December 6 – Santa Claus
Did you ever send a letter to Santa? Did you ever visit Santa and “make a list?” Do you still believe in Santa Claus?
I don't recall ever believing in Santa Claus. Not only that, I was a very curious child who never wanted to wait for the surprise on Christmas morning, and got in trouble more than once for peeking. I'm sure my parents took me to visit mall Santas or similar when I was quite young, but I don't remember ever wanting it on my own behalf. Likewise, if I ever made a list for "Santa", I must have been very young.
In fact, had it been up to me, I would never have done the Santa thing with my own kids. I find the whole thing to be contrary to the real reason for the holiday, and an intentional deception to my kids. In the end, I chose to not fight that battle, and just kept my mouth shut. I still regret that on occasion.
This and all other articles on this blog are © copyright 2011 by Daniel G. Dillman
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Monday, December 5, 2011
Advent Calendar - December 5, Outdoor Decorations
December 5 – Outdoor Decorations
Did people in your neighborhood decorate with lights? Did some people really go “all out” when decorating? Any stories involving your ancestors and decorations?
Some of the neighborhood folks put up some lights, and we did a little bit of that. But no one in our neighborhood was a "Griswold" (referring to a movie called National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation starring Chevy Chase, in which he goes hog wild overdecorating his house.) Mostly it was a few strings of lights. There were other neighborhoods that were known for their displays, and we would drive around and look at them each year.
This and all other articles on this blog are © copyright 2011 by Daniel G. Dillman
Did people in your neighborhood decorate with lights? Did some people really go “all out” when decorating? Any stories involving your ancestors and decorations?
Some of the neighborhood folks put up some lights, and we did a little bit of that. But no one in our neighborhood was a "Griswold" (referring to a movie called National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation starring Chevy Chase, in which he goes hog wild overdecorating his house.) Mostly it was a few strings of lights. There were other neighborhoods that were known for their displays, and we would drive around and look at them each year.
This and all other articles on this blog are © copyright 2011 by Daniel G. Dillman
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Christmas Wish List
Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings has another SNGF challenge, for which I am again late to the party. Well, as they say, better late than never!
As anyone in my family can attest, I've never been big on the whole Santa Claus mythos. That said, I still like Christmas gifts as much as the next person! I think I've been a pretty good genealogy boy. My goal has been to better document my tree with source material, preferably properly cited. This is the part of genealogy, in my opinion, that makes it hard. Anyone can collect a string of names and dates, but proving them correct and citing your evidence is akin to working on a college thesis!
I have a few items for my wish list, and reasons why those things made my list:
This and all other articles on this blog are © copyright 2011 by Daniel G. Dillman
Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision. Here's your chance to sit on Genea-Santa's lap (virtually) and tell him your Christmas genealogy-oriented dreams:
1) Write your Genea-Santa letter. Have you been a good genealogy girl or boy? What genealogy-oriented items are on your Christmas wish list? They could be family history items, technology items, or things that you want to pursue your ancestral quest.
2) Tell us about them in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook status or Google Stream post.
As anyone in my family can attest, I've never been big on the whole Santa Claus mythos. That said, I still like Christmas gifts as much as the next person! I think I've been a pretty good genealogy boy. My goal has been to better document my tree with source material, preferably properly cited. This is the part of genealogy, in my opinion, that makes it hard. Anyone can collect a string of names and dates, but proving them correct and citing your evidence is akin to working on a college thesis!
I have a few items for my wish list, and reasons why those things made my list:
- Flip-pal Scanner - For obvious reasons, a portable scanner would be handy in all sorts of genealogy field trip ways! Plus, as a technical sort, it appeals to the gadget freak in me.
- Ancestry.com subscription - I've never had one. That's right, I've been doing genealogy since about 1992, and never had one. I've taken advantage of their occasional freebie weeks, but that's it. I've always thought them overpriced. I still do, but it would be nice to have access to all of those digitized sources.
- Evidence Explained - This ties in with my goal above of properly documenting and citing my tree. This is THE book that is the agreed-upon standard of how we want to do this in the genealogical community.
- An elf to help me break my McMurry wall - all roads end in Arkansas about 1870. Family rumors hint at some sort of family schism, probably during the Civil War, with this line breaking off from the rest of the family. I'm having great difficulty finding any solid documentation. Maybe Ancestry will have something more?
This and all other articles on this blog are © copyright 2011 by Daniel G. Dillman
Advent Calendar - December 4, Christmas Cards
December 4 – Christmas Cards
Did your family send cards? Did your family display the ones they received? Do you still send Christmas cards? Do you have any cards from your ancestors?
My family sent and received Christmas cards from various friends and family members for a long time. My grandmother was a great one for any sort of correspondence. I don't know if I still have a card from her or not, but I'm pretty sure I have a letter from her on holiday stationery. The cards we sent were generally store-bought greeting cards. We displayed cards we received about as long as we kept the decorations us.
I haven't sent any cards in a number of years. I never was very good at that sort of thing, being more inclined toward electronic communications, and not for particular occasions. I did try to take up that practice, and sent cards to people for about three years, but it just didn't catch on with me. About the time I started to get people sending them back, I fell out of the habit. I just don't have the time, the inclination or the legible handwriting to do those, and people seem to frown on anything that doesn't have at least some hand-written stuff as being too impersonal.
This and all other articles on this blog are © copyright 2011 by Daniel G. Dillman
Did your family send cards? Did your family display the ones they received? Do you still send Christmas cards? Do you have any cards from your ancestors?
My family sent and received Christmas cards from various friends and family members for a long time. My grandmother was a great one for any sort of correspondence. I don't know if I still have a card from her or not, but I'm pretty sure I have a letter from her on holiday stationery. The cards we sent were generally store-bought greeting cards. We displayed cards we received about as long as we kept the decorations us.
I haven't sent any cards in a number of years. I never was very good at that sort of thing, being more inclined toward electronic communications, and not for particular occasions. I did try to take up that practice, and sent cards to people for about three years, but it just didn't catch on with me. About the time I started to get people sending them back, I fell out of the habit. I just don't have the time, the inclination or the legible handwriting to do those, and people seem to frown on anything that doesn't have at least some hand-written stuff as being too impersonal.
This and all other articles on this blog are © copyright 2011 by Daniel G. Dillman
52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History - Historical Events
52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History by Amy Coffin is a series of weekly blogging prompts (one for each week of 2011) that invite genealogists and others to record memories and insights about their own lives for future descendants. You do not have to be a blogger to participate. If you do not have a genealogy blog, write down your memories on your computer, or simply record them on paper and keep them with your files.
The hard part of this will be for me to pick just one event. I'm young enough to have missed John F. Kennedy's assassination, just young enough I don't remember Robert Kennedy's assassination either. I do vaguely recall Richard Nixon resigning and flying off in a helicopter. I would have been about 8 years old. I vaguely recall thinking it was a good thing he was resigning, but I'm not sure I had a real good understanding of why it was happening. I do remember Watergate being in the news a lot, and thinking Watergate was an odd name. I don't remember there being any direct effect on my family, though my parents didn't really talk about politics with me at the time.
More of my remembrances deal with the space program. I remember some of the later lunar landings in the Apollo program, and I remember Skylab being manned. I was about 9 years old at that time. And I also remember it falling back to Earth. I really remember the Viking probes landing on Mars, and the full-color supplements in the newspaper with color pictures from the Red Planet. I was 10 years old when they landed. I remember the Apollo-Soyuz joint mission with the Russians, and the special docking module they had to use to join the spacecraft. It was a major milestone, being done during the Soviet era, between two normally competing space programs. When I was this age, I really planned on a career as an astronaut. I don't think my parents cared one way or another about anything in the space program, but it was quite important to me. Later, I remember being shocked by the Challenger tragedy, and still later by the loss of Columbia. Fourteen astronauts died in those two accidents.
I remember the hostage crisis in Iran, and how every day the Days counter on the news programs would increment by one. I remember it dragging on and on, and finally coming to an end after Ronald Reagan got elected President. Was Iran afraid of what President Reagan was going to do to them if they didn't release our people, or was the timing coincidental?
I remember hearing about the terrorist bombing of US Marines barracks in Lebanon.
I remember the first gulf war, Operation Desert Shield, later Operation Desert Storm. I remember this one very well, because I was on active duty at the time in the US Navy. In fact, I was in VF-32, a squadron of F-14 fighter jets assigned to USS John F. Kennedy (CV-67), and our battle group was the one tagged to go over first. At that time, I was preparing to transfer to shore duty, and I wasn't sure if they would drag me overseas and send me back at some later time, or if they would leave me behind to transfer on time. It ended up the latter. I transferred to the Photo Lab on the base I lived near about a month after the squadron left for the Gulf. That month I spent standing watches in an empty hangar full of the files and equipment they hadn't taken along, cleaning and basically just waiting for my transfer. I remember watching on CNN as the reporters filmed and described the night time attacks with tracer fire looking like fireworks. I was glad I wasn't over there, as we had no idea of Saddam Hussein's capabilities and whether we would have been in danger (turns out the ship was safe enough), but was concerned for the well-being of my former squadron mates.
A bit later, I remember the fall of the Berlin Wall. I was about 23 when it happened, and I remember being stunned that it actually happened, and watching people on CNN with sledgehammers breaking down parts of it. Of course, any time prior to this, people would have been shot for doing that. I remember when the Soviet Union collapsed, with a similar sense that it wasn't real somehow, that we would always have our communist rivals.
I remember again watching CNN as a white Ford Bronco made its way slowly down an abandoned freeway followed by a lot of police cars as O.J. Simpson ran from them. I remember watching more of his trial as well. CNN figures prominently in my memories, as it seems I caught a number of major events as they happened that way.
As I watch world events today, I wonder which ones we will remember in years to come as being the major, pivotal events that changed history. Will the Occupy movement make a real difference? Will Iran get nuclear power, or weapons? Will they use them if they do? Will we ever finish the War on Terror? The War on Drugs? Any of the other "wars" we're fighting? Will our leaders manage to fix our country and economy before we go down the tubes? Will global warming actually come about, or will we do something to mitigate it? The problem with historical events is that by the time you realize what events were really important, and what effects they had, you're past where that knowledge can be of any real use to you.
This and all other articles on this blog are © copyright 2011 by Daniel G. Dillman
- Week 49. Historical Events. Describe a memorable national historical event from your childhood. How old were you and how did you process this event? How did it affect your family?
The hard part of this will be for me to pick just one event. I'm young enough to have missed John F. Kennedy's assassination, just young enough I don't remember Robert Kennedy's assassination either. I do vaguely recall Richard Nixon resigning and flying off in a helicopter. I would have been about 8 years old. I vaguely recall thinking it was a good thing he was resigning, but I'm not sure I had a real good understanding of why it was happening. I do remember Watergate being in the news a lot, and thinking Watergate was an odd name. I don't remember there being any direct effect on my family, though my parents didn't really talk about politics with me at the time.
More of my remembrances deal with the space program. I remember some of the later lunar landings in the Apollo program, and I remember Skylab being manned. I was about 9 years old at that time. And I also remember it falling back to Earth. I really remember the Viking probes landing on Mars, and the full-color supplements in the newspaper with color pictures from the Red Planet. I was 10 years old when they landed. I remember the Apollo-Soyuz joint mission with the Russians, and the special docking module they had to use to join the spacecraft. It was a major milestone, being done during the Soviet era, between two normally competing space programs. When I was this age, I really planned on a career as an astronaut. I don't think my parents cared one way or another about anything in the space program, but it was quite important to me. Later, I remember being shocked by the Challenger tragedy, and still later by the loss of Columbia. Fourteen astronauts died in those two accidents.
I remember the hostage crisis in Iran, and how every day the Days counter on the news programs would increment by one. I remember it dragging on and on, and finally coming to an end after Ronald Reagan got elected President. Was Iran afraid of what President Reagan was going to do to them if they didn't release our people, or was the timing coincidental?
I remember hearing about the terrorist bombing of US Marines barracks in Lebanon.
I remember the first gulf war, Operation Desert Shield, later Operation Desert Storm. I remember this one very well, because I was on active duty at the time in the US Navy. In fact, I was in VF-32, a squadron of F-14 fighter jets assigned to USS John F. Kennedy (CV-67), and our battle group was the one tagged to go over first. At that time, I was preparing to transfer to shore duty, and I wasn't sure if they would drag me overseas and send me back at some later time, or if they would leave me behind to transfer on time. It ended up the latter. I transferred to the Photo Lab on the base I lived near about a month after the squadron left for the Gulf. That month I spent standing watches in an empty hangar full of the files and equipment they hadn't taken along, cleaning and basically just waiting for my transfer. I remember watching on CNN as the reporters filmed and described the night time attacks with tracer fire looking like fireworks. I was glad I wasn't over there, as we had no idea of Saddam Hussein's capabilities and whether we would have been in danger (turns out the ship was safe enough), but was concerned for the well-being of my former squadron mates.
A bit later, I remember the fall of the Berlin Wall. I was about 23 when it happened, and I remember being stunned that it actually happened, and watching people on CNN with sledgehammers breaking down parts of it. Of course, any time prior to this, people would have been shot for doing that. I remember when the Soviet Union collapsed, with a similar sense that it wasn't real somehow, that we would always have our communist rivals.
I remember again watching CNN as a white Ford Bronco made its way slowly down an abandoned freeway followed by a lot of police cars as O.J. Simpson ran from them. I remember watching more of his trial as well. CNN figures prominently in my memories, as it seems I caught a number of major events as they happened that way.
As I watch world events today, I wonder which ones we will remember in years to come as being the major, pivotal events that changed history. Will the Occupy movement make a real difference? Will Iran get nuclear power, or weapons? Will they use them if they do? Will we ever finish the War on Terror? The War on Drugs? Any of the other "wars" we're fighting? Will our leaders manage to fix our country and economy before we go down the tubes? Will global warming actually come about, or will we do something to mitigate it? The problem with historical events is that by the time you realize what events were really important, and what effects they had, you're past where that knowledge can be of any real use to you.
This and all other articles on this blog are © copyright 2011 by Daniel G. Dillman
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Advent Calendar - December 3, Christmas Tree Ornaments
December 3 – Christmas Tree Ornaments
Did your family have heirloom or cherished ornaments? Did you ever string popcorn and cranberries? Did your family or ancestors make Christmas ornaments?
We had a number of ornaments that had been around forever, from my point of view, but I don't recall any that were handed down as heirlooms. There were some that we made sure got on the tree every year, and some that didn't always get used. I remember occasions when we did string popcorn, or cheerios, but not cranberries. I don't know why we never did cranberries. And the strings usually got pretty beat up, resulting in a mess, so we didn't usually do those in consecutive years.
We didn't make ornaments as a rule, although there were always the ones we kids made at school and church that got put on the trees. Some of those lasted a number of years before falling apart.
This and all other articles on this blog are © copyright 2011 by Daniel G. Dillman
Did your family have heirloom or cherished ornaments? Did you ever string popcorn and cranberries? Did your family or ancestors make Christmas ornaments?
We had a number of ornaments that had been around forever, from my point of view, but I don't recall any that were handed down as heirlooms. There were some that we made sure got on the tree every year, and some that didn't always get used. I remember occasions when we did string popcorn, or cheerios, but not cranberries. I don't know why we never did cranberries. And the strings usually got pretty beat up, resulting in a mess, so we didn't usually do those in consecutive years.
We didn't make ornaments as a rule, although there were always the ones we kids made at school and church that got put on the trees. Some of those lasted a number of years before falling apart.
This and all other articles on this blog are © copyright 2011 by Daniel G. Dillman
Friday, December 2, 2011
Advent Calendar - December 2, Holiday Foods
December 2 – Holiday Foods
Did your family or ancestors serve traditional dishes for the holidays? Was there one dish that was unusual?
My brothers and I were rather picky eaters, and I was quite stubborn about what I would eat. On more than one occasion, I outlasted my mother's willpower in refusing to eat things I didn't want. For that reason, we had a fairly limited repertoire of foods that we had on a regular basis.
I really don't remember if we had a particular meal every Christmas. I know we had turkey dinners more than once, and probably beef roast or ham other years. Usually that was accompanied by mashed potatoes or white rice, gravy, corn and bread or buns of some sort. On several occasions, there was also stuffing and sweet potatoes and such, which I never paid attention to, as I did not like those. There were usually cookies and pie for desserts.
This and all other articles on this blog are © copyright 2011 by Daniel G. Dillman
Did your family or ancestors serve traditional dishes for the holidays? Was there one dish that was unusual?
My brothers and I were rather picky eaters, and I was quite stubborn about what I would eat. On more than one occasion, I outlasted my mother's willpower in refusing to eat things I didn't want. For that reason, we had a fairly limited repertoire of foods that we had on a regular basis.
I really don't remember if we had a particular meal every Christmas. I know we had turkey dinners more than once, and probably beef roast or ham other years. Usually that was accompanied by mashed potatoes or white rice, gravy, corn and bread or buns of some sort. On several occasions, there was also stuffing and sweet potatoes and such, which I never paid attention to, as I did not like those. There were usually cookies and pie for desserts.
This and all other articles on this blog are © copyright 2011 by Daniel G. Dillman
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Advent Calendar - December 1, The Christmas Tree
December 1 – The Christmas Tree
Did you have a real tree or was it artificial? How big was the tree? Who decorated the tree? What types of Christmas trees did your ancestors have?
We usually had an artificial tree, although I seem to remember having a real tree on more than one occasion. They were all about 5-6 feet tall, since our house was small and had fairly low ceilings. We all decorated as a family. Decorations consisted of numerous glass ball ornaments (fewer each year, as one or more would inadvertently get broken over the season), other miscellaneous ornaments, garland (usually tinselly or other sparkly material, not the pine-looking stuff), and lights. We sometimes had strings of popcorn, but not every year.
When I was young, the strings of lights had the larger, hot incandescent bulbs that you had to be careful not to touch after they'd been on any length of time. Later, it became the smaller incandescent bulbs that were cooler, but if one blew out, the whole string died and you had to hunt for which one was dead by replacing one bulb at a time until the string lit up again.
The only ancestors I recall spending Christmas with were my paternal grandparents, Estel and Alta Dillman. We went to their house in Yankton, South Dakota. I don't recall for sure if their tree was real or artificial, but my memory says "real". I don't have any idea what other ancestors did for their decorations.
This and all other articles on this blog are © copyright 2011 by Daniel G. Dillman
Did you have a real tree or was it artificial? How big was the tree? Who decorated the tree? What types of Christmas trees did your ancestors have?
When I was young, the strings of lights had the larger, hot incandescent bulbs that you had to be careful not to touch after they'd been on any length of time. Later, it became the smaller incandescent bulbs that were cooler, but if one blew out, the whole string died and you had to hunt for which one was dead by replacing one bulb at a time until the string lit up again.
The only ancestors I recall spending Christmas with were my paternal grandparents, Estel and Alta Dillman. We went to their house in Yankton, South Dakota. I don't recall for sure if their tree was real or artificial, but my memory says "real". I don't have any idea what other ancestors did for their decorations.
This and all other articles on this blog are © copyright 2011 by Daniel G. Dillman
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)