The Genea-Bloggers' Picnic Has Been Posted

Bill West of West in New England has posted "Welcome to the Picnic!" He asked genealogy bloggers what kinds of picnics they remembered from their childhood. I added some more questions in "Week Forty: The Geneabloggers' Picnic."

There are 20 picnickers, each with their own picnic baskets and favorite foods. My submission, "Picnic Time" is here.

Enjoy the reads!

Week Forty: The Geneabloggers' Picnic

OK, I lied when I hinted that I might post another prompt mid-week. Truth is, there's been so many carnivals lately, it was overwhelming to think of coming up with more ideas...and then finding time to write about them, too! (What's a carnival? It's a little like these writing prompts, but on a much larger scale. Go here to see the latest edition of the Carnival of Genealogy to get an idea. There are about a half-dozen more that I participate in!).

I thought I would share with you an idea by Bill West who blogs at West in New England. A while ago, he featured the Geneabloggers' Parade, with genealogy bloggers writing about what things they would enter in a genealogy parade. Now Bill invites one and all to the Geneabloggers' Picnic.

*What food does your family serve at picnics?

*Are there traditional foods or family recipes?

*Is there one particular relative's specialty you wish you could taste again or one perfect picnic day you wish you could go back and relive?

Here's more ideas I came up with:

*You could expand to write about family reunions, past and present, and what kinds of foods were/are brought to them.

*You could add what dish everyone loved to eat, and which one people were sneaking off to scrap into the garbage so they wouldn't hurt the cook's feelings!

*Is there a picnic basket, old ice chest, a BBQ grill or camp stove, a special dish (physical, not recipe) or picnic cloth that's been handed down in the family and used for decades at picnics, potlucks, or reunions?

*Is there a favorite campground, park, home, or meeting place where picnics or reunions regularly occurred?

*What about unwelcome guests like ants, mosquitoes, and yellow jackets? Raccoons, anyone?

*What favorite picnic or reunion photos do you have, especially ancestral?

*Beverages served, games and activities played, stories told...all contain memories that future generations will someday treasure, if they're left for posterity!

The deadline is Friday, August 1st. If you have a genealogy blog, write your memories there, then contact Bill at lunacy2ATmindspringDOTcom. You don't have to have a genealogy blog to participate, of course. You can choose to write your memories offline in a journal, or your choice of media. If you would like to publish your memories online, but don't have (or don't want to have) a genealogy blog, e-mail your writing to me at kidmiffATgmailDOTcom by August 1st, and I will post it here on this blog and send Bill notification so he can link to it.

Next week: Get out your hammer, paint, and wallpaper...we're remodeling!

Great Lakes Dunes Featured on Stamps

(click here to enlarge)

I'm a big fan of stamp collecting. Although I haven't done so since I was child, it's one of those ways like coin collecting, reading biographies of historical characters, conducting science experiments, and creating works of art that expand a child's mind and can be a lead into learning more about one's own past. A number of years ago, the United States Postal Service began a series of a large block of stamps that highlight various ecological habitats found around the U.S. According to this article in the Muskegon [Michigan] Chronicle, the "glorious sand dunes that line portions of all five Great Lakes are about to get national exposure," while being featured in the 10th installment of the Nature of America educational series.

This announcement caught my eye for several reasons: the first, stemming from my childhood hobby of stamp collecting, and the second being that Michigan is an ancestral location for me. But I have more than a passing interest in the Great Lakes dunes than just that they are a wonderful natural feature. You see, my parents met while both their families were camping at Silver Lake State Park 47 years ago this summer, and their first date was taking a motorboat ride across Silver Lake, then walking across the dunes from Silver Lake to Lake Michigan! I thought it would be a great idea to buy a block of these stamps and preserve them in a scrapbook to use as a creative prompt to write about how my parents met, so that generations to come would know their story.

Week Thirty-Three: Laughter, the Best Medicine

A while ago, I was working away at my laptop, when my teenage son's belly laugh floated down the stairs from his room where he was watching one of his favorite television shows, Family Guy. Immediately, I flashed back to my childhood and heard my brother's own childish belly laugh echoing in my memories, from the weekend mornings when I would try to sleep in and he would be watching Saturday morning cartoons in the living room directly below my bedroom. I thought about how my son's chuckle imitates both my brother's and my sister's, and how my daughter has a very unique outright laugh (it almost sounds fake!), although at times I hear her paternal cousin's giggle or her paternal aunt's chuckle when she is amused. My sister-in-law and my mother-in-law share the same "ha-ha!" and my husband, brother-in-law and father-in-law sound alike as well.

Now that nearly all my grandparents are gone, I can tell you that one of the sounds I miss most is my maternal grandmother's merry laugh, and my paternal grandfather's knee-slapping that accompanied his guffaws after telling a good joke. I can't remember my maternal grandfather's laugh or even a memory of him laughing out loud...maybe because he was a quiet man. I know that my dad and his mother have similar laughs, and I wonder that if I could be transported in time, which ancestors they would sound like.

Ancestral photographs and documents may tell us who someone looks like in the family, or what similar habits or occupations were passed from generation. But sound--people's voices and the way they laughed--are not things that often get recorded for future generations. Yet, they could tell us so much about ourselves and our families!

*When you laugh, who do you sound like? Your father, mother, a sibling, or other relative?

*Who in your family giggles? Belly laughs? Chuckles? Guffaws? Knee slaps or does some other large physical act while laughing?

*What other members of the family have similar laughs? Query the older generations and ask them "who in the family has your grandma's (or grandpa's) laugh?"

*Who has the most unique laugh in your family, and why?

*What kinds of things did your family laugh or joke about?

*What best describes the style of humor in your family (dry, wet, ironic, silly)?

*Did you ever have tickle fights?

*Who were the practical jokers in the family?

*What private jokes did you have as a family? What key phrases were giggle starters?

*What do you remember about your own children's first laughs when they were babies? What silly things did you do to get them to chortle?

*What books, magazine, or cartoon strips were favorite humorous reads in your family?

*What comedy television shows or movies were favorites in your family?

*Do you ever play games that get your family giggling up a storm? (Our family plays Balderdash with my brother-in-law's family every year while camping at the lake for a week...it's our favorite group activity, mainly because we get so darn silly while playing it!)

*Do you have digital recordings, videotapes, audio tapes, or home movies with family members talking or laughing in them? I'm a fan of Susan Kitchen's blog, Family Oral History Using Digital Tools, and she has lots of good tips for preserving these recordings. Perhaps you should plan to do some recording at the next family gathering!

*Besides preserving audio recordings (and perhaps posting them on your blog!), you can post photos of family members cutting capers, laughing, or joking around. If you don't have a blog, you can add these photos to a scrapbook and post your responses to this prompt. You could also add quotes about laughter from the Bible or other sources to your journal, scrapbook, or blog.

And now, it's time to do a little giggling yourself! Watch the YouTube video below! For more great baby laughing videos, go to YouTube and enter "baby laughing" in the search engine.

Week Twenty-Nine: Family Time

Last week there were some great responses to "Games and Puzzles." You could really see the family dynamics as various bloggers wrote about the game times they had with their families. I wanted to continue in the same vein with "Family Time." These times can be referring to your household family, or extended family members.

*Did your family have a regularly scheduled family time?

*What sorts of things did your family do together most often?

*Where did you spend your family times? At home or elsewhere?

*How important were family meal times?

*Did you ever go for "Sunday drives"? Where did you go?

*Did your family have a favorite place at which to eat out together? What made it a favorite?

*Was there a favorite television show you liked to watch together (or a radio show to listen to together)? Did you ever read together?

*What kinds of things did your family talk about when they got together?

*Were there certain kinds of sports or activities that you participated in as a family?

*Did you ever have a family portrait done by a professional photographer? Was this done on a regular basis, or just occasionally?

Understandably, if you grew up in a household where the family dynamics were not the best, the above questions may not apply. Some people may find it therapeutic to write honestly about this, while others may find it helpful to write about how they determined to have things be different when they raised their own families.

One of my great-great-grandmothers, Jana "Jennie" (TON) HOEKSTRA, was orphaned at an early age. She lived with her step-father, but once he remarried after her mother's death, she went to live with an uncle and aunt, and worked as a maid and a laundress at a young, young age. She had a very hard life. One of the most precious possessions I own is a little scrap of paper on which she wrote about some early memories she had of her immigrant Dutch parents:

I, remember when my mother was kind to me, and took the long walk, with her, Sundays after-noon and her Love.

I, remember the walk, my Father and I took one evening in Cincinnati Ohio. The Father's day, and mother's days are a blessing.

Sunday Feb 14--1943

This is all I have ever seen in Jennie's writing, and it is so significant that the one thing that has been saved of all she ever wrote was about her family! Make sure your descendants have a record of your family times, and copies of your family portraits or snapshots.