Monday Genea-pourri, Week of May 11-17, 2020

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.

I have completed nine weeks of “lock down” due to Covid-19. I left the house only to do phenology at the meadow, walks to the mailbox, and a trip to the post office.

Genealogy

Blog Writing:

Blogs posted this past week:

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 20: Travel: Lorene Traveled Around the World, Part IV. I wrote about the continuing trip from Japan to Europe with girl friends of my aunt, Lorene.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Your Maternal Grandfather's Matrilineal Line.   We wrote about our maternal grandfather’s maternal line. I could only go back three generations. Perhaps something to research in the future.

Study Groups Attended:   

Many more online meetings again this week:

• Our Monday Morning Group met for ninety minutes. It was our regular meeting day and nine members showed up. We had sharing and questions and answer time.
• My NGSQ Study Group with Cari Taplin met to discuss one of the Quarterly’s articles. There were fewer people online today and I made more of a contribution this week.
• I also met with Jacqueline for our weekly talk about our own genealogical projects.
• I attended the Certification Discussion Group where I was the guess to discuss my certification progress. I managed to fill the hour by talking about how I came to become certified and about the different elements of the portfolio.
• Three out of four of the 4 Amigos met on Zoom for more catching up. Three of us have signed up for the Writing Your Family History course at the National Institute of Genealogical Studies. We agreed to meet on Friday afternoons to discuss the homework. After the first module, it has felt like a very weak class—certainly more about producing a book and the process of writing.
• Thursday, three of us met online and discussed genealogy presentations, lighting during Zoom meetings, and recordings.
• My Friday Cert Discussion group met with five of us. We discussed the Wednesday Cert Discussion Group and listened to Pam’s presentation on her DNA case study.

Webinars Attended:

·         I watched “Hello, Girls,” at the U.S. WW1 Centennial Commission. It was fascinating story of the women who volunteered to work the telephone system during the war. A musical was made about it based on the book, The Hello Girls, written by Elizabeth Cobbs. I’ve ordered the book. The images in the presentation was fantastic. The video and slide deck are available on their website.

Client Work/Presentations:

I started the last class of the CGS Intermediate Skills class on Wednesday. I broke the 2.5 hour class into two parts. It was nice seeing everyone and hearing about their genealogy discoveries. I wish I had taken a screenshot of everyone. That would have helped me remember their names.

Volunteer Work:

I attended the Sacramento German Genealogical Society’s Zoom meeting of potential volunteers. I have tentatively volunteered to be secretary, so will be joining the board. Fortunately they meet now virtually, so I don’t have to travel to Sacramento for a board meeting.

Own Work:

I am working on the two-part presentation/class for CGS on writing for our Writing Series. My portion is to discuss writing and adding content. I am reading all of the writing and publishing handouts I have received over the years and I read the book, Bringing Your Family History to Life using Social History. There are some great points in the book I plan to share.

In working on Lorene’s story for the 52 Ancestors, I realized I should scan all of her letters and place them in sheet protectors. Right now they are three-hole punched and in a cloth & cardboard binder. Actually, there are two binders, one the letters from when she worked in Japan, and the second one of the letters from her trip. I’m sure my cousins would be very interested in reading them, too. So I spent early Saturday morning scanning the trip letters and next on the list are the working in Japan letters. I need more sheet protectors and can’t find the ones I stuffed somewhere.

Other:

Attended all three of my online German language classes. It’s getting hard to come up with something to say when each week seems like the last. I need to think of a theme to prepare and discuss.

I love getting out of the house to go to Phenology at the meadow. However this week, it was so humid from the bit of rain that would come later, that my glasses get fogging up from wearing the mask. I couldn’t see in the binoculars and finally had to take off the mask. I kept my distance from Shirley. The mustard is so tall at the meadow!

Copyright © 2020 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.