I've Caught the Bug

For years, as a reference librarian, I taught classes, gave workshops, and advised interested parties on how to do genealogical research.  I even spoke to the local DAR, not an easy group.  Whenever cornered by an aficionado outside my official duties, my eyes reflected the deer in the headlights look as I plotted my escape. Whenever possible I would indicate the appropriate resources, instruct on their use, make alternative suggestions, and beat a quick retreat back to the reference desk.

No more.  I’ve caught the “family tree bug.”  Actually it began last year when my cousin, his wife and his older brother were planning a trip to Ireland and we invited them over for a look at our Irish cousins’ pictures, provide addresses, and offer general encouragement.  I reviewed old family documents, sorted photographs. My cousins and I shared old family stories, recalling long lost faces and remembered names.  That planted the seed.

We are double cousins with an Irish family. By that I mean that my grandfather’s brother married my grandmother’s sister. That branch of the family stayed in Ireland while the rest emigrated to Chicago. Throughout the years my grandmother corresponded with her sister. When my grandmother died, the Irish aunt continued her correspondence with my mother.  Since then I have picked up the threads with my cousins. It is fun to read over letters written nearly fifty years ago.  Over the past fifteen years we have visited with each other in our homes. 

Last summer I gathered together legal documents, photographs, notebook lists, and old letters to begin a family genealogy.  I added information from the very helpful Irish Census of 1901 and 1911, as well as our own census information, marriage records, and obituary notices.  Once I had the skeleton of a genealogy, I sent my information to the Irish cousins, asking for their additions and corrections. The only caveats I insist upon is that the genealogy not be placed on the Internet, on an Internet site like Ancestry.com, or made available to the Mormon Church family genealogies. I eschew the Internet sites because of inaccuracies and because posting genealogies provides a treasure trove for Identity Theft crime.  The Mormon restriction is made because I don’t want the entire family baptized in retrospect should some future family member become a Mormon.

Despite these prohibitions the Irish response was enthusiastic.  One of my cousin’s children had begun the Irish branch genealogy a few years ago. He was glad of the American cousin information; I was delighted have his work augment my own.  Since then we have debated and collaborated, meeting in person for the first time this summer.  Soon we will meet again in Killarney.  I have worked feverishly in the past weeks to add a new branch to the genealogy that is based on the family of my great-grandmother.  Assiduous research has resulted in enlarging the primary family’s genealogy; careful collaboration has cleared past doubts, filled holes.  We are well on our way!

What plans for the future?  There are a few people—read, strangers—I plan to contact personally to chase down lost family members.  Much work has to be done in obituary searches and the 1940 census. Primary sources for soft records need to be found. There is a good deal more to learn.  The August the Third “Gathering” of the family clan in Ireland should have provided another rich source of information for my cousin’s work. I can’t wait to consult with my Irish counterpart to share new data we’ve been able to assemble.  There is much to do.  I think of the possibilities all the time.  I am on the look-out for new sources.  

Do I see a deer in the headlights look in your eyes?  What’s your hurry?  I have so much more to share…

Beautiful Destroyer

Most of the country is beset by very hot weather, but it seems much more oppressive than usual this July.  My mile walk to the public library has become arduous since there is no longer relief from the relentless summer sunshine along the route.  The reason?  In the course of a few months the shade canopy that has been cooling our streets for nearly fifty years has been destroyed, beautiful trees cut to the ground. The ambiance of our neighborhood forever altered.

The beautiful, but destructive, Emerald Ash Borer began its assault in the state of Illinois seven years ago. Our community became infested about three or four years ago.  We never really thought much about the abundance of a single type of tree planted along the parkways.  There were a few other types and some other specie replacements had been preference and paid for by home owners over the last ten years, but, as the current vast blankness reveals, not many, and those not yet large.

The tree trimmers struck with ruthless abandon, each block's canopies falling before their saw.  At first many trees were stripped of all the top branches, leaving barren trunks as sentinels in a bazaar parody of the Easter Island standing figures. Eventually even those were cut to the ground, the necessary but ugly slaughter representing a Pyrrhic victory over the insects.  Today all is devastation.

Our town had the foresight to purchase a nursery of new saplings a few years ago, knowing that the ash trees would fall victim to the green menace.Slowly the town is replacing our ash trees with new trees, varying the species as they should have in the beginning.  We have been given a puny Victory Elm, a mockery of the once great American Elms which were destroyed by Dutch Elm disease a decade or so ago. As I walk along the street on my way to the library I read the labels on the tiny trees that will require years before they give shade and grace to our community streets once more.  The sun beats down seemingly as a punishment for our ingratitude and negligence.  We mourn our trees and wonder about this, and yet undiscovered, vulnerabilities waiting for tomorrow.

On Being Married to Cary Grant

Either I harbor a deep seated death wish or I need to be confined to the nearest loony bin. I am the long-suffering wife of a man with” the devil’s own charm” and I’ve just put my head into the lion’s mouth again.

 Both of us have just joined a local university’s continued learning program for people fifty-five and older. Normally this would be a good thing—meeting new people, learning interesting things, discussing challenging topics, taking trips with our peers. The problem is that most of these interesting new people are ladies, nice ladies to be sure, but ladies susceptible to “Cary Grant.”

Our first outing was for a discussion at the weekly “Plato’s place.”  At the end of a spirited conversation with more than a dozen others, many of the single ladies hurried to welcome the newcomers. It would be more correct to say to welcome my handsome, intelligent, and charming husband. (Apparently I am “chopped liver.”) Several introduced themselves as “widows” and proffered invitations to their favorite activities like travel abroad and supplemental groups in nearby towns. One woman tracked him down at the nearby Costco store where we went after the discussion.

Ladies have been stalking him for decades. It’s the same story everywhere we go. At the last IBAM (Irish Books, Art, and Music) celebration at the Chicago area Irish American Heritage Center he was cornered in the library by some Irishwoman not prepared to give him up any time soon. “Oh, your husband is such a nice man!” she declared, thereafter turning her back to me and continuing the conversation despite his genuine attempts to break away.

The neighborhood isn’t safe either. I made the mistake of removing a few bushes and making the front of our house into what I like to call The Veranda but what is actually a small porch with a few chairs.  It’s usually nice and quiet when I go outside to read in the fresh air. It’s usually standing room only when “Cary Grant” sits out there. All the neighbor ladies want to pass the time or ask him something. Since he is a charming, nice, and kind extrovert he loves to help if he can. He’ll even put out the seat cushions for “the ladies.”  Naturally they beat a quick retreat if I join them.

Young and old, the ladies all love “Cary.”  The sweet Korean woman who owned the local dry cleaners giggled to me when she connected the two of us.  “He very pretty man,” she said.  Another young Chinese nurse recently thought I was his mother!  Now that was going too far, even though my hair is mostly white and he has a dozen distinguished grey hairs at the temples.  Actually “Cary Grant” is three and a half years older than "wifey."

Don’t get me wrong, I love him dearly and am not immune to his charms even after almost fifty years.  It’s great to have a husband who is kind and helpful, but couldn’t he turn it down a bit. The least he could do would be to get more grey hair and a few wrinkles. He should definitely whip out the photos of his grandchildren while referring to his arthritis and any variety of age related impairments. I doubt it would deter the widows and other ladies though so I’ll keep a close eye on Cary and the ladies—especially the ladies—because he  really is an innocent and unaware of his effect on the weaker sex. Perhaps that’s part of his charm.  After all when you’ve got it, flaunt it. And he’s got something!  

Happy Father’s Day, Cary.

The Eye's Have It

I am composing this without my specs.  Not a big deal to most of you, but an amazing experience for one who has been wearing glasses since the sixth grade. It was at the tender age of eleven that I received my first pair of glasses and “really saw” the golf course across the street from our home, never suspecting what I had been missing beyond twelve feet.

As time passed my myopia became progressively worse. As time passed my arms grew ever shorter as presbyopia added to the mix. Oh the joys of old age! Bifocals became de rigueur. My visual world appeared increasingly smaller and farther away, rather like the side view mirrors on the car which warn that objects are closer than they appear. Unconsciously one’s depth perception adjusts to the distortions.

That is, until this month when my lenses were returned to their pre-pubescent clarity.  More and more I had been seeing through a glass darkly as cataracts progressed, but no more! Cataract replacement surgery has not only refocused increasingly scattered light, but also restored much of my distant vision. WOW! I feel like a ten-year old.

Everything is larger and nearer than I realized. Light is bright, colors clearer. It is a life-altering change, one that I am only just learning to appreciate.  It is an eye-opening experience as I am introduced to a re-sized and refocused world. Do I actually look like that? Is that what high definition TV looks like? Where are those phantom glasses I keep trying to push up on the bridge of my nose? Are you really so close?

The experience is profound enough to cause me to reflect a bit deeper into my perceptions. Have I internalized my myopia all these years, diminishing my relationships with others, holding the world at arm’s length, closing mental ranks while avoiding a world perceived as distant and stunted?  As objects receded have I emotionally withdrawn with them? Had myopia dwarfed my soul too?  I have no answers, but questions are becoming more clearly focused as my sight improves. Adjustments are required. I will need to re-evaluate more than my vision, to adjust my inner world to “objects—and people—that may be closer than they appear.”  The eyes may have it indeed!

Shakespearean Logic Puzzle

Celebrate Shakespeare’s birthday! For the occasion I thought it might be fun to create an original logic puzzle in honor of the Bard.  There is a template to help you organize the clues.  Click on it to enlarge and print a copy if you need one.  Answers are at the bottom of the post.  Enjoy!

Five Shakespearean actors live and work in London. Two are women.  Each will perform in a different play this season. One play is “The Taming of the Shrew.”  Each performance will be in a different location including the Shakespeare Globe Centre in New Zealand (SGC-NZ) and at the BBC studios near London.  Determine the first and last name of each actor, their current role, the location of this season’s play, and which play each performed in last season—one of which was “Measure for Measure.”  

1.  1. Actors include the one who plays in “Othello,” the woman who will perform in Oregon, and the one named Yorke who is sporting the red rose this season.

2.      2. One actor who has a role in a comedy this year performed in a tragedy last season; a second's current and last season roles feature characters in historical plays; and a third who has chosen Celtic plays for both seasons. 

3.      3. The actor who warns his lord to beware the green-eyed monster is not Evelyn or O’Dowd. Last year’s woman who portrayed a woman playing a man playing a woman will not perform in the UK this year.

4.      4. One performer’s first and last names have the same vowels. The last letter of one's first name begins their last name.

5.      5. This year DeBonne will plead for mercy in North America; Henry Duke of Hereford deposes under the Southern Cross; Tyler will not need to use a passport.

6.       6. Liam is not Yorke; Rome never played a princely role; Canada will resound with the wooing of “gentle Kate.”

7.      7. Arnold will lunch frequently with BBC’s Fidele.

Answers:  Evelyn Yorke—Bolingbroke—SGC-NZ—King Henry IV, Pt. 1; Howard Arnold—Iago—Globe/London—Measure for Measure; Liam O’Dowd—Petruchio—Stratford, ONT—Hamlet; Sybil DeBonne—Portia—Ashland, ORE.—As You like It; Tyler Rome—Imogen—BBC—Macbeth.                                                                                                                                          ©2013 “ettsme”

Silk Screen Philosophy

Click to enlarge

A few days before we left southern California for the frigid Midwest, we stopped for lunch at the Library Alehouse in Santa Monica.  While waiting for our food I glanced at a neighboring table, focusing on a young man sporting a tee shirt which read:  What if the Hokey Pokey IS what it’s all about?  What indeed? 

That got me thinking of the many tee shirt sayings I’ve seen in the last few years.  A short walk on the Venice Beach boardwalk provides visual and philosophical ideas worth pondering for weeks! All sorts of messages reveal all variety of viewpoints.  For years I’ve seen catalogs virtually teeming with pity sayings, silk screened on cotton blends.  I have decided to share a few samples I have cobbled together in the spirit of “Philosophy for the Masses.”

All tee shirt statements have been created in the spirit of fun only. I include some of my own idle thoughts while others are are based on quotations. The library tee shirt paraphrases the wise words of my former library director.  In the ten samples attached I chose graphics that came from “free to use” GOOGLE images or the clip art included with my MS 2010 PowerPoint software.  No commercial use is intended.

There are many other possibilities. Some un-illustrated ideas follow. Some come from catalogs, ever a source of revenue for the Postal Service.  What favorite sayings can you add  to benefit the tee shirt wearing world?

From Signals—visit website for details (www.signals.com):  1. Let’s Eat Grandma; Let’s Eat, Grandma; Commas Save Lives. 2. I dream of a society where a chicken can cross the road without its motives questioned. 3. I’m on the endangered species waiting list.

From Northern Sun—visit website for details especially because I am not a customer and have no commercial history with this company (www.northernsun.com):  1. I may be getting old but I DID get to see all the COOL bands. 2. Gardening is cheaper than therapy and you get tomatoes. 3. The Lifestyle you ordered is currently out of stock. 4. Well-behaved women seldom make history.

Some famous quotations itching for a cotton/polyester blend:  1. Angels fly because they take themselves lightly. (G.K. Chesterton) 2. Seek Simplicity…and Distrust It. (Alfred North Whitehead) 3. Wisdom has two parts—Having a lot to say, and Not saying it. 4. Accessing information is almost as good as knowing things. (from “Oliver’s Travels”) 5.  Truth—something you don’t have to lie about. 6. What is a Friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies. (Aristotle) 7. Cui bono? (Cicero) 8. I will make it a felony to drink small beer. (Shakespeare, “King Henry VI”) 9. There was never yet philosopher that could endure the toothache patiently. (Shakespeare, “Much Ado About Nothing”) 10. AGE—is a personal choice. 11. The Chicken came first. 12. A great ox stands on my tongue. (Aeschylus, “Agamemnon”) What does that mean!?!