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

I have completed one hundred forty-one (141) weeks of semi-lockdown due to Covid-19. I volunteered at the History Center on Tuesday and worked at the train club during the weekend show running trains.

Genealogy

Blog Writing:

Tombstones: May Reveal Place of Origin. I wrote about two examples of how a tombstone can reveal the place of birth in a foreign country.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Early Childhood Memories I shared the start of the autobiography I am writing which I wrote about an early memory in kindergarten.

Meetings/Discussion Groups
I attended the Kinseekers military SIG meeting while we drove back from Truckee. Jacqueline and I each had our computers using a hotspot and Stewart did the driving. This month was about World War I and next month she will cover World War II.

Volunteer
I volunteered at the History Center on Tuesday and later took the minutes at the Contra Costa County Historical Society’s board of directors meeting on Thursday.

This week I volunteered at the Oakland FamilySearch Library on Wednesday, but no one needed any help. 

Client Work
We had an AppGen founders meeting and had a meeting with Carly about how to use social media to build our business. She had some good ideas and now we need to think about which to start with.

I spent this week commenting on the final homework assignments for the AppGen course I taught and sent out both the evaluation and their certificates. Next up will be writing the lessons for the next session.

Our writing workshop group met and we discussed three of the writings. They are making such great progress and give each other ideas on how they can approach their projects.

Own Work
I continued working on the Ruben Mack Johnston genealogy and worked on child number 8, Woodie, and his descendants. I didn’t have as much time to work on it as I did during the retreat. It was such a blessing to have so much uninterrupted time to work.

Webinars Viewed:

• Their Mark Here by Nicole Gilkison LaRue  (BCG/LFT Webinars)
• Getting Things Done and Family History Productivity by Diana Elder (Santa Clara Co Gen Soc)

I am reading:

• Homesteading the Plains by Richard Edwards, et al—FINISHED!
• The Resistance Man by Martin Walker—FINISHED!
• Ghosts of Gold Mountain by Gordon H. Chang

Other:
I joined my friends on a hike to Fernandez Ranch on Wednesday.  It was a good hike uphill and then back down.  

Saturday morning, the Friends of Alhambra Creek planted new native plants in six of our downtown gardens. Each of us will take on one garden and care for the new plants by watering them if it doesn’t rain. I have the garden on Castro St.

This weekend was the first of two open houses our model train club, Walnut Creek Model Railroad Society had. We operated the layout from 11 to 6 on Saturday and Sunday and 8 to 10 on Friday night. We are open again next weekend, even more hours on Friday 2 to 10.

Photos for this week: Photos from the retreat, planting, hike, and the train show.

 

Genealogists are great at documenting our ancestors’ lives but not so great at 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.