Squirrel in a Hole

I have been absent from my blog for a few weeks. I’ve been feeling like a squirrel in a hole (you really must click on the picture to understand the feeling I wish to express) and the creative juices seemed to just stop flowing. The result – no writing.

I’ve been reading other blogs, though.

A couple of weeks ago I hopped from one blog … to another blog mentioned in the comments … and on to another blog related to the story.

Do you ever hop down those internet trails?

Sometimes I think I shouldn’t do that – it’s a time waster!

It turns out this wasn’t wasting time after all. This was research! I just didn’t know it at the time.

I’m not going to tell the whole story here because the person at the end of that trail has done that for us and I’m sending you over to her blog to read about it.

Please visit the blog Past-Present-Future, where Smadar Belkind-Gerson has written about the serendipity of our blog hopping and how it led us to a greater understanding of our own family histories.

It involves floods and bananas.

We often hope for cousins to find us when we blog about our families. And we sometimes put something on our blog as “cousin bait.” But sometimes people who are not related can add another layer of information and texture to our own family histories.

What shall we call these people?

neighbors?
peers?
contemporaries?
non-familial persons of interest?
people-who-might-have-known-someone-in-my-family?
people-in-the-general-area-of-my-ancestor-at-about-the-same-time?

I think they may be worth looking for. Choose the moniker of your liking and send out a little bait.

And please – Go read this story!

Woo hoo!

… because my filing system is a mess and there have been many times when I knew I had some thing some where, but I didn’t know where. What in the world did I name that file?

Unfortunately, this does not address my unorganized mess of physical files, folders, boxes, tabletops, closets, and desks.

The basic idea is to create a master folder for your family history. I created one for my family, one for my husband’s family, and one for my step-father’s family.

Within the family history master folder, create two folders: Surnames and Places. Within the Surnames folder, make a folder for each surname. Then within each surname, create folders for individuals.

I like his format for naming folders for individuals because it addresses individuals who share the same name – just add dates…

and it addresses married/maiden names.

It makes sense to me.

These videos do not suggest creating folders within the individual person folders, but I am doing that for some people. I have a lot of artifacts/memorabilia from my grandmothers, so I have made an Artifacts folder for each of them within their individual folders. In fact, I have so many that within the Artifact folders, I have made folders for Recipes and Newspaper clippings and I may decide to add more. I have a lot of one grandmother’s jewelry, for example, so I’ll make a Jewelry folder and add all the pictures I have taken.

The other thing I learned from these videos is how to make alias files. What a concept! A document – say a census record – may be in the individual file for the head of a household. I can create alias files for the other members of the family that show in their individual folders, but they aren’t really duplicated so don’t take up any additional space on my hard drive. Who knew? Not me!

And alias folders are great for married women. She can have a folder included under her husband’s surname as well as her own.

I haven’t done much with the Places folders yet other than set up some of them. I still need to decide how I want to use them. Maps, obviously; pictures of homes; descriptions of towns; …. I also like his suggestion of using alias files for places where the name has changed over time.

Yesterday I worked on one of my uncles. If I had the date for whatever I was adding to his individual folder, I included the year immediately following his name when I named the file. This provided a partially chronological view within his individual folder.

You may notice that I took a shortcut within his individual folder and did not use his full name or the years of his life. Since they were already in his folder, I thought it would be ok.

These tutorials are for Mac users, but the filing system itself makes sense for anyone. The explanations are for beginners, so you may already know everything. I did not.

Here is the link to the first video. Links to subsequent videos are at the bottom of the linked post. The comments section of the posts have additional information about his system not addressed in the videos. (Where I have just now read that he puts census records into the Places folders and creates alias files for individual folders; he addresses what he does with photographs; and more.)

Do you have an organizational system that works for you? Please share in the comments.

The prompt picture this week pays tribute to the human face. And, indeed, this face invites you to spend time studying her features; looking into her eyes; wondering about her thoughts. There is nothing to distract us from her face – not even the style of her hair.

When I was trying to come up with ideas for this week’s Sepia Saturday theme, I thought about a few photographs I have with missing faces – faces that should be there, but have been forcibly removed. Faces we will not spend time contemplating.

Also this past week, Carole King became the first woman ever to win the Gerswhin Prize for Popular Song, an award given annually by the Library of Congress. Her 1971 album, Tapestry, was the background music to my late teen/early adult years. I played it over and over again, always from beginning to end.

I find that some days I still need a dose of Tapestry because there is a song there that speaks to the need of the day. Some days I need “Far Away.” Some days I need to hear that “You’ve Got a Friend.” Some days I need to find shelter “Way Over Yonder.”

And some days I really need to hear “Beautiful” – either because I don’t feel particularly beautiful or because I don’t feel like facing the day ahead. Carole encourages me with each refrain that the day will be better if I face it with a smile:

You’ve got to get up every morning with a smile on your face
And show the world all the love in your heart
Then people gonna treat you better
You’re gonna find, yes, you will
That you’re beautiful as you feel.

As I listened to the Tapestry album this week, it crossed my mind that the women who cut themselves out of my photographs could have used a dose of advice from Carole. And what about those stern looking matriarchs of the family? Surely they weren’t as mean as they look in the photographs I have of them.

If only they had had Carole King’s encouragement singing within ….. Smile. Show the love in your heart. Or maybe treat yourself a little better and don’t cut yourself out of the picture. You probably don’t look as bad as you think you do.

My husband’s grandmother, Lena Morales, cut herself out of photographs on several occasions. Sometimes with just a raggedy tear.

My grandmother Abbie replaced her face (and my cousin’s) with a big heart.

I wanted to remove myself from the photo below. I arrived at school, hair unwashed and pulled back in a headband as a last resort, only to learn that it was picture day.

You can make me get my picture taken, but you can’t make me smile.

If only “Beautiful” had been written in time to help me and my “greats” realize that a smile can be the secret to beauty – or at least to a better photograph.

Susan Nancy Hendrickson Strange

Celia Jenkins Harris

“I believe happy girls are the prettiest girls.” – Audrey Hepburn

You will find many faces to contemplate at Sepia Saturday today. Go take a look.

P. S. if you read my Sepia Saturday post last week, you might recognize some of the faces from the class portrait – now two years older. Another post I could have prepared for today’s prompt!

Turning on bars was the favorite recess activity for the girls in my class at Morrison Grade School in Great Bend, Kansas.

My family moved to Great Bend in the fall of 1961, after school had started. It was my second new town and new school in just a few months. I was assigned to Mrs. Nossaman’s third grade class. In my mind’s eye, my view of Mrs. Nossaman is from left of center, about half-way back from the front. I sat between Susan and Ruth.  Susan always looked a little unkempt and I thought her family must not have much money. Ruth was quiet and poised, but seemed fragile. She had had scarlet fever and couldn’t run around and play with us at recess. I thought that James, who lived down the street from me, was mean. I thought that John, who shared the same last name with me, was cute.

Mrs. Nossaman’s 3rd Grade Class, Morrison Grade School, Great Bend KS 1961-62

I’m just left of center in the middle row – light colored hair pulled back and still styled in ringlets and wearing a white blouse with a little clock design printed on it.

Our house, 20th St., Great Bend, KS

To my left in the picture is the girl who had become my best friend, Katie. Our backyards abutted an alley and she lived a couple of houses down on the corner lot. Every morning I walked through my back yard; turned left down the alley; stuck my hand through the chain-link fence that surrounded her back yard so I could pet her pug, Sir Cedric Pogo III (aka Po); and then went to her front door to get Katie for our walk to school.

Mrs. Nossaman had the perfect cursive handwriting expected of an elementary school teacher. She enforced the rules of her classroom and set high expectations. I don’t remember why exactly, but something about our relationship got off on the wrong foot. She must have called attention to me as the new kid in some way – for not following a class rule or something. Now that I think about it, it may have been my confusion at how to spell or pronounce her name.

The wonderful thing I remember about Mrs. Nossaman, though, is that she read to us every day without fail. She sat at her desk or stood at the front of the class and read to us, one chapter at a time, from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House on the Prairie.” I fell in love with Laura and Ma and Pa and the books about them. And I could forgive Mrs. Nossaman for being kind of mean because this was my favorite part of the school day.

As you can see from the picture above, all of the girls are wearing dresses or skirts except for the girl front and center – clearly a girl ahead of her time. Since the turning bars were the domain of the girls at recess, the issue of us hanging upside down in our dresses was a matter of great concern to our teachers and the subject of school yard chants by the boys. A rule for recess was established that any girl wearing a dress was not allowed on the turning bars unless she was also wearing shorts or slacks under her dress. Sometimes girls forgot to wear the extra layer of clothing and would try to sneak in a turn or two on the bars without being seen by a teacher – or tattled on by someone who would like to see them get into trouble… because it was no fun to stand idly by and watch your friends playing on the bars.

Just look at the long line of children on the bars in the prompt picture if you have any doubts.

The class portrait above was taken in front of the door that faces this playground. You can see monkey bars and one of those bars you swing across with your hands (what do you call those?) and an open playground that we used for P. E. I remember playing field hockey, softball, and Red Rover there. I also remember sitting and waiting for my turn and one of the girls asking, “What’s wrong with your legs?” because I had bright purple capillaries on my thighs even at that age.

The turning bars we played on are not visible in this picture. They were in a play area on the other side of the building. Our bars were taller than those in the prompt photo. We turned facing forward like the children in the picture. We turned with one knee hooked over the bar. We turned backwards from a sitting position and flipped over onto our feet. And sometimes we just hung upside down by our knees.

I completed 3rd through 5th grades at Morrison Grade School and had barely started 6th grade when we moved again.

I don’t have a picture of my 4th grade class. I can’t remember the name of my teacher. I can’t remember what she looked like. I can’t remember who was in class with me. I have only a few vague impressions of that year. I think I would have no memories at all if I had no photographs!

Thankfully, I have a picture of my 5th grade class to help me remember that year. And, although I do remember the names of the kids I wrote about, I changed them.

One of the first posts I wrote for this blog was about 1st grade: 1st Grade Hairstory: Ringlets, a Peeled Onion, and a Clueless Boy.

There’s the bell! Run on over to the Sepia Saturday playground and see what everyone’s playing today.

Four Generations; Me as a Baby

I’m the baby in the arms of my great-grandmother, Dorinda Webber nee Strange. My grandmother, Abbie Smith nee Webber is on the left; my mom is in back; and my grandmother Eveline Hoskins nee Coates is on the right.

I was born in mid-October in Iowa, so it seems unusual that everyone is in short sleeves. The older ladies look a little dressed up, especially my great-grandmother, who is wearing a hat. Abbie’s apron indicates that the picture was taken at her home and that she hosted a meal. I bet I was the guest of honor!

Everyone looks happy – well Abbie may be concerned about a roast in the oven. Or maybe the sun is shining just a bit in her eyes.

New life. A new mother. So much loving ahead. So many possibilities.

This next picture was taken several years later. It features Eveline on the left; mom in the back; and I am sharing a chair with my great-grandmother Mary Coates nee Harris.

Four Generations

My parents were divorced by this time and my mother and I lived with her parents – and so did my great-grandmother. Lots of love and hugs readily available for this young girl.

Whenever I look at this photograph, I get a little sad….. but not for a reason you would assume. It makes me sad because I had a better picture taken at the same time in the same pose. My grandmother’s eyes were open…. we all just looked a little better.

And I lost it! How could I have been so careless?

I took it to church with me to share at a women’s Bible study and I must have dropped it on my way to the car. I lost another picture at the same time of my grandmother Abbie. I didn’t have a “second” of that one.

I can’t remember the exact reason I took the pictures with me, but it had something to do with people (or women) who had had an impact on your life.

Me, Mom and Kay

My grandmothers – as attested to in the name of this blog – had a profound influence on my life. As did my mother, of course. And my great-grandmothers. How lucky I was to be embraced by love every day – and to always be in the care and protection of my mother and grandmothers.

Mother’s Day did not begin as a day to buy cards and send flowers and take your mother out to brunch. Or to share pictures of them on Facebook. Or on your blog.

The roots of Mother’s Day in the United States began as a call to peace in 1870. And later as one daughter’s remembrance of her mother who worked for that call to peace.

The women in my family, as I knew them, were nurturers and peacemakers – or peacekeepers. Their care and concern extended beyond their immediate families. I knew them to be women who had hearts.

And so I’ll end with this link to ‘From the Bosom of the Devastated Earth,’ a History of Mother’s Day for Peace by Matthew Albracht, published in The Huffington Post 05/07/2013.

And this excerpt from Julia Ward Howe’s “Appeal to Womanhood Throughout the World” also called the “Mother’s Day Proclamation”, written in 1870 in the aftermath of the U. S. Civil War  and the Franco-Prussian War.

“Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of tears!… We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says “Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”

May we all have hearts that are tender and reject violence in its many forms in honor of those who nurtured us.

You can read the full text here:

Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections Division

And, although I did not stick with the theme this week, this is my contribution to Sepia Saturday. Please pay other participants a visit.

Sepia Saturday provides bloggers with an opportunity to share their history through the medium of photographs. Historical photographs of any age or kind become the launchpad for explorations of family history, local history and social history in fact or fiction, poetry or prose, words or further images.

I had decided not to participate in Sepia Saturday this week, but when I woke up this morning I thought of a photograph to share.

This is a picture of Angela Loverde nee Parlati, my husband’s grandmother.

I thought of this picture because of the similar side view, hair style, and age of the women.

I  have shared other photographs of Angela for Sepia Saturday. Her wedding pictures were featured here and she appeared in a post about her husband’s barbershop here.  As I mentioned in the post about the barbershop, Angela was a smoker and that is her other connection to the photo prompt.

Joseph Loverde and Angela Parlati

Although Angela’s wedding pictures prompted speculation among commenters that the family was wealthy, in truth, they were not. The family put a lot of resources into the wedding but, as my husband says, “They were Italian. Of course they had a big wedding!” Angela and her husband, Joe Loverde, married during the Depression and moved in with her parents. They never moved out.

Angela’s father died fairly young, but her mother lived a long life and was always the head of the household. Nana, as everyone called her, had a strong personality. She did not abide Angela smoking in the house and Angela was relegated to the outside or the bathroom. I never saw Angela smoke in public. When she craved a cigarette, she would disappear to the bathroom and return after what seemed a very long time. Pity the poor person who needed to use the facilities after one of Angela’s disappearances!

Other Sepia Saturday participants would enjoy a visit from you too!

Would like to be a mule or a pig or a fish?
Of course not, silly!

Would you like to swing on a star?
Oh, yes!

The song wasn’t just silly, though – it had a moral. If you don’t want to be a mule, you had better go to school!

“Swinging on a Star” was written for the 1944 movie Going My Way, in which Bing Crosby plays Father Chuck O’Malley. 

A parody of the song was used in the 1945 movie Duffy’s Tavern, again with Bing Crosby. Rather than being a pig, one might be a ham …

I hope Bing found a bright star to swing on!

I don’t remember mom ever serving beets to us, so maybe she wasn’t really a fan either.

These days I belong to a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm. I get a box of seasonal organic vegetables bi-weekly. This time of year there are beets in the box. As I have already reported, I don’t have a positive history with beets. My husband thinks beets taste like dirt.

I took the beets the first time they were in our box and found a recipe for roasting them. It has been my experience that you can eat most any vegetable if you roast it. They weren’t bad – but I knew I would need to develop a “taste” for them. Husband took a couple of bites without complaint, but he still prefers that I trade out the beets for something we like better.

Grandma had a recipe for Harvard Beets in with her recipe cards. I don’t know if she made them often or not. I’m going to share it here anyway for posterity’s sake. Then I’m going to follow up with a recipe that I want to try.

Harvard Beets

2 cups beets, diced
2/3 cup liquid (beet juice and water)
Heat.

Mix:
2 tablespoons flour
1 1/3 tablespoons sugar
2/3 teaspoon salt
dash pepper
1/4 cup vinegar

Cook until smooth and well blended.

Most recipes I find for beets are of the roasted variety or involve shredding raw beets to add to a green salad. I thought this recipe from Laurel’s Kitchen might have potential in a different direction.

Fruity Beety

4 beets                                              
3 oranges
2 tablespoons coconut
1 teaspoon honey
juice of 1/2 lemon
grated peel of 1/2 lemon
2 tablespoons currants
(1 teaspoon vinegar)
pinch salt

Wash beets and steam whole until tender; then peel. Grate on ripple-shaped grater or slice in long, think sticks.

Peel, seed, and cut up oranges. Place half the oranges in blender with coconut, honey, lemon juice, and peel, and blend 2 minutes.

MIx all ingredients, balancing the sweetness with the additional vinegar if needed. Chill, letting the flavors blend for 2 hours or so.

Makes 3 cups.

Notes on Fruity Beety:

The recipe does not say how long to steam the beets. I think mine took about 25 minutes – I forgot to time them exactly. Easy to peel after steaming.

Grated beets

I had three golden beets in my box this week and two fairly large oranges on hand, so that’s what I used. Since my beets were a golden variety, my salad is a monochromatic orange. Had I had the traditional red beets, this would have been some shade of red.

I didn’t use any vinegar. I added a little coconut on top to make it prettier.

Fruity Beety

This wasn’t bad. I still haven’t developed a taste for beets, but I might if I make this a few more times. For those who really don’t like beets, but would like to cook with seasonal vegetables, you might add an additional orange and more coconut to mask the beets a little more. My husband said it tasted like oranges and roots. Obviously, he is still not a fan of beets. I tried. (sigh)

Sepia Saturday provides bloggers with an opportunity to share their history through the medium of photographs. Historical photographs of any age or kind become the launchpad for explorations of family history, local history and social history in fact or fiction, poetry or prose, words or further images.

When Alan posted this week’s prompt picture, one of his suggestions to fit the theme was the newspaper headlines. The headlines were Greek to me, but as I looked closely at the photograph for ideas, the poster behind the readers caught my eye. I don’t speak the language, but I could understand “Italiaans Nationaal” and recognize it as a circus poster.

This detail caught my attention because my husband, daughter, and I had recently attended a circus – an Italian family circus. My husband, ever vigilant to seek out events with an Italian connection, purchased tickets for the Zoppe Family Circus.

It was held on the grounds of the Long Center in Austin on a lovely April evening.

As we walked up the hill toward the tent, we heard music and applause and noticed that people were crowded in front of the tent rather than entering. We had missed most of the pre-show entertainment, but Giovanni Zoppe was talking to the crowd.

Giovanni explained a little of the history of this small family circus and the great meaning the circus has for this family. He set the stage so that the audience knew from the beginning what to expect (or not to expect) from this circus. No Ringling Brothers here. No Cirque du Soleil. Instead, this circus seeks to preserve the traditional Italian Family circus.

“In 1842, a young French street performer named Napoline Zoppè wandered into a plaza in Budapest, Hungary, looking for work. There, his eyes glanced upon a beautiful equestrian ballerina named Ermenegilda, who captured the hearts and minds of the crowd with her grace and showmanship. More important, this talented beauty captured Napoline’s heart.

However, since Napoline was a clown, Ermenegilda’s father saw him as beneath her and disapproved of their relationship. The two ran away to Venice, Italy, and founded the circus that still bears their name. Over the generations, the circus survived wars and political upheaval in Italy and the rest of Europe.”

Cecil B. DeMille brought Alberto Zoppe, Napoline’s grandson and Giovanni’s father, to the U.S. from Italy in 1948. Alberto was running the Zoppe Circus in Italy and was famous for his backwards, flat somersault off the back of a running horse onto the back of a second running horse. He appeared in the movie “The Greatest Show on Earth” performing this trick in the background. During filming, Alberto performed his trick over and over and over again as the speaking character repeatedly flubbed lines.

In 2007, Alberto was inducted into the Circus Ring of Fame in Sarasota, Fla. Alberto’s first wife was from the famous Wallenda family. Their son, Tino Wallenda Zoppe spoke about his father in the tribute video below. It contains some old footage (including his famous lateral somersault) as well as circus and family photos.

Following is a clip of Alberto in “The Greatest Show on Earth”.

And now back to my family trip to the circus….. Most of the performers in this circus are related. Giovanni and his wife, his sister Tosca and her husband, and his sister Carla and her husband are all performers. I did not anticipate blogging about this, so our pictures are few and, frankly, not that great. It didn’t help that we were using our phones and flash was not allowed. If you visit the Zoppe Family Circus website, you can see photographs of a much higher quality. Now … on with the show.

After some more banter with the crowd and a tarantella played on accordion by the “white clown”, we were finally told that we could enter the tent and find a place to sit.

The bleachers looked a little iffy – like boards held together with bungee cords. Parents kept a hold on their kids until everyone became comfortable with the seating arrangements. The bleachers weren’t very high, so we weren’t in much danger even if someone slipped through. The green sections were the aisles.

A transformed Giovanni entered the ring as Nino the Clown and the circus opened with all of the performers in the ring at once.

Here are the rest of our pictures from inside the tent.

A couple of comments regarding the circus:

Nino the clown is great. Not only is his performance as a clown engaging, but it seems that he can do everything in the circus. He rides bareback; he walks the tight rope, he does trapeze – and all while in character as a clown. It reminded me of the saying about Ginger Rogers doing everything Fred Astaire did only backwards and in heels. He has suffered some serious injuries in the past, but you wouldn’t know it.

I have so many relatives that are heavily into animal rescue, animal rights, and such that I wondered if I should feel uncomfortable about the animal performances. The only animals in this circus are horses and dogs. The horses are all used for equestrian trick riding except for a pony. I wish I had a decent picture of the palomino – it had the most beautiful, velvety coat I have ever seen.

Not everything goes perfectly in a circus like this. The family that does acrobatics (not part of the Zoppe family) were great. But one young girl was unable to successfully pull off a new trick. She tried three times and was never successful. Not a good day for her.

The act that stole the show was Little Nino. I think he is Giovanni’s son. He was maybe three years old and came out dressed just like Nino the Clown, only he had a pacifier in his mouth. Big Nino slipped the pacifier out of little Nino’s mouth at the first opportunity and without a problem. The little guy was so cute. He already had comic timing and performed a rather a lengthy routine with Nino. The next generation in training at a very young age.

Another nice thing about this little circus was that all of the performers left the ring through the same exit as the audience, so they were outside to thank everyone for coming and pose for pictures. The Zoppe Family has a mission statement that reads:

Zoppé an Italian Family Circus is a performing arts troupe dedicated to the celebration of life, love and family. We are committed to the preservation of traditional Italian family circus. Our vision is a modern day presentation that has deep roots in both history and heritage. The goal of each performance is an entertainment and educational experience that sends the audience home with a happy heart and enchanting memories.

I would say that they are succeeding in their mission.

You can view more historical photos of the Zoppe family here.

Now stay seated and read what others have prepared for Sepia Saturday.

I feel a bit like my one-year-old self in the picture…… I stood up. I took the first step, but I’m not steady on my feet yet. I fall down a lot. And I’m reliant on that bottle for comfort.

OK – the bottle has been replaced by lots and lots of dark chocolate.

For a brief, but embarrassing moment, I thought my anniversary was on April 4, like Jana Last, and I left a comment on her blog saying so. But what really happened is that I had posts ready to publish on April 4th 2012, but I was too scared to hit the publish button until April 21st. I should really learn to check my sources more carefully!

I doubt if anyone read those first few posts, even though I stewed and stewed over them. Then I got up the nerve to ask to be added to the Geneabloggers blog roll. People actually read what I wrote and left me comments! A couple of my family joined in too. Uncle Don – you are the best! And a friend started following early on even though she’s not that into genealogy and certainly doesn’t know most of the people I write about. Thanks for the encouragement, Danita!

I’ve discovered what a great community there is among family history bloggers. It’s extraordinary! Support, encouragement, advice, knowledge – freely shared by people I’ve never met and possibly never will. I’ve found it very difficult to balance my own life and preparing my own blog and research with time to read and support other bloggers – not to mention how much I learn from them! Some weeks it’s more of one. Some weeks it’s more of the other. Thanks for the support – you know who you are!

The most amazing thing that happened because of blogging (combined with weird coincidences on Facebook) was finding my half-sister, whom I hadn’t seen since she was a baby and I was 8 years old. An intention and a picture sent out into the blogosphere that I never expected to be found….  Incredible!

I hope to have achieved a better sense of balance by next year, to walk at a steadier pace, and to have a better sense of direction. I’ll surely fall down and embarrass myself sometimes. But who knows who or what I may discover in the process?

Thanks for walking with me into the past, through the present, and on into the future!

I’ve got plenty of dark chocolate on hand for the journey!