Several months back, my phone crapped out, and I no longer had a backup of my data as Carl formatted his hard drive, meaning I lost everyone's name and number. This is problematic for one reason ( Read more... )

So much for having the estate sale in July -- Mother's house is still a pit, in part because I can only get out there so often. Not August seems slightly more reasonable, but even then it might not be feasible. We keep finding some fascinating and bizarre things -- for some reason we have books in Japanese from the 1920s in my mother's house (why ( Read more... )

( Regev reminisces about a long-deceased relative ... )

So about four months ago -- when Mom died -- we were trying to contact everyone we could, who knew Mom, who would want to know what happened. One who we couldn't reach was my cousin Dawn. I'm not sure what's been going on in Dawn's life, but she'd always been between jobs, moving -- her life was pretty unstable. I had regained contact with her ( Read more... )

As my mood goes in wonderfully random places, I'm finding that I'm developing a (perhaps unhealthy) "really, what's the point?" mindset, and with Thanksgiving coming, that statement couldn't be truer ( Read more... )

roxbear should do interviews, as he's got another great question:

How deep do you know history of your family? How big genealogy tree you can draw for your family? And who or what give you that information?
I've always had interest in my family, but following the family tree has been amazingly difficult. My dad's side has been easier to follow because all ( Read more... )

Carl was getting annoyed with me when he kept asking, "What do you want for Christmas ( Read more... )

So, a while back, I wrote about having procured a bunch of old cards and letters sent to my grandfather from Sweden. I've felt for a while now, that I feel a bit odd never having met this huge family that I still have in Sweden; that there are cousins and uncles and aunts and who-knows-what-else in Sweden still, and NOT knowing these people makes ( Read more... )

I don't know why I thought of this today, but I figured I'd share an awkward part of my childhood ... sit around and listen, won't you?

( clickity clickity )

Part of the 1930's census in Chicago, showing my family at the time in the city.I'm finding it fascinating screwing around on ancestry websites, trying to learn more about who my family was, particularly before they came to this country. It wasn't until last night that I even knew my great grandfather's name to be Karim Elia -- I knew he was from ( Read more... )