Monday Genea-pourri, Week of April 10–16, 2023

I have completed one hundred sixty-two (162) weeks of semi-lockdown due to Covid-19. My outside activities included working at the History Center, doing phenology, hiking, train club meeting, and attending a party at the Oakland FamilySearch Center.

 Genealogy

Blog Writing:

What My Mother Did to Get Solitude. For week 15 of 52 Ancestors, I wrote about the ways my mother found solitude from us six kids.

SNGF: What Genea-Musings Posts Do You Like For Randy’s 17^th anniversary of writing on his blog, we wrote about the posts we like. My favorite is SNGF, but I enjoy some of his other themes, too.

Meetings/Discussion Groups
Met this week with Jacqueline, my mentee, Amigos, and heard the tail end of the Certification Discussion Group about adding context to stories.

Volunteer
On Tuesday, I did my volunteer stint at the History Center, working primarily on an accession. On Monday and Friday, we interviewed candidates for the Executive Director’s position. During the week, I put out the press release for the next BCG-sponsored webinar at Legacy Family Webinars. I attended and took minutes for the Sonoma County Genealogical Society on Tuesday and on Saturday, was one of the co-hosts for the spring seminar. Lastly, on Saturday, the Oakland FamilySearch Center hosted a volunteer appreciation dinner and we gave a send-off to a volunteer who was moving to Germany and two missionaries who are returning home. They will be missed.

Client Work

• I finished up the probate class I’m teaching at Applied Genealogy Institute. The class presentations were wonderful and everyone learned so much. I agreed to redo my land class for the fall session.
• I also hosted the Writing Group and we discussed Nancy’s wonderful tale about her New Mexico ancestor. Her piece is coming along nicely.
• I spent Sunday reviewing and updating my farming talk in preparation for the Davis Genealogy Club presentation I’ll do on Tuesday. My second time giving one in person since the pandemic. I rather like doing them on Zoom but miss meeting people. I also got ready for the beginning class I’m teaching at the adult school on the next four Mondays.

Own Work
I was way too busy this week to do anything on my own work except for writing blog posts, which, I say count.

Webinars Viewed. This week was both the 24-hour marathon at Legacy Family Tree Webinars and the spring seminar at the Sonoma County Genealogical Society.

• Giving Them Their Glory: USCT 78^th by Nicka Smith (Legacy Family Tree Webinars)
• Publishing Your Family History: From Idea to Distribution by Lynn Palermo (Fam Hist Writing Studio)
• Using Timelines to Analyze Your Research by Cari A. Taplin (SCGS)
• Finding Dirk: Insanity in the 19^th Century by Jill Morelli (SCGS)
• Planning Research by LaBrenda Garrett-Nelson (SCGS)
• The Jones Jinx: Tracing Common Surnames by Tom Jones (SCGS)
• Time: Calendars & Feast Days by Jill Morelli (Legacy Family Tree Webinars)
• Elusive Ancestors: Never Too Poor to Trace by Elizabeth Shown Mills (Legacy Family Tree Webinars) **Don't miss viewing this one - free for a week.
• Off the Shelf: The Unexplored Potential for eBooks in Genealogy by Cyndi Ingle (Legacy Family Tree Webinars)

I am reading:

• Researching U.S. WWI Military Members by Margaret M. McMahon, Ph.D.
• Aunt Dimity & the Enchanted Cottage by Nancy Atherton.

Other
No bird watching this week, though I saw a kestrel chasing a red-tailed hawk on my hike at Black Diamond Mines Regional Park, where I hiked with the hiking group. The cattle really wrecked the trail, so we turned back and returned by way of the road, where we saw more wildflowers than we would have seen on the trail.

I did some gardening in my native plant garden, pulling up grass between the poppy plants. I found some surprising wildflowers that must have come up from the seed I tossed there last year. On Sunday, we pulled more weeds in the backyard to prepare for our veggie garden and had someone come weed whack, too. Unfortunately, the gardener whacks a couple of my native plants.

Photos for this week

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 © 2023 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.