Monday Genea-pourri, Week of March 28-April 3, 2022

I have completed one hundred seven (107) weeks of semi-lock down due to Covid-19. I was out more this week. Besides my normal visits to phenology and the history center where I see the same people, I visited the East County Historical Society, the train club, and ate in a restaurant where we celebrated Ed Mackinson’s memories. That was the most strangers I have been around in a long time. I also had a doctor’s appointment, but we wore masks. Finally, I met a group to hike in a newly acquired piece of property for the national park. Being outdoors is safe enough.

 Genealogy

Blog Writing:

Sisters: Five Gleeson Daughters
I wrote about the five daughters of John and Margaret Gleeson and shared a group photo of them.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Your 1950 Census Finds
I wrote about locating the census pages for my Hork family, which included my dad with his mother and oldest sister, the Horks in Hamilton, Montana, and my dad’s youngest sister and her husband and first daughter. I had to browse, as they did not come up in a search. I suppose if I played around with other choices like Hook, Hoik, etc., but I had the ED numbers, so it was easy to browse.

Online Study Groups & Meetings Attended: I attended many meetings this week.

• Our Monday morning Zoom meeting was hosted by me and we had a dozen attend. It was nice seeing those who live out of town.

• Jacqueline and I met on Monday as well.

• Tuesday evening was the first meeting of the restart of the APG NorCal Chapter meeting. We had a nice turnout of thirteen and got to meet some others in a breakout session. We plan to meet at the NGS conference in May and hope to meeting on Zoom at least once a quarter.

• Three of the Amigos met on Wednesday and spoke for over two hours, covering the NorCal chapter, events at CGS, and other topics.

Client Work/Presentations:
I had the third session of the AppGen Foundations I course, covering naturalization and immigration, as well as an introduction to land records. Time management went well, as I had reduced the PowerPoint presentations and had the in-class activity not be in a breakout room. No problems with the internet connection—yeah! It does take time though to comment on their homework, but I think it is the best value of the course and our institute.

Volunteer Work:
I hosted the Introduction to Genealogy with Ron teaching about organization. The Der Blumenbaum Team met on Friday and we decided on what articles might be in the next issue and a possible theme for the fall issue.  

Own Work:
I attended the eighth class of the SLIG Academy class on writing for peer review. Tom Jones gave his second two lectures on source documentation and the homework was a little more difficult. I’ll see the answers on Tuesday this coming week. I have been writing the case study which is due this week. I think I’m done, or at least it is ready for peer review.

Webinars Viewed:
None this week.

Other: Friday, I joined one of the rangers from the John Muir National Historic Park along with others from Friends of Alhambra Creek where we hiked the new property West Hill Farm that will be added to the national park soon. It was a short hike but we saw some nice wildflowers and beautiful country. It will be a nice addition to the park. The photos below are from this hike.

The hearing aids are getting better. I don’t seem to notice every little sound anymore but conversation is definitely better. She adjusted the sound down a little for me.

We met with friends at the local Mexican restaurant to celebrate our memories of Ed Mackinson, who passed away a couple of months ago. It was good seeing the friends.

I am reading:

• How to Raise an Elephant by Alexander McCall Smith—Finished!
• Tractor Wars by Neil Dahlstrom
• Research Like a Pro by Diana Elder

Photos for this week:

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.