Category Archives: family

American Colonial History, Bible study, family, Health, home improvements, non-fiction, self-publishing, Writing

2023 Recap

Leave a comment
It may not be selling, but at least my grandkids are reading it and seem to like it.

2023 was a strange year for writing. In some ways my output doesn’t seem very significant. But, then, the year brought many other things that pried me away from writing. We made six trips for family matters, Lynda had her heart irregularities leading to a pacemaker implant, home improvements led to the discovery of water damage that is taking much time to arrange for contractors to begin repairs.

Yet, I think I made some progress. Let’s see how it stacks up against the goals I published on January 6, 2023.

  • Edit and publish The Key To Time Travel. Yes, I got this done. Publication was in June.
  • Determine the structure of the overall A Walk Through Holy Week Bible study series, and whether it will be six parts or seven. It’s being taught in six parts over six Lent/Easter seasons, but I’m thinking it’s better as seven parts in books. I completed this, sometime in late spring. I settled on eight volumes rather than six or seven. All volumes are planned out and all chapters named.
  • Finish/edit Part 4 (what may become Part 5) of AWTHW. Finished this, and it’s now on hold, waiting for earlier volumes to be finished and published.
  • Finish/edit Part 3 (what may become Part 4) of AWTHW. Finished this (didn’t actually have much left to do on it), and it’s now on hold, waiting for earlier volumes to be finished and published.
  • Write Part 5 (what may become Part 6) of AWTHW, simultaneously with teaching it. I’m pleased to say I finished this. It actually became Part 7 in the restructured series. It was done a couple of weeks before the last class.
  • Start Part 1 of AWTHW, after determining the overall structure, of course. Not only did I start it, but I finished it and made one editing pass through it. Two more passes and it will be ready to publish.
  • Depending on how work on this goes, publish some or all of the completed parts of the study. I decided to hold off publishing volumes out of sequence, so all the complete volumes are waiting for Volumes 1, 2, and 3 to be published.
  • So far this has not found an audience on Kindle Vella. All 32 episodes have been published.

    Start writing the next book in the Documenting America series. It will cover the years 1761 to 1775 and is tentatively titled Run-up To Revolution. Yes, I finished this. I decided to publish it to Kindle Vella, chapter by chapter. In hindsight that was not a good decision, as it has not attracted a readership.

  • One other item, which is non-commercial but which will be a book, is to start transcribing the letters from our years in Saudi Arabia (1981-1983). I don’t think this is something that I can finish in one year, given that it will be fill-in work when I have nothing else to do, but I’d like to at least start it. I’ll wait to start it, however, until I get a few more disaccumulation items done. No, I didn’t do this. The work of disaccumulation proved to be more time-consuming than expected. I made major progress on it, but I’m still a long way from done.

So all in all, I published only two items: one book, one book in serial format. Given the distractions, maybe that’s not too bad. And I did get a lot of writing done, even though it’s not yet published.

Time now to set some goals for 2024. That will be in my next post.

family

Living Vicariously—Not

2 Comments
The loneliness of the long distance runner. Ephraim en-route to winning his 8th grade cross-country district meet.

Once upon a time, when I was young, my weight where it should be, my knees good, and I didn’t know I had an abnormal heart valve, I played football and ran track in high school. Not in junior high. The only team sports they had were basketball, baseball, and swimming. I was no good at those, so I didn’t play jr. high sports.

I did three years of football, two years of outdoor track, and one year of indoor track. Sophomore year I ran the mile. Junior year I dropped down to the half-mile. That was probably a mistake, and I wish the coach had advised me differently. I had endurance but not a lot of speed. If I was going to change distances, I would have been better in the two-mile. But that’s all in the past.

On a 1600 m run, freshman year.

My oldest grandson, Ephraim, is now running track. He does cross-country and outdoor track. In track, he runs the 1600 meter and 2400 meter. Well, that was in junior high. I imagine it’s the 1600 and 3200 in high school. He’s been running since seventh grade, slowly improving. We’ve been able to drive to see him run a few times, when they coincided with trips for other reasons.

When the family was here visiting over Thanksgiving, Ephraim said he wanted to run in the early mornings. I woke him the first day at 6:00 a.m., as he requested. We were outside the house by 6:15, and it was still dark, with some light showing in the east. I slowed him down, insisting he wait a little until there was enough light that cars could see him. He did about 1.5 miles that morning.

The sprint to the finish. Ephraim passed the kid on the right to take a higher finish in a cross-country meet.

The next day it was below 30° at wake-up time. I woke him, but recommended he run later. He decided he would do a time mile around 11 a.m. or so. I drove him into town, bought him some spikes, then we went to the public track. He warmed up and ran, with me calling out his lap splits. He finished the mile in 5:33, equaling his best time. Two days later, after Thanksgiving, we did it again. This time he did the mile in 5:27. I told him that my best time sophomore year was 5:15, so I still had him beat.

With his teammate from the girls’ team, after their boys-girls sweep of the cross-country district finals in 8th grade.

A couple of days ago, I got a text from Ephraim, saying he had just done a mile in 5:16 or 5:17. He then wrote, “I’m closing in on you time.” I told him he was actually ahead of me, because I did my 5:15 late in my sophomore outdoor track season, probably in May. So he did his time five months earlier than me, in the off season, in a practice run, not in competition. I said he would surely be well below my best this year. It wouldn’t surprise me if he were sub-5:00 for the mile before the season is over.

It’s been good to follow Ephraim’s progress as a runner. He’s obviously better than I was. I want to make sure, however, that I support him, not push him. If he wants to get better, I want to support him. If he were to say track wasn’t his thing and quit it, I would support him. I’m here to encourage and motivate him to be the best he can be, in whatever he does.

So I’m not here to live vicariously through him, but it’s a pleasure watching him develop as a runner.

Carlyle, family, holidays, home improvements, The Forest Throne

This Piece of the Universe, This Section of Eternity

Leave a comment
Games were on the schedule over Thanksgiving week.

Oops! I didn’t make a post on Friday, the first time in a long time to totally miss a day. I’ve been late a few times, but I didn’t even think of the blog.

What captured my attention? Family. Our daughter, son-in-law, and their four children came in Monday evening and left on Saturday. Our son and his husband came in on Wednesday, delayed a day due to airplane troubles. We had the normal Thanksgiving meal on Thursday, followed by a 1.6 mile hike on a trail loop near us (part of the route is on city streets).

I call this puzzling behavior.

Some of us put together a 1,000 piece puzzle. Some played games. We had other meals and conversation. Once I got up early to get grandson #1, Ephraim, out on his run on our semi-rural streets. Two other times I drove him to a track in Bentonville, where he ran timed miles. The first time he equaled his personal best. The second time he beat that by about 7 seconds, setting a new personal best.

The 2009 photo.

With #2 grandson, Ezra, I drove to the airport on Wednesday to pick up our son and his husband. That gave us some time to talk. He also helped me work in the yard on Tuesday. He and a friend of mine about his age, Liam, helped me move some large logs, both cut and deadfall, and cut out some wild thorn bushes that encroach on the blackberries. He earned his money. I also had him doing some leaf blowing, which he seemed to enjoy.

The 2019 photo.

With granddaughter, Elise, I had a lot of conversation. We worked together on the plot of the next book in The Forest Throne series. This will feature the one daughter in the Wagner family, Elizabeth. Elise and I worked out a prologue and discussed various plot lines. Tomorrow I will put some of those into a word document, filed away for writing a couple of books from now.

The 2023 photo, perhaps never to be done again.

With my youngest grandson, Elijah, I had a good time with a little roughhousing. We read together, and I gave him his first word exercise, now that he’s in 1st grade. He’s still a lot of fun, and wanted to work in the yard like others did. Almost all the baby toys we had for the kids are too young for him (and obviously the others), so I’ll be getting rid of them.

In the late evenings, after the games, puzzles, or whatever, we watched back episodes of Shark Tank. The three youngest kids seemed to enjoy it a lot, as did some of the adults. Mornings started with 30 minutes of reading. Ezra chose The Fellowship of the Ring, which is certainly a challenge for anyone, let alone a 12-year-old.

Saturday morning, as our daughter’s family were soon to leave, I remembered we had not yet recreated the photo from 2019 of me and all four kids. We shot that photo because at that time, a popular Facebook activity was to post photo comparisons from 2009 and 2019, ten years later. In 2009, I was on the floor reading to Ephraim, who was our only grandchild at the time. So we did a posed shot of me and the four grandkids on the floor. We wanted to do that again, and we just did fit it in before the trip was over. This is likely the last time we will ever get to do that shot.

Saturday, once our daughter’s family was gone, we had a quiet day with our son (his husband having left on Friday for business). We watched a couple of movies, ate leftovers for lunch, read, and went out for a simple dinner. An early morning airport run on roads we expected to have some frozen stuff on them turned out to be easy. Came home, rested, went to church to an excellent worship service.

Yesterday. I got back into reading Thomas Carlyle’s letters. He was visiting places in his native Scotland. In a letter he named the place he was at and said that this place was a piece of the universe and the time of his visit was a section of eternity. The place and time, “is very beautiful; doubly beautiful to me whose head has long simmered half-mad with brick wildernesses, dust, smoke, and loud-roaring confusion that meant little.”

That’s kind of how I feel. The last week, Thanksgiving, was doubly beautiful for taking me out of my routines. Today I’ll be back at it: writing in the Bible study in progress, trading stocks, doing housework. But last week will always be doubly beautiful, and I will think about it for a long time.

Bible study, books, critique group, family, home improvements, Magazines

Getting Rid of Some Books

1 Comment
This was an okay book, not great. Not sure of its truth. Will never read it again, so it’s gone, today added to the sale/donation pile.

Our efforts at dis-accumulating continue. Perhaps not as fast as needed to do a downsizing in this decade, but we make a little progress. The last month has seen the old postcard collection acquired in the mid-1980s, having been left behind in the house we bought, for $115. But the buyer wanted me to ship it to Houston and so didn’t want the small, steel cabinet. I was able to sell that for an extra $10.

Then Lynda decided she was willing to part with the Gulf War memorabilia she brought back from Kuwait in 1991. They were supposedly Iraqi items. I listed them on Facebook Marketplace, not being sure they would sell. After one price reduction, a mom contacted me. She wanted them for her son (maybe a teenager), who loves military stuff. We were able to arrange a transfer that was convenient to both of us.

But really, the big thing we need to part with is books. For a bookiphile, that’s like cutting your wrist. But we have to do it. Despite the number of books we’ve gotten rid of, we still have at least 2,000 books in the house. I gave one away at writer’s critique group last week.

One book obviously isn’t much; we need to do more. In our living room is a built-in bookcase.  We are going to have to dismantle this to repair some water damage that appears to be from improperly installed flashing around the chimney. We have already removed some books from the lower shelves and piled them, to prevent them from being damaged and allow the bookcase to dry from a little moisture found.

As Lynda and I discussed it, she suggested that we get rid of a series of Bible study books that are shelved on that built-in. We went through one of those books together, and started a second. They aren’t bad books. I learned something from them. But when you have 2,000 books, and need to unload at least a thousand, I agreed with her to put those in the sale/donation pile.

I then suggested we also get rid of two books from the built-ins, the two books in The Bible Code series. We read these aloud together. They are an easy read because the books are not long, are well-written, and have lots of illustrations of where the Bible may have a code in the books of Moses. I say “may have” because, while the writer makes a good case, I’m not fully convinced it’s true.

At first Lynda balked. She was more accepting of the Bible code than I was and thought more of the books than I did. But then she agreed with me that we read the books, got something from them, and with all the other books in the house we were unlikely to read them ever again. So she agreed to get rid of them. I’ll move them out tomorrow.

I also have a fairly large set of magazines about World War 2 that I got from my dad. I had intended to read them, but it looks as if I never will. I have them listed on Marketplace and lowered the price twice. I think I’ll do so again and see if they will sell. Also on the getting-rid-of-block is my collection of WW2 history books. They are all good. If I had a shortage of books I would probably read all of them again. But, with a book surplus and a shortage of years ahead, I think they will also go up for sale.

Six Bible studies, two Bible codes are a long way from 1,000 books. A good sized box of magazines, and perhaps ten war books are not much. But it’s a start. I’m hoping over Thanksgiving, when our children are here, we will be able to take some time to go through a few things and, with their encouragement, get rid of some things we haven’t done anything with since the 1970s through 1990s.

And that will be a good start.

Bible study, construction, critique group, family, home improvements

Grinding, Part 2

Leave a comment

In my last post, I wrote about how I was grinding through a bunch of tasks, and, to keep them all straight, I needed a to-do list.  I’m in The Dungeon right now, writing this, and I don’t my current to-do list with me, so I’m starting a new one.

I do these on a long, narrow note pad that we’ve had for years. I found this pad in the desk in The Dungeon, something that isn’t used too much. I was given to us when we bought our house in Bentonville in 1991. Time to use it up I would say. It’s perfect for to-do lists.

As far as what got done from the last to-do list:

  • Flu shots.
  • Heard back from two contractors. One gave me a little more information on his schedule, moving the work out some. The other apologized for not getting me an estimate yet and established a date when he would. I would have to say, I feel a little better about contractors today.
  • Got my hair cut.
  • Continued to write in my current work-in-progress, A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 1. I should finish a chapter today, putting me at 70 percent finished with the first draft. That puts me a little behind where I hoped to be by this time, but I’m not unhappy with my progress.
  • Got some filing done, though I have much more of that to do.
  • Attended my writers’ critique group last night. A good meeting; I might blog about it next.
  • Have started getting things together for Thanksgiving.

And Thanksgiving will dominate my next to-do list, which I started by interrupting writing this. Lots to do in terms of cleaning and organizing. Also buying in some groceries. I’m trying to plan our meals so that we get to Monday night’s supper, the last we will have alone, finishing the last prepared item.

It will be a good Thanksgiving, with both of our children, their spouses, and all our grandchildren here. It may also be the last family gathering at our house for a while, as henceforth we might shift these to our daughter’s house.

So carry on, everyone. My wishes to out to you, a bit early, for a happy Thanksgiving.

family, Genealogy, home improvements, miscellaneous

Grinding

Leave a comment

Dateline: Sunday, 12 Nov 2023

From time to time, life gets so busy that I fall back to a habit that served me well in my engineering career: making a to-do list. Not that my days are really so busy that I miss deadlines, doctor appointments, club meetings, etc. Those are relatively few in number, and easily remembered—at least those happening in the next month are.

But as I look around the house, I see lots of things that need doing. Some are small things, but they pile up. It is a needed task to clean up as much as I can before company comes Thanksgiving week. Here in The Dungeon, if I look over to the left, the worktable with our printer has piles of papers. The biggest pile is scrap paper, being kept for printing drafts of my writing for proofreading or critiques. It’s ugly, but it’s going to stay. Next to it is a notebook of genealogy files that I’m slowly scanning and saving to the cloud so that I can get rid of the paper. Also on that table are a few miscellaneous papers that I need to file. One is a charitable donation receipt I need to put with the 2021 tax returns. So far I haven’t felt like dedicating the two minutes needed to do that.

That work table also has two bank statements to file. That’s another two minute task I just haven’t felt like doing.

A little farther away are bookshelves lining the basement family room walls. At one time these were nice and neat, separated into fiction and nonfiction, and alphabetized. They may still be mostly that way, but years of reading and re-shelving, selling or donating, pulling other books from boxes, have resulted in some loose of organization. Fortunately, correcting that, while a big task, isn’t urgent.

What is urgent? Filing receipts! I suppose that’s number one. Many things I used to file have gone digital. Yet there’s still a big pile of them to file. Most of them are medical, the papers you get with each prescription. Some are medical info, others are receipts. Others are grocery store receipts, travel receipts, a few insurance statements, and a few brokerage papers that we haven’t yet switched over to digital. Once I set my mind to it, I can have these all sorted, ordered by date, and filed in about two hours. Maybe that will be a Monday task.

Then there are all the things involved with home repairs. We are inching forward with gutter and downspout replacement. My water damage restoration contractor bailed on me, so I’m having to go through it all again with a new one. I hope to hear something this week from him. And I still need to get the floor guy out here to figure out if I’ll be able to change out the ancient wall-to-wall carpet with modern flooring after all the other work is done. I guess I need to carve out a little time today to figure out which number I called was him and call to set up an inspection time.

Then there’s flu shots. We normally get them in early October, but couldn’t this year and I haven’t made appointments since then. That might be a today task as I can do that online. Oh, and the Silver Dragon need some routine servicing. I think Wednesday is free, if I can make an appointment on Monday. Oh, year, just remembered: I have some over the counter things to order as part of our Medicare Advantage Plan benefits. Better do that today as well.

Somewhere in there I need to work in some stock trading. The latter is mostly Monday through Friday, only 15 min to a half hour a day, plus an hour wrap-up on Saturday.

See why I need a to-do list? I have to grind through these things, trying to get everything done without letting something fall through the cracks.

I’m going to end this blog post here, and do those on-line things while I can. I hope on Friday I can post that I got lots done, and feel less stressed about everything.

family, memories, miscellaneous, Stars and Stripes

Not Quite A Reunion

Leave a comment

Three posts ago, I wrote about a reunion I helped facilitate between my wife and an old friend, who was also an old friend of mine. Along the same vein, but different, was something that happened over the next few days. Let me set this up.

The man on the left is my dad, Norman Todd, somewhere in Europe during World War 2. Who are the other three?

I found the photo at the right in a box of photos at Dad’s house when he died. Dad is on the left. The other three men were mysteries. The photo was taken someplace in Europe. Once Dad was assigned to the Stars and Stripes, he was in Algiers (briefly), then Anzio beachhead, then up the boot of Italy with the mobile publishing unit, then southern France in three different places. Readers of this blog have heard all this before, at posts at this link.

I wondered who the other three men in the photo were. Most likely they were Stars and Stripes staffers, but who? And was there any way to find out?

Perhaps the most famous part of the S&S staff was cartoonist Bill Mauldin. Dad was at the same location Bill was on V-E Day (May 8, 1945), but how long they served together and in what locations was a mystery. Dad told me that Bill sometimes had him model for some of the Willie & Joe “Up-Front” cartoons.

I wonder if Dad modeled for any of these Bill Mauldin cartoons.

Bill is so famous that from time to time a post about him shows up in my Facebook newsfeed. I always comment on them about Dad’s connection to Bill, hoping someone will respond. Not that I think any of the men in the photo are still alive (unlikely) but hoping that someone would say something to me that might help me either identify the men in the photo or hear something that might bear on Dad’s war service.

One of those posts came up this week. A post by Grand Comics Database, showing a Bill Mauldin cartoon of Willie and Joe, the two sad-sack soldiers featured in his “Up Front” cartoon series. A number of people posted to it, and I added this comment:

My dad was a typesetter for the “Stars and Stripes”, in N. Africa, Italy, and So. France. He knew Bill Mauldin and was friends with him. Dad told me Mauldin often had him pose for the cartoons.

One woman answered with the following comment:

Your dad must have been in the same group as my dad, same countries, same background. Bill Maudlin drew this picture of my Dad on an index card, in pencil.

She added the cartoon.

I then took this to Messenger and sent her four photos of Dad with other men, including the one above. There was a delay of some hours, when she messaged back:

The man on the right third pic…is my Dad! what a shock to see him in your pictures. It is a small world.

later adding:

just could not believe I was looking at my dad’s picture, when you sent that one. I only had a few of him during the service and unfortunately he passed when I was only 13, so not enough years to know too much about the war….

His name is Fred R. Unwin. Born in London, he made his way to America (part of the story I still need to learn) and was indeed with the S&S in Europe. After the war he stayed in printing (as Dad did), as a pressman and later a supervisor, in Chicago and Phoenix. I’ll get some more info about him as our conversations continue.

Robyn sent me some photos of her dad, and I said to Robyn:

So, shall we call ourselves Stars and Stripes cousins?

She, of course, said yes. Thus now we are cousins.

When I made that post, I had hopes but no expectations that anything would come of it. But two men in the photo are now identified, Norman Todd on the left, Fred Unwin on the right. Will the two men in the middle ever be identified? Possibly not, but I feel good about having one more known, against the likely odds.

C.S. Lewis, Documenting America, family, The Forest Throne

Immersing in Reading

Leave a comment

Dateline: Thursday, 28 September 2023, 2:20 p.m.

It may not be selling, but at least my grandkids are reading it and seem to like it.

This will be somewhat of a short post. Lynda and I are currently on grandparent duty while our daughter and son-in-law are away at their annual ministers and spouses retreat. Four children, three cats, one dog, one bearded dragon, and five foster cats that will soon be going to the shelter (I hope I hope). Just for two days and two nights.

The last two days I went with my daughter on the school drop-off and pick-up run so that I could get a feel for routes and timing. Yesterday morning, I was quite stressed out about it, but after that, with some study of the map and two more times to run the route, I think I’ll be okay.

As I’m between writing projects, my free time is taken up with reading. I’m close to completing Darwin’s Century, having only 30 pages to go. I should finish it Sunday or Monday. I’m also reading a collection of C.S. Lewis’s essays on literature. These are not his real scholarly essays on medieval or renaissance literature, but rather shorter things he wrote for magazines: book reviews; criticism; stories on genres of literature; etc. They have been good, if not terribly inspiring. I imagine I’ll be another two weeks in that. I’m also going back and re-reading a book on “The Inklings,” Lewis’s and Tolkien’s literary group.

Last evening, grandson Ezra and I managed to read four chapters in Proverbs together as Ezra continues on his quest of reading the Bible through cover to cover. The previous two trips, we didn’t get in any reading time. But, then, he was gone parts of those trips and we only overlapped a day or two each time. I was also able to read with grandson Elijah in a Bible stories for children book. That was the one he picked out last evening. I’m hoping to read with granddaughter Elise a little. Yesterday, in their grandfather-imposed 30 minutes of reading time, she said she was reading in The Key To Time Travel. I didn’t see it so I’m taking her at her word. Maybe today I’ll get to observe her reading.

So far this has not found an audience on Kindle Vella. But I will stay the course and publish all 32 episodes there, the bring it out as a book at the appropriate time.

Possibly tomorrow I will begin putting a few words together on my next writing project. I’ve already created the file and the diary. That will be beating my goal by a couple of days. I don’t think that’s ever a bad thing. Meanwhile, episodes of Documenting America: Run-Up To Revolution continue to post to Kindle Vella on schedule. Episodes 1-6 are live and available for reading. Episodes 7-11 are scheduled for publication. Episodes 12-18 are edited and waiting to be scheduled. And Episodes 19-32 are written and waiting to be edited. It’s not selling either, but that’s somewhat true for everything I write.

Discoverablility is everything, and so far I ain’t got it.

family, Genealogy

Will I Ever See It Again?

1 Comment
Genealogy charts like this for my wife’s ancestry: will I ever see them again?

There have been times in my life when I got a foreboding that I was doing something for the last time.

The first time it happened was when I flew out of Boston in 1990. We were back in the USA after Iraq invaded Kuwait, living back in Asheboro NC, waiting for the situation to clear. I took temporary employment with Metcalf & Eddy in a Boston suburb, and flew up once a month for a three-week stay in their guest house. I flew back to NC in November and, as we looped around the city after takeoff from Logan airport, I remember thinking, will I ever see Boston again?

The was probably foolish thinking. I was only 38 years old. My dad and brother still lived in Rhode Island. I should have realized I would have many more times to be in Boston. But that was the feeling I had.

The next time was leaving Kuwait in July 1991, out of the severely damaged airport. That was an accurate foreboding, as I’ve never gone back there.

I start working on this notebook today.

It happened in 2010 when I was in Rhode Island for my 40-year high school reunion. My brother was hospitalized. He looked awful. A new health problem had recently developed, compounding three other major problems. I remember thinking as I left the hospital that I thought he had less than 5 years to live. In fact, he didn’t make two years, and my premonition was correct.

Now that I’m a lot older, I get those forebodings more frequently. Every time we make a trip to a home town or old haunt, I can’t help but think, “Will I ever see this place, or these people, again?”

But I generally can put those thoughts out of my mind. Is this the last car I’ll ever own? Is this my last big vacation? Is this my last long-distance drive? Yes, I set those thoughts aside and concentrate on what I have.

13 notebooks emptied, ready to be brought up to the staging area for donations.

I had just such a foreboding yesterday. Not about people or places but about a thing. Or actually a bunch of things: my genealogy research papers. I think I’ve mentioned this on the blog before, at least in the Progress and Goals posts. I had a lot a lot of genealogy papers. I made it a practice to write everything down as I researched. I came up with filing systems and reorganized. Then, as the 3-ring binders seemed to reproduce themselves like fruit flies (but taking up much more space), I carved out a shelf in my closet for them. Six feet of glorious space to put notebook after notebook.

Except the shelf filled and I had to lay some horizontally on top of the others. Then, my interests began to change and I spent much more time on writing than on genealogy. So many of my notes were incomplete. Even as research became easier as more and more records were placed on the internet, many for no-cost searching, I did less and less.

Every now and then I’d hear from a relative, the old obsession would rear up and I’d research in a frenzy for a week or two then…back to writing, with another twenty or thirty papers stuffed into an already over-stuffed notebook.

Now, as we are in the process of disaccumulating in advance of a future downsizing, as I looked around for what I could get rid of next, I spied the shelf in the closet and realized that row of notebooks were something I couldn’t keep.

But what to get rid of, what to keep? What to save, what to trash? How to get rid of the bulk of those papers without destroying my research, just in case someone in the future cared to know what I had learned about the family?

I’ll try to make this short. I first went through the notebooks and pulled out any sheet with a name on it that had no further information. To recycling. Next I took a hard look at some family lines that I had a little research on but which I never did a whole lot of research on. Out they went. This, if I remember correctly, got rid of three notebooks after consolidation.

That left around 25 notebooks—still way too much. I knew I had to digitize these papers and save them to the computer. But how to do it, and how to save them so that they would be findable in the unlikelihood they would ever be needed again, either by me or by a descendant?

I had only recently discovered that my printer was also a scanner, and that it had options such as scan to PDF, jpg, or to text. I had already been using it to scan printout of letters and e-mails. I could just shift a little and use it for genealogy papers.

That’s what I’ve been doing for a lot of 2023. I made it a goal to scan and trash 10 sheets a day from the notebooks. That would be over seven reems of paper in a year. It took me a while to get going. I figured out a way to save everything digitally so that I could find everything again. About five more notebooks into the process, I realized my filing system was a bit cumbersome and was slowing down the work. It took me a week or two of experimentation before I figured out a better way.

With that better way, and with old Betsey (the name I just gave to my scanner) cranking away, I discovered I could easily scan and trash 20 sheets a day, taking relatively little time. Now I was up to close to 15 reems a years. That would make a real dent on that closet shelf.

Yesterday was a catching up day. I scanned 57 sheets and filed the electronic files. That emptied one more binder. I set it on the floor under my worktable with the others, all waiting to be carried out of The Dungeon and to the garage staging area for things to be donated. Right now it’s 13 notebooks. I’ve already donated a few earlier in the year, and I think it’s 18 that have been cleaned out and declared surplus.

Ah, but I was talking about forebodings. Yesterday, as I scanned and filed all those papers—many showing incomplete research, I got the sense that I might never see them again. Will the time arise that will allow me to expand the research? And will it come to a point where I no longer care?

So that’s where I’m at today. Did I save my “darlings”, or kill them, as Hemingway famously advised writers to do? Time will tell.

book reviews, family, Genealogy, History

Book Review: Letters From Muskoka

Leave a comment
The book is available in modern reprints. My copy was a free e-book of the original, out-of-copyright edition.

Some years back, after twenty years of searching, I finally “found” my maternal grandfather. I had a last name and diminutive first name, but no location. A few hints that my grandmother gave, along with DNA triangulation at 23andMe, and in August 2017 I finally confirmed Herbert Stanley “Bert” Foreman as the man, and his birthplace as Port Carling, Muskoka, Ontario, Canada.

The genealogy research went fast, as did finding cousins. The library at Port Carling was incredibly helpful with making copies of book pages for me. With the location being totally knew to me (now mainly a vacation area north of Toronto), I began to look for and acquire books about the area. The ones I got were available on line through Google Books as they were out of copyright. I downloaded four books, and the first one I read was Letters From Muskoka by “an Emigrant Lady”.

I read this several years ago, probably back in 2018, but, being somewhat less familiar with Google Books than I am now, I didn’t save it to my library there. Also, I find that I’m not as prompt at reviewing books I read as e-books, and hence I never reviewed it. This week, wanting to catch up on book reviews, I went looking for “that Muskoka book I read a few years ago” and didn’t find it. Fortunately, through a simple search I found it. In order to write a review of it, I had to give it a bit of a re-read. Mainly, I scrolled ahead to this haunting passage I remembered from the end of the main narrative:

I went into the Bush of Muskoka strong and healthy, full of life and energy, and fully as enthusiastic as the youngest of our party. I left it with hopes completely crushed, and with health so hopelessly shattered from hard work, unceasing anxiety and trouble of all kinds, that I am now a helpless invalid, entirely confined by the doctor’s orders to my bed and sofa, with not the remotest chance of ever leaving them for a more active life during the remainder of my days on earth.

What a sad commentary on her years there. She, a serviceman’s widow for fifteen years, and her adult children were Brits who were living in France when the Franco-Prussian War broke out. When the war ended in 1870, changes in the country made life there less attractive for these British expats. One daughter and family had emigrated to Muskoka, and most of the rest decided to follow.

When the book was first published in 1878 in England, the author was listed as “An Emigrant Lady”. Later editions identified her as Harriet Barbara (Mrs. Charles) Gerard King. She was a widow with four children, at least two adults. At the end of the war, they decided to emigrate to Canada to take up free land being offered in Muskoka. Harriet was 61 at this time.

They arrived in Muskoka, after a major ocean storm in transit, after train delays, after finding themselves without money, in fall of 1871. The hardships began almost immediately, and did not abate for the next four years. Here are other salient quotes from the book.

It was anguish to see your sisters and sister-in-law, so tenderly and delicately brought up, working harder by far than any of our servants in England or France.

We were rich in nothing but delusive hopes and expectations, doomed, like the glass basked…to be shattered and broken to pieces.

A portrait of Harriet, I suspect after she left Muskoka in 1876, more likely shortly before her death in 1885.

Normally I don’t have much sympathy for or interest in those who are, or think they are, part of the aristocracy. They have their good things in life and don’t need my sympathy. But it’s hard to read this and not have a little sympathy for the emigrant lady. In the last day or two, as I read on in the book, I learned that she was a writer and tried to bring income in by writing and submitting articles. At this, she was mostly unsuccessful.

The letters take up the bulk of the book, with a few ancillary sections. I’m not sure that I read beyond the letters. Mrs. King described in great detail the hardships in getting a farm cut out of the rocky woods. All family members saw their health deteriorate due to the hard work and the meagerness of the provisions.

The book did what I wanted it to do: help me to understand the area my long-lost grandfather came from. As I wrote this review, I can see I need to finish the last few short sections of the book. I’ll download it to my phone and begin reading it in the off moments. Then, when I’m sure I finished it, I have three other books about old Muskoka to read. So I’d better get on it.

Unless you have a connection to Muskoka, or you really, really like pioneer stories, there’s no point in reading this. For me, it was a great book. The detail and the quality of the writing make this a 5-star book—for me. For most people, it’s maybe a 3-star book. But, in the beauty of e-books, I’ll keep it in my library for a while.