Mimi Torchia Boothby

Category: historic

  • Day 7 – Thomas Moore – poet

    When you are drawing a historical personage, you are at the mercy of the previous artist’s work. Thomas Moore died before there were photographs, so I picked the portrait that looked most lifelike as my reference, but I was never happy with it. Thomas Moore was a singer, songwriter, poet, and entertainer. He toured the…

  • Day 3 – Mary Shelley

    This is Mary Shelley. Honestly, I knew nothing about her besides some sort of association with Lord Byron and Percy Shelley. Mary fell in love with Percy, an older, married man, when she was 16. She was an adored child, but once she cast her lot with Percy, her father did everything he could to…

  • Ripped off, the story of “Jim” Fressola

    My only American grandparent was born in Manhattan, New York at the end of the 19th century. He was born in the USA to recent Italian immigrants. He was their last child, born when they were already advanced in age, and had more or less given up on having a son at all, having had…

  • Harvesting the Pacific Northwest Grandeur.

    The first white settlers of the Oregon Territory discovered that the riches were in wood and salmon. Flocks of hardy men came from all over the world to harvest this wood, some of it 1000 year old trees, many of these trees stood over 300 feet tall and their girths were often over 50 feet.…

  • La Giara – Sersale

    This is a scene from a large house in Sersale that appears to be abandoned. Two years ago, my cousin Peppino Talarico told me that the Talarico family owned this house many years ago. During my latest visit, my tour guides let me peek inside. How lucky could I get? There was this amazing jar…