R. Mark Melville

@rmarkmel

Assistant editor of Utah Historical Quarterly. Holiday enthusiast, casual trail runner, cat dad. Views are my own. 🏳️‍🌈

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R. Mark Melville@rmarkmel· 4d

Several nights a week, I go on neighborhood walks to pull up goathead plants from a few patches I've adopted. I have spent hours and hours doing this, so I can't help but feel resentful that some folks can't be bothered to remove them from their own yards. 😠🐐

A mass of puncturevine, or goathead, plants. They are vines with sharp, green fruits.

R. Mark Melville@rmarkmel· 8d

In northern Idaho is a neighborhood with streets all named for berries, including Halleberry.

A Google Maps screenshot with streets named Blueberry, Strawberry, Raspberry, and Salmonberry, with Halleberry Court in the southeast corner.

R. Mark Melville@rmarkmel· 9d

(In April, I went to Ken Sanders Rare Books in Salt Lake City and was delighted to find an original print of the postcard that's the cover image, so of course I bought it.)

A 1910 postcard of a boy wearing a green star-spangled jacket and red and white striped pants, holding a star-spangled top hat, sitting on a large live turkey.

R. Mark Melville@rmarkmel· 14d

The same page included this amusing strip, though I'd never heard of Muggs and Skeeter before.

Muggs and Skeeter comic strip. First panel: A boy walks past a guard into an art museum. Second panel: Four adults are bent down looking at paintings with their derrieres sticking out. The boy says "Oh boy!!" Third panel: The boy is thrown out of the museum while someone says, "Get out an' stay out!" Fourth panel: A hand throws out a slingshot while someone says, "An' take this with you!"

R. Mark Melville@rmarkmel· 14d

Stumbled across this Nancy strip from December 5, 1942, while checking a source today. WWII history doesn't interest me when it's about the battles, but I love these little slices of life.

Nancy comic strip. First panel: Nancy says to Sluggo, "How do you like my column, chief?" He says, "Very good—we sold a lot of papers today!" Second panel: "Nancy's Gossip Column: What man in this neighborhood is hoarding an extra tire?" Final panel: "That night!" Tires are being thrown over the wall into the Scrap Rubber Depot.

R. Mark Melville@rmarkmel· 19d

On Labor Day 2024, I went to a library book sale and found *two* cultural and environmental histories about birds, The Bald Eagle and The Turkey. I finally finished them both. They were both really well researched and interesting. The Bald Eagle gives me hope that we can fix environmental problems.

The books "The Bald Eagle: The Improbable Journey of America's Bird" by Jack E. Davis and "The Turkey: An American Story" by Andrew F. Smith. The first book has a bald eagle on a branch. The second has Uncle Sam holding a live turkey while sitting on a pumpkin with a document that says "Thanksgiving Proclamation" next to it.

R. Mark Melville@rmarkmel· Jul 8

Got my Pioneer Day decorations up.

A bear holding an American flag while the old Utah flag is behind him; small toys of nineteenth-century pioneers, one of them pulling a handcart; salt and pepper shakers of a horse and covered wagon, with the present Utah flag behind them.

A large decorative jar of a beehive (skep) with bees and sunflowers on it. Patriotic wire decorations sit behind it.

R. Mark Melville@rmarkmel· Jul 6

"Would you believe that the same face could become so beautiful? Just take off those ugly 'specs.'" Indianapolis News, April 6, 1953, p. 14.

A newspaper ad for "New Type plastic, unbreakable, fluidless Invisible Lenses." It features two women next to each other, one wearing glasses, the other without.

R. Mark Melville@rmarkmel· Jul 2

I love "pumpkin ghosts" of the mid-twentieth century! I wish they would come back. These days it's usually pumpkins or ghosts, or ghosts holding pumpkins, but not pumpkin-headed ghosts.

A screenshot from the 1967 "Safe and Sane Halloween" episode of Bewitched. It has Samantha with Tabitha in a leopard costume, then an elf-like gremlin, a hairy gray goblin, and a jack-o'-lantern with a ghost body.

R. Mark Melville@rmarkmel· Jun 30

Aww, nice doggy!

A screenshot from The Simpsons: "Summer of 4 Ft. 2." Millhouse does not have his glasses on and is petting a horseshoe crab.

R. Mark Melville@rmarkmel· Jun 23

The great thing about the internet is that if I randomly remember a super awkward picture from a high school textbook more than two decades ago, sometimes I can find it.

An illustration of a boy (Paul) sitting on a bench offering orange slices to another boy (Vincent), whose back is to Paul, and Vincent is awkwardly positioned on the bench. The captions say "Paul ést généreux" and "Vincent est égoïste."

R. Mark Melville@rmarkmel· Jun 19

Whenever Deidre Henderson defends Utah election laws

A screenshot from "The Nightmare Before Christmas" with Sally looking at the camera, with the subtitle reading "She's the only one who makes any sense around this insane asylum!"

R. Mark Melville@rmarkmel· Jun 16

And here's another Lucy and Lucy!

Screenshot from "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown," in which Lucy is reading a yellow TV Guide with a picture of herself on the cover.

R. Mark Melville@rmarkmel· Jun 14

This is why I bought this button.

A button pin that says "not a hugger" with an image of a saguaro cactus.

R. Mark Melville@rmarkmel· Jun 11

SPLOOT

A large brown tabby cat with long fur and a mane on a bed with a blue blanket. The cat's back legs are behind him to the side.

R. Mark Melville@rmarkmel· Jun 9

I'm going through old office files at work and can't stop laughing at this email exchange from one of my predecessors twenty years ago.

R. Mark Melville@rmarkmel· Jun 3

I just discovered that my phone camera captured a different spider in a different sego lily on the same night!

The white petals of a sego lily surrounded by leaves from an arrowleaf balsamroot plant. A light-colored spider can be faintly seen in the flower's petals.

R. Mark Melville@rmarkmel· Jun 3

FYI, last year, UHQ published an article that questions the usual narrative about the bear flag and the Mormon Battalion. The author contends that the flag was made later and did not go to California. @benjaminepark.bsky.social @nbshrum34.bsky.social scholarlypublishingcollective.org/uip/uhq/arti...

A screenshot from Benjamin Park and Nicholas Shrum's article:
"Yet on their path to the Great Basin region, the federal government enlisted a group of church members to serve in the Mexican-American War. Known as the Mormon Battalion, they marched into Mexican territory under an American flag with only 13 stars. It was a symbolic protest: the U.S. they hoped to represent was the one that existed during the American Revolution, not the one with 28 states that had chased them out. They saw their own church, not the current government, as the revolutionaries’ true inheritor."

R. Mark Melville@rmarkmel· Jun 2

If you are having a bad day, just remember that you live in a day with a backspace button.

A 1981 typed letter that says "all issues," but it originally had s's instead of l's. The l's are typed over the s's.

R. Mark Melville@rmarkmel· Jun 1

In the Olympics section, they have these plush mascots. My family has these exact plushes on a shelf in our basement.

Plush animals from the 2002 Winter Olympics: a bear with a hockey stick, a coyote with ski goggles, and a rabbit with ice skates.

R. Mark Melville@rmarkmel· Jun 1

They have ephemera from @sundance.org 2019 and 2020 festivals, the two years I worked for the Sundance Film Festival!

A t-shirt that says "Sundance Film Festival 2020" with a lanyard from the 2019 festival.

R. Mark Melville@rmarkmel· Jun 1

Got to go on a staff tour of the new Museum of Utah today, and I can't wait for everyone to see it! It is beautiful, smart, diverse, and inclusive (even if it can't use some of those words 🙄). Grand opening is June 27. The museum, located north of the capitol, will be free to the public.

The Mormon Meteor III, a 1930s race car that is blue and orange.

R. Mark Melville@rmarkmel· Jun 1

One section that I edited was quotes from writers, including Juanita Brooks. I suggested that the exhibit not include the full title of Brooks's book, "John Doyle Lee: Zealot, Pioneer Builder, Scapegoat," because I didn't want to perpetuate the idea that Lee was a scapegoat. They took my advice!

A block of text in a museum exhibit that says:
EXCERPT
At one time he opened his eyes wide to the ceiling saying, "Blood! Blood! Blood!!" in a way that made my scalp fairly crawl.
"What troubles him?" I asked one of those present. "He acts as though he is haunted."
"Maybe he is. He was at the Mountain Meadows massacre, you know," was the answer.
No, I certainly had not known.

R. Mark Melville@rmarkmel· May 27

I often see bees and flies in sego lilies, but this is my first time for a spider.

A sego lily, with three white petals tinged with yellow and scarlet and three white sepals, with a light green spider on one of the petals.

R. Mark Melville@rmarkmel· May 25

Happy Memorial Day! Last month I went to Ken Sanders Rare Books in Salt Lake City and bought these vintage Decoration Day and Memorial Day postcards from 1912 and 1909. When these were made, there were still surviving veterans from the Civil War. 🇺🇸🪦🌷

A postcard of an old man in a blue Civil War uniform with flowers and an American flag in his lap, with a young girl standing next to him. They are by a tombstone that says "In memory of," with flowers in front of it. In the background, a flag flies at half staff.

A postcard that says "Memorial Day souvenir. Red, wihte [sic] and blue." It has a naked cherub holding an American flag. There is sheet music for "O Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean."

R. Mark Melville@rmarkmel· May 20

It is so dystopian that I would even encounter a notice like this on an official government website.

A screenshot from Bureau of Indian Affairs that says, "You are viewing ARCHIVED content published online before January 20, 2025. Please note that this content is NOT UPDATED, and links may not work. Additionally, any previously issued diversity, equity, inclusion or gender-related guidance on this webpage should be considered rescinded."

R. Mark Melville@rmarkmel· May 19

My favorite thing about checking sources is stumbling across random things in old newspapers. 😸

A newspaper clipping of a large cat with his paws stretched out in front of him and his claws visible. The caption reads: "Coddled Alley Cat. Sylvester is a very special breed of ordinary alley cat. He lives very sumptuously in Detroit—so that other cats of all breeds might live. He is valued for his blood which, according to the Humane Society, is given about four or five times a year to other felines suffering blood deficiencies. Sylvester, shown stretching on society manager Ron Blauet's desk, enjoys the luxuries of a well-balanced diet, a large private kennel and complete freedom to roam in the two-story building."

R. Mark Melville@rmarkmel· May 10

Someone make this into a meme

A black-and white photograph of a baby with a surprised look on his face while another baby's hand is on his head.

R. Mark Melville@rmarkmel· Apr 24

What I'm listening to today. Happy Arbor Day!

The CD cover of the joint soundtracks for "It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown" and "Charlie Brown's All Stars!" by Vince Guaraldi. It features an illustration of Peppermint Patty and Charlie Brown lying down with their heads against a small tree.

R. Mark Melville@rmarkmel· Apr 21