa at Boscoreale, circa 40-30 B.C., courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.

I suspect the artists had access to books depicting some of the frescoes being uncovered in Pompeii during this time period.

You're the Bestest. I had a great weekend with Evan. On Friday night we played dominoes with Mark, Sandy, and Zane. I even won a game.

Bestest.

On Saturday morning we had breakfast with Sylvia and Dan. There are a fun couple and I had a great time getting to know them. Sylvia gave me a cookbook with really interesting recipes.

That afternoon, Evan and I drove out to the Tohono O'odham Cultural Center and looked at the exhibits. Then we came back and took Mummy to her favorite knitting store. She was very happy.

This morning Evan and I went to Sweetwater Wetlands and admired the huge number of ducks.

Northern Shovelers.

American coots.

Once again, an awesome weekend.

By chance I was in traffic at the corner of Campbell Avenue and Speedway Blvd as Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford's ambulance pulled out from the hospital and headed to the airport. She is being taken to Houston to a rehabilitation facility.

People stood along the side of the road and waved at the police officers, the ambulance, and the motorcycle escort. Some held up signs wishing her well. I had to pull out a tissue and wipe tears that suddenly appeared. Why am I so sentimental at times?

I guess I am a soft-hearted man.

Nothing good has come of this horrible tragedy in Tucson. There is no real discussion on ways to stop this sort of thing happening again. State Senator Jake Harper is still pushing his new legislation allowing guns to be carried on college campuses. The local tea party leader blamed Ms. Giffords for being shot. The governor of Arizona has announced that 280,000 people will be thrown off Medicaid, I am sure some of those people will have mental problems that could be ameliorated through counseling and medication. The sale of semi-automatic handguns grew after the shooting. And so on.

Even suggesting that gun control laws should be re-examined is criticized. A man who once worked for my company had a letter published in the Arizona Daily Star, stating that "can't the gun-control advocates please take a step back and not use this event as a platform to voice their uninformed comments regarding gun control?" I responded by asking when would be a good time to comment: Is it during months that start with Q? When Venus and Uranus are in direct alignment? The 26th century? It is never a good time to speak up about gun-control if you are one of the uninformed anti-gun-control people. His response was basically what I suggested- never.

I hope Gabrielle Giffords can recover. I don't know if she will be able to get back her old life. It makes me sad that she was so horribly injured and six people died, all because Walmart sells ammunition at 7:30 in the morning to a mentally ill young man.

After William's house burned down, the family had to build a log cabin.

David, William, Winfield, Margaret, Caroline, and William Sr., circa 1870-1875.

What I would give to excavate this place.