These salty tears...

1876, for so many reasons, was a hell of a year. Just check it out. If you can, time travel. Edward and Agnes Kennings were both loyal Donkay submitters; many of us spent a few months of our adolecence (wherever in life it may have fallen) with their Blue Beach Notebooks, which they updated every summer of their marriage. Here we've chosen not that well-loved archive but an excerpt from their wedding vows. Its the first archived usage of that spelling that the Kennings always advocated-- each other spelled as one word. Now, maybe you thought that the writing of one's own vows was a post-60's phenomena, you may have to check yo' century. Here's Eddie, only his vow survives. Agnes, like so many other artists, often prefered to burn rather than submit to the academie.

I first knew that Agnes was to be the woman of my life one afternoon in the living room of my parent's house. We 'd pass her visits reading, looking at reprints of lithographs, and we'd then fall into discussions that lasted until supper. Most of these afternoons were spent in the nectar of knowing, of savoring eachother's words as well as the aspect from which they emerged. We had just been discussing whether or not Keats' Porphyro was a villanous seducer. After hearing Agnes put forth the argument that indeed he was, doing credible damage to my romantic notions, I sat crestfallen. But in the ensuing silence she followed up by saying "I'll tell you what I am, a villianous consumer of that new Lowery's Season Salt." This was the humour I was looking for.