The Turner Family

Despite Michael Bay 's directorial credit, and the list of writers involved as well, the folks responsible for the Transformers sequel must have actually been a room full of dim, panting 14-year old boys. While the first iteration of Transformers certainly contained a healthy dose of sophomoric sexual voyeurism -- there's nothing personal about watching Megan Fox, clad in her Daisy Dukes , lean over the engine of a car -- Revenge of the Fallen goes well beyond any sense of subtlety or nuance: this time we again see Fox, clad in her cutoffs, performing ridiculous tasks, like airbrushing a chopper's gas tank whilst astride the saddle. And, as Tiffani has pointed out, what's with the new female acting technique of standing around with one's overplumped lips puffed out and parted? The media has lately allowed for too much emphasis on body parts, and not enough focus on story or acting. Due to the success of the original Transformers , Bay likely enjoyed considerable...

The kids were off school for the fall break so Ahni and I took a day off work to head to the hills. We had reservations at Biakpa Mountain Paradise, in the Volta Region. It was about a three hour drive from Accra on fairly decent roads, until the last four kilometers, when I wish I drove the Defender. The accomodations were austere, a step up from a hostel, but with gnats that aggravated us in the night. The views, as you can see later, were stunning. Garrett took drum lessons from "Believer," a name given to him by the man who apprenticed him at the cultural center in Accra. He is from Togo and his real name is Desiree. The lady who was more or less in charge of the resaurant was Charity, and her helper was Mercy. The night we arrived it rained cats and dogs. The girls made a point of running to the room to read books while Garrett took the first installment of his drum lessons. We all enjoyed the fabulous lightning and thunderstorm. We took off on a three hour hi...

On our way home from Quebec we stopped in western New York to find the final resting place of some ancestors on the Ross side. These folks are named Russell. As the Rosses migrated west from New England to Michigan, they tarried for a generation in western New York, and children were born there. Orlando Ross married Beulah Fidelia Russell. Orlando and Beulah would be Marian Ross Turner’s great-grandparents. Beulah’s grandfather was Riverus Russell, a Revolutionary War Veteran. He had also migrated west from New England to western NY, and is buried there in Livingston Co., near the little crossroads village of Linwood. We found the little country cemetery and the Russell graves without a hitch. On the day we were there, it happened that the local historical society was having a cemetery tour, and Riverus Russell was one of their highlights of the day. We were surprised and pleased to be there on that day, and they were pleased to meet a descendant of Riverus. The photos are of the J...

We recently made a trip to Quebec to look for Kay’s ancestors, the Couturiers. Two brothers had moved to Michigan from Yamaska, Quebec in the 1860s. Yamaska is a village of perhaps 600-800, located in lush farmland midway between Montreal and Quebec City and south of the St. Lawrence. The village is picturesque and overlooks the Yamaska River. The first photo is a view of the river, facing upstream, taken from the front yard of the church. The second photo shows the view of the village and church steeples from across the river, with cows in the foreground. Our primary stop was St Michel’s Catholic Church in Yamaska. We found two elderly gentlemen there, the church clerk and the custodian, who spoke almost no English, but who were willing to help. Together they were like an Abbott and Costello routine conducted in French: one tall and disheveled, one short and very neat, both excitable and prone to arm waving and speaking loudly and rapidly to one another. We were enthralle...