50-Day Family History Blogging Challenge: Baseball

 My husband and I, on a whim, watched the greater part of a baseball game today.  It was the Baltimore Orioles at the New York Yankees.  As a lifelong Dodgers fan dating from their time in Brooklyn (yes, I'm that old), I don't like the Yankees, so I had to cheer on the Orioles.  It was a futile endeavor, I fear, as the score when we left the game was 9-0 Yankees.  Sigh.

Yes, I've been fond of baseball since my childhood in the 1950s.  I was a tomboy; the usual girlish pursuits did not attract me.  I collected baseball cards.  I played "flyers & grounders" with a neighbor boy.  I watched baseball games on TV with my grandma, and I was thrilled when my mother kept me out of school one day and took me to the baseball stadium in our home town of Jacksonville, Florida, where we watched the then-Brooklyn Dodgers play an exhibition game.  I almost caught a fouled baseball, but I was carrying soft drinks back to our seats, and didn't want to drop them.  

And just in the early years of this century, the Dodgers played again at our local stadium, and I got Tommy LaSorda's autograph! That was a big thing for me.

My one regret in my affection for baseball has been that my eyes are not aligned due to a childhood operation to correct severe cross-eye.  I have no depth perception within three feet.  I can't hit a baseball worth beans.

 

50-Day Family History Blogging Challenge: Charles Reed's Timeline

 Charles Reed (1840-1920) was my great-great grandfather on my mother's side.  He was born in Gallia County, Ohio, 28 August 1840.[1]  He died 26 January 1920 in Portland, Jay County, Indiana.[2]  In the year in which he was born, "horsepower" meant the ability of a horse to pull the family buggy.  In the year in which he died, "horsepower" was the power rating of the automobiles coming off Henry Ford's production line.  Charles Reed had served in the Civil War, Company F, 140th Indiana Infantry.[3]  When he died, the world had not long before engaged in a terrible war "to end all wars," which, of course, it did not.  

And when he died, importing, manufacturing, or drinking alcoholic beverages was illegal.

In the year in which he was born, Victoria, Queen of England, married Albert, Prince of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Germany.  James Fenimore Cooper's The Pathfinder was a nationwide best-seller.  Born in 1840: Emile Zola, Claude Monet, Thomas Nast, Pierre Auguste Renoir, August Rodin, Peter Ilich Tchiakovsky, and Father Damien, the "leper priest" of Hawaii.[4]

 In the year before Charles Reed died in January of 1920, Theodore Roosevelt died.  Woodrow Wilson presided over the first meeting of the League of Nations.  There was racial strife in Chicago, and the American Steel strike began, ending in January of 1920.  The International Labor Conference endorsed the eight-hour workday.  Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio was published, as was Hugh Lofting's first Dr. Doolittle book, H. L. Mencken's The American Language. and Robert H. Goddard's A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes, a seminal work at the beginning of the age of rocketry.[5]  

 All of this information, and the citations below, are in an extensive timeline I did in 2003 on Charles Reed.  It spans 88 pages, with endnotes.  I had read an article extolling the virtues of timelines as a way of placing our ancestors in context.  I used Bernard Grun's The Timetables of History, which is arranged in chronological order, and lists events of political, historical, scientific, and social importance.  I also used various censuses, Charles Reed's Civil War pension file, and other references, to create the timeline.

Not only did I enter the events of national and world importance, I also entered the family events, such as births and deaths of the descendants of Charles Reed and of members of collateral families, mainly the spouses and children of his descendants. 

I am a convinced advocate of timelines. 

[1]  John Robinson Reed (son of Charles Reed), et. al., "Births and Deaths in the Reed Family to April 1st, 1913."  List of the birth and death dates of Charles and Clarissa Reed and their children with additional death dates entered by persons unknown, no date.  Copy of typescript, initialed "J.R.R." (presumably John Robinson Reed).

[2] Charles Reed, Civil War Pension Application File, SO 816,345; SC 697,707: Records of the Veteran's Administration, Record Group 15, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Bernard Grun, The Timetables of History (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982).  The book is arranged by year; I have not given page numbers because the arrangement by year makes it easy to find the items cited.

 [5] Ibid.

 

50-Day Family History Blogging Challenge: Pi Day and Beyond

Years ago, our older daughter Marti was the receptionist/secretary of the Math and Statistics Department at the University of North Florida (UNF).  Mathy types celebrate their own holiday -- well, it's a working holiday -- on 14 March of each year.  Pi Day, so named because 3.14 are the first three digits of Pi.

So, of course, on Pi Day, what to the mathy types eat?  Pie.

Marti and I made pies for Pi Day and took them in to the department.  I was a student at UNF at the time.

 And to be true to the concept of Pi, I made my pies in a square pan.  With the formula on top, in crust.

Like this cherry pie I made one year:

Marti and I had great fun making these pies, and everyone in the department enjoyed them.  And we still enjoy remembering them.

Marti, being an employee of the university, had the perk of a free class each term.  Being deaf in one ear, she chose American Sign Language (ASL).  When she and her sister were young, they asked for and received a book on ASL.  Little did we parents suspect that we were giving our daughters access to a language which we didn't "speak."  I'm sure that led to all sorts of shenanigans, but they survived all.  So ASL was not new to Marti.

After taking the classes in ASL, Marti enrolled in a "bridge program" offered by Florida State University, my first alma mater.  This program was designed to bring students who had no background in sciences up to speed to then enroll in doctorate programs in audiology, in an effort to make up a shortfall of audiologists.  No surprise to me, considering how loud young people have been playing their music since the 1960s.  Anyway, she then was accepted at the University of Florida's doctoral program in audiology, and now she is a doctor.  She's not the first doctor in the family -- that occurred back in the late 1800s.  She is, however, the first female doctor in the family.  She works with veterans, individuals with whom she feels right at home, since her father and I are both veterans.  She loves the work.

 Our daughter, the doctor!

 

50-Day Family History Blogging Challenge: Hallowe'en 1982

[Alert:  this post has one mildly naughty word in it.] 

It was the season for trick-or-treating in the neighborhood where we lived when our daughters were in middle school.  This photo was taken 1982 at the home of my older daughter's best friend Kim.  In the photo are Marti, our older daughter; me; and our younger daughter, Elizabeth.

I have to say I'm still impressed that I actually made those uniforms.  If you don't recognize the uniforms, they are my best job of the Starfleet uniforms from Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan.  I don't sew, as a rule.  I am not good at it and it's not really something I enjoy.  But even if I do say so myself, I did a doggone good job with them.

 

Marti is Captain Kirk, though with a much fuller head of hair.  She's reading A Tale of Two Cities, the book Spock gives to Kirk as a birthday present in the movie.  Elizabeth is Lieutenant Saavik, Spock's full-Vulcan protege.  I guess having made the uniforms makes me the Starfleet tailor.

Our family had a lot of fun with Star Trek.  We watched the original series in syndication, and we watched the later series offerings, as well.  We went to all the movies.  We went to conventions and sometimes worked on convention staff.  And we played games based on Star Trek.  It has been a part of the glue that kept this family together all these years.

One game we played was a card game, in which, in our explorations, we got into a combat situation, a part of the game that the rules called The Last-Ditch Battle.  Whoever had the most cards won the game.  I was running the game, with Marti and Elizabeth, by that time, both in high school, playing with me.  We went through all the levels and got to that last end-game part, and I announced it:  "Now it's time for the last-bitch dattle."

I don't think we stopped laughing for ten minutes.