Tell Your Story
I always get excited as the year comes to a close. What will the New Year bring? Sometimes it brings fun challenges like the ones I have gathered here for your consideration. Is this the year you will start telling the stories of your photos, family, and things? If you’ve read my book, What’s a…
I finally did it! Did what? I figured out my relationship to Henry Clay, the 19th century American statesman. How? By finding our common ancestor. Once upon a time, my Grandma Clay told me we were related to Henry Clay, about whom I had learned in school. (That’s what we called my paternal great-grandmother Bettie…
I grew up in a family of six, with my parents and three younger brothers. We had few relatives. Certainly none who lived nearby. My parents did not share family stories or photos. Not really. We enjoyed slide shows of our own family…
(This story originally appeared in a Facebook Note on December 24, 2012.) Luminarias are a New Mexican Christmas Eve tradition with religious origins. (Scroll down to learn more.) They are also one of my favorite family holiday traditions. But… in the cemetery? Let me explain.
UPDATE: Mystery solved! (scroll down) What do you think happened when I offered my mom’s good silverware to my niece, Vinca, as a wedding present? One never knows what will happen when you pass a family keepsake on to the next generation. Will they love it? Or, not so much? There’s only one way to…
I thought this phrase — If you can’t find something, clean up — was a well-known adage. But random people I’ve queried have never heard it. So, I Googled it. Turns out it’s one of Gretchen Rubin’s many Secrets of Adulthood, which she introduced in her bestselling book The Happiness Project. I guess it made…
Writing a book is a prolonged exercise in perfectionism. One must strive for quality while resisting the urge to make it perfect. Why? Because perfection, which is highly subjective in this case, falls somewhere between unlikely and impossible to achieve. And perfectionism can lead to procrastination, writer’s block, stress, and the inability to finish one’s…
(NOTE: It was in October 2012 when I “just returned” from this trip and wrote this post. A worldwide pandemic was the furthest thing from my mind! Most of us have stayed home for over a year, and we’re just now thinking about traveling again as we gradually get our COVID-19 vaccinations. Also new since…
UPDATE #1: Mystery solved! (scroll down) UPDATE #2: I was so taken by my grandmother’s “bathing beauty” photograph that I used it on the cover of my 2021 book — What’s a Photo Without the Story? How to Create Your Family Legacy (click to learn more). The book is not about my family, per se,…
I recently saw this example of white privilege: Ugh! That one really hit home. Genealogy research for the descendants of black slaves differs greatly from that of the descendants of their white owners. I knew, of course, that many African-Americans whose families have been here for a long time, and who want to trace…
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