Doing genealogy is often a search for the truth. Sometimes, we are trying to clear up family folklore, and sometimes, the myths go beyond family. As fall and the new school year arrive, my mind is drawn to myths learned as children.
Summer returned with a vengeance this past weekend, much to the delight of many, as temperatures soared to the 80s on Sunday.
That’s the beauty of life in northern Maine. You just never know what Mother Nature will throw at you this time of year. One morning it’s 26 degrees, the next it’s 80. Like many people, I had to head into my basement to find some of the summer clothes I had just packed away for the season only five days earlier.
A few weeks back, there was a national report on how watching the cartoon “SpongeBob SquarePants” was detrimental to our youth. It was suggested, based on the research, that watching the program for just nine minutes caused short-term attention issues.
Sometimes one can simply stare out a window at nothing, ruminating silently over variables until they come together into a plan. But sometimes, no matter how long one sits and thinks, the ideas just don’t come.
My granddaughter Mollie found a very intriguing rock the other day. It looked as if someone had tried to make a scoop of it, and then left it still attached. We marveled at it, wondering how it might have been formed. It has been way too easy to pass my curiosity to my grandkids. I now have about 200 pounds of “interesting” rocks.
Fall is by far my favorite time of year. The leaves start to change colors. Children go back to school. Thoughts start turning to the holidays in the months ahead. And of course, there is football.
For me, there is no better sport to watch than the National Football League. It doesn’t really matter who is playing, I will watch. Naturally, the New England Patriots are the preferred team of choice in our household and I have tried my best to get the family interested in watching the games, but they do not share the same enthusiasm for the sport as I do.
They have a variety of names, but yet none of them truly describe the precise nature of their meaning. To some they are yard sales, but I have yet to see one that actually involves the sale of someone’s yard. Others know them as garage, tag, rummage and porch sales, but again, that description does not seem accurate since no one’s porch or garage actually changes ownership.
Nearly everyone remembers where he or she was on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. It is a day that will forever be etched into the minds and souls of a generation as four coordinated suicide attacks by al-Qaeda took place against the United States.
For me, I was in my apartment in Rockland getting ready to head into work at the newspaper when one of my friends called and told me to turn on the television. He wouldn’t say why, just “turn it on.” I knew something must have happened, but never in my wildest dreams could I imagine the horrors that were about to unfold before my eyes.
“My mom grows garlic …” so reads the logo as part of Good Dirt Garlic’s label as drawn by the grower’s 8-year-old daughter Matilda. Matilda’s mom is Aimee Good and she and her dad Tom, a potato grower, are into their second season of growing organic garlic on a one-acre plot in Monticello.
I’m not going to lie to you, research through NARA is a daunting prospect. NARA is the National Archives and Records Administration; the federal agency charged with saving our most important government records.
