Who do you think you are?

(please forgive any wayward wonky spaces in this post - 

it just appears out of nowhere, 

unbidden and makes me very sad boo hoo!)

Hope you all had a fun weekend!  We sure did! 

Have any of you been watching "Who Do Think You Are" or the Henry Louis Gates PBS show, "Finding Your Roots"? 

I think it's accurate to say we're currently obsessed with family tree research over here. 

I had become forlorn over finding out about my Swedish relatives but then I found a family tree (it appears to have been done about the time of my Swedish relatives emigration to America) going back several generations. There ensued a brief, oh so brief, exultation and celebration and then a smack down of high hopes WAH! 

Turns out it was too light to read with any certainty and I couldn't darken it enough to read the handwriting.  Thankfully after finding nothing but "pay" sites re finding ones Swedish roots, one of the sites suggested the LDS site, Family Search and HURRAY!  Between the old family tree I had found in my mothers things, what I did actually know and what I guessed were the correct names, I was able to find my Swedish ancestors there.  Doing the happy dance!  

Unfortunately on one side of my husbands family, we had indeed come to a grinding halt.  We had names and dates but could not verify or back up with hard copy, any of them.

So on Saturday we gleefully went off to the Southern California Genealogical Society Jamboree in Burbank, CA. 

 

We missed the early seminars due to a gray hair banishment emergency, um, that someone in the family was having (!!!), so we got a later start than desired, which meant we had to miss the early seminars we had thought about attending.  BUT, we had a wonderful time in the Exhibition Hall. We had the great good fortune to meet and spend time with a volunteer at the FamilySearch.org booth who was so very darling and lovely.  She showed us some sites and then looked up some records for us and found us some info on my husbands side of the family we had been unable to corroborate (and without the proof that that info was correct, we could not proceed any further - we were at a dead end.).  YIPPIE YIPPIE YIPPIE!  So exciting. 

There were lots of interesting booths - book vendors, family tree charts, genealogical software program dealers, online services, etc. and a fun one of Mayflower families and the attendants were dressed in period costumes.

I got to meet the author of the companion book to the TV series, "Who Do You Think You Are" and pick up her books and have them autographed.

It was so much fun, the few hours we were there passed in a blink of an eye.  We entertained the idea of going back on Sunday but there was only one seminar we really wanted to go to and we decided the drive out to the Valley again and the (steep) price of admission for the day, didn't equal our enthusiasm over going.

On Sunday we went out to breakfast and then we drove out to San Marino, to the wonderful Huntington Library - so lovely if you've never visited it before.

There was an exhibit that was about to end, for one of my favorite columnists from the Los Angeles Times (or anywhere for that matter!), Al Martinez (turns out Al has a blog these days, just like the rest of us!).  I should say, former columnists, since the L.A. Times lost their mind and let him go!  Which they have done, time after time, since the paper was sold in 2000 to the whackadoo Tribune Company, who want to turn our Times into a largely entertainment rag.  WAH!  The best of the paper is gone, our Pulitzer Prize winning authors gone, the new incarnation a sad shadow of itself and that's being generous. 

When I was in the sixth grade we studied print journalism and we produced our own newspaper for our classroom, each us having our own columns to write. So much fun!  We had a field trip to the Los Angeles Times and I can remember it to this day, watching the newspaper be printed, so exciting. 

It was a gorgeous day at the Huntington, warm but not baking hot as it quite often is. Such a lovely way to pass a Sunday. 



And then on Sunday evening was Part 1 of the two part final episode (of Season Two) of "The Killing".  LOVE THIS SHOW!  I can barely wait for next Sunday to arrive and the tying up of all lose threads.

We're doing errands and puttering around the house today since my husband is off because of a forced furlough day - California schools being in dire straits, unable to pay their teachers (or afford supplies).  Ay yi yi.  There's talk of it getting much worse - instead of the five furlough days of lost pay, there is rumor of an entire month of forced furlough days off and lost pay in the future.  What crazy (and frightening) times these are.