One thing about staying home during the pandemic is having gobs of time to sort through all the family stuff I’ve been grumbling about for years. The other day I discovered the above chart, created by me when I was eleven years old!
When people see how passionate I am about family history they often ask how long I’ve been researching my tree. “For as long as I can remember,” is my usual reply. Well, now I have proof I was doing it at least since age eleven. 🙂
Looking at this made me smile because it has so many mistakes, mostly the spellings of some of my cousins’ names. And using nicknames where I wasn’t sure of the full name. But I did the best I could after interviewing my parents. No dates. I was keenly interested in the relationships.
After I found this chart and drifted down memory lane for awhile, Tim suggested we go for a drive up in Ledyard because one of his friends said the trees were starting to show their fall colors. It was a beautiful Sunday drive! Please enjoy a little glimpse of our autumn. I have a feeling because of the drought it might go by too quickly…
Every day you play with the light of the universe.
~ Pablo Neruda
(The Poetry of Pablo Neruda)
Local COVID-19 update:
Ledge Light Health District is tracking an uptick in the number of COVID-19 cases in southeastern Connecticut. People are letting their guards down. We decided to try a take-out order on Monday — it was delicious — and then heard this news and decided we won’t be doing that again. Numbers are now higher than they were in April. People are gathering and not following protocols.
LLHD recorded 60 new cases during the week of Sept. 19-25 and another 43 new cases this weekend alone. Those numbers compare to a low point of five new cases a week in mid-August.
New London County now has 1,959 confirmed cases of COVID-19. Of those, 14 people are in the hospital and 115 have lost their lives. That’s 339 new cases and 7 more in the hospital since September 9 when I last reported. We were startled to see our part of the state the new area of increased concern on the news. Living in our bubble has become a comfortable routine yet this is raging all around us. It’s unsettling. A reminder that we’re doing all this staying home for a reason.
On Tuesday we decided to take another leaf peeping drive, as it was too humid for a walk. The weather people said that the colors are coming two weeks early because of the drought so we might be headed up to the Quiet Corner of Connecticut sooner than planned for our autumn drive. Still a lot of yellows for now but we did see a few rust and orange leaves…
We are under a gale warning today as we get some badly needed rain. Waiting to see how many leaves will be left on the trees tomorrow!
The paper is not even rumpled and says organized all over the place! How wonderful to pair those passages with ours into the warm colors of autumn.
Thank you, Marilee! The paper is discolored in the middle where it had been folded and stuck in my baby book. I’m guessing my mother put it in there for safe-keeping. Acid-free paper wasn’t common back then.
Mothers are the greatest! When I go …. haha!
🙂
What an absolute joy to watch, Barbara. And so strange – my daughter started to explore our own Tree too about that same age as you were. I am so glad she did
Thank you, Leelah. It seems like there is one in every family. 🙂 I’m also glad your daughter wanted to explore her family tree from an early age. I wonder if/when my grandchildren might start asking questions like I did. (My own children never had a chance to ask questions, I was telling them things as I discovered them…)
Wow, the things you are finding! There are definitely benefits to being cooped up at home. 🙂
Your scenic photos are so beautiful. You live in a gorgeous area, Barbara. 🙂
Thank you, Joanne! 🙂 I do feel blessed and grateful to be living here by the sea and close to so many natural areas, trails and gardens. And the changing seasons — never a dull moment!
I adore your early genealogical work. Your penmanship and detail is wonderful. I have a bunch of boxes filled with family paper *stuff* that I shall get to during this pandemic.
We’ve not had any take out food during the last 6 months. Your experience, while tasty, convinces me we’ll just keep cooking for ourselves.
The photos are beautiful. Kind of a spoiler for me about what is to come.
Thank you, Ally! For some reason the autumn colors in the photos never look quite the same as they do to my eyes, but I keep trying.
Yeah, it had been at least 6 months since our last take-out food. I don’t know what we were thinking! Except that some of our friends have been going out to eat at restaurants, some outdoors and some even indoors. But we’re back to playing it safe. Probably until there is a safe vaccine.
I hope you enjoy your fall colors when they arrive and also have fun going through your boxes of stuff. You never know what you might find!
How sweet that you still have this from your eleven year old self. Such a deep passion in you for most of your life so far! Glad you are enjoying your fall colors. P.S. Know what you mean about how hard it is to photograph autumn colors. They can look so stunning to the eye–and then bleh when they’re uploaded.
Oh those elusive autumn colors. Perhaps we should abandon our cameras and enjoy them without distraction, staying in the moment. Maybe the universe is making a point by frustrating our efforts! Sometimes I feel like a fisher bragging about the one that got away, when I’m going on about the colors the camera didn’t capture…
I read your comment in Ally Bean’s post, and like you, I’m a lover of blue. But… I must say… I think we both like the orange in Fall. Hope the gale winds weren’t too difficult for you yesterday. We had rain/wind but no power outage…this time.
So nice to know you love blue, too, Pam! And you’re right, autumn wouldn’t be the same without those warm shades of orange, like rust and copper and burnt orange. I once learned in an art class that brown is actually a shade of orange. We also didn’t have any power outages here this time. We could have used more rain, though.
Well, I didn’t know that either, but orange is much more exciting than orange/brown!! 🙂
Indeed! 🙂
The trees are gorgeous with their tinges of color and so many leaves on the ground already – I am shocked about that, but I also heard that the drought-like conditions will wreak havoc with the Fall colors. In the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, they might get frost and some snow this week, so that’ll put a different spin on the leaf color in that portion of Michigan. I’ve not had take-out food for 10 years so I have you beat … we have a bad Hepatitis A outbreak in Michigan and have had many deaths as a result of it over the past decade. It is food handlers’ bad hygiene primarily and it is found in fast food restaurants to fine dining establishments. So I could choose to get the two-part Hep A shot, but I just don’t go out to eat. Nor do I get anything from a deli at the grocery store and I won’t buy any type of fresh bread, baked good made by that store either. Nothing made in Michigan that is fresh. Besides, it is only me, so not as fun to go out alone, but that’s my story.
We had a spike this week too and in conjunction with that spike I wondered why our Governor, who has been very diligent about doing things slowly and carefully, decided to allow larger crowds at high school football games – this apparently was a real coup for families who had protested the small amount of people in attendance. There have been multiple attempts to recall the Governor for being so strict.
As to your tree, how fascinating you began tracking down and putting together a chart of relatives at age 11. When my friend Carol did my tree on Ancestry, she gave me the info on my grandmother’s siblings as I mentioned to you a few weeks ago. In doing that, the list showed their given names – I could not match them to the names I heard the women referred to by my grandmother – they were odd names, not shortened forms of their names. So, I could only tell who they were by their spouses’s names. My grandmother’s name was Wilhemina but she went by Minnie.
How interesting, I haven’t heard anything about Hep A around here. But I do worry about the cleanliness of restaurant food in general and I suspect after the pandemic is over we won’t be in a hurry to return to eating out and getting take-out. Last night on the news there was a story about a woman and how her restaurant was getting along during the pandemic. In every shot where she was cooking she was wearing her mask improperly with her nose exposed. I couldn’t believe it! They shouldn’t have put the story on the air because it makes it seem like it’s okay to wear it like that. Definitely NOT getting take-out any more! I’m having trouble trusting people these days.
We used to have our groceries delivered when the pandemic started but over the summer Tim started food shopping again because there were things in the store that instacart wouldn’t pick up. He goes through as fast as he can, making frequent use of his hand sanitizer. If he turns into an aisle and he sees someone wearing their mask like that (he calls it a chin diaper!) he skips that aisle until later. Fortunately that doesn’t happen often. He says most people are wearing their masks properly and keeping a good distance from each other. Mid-morning on a week day there are very few customers in the store. What a bizarre world we live in now.
Yes, those nicknames can complicate one’s genealogical research! Plus, the further back you go in history, the less the spelling counts. Many people couldn’t read and write and the spellings that made their way into town birth and death records are mystifying at times. Minnie can be a nickname for so many names: Mary, Minerva, Wilhelmina, Clementine, Hermione, Amelia… 🙂
I worked in a diner throughout college and we had to go to the health department and get a food handlers card and were tested for TB before we could begin there. The diner posted our cards in case anyone asked. I don’t like all the incidences of Hep A so I just don’t buy anything. I think the 2-part shot is $250.00 (for both). Last week I got a pneumonia shot as it had been 20 years since I got one and due to COVID – I worry and I’m not really around people. So my insurance paid about $30.00, but I had to pay $212.00 for the shot and it is part 1 of a 2-part shot, with the booster this time next year for the same amount. I will be on Medicare this time next year, so hopefully it will be considerably less. It was so bad in Michigan for Hep A that the surrounding states (Illinois and Indiana) took out ads warning their residents not to visit here.
Well I see that mask wearing like that too here and something bad happened today in our state. People had challenged our Governor’s repeated executive orders to keep us safe. We are going to have movie theatres open next week and gyms opened just two week ago – but people are mad, felt their rights were infringed on, challenged her and filed a lawsuit and the ruling was today by the Michigan Supreme Court to remove those executive powers in 21 days. I am sure she will appeal the order to the Court of Appeals on an emergency basis. I hope she wins – otherwise no masks will be necessary, no restrictions … it will be a free-for-all.
That makes sense about the names. My grandmother never went by that formal name – besides Minnie would be easier to spell. 🙂
That’s amazing, I had no idea Michigan was having a Hep A outbreak. I’m not sure which vaccines are worth getting these days, but if the disease one prevents is particularly horrifying… well, I keep up to date on my tetanus shots!
Sorry to hear about your governor’s loss in the court. 🙁 I often say many Americans have a tendency to focus soley on their “rights” with very little regard for their responsibilities to their communities and fellow citizens…
I agree and I would much rather get a new pneumonia shot than the Hep A shot as I can refrain from eating food prepared by others but I don’t know that I won’t pick up germs that will make me ill and I end up with pneumonia. I got a shingles shot at age 59 when my neighbor had shingles so badly that she never regained her full sight in one eye the rest of her life. She got shingles in her one eye and one side of scalp. It was stress related. I know it is/was not contagious but I saw what she went through but I asked my allergist for a prescription – at the time you had to be 60 to get the shot. I told him about my neighbor and he wrote the prescription.
Now they have a more-powerful, two-part shot which is suggested if you are older. I will get that eventually, but for now I am covered by the prior one.
I got a tetanus booster perhaps 4-5 years ago.
My poor husband also had shingles in 2015, on his cheek and temple. He was on a narcotic the pain was so bad, and he still has scars on his face from it. I cannot imagine how awful that must have been for your neighbor to have it in her eye! I shudder at the thought of it. My daughter had it in her 30s, in 2018, on her thigh. She was under a lot of stress, pregnant and moving back to North Carolina from Ireland, helping her cousin with her wedding in another state, but her pain was manageable without narcotics, thank goodness. Back in 2015 my doctor said the vaccine wasn’t terribly effective so I didn’t get one at that time, but apparently the new one is more effective. My sister got the new shingles vaccine a couple of weeks ago and had a bad reaction to it. So, as with many things lately, I’m sitting on the fence about getting one myself.
I had to return here before I shut down for the night. I have subscribed to the Food Poisoning Bulletin for years. Initially it was for my canary when there were the Romaine lettuce problems – he loved his greens, but I followed the recalls religiously. Also, one time his food was recalled for parsley salmonella and they put parsley and greens in the canary seeds/food. Anyway, this is exactly what happens here in Michigan and for the same reason. This is in Maine – I know not your state, but wanted to mention it:
https://foodpoisoningbulletin.com/2020/worker-at-birches-resort-in-rockwood-maine-diagnosed-with-hepatitis-a/
Subscribed. Thanks!
It is a worthwhile site to subscribe to – it is on Facebook too, but they are always a week behind. I just stayed on the subscription after my canary Buddy passed away. I’ve alerted friends and fellow bloggers who use raw food for their cats and dogs when there is a recall – in both instances it was the type of food they used. Also, a high school pal’s grandson has a bad peanut allergy and they always tell when there are peanuts in items that are not supposed to have peanuts. My friend in New York loves Wegman’s and they are always having recalls, often items that Carol purchases.
I always pay attention to the food recalls on the evening news but it will be nice to get an email now, in case I happen to miss the news. 🙂
I know that it is about time for romaine lettuce issues as the holidays get closer. The Meijer grocery store where I shop is large, like a KMart or Walmart – they carry a little of everything. They have had a few recalls for cut-up fruit and veggies packages. Listeria mostly. I won’t get it anyway as it is prepared in Michigan by Michigan workers, thus worries about Hep A. I do miss getting fresh bread – occasionally I got the mini whole-grain baguettes for a treat, but no more. I am very behind here Barbara … I worked until 7:30 tonight. I may never catch up in Comments or in Reader. As to my longer posts, I write a rough draft the day I take them, then pair the photos with the narrative later. I may have to cut back to two posts a week for a bit if I can’t get a handle on this.
I got my first recall email this morning — feels good to be informed. It’s funny, because of my radiation proctocolitis I cannot eat raw fruits and vegetables (and many cooked ones, too) anyway, or bread, for that matter.
Please don’t worry about catching up on comments and posts. I am amazed that you can work full-time AND blog at all! Sticking to a posting schedule would take all the joy out of it for me. Whatever and whenever you post or comment is all good!