Monday Genea-pourri, Week of May 1–7, 2023

I have completed one hundred sixty-five (165) weeks of semi-lockdown due to Covid-19. My outside activities included teaching at Acalanes Adult School, working at the History Center, and volunteering at the Bring Back the Natives at the John Muir National Historic Park where we have a large native plant garden. Perhaps it’s time to stop counting the Covid weeks, since the pandemic is technically over.

Genealogy

Blog Writing:

Nana Loved Birds; Mam-ma Loved Dogs. For week 18 of 52 Ancestors, I wrote the pets my grandmothers owned.

SNGF: Then and Now – Family Tree Software I wrote about the genealogy software programs I have used since I started doing genealogy research.

Meetings/Discussion Groups
The only discussion group I attended was the monthly peer group, but it was only Josh and me on the call. I also attended an in-person class at Los Medanos College on how to take care of paper products.

Volunteer
I had two meetings about the hiring of our new ED and I volunteered at the History Center twice. I also did my shift at the Oakland FamilySearch Center, but we had few patrons, so I did some of my own work.

Client Work
We had an AppGen Founders meeting on Monday and everything is on track for our Fall term. We’ll make the announcement soon. I also taught my second Acalanes Adult School class on researching vital records.

Own Work
At the OFSC, I had time to finally look at the Morning Reports for Company E of the 4^th Engineers that are located at Fold3. I downloaded each page, renamed the images, and recorded the page dates in a Word document. I have about six months left to complete. My uncle was listed on one of the pages.

I discovered a database at Ancestry of Arkansas birth records and have spent the weekend downloading birth and delay birth certificates for the Loveless families and entering the data into RootsMagic. These are for the siblings of my great-grandmother, Lela Loveless, and cousins of my great-great-grandfather, Ebenezer Loveless.

Webinars Viewed.

• Crafting Genealogical Proof by Cyndi Ingle (Arizona Genealogy Day)
• How to Cite Anything: Overcoming Frustrations of Citations by Paul Graham (APG Writers SIG)

I am reading:

• An Incomplete Revenge by Jacqueline Winspear
• Founding Gardeners by Andrea Wulf
• Purple Crayons: The Art of Drawing a Life by Ross Ellenhorn
• The Wounded World: W.E.B. DuBois and the First World War by Chad L Williams

Other
Our Wednesday hike was at Rockville Hills Regional Park in Solano County and I took over fifty photos of wildflowers and scenery.  

At the John Muir National Historic Park, the native plant garden group set out signs for many of the plants in preparation for the Bring Back the Natives tour on Sunday. I worked the afternoon shift as a garden guide, answering questions about the plants. I also spent my free time pulling weeds.

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.