Once upon a time, in 1966, a branch of the Hohmans moved to 65 Ordale Blvd. The house was sold in 1980. Many roads led to Ordale. Many roads led from Ordale. All roads can lead to Ordalia, the family website. May it live happily ever after.
Email memorabilia, timeline suggestions, favorites, etc. to: mail@ordalia.us
Ordalia was created in loving memory of Ellie/Mom/Gram. Credit for most of the vintage photos goes to her and her Kodak Retina Reflex IIIC. Ruth/AR snapped memorable Kodachromes too.
"Memory is not just commemoration; it is ethical power."
Patricia Hampl, I Could Tell You Stories: Sojourns in the Land of Memory (1999)
"From a real body, which was there, proceed radiations which ultimately touch me, who am here; the duration of the transmission is insignificant; the photograph of the missing being, as Sontag says, will touch me like the delayed rays of a star. A sort of umbilical cord links the body of the photographed thing to my gaze: light, though impalpable, is here a carnal medium, a skin I share with anyone who has been photographed."
Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida (1980)
"Mother was fond of saying if we were to have a family crest, a suitcase should figure prominently."
Eleanor Hohman
"Sorting and resorting a heterogeneous mountain of historical mementos became a means for family members to witness and talk about generational continuities or discontinuities. One era’s familiar objects turn alien in another epoch. Memories, if they are to persist, have to be incorporated into the stuff of contemporary stories. The display of oddities as a component of ordinary household furnishing could have offered the Cobbes—or, by analogy, any tightly knit group—opportunities for rethinking, making sense of, and telling themselves and their guests how they and this particular cluster of artifacts fit into what otherwise would only be the vast, impersonal scheme of things."
Barbara Maria Stafford on a museum of curiosities located in Newbridge House, outside Dublin, Devices of Wonder: From the World in a Box to Images on a Screen (2001)
Of ourselves, a few plastic practice golf balls in the iris and a few dusty little Superballs beneath the radiators will be all for others to find. The ghosts we have left only we can see. John Updike, Plumbing (1972)
Shout outs
The Anonymous Project
Jonathan Derham, Enniscorthy, Ireland
Nancy Laitta, Mt. Lebanon PA
Julie Underwood, Mt. Lebanon PA
Adele "Dell" Washington, Alison Park PA
Email memorabilia, timeline suggestions, favorites, etc. to: mail@ordalia.us
Ordalia was created in loving memory of Ellie/Mom/Gram. Credit for most of the vintage photos goes to her and her Kodak Retina Reflex IIIC. Ruth/AR snapped memorable Kodachromes too.
"Memory is not just commemoration; it is ethical power."
Patricia Hampl, I Could Tell You Stories: Sojourns in the Land of Memory (1999)
"From a real body, which was there, proceed radiations which ultimately touch me, who am here; the duration of the transmission is insignificant; the photograph of the missing being, as Sontag says, will touch me like the delayed rays of a star. A sort of umbilical cord links the body of the photographed thing to my gaze: light, though impalpable, is here a carnal medium, a skin I share with anyone who has been photographed."
Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida (1980)
"Mother was fond of saying if we were to have a family crest, a suitcase should figure prominently."
Eleanor Hohman
"Sorting and resorting a heterogeneous mountain of historical mementos became a means for family members to witness and talk about generational continuities or discontinuities. One era’s familiar objects turn alien in another epoch. Memories, if they are to persist, have to be incorporated into the stuff of contemporary stories. The display of oddities as a component of ordinary household furnishing could have offered the Cobbes—or, by analogy, any tightly knit group—opportunities for rethinking, making sense of, and telling themselves and their guests how they and this particular cluster of artifacts fit into what otherwise would only be the vast, impersonal scheme of things."
Barbara Maria Stafford on a museum of curiosities located in Newbridge House, outside Dublin, Devices of Wonder: From the World in a Box to Images on a Screen (2001)
Of ourselves, a few plastic practice golf balls in the iris and a few dusty little Superballs beneath the radiators will be all for others to find. The ghosts we have left only we can see. John Updike, Plumbing (1972)
Shout outs
The Anonymous Project
Jonathan Derham, Enniscorthy, Ireland
Nancy Laitta, Mt. Lebanon PA
Julie Underwood, Mt. Lebanon PA
Adele "Dell" Washington, Alison Park PA