ALL AROUND THE TOWN . . .

Out town is bustling with activity -- and now most of it is for the Holidays. It is fun to see the daily display of tourism here, and it is not hard to recognize the typical groups. It seems not that long ago (15 years) when we were in that group that decided to visit "that cute little town up North" on a given weekend . . .

And the time is flying by -- every year it seems that "there is tons of time" before the Holiday, either Christmas or Thanksgiving:

That number above is amazing -- while it seems that there are plenty of shopping days left, that will change. Christmas falls on a Wednesday this year and that means pretty much the whole week is taken up. We already have watched a "Christmas" story on TV and the music and jingles will get overdone and we have almost two weeks before Thanksgiving.

Birth Dates & Anniversaries from the Tree

Besides Holiday shopping there may be shopping for other "dates" as well. This past week we celebrated many significant dates for births and marriages:

The above represent last week events -- this post I will begin posting "dates" for the upcoming week:

The above would give advance notice -- which would be desirable . . .

Best Wishes & Congratulations to all the above   ♫  ♫


Shopping THEN & NOW

Seasons ago -- growing up -- things were a lot different than today's shopping arena. And in my early adult years I recall that 99% of what we bought was either "in person" or perhaps via a catalog with a specific retailer. It is fun to look at the old ads and compare that to current methods and habits.

I remember S&H Green Stamps and that whole process. Almost every retailer was involved and what a distinctive method to receive a "discount". When you shopped, stamps were generated at the checkout stand equal to a proportion of the dollars that you spent.

The stamps were handed to you loosely and stuffed into your wallet or pocket/purse and brought home. At home the process was to stick the stamps onto pages in small books. Once a few books were accumulated the books were taken to a "Green Stamp" redemption center where catalogs showed what merchandise could be redeemed with "how many" books of stamps.

What a cumbersome process and it so nice that we are beyond that today. Above you can see the S&H Books for two retailers (Wiebolt's & National Tea Food Stores) and the examples of the stamps -- I probably could find some in my memorabilia . . .

But today -- not only do we NOT have to lick stamps and drive to a redemption center -- we don't even have to leave the house to get some fantastic deals and promotions -- Amazon offers almost everything that you can think of -- it is usually priced right and shipping is often free.

AND now Amazon is going to include Sunday delivery in many areas (utilizing the USPS) which we'll see how that works . . . what more could you want.

Webinar Wednesday

The week was back to a single webinar from Legacy -- but it was a crucial one for those of us who have a lot of  ancestors from the state of Ohio:

Ohio is so important as it pertains to the known location and activities of most of my paternal family. It is in Ohio that we can most assuredly find documents and other proof of our family -- and that is true for a lot of families.

The webinar gave some very specific methods and links to use in Ohio and many could translate to other state researching as well.

"Spelling for Fun"

I try to use the correct spelling in most everything that I post -- spell check certainly helps. But in one of the webinars recently Thomas Kemp used the following to illustrate a point:

I found it fascinating that maybe too much emphasis is placed on the importance of spelling -- though I do appreciate when things are correctly spelled . . .

I though it would be interesting to plug the above paragraph into WordyUp and see what came out:

WordyUp is a site that you can use to see the relationships that words have with each other -- in this case most of the relationships were with non-words.  But try it out for yourself by going to the above site and plug in some written material.

Spotlight on One Uncle from the Tree

Growing up we had "limited" exposure to most of the extended family and this exposure usually came at the holiday times. I probably had ten occasions that I met or was around Uncle Ken and his wife Tada.  I have a positive sense about those occasions.

This week I was asked (by a cousin) about Uncle Ken and I realized that I needed to clarify in more detail about he and his wife:

Uncle Ken was married to my Grandmother's sister, so he is a Grand Uncle to me. We usually saw Tada & Ken at Thanksgiving and/or sometimes Christmas.

They lived in Algonquin, Illinois and had no children of their own. I do not remember ever going to their home when we were young. After I was married I remember visiting Tada & Ken one time at their home and we went to their club for dinner.

Ken was an officer (Vice President)  at the Algonquin State Bank which is still going strong today. In the above collage can be seen Tada & Ken, then Ken & Jean (Bumgardner/Swanson) with Marv as a baby, the house they lived in (316 Eastgate Dr, in Algonquin) and the Algonquin State Bank.

And Finally from GENi:

GENi from time to time let's us know which famous or well known person to whom we are related. And this week it is Georgia O'keefe:

In the above you can follow the path up through our paternal side and to the Gillett's path and then back down to Georgia -- fun to know.


That was a bit of our week -- and, keeping things changing -- Salmon Saturday Night . . .

See you all in a few!