We all have our priorities...

It's amazing what it takes to get a person to break silence and do a blog post. ;-) There have been a few noteworthy things happening of late that are certainly more serious and important. Two family members are being faced with cancer treatments (recurring for both... an uncle and a cousin). Our prayers go out to them both and their families and at this point I am remaining optimistic for good results from treatment. We'll be keeping our ear to the ground with them both.

We've been busy puttering around with this and that. Ron has done a bit more work in the basement... putting moldings around doorways and painting them. I've done some work outside... mostly pruning... and just listed the soaps on the web page that were made this past month (22 batches?). I still need to print labels but decided to take a break and do more family history scanning first. I've been trying to whittle away at the huge amount of stuff that is here and as I do this, I plan to share it. Some of you have been getting periodic emails with images attached. I hope someday to organize this stuff in book form and get it all together where photos, correspondence and family charts create a three dimensional picture of people I barely knew as a child... and for some people I only saw a couple of times before they passed. My favorite thing is coming across old letters. Reading them not only reveals many of the feelings, values and humor of the writers... but also some bits of family history and dynamics not otherwise realized.

Last week I received a letter in the mail from the husband of a third cousin, once removed. Her great grandmother was a sister to my great grandfather (Braasch). She still lives in the state where my mother was born... Nebraska. Because I'd mailed a couple of booklets to some other cousins there when my mother died (her biography)... they'd recently met those people and got my address from them. I just love making these connections and especially when we can share information via the internet. This fellow beamed over an old photo I'd never seen and I had a copy of an old photo of the same parents with just the two of them. I'll show the picture he sent. My great grandfather, Michael Edward Braasch, is on the left side of the back row and their great grandmother, Wilhelmina is standing to his right.

I look forward to sharing information in the future with these folks. They look like very nice people from family photos they also sent (Jim and Kathy Morley). He even owns a Mac! ;-)

What got me on here was the clipping shown at the top... or actually, the back side of the clipping. The front was an announcement for my great grandparent's Hough on their 50th wedding anniversary (also my mother's line... her dad). The Hough Family History book we put together in 2000 centered on their family. They reared eleven children. After scanning the clipping, I looked at the back to see if there was anything interesting there. Some of the backsides of these old clippings are as informative of the times as the fronts. I wasn't expecting what I found. Also irony in that it was on the back of an article celebrating a long and happy union. In the old days a person had to provide reasons for seeking a divorce... and it appears they printed those in the paper. What I found so astonishing, was the abuse the first woman put up with before experiencing her "last straw." As I said in the subject line... we all have our priorities. ;-)

Here's the back side...

Wow! This is over 50 years ago! ... a little over a year before my older sister was born. Laws and societal norms may change... but human nature doesn't.

I need to get back to more scanning before it gets too late... but had these parked on the desktop from last month. We had a large family group photo I'd never scanned. It was 14 inches by whatever and wouldn't fit on the scanner bed, so I had to do it in two pieces and stick them together in Photoshop. Underneath this first one was an older one of the same size... so I'll drop in both.

This was the Gunne Saxe (sp?) period in my sewing history (1983?). Diane was the baby of our family at this time. I'd sewn all of the girl's and my clothes in this photo. That little dress of Kristine's was a tedious and time consuming project, but I sure liked her in it. Can't say the same for what I'm wearing. Just makes the football shoulders look even larger. ;-) What I mostly remember about this is that I'd just had a foot stomped on by a horse in an incident we had with the shoer/trainer here. I think that was the time the mare who was tied, panicked trying to get away from her filly who was trying to get away from the trainer and ran right through the tie line... I got knocked down from behind and as I lay there I looked over my head and could see nothing but horse's stomach and rearing front end (the filly). I knew she'd do everything she could not to step on me so covered my head and waited. The trainer realized he had to give it up and let go of her or I was going to be caught in the fray and it all blew over. Once I got up to secure the gate (a younger colt had bailed out of the corral by forcing his body through a crevice), I noticed a foot injury... and an extremely TIGHT boot! Anyway... that happened a day or two prior to this photo and I'm standing here with one dress shoe on and a bare foot on the other side... trying to look normal. (Don't say it!) ;-)

The one underneath is when Robert was a little four month old tyke... making this around July of 1977. Obviously we must have looked terrible in the other photos, to keep this one with his eyes closed.

Back to scanning...