Nostalgic -- Deja Vu

It must be all the searching back in time that is giving me this really strange feeling of nostalgia the last few days. And it seems to be a nostalgic feeling for something(s) that I may have not experienced which is really strange.

I can't explain it rationally, and I'm not feeling sad necessarily, but rather maybe escaping to a place that only appears in a mind's eye if that makes any sense at all. The word "prestalgia" just might be appropriate I don't know, I think I'll take a couple of Excedrin and see if that helps . . .

Even the flowers in the back yard bring about the same feeling -- but the bees are working the beds good . . .

Speaking of nostalgia and nostalgic photos:

That happens to be my younger brother, Jon, and our dog at the time, "Lady". This was about 1950 in La Grange, Illinois. My mom was always a bit upset when "Lady" would drink out of the kitchen sink while she was working there.

The dogs in our lives have made very memorable pictures and mostly positive images that bring back to mind the spirit of those times.

Most of this week, in my spare time I have worked on "cleaning up" the results of syncing the tree from Ancestry.com to the tree at Family Tree Maker 2017.

These two companies used to be owned by the same firm -- but now Ancestry has sold Family Tree Maker and things have been really shaken up in terms of keeping up with saving facts to the tree.

A great feature of Ancestry's tree was that you could work at that site and add and delete folks and then when you were done you could push a button and have all the changes put into the FTM tree saving one from having to do duplicate work.

After several months of being promised by the new FTM program that they would continue the syncing process, we finally are getting to that point.

But. when I asked for the tree in Ancestry to be downloaded to a Family Tree Maker tree, after a few tries it worked -- however, there were several (a couple thousand maybe) duplicate entries that need to be dealt with and so that is what I have been doing.

At first, I thought it was a terrible dilemma but I have accepted the situation and it has allowed me to look at folks that I had forgotten about for several years -- and maybe, just maybe contributes to the nostalgia.

Again being nostalgic to some degree, baseball for our home team (SF Giants) has not been good this year -- we still watch the games, but just shake our heads in disbelief as the team keeps losing game after game when just a few years ago they were the world champs.

Now, in less than two weeks, pre-season football begins again. And looking to our home team (San Francisco 49ers)  we hope for major changes to bring a renewed respectability to their playing.
Last year for them was disastrous and for us the non-viewing fans was tiresome.

We can only hope that the political nonsense that preceded last year's games will have been replaced by returning to have football be a way to forget the world of politics and other ominous activities for the three hours of a game. Plus, maybe see some home team wins as well.


And if we did not have enough to be concerned about there is the fact that there are only so many more days 'til Christmas.

In a way, it is like having the income tax season upon us again. Besides the gift purchasing, wrapping and mailing there is the Christmas Card list that needs to be updated and attended to.

The rocking chairs that we do have on our front porch do beckon us, not so much in the heat that we are experiencing though.

When we do sit in those chairs we marvel over the fact that for some reason there are very few people that come down the street and very few folks make eye contact -- not like the days that I (nostalgically) recall sitting on my grandparents front porch when folks always seemed (in my mind anyway) to greet one another and exchange pleasantries.

Oh well, that is a bit of our week.

By the next post, it will already be August . . . See you all "in a few"!

Day Dreaming

For whatever reasons this week, my mind has given in to slipping into daydreaming at various times. My desktop photo I think triggers that and takes me into a totally different world. I've told the story many times in earlier posts about the fact that it was my father's dream to own a farm. And we came "that" close to having a farm.

 The farm as I remember seeing it looked similar to the one pictured above. The house was off to the right and was decent. The corn right now would be about "knee-high" -- just saying . . .

But, then I get back to not day dreaming and back to working and searching the family tree - sort of being a farmer - no corn though, well maybe lots of "corn" . . . who doesn't love corn?

It is again approaching the century mark on the thermometer here today. I have to say that I would really welcome a good rainy day, but that is not in the forecast.

So, what did I spend my time on this week? A lot of it in scanning, I scanned about 300 items, photos, and documents from the family history box from Eleanor Sigg.

I have been inserting some of the photos into the Ancestry.com tree, a few at a time.

I have already heard from some of the related folks in that branch thanking me for adding them.

Granted, none of these folks are my direct relatives, well maybe a few are, but I knew a lot of them for many years.

I only wish that I could have shared the info earlier so that all of them could see their branch better. The same way I wish my own parents could see the folks and facts that have been put into their branches.

As usual, there are a lot of unidentified photos and that is always frustrating. I have been able to i.d. some, but there are many that will probably not be identified.

Never-the-less, it has been fun and interesting.

And now if you are looking for something to do the rest of this weekend AND you love mushrooms then you might be interested in:

The article in "The Forest Republican" details the events for mushroom enthusiasts in HILES, Wisconsin. This weekend, July 21-23, folks are descending on HILES, Wisconsin for mushrooming and a record turnout is expected.

Even though many apparently turned up as early as Wednesday, there is still about a day and a half left in the event. I like mushrooms . . .

Going back to the search and the endless numbers of ancestors and relatives are exemplified in the "Pickles" comic:

I haven't done the math, but assuming that it is correct, Nelson has over a million ancestors in just a few hundred years. Now that is the reason that this hobby just keeps going and going.

And every week it is true with me as I add new folks. Those new folks have folks and so on and so on. At some point, we draw the line at where we stop adding people, but that is difficult to do.

Every once in a while I hit a "jackpot" so to speak and it is so fascinating to learn about more branches of the tree that I never knew existed. Just this week as I was entering a person into the tree I saw that she was married -- married to a George Patton and this George Patton was stationed at a military fort in the 1940 Census.

I got excited with the prospect that she was married to THE George Patton, but the middle initials were different and so it was just a plain George Patton -- maybe the next person will be the one that has some amazing connection . . .

Lastly, this week we learned that my son, Chris, is out of the ICU from having brain surgery.

Information is sketchy, but hopefully, he will continue to be on the mend.

Thank you all who called and wrote about him and sent best wishes.

It is hard to be so far away and not be in the know as much as we'd like to be. As of two days ago, he was still in Swedish Hospital, Cherry Hill Loc., Seattle, RM536.

That is a bit of our week. See you all "in a few"!

End of Week #28 . . . Still Hot

That's right -- twenty-eight weeks of the 52 for this year have gone by so far in 2017. It's day 196 so about 53.7% of the year has passed. And it is hot again (still). Today and tomorrow are projected to be over 100° and in the next two weeks the coolest day is somewhere around 90° . . .

We keep our fingers crossed for the a/c system and the ice maker (we've had to replace that twice already in five years).

The above flowers love the heat and four out of the five are found in our yard along with several others. The center flower is the Edelweiss and just the name alone brings emotional tugs.

I saw the Edelweiss when I visited my son in Germany many years ago. And of course the song in "The Sound of Music" is a keeper.

We continue to read every night before slumber strikes and this week we just finished "Driving Miss Norma" which is a book that we found very interesting to read.

Miss Norma was a 90-year-old woman who when given a terminal diagnosis had the option of traveling the country with her son and daughter-in-law in their RV or be hospitalized and go through chemotherapy and other measures.

She chose to go driving and she had wonderful adventures that are well documented throughout the book.

Now we started reading "Finding Gobi" and it relates the true story of a long distance runner who meets and befriends a little dog while running a mega marathon in the Gobi Desert.

We have only just begun the story and are finding it intriguing. Of course, we love dogs -- not so much fans of running marathons that are well over 100 miles in length (under 100 just fine) of course we are . . . we look forward to living the adventure along with "Gobi".

Unfortunately this week my son, Chris is at this moment in the ICU unit at Swedish Hospital (Cherry Hill Location) in Seattle.

He had brain surgery two days ago and has made it through this first stage and may face an additional surgery next week.

We are distraught over these developments and are so anxious to hear that he is mending.

Of course, I have not been able to talk with him and I  just get the briefest of updates as to his condition.

The next few days are critical as to keep him free of any infection or other things hampering his recovery. It is difficult to not be able to do things that might help him. Our hopes are in the hands of his doctors.

I did send the above flower arrangement to him for possibly a bright visual way of encouragement when he "comes to" from the surgery -- however, the ICU would not accept the floral gift.

We will keep a positive outlook for him in the coming days and weeks. Unfortunately, Seattle might as well be on the other side of the world as far as visiting. We have our own difficulties as to be free to travel . . .

I have managed to do some genealogy work this week, but only a little. As I have mentioned before genealogy is one way that I can escape any unfavorable aspects of daily life for a little while.

This week I have been struggling to deal with the above two programs, both of which have introduced new versions that offer new features. The main feature for me is the ability to "sync" the trees in each program with the tree that I maintain on Ancestry.com.

There is a learning curve for both programs and I have used FTM as my main program for years with RootsMagic as a good backup.

What I do generally is to work in Ancestry.com and then sync the tree in FTM and in RootsMagic.
Those actions take incredible skills on the part of the programming to make it happen.

I just need to spend more time getting the kinks worked out -- but once that is done -- what a great feature. But wait, there is more . . .

We still have been watching baseball and the Giants struggle this year.

What a difference to see the Giants almost lose every other game that they play.

Today, the Giants play the Padres. And MadBum (Madison Bumgarner) is slated to be the starting pitcher.

This will be his first game this year -- in the preseason he foolishly rode a dirt bike and fell off injuring his shoulder.

He has been in rehab ever since -- some think it may have finished his career -- but we will get an indication today when he steps onto the mound. The "snot-rocket" king will have a chance to prove that he is still "in-the-game".  We hope so.

Lastly, I know that I am not alone when I mention that working on family genealogy is a "lonely" hobby, but it comes with a ton of personal satisfaction for me. And so that keeps me working on the trees.

I happened to notice this question somewhere in my searching recently and I have to agree that almost never do I hear from family regarding any aspect of my searching.

I recall when I first started working on family history and I told my father about that and he replied: "Why would anyone want to do that?"  and that is another reason that I keep at it . . .

That is a bit of our week, see you all "in a few"!

Gladiolas . . . Hot

In our local paper, it said that Healdsburg had a temperature of 110° yesterday. the second time in a couple of weeks. Granted, it is not like Needles, California nor like Palm Springs, both around 120°, but anything over 100° to us is hot.

And it stayed hot late into the night. We kept the a/c on past midnight and even then it felt warm outside. I am beginning to think that rainy weather would be preferable.

The gladiolas though seem to like the heat as do other plants like the lavender. We just have to water more often -- and we do now that the drought is somewhat gone.

The yellow in the gladiola is brilliant in the morning sun. And the bees are working the lavender extensively. If you click to enlarge you can see many of the bees at work. I wonder where they disappear when their work is done.

The neighborhood seems extra quiet these last couple of days. School is out and some folks have left on vacations probably to cooler locales. We actually start the day feeling cool inside and by late evening the sun has done its work and we are feeling the heat.

I've mentioned it many times before, but we lately have had a jigsaw puzzle up in a constant state of being worked on . . . we enjoy being able to leave the puzzle out and then we can work on it whenever we are inclined.  Often we are listening to the TV with a ballgame on and the Giants losing another one. Recently though the Giants have won several of their games and that is more to our liking.

Off to the right is the puzzle that we have been working on this past week.

It is a puzzling puzzle in that we finished it yesterday and there are four pieces left and four openings left -- but, the pieces do not fit exactly into those four places.

The pieces fit on some sides and not on the others and leave a gap -- we can see that they almost fit, but not quite.

We have not had this happen before. We have had missing pieces, but not pieces that do not fit . . .
I will send a note to the company and hopefully, they can advise us as to what has happened and also replace the non-fitting pieces with fitting pieces, that's all we ask.

Speaking of puzzles, a great segue way to genealogy, because genealogy is always potentially puzzling. As I mentioned a few posts ago, I have been exploring the Bumgardner branch a bit.

And I have mentioned that spelling is always an issue. As a result of the many ways that surnames are constantly being spelled in different ways, I often ignore the different spellings and look at the people and guess at why their name is spelled differently than I think it should be spelled.

It's "BUM" vs "BAUM"

With the Bumgardners, I usually stick with searching and looking at folks only using the "Bumgardner" way of spelling.


To the left, the two unnamed pictures on the bottom represent two folks that I started communicating with this past week.

Their comments and questions had to do with the parents shown above them.

I did not list a maiden name for the mother and they shared with me what that name was. They also passed over the spelling of their last name and attributed it to careless census takers and others.

I was beginning to think that I might not be related to these folks because of the Baumgardner spelling.

So, I started doing some investigation. I added a third generation -- the grandparents.

George Harry Baumgardner and his wife, Pauline. I looked up George's WWI draft card and VOILA -- it said, Bumgardner.

I then looked up his WWII draft card and guess what -- it said, Baumgardner -- with his signature as such.

Upon questioning the contacts, we were able to conclude that George had a real distaste for sometimes being called "Bummie" which was a common nickname for a Bumgardner. So some time in between WWI and WWII he changed the spelling of his birth surname to Baumgardner.

That spelling change meant that his descendants too would be Baumgardners, not Bumgardners.

Now, George Harry Baumgardner was the son of Marion Bumgardner, my 1st Cousin. Marion had several offspring and two changed their names to Baumgardner, the rest I believe kept Bumgardner.

Now, I realize that in Muscatine, Iowa and other locations, there are a lot of Baumgardners that are in fact cousins and for a strange reason they have a surname that is spelled differently -- not the result of careless record keepers -- though that does happen as well. And so it goes with the puzzle.

And lastly, the unfortunate marker for Will:

That was a bit of our week, we're trying to keep cool, see you all "in a few"!

JULY 4TH Holiday Weekend -- 4 Days . . .

It happens every year, so far. One of the "fun" holidays of the year i.e. no mandatory gift-giving nor card-sending. Just plain old fashioned down-home celebrations.

Preparations started a few weeks ago when I realized that the flag that we fly almost daily was very faded. So I did what I usually do and that is to go online and look for a replacement.

If you look in the center picture, you will notice that there are "two flags" a flying on the house.

The outer pics are of those individual flags. I must say that I did not set out to double the number of flags -- only update the one that we usually displayed.

So, I ordered a new flag and after placing the order realized that I had ordered a larger flag than what we had -- a 4'x6' in place of the 3'x5' . . .

Then I realized that the flagpole that we had would not support the larger flag -- so what to do. I searched around for the suitable pole and ordered that. But when it arrived last week, it was so much larger than the previous pole and the box stated: "professional installation" recommended.

Long story shortened, I was able to install the new pole and raise and display the new flag AND move the previous pole by the front door. At the front door, I displayed the "13 Star" version, which is treated to appear "old and original" from 1776 . . .

Hopefully, we are set for awhile on flags.

Gail received a wonderful orchid (thanks, Silvia) a few days after her birthday last week.                                                                                                                                                                              We're hoping that we can give it the proper care so that it will last for awhile.                                                                                                                                                                                                         The last houseplant recently did not make it and we feel that over-watering may be the culprit.

Gail also received a couple of day-after-her-birthday calls and several Facebook wishes, all very nice!

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

We did manage to finish the current puzzle that we were enjoying working on, though this one towards the end was challenging. Again, when it was all finished, one piece was missing. We've done this puzzle before and there were no missing pieces, so go figure . . .                                                                                                             Dino is so patiently waiting for us to finish . . .     whatever we are doing, he waits for us to finish and maybe, just maybe we then will play with him or take him "out" for a bit.                             

Regarding the status of the "search" . . . I go through weeks of struggling to find bits and pieces to attach to anyone in our tree and then this:                                                                                                                                     I recently was given access to a boxful of family history that I have agreed to scan the things that are pertinent and then return the originals.                                                                                                                             So, I have begun going through the pictures, documents, and other memorabilia and scanning some of the items.                                                                                                                                                                       Unfortunately, my scanner stopped scanning for whatever reason but I was able to install a "scan app" that works, just not like the previous way of doing business . . .

One of the pictures that I found in the box was of my brother at one of his graduations along with his in-laws, the Siggs. It just so happens that in 1959, I lived with the Siggs in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.                                                                                                                                                   I did not have a picture of Georges Sigg until now. I did have one of his wife Frances and of course many of my brother, Marv.

I enjoyed living with the Siggs and found both of them to be really great folks. They owned the "Bible Book Center" in Fort Lauderdale (on Andrews Blvd) and I even worked there for a bit. I cleaned and inspected films that came back from rental and did many jobs related to shipping (going to the post office) and receiving (unboxing new shipments). This was good work for a high-school senior . . .

So, now I have this box of "family history stuff" that I am enjoying going through. And even though the families are related to me only through marriage, I find it very interesting and fun to record. I knew these folks and still hear and sometimes see their descendants. You can look on our tree on Ancestry.com and other of my trees for many of the pictures identifying these folks.

 Currently on our nightstand is the book appearing to the right -- "Driving Miss Norma"  received from Lisa & Bob for Gail's birthday.                                                                                                                                                           Interestingly, for me anyway, is that the first movie that Gail and I ever went to together when we were first dating was "Driving Miss Daisy".                                                                                                                                                   The book, however, is about a 90 something-year-old women who has been given a diagnosis of a terminal disease and instead of going into the hospital for treatment, chooses to travel the U.S. with her son and his wife.

So far she is having a great time and doing things that for sure would not be something that she would be doing in the hospital setting.

We are enjoying the book so far and find it refreshing.

And, we have been watching the Giants baseball games every day that they play.

Mostly it has been -- watching them lose big and bigger times.

But yesterday they won their fourth in a row -- I believe the best so far this season.

Interestingly there are so many new players being brought up each week that it is impossible to keep track -- maybe they will get the right combination.


So, that is a bit of our week. Enjoy the Fourth! See you all "in a few"!