of course i am glued to the news, wondering if demonstrations will choke tulsa just as the president arrives to have a 19,000-person rally that has been described as a "petri dish" for covid. of course the demonstrations would be the same, if they materialize. it's all reality television at its best, or worst, since i never cared much for "survivor" or "hunger games" in the first place.
my genealogical research has led me in several directions, once i get out of the civil war. in the civil war my father's side of the family is out in southeastern nebraska helping nebraska decide if it wants to be a state. nebraska doesn't really want to be a state, until much later, but lincoln and washington republicans want them to be a state, so they can be a free state. it's all high drama, but the upshot of it is that my great great grandfather goes up to be a delegate in the constitutional convention, and the democrat majority adjourns it before they can write a constitution, because they don't want to do anything that might help lincoln.
then it turns out that i have another great-great grandfather who has written his whole sad story, typed, about eighty pages single space, and i've undertaken to transcribing it so as to use it in some way. he was treasurer of hillsdale college and was totally into the michigan pioneer business before becoming treasurer. but a world of catastrophe befell him in hillsdale and the upshot of it was that my great grandmother, who was a little girl, was lucky to get out of there with her life. his story is so egregiously horrible and spelled out so carefully that i am compelled to print it one way or the other, just so it gets told. but i'm not sure hillsdale college would want it. in fact, they haven't even answered my e-mail. i'm about 65 pages into typing it, almost done, and know it's a powerful little document. but what is my place? it seems that self-publishing may be the way to go, but even that is a somewhat odd outcome.
but then here's the last development. as i finish writing about my great-great grandfather, and we come into the 20th century, they start driving autos, going out to california occasionally, and that kind of thing. but then i come to people i've actually met, namely my grandfather, whose first wife (my father's mother) i never met, but who had an interesting story of her own. to tell the truth, someone who has his story laid out in eighty single space typed pages at least has a profile that we can recover to some degree, but there is much less about my father's mother, whose family emigrated from germany in the late 1800s, and didn't write much down, in terms of life stories. so i'm back in the shed digging through old papers and finding some names of them, as my mind has moved forward a little, to the point where these german immigrants, in chicago, decide to transplant themselves to a small town in western iowa which is full of german immigrants anyway. probably they knew somebody, or even perhaps a relative, who had ended up in this small town and told them life was better out here than in the city. all that is what i intend to find out - who they were, and even where in germany they came from. i tend to not do so well with research on the european end, though, because i get less patient with geography i don't know.
and back there in the shed, i found a bunch of pictures of my aunt. my aunt grew up in des moines and was about eighteen when her husband went off to the war. right as she was having her baby, my only cousin, she found out that that husband had been shot down and killed. that did it for her, and schizophrenia won. from then on, she didn't quite know who was who, and had to be put in a home, as the family was unable to care for her. at one point i moved to iowa and made a point of visiting her, and she didn't know who i was either. i did make an effort to know her, but her lack of real awareness of the family or even who i was was kind of overpowering. she was happy though. they were taking care of her.
anyway, the pictures show her as a young, and very aware teenager. and she's a very different person; you can even see it in the picture. that's what's so odd. i never knew her as a real person, with hope and a future, and a husband, and even a little child - although that picture is not quite the same as the others. it brings up the question of whether you can actually determine anything from a picture really, about what someone's thinking. but it's also because we're in the era where my father is coming into his own as a photographer, and one of the reasons these pictures come down to me is simply because they are good pictures.
in any case, it's my role here to preserve this history, all of it, if there is time, before the steamrolling covid comes around.
my genealogical research has led me in several directions, once i get out of the civil war. in the civil war my father's side of the family is out in southeastern nebraska helping nebraska decide if it wants to be a state. nebraska doesn't really want to be a state, until much later, but lincoln and washington republicans want them to be a state, so they can be a free state. it's all high drama, but the upshot of it is that my great great grandfather goes up to be a delegate in the constitutional convention, and the democrat majority adjourns it before they can write a constitution, because they don't want to do anything that might help lincoln.
then it turns out that i have another great-great grandfather who has written his whole sad story, typed, about eighty pages single space, and i've undertaken to transcribing it so as to use it in some way. he was treasurer of hillsdale college and was totally into the michigan pioneer business before becoming treasurer. but a world of catastrophe befell him in hillsdale and the upshot of it was that my great grandmother, who was a little girl, was lucky to get out of there with her life. his story is so egregiously horrible and spelled out so carefully that i am compelled to print it one way or the other, just so it gets told. but i'm not sure hillsdale college would want it. in fact, they haven't even answered my e-mail. i'm about 65 pages into typing it, almost done, and know it's a powerful little document. but what is my place? it seems that self-publishing may be the way to go, but even that is a somewhat odd outcome.
but then here's the last development. as i finish writing about my great-great grandfather, and we come into the 20th century, they start driving autos, going out to california occasionally, and that kind of thing. but then i come to people i've actually met, namely my grandfather, whose first wife (my father's mother) i never met, but who had an interesting story of her own. to tell the truth, someone who has his story laid out in eighty single space typed pages at least has a profile that we can recover to some degree, but there is much less about my father's mother, whose family emigrated from germany in the late 1800s, and didn't write much down, in terms of life stories. so i'm back in the shed digging through old papers and finding some names of them, as my mind has moved forward a little, to the point where these german immigrants, in chicago, decide to transplant themselves to a small town in western iowa which is full of german immigrants anyway. probably they knew somebody, or even perhaps a relative, who had ended up in this small town and told them life was better out here than in the city. all that is what i intend to find out - who they were, and even where in germany they came from. i tend to not do so well with research on the european end, though, because i get less patient with geography i don't know.
and back there in the shed, i found a bunch of pictures of my aunt. my aunt grew up in des moines and was about eighteen when her husband went off to the war. right as she was having her baby, my only cousin, she found out that that husband had been shot down and killed. that did it for her, and schizophrenia won. from then on, she didn't quite know who was who, and had to be put in a home, as the family was unable to care for her. at one point i moved to iowa and made a point of visiting her, and she didn't know who i was either. i did make an effort to know her, but her lack of real awareness of the family or even who i was was kind of overpowering. she was happy though. they were taking care of her.
anyway, the pictures show her as a young, and very aware teenager. and she's a very different person; you can even see it in the picture. that's what's so odd. i never knew her as a real person, with hope and a future, and a husband, and even a little child - although that picture is not quite the same as the others. it brings up the question of whether you can actually determine anything from a picture really, about what someone's thinking. but it's also because we're in the era where my father is coming into his own as a photographer, and one of the reasons these pictures come down to me is simply because they are good pictures.
in any case, it's my role here to preserve this history, all of it, if there is time, before the steamrolling covid comes around.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDuPcjXP04bZsnJnqLyshOYTejrtOxA2PLRaO51p5A0bbj2ZVQeSpk1UOtbgPvpeJ1eEt2k9nOQSwUqrnnPKJYS4whWwxcICyG40ylmWP1kldjmBgnXEOdvCLjtaxTGZ6RYpWa/s1600/georgepop.jpg")
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