Monday Genea-pourri, Week of February 14–20, 2022

Happy Presidents Day! I have completed one hundred one (101) weeks of semi-lock down due to Covid-19. I went out to the History Center twice this week, the meadow for phenology, Susan’s for Monday Morning Genealogy, and got a haircut.

Genealogy

Blog Writing: 

Landed – My Parent’s First Home I wrote about my father buying his first home just before my parents were married. I am fortunate to have a photo of them standing of the lot before the house was built.

1950 Census Prep: Paternal Relatives I located the Enumeration District numbers for my parents, their parents, and some aunts and uncles.

Online Study Groups & Meetings Attended:
I met with Jacqueline, my AppGen partners, Amigos, and Peer group online, and with the CCCGS Monday Morning group in person. Amigos hadn’t met in a few weeks and it nice seeing everyone. Three of us in the Peer group discussed our locality guide we created for the Research Like a Pro book we’re studying. I also met with my Geno-Study group and finished our last discussion of the KKK book. I wonder what we’ll read next.

Client Work/Presentations: I have done no client or presentation work this week, though I need to work on the PowerPoint presentations for the upcoming Foundations I course. I sent out a survey to learn where the students stand on their working knowledge of the topics I will be covering. It is wide-ranged-some brand new and others with lots of knowledge. It will make for an interesting class.  

Volunteer Work: I went to the History Center twice this week. John G. and I worked on dividing up the Fahden collection and are about half way there. The email was down, so I couldn’t check for any queries.  Thursday, I met John M. to discuss the extra library books and what I could do about consolidating them. I also took minutes for the board meeting that evening.

I volunteered at the Oakland FamilySearch Library and brought the VCR for their library. I wrote my column for the CGS Nugget and sent it to the editor for the upcoming issue. I also proofread the Der Blumenbaum and sent possible corrections to that editor.

Own Work: I did no work on my own research, not even writing a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post, which usually prompts some kind of research. I did go through many file folders and discarded copies of unneeded papers and scanned those that I wanted to keep. I have one file box empty. Four more to go.

I attended the second session of the SLIG Academy course “Writing for Peer Review” from Karen Mauer Jones. We listened to Tom Jones give us advice on proof reading and editing our own work. We are to turn in a paper we written with the maximum of 500 words, but first we had to edit it down, using the tips he gave us. I took the article I wrote for Der Blumenbaum and edited it down from 497 to 448 words. Perhaps he’ll edit it more for me in front of the class.

Webinars Viewed:

• Introduction to Southern Research by Evan Wilson
• A Nose for the News by Mary Kircher Roddy

Other: On Friday, my sisters, Sabrina and Renee, met me at Ginger Thai for dinner. It was nice getting out and eating with them. Jacqueline and I bought tickets to see the Lumineers in Sacramento on August 2. We’ll stay overnight and maybe ride the Capital Corridor train up and back. I’m so glad I found someone to attend the concert with me.

I am reading:

• A Rule Against Murder by Louise Penny--Finished! 
• Gospel According to the Klan by Kelly J. Baker—Finished!
• Genealogical Evidence by Noel C. Stevenson
• Research Like a Pro by Diana Elder

Photos for this week:

Christmas cactus in full bloom

One of the few weeks that the meadow is green

Sunset looking toward SF from Oakland FS Library

 

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.

Copyright © 2022 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.