Fall Foliage -- Hiles Foliage -- Guidedog Grads

This week has been another beautiful mix of fall weather here. Earlier this week Gail and took a brief walk around the neighborhood and were struck with a brilliant display of fall colors. The weather was sometimes brisk and crisp enough to snag a few photos:

The sun on this day was just right to catch the reddened leaves intermixed with other shades.  We love the Liquid Ambers but having had several we know that everyone of those leaves will drop and then need attention. We never minded though -- in years gone by those leaves would have been raked into big piles and then burned -- I can still smell that smell . . .

We both were busy this week with a variety of things -- Gail mostly with teaching, while I worked on the other leaves and branches of the Hiles trees, the Bumgardner trees, the Bouldron trees and the Rahman trees. In a variety of places I found things to add to the various branches. I manitain trees on several different websites. This week I added a number of items to my own website, to Geni and to Ancestry. In Geni it is interesting to see the statistics that pop up:

Above is an example of some of those I added this week -- pictures of two of the Martin girls -- daughters of Samuel Martin. Susan Martin and Esther (I) Martin -- both of whom are my Grand Aunts. Unfortunately they both died young, Susan when she was about 10 years old and Esther (I) at about three years old. Esther (I) is named that because after she died the Samuel Martins had another daughter and they named her Esther as well -- and she was Esther (II).

If you click on the above to enlarge it you'll see the info -- but better yet, visit Geni.com for yourself. And the bottom circled item shows my stats -- 1227 Family members on Geni, 100,000 blood relatives and 43,256 ancestors -- check them out . . .

Guide Dogs for the Blind -- Graduation Day


Gail and I spent the day in San Raphael, California. We attended the graduation of several guide dogs. It is at this celebration that the dogs are formally taken from the "raisers" and given to the blind recipients. It was a powerful and emotional ceremony.

Above are some pictures of that ceremony -- every recipient and every raiser gives a short talk about their experience and thanks both to GDB and to the GDB families that make everything happen. The recipients are flown in from around the country and receive their new dogs and then are flown back to their homes -- all of this at no charge to the recipients. There is also a huge amount of training that takes place and the recipients are all housed at the San Raphael facility while trainig.

Prior to the graduation Gail & I took the tour of the very impressive facilities that have been in place since 1942 and since 1947 in San Raphael. It was truly an unbelievable day.

We in all likelihood will return to this facility to receive our first puppy to begin training.  Click on the above to see some of the activities that go on and to see some gorgeous pups. While there today, we did meet our second pup to "puppysit" this next week -- Julep.

Correction 


Last week in honor of Armistice Day, I had shown the WWI draft cards of all four of Gail and my grandfathers. And I said that it was ironic that none of them served in the war -- while they did not serve in the World War I, Gail's grandfather Henry J Rahman did serve in the military.

Henry enlisted into the U.S.Army in 1902 in Missouri and was discharged in Washington State in 1905. Below is some of that documentation:

Click to enlarge and you can see the details of Henry's Army record.


Lastly


I was busy busy busy this week in finding and updating with newspaper articles. The one's below I sent away for from the Monroe County (Wisconsin) Local History Room & Museum. It usually takes a couple of weeks to receive the copies and then I start to place them wherever they fit.

You can see four of the ten or so articles that I posted in the various trees and websites. I know how excited I feel when I go to a site and I see things that others have posted that is important for my research, and I hope others are pleased to find these also . . .


And so went our week. It will be sliders soon, later than usual, but we will enjoy them while watching a recorded football game or other event . . . see you back here in a few!