To know a place at night puts it in a special realm between an everyday world and the cosmic unknown. It’s not lack of sight; it’s a new vision. On nights when the moon is full and our eyes and brain strain to make sense of every detail as if the sun were out, and in this effort to discern the clover in the grass beneath our feet, shrouded by looming trees, seeing them as they have never seen them before; in a new light, as if for the first time. There are books that go to this place of magical realism; the authors Márquez, Allende, and Borges…

July 4/.98 This is indeed a “glorious Fourth” for to us comes the news that Admiral Sampson has destroyed Cervera’s fleet, and General Shafter is threatening to bombard Santiago, unless they surrender at once. We pray that this blow to her armies may cause Spain to sue for peace, and thus end this cruel war.— Robert wanted to shoot fireworks so his father got them for him. After his nap he called for them again saying, “more shoot fire-tackers, lots fun.” When asked who’s boy he is, he answered “uncle Sam’s boy,” so I took his picture with the U.S. flag floating over him.— He can tell the stories of…

In the 1960s my father was an active member of North Evanston Neighbors (NEN), a group of residents encouraging open housing. We have a box of his papers from the group, letters and minutes, proposed ordinances. At the January meeting in 1964, a “Statement of Purpose, prepared by Dave Calhoun, was read and unanimously adopted”. There is so much of him in the words that it reads to me in his voice. The North Evanston Neighbors is an association actively concerned with overcoming the practice of housing discrimination in the 6th and 7th wards. Our members hold varying views of the problem. Some are acutely distressed that our community, in…

Lida Brooks (Toomer) Calhoun wrote in her journals about both major and minor events of life in St. Cloud, MN. On February 14th, 1891, she wrote about one of the major events, a fire that destroyed “Mr. Calhoun’s” law office. She wrote of him in the third person, (like John Prine’s grandma, she called her husband “Mister”), but there was always affection in her words. That morning she woke to the distant ringing of a fire alarm. “I called to Mr. Calhoun to get up, saying it looked as if the whole town was afire, and when he stood beside me, he too thought the fire was spreading, but a…

The paper trail goes only as far back as John Calhoon; our first ancestor in this line to arrive in America. His wife’s name is given as Janet in his will. There is weak evidence for her maiden name being Walker, and stronger genetic evidence that there is Walker ancestry in the family. In relation to Rev. Thomas Calhoon it is noted that “The grandfather and grandmother of Mr. Calhoon emigrated from Ireland, and settled in Pennsylvania.” It follows that his great grandparents were also among the Scots-Irish seeking respite from the struggles of British controlled Northern Ireland in the early 1700s. William Henry Egle, State Librarian of Pennsylvania, records…

My grandparents, Robert Lowry Calhoun and Ella Clay Wakeman, married on Christmas Eve in 1923. On their 50th wedding anniversary many friends and family came to celebrate. The Christmas tree was hung with photos of several generations. As on the original day we had an iced fruitcake. Years later there was still a piece left in the freezer. I suppose, eventually, someone ate it. 45 years later we also hung the tree with those decorations. When asked to recount the history of our Calhoun line, my grandfather put together a patchwork of notes on his own memories of his family and some conjectures about more distant ancestry. I keep finding…

The home of my family in Connecticut has come to be the resting place for many bits and pieces of historical flotsam and jetsam. The archive seems to have assembled itself. I can conjecture why some specific material is present, artifacts passed from one generation to the next, but the origins of much of it is a mystery. Past owners left no record of who is pictured in this daguerreotype or owned these moccasins. One of my favorite items is A Greek and English dictionary, comprising all the words in the writings of the most popular Greek authors; with the difficult inflections in them and in the Septuagint and New…

Benjamin Toomer had been dead for over a decade when his youngest daughter, Lida Brooks (Toomer) Calhoun, and family made a trip to Mobile. His grave in Magnolia Cemetery, photographed during the visit, was a white headstone, readable in the photo. The current gravesite, added later, has a pair of large ledger stones, level with the ground. The first is inscribed to Benjamin Toomer and his wife Lucinda Huddleston. The second, his son, Edward Terry Toomer, and his wife, Anna Rambaut. The other gravesite documented in the set of photos from this visit is quite different. I don’t expect the name of the person buried in this grave can be…

My father, David Wakeman Calhoun, died on December 24th, 2017; Christmas Eve. He was 93 having been born on December 4th, 1924. We were fortunate as a family to have many months of lucid conversations over his final months to come to terms with our loss. He died peacefully in his sleep. The contributions he made with his life were significant. After an education in New Haven, CT, at the Foote School, Hillhouse High School and Yale, he worked as a biometrician at G. D. Searle, a pharmaceutical company in Skokie, IL. As part of the Biological Research Division he was a key investigator at Searle for the introduction of…

My children and I heard Dar Williams sing “The Ocean” with my Brother and his family at a free concert in Freeport, Maine several summers ago. She forgot some of the words and her collective memory, the audience, jarred them loose again. Who would have thought such grace could be shared in an L L Bean parking lot. I went back to the ocean today With my books and my papers I went to the rocks by the ocean But the weather changed quickly, oh the ocean said "What are you trying to find, I don't care, I'm not kind I've bludgeoned your sailors, I've spat out their keepsakes Oh…