Life: Through the Lens

  The Ammi Wright House.  Built 1888.         Our town has some pretty remarkable older homes and businesses.  Many have already been restored and are residences and/or businesses.   We went to a meeting the other night which focused on how to go about restoring a beautiful old lumber Barron's home - the Ammi Wright house, just off the main street. It has been empty for a great many years and needs a lot of work to bring it back to life.  But this group of people can do it.   The building itself is already purchased as part of an agreement with the Gratiot Area Historical Society.  Located in a nearby town, they have purchased it and Alma will be part of this system.  We are now forming committees for all the areas which need to be addressed, including historical research, fundraising, publicity, etc.  Lots of work, and lots of interest.  There is a steering committee in place, and we all signed up for an area we feel...

 So Much Information! Early Detroit Working on my genealogy research is like jumping from one rabbit hole to the next.  I was at a sewing group this week and one of the women, whom I have known for a very long time, has been working on her own research for years. And she is very organized, and suggested a few ways to become more organized.  They all sound lovely.  And they all suggest a lot of work - as I have to admit to being a little sloppy when gathering information.  Not that I don't have some good organizational strategies, and I do have properly labeled notebooks and folders, and photographs sorted into category according to my current research trend.   I put together a very nice collection of recipes (copying the actual card with original handwriting, photos of each person, when available).   BUT...I had no idea what I was getting into years ago, and  what the shear volume of "stuff" would be.  So now...no, I do not have a proper...

 Creating an interesting narrative to accompany genealogical research is such a daunting task.  I love my research, and sometimes love the findings, and I really want to wrap up one side of my family and work on the next.  But...YIKES!  How to begin? I usually begin with photographs.  I love photographs.  They have such story-telling power.  Especially the older ones.  My sister and I are the ones left to tell much of the story.  We have lots of questions, and we share our remembrances and we come up with a semblance of story.  But photos are our biggest helpers. "The Cottage" August 1963 This photo, for instance, was lifted from a scrapbook - the kind where we used to glue them to the page.  VERY difficult to work with as I compile my favorite photos.  But this tells such a great piece of the Trerice story.  I would have been about 10 years old, making my wee sister about 7.  Isn't she an imp in this pic?  This ...

Very hard to photograph at night, with a poor little cell phone.  But you get the idea. (Look for the family photo hidden within this picture). Las Vegas - Old School A week ago I joined the "kids" for a walk down memory lane.  I helped them clean out their father's house in Las Vegas, following his recent death, and we found so much history and memorabilia from the life and times of their father, grandfather and great-grandfather, as well as other grandparents and relatives.  One of the bonuses to cleaning out houses of people who don't throw anything away, is finding treasures and riches beyond measure.  A true inheritance. Discovering their history - while wearing Grandma's pearls. Snapshot Grandpa took, we assume, during a WWII USO tour. Ah...Bing. It turned out to be a souvenir edition, but still fascinating. We don't know which family member this is...but what a great photo! In a prior life I did live, and teach, in L...

The Mad Hatter Bistro, on Old Woodward Ave. Jumping down the rabbit hole and appearing at the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, in the town of your childhood, is an incredibly surreal experience. I traveled to Birmingham with a friend today, to have a real "tea party" at the Mad Hatter's Bistro.  We had seen it advertised on Facebook and it seemed like just the ticket to escape the doldrums of a mid-Michigan winter.  Birmingham is also the city I grew up in, yet it was nothing like the town I remembered.   The Birmingham Theatre, where I first saw the opening of Romeo & Juliet in October 1968! That's not all bad.  It was a bustling environment, with lots to see and do.  We worked hard to find a parking spot, went in and out of shops, had our tea party, and scouted the old neighborhood.  What a treat this adventure was. The house where I grew up - with the addition of a bay window which we used to talk about putting in, but never did. But wait...