A Mighty Strength
Let’s have a history lesson. I’m not super into St. Patrick’s Day. It’s from going to college in Boston (and no, that’s not a euphemism for going to Harvard. Which is in Cambridge. Go Terriers!). I’m not a huge fan of crowds and navigating public drunkenness and overpriced bar menus…which are all unavoidable in that…
Uncanny Valley
The Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania has one very important, indispensable thing going for it – Vassi’s Drive-In. We found it completely by accident. My younger brother and I were kids, and we’d been cooped-up in the car going on thirteen hours on our way home from our annual summer trip to Louisville. We only had…
Yet Here’s a Spot
This seems like a good time to write about the early days of the United States. When I first started researching my family, I had one clear goal – find a descendant of my grandma who fought in the Revolutionary War. This was around 2012-2013 and my weapon of choice was Ancestry.com (U.S. records only).…
The Woman Builder
Some people loom large well after they’re gone. My great-grandmother is one of those people. “Mama Lil” was a complicated person. Widowed with two young children, she managed to become the first woman real estate developer in Louisville. She died a decade before I was born, but I swear she’s still walking around in the…
We Have We
Well, we made it to December. I haven’t been ignoring this blog. Rather, I’ve been doing inventory of a massive haul of cool photos that my uncle very kindly scanned for me, and outlining some stories I would like to tell with them. I’m relieved that there’s only about 10 days left in this year.…
Legacy
After a week of avoiding the Internet, I’m back. If you are not in the United States, it’s hard to describe what this election means to me. The past four years have been bizarre at best and downright frightening at worst. At the beginning of Trump’s presidency, I thought people would realize quickly how xenophobic,…
Start With Stories
When I was in library school, I had to take a class called Human Information Behavior. It was my first real experience with information science, very esoteric and technical. It was also the first time I realized it takes a certain type of person to be a librarian. Most people wouldn’t spend time wondering why…
A Hunch
I started doing genealogy because my grandma had a hunch. Grandma Betty, my mom’s mom, was a wonderful person. She passed away in 2000, when I was eleven years old. My memories of her are more like clips, but they are powerful. I remember her smiling a lot and the sound of her voice. She…
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Heart Scraps 