Monday Genea-pourri, Week of October 1-7, 2018

Genealogists are great at documenting our ancestors’ lives but not so great documenting our own. I’ll write about what I’ve been doing the past week. This idea came from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing, who started this meme.

Genealogy

Intermediate Skills 2. I’m teaching the class for the California Genealogical Society at the FamilySearch Library in Oakland and I have 15 students! We had our first class about cemetery and funeral home records. They seem excited to be in class and participated well. We’ll cover military records this week.

Seminar. I attended the fall seminar with the Contra Costa County Genealogical Society, where we listened to Thomas MacEntee give four great talks. I got some great websites for searching for living people and I enjoyed both the lecture on collateral and cluster searching, and the Genealogy Do Over. His tips about spreadsheets were fantastic. A group of CGS members got together to take a photo.

Thomas MacEntee at the CCCGS Seminar

Webinar. I attended a Legacy Family Tree webinar,  “Remote Research in the Databases of the Daughters of the American Revolution Genealogical Research System” given by Rick Sayre. It was very informative and I might investigate the possibility of having a Revolutionary patriot ancestor.

Portfolio work. I worked on the final part of the case study and finished. I then investigated how to submit the portfolio. After meeting with the Certification Peer group, I did submit and pay for my portfolio. My first feelings were dread—like I’d done something wrong. But then I felt relief that I was finally finished and could work on something else. About an hour later, I was thinking: I’m bored, what shall I do now? Time to make To Do lists.

Blog Writing: Blog posts I wrote this week:

This week’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks was about “ten.” I posted two photos the ten children of John Gleeson and Margaret Tierney.

I participated in Randy Seaver’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun and answered 20 questions that had been posed by Ellen Thompson-Jennings.

Other Activities

We visited our daughter in Sebastopol. First we shopped for apples and pumpkins, then headed for Healdsburg using the back roads. Along the way we stopped at a small winery, Foppiano Vineyards, for some tasting. In Healdsburg, we had a delicious dinner at Valette.

Pulled weeds this week at the John Muir National Historic Park at the native plant garden. Here are some photos of flowers still blooming.

Friday, I spent a couple of hours working my way along Alhambra Creek, taking photos. I tried to take one at every bridge that crosses the creek from Marina Vista to Alhambra Way, looking both north and south. In some places, the sun made dark shadows. I’ll try again on a gray day. These photos might work out for the remake of the Friends of Alhambra Creek brochure.

Copyright © 2018 by Lisa Suzanne Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.