Grandson, this is your grandma.

On the Facebook Page "Genealogy Forward the Storytellers," member Darry Kannenberg gave us a very good blogging prompt when he asked some questions.  With his permission, I'm repeating his questions and answering them here.  I hope that someday my grandson will read this, and other entries in my blog pertaining to our family history.

"How did you and your spouse meet? What was your first date?"

We met in church -- when we were seven years old.  His family attended the church, and my aunt, who was also my godmother, took her duties seriously, and dragged me along.  Our first date?  Gosh, I can't really remember what I would call a first date.  I think it was going out for ice cream or something old-fashioned like that.

"Who was your best friend growing up? What sort of adventures did you have?"

My best friend in high school was Ellen.  She moved to our city, Jacksonville, Florida, from up north.  She was a native of Long Island, and had the accent.  We did a bunch of crazy and silly things together.  One winter morning (north Florida had some bitter winters in the 1960s), we hopped the city bus and went downtown to the most popular and toniest department store of the day, Cohen Brothers.  It was very cold, and the management of the store took pity on the few of us who were waiting outside for opening.  They let us in, into a roped-off area, where we could wait in the warmth.  At precisely the hour of opening, the bugle call "Post Time" (which they play at horse races) sounded, and Ellen and I hollered out, "Charge it!"  The other patrons and the store employees who heard us were amused.

"Favorite class in school? Least favorite?"

I'll start with the least favorite: algebra.  I was miserable at it, didn't understand it.  I barely squeaked by, which was unusual for me.  Geometry, on the other hand, was fun, and I grasped it with no trouble.  Favorite course?  At the time, English, because we had some outstanding, stellar English teachers at our school.

"Who was the mean neighbor when you were a kid? What would they do?"

I'm not sure we had a truly mean neighbor.  We had some who pretty much kept to themselves.  But I don't remember having an actual grouch.

"Where was the scariest place you ever happened to be?"

At the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, with my foot stuck in the mud.  I went to a summer camp a few years in a row.  It was in the Florida Panhandle, on the Gulf.  There was a pier, and a diving board off it.  Out in the water, there was a raft, a platform of wood over sealed, empty 55-gallon drums.  One day, a bunch of us dared each other to jump off the raft and go as deep as we could.  I got to the bottom, but it was very deep mud, and one of my feet got caught.  I struggled, gazing up at the sun shining on the surface of the water, wishing I was there.  With one last effort, I drew my body in like a spring, being careful not to get the other foot stuck, and gave one mighty effort to get free.  It worked, and I got to the surface, happy to be there.

"Growing up, what was the far away place you always wanted to visit? Ever get there?"

I don't think I gave that much thought.  I would like to have gone to various places here in the U.S., but those trips never came off.

"Who were your heroes? Why?"

Eleanor Roosevelt was one.  She went from "ugly duckling," criticized by her family, to being the First Lady of the land, and one of the most active, outwardly-directed First Ladies in the history of this nation.  Eliot Ness was another, because of his dedication and incorruptibility.  My father was one, too.  He was a Naval aviator and flight instructor in World War II.  He died when I had just turned seven years old.

"Is there a time or place you’ve always been drawn to? Why do you think that is?"

I've always been fond of American History, and was interested in the 1920s and 1930s.  Not sure why.  It just seemed like an interesting period, though it became a very difficult one for so many people. Perhaps it was because my mother's generation was young during the Great Depression, and she and my grandma both spoke of their experiences during that time.  One place I just love going back to is Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, for the same reason of my fondness for American history.

#TheBookofMe How do you keep emotionally strong?

The first way is what comes naturally -- I'm a cantankerous old curmudgeon.  I'm too stubborn to give in.

The second way is that I have, at my age, no qualms about speaking my mind.  Some of my opinions should be issued with laboratory gloves, because they have a pH of 1.

The third way is that I let off steam by having fun.  Everyone needs to do that from time to time.

The fourth way is by trying to take care of myself.  That's difficult, because right now I'm battling a very difficult insomnia. 

The fifth way is with hugs.  We're a very huggy family, and sometimes a hug is just what we need to set things right.

The sixth way is what I just did last week.  I took the week off to be a lazy bum and do nothing.  No work.  I did play computer games.  I watched TV, binged on "Law & Order."  I feel much better now.

On the other hand, in the seventh way, I get into my work, go back to the late 18th - early 19th centuries, and bid the modern world adieu for a while. 

And finally, I realize that, in the great cosmic scheme of things, my problems aren't that big at all.

#TheBookofMe How do you relax and unwind?

Or, as my daughters would say, how do I unlax and rewind?

Playing computer games.  I play a variety of games.  When something has really irritated me, I play Diablo III, because I can blow away demons with great satisfaction.  My daughters and I have an expression for playing Diablo III to blow off steam:  We say, "I'm going to go kill things."  When I'm mellower, I play less violent games.  However, game play can be frustrating in its own way, for the first rule of gaming is "The game always cheats."  (And let's note that when I say "gaming," I mean playing compter or role-playing games.  When Las Vegas and other places I have no wish to go use the word "gaming," they should be using the word "gambling."  They're just trying to make that practice sound innocuous, which it is not.  Here endeth the editorial.)

Interacting with family.  It's fun to go places with my daughters, son-in-law, grandson, and my husband.  We do fun things and/or eat good food.  Or just sitting and talking with them.  Humor plays a big part in our interactions.  We love to laugh.

Taking a nap.  At my age, taking a nap is nearly mandatory.  It sure does help, most of the time.

Reading.  Other things have kept me from reading as much as I like to and as much as I should.  I have a very long To-Read Queue (TRQ).  But I enjoy it.

Playing with or petting our cat.  It is said that petting a cat (or a dog) lowers your blood pressure.  Certainly, when I pet Gabriela, it lowers her blood pressure.  That cat knows how to mellow out.  She also knows how to play, and her favorite toy is a 6' length of string.  She plays with that only under supervision, and she really goes after it.  She also likes "the red dot" (laser pointer).

Listening to music.  And when I say "music," I mean music.  Classical, show tunes, bluegrass, world music, jazz.

#TheBookofMe What Do You Share?

Well, that could get into the realm of Too Much Information!

However, I will exercise uncharacteristic self-restraint.

What, indeed, to I share?

My opinions.  Anyone who knows me on Facebook or, to a lesser extent, on Twitter, knows that I can have very strong opinions.   If you remember high school chemistry, you'll understand when I say that my opinions often have a pH of 1.

My work.  I do enjoy talking about the work I'm doing as a historian studying Spanish colonial East Florida between 1784 and 1821.  A lot of this genealogy blog concerns the genealogy of the residents of that area during that time; I have not much time for my own family genealogy anymore (though today I did get an awful lot of very good documentary hints on Ancestry!).

My fun.  One of the ways I share my fun is in online games.  My daughters and son-in-law and grandson and I all play Diablo III (before anyone gets het up about it involving demons, yes, it does, but your job as a player is to fight them and defeat them on the side of good).  We share fun, and in-game gifts and goodies.  In another game I play, a much more peaceful game called Township, I share my produce and manufactured products with friends, both within and outside of the cooperative I belong to.

Love.  I come from a very huggy family.  We shared our love with hugs and food and humor.  Though there were trying times, my family was basically fun to grow up in.  We still share with food, especially at Thanksgiving and Christmas, though we also take friends and family out to dinner on our nickel throughout the year.  I love my husband, our daughters, our son-in-law, our grandson, our friends.

Interests.  My husband and I have a lot in common, but we also have different interests.  He's retired, and spends a lot of time on the computer (he was a programmer).  I spend a lot of time in my office because I'm not retired!  I have things in common with our daughters, too (like computer games), and that makes our relationship fun.

That's enough sharing for one day!

#TheBookofMe May's Prompts -- late again

I don't know where the month of May went, but it's now June (hurricane season has begun).  I am going to, once again, combine all of one month's prompts into one blog entry.

1.  What or who are you proud of?

I am proud of my husband for having been a good provider in 47 years of marriage.  He even, on our modest income, got me through graduate school without a student loan.  We've had some rough patches, as we all do.  But we have come through them, perhaps a bit financially bloodied, but unbowed.  We have a comfortable retirement.  Well, he's retired.  I'm probably an old ADHD, and will never retire, as I always have to be doing something.

I am proud of my daughters, who have become hard-working, life-loving, responsible women.  Our older one has a good marriage to a fine man.  Our younger one chose never to marry, and has her own place in the country, where she is most at home.  Both of them have a solid work ethic.  Both of them enjoy their family and friends. 

I am proud of my grandson, who is doing well in school and overall, despite a fairly severe ADHD.  That's why I made the reference above, because I see myself in my grandson.  He has a terrific sense of humor, and is particularly adept at puns.  He made his first pun at the age of about five.

I am proud of having served in the United States Coast Guard, active duty and reserve, enlisted and officer.  I accomplished things beyond what I had ever imagined I could.  It was a tremendous growth experience.

2.  What frustrates you?

Computer games, at times.  There is one cardinal rule of computer gaming -- the game always cheats.  When I can't seem to accomplish a level, it frustrates me.  However, I'm mule stubborn, so I don't give up until I do complete the level!

Deliberate ignorance frustrates me. Not much else does, though.

3.  What is your favorite way to communicate?

Face-to-face.  That's the best.  I despise the telephone.  I had a job once sitting at a desk with a headset on my head, answering incoming call after incoming call, for the Internal Revenue Service.  At home, I informed my husband that he would have to answer the telephone, because I wasn't going to after a day of doing nothing but that.  I still don't like to get on the dratted instrument.

4.  Name a treasured possession and share why.

Family photographs.  My family is mostly gone.  My father died in 1954 (I had just turned 7), my aunt, who helped raise me, in 1967 (I was in college).  My grandma and my mother-in-law in 1978 and my mother in 1980.  My brother in 1996.  So photographs have been for different stretches of years the only thing I have to remember them.

5.  What and who do you value?

I value my family and friends.  They keep me going.

I value honesty and integrity.  I value incorruptibility.  I value a sense of humor; never trust anyone who does not have one.  I value intelligence. 

Who was Agnes Rodríguez?

In my research on St. Augustine, Florida, during the years 1784-1821 (the Second Spanish Period), I often come across discrepancies in names which indicate that there may be more than one individual with the same name.  This time I found two different names for one individual.  I found a marriage record with the bride's name recorded as Agnes Rodríguez.  The groom's name was Jorge Clak.  I have been investigating this population for ten years now, and I never have come across an Agnes Rodríguez in connection with Jorge Clak.  His wife's name has always been recorded as Ynes (or Inez, or a few other spellings) Pablo.  Here is what I found when I pored through the original records I have found for these people:

1.  There is no record of Agnes Rodríguez other than in the marriage record styled Jorge Clak and Agnes Rodríguez.   The parents of Agnes Rodríguez are not named in the marriage record. (1)

2.  Ynes (or Inez) is a form of the name Agnes.

3. Agnes Rodríguez was supposedly, according to this marriage record, married previously to Andrew Brown, who died 15 January 1785, according to his death record in the diocesan archives.  (2)  The death record does not mention his marital status, nor does it give a spouse's name.  Andrew Brown probably died single or a widower.  However, this is not the right person.  The groom's name is found in other records to have been Andres Bron. (3)

4.  Ynes Pablo shows up first in the baptism records of the parish of San Pedro de Mosquitos (called the Golden Book of the Minorcans), on the New Smyrna Plantation, in the early 1770s.  Her husband is listed as Pedro Duran.  (4)

5.   Their son Pedro, age 18, is also enumerated on the 1793 census in the household of his stepfather, Jorge Clak. (5) Pedro Duran is last shown alive on the baptism record of his son Pedro Juan on 19 Nov 1775.  There are no death records from San Pedro parish, but Pedro Duran (the elder) probably died somewhere around 1776 or 1777. 

6.  Ynes is next found in the marriage records of San Pedro parish.  She and Andres Bron are shown as married in these records. (5)  She is also shown as having been previously married to him on the 1793 census, on which their son Andres, age 10, is enumerated in the household of his stepfather, Jorge Clak.(6)

7.  Ynes (Agnes) Pablo and Andres Bron married 20 August 1778. (7)  They were parishoners of the Minorcan chapel after it moved to St. Augustine in 1779, and, again, there are no death records.  Andres Bron is last shown as alive on the baptism record of his son Andres Francisco, 16 December 1782. (8)  He probably died somewhere around 1783 or 1784.

8.  Ynes Pablo married Jorge Clak 29 Mar 1785, but is identified on the record as Agnes Rodríguez. (9)

9. On the marriage record for her marriage to Andres Bron, Agnes (Ynes) Pablo’s mother’s maiden name is Rodríguez. (10)  This is probably, through clerical error, the root of the identification of Ynes Pablo as Agnes Rodríguez on the record of her marriage to Jorge Clak.

10.  To recap, Ynes Pablo married:  1.  Pedro Duran, probably before or during 1770.  2.  Andres Bron, 20 August 1778.  3.  Jorge Clak, 29 Mar 1785.

Agnes Rodríguez and Ynes Pablo are one and the same, and Ynes Pablo is the correct name.

-----------
Notes:
(1) Marriage of Jorge Clak and Agnes Rodríguez, White Marriages 1784-1801, page 2, entry 4, "Ecclesiastical Records of the St. Augustine Diocese," Ecclesiastical and Secular Sources for Slave Societies, http://vanderbilt.edu/esss/spanishflorida/index.php
(2)   Death Record, Andrew Brown, Deaths 1784-1793 [1809], page 2, entry 6, "Ecclesiastical Records of the St. Augustine Diocese," Ecclesiastical and Secular Sources for Slave Societies, http://vanderbilt.edu/esss/spanishflorida/index.php
(3)  Marriage of Andres Bron and Agnes Pablo, Records of the Parish of San Pedro de Mosquitos ("The Golden Book of the Minorcans"), page 11, entry 8, "Ecclesiastical Records of the St. Augustine Diocese," Ecclesiastical and Secular Sources for Slave Societies, http://vanderbilt.edu/esss/spanishflorida/index.php
(4)  Baptism of Catalina Duran, Records of the Parish of San Pedro de Mosquitos ("The Golden Book of the Minorcans"), page 9, entry 18, "Ecclesiastical Records of the St. Augustine Diocese," Ecclesiastical and Secular Sources for Slave Societies, http://vanderbilt.edu/esss/spanishflorida/index.php
(5)  Marriage of Andres Bron and Agnes Pablo, op. cit.
(6)  1793 census, Censuses 1783-1814, Reel 148, Bundle 323A, Folio 2-159R, East Florida Papers.
(7)  Marriage of Andres Bron and Agnes Pablo, op. cit.
(8)  Baptism of Pedro Juan Duran, Baptisms, page 33, entry 36, Records of the Parish of San Pedro de Mosquitos ("The Golden Book of the Minorcans"),  "Ecclesiastical Records of the St. Augustine Diocese," Ecclesiastical and Secular Sources for Slave Societies, http://vanderbilt.edu/esss/spanishflorida/index.php
(9)  Marriage of Jorge Clak and Agnes Rodríguez, op. cit.
(10)  Marriage of Andres Bron and Agnes Pablo, op. cit.

#TheBookofMe - Combining March and April

I've been out of town on business and fun.  The business:  attending the roll-out celebration in Washington, D.C. of the website LaFlorida: The Interactive Digital Archive of the Americas, and researching at the Florida State Archives in original documents for data for the LaFlorida site.  The fun:  A reunion of the women who were my housemates in a scholarship house at Florida State University in the 1960s.

So I have let my blog entries slide, and now I'm going to take a page out of the book of Carol A. Bowen Stevens's blog and combine the remaining March prompts with April's, and get it all done.  Fortunately, the prompts lend themselves very well to this treatment.

March:

What is something you would like to change, or something you wish had changed?

For one, I would wish my husband, when he decided to go back to college in the 1970s, had chosen computer science rather than getting a teaching certificate.  He would have been much happier.  For another, I wish we hadn't run into hard times and had to sell the house we loved and enjoyed living in, and which would have been paid off in 2010.

What are your favorite things?  Books.  Music (clasical, show tunes, world music, bluegrass, real country music).  Kitties and doggies.

What frightens you?

Tornadoes.  Idiot drivers.  Category 4 and 5 hurricanes.

Using adjectives, describe yourself.

Plain-spoken.  Casual.  Friendly.  Curious.  Intelligent.  Funny.  Stubborn.  Liberal.

What do you think are your essentials in life?

Beyond food, shelter, and clothing:  Books.  Music.  Family.  Friends.

What are your challenges?

Procrastination!  My health (not much left of it).  Impatience.

Are you right or left handed, and does that reflect you?

Right-handed.  Reflect me?  Not sure I understand that fully, but I would say no.  It's genetic, that's all.  Except maybe to say that right-handers are usually left-brained and left-handers are right-brained, so as a right-hander, that means I'm not in my right mind.  (But people know that about me, anyway, bwahahahahahaaaa!)

Describe something you created.

I'll let  Amazon.com describe it for me.

So now I'm ready for May's prompts!

#TheBookofMe Who do you love?

Shouldn't that be Whom Do You Love?  Anyway . . .

My husband, of course.  Have done for 47 years, and we just keep on keeping on.  We've known each other since childhood, were best buds in high school, though we went to different schools (same church, though).  So on it goes.  He enjoys my adventures in academia.  I keep him entertained.  He takes good care of me, and certainly did last year when I broke my shoulder!  He got to be quite the cook, and made some delicious meals!

Our daughters, of course, too (we have no sons).  Both are fine ladies.  Now middle-aged, which makes me feel a bit old.  But I also feel young in having so much in common with each of them.  They're fun to be with.

Our son-in-law, who is a fine fellow.  He and our daughter have also known each other from childhood, having met at a party given by the sysop (do you remember that term?) of a BBS (and that one?) we all used to participate in.  Our son-in-law has been there for our older daughter since before they were married, and certainly does love her.  He's brought some genealogical diversity to the family, adding German and Dutch to the mix!

Our grandson, of course, too.  He's a great kid.  Now in junior high school.  I can't believe he's 13!  Gads, what an age.  But he'll get over it.  We all did.  He wants to be an architect or an engineer.  Following in family footsteps, he's quite the punster, and has been since the age of 5.  He is also quite the flirt, and the girls just love him.

Our cat.  Well, technically (grammatically) the cat isn't a 'who,' she's a 'what.'  But my husband and I love and spoil her, anyway.  She's a very affectionate cat, who likes to sleep with us and to be with (or on) us on the couch when we watch TV.  She is not quite 2, and is still energetic.  Sometimes she runs around the house at great speed.  She loves to hide and then jump out at us, or come up behind is in the kitchen and tap us on the rear end!  Silly kitty!

My friends.  All of our friends, with very few exceptions, are younger than we are, and most of them have no kids.  Our daughters are also friends with most of these same people.  We have a quite diverse group of friends.  That adds to the enjoyment.

The youngsters I work with on a massive database project, to identify and profile everyone we can find in the original documents, who lived in Spanish colonial Florida between 1513 and 1763, and 1784 and 1821.  I'm the Principal Investigator of the portion known as East Florida between 1784 and 1821.  All these colleagues are younger than I am, some of them by some 50 or so years!  The head of the project, who was my major professor at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg a few years ago, is also quite a bit younger than I am.  Fine people, all of them!

Others I have loved are no longer with us -- most of my family, my husband's family, friends I've lost over the years.  I still love them, too, and miss them.

#TheBookofMe: What (or who) do you miss most?

The question reminds me of the old saw: "Of everything I've lost, I miss my mind the most."

Well, I haven't lost my mind.  Yet.

I have lost so many people in my lifetime -- my father, my grandma, my aunt, my mother, my brother, friends -- that I miss them all, and don't want to single out just one of them.

I miss my health; it has pretty much gone away, though I still get around.  I don't get around as much as I used to, of course.  We all suffer from that.  But just walking a couple blocks this week in the Adams-Morgan neighborhood of Washington, D.C., where our nephew lives, was a real challenge.  I also did a lot of standing around, and a lot of sitting.  I went up to Washington for the launch of the website of the huge Spanish Colonial Florida database project I've been contributing to.  It was a wonderful launch, and a bunch of us went out to eat afterward, and had big fun.

I miss a lot of people less than I used to, because I'm back in touch with them on Facebook.  I'm especially happy to be in touch with my cousins, though we lost one of our number a couple years ago. 

I miss the ability to travel more and be more adaptable to different environments.  No more camping or hiking, or even taking long walks, because of arthritis.

I miss mountains, because I live in Florida.  I was born in California, and lived there as a child.  I like mountains. 

I miss our boat, because we had such fun with it.  We even were members of the Coast Guard Auxiliary for a few years, and used our boat in a number of search and rescue missions, patrols, and training exercises.  That was terrific fun!

I'm not sure there's much more I miss.  I have so much now.  My husband, our kids, our grandson, our kitty-cat, my historical research.  I stay occupied, so I don't have time to think about what I miss enough to be in any way despondent about it.

#TheBookofMe What Do You Dislike?

What do I dislike?

Arrogance.

Ignorance.

Greed.

People who cheat other people.

Avocados.

Liver.

Hot weather.

Cockroaches.

Ticks.

Scorpions.

Unkind people, whether to other people or to animals.

Bad writing.

Bad drivers.

Most popular music.

Most current television programs.

People with no sense of humor.  (Never trust such people.)

Gummy anything.

#thebookofme What Do You Collect?

I know, it's March already, but I'm going to catch up on The Book of Me by posting my response to the last two of the February prompts today.  I've been really busy!

So -- What do I collect?

Dust.  Not much of a joke.  We have a lot of dust in our house.  I keep telling my husband it's his powder, a necessity in this humid climate, but he insists it isn't.  I keep thinking I oughta spend some money and take a sample to a lab for analysis.

Frogs.  Ever since I was a little girl, I have collected frogs.  Only then, in my childhood, I collected real frogs!  I would gather tadpoles (which actually turned out to be toads, not frogs) in a nearby stream and watch them turn into frogs.  It was fascinating.  That is one of the things that has sparked my lifelong lay person's interest in science.  Once the tadpoles metamorphosed, I would liberate them in the back yard, where they were happy in the damp patches in the lawn.  After I grew up, I collected ceramic frogs and wooden frogs and plushy frogs.  I have quite a collection now.  My grandson has inventoried them.  He even made frogs for me in art camp.  Here is one of them.  You can tell that the art camp was at a museum of modern art!

Books.  Well, I would not really call myself a book collector.  I don't collect first editions or rare books or anything like that.  I can't afford that indulgence.  I collect books in the sense of having a houseful!  I have had to classify them by the Dewey Decimal System!  My studies as a historian has prompted me to build quite a library of books on Spain and Spanish colonial Florida. 

At one time, I had quite a collection of Star Trek memorabilia, but I have had to pare that down.  My three categories of collecting are "Necessary, Nice, and Nuts."  When I divested myself of many of my Star Trek items, my priority became the "Nuts" items.  They're just such fun.

State Universities (of Florida).  I joke that I am collecting state universities, having attended three different institutions in the state university system of Florida.  In the 1960s, I attended Florida State University, earning a bachelor's degree in Government and a master's in library science.  I worked as a librarian for a while, and enjoyed it.  That dried up in the recesion of the early 1970s.  After a lifetime of doing this and that while concentrating on raising a family, I finally went back to college at the age of 60, at the University of North Florida.  After that, I went for another master's degree at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.  Not sure if I'm going to be adding to this collection.

And, of course, as a genealogist, I collect dead relatives!  Only, these days, as I study the families of St. Augustine, Florida, during the second period of Spanish possession, I'm collecting a whale of a lot of other people's relatives, while neglecting my own.  Kinda like the shoemaker whose kids go without shoes.

#TheBookofMe: What Do You Read?

When I was a kid, my aunt would give me books to read, but I seldom enjoyed them.  I guess it was rather like being assigned a book in a school class -- you never like them, no matter how good they really are.  An example of that is To Kill a Mockingbird.  I read it when I was about 14, voluntarily, and enjoyed it immensely.  My daughters, when they were about the same age, were assigned to read it in school, and they hated it.  It's the idea of lack of choice, I think, that makes these really good books come off not to our liking.

Anyway, in high school, I did not read much until the eleventh grade.  In my high school, the English teachers would require us to keep a file, and write the names of books we had read, whether for an assignment or on our own time, on the inside of the folder.  In tenth grade, I may have had ten books written down on the inside of my folder at the end of the year.

Over the summer, some sort of switch got turned on, and I started reading like a possessed person.  During my junior year, I had read so many books that I had the inside of my English folder covered on front and back, and in the margins as well!

So what do I read?  My first inspiration to begin that eleventh-grade reading binge was Ray Bradbury.  I read all of him I could get hold of, then moved on to Isaac Asimov.  I read in other genres, too.  I read Steinbeck.  I devoured everything he ever published.  Then it was Hemingway and Faulkner.  I read all of their books, too.  I read Adela Rogers St. John, the newspaper reporter.  My favorite of hers is her autobiography, The Honeycomb.  I got into mysteries, and read all of Agatha Christie.  I tended to prefer cozies to the hard-boiled detective stories of Raymond Chandler and the like.  I also read several excellent biographies.

Of course, I read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy when they came out.  At that time, I was in college at Florida State University.  It was during that time that I also got into the ancient Greeks, reading a goodly portion each of Aristophanes, Euripides, Aeschylus, and some others.

Childbearing years had my reading in a different direction -- such as Where the Wild Things Are, The Velveteen Rabbit, Winnie the Pooh, and other great children's literature.  There wasn't much time for adult reading during that time!

I tended to lose interest in science fiction about the time cyberpunk became the thing.  I just couldn't sympathize with the troubled, distant, odd protagonists.  I still retained my interest in mysteries, however, and found enjoyment reading Patricia Cornwell and Lawrence Sanders.

From my youth also, I began reading about history.  I had a subscription for many years to American Heritage magazine, back from the days when it was published in hardback into their paperback years.  Just a year or so ago, I finally re-homed my collection of American Heritage, giving them to an American History teacher friend of mine.

What do I read now?  A great deal of my reading today, of course, is focused on Spain and her colonies, especially La Florida.  I also enjoy another set of cozy mysteries, the wonderful stories of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, written by Alexander McCall Smith.  Our whole family went on a seven-book binge when J. K. Rowling started publishing her Harry Potter stories.  We read every one of them, and enjoyed them. 

I also have been reading books written by friends of mine from an online writing group I've been a member of for over thirty years!  It is because of that bunch that I have two books of my own in print.  And a cousin of mine has just published her first mystery, so that is on my very long To-Read Queue.

Maybe Dead Men Can Vote Twice; They Can Also be Counted in Censuses

I am working with a group led by my former major professor at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg on what's called, in fifty-dollar language, a prosopography.  That simply means an attempt to identify and describe all the people in a certain place at a certain time.  The certain place in question here is Colonial Spanish Florida, and the time, or times, in question span from 1565 to 1763, and from 1784 to 1821, called, respectively, the First Spanish Period and the Second Spanish Period.

I am entering some of my data into a template.  These data will become part of this massive project, which will be an online database, searchable by anyone who is interested.

Now, let me say that I've seen people who were counted twice in censuses.  My great-great grandfather Charles Reed was counted twice in the 1860 U.S. Census, and my father was counted twice in the 1930 U.S. Census.  I've seen people whose names were mangled in the censuses.  I've seen male people identified as female people, with a female name substituted for the male name.  That happened to the famous Prohibition agent Eliot Ness, in the 1910 census in which he was identified as Ella, seven-year-old daughter of Peter Ness, when in fact he was, of course, Eliot, Peter's son.  Since the U.S. censuses are kept from public view for 72 years after they are taken, I'm sure Mr. Ness, who died in 1957, never knew of this goof. I've seen people given odd professions.  One man in the 1935 Florida census is identified by profession as a lobster!  The enumerator, of course, meant "lobsterman," but the form did not give him enough room to write the entire word.

However, I have never seen a dead person enumerated in a census post-mortem.  Until now.

I am working on entering some data from the 1793 census of St. Augustine, and there is an entry for a man whose name was Theophilus Hill.  What a great name!  The Spanish rendered it as Teofilo Hill.  When I came across this entry, my reaction was, "Theophilus Hill was alive in 1793?"  I had seen his death record, it is in his file in my file cabinet, along with over 1600 other residents of St. Augustine during the Second Spanish Period, on which I am still gathering names and data.  I remembered vaguely that he had died earlier.  I pulled his file, and there, in the back of the file, is his death record, taken from the St. Augustine parish death records, the original documents.  The information is on a form I have created just for this purpose.  And the date of death?  20 December 1790.

When the census had been taken, Theophilus Hill had been dead for around three years.

Is there a chance that there was another Theophilus Hill in St. Augustine?  No.  He and his wife Teresa Thomas had four daughters and a son named Juan (John), who died at age 9 in 1796.  There was no Theophilus Hill, Jr.  I have not found any other Hill family in St. Augustine.  The data in the 1793 census matches the information I have on the deceased Mr. Hill.  There is no notation in the census, as was customary, that someone else was informing for Mr. Hill on the census.  The 1793 census of St. Augustine is one of the few, if not the only, census on which we know, at least in a small percentage of the entries, who the informant was, prior to the 1940 U.S. Census.  When a householder was absent, the census-taker would obtain the necessary information from someone else, and would record the name, or at least the relationship to the householder, of the individual reporting for him.

I have no idea how a man who had been dead for around three years ended up enumerated in the 1793 St. Augustine census.  Was the grieving widow that much in denial?  Was there some reason someone wanted Mr. Hill recorded in the census -- as a memorial?  Was there another motive?  And since, obviously, Mr. Hill could not have responded to the census-taker himself, why did that official not record who was giving the information?

Or could the death record be in error?  I doubt that.  Theophilus Hill and his family were well known to St. Augustine's people.  One of his four daughters was married to one of the most prominent men in St. Augustine, don Francisco Xavier Sánchez.  Certainly the priest who conducted the burial, Father Thomas Hassett, knew Theophilus Hill, his wife, Teresa Thomas, and his four daughters.  After all, he was the priest who conducted the marriage between Theophilus Hill's daughter and don Francisco.  No, I think the death record is correct.

Which provides us with a dandy mystery.

#TheBookofMe: What Makes You Tick?

What makes me tick?  Or what has made me tick for the past 70 years?

1.  Family -- My mother was a widow with three kids.  I was the youngest.  My grandma and my aunt helped raise me.  Every Sunday, we had a large midday meal, either at my grandma and aunt's house, or at ours.  Sometimes we had guests, too.  It was fancy table-setting time, using our dining room table, usually at full extension.  Those were great (and delicious!) times.  My husband and I have two daughters, and we spend holidays with them, and with two sisters who are around our daughters' age and who have no family in this area.  We always have a great time at these celebrations.  Our daughters and I also do things together, and we have a lot in common.  It's not as frequent as we would like, as both our daughters work.  We have fun when we do get a chance to do things together.

2.  Service -- My aunt instilled in me an ethic of public service.  She was a public health nurse, and the Director of Health Information for the State of Florida in the 1950s and early 1960s.  The first time I went to college, back in the 1960s, I joined a service sorority.  I served as first vice president, in charge of the service projects of our chapter, and it was during that time of service that our chapter won the sorority's most prestigious award for the second time in a row.  I was a registered nurse for a while, until we had three deaths in the family in a rather short period of time, and I burned out.  I also served in the uniform of the United States Coast Guard, mostly in the reserve, but I did do a total of over two years of active duty, too. 

3,  Learning -- I went back to college at the age of 60, and earned two post-baccalaureate degrees, summa cum laude with honors in the majors.  Then I went on to earn a second master's degree.  My first was in library science, in 1970.  I lost that path when library jobs dried up in the early 1970s, in a recession.  (That was also in line with my ethic of service.)

4.  Staying busy -- I always have said that I would rather be busy than bored.  When I worked as temporary office staff, if I had nothing to do, I would look for something to do.  Sometimes I bugged the boss until I got something to work on, as when I volunteered to update and organized one company's publications, having much experience doing so as a yeoman in the Coast Guard.  They say women never really retire, and I'm an example of that.  My husband is retired, and is quite very retired.  He earned it.  Me, I stay busy.

5.  Books -- I read books.  I also write them.  I have two published, and I'm working on a third at this time (along with other things I'm into).  Years ago, when my husband and I were looking for a new home, he said we needed a house with a library because we have so many books.  I said, "No, what we need is a library with living quarters."  I have so many books, and need to refer to many of them from time to time, that I have my bookshelves in my office organized by the Dewey Decimal systerm (well, I was a librarian once upon a time)!

#TheBookofMe: What do (or did) you do?

You could almost ask, "What did you not do?"

Well, for one thing, nothing that broke the law.  (wink)

When I was a child in the 1950s, unfortunately in a traditional family, I wanted to be a newspaper reporter.  But little girls just did not have such ambitions, I was told.  And when I said I wanted to join the Navy and serve our country because my father had been in the Navy (Annapolis, class of 1934), my mother and brother were aghast, telling me that good girls just didn't do such a thing.

That is why, when I  got older, the surest way to get me to do something was to tell me not to do it.  (However, be it said that this did not lead me into doing really stupid stuff.)

I got through college at Florida State University with a bachelor's degree in government and a master's in library science.  I worked at a city library until, having become married in the meantime, my husband got a change of station and we moved.  He was in the Coast Guard.

At our new location, there weren't any jobs for me.  It was the early 1970s, there was a recession, and under such conditions, libraries are the first on the chopping block.

When my husband was released from active duty and went into the reserve, we moved back home.  I had seen how interesting the Coast Guard was from all the things my husband had done -- some of them sounding downright fun -- that I wanted to join up.  Unlike my mother and brother, my husband was all for it.  He knew me well enough to know that I could certainly remain a "good girl" and still serve.  So I enlisted in the Coast Guard Reserve as a yeoman and spent 15 years in the reserve.  Along the way, I got a commission.  I did not make it to 20 years and retirement because I developed osteoarthritis, and had to stand down.  However, I had finally satisfied my desire to serve my country, and could thumb my nose at my mother and brother who, despite their original misgivings, were proud of me.  There was also the added boost that my brother had been a Marine -- and I outranked him!

During the time I was in the reserve, I also helped the family out by taking jobs through temporary staffing agencies doing clerical work for various concerns, from a large city hospital to small businesses to one of the largest railroads in the country.  Then I got extended temporary work with the Internal Revenue Service during tax season.  I did that for a couple years, then got a permanent job with them.  It was interesting enough, but the boss of the section was one of those civil-service fief-builders, and I was not interested in her self-aggrandizement.  I decided to go to school and become a nurse, enrolling in a program of study at the local junior college.  I spent a couple of exhausting but fascinating and rewarding years as a registered nurse, but then we had three deaths in the family in a relatively short period of time, and the emotional and physical exhaustion were too much.  I burned out and had to quit.

I enrolled in a distance-learning course through the University of Toronto, a course of study adminstered by the National Institute of Genealogical Studies, of Toronto.  I got training in American Records.  It was a varied group of courses taught by certified genealogists or by people who were Ph.D.s in their field.  I decided to study Florida's Spanish lineages, as no professional work had been done in that area, and I lived within day-trip driving distance of several fine repositories and archives of materials on the subject.  However, realizing that my high-school Spanish from 40-odd years ago was not going to help me much, I looked into taking courses at a local state university, and ended up enrolling as a post-baccalaureate student with a double major in history and Spanish.  I graduated in April of 2012, and then applied to graduate school.  I got my second master's degree in May of 2015.  I am now a historian studying Spanish colonial Florida, concentrating on St. Augustine and its province of East Florida during the years 1784-1821.  Again, I have, in a way, satisfied a childhood wish.  I'm a reporter, but a different sort of one as a historian.  And I enjoy it!

Librarian, nurse, clerk, Coast Guardsman, genealogist, historian -- a varied career, indeed.

Genealogy Blog Party: Stories of Love

Remember the old love stories, where kids grow up together and later fall in love, marry, have kids, and live happily ever after?

Rarely does it work like that in real life, and never with anything approaching perfection.  Life is a rocky road at times, and so is love.

However, let me tell you a story:

When I had just turned seven years old, my father died, and my mother wanted to take the three of us kids -- my sister, the oldest (16 at the time), my brother (12), and me -- from our home in California to Florida, where her mom and sister lived.  In Florida, my aunt (mom's sister) took upon herself the duties she had assumed six years earlier, when she was my godmother at my baptism.  She took me to her church, of the Episcopal persuasion, and there I met a group of other kids, including a boy with the unusual name of Keys.  We kids grew up in that church, all of us participating either in the choir or as acolytes (altar boys), and when we became teenagers, we all joined the Episcopal Young Churchmen. 

That was a fine time, and I found opportunities to serve as treasurer of the EYC and as one of two delegates to the diocese-wide House of Episcopal Young Churchmen, or HEYC.  I got my driver's license at 16, my aunt having also taken up the duties of teaching me to drive, as she had my sister and my brother.  She was a calmer teacher than mom ever could have been!  Keys needed transportation home after meetings, so I gave him rides.  I lived quite near to the church, just three blocks away.  Keys lived much farther than that, but I enjoyed driving and was happy to take him home.  We developed a habit of sitting in the car in the driveway and talking, about all sorts of things.  We, know-it-all teenagers that we were, solved the world's problems there.  We talked about amusing or engaging movies and TV we had seen.  We told jokes.  And I commiserated with Keys when he told of his difficulties with his girlfriend.  I wasn't much into dating as a teenager, though I enjoyed social gatherings and talking with all sorts of people.  So did Keys.  We were good buddies.

We  went to different high schools, rival schools.  When we graduated, we went to different, rival colleges.  One Christmas break, I decided to go to the Christmas Eve service at the church, and Keys was there with his family.  I saw him on the other side of the church, with new eyes.  I fell in love.  I didn't know whether he reciprocated, but he began to call me on the phone, and we'd go out for ice cream or to a movie. 

It wasn't all smooth sailing.  I had entered upon an internship at the city's public library, which led to a full grant for graduate school in library science, and a guarantee of a job at the city's main library after graduation.  It was during the internship that Keys decided to break up with me.  It broke my heart, but my steadfast mentor, my aunt, who was unmarried, told me that if he cared for me, he would be back.  She was right.

We dated again, and after graduating from college, he was concerned about the draft.  It was the 1960s, and he did not particularly want to go to Vietnam, but he didn't want to go to Canada, either.  He was looking for a way to serve.  He joined the United States Coast Guard, and went to officer candidate school at Yorktown, Virginia.  After he completed that training, he was assigned aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Ingham -- which is now a museum on the National Register of Historic Places, moored at Key West, Florida. 

It was then that we got married.  We did not start off living as husband and wife, though, because I was under two years' contract to the city library, having received my master's degree and started work there, and his ship spent 30 days at a time bobbing like a cork in the North Atlantic ocean, hosting scientists conducting atmospheric and oceanographic experiments, and providing guidance to ships crossing the ocean on the northerly routes.

We did manage to have a baby, and then he got a change of station to a city about 400 miles away from our home city, and we finally were together as a family.  It's been nearly 47 years -- we are 18 days away from our 47th anniversary -- and there have been hard times, but there have been more good times and a lot of laughter.  We have grown old together, and are happy and content to be as we are.  It's not perfect, but it sure beats anything else I could imagine.

So sometimes such stories do come true.

#TheBookofMe: What do I want to be doing that I'm not doing now?

That's a big question, and I'm not sure I have much of an answer, as it is something I have not given much thought, mainly because I haven't had the time!

I'm so busy with my historical research into St. Augustine, Florida, between 1784 and 1821, that I don't have time to contemplate the question.  And, honestly, I'm having so much fun with it that I'm not sure there's anything else I'd rather be doing.  The project is a lot of paperwork, but I do not fear paperwork because I was a yeoman in the U.S. Coast Guard.  In fact, the paperwork fears me!

But are there things I regret not having done?

Yes.  I wish I had taped my grandma's stories that she told me.  I wish I had visited a friend when I could have, but didn't.

I wish I had had more of a handle on what to choose as a major the first time I went to college, back in the 1960s.  I wish I had been more assertive when I was younger, and thrown off the traditional expectations of my family back in the 1950s.

And what have I done that I'm glad I did?

I'm glad I went to college in the 1960s, because I have friends from that time that I see every few years, and keep up with in a semi-annual newsletter that we contribute to and that one of our number has been ever-faithful in sending out for the past 52 years!

I'm certainly glad I joined the Coast Guard, when I saw how my Coast Guard officer husband was enjoying it, and doing so many varied and interesting things in it.  I enlisted, and after several years, I got a commission.  I also did varied and interesting things, some of which were way outside of my comfort zone, but which I managed to handle well.  That was a real growth experience!

I'm glad I married the man I married almost 47 years ago (as of the 20th of February).  We've had good times and hard times.  We have two great daughters and a wonderful grandson and the best son-in-law we could have hoped for.  And we've had a lot of laughs.

I'm glad I had those two daughters.  We are very close, and always have had a lot in common.  We enjoy being with each other and we have fun!

 So what do I wish I were doing now?

Well, I'd sure like to go to Suffolk, in England, and research my genealogy on my father's side.  I'd like to go to London, too, not only for family research at their National Archives, but also to do some research on the British period in Florida (1763-1783), in relation to my researches on St. Augustine.  I'd like to visit Ireland and Germany.  I'd like to go back to Spain and see some sights I didn't see last time.  I'd like to go to Canada, where my father's family has roots, and do research there.  There are a number of trips inside the U.S. I'd like to make, and indeed right here in Florida, too.

There.  I answered the question, after all.

The Book of Me: Who Inspires You?

That's a loaded question.  I could ask, "Inspires me to do what?"  There are people out there who inspire me (inadvertently, I'm sure) to do violence.  Let's exclude them right off the bat.  (I was originally going to say, "Let's eliminate them . . ." but that could be taken the wrong way!)

That leaves inspiration in a positive sense. 

I have had people throughout my life who have inspired me to learn and to love learning.  My senior English teacher at duPont High School, Mrs. Hartzog, was one.  My aunt, Elizabeth Reed, for whom my younger daughter is named, was another.  That got me to go back to college many, many years later, at the age of 60, and earn two post-baccalaureate degrees, in History and Spanish, and then go for a master's degree in Florida Studies (a program found only at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg). 

Turns out I became inspiration for some youngsters, to hear my buddy, one of the custodians at USFSP, tell it.  That cuts both ways, because the young students who were my classmates inspired me, too, with their energy and enthusiasm.

I come from a family (on my mother's side) with a weird sense of humor that tends toward puns.  I guess it's in the Reed blood.  My grandpa made up songs that consisted of puns.  My aforementioned aunt was a great humorist, and could entertain crowds with amusing monologues that skewered human foibles.  My mother also had a great big sense of humor.  My husband also has a weird sense of humor.  These family members have inspired me to see the absurdity of life, and to find humor in it.

My friends inspire me to see beyond myself to the greater number, and to seek the greater good. 

There were leaders whom it was my honor to serve in the U.S. Coast Guard.  The ones who displayed the best characteristics of leadership led me to strive to emulate their leadership style.  These were the ones who took care of their personnel, keeping up with our professional development, seeing to it that we could meet our family's needs in emergencies, and directing us to achieve the missions of the Coast Guard.

Those are a few of the people who have inspired me.

#52Ancestors: Number 1 -- Samuel, who started it all

Here's another set of blogging prompts, courtesy of Amy Johnson Crow (thank you, Amy!) that, if I keep up with them, might help me keep this blog more active.  Since I'm starting a week late, I'll  do two this week.

Number 1 on the list is Samuel Packard (c. 1610-1684), who emigrated from Stonham Aspal, Suffolk, England to Hingham, Massachusetts, in 1638, during the "Great Migration."

Samuel was my eighth great-grandfather and the progenitor of most of the Packards present in the United States.  He is directly in my paternal line, my descent being, in the Packard surname:

Samuel
Zaccheus
Zaccheus
Eleazer
Richards
John Allen
Matthew Hale
Oscar Merry
Walter Heatherington
Arden (my father)

Samuel left England as a separatist, a protestor against the Chuch of England and the excesses of Archbishop William Laud.  When I was a kid, I had a Puritanical streak, and always wondered where it came from until I started delving into my family history and discovered myself to be a direct descendant of Massachusetts Puritans!  So I come by it honestly!

His wife was named Elizabeth, though the most reliable family research has failed to turn up her maiden surname.  Samuel and Elizabeth were married in Suffolk, and boarded the ship Diligent with an infant girl, Mary.

Samuel was a farmer and keeper of an ordinary, a word used in those days for a tavern located in one's home.  A room on the first floor of the house would be opened to the public for purchase of libations of an alcoholic nature (Puritans weren't all that pure!), and I would imagine for some lively conversations, too.  He also served the town at different times as surveyor of highways and collector of minister's rates (that is to say, taxes). 

Samuel and Elizabeth had fourteen children.  Two of them, twin girls Jane and Abigail, died young.  One, Israel, lived to young adulthood and then disappeared from records.  He was a soldier, and may have lost his life in that role.

Samuel's will was made 29 October 1684, nine days before his death.  Though Samuel was a literate man, Puritanism being a literate movement and his municipal offices also indicating literacy, he signed his will "by mark," which may indicate that he was too infirm in his terminal illness to have signed his name.

He bequeathed to his "loveing wiff Elizabeth" (ya gotta love the creative spelling of those days before orthography) all of his lands, buildings, and possessions for the rest of her life, then they were to be divided among their children as stipulated in the will.  There was apparently one no-good son-in-law among the flock, at least as Samuel saw him, for there is a stipulation in the will that provides that the inheritance of his daughter Jael, wife of John Smith, should not be delivered to John, but be given directly to hand to Jael.  John apparently was not to be trusted with money.

Samuel worked hard and left his family well enough off.  Good Puritan.

The Book of Me: What do you enjoy?

I am a certified oddball.  Or, if you prefer (or if you're British), eccentric.  I like a lot of stuff that people today just don't care for.

Music:  I enjoy classical music.  My three favorite classical composers are all twentieth-century:  Aaron Copland, Richard Rodgers, and Leonard Bernstein.  However, I also enjoy Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and even earlier composers.  I like classical music from all over the place, including Asia (Chinese and Japanese classics are wonderful).  I also enjoy opera, being particularly fond of Antonio Carreras and Luciano Pavarotti.  I love bluegrass and what I call Real Country -- that which existed before it became nothing more than banal rock'n'roll with a southern accent.  I'm talking about A. P. Carter and Ralph Stanley and their contemporaries.  I like world music, especially Spanish, because I have spent time in Spain.  I lived with a University of North Florida classmate in the Triana neighborhood (or, in the Spanish word, barrio) of Seville while we were researching at the General Archive of the Indies.  The apartment was on the second floor (or, in the European manner, the first) over a flamenco studio!  Wow!  That was great!  Wonderful study music.

Movies:  My husband and I are both movie buffs.  We like many modern movies (though our tastes vary) and the classics.  My favorite classic movie is Sunset Boulevard.  I think his is Citizen Kane.  He likes action flicks, usually involving comic book characters.  I'd rather see a good drama or mystery.  I am very finicky about comedies.  Some of them coming out since the sixties are just plain dumb as a box of rocks.  Why they're popular is a mystery to me, but then one must take into account that one never will go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.  (H. L. Mencken said that.)  However, we've seen some hilarious ones, including Over the Hedge.  That was a scream, and William Shatner's death scene was such a self-parody!  What a hoot!  I also have to confess to one guilty pleasure in movies:  I love cheesy disaster movies, because they're just so funny to me.  They all have pretty much the same plotline (kooky scientist whose outlandish theory is dismissed by others saves the world, or at least what's left of it after the disaster plays out) and the same cardboard characters, including an action-hero type (cop, fireman, military person) whose personal life is an unmitigated mess.

Food:  Well, here, I may be closer to the mainstream.  My favorite food is steak.  I love it!  I'm also a chocoholic.  My favorite is dark chocolate.  I also love good fruit.  A nice, sweet watermelon  is such a pleasure in the summer.

I also enjoy my family and friends.  At Thanksgiving and Christmas, we expand our family to include two sisters whom we met years ago through other friends, and who live in our area with no other family around.  We all have a fine time on the holidays.

My husband and I both enjoy our cat, Gabriela.  Sometimes she is crazy, running from one end of the house to the other, climbing (sometimes places where we wish she wouldn't, but she also has approved climbing places we've provided for her), and sometimes stealthily attacking us as we walk by.  She is, as our friend Tom observed generally about cats, "an endless source of amusement in our idle hours."  She's also very attached to both of us, camping out near us and sleeping with us.

I enjoy scenery, especially mountains as I am a Californian transplated to flat old Florida.  The scene out my office window is nice, even if it is flat, and Gabriela is currently enjoying it as well, all loafed up on her window shelf.  Sometimes turkeys come out of the state forest our lot backs up to, and she does enjoy watching them!

Finally, I enjoy my work as an independent historian, translating and analyzing two-hundred-year-old Spanish documents concerning St. Augustine, Florida.  There are aggravations and frustrations (usually somehow involving the computer), but the work is fascinating and I can spend hours on it,  forgetting to eat (more of that, and I just might lose these pounds of fat)!

Overall, even with the disgusting state of public events and discourse, a very enjoyable life!

The Book of Me: What do you look like?

Well, the first thing that pops into the weird brain of this 70-year-old former Coast Guard member is:  What do I look like?  I look like hell, sir!

Today I am not at my best.  2017 beat up on me pretty bad, starting midway, in June, when I fell and broke my shoulder.  And for the past month, I have been through the Battle of the Kidney Stone, which was finally removed 21 December by being blasted apart with a laser, and I won't go into more detail than to say the final step in the healing process for that was taken today.

I am short, 5'4" tall.  I'm not slim, being a sedentary sort and too fond of sweets.  My hair is both grey and going away, as I am subject to the same problem of thinning hair that my mother had, and if I make it to 80 I will be one of those old dames with a few wisps of hair clinging to my pink scalp.  I think I'm going to develop a fondness for hats.

And they do say that married people come to resemble each other after many years of marriage.  We're coming up on 47 years, and my husband is bald as an egg.  I'm headed that way.

I also am not by any stretch of the imagination a fashion plate.  I'm rather a fashion paper towel, really.  Since I was a teen, it has been my deeply-held belief that the fashion industry is nothing more than a plot to separate the gullible from their money.  Since I've never had scads of money, anyway, that was a rational position to take!

My fashion for this morning was long socks (compression socks), blue jeans,  Land's End water-resistant boots, a turtleneck, gloves, my watch cap that proclaims me to be of the House of Hufflepuff, and my Land's End jacket certified for use down to 20 deg. F.  It's cold in northeast Florida today, and wet.  Right now, I'm in blue sweatshirt and sweatpants.  My motto is a paraphrase of the old Ford slogan, as I maintain that Comfort is Job 1.

I'm only beginning to get wrinkles on my face.  I've been mistaken for being 20 years younger than I am, and I maintain that this is the result of my having experimented with make-up in my teen years, like most teenage girls, and having discovered that I was totally and completely inept with it.  I decided it would be better if I left it alone.  It certainly has been better for my skin!  And the money I saved on not buying that stuff left me with the option of being able to buy books instead!  That also worked out for the better.

What do I look like?  Well, here is a photo taken about 10 years ago, when I was a student at the University of North Florida -- I went back to college at age 60, got 2 post-baccalaureate degrees, then went on to grad school.   But that is a story for another day.

The Book of Me: Who Am I?

I first answered this particular blogging prompt in 2013.  I did three more of the Book of Me, Written by You prompts, provided by Julie Goucher.  Then I got distracted, and did not complete the year's posts.

Julie is doing the Book again.  We've both been subject to distractions, but will try to soldier on. 

So the first prompt, just as it was the last time, is to answer the question "Who am I?" at least 20 times.  My answers have changed somewhat, as my situation has changed.  So here, with the first responses that come into my mind, are my answers to this question.

I am . . .

A historian.
A writer.
A genealogist.
A translator of 200-year-old Spanish documents.
A wife.
A mother.
A grandmother.
An aunt.
A grand-aunt!
A lover of music of various kinds.
A reader.
A person owned by a cat.
A punster.
A curmudgeon.
A stubborn woman.
A former Coast Guard member -- active and reserve, enlisted and officer.
A "Floridated" Californian.
An old person with various medical issues.
A person with a too-active sweet tooth!
A football fan (especially this year, with the Jaguars in the playoffs!).