| August
1, 1008 Edition
E-MAIL CONTACT:
Rick@RARWRITER.com
RAR TUNE OF THE WEEK:
The shot above
is of Penelope Cruz in the 2006 Pedro Almodóvar film Volver,
nicked from the satirical Spanish literature website
trazegnies.arrakis.es. Penelope, in this shot, make's a perfect model
for the femme fatale depicted in RAR's satirical sexcapade "Para
Conquistarle"; another bit of sound clip silliness courtesy of
"Sexy
Spanish" and a site I have lost (still
looking) where a guy says things like "I like the meat raw," which
strikes me as funny in this goofy context. Click on the photo above to
hear another RAR original, "Para Conquistarle."
Click on the MySpace Music graphic to go to RAR on
MySpace
or click the photo below to go to the
RARWriter Music Page
ARTIST INDEX:
Click here to go to the
Index page to find the artists profiled on the
Links at RARWRITER.
FEATUREDARTISTS:
Click here to go to the
Featured Artist page:
DENNIS WANEBO / MARTIAN
ACRES
JOHN PIEPLOW
ANGIE MATTSON
TAMRA SPIVEY
LIBBY WINTERS
and more!
Photos, streaming MP3s
and more!!!
ESSAYS:
"Has the New York Times
Profiled the Devil?"
- Something about this
guy gives me the creeps
"President of the Subconscious
World" -
Why stop with the White House?
"John McCain's Wild Ride"
-
Pilot, Prisoner, Playboy, President?
"Death of Turtle Boy"
-
What will the Washington
press corps do now?
POLITICAL LINKS IN THIS
ELECTION SEASON -
points of view not necessarily endorsed by RARWRITER.com
DAILY KOS: STATE OF THE NATION
ATLAS SHRUGS
RARADIO:
Click here to go to
the new RARadio page to hear innovative acts from across the spectrum of
musical genres.
ARCHIVES:
Features from past
editions.
REVIEWS:
Books, albums, films
and bad baseball trades.
Recently Added:
FEATURED LINKS:
The Gibson guitar folks have a
Lifestyle zine section on their website that is well worth checking.
Click here.
RARWRITER
CONTRIBUTOR
PROSPECTUS
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exploding with new readers, new artist profiles, and new business
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download the
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PROJECTS
Rice Family
History
My
understanding is that my paternal great-grandparents, Charles Jerome Rice and
Laura Maris Rice, were first generation Americans descended from Irish heritage,
or possibly English on Laura's side. Charles was the son of a pioneering
homesteader who moved to the Nebraska plains when it was still unsettled
territory.
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I
have in my possession leather diaries
that date from 1883 to the early 20th century in which Charles, or C.J. as he
was called, kept meticulous records of his day-to-day activities starting from
the time he was around 20 years of age. These are on gracious loan to me from my
Aunt Lillian Rice, the daughter of C.J.'s youngest son Walter, and they provide
an extraordinary window into life on the plains in the 19th Century.
Left:
C.J. and Laura, photographed in Davenport, Nebraska on their wedding day in
1885.
Laura
was a teacher, whose family had moved west from Pennsylvania to Illinois, where
she attended teacher's college, then on to Missouri. She was teaching in the
Davenport area when she and C.J. met.
After
their wedding, they moved into their first home, a remote "soddy" on
the plains in Nucholls County, Nebraska.
Below
Left: The C.J. and Laura Rice Family's first home in Nucholls County,
Nebraska. Below Right: The Rice's Hays County soddy, established in 1887.
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Above:
The sod house on the left was the house C.J. Rice moved his new bride Laura
Maris into in 1885. It was located in Nucholls County, Nebraska. C.J. and Laura
are pictured, along with their team and various farm animals. In 1887, C.J.
moved by wagon to Hayes County, Nebraska and built the more refined soddy shown
on the right. C.J. and Laura are pictured on the right side of the frame, along
with Roy, their first born to survive. The identity of the other family
pictured, and why they were there at the Rice home, is not known.
I have mentioned elsewhere on this
site that our family experienced a devastating house fire in February 2005. We
lost virtually everything, including several years of work I had done toward
bringing the history of the Rice family to life in a variety of forms. Among
what was lost were hours of interviews I had done with my grandfather Walter
Rice, C.J.'s youngest son. For me, this was the hardest loss to take. Along with
the leather bound diaries, the interviews were serving as the foundation for my
book Up On the Blue, referencing the family's humble beginnings along the
Blue River in Nebraska.
Miraculously, the C.J. Rice diaries
survived that fire, though they were at ground zero of an inferno that began in
my office and took all of my digital files and most of my hard copy manuscripts.
A primary focus of mine these days is rebuilding my oeuvre of unpublished works.
All are dear to me, but none of those "recovery" projects is more dear
than completing the work I started on our family's history. I have the utmost
respect for people who get their stories on paper for future generations to
read, and for the family historians (like my Aunt Lillian Fielding on my
Father's side, Second Cousin Kenny Most and Aunt Lonnie Frick on my Mother's).
How else can we really understand who we are? And how can we begin to relate to
the travails of others unless we have an understanding of from where it is we
came?
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©Rick
Alan Rice (RAR), August, 2008
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