Mimi Torchia Boothby

Category: historic

  • Clarence and Sophyra Hartness, 1941

    It is my good fortune to possess the negatives that once belonged to my husband’s grandfather Tom Boothby. Tom and his wife Winnie drove all over the northwest in their free time,camping and cataloging their travels with their camera. Most of the pictures are of themselves, but they also took pictures of relatives. The people…

  • S is for Summer Avenue

    As part of a project for the Brooklyn Art Library, the Art House Co-op challenged 500 people to write a letter to their old home. I had many old homes to choose from, but this is the one I chose. The reference for the painting was a google street view! Dear 565A Summer Avenue You…

  • Not Nonno – Becoming American

    So here’s the question that my cousins and I all fruitlessly discussed: Why did we call our Italian grandmothers “Nonnie” which is very close to “Nonna” or “Nonnina” – the Italian word for grandmother; but none of us called our Italian grandfathers “nonno”? We called them Grandpa and Pop. I had been thinking about this…

  • Aunt on an Automobile

    Here is my Aunt Tess sitting on her husband’s Buick. I actually have more pictures of that Buick than I do anything else from that time. Cars meant a lot to my family, they were status symbols even in the 1940’s. My Aunt looks a bit like a hussy here; but she was a beautiful…

  • Boise, Idaho – a jaunt to the hot dry side

    I flew to Boise on Saturday to visit some family; and while I was there I had a little time to work in my journal. While sitting with my dear husband in Starbucks, I sketched him writing about the frustration of his niece having cancer — “Life isn’t fair” At the niece’s house, the only…