Comments on: Twin Barbarians 2: Mormon Lice

By: Jared T

Jared T — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 17:30:06 +0000

Haha, must be deceptiveness of evil

Great post, keep them coming.

By: Edje Jeter

Edje Jeter — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 17:23:25 +0000

Thanks SC and Researcher.

Scholarship aside, the ten-year-old in me delights at ick, itch, and eww.

As I have been looking for images, though, I’ve been struck by how beautiful some of the insects are in close up. (Does that make for a Sunday School lesson on the beauty of creation or on the deceptiveness of evil?)

By: Researcher

Researcher — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 16:02:50 +0000

I don’t normally mind bugs (outside) but eww. Shudder. Very well done post.

By: SC Taysom

SC Taysom — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 01:16:27 +0000

I’m very itchy right now.

By: Edje Jeter

Edje Jeter — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:59:58 +0000

Thanks, Ardis.

Sarah Wyckoff Covenhoven must have been amazing. Keeping an wooded 18th-century house must have required enormous work.

By: Ardis Parshall

Ardis Parshall — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 20:03:01 +0000

Ick, ick, ick, ick, ick.

Your posts, Edje, are like a gruesome late night movie. No matter how badly I want to turn away, I can’t! Mostly because I wouldn’t miss the footnotes for anything. I gorge on them like a bedbug gorges on blood.

I’m rather fond of a certain reference to fleas, bedbugs and lice — or their absence — in my own family history. One of the few personal details I know about my 5th great grandmother is a reference in the diary of the 18th century Presbyterian minister, Philip Vicars Fithian. As he traveled on the West Branch of the Susquehanna in 1775, he stayed overnight with my 5th great-grandparents and recorded in his diary the next morning,

I slept soundly and fine without being disturbed by either a bug or a flea. And the house is as poor and as much surrounded with woods and brush as other houses, where, through entire carelessness, I am surrounded by numberless numbers of these insects.

Sarah Wyckoff Covenhoven kept a clean house!