Betsy and I Killed the Bear

“Betsy and I Killed the Bear” is an expression whose meaning has been lost. Like many of the things I work with, it is an evocative archaeological find whose significance is not immediately discernable. Its meaning – as nearly as I am able to reconstruct it – has to do with taking credit for something one has not done. But this meaning has become so obscure that it remains more or less a private one to the individuals in the photographs, in particular to my Aunt Dorothy, who mentioned it to me in conversation a few years ago; now 91, and languishing in a sanatorium, she will take it, along with the whole apparatus of her understandings of these events and places, with her to her grave".

(Michael Huey)