Comments for Truth and Justice For All

Comment on by Lin

Lin — Fri, 08 Aug 2014 08:12:50 +0000

What a beautiful and powerful letter.
I wish I was capable of creating something that moving but alas, I don’t have a single romantic bone in my body!

Comment on What I Have Been Doing by Terrell Neasley

Terrell Neasley — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 00:42:30 +0000

I knew you’d be back around at some point. Good to read you, even for a moment.

Comment on What I Have Been Doing by Stephen

Stephen — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 00:55:30 +0000

Thanks, Dave. You wouldn’t believe what I’m finding, virtually every day. Documents from the 1880s. Letters from 1917 that lay out family history and genealogy. Relatives that lived here in Minneapolis and in Ortonville, over near South Dakota. And on. And on. I’m more than half-way through, although the slog is pretty slow just now.

Trust you looked at some of those 120+ year old photos.

Comment on What I Have Been Doing by Dave Polaschek

Dave Polaschek — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 23:09:38 +0000

Good to hear you’re still plugging along. Mentioned you yesterday when I got asked about one of the photos I bought from you (of Brooke).

Comment on Solving a 100-year-old Mystery by William Lee Webster

William Lee Webster — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 23:29:51 +0000

I know this photograph well and have a copy of it on my den wall. It is of the Montgomery Webster family. The two adults are Montgomery Webster (my grandfather) and Jessie Lee Webster (my grandmother). The older boy in the sailor suit is Montgomery Lee Webster (my father) who did indeed go to West Point. The younger boy is William Oliver Webster II, who later became a surgeon in North Dakota. Part of the confusion is that both William Oliver Webster (my great-grandfather) and his son Montgomery Webster were Judge of Probate in Ionia.

Comment on A Puzzle Within the Puzzle by Unbearable Lightness

Unbearable Lightness — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 19:12:00 +0000

Stephen, I’ve been dealing with boxes of family letters as well. Beyond that, I’m piecing together (yes, we must piece the past) family history in all its horrors. Murders, burnings at the stake, beheadings, betrayals, some public, some kept secret until I opened the envelope.

I see you haven’t posted since you posted these pieces. I hope you’re doing all right.

I wanted to wish you all the best for the holidays, so may I add best wishes for a New Year filled with answers. I have the feeling you need that elusive thing we hope for at the end of our questions.

Comment on How Do They Think They Can Get Away With That? by Mark

Mark — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 04:31:52 +0000

I can appreciate your frustration. My mom died last spring and in going through the family pictures we had many of the same sorts of discoveries. There are a fair number of pictures of (presumably) relatives from the nineteenth century who are currently unknown. My mother-in-law just moved to Georgia and I have now become that family’s historian. Those pictures were in worse condition. Some of them are stuck together to such an extent that they can’t be separated without damage. I did find a surprising amount of geneological material, but pairing names with faces will be even harder past the 1930s. I like a lot of old photos even if I don’t know who the people are; so even if I can’t put names to everyone it is still worth the effort (and it keeps me off the streets).

Comment on How Do They Think They Can Get Away With That? by Dave Polaschek

Dave Polaschek — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 21:23:24 +0000

Could be worse. There could have been a dementia-fueled day of photo destruction somewhere along the way. My grandma did that, and as a result, I have exactly two photos of her husband who died before I was born, one of which is a newspaper clipping and exactly as yellowed as you’d expect from 50+ year-old newsprint.

Comment on How Do They Think They Can Get Away With That? by Jim

Jim — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 18:03:19 +0000

Stephen:

I know the feeling. Although we have precious little in the way of photos of even my grandparents on either side (my father’s parents didn’t like to have their picture taken and my mother’s parents lived their entire lives in Ireland – we only saw them once), I had to “rescue” the old family photos, and the 8mm movies of our trip to Ireland (I was five years old on the trip) from my mother back about eight years ago because she had them so poorly stored. I scanned a bunch of them and then I was able to show them to my mother and ask who all the people were. I have put many of the ones of us as very young children (along with our very young parents) in an album for protection and access. My mother’s habit was to store them in old cardboard boxes and leave them in the dampest part of the basement.

Comment on If no Adam or Eve, Wherefor Original Sin? by Mark

Mark — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 07:06:14 +0000

For many in the early church it didn’t matter whether or not the story was historical or not. What was important was the meaning behind it. Two things changed that as I understand it. First, the Gnostics came along and took the issue of finding meaning in the stories to extremes that many ordinary Christians were uncomfortable with. Then, after Christianity became legal and then favored the people in power set about enforcing a very narrow view that included a much more literal view of the stories. That has tended to carry down even when Protestants were rejecting Roman Catholicism and later when certain Evangelical and/or fundamentalist groups were claiming to be like the early church (which they clearly had no concept of what it was really like). It’s quite possible that there was some sort of historical Exodus. It probably didn’t look much like the movie “The Ten Commandments” and some of the events in the Bible may not have happened or happened rather differently. It’s actually possible to explain all of the plagues that happen through the explosion of Thera. That presents some problems with the traditional timeline though changing the timing to that period could put that group to Jericho at the right time. My own opinion is that there were actually several migrations and that the stories and timelines were later merged by someone who thought that it all happened at once. Regardless, if you assume that God inspired that document to be used or even compiled the actual history is less important than what the text is teaching. Some of the books are proabably fairly factual while others, such as Job, may have no basis in reality at all. It does make the whole thing a lot more work which is probably why so many prefer just to believe it as literal because that requires no work.