Tika & Her "Cousins" & Cookies

 On Christmas eve day, Tika rode with Handy Man and Nice Lady south to Pullman, Washington, to spend Christmas eve with her "cousins" and to paint Christmas cookies (a long time family tradition).

Her "cousins" are Dolly, Cody, Bentley, and OneSpot. Tika was not thrilled with this line-up and Handy Man had to "convince" her to join in.

And what helped convince them to pose so nicely? The promise of a cookie! What else?

Our family has been making sugar cookies and painting them since the 1970s. We make the cookies the day before (using a butter and sour cream recipe)
and on The Day we mix up frosting (powdered sugar and water) and use actual tiny paintbrushes to do the
decorating. Of course a few noses are painted! After the frenzy of imagination is over, there is a judging....
prettiest, most creative, grossest, etc. A fun time is always had by all...... even the doggers.

Tika..... hope she makes it this long.

As Tika sat by my side in our chair, I read to her the sad news that the world's oldest dog (according to the Guinness World Records) has died in Japan at the age of 26 years and 8 months. Her owner told reported that Pusuke, a fluffy tan Shiba mix, died Monday (5 Dec 2011) after suddenly falling ill and refusing to eat. According to Guinness, the dog was born 1 April 1985. Pusuke was recognized as the world's oldest living dog last December. Click on the USAToday link below if you'd enjoy seeing a photo of Pusuke.


http://www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/story/2011-12-08/Dog-Worlds-oldest/51726488/1

Domesticated animals have always been with mankind. Dogs especially have been near and dear to us. We always mourn that our beloved pets don't live as long as we would like. But my friend Cecily gave me a good perspective on this. "It gives you a chance to love another dog," she mused. And I guess I do agree. Tika is now 2 1/2 and I want her to live to be 25!  Fingers and toes crossed. I wish the same for your chair-mate.

Tika Surely Misses Me ??

In a class taught my Thomas MacEntee I just learned about a free photo website, Wikimedia Commons. Any photo you find on this website can be freely used without any question of copyright. It is NOT that way with Google Images, by the way.

Anyway, I'm in Salt Lake City on the 27th annual Salt Lake Christmas Tour and while having a great time some of my thoughts (especially at bedtime) stray to my Tika. While I did not find a picture of her on WikiMediaCommons, I did find this most darling photo. We all can emphasize, right?

Remember: WikiMediaCommons for totally free photos.......and Thomas told us that they have millions so surely you will find what you need. (Except one of my Tika.)

Tika & the Family History Library

It's December (almost) and time for me to fly away south to Salt Lake City to spend a week at the Family History Library. This wonderful huge painting hangs on the stairway between floors and always is a delight to see again when I visit. Tika is not coming, as you might would guess. But she'll hear all about it when I return.

How have I prepared to spend a research week? Everybody's preparation is different but I look over my pedigree and pick some dead-end problems. Then I print out the family group charts and pedigree charts for just that problem. These charts go into a folder. This year I've picked about six problems....... including a very cold case from local history so I have six folders and that's all I take with me to the library. Yes, onto those family groups (printed from my Legacy genealogy program) are summarized all my notes and my research finds, so why would I need to take anything else?? (I do take a flash drive with my entire Legacy file in case I need or want to check something else.) These folders are a statement of "I know what I know and I can see what I want to learn" and that works for my research.

Tika and family and I will share a wonderful Thanksgiving and then I'm off........ who will I miss most, hubby or Tika??? Hummmm............ And will Tika miss me? Do dogs miss us????

Tika's German Roots......... Maybe

This past November weekend a good friend and I drove the 300 miles west across Washington to Whidbey Island to spend a day with genealogy friends there and attend their all-day Irish Roots seminar. It was a very good day and as I drove home I got to musing about Tika's German roots. Once home, I turned to Google and learned something about Tika's maybe ancestors. And WOW did I find interesting stuff! Tika has Gunnar LongRed and Ursula ShortLegs in her family tree!  She also has Heinar GreatNose, Bertraud BadgerChaser, and Valentinius HoleDigger on her father's side. On her mother's side she has Anna Maria BrightEyes, Anna Catherina FloppyEars and Anna Elizabetha FeatheredFeet. Every pedigree has a rascal or an outlaw hiding somewhere and Tika has hers. Way, way back I found Lancelot LongHair!  Surely this was a French influence???? I've always suspected that Tika had very interesting ancestry and now I know she does.

Tika & Her Nose & Our Research

Look at the size of that darling little black nose! If you want to learn some fascinating trivia (and if you're a dog person) do a Google search on "how dogs smell." The abilities of their noses are amazing.  Tika finds new things to sniff at every single day even when we're walking the same route most of the time. Everything is deserving of a sniff to a dog. Everything is worth "checking out."

How to apply this to genealogy? We have been watching the new TV series, "Person of Interest." Last night's episode had a quote that I quickly scribbled down:  "We only see what we choose to look for."  Or that quote could be amended thusly: "We only find what we choose to look for."   If you're seeking an answer to a family history mystery and you choose not to look at all the available places, even the same-old-same-old places, you will not "see" answers and you will not find answers. Choices rule our lives in everything.  Might you agree or disagree????

Tika & Jokes & Coyotes

A good friend sent me this joke; I hope I'm not infringing anywhere to share it with you. But it surely did make both Tika and me laugh!  We don't have a cat but we have coyotes here in our rural environment and even right in our backyard sometimes. One, looking much like this, sat right outside my window looking in at a dancing, barking Tika (who spotted him!) and drooling at the thought of what a nice lunch she would make. Needless to say, Tika only goes out on a leash and with us!

Well, back to "genealogy work".

Tika & Cold Case Genealogy

I usually take Tika with me when I go walking in one of our local cemeteries. And I never go so walking without a camera, pencil and paper for one of the things I most enjoy is tackling a "cold case genealogy" project.  For instance, on one walk I spotted a little metal plate resting near a tombstone:

The little plaque reads, "R.N. of A. In Memoriam."  Now I could guess that it means Registered Nurses of America but as yet I've not found out for-sure exactly what that means............. and that makes it an especially "delicious" cold case research project.

I usually pick a "story" of a person who died prior to 1935 so that I'll have some public records to search. From the cemetery file, death certificate, local city directories, and the U.S. censuses, I can usually find enough material to write up a personal sketch for the person. (It does help that Washington state has the most fabulous digital archives:  www.digitalarchives.wa.gov ) 

And what do I do with these projects? They will go posted to my local genealogical society's website (www.EWGSI.org) so that maybe-hopefully-possibly some descendant looking for that person will hit the jackpot. To me this is a warm-fuzzy thing to do.

Tika always enjoys the outings. (And I always have a little green baggy in my pocket, as should you.)

Tika & My Surgery Recovering

Recovering from total hip replacement surgery, and being "enthroned" in my La-Z-boy for weeks, I've been very grateful for my little Tika to watch over me and to bring me comfort. Dogs truly are "teddybears with a heartbeat." 

We all have stories in our genealogy about the long illnesses our ancestors had........ how they could be bed-ridden for months. Don't you want to bet that some little dog was right there with them to bring them comfort and cheer? I surely do hope so. A few weeks of limited activity is enough for me; I cannot imagine months............ and with no netbook or library books to occupy their mind as I have had.

Tika & Tomatoes

Don't think Tika loves eating tomatoes as much as I do but this I do know: When I fix nice thick slabs of beefsteak tomato broiled with melted cheddar, Tika is right there to do the lick-up-the-plate duty. Does summer mean tomatoes to you? Did you realize that it wasn't all that long ago that tomatoes were considered poisonous? (Google "tomato history")  After our forebears got over their fear, how did our ancestors enjoy eating tomatoes? Anybody have any pre-Civil War era recipes to share??? And tomatoes do not keep in root cellars so how wonderful when canning was invented (which was when???). I have midwest ancestry and I can just bet that they enjoyed oodles of summer tomatoes just like Tika and I do. Well, me anyway.

Tika is a Dachshund

According to my The Essential Dachshund book, dachchunds are curious, agile, single-minded, comical, fearless, sturdy and scent hunters. I can vouch for the fact that Tika is definitely a dachshund!  She is curious; I keep trying to get a photo of her sitting up on my footstool looking out the window for elephants. She is agile; she leaps up and down from our chair as we play throw-the-toy with her. She is single-minded; there is an old stinky something down the lane and she NEVER FORGETS to sniff it out. She is comical; she won't eat her dinner until we finish ours and she can have a lick or two...... hope springs eternal that we may leave more. She is fearless; I've seen her tear into two larger dogs and promptly show them who was boss. She is sturdy; so far so good, no broken bones. And she is surely a scent hunter; we could let her run with us in the yard but she'd catch a whiff of something and poof! she'd be beyond the fence.

All of which makes me think: genealogists are curious, agile in their thinking, single-minded in their thinking, comical at times, fearless mostly, sturdy all-weather souls and scent hunters......... put us on the hint or sniff of a trail of 4-great grandpa and we're off beyond the fence too.

I think dachshunds and genealogists have lots in common; at least Tika and I do.

Tika & "Her" New Birthday Blanket

Tika loves our new bedspread! To mark our 50th anniversary, our children presented us with this gorgeous Pendleton blanket/bedspread........we had told them NO PARTY........ and we all think it's quite snuggly and wonderful. Tika says it's a perfect birthday gift for her; she turned 3 on September 18th. Why argue with a dog?????

Tika & Elephants

While we did miss our little Tika, we so enjoyed seeing all the African animals on our recent trip...... this was a herd of elephants crossing a river (led by the matriarch) and very carefully guarding and helping this baby.

FAMILY, whether in people or in animals, is all-important. We saw that over and over....... mother baboons cradling their babies, "ellies" watchful of their babies ("if you get out of the truck right now, the mother WILL stomp you," said our guide), mother giraffes nuzzling their babies and mother wart hogs (Pumbaas on the hoof!!) herding their 2-4 babies.

So what did I learn to share with you that is "genealogy?" Only that families are central to life, period.  And Tika is a furry little member of our family!!!

Tika is NOT in Africa but I am!

This is the African Bee Eater bird........ bet you've seen them on nature shows. They are way more beautiful in the "real." I am in South Africa and while I miss my Tika I'm seeing wart hogs, kudu, wildebeest,  impala, giraffes, rhinos, ostrichs and dozens of new birds. It is barely the start of summer and it's already in the 90s I'd guess. I wish all of you could come visit South Africa but if you cannot be sure to watch every nature or "planet earth" type show that comes along. It is a beautiful place!

Tika & Long Lake

Now I DO NOT usually swim with a yellow noodle, nor do I swim with a white T-shirt, but I wanted to re-create the Tika-riding-on-my-back photo and we were in deeper water. Does she look happy???

A friend suggested that we needed life jackets for our two dogs when we go boating. Don't think so; dogs...all mammals...can swim wonderfully. (Ever seen a rabbit or a porcupine swimming? Just this morning our local newspaper had a bit about a porky getting into their backyard pool during the night.) Now I do have a baby life jacket for when we took our infant grandchildren out; what was different about it was a high around-the-head collar. I love the water but I well recognize the power of water.

Doing my genealogy, many of my ancestors met their fate by drowning; one distant cousin in World War II. Did you realize that it was after WWI that America realized that many of her young men could not swim (being from the landlocked midwest and all) so it was decided that all high schools would have a pool and would teach swimming. (Are you thinking of the Christmas movie, It's A Wonderful Life?) And now those older schools are being remodeled to do away with their pools and new ones have none. Most communities have public pools and do offer swim classes. It is my opinion that all children should learn to swim, period. Life is long and you just never know and most of us have a love of water.

Tika & Banks Lake

Summertime to us means lakes and water, anywhere and anytime. Banks Lake is one of our favorites. It is a man-made lake south of Coulee Dam in a basalt-cliff coulee; the lake was created to give water to all of central Washington for irrigation. Anyway. The lake was being drawn down for some reason and we went over to prowl the beach..... we've found arrowheads in the past. No arrowheads that day but plenty of muddy-sticky-clay exposed beach. We went swimming anyway! I drug her in on her leash with me and in a shallow part, as I rested on hands and knees, she climbed up up on my back.... like a baby duck does!

Our family has been going at least annually to this lake for 40 years. Amazing; well before my time, said Tika.

Tika & Liberty Lake

Tika went with us today boating on Liberty Lake, a small lake about 10 miles east of Spokane. Here she's helping me look to see where the public bathing beach would have been in the 1920s........... Handy Man's great-grandmother, Ada Smith Leverich (1866-1944) came from Illinois to Washington to visit her married daughter, Mary Ethel (Leverich) Oswald in the 1920s sometime. And it was "the thing" then to ride the nickel trolley from Spokane out to Liberty Lake. I have a photo of Ada in her head-to-toe-with-big-black-hat bathing costume standing up to her ankles in the water on a beach somewhere on this lake. There I was in my far-less-covered-up swim suit remembering his ancestor as we putt-putted around the lake. It was a great day; Tika agreed (especially as she got part of my tuna sandwich).

Tika & Dog Tags

Tika, like most good doggies, wears her "dog tags" on her collar........ her owner ID, her rabies tab and her county license tag. But I was telling her about a different kind of "dog tag," ones that soldiers wear. Last week when I visited family in Kansas City, MO, and visited the fabulous World War I Memorial Museum, I took this photo of some WWI-era dog tags. Each soldier was issued two metal tags; one to be left with his body (on a marker perhaps) if he was killed and the other to be sent back to headquarters for family notification. I did an article on Military Dog Tags not too long ago for Family Chronicle magazine. It was quite sobering to stand and view these little silvery metal discs and know their reason for being.

Tika & Crayola?

Tika is happily home with Handy Man and I am in Kansas City, Missouri, visiting Handy Man's sister Sharon. While the weather has been beastly (today 106o) we have had a wonderful time. Today we go to downtown KC to the Crown Center and one thing we'll visit is the Crayola "place." Did you know that the Crayola company was founded in 1885? The name Crayola was coined by Alice, wife of company founder and comes from craie, French for chalk, and ola for oleaginous or oily. Thus: oily chalk. By 1905 the company offered 18 different sized boxes of 5 different Crayola colors in sizes. Initially, crayon boxes were targeted to artists and sold for $1.50 a box (expensive in those days). Think what they cost today, say at Wal-Mart, in the back to school sales. Question:  Do you think your ancestor used crayons? Or better yet, when did your ancestors in their childhood begin to use crayons??

Tika & German Potato Salad

Yes, Tika is a German-dachshund-dog but she looks at German Potato Salad just about how this big guy above would view it:  No way. I attended the annual national convention of the Germans from Russia yesterday here in Spokane. One demonstration was showing how to make authentic German Potato Salad from a century-old recipe. It began with red potatoes ("russets get too mushy!") and the dressing included white wine, white vinegar and lemon juice and chopped green onions. NO bacon but she said it was optional. NO fried-in-bacon-grease onions. It was quite yummy. And, she said, it is great for a camping trip or picnic for it can sit at room temp for hours...... even days in a coolish place. (No dairy, no eggs, no mayo.)

So is a German dogger supposed to like German food? If its bratwurst, sure! Otherwise, no way! No problem, I'll eat her share.

Tika's Family Is Growing!

This is grandson Justin proposing to his Grethe at her summer work place, a day-care center. Isn't it great to see proposals being done down on one knee old-fashioned-like? Grethe ("gretta") is a VOGEL so hooray and hallelujah I'll have a new line to work on! And a German one at that. (By the by, she did say yes.)

Makes me reminisce about John's proposal to me and our wedding, etc. Gosh, me thought, have I written down that story for my posterity?  We may not have 1000 photos like today's young couples, but we still have the words and we are the only ones who can write that story. So there is Tika's advice for today: Write the story of your meeting your spouse, your engagement, your wedding, etc. They'll be glad you did.

Wouldn't you just love to read that sort of account from your great-great grandmother who got married in upstate New York in 1854?

Tika & Grass & Some New Stuff

Being close to three years old, you would think that Tika had learned that "if you eat grass you will upchuck." Even the Dachshund book says, "Often dogs eat grass, which, because it's indigestible in its pure form, irritates their stomachs and causes them to vomit." She was looking so cute sitting in my flower bed, chewing on whatever was there and the next she was below the rocks doing you-know-what. Will she ever learn?

We humans, especially we genealogists, can learn new things, bring them on!   Here are three new things for your learning pleasure:  (1)  The New Jersey Archives has posted a full dozen new databases, containing millions of name entries, to their website.  Check it out:  www.njarchives.org ;   (2)  FamilySearch offers you the opportunity to "Take a research consultant home, VIRTUALLY, on the new FamilySearch Wiki. A Wiki is a quick tutorial on just about anything you want to know and the FamilySearch Wiki contains information on all things genealogy. Click to http://wiki.familysearch.org;  (3)  Want to try a new search engine? Mocavo.com seeks to index and make searchable all of the world's free genealogy information. A friend reported to me that using this new genealogy search engine she found a tidbit of information that she'd never found before. Score!

Tika & Learning

Tika knows that I am a collector of words, especially words arranged into meaningful patterns. For instance:

Where there is a NEED there is an ABILITY to learn.  This was a quote from Lisa Louise Cooke in the opening address of the Colorado Expo. Thinking about this, she is so right! When we need to learn something, we can and we do! Lisa Louise was mainly talking about genealogists using new technologies for learning and said, "You may think you're not up to using this new techie stuff but review your history.... you have already progressed! You used to do everything on paper! And then floppies! You can learn!"

She continued, "Using new tricks (meaning that "techie stuff") makes us realize and appreciate old tricks.... think of the progress in citing sources.  And the benefits of embracing these new tricks, this new techie stuff, are worth it..... saves time, you find more and more quickly, and you connect with others."

Her parting admonition applies to all of us in all of our day-to-day activities:  "Don't be a prisoner of stagnation."  I really liked that.

Tika has learned that if she bangs open the cupboard door with her nose, she'll likely get a doggie treat. And she's learned to stop at the open back door and wait for her leash and not get scolded. Good doggie.

Tika stayed home; I went to the Family History Expos!

I snapped this photo from my window in the hotel in Loveland, Colorado, where I was attending and helping with Holly Hansen's Family History Expos. I first went to Sheridan, WY, to help, and then CO, and then drove home through Salt Lake City. These Family History Expos are held at many different locations all across the country. The next one is near Kansas City, MO........ if you live near consider attending. (Click to www.familyhistoryexpos.com for all the details.) Lisa Louise Cooke was the keynote speaker and her talk was on Tips to Teach "Old Dogs" New Tricks. She was targeting we older genealogists and encouraging us to use the fabulous Internet resources to further our research. (Yah, you've heard this before; do you believe it yet?) I intend to explore the product from one vendor:  www.ages-online.com. This service allows you to keep your tree, and all your documentation, online. This is good! Just consider it as a "cloud" back-up or storage system. So click and consider this "new trick."

I was gone only a week but Tika gave me 100 kisses when I returned. Hubby only gave me one. Hummm.

Tika and her "cousin" the basenji.

This is Jake (or what Jake looks like); he is a Basenji and the "love" of Handy Man's Sister Sharon and her hubby, Ron. Tika has never met "Jakey" but I'm quite sure the two dogs would get along famously. What do they have in common? They are both "red dogs" and they are special to us. They both love cheese. They both wag their tails. They are both dogs; they are canines; they are related; they are cousins in the natural world. So what is my genealogy point here?

In our genealogy pursuits, we will find cousins........distant or near cousins......... who are people like us but are vastly different in looks, size and personality from us. So are we all really cousins? I read once where a senior medieval research specialist in the Family History Library said that any one of us is really no further removed than 50th cousins from any other person on the planet. Think about that! 50th cousins to anybody. And you know how different all the peoples of the world seem to be. 

Am I related to you? Probably. Can we prove it? Maybe.  Is Tika related to Jake? Probably. Can we prove it? Nope. As all dogs pretty much accept each other, shouldn't we pretty much accept each other, seeing as how we are cousins???

Tika's Ancestry?

Reading in the Southwest Airlines magazine (from the seat pocket) I saw an ad for a Dog DNA kit. For a not-cheap fee I can send in a mouth swab from my Tika and find out if she is a "read" dachshund. Will I? Nope. Wonder how many folks do this?

I have done a DNA study with "Handy Man," my Phillips husband. Did it give me answers? Nope. Did it give me clues? Yep. I'll explain.  The Phillips DNA Project showed two (and now three) nearly perfect matches between John and others. But each of us only know and can document so far back and none of us can go back far enough to connect! Maybe in time. I believe in these DNA tests but I realize and recognize that there often are no "red hot" answers.

To learn more about this fascinating topic, do a Google search for "genealogy + DNA + research."

Tika & "County" Trivia

"Tika," I said, "this sort of thing is really interesting to genealogists." You see her response. But I was reading some notes I took from the book The American Counties by J.N. Kane, 1972.  I learned stuff like:

Of the 3067 counties in the U.S. only 2136 have been named for individuals. This figure includes the 203 counties named for 25 presidents. The president for whom the greatest number of counties was named  is (would you guess?) George Washington who leads the list with 31, followed by Thomas Jefferson at 26. Jackson has 21 counties named for him, excluding Hickory County, Missouri, for his nickname.

There are 20 counties named for Madison, 17 for Monroe, 17 for Lincoln, 12 for Grant and 11 for Polk. There is a long list of presidents for whom 1 to 8  counties were named. Only one president had both his first and last name used as the name of a county. Millard Fillmore had Millard County named for him in Utah as well as Fillmore County in both Minnesota and Nebraska.  And there are 11 presidents who do not have a county named for them.

So if there were 3067 counties and only 2136 have been named for people, that leaves 931 counties named for other than individuals. What about your county of birth?  (Mine: Kalamazoo, MI)  Or your county of residence?  (Spokane, WA) Have you ever thought about the origin of "your" county's name?

Tika has not. She was born somewhere in Idaho, remember.

Tika Listens To A Lesson on Names

Was giving Tika two genealogy examples today in our lesson....... first was "proving" that so often in olden-times people were given names from the Bible. Charles Wilbur Gurney (1864-1923) m. (1) Sarepta Mae Bishop (1867-1892).  I wondered about that name....... and then found it in Luke 4:26. Sarepta was a city of Sidon. But guess her mother liked it as her name.  Sarepta had Leila Mae in 1889 and died in 1892...... I'd bet from complications of a second pregnancy. No, I've not studied that out because my ancestor is Charles Wilbur's second wife, Viola Belle Evans (1872-1962).  And because I did rather/kinda ignore Sarepta Mae Bishop I nearly missed out on some good photos. OF COURSE she had sent photos of her new husband to her family, and her wedding photos, and with her dying so young, of course they kept the photos........ and doing a search on the Bishop family online I located those pictures of a very young Charles Wilbur and his first bride.  Pays to be totally thorough in your research; that's what I was teaching to Tika in our lesson today.

Tika Reads Comics

Tika was snuggled by me in our chair as I read the morning paper recently. I laughed out loud at the Dennis the Menace cartoon and when I read it to Tika she.............. yawned. No matter. Dennis and his little friends were admiring a momma dog's new babies and the caption was, "WOW! She downloaded EIGHT PUPPIES!"""" "   While that cartoon was darn cute enough, it made me wonder how many computer and Internet references have crept into our everyday language?? I suspect that the list would be long. Surf does not involve ocean waves; mouses do not eat cheese; we keyboard and not type; and website does not mean that lovely big dew-spangled spider web in your flowers. Bet you could come up with many more.

While we're thinking, how many definitions for the word dog can you list? Dog as an adjective, dog as a verb, and dog as a noun. Interesting exercise.  And by the by, Tika says she is not a "dog," but a dachshund.

Tika Likes Webinars

Tika likes webinars.......... or rather I should say Tika likes it when I'm at my computer listening to a webinar. She sits at my feet but also where she can look out into the yard. She does not care if I'm listening to and learning from Geoff at Legacy, Thomas at High-Def Genealogy or dearMYRT expounding. She just knows I'm eager to learn and she's there to support me. (And get a doggy treat half way through.)

If you would like to know about upcoming (free) online genealogy webinars, click to www.geneawebinars.com
and mark your calendar to be sitting by your computer and ready to learn something new or great or wonderful or just plain fun.

If Tika and I both recommend webinars to you, well, what more do you need????

Tika & I are glad to be home.

The Colorado River water was 47-50o but the nice clean warm beach sand was a delight to walk on; Tika would have loved it! So did I do any genealogy? Looking at rocky ledges and walls that were MILLIONS of years old......... boggled the mind. They said a casual rule of thumb is 1 inch equals 5000 years and our human history in the last 10,000 years is .00008 of an inch. Boggles the mind. So I talked genealogy to my boat mates!

Tika Goes to Gramma Kay & We Go To The Grand Canyon

Tika gets to go visit Gramma Kay, her favorite dog sitter, and our house sitter will tend all our many plants, and we're off to float the Colorado River through the entire Grand Canyon. Cannot wait to get there!  Tika will be spoiled rotten when we fetch her home and not miss us at all!

Tika Dog Blog Speak

In one of his bird dog hunting magazines, Handy Man found this list of explanations................. to which Tika said "wwwhhhaaaatttttt?"  Here they are:

Hard Drive Back-up ..............  Dog in a brace
Search Engine ......................... Dog nose
Twitter .................................... Sound a bird makes
Tweet .....................................  More sounds a bird makes
Browser..................................  Going from smell to smell to smell
Megabytes............................    How a dog eats
Gigabytes................................  Dogs "singing" for their dinner
Linkedin .................................   Dog kennel fencing
Hyperlink...............................    Dog "prong" or "pinch" collar
Router ...................................   Dog flushing out/smelling out a bird or critter
Download ................................ Dog squatting and doing her business

This was just too cute not to share with you............. Tika gave her blessing to do so.

Tika & FamilySearch Indexing

Since we are a full month behind in having spring weather............ these are lilac BUDS..... our annual Lilac Festival is in about three weeks and the buds are still tight green buds........... Tika and I have not much felt like being out-of-doors. Perfect time to do some FamilySearch Indexing! According to the website, the 1930 census for New Hampshire is their highest priority....... that just means it's almost finished and let's get it finished. So while Tika sits looking out the lower part of the sliding glass doors, and I look out the top part of the sliding glass doors, I will spend some worthwhile time doing FamilySearch Indexing. And we're both hoping for a sunshiny warm day tomorrow!

Tika Went Easter Camping

This group's annual Easter event started in 1977 with 6 adults and 7 children and we've grown over the past 40 years to a group of 50ish......... friends, in-laws, outlaws, employers, relatives and neighbors of the original group have been happily added. (Tika and I are third from the right; Handy Man/John is second.) So what has this to do with genealogy! Lots......... do we believe that "the family that plays together stays together?" These are all good, family-oriented folks. In the next couple of posts I'll share some bonafide genealogy lessons that Tika and I learned.

Tika Goes Easter Camping

Despite the fact that it snowed on our daffodils yesterday, Tika is going camping with us! For 40 years the same group of good folks have gone to the same place on this same weekend and what a big celebration there will be this year...... 40 years! Thank goodness it is a desert-ey place and should be warm enough for only one pair of socks. Tika will be loved and mauled to pieces because she is so darn cute. No genealogy this weekend..... just plain old good camping family fun. But I have my copy of Dan Lynch's Google Your Family Tree to read. I'll report back on how well Tika listened.

Tika & Earthquakes????

Tika and I live in eastern Washington state.......... did we know that our little part of the world had a 3.4 earthquake last week on April 6th??  It was centered south of Mt. Rainier. Just the day before there was a 2.7 southeast of Mt.Hood, Oregon.

I just found a Google Gadget that shows the earthquakes in your (zip code) region. How cool is this?  Search for "google gadgets" and then type in "earthquake watch" and add that gadget to your iGoogle home page.  I just did.

Maybe Tika digging those craters triggered the earthquake?  Nawwww.........

Tika Goes Digging

Tika is such a good genealogy teacher........without even knowing she is!  Last couple of times when we've gone out walking, I hook her leash to the fence while I take wildflower photos. Not only wildflowers are coming up but little critters too........ and Tika can both hear and smell them and BANGO she's after them. She can dig a grand-canyon-sized crater in minutes. So what does this teach me? When I get even a whiff or a breeze of an idea about a new resource or research thing to do, I should bango be right on it and keep digging until I achieve my goal. Difference between Tika and I about this ends here: I find information. She digs and digs and usually catches nothing. But that does not stop her from trying another day!

Tika gets a lesson about the Civil War

Tika sat so quietly and appeared interested as I explained to her that the Civil War both began and ended in the month of April. Did you realize that factoid? Shots were fired on Fort Sumter on 12 April 1861 and pen was put to paper on 9 April 1865 at Appomattox. Both a Potter and a Phillips ancestor were participants in the Civil War so in this year of the 150th anniversary of the beginning, I've been doing some extra Civil War reading. How about you? Did you have an ancestor who fought in the "War Between the States" and have you been doing some extra reading this year??

Tika Follows the Census News

In our daily newspaper for 25 March 2011, the AP had a story explaining how the U.S. population center has shifted constantly west/southwest over the last 220 years........ as this map above shows. Now according to the 2010 census, our center of population is Plato, Missouri, a little town of 109 residents. So in a nation of nearly 310 million people, the 109 residents of Plato, Missouri, have a big claim to fame.  Any of your ancestors from Plato, Texas County, Missouri??? None of Tika's are. She's from Idaho remember.

Tika & Cookies

Tika has no fear of cookies; in fact, she and Handy Man share one most evenings after dinner. But cookies to Tika and cookies to you or me are two different things. Had a wonderful afternoon helping a friend get going with her blog http://africanroots.blogspot.com and to set up her own iGoogle page and to get her Gmail account. And over "real" cookies we talked about "internet cookies." Internet cookies are not always bad; they're rather like a cookie-crumb trail more quickly taking you back to where you were. Tika likes her cookies to be lick-able.

Tika's Sort-of Grandmother: Esther Mary Oswald Phillips

Today, March 25, is Esther Mary Oswald's birthday. Born in Spokane, her parents were living in Hillyard in 1913 where John Peter worked for the railroad but her mother Mary Ethel was adamant that her children would be born out of the city.......... the Great White Death (tuberculosis) was a city-killer in those days, and I think Ethel wanted the best for her children. So way, way, WAY west out of town (10" today) they went. Esther attended Cheney Normal School (now Eastern Washington University) and at age 18 was graduated from college and teaching in a rural school in Newport, Washington. For the next decade she and her girlfriends traveled all over the world during the summers often sailing on tramp steamers.  She met Chuck (Charles Alexander Phillips) and they were married in November 1941 in her parents' home. She was 28; he was 35 and they had a rocky marriage. Newly pregnant in Shelton, Washington, in 1942 and expecting to quit teaching, the war-need for teachers was so great that her principal told her "to put on a smock and go to work." So she did. Divorcing in 1952, she finished her teaching career in Spokane and succumbed to Alzheimers in 1998. She left two children, five grandchildren and nine greats (so far). She was a great lady with never a hair out of place and always uncomfortable in slacks and she loved a daffodil-themed birthday party with all the crystal glasses on the table. Happy Birthday, Esther.

Tika Says WHO????

While Tika stayed home and I went to Port Townsend, I got to rendezvous with Marcia........... we hadn't seen each other since we graduated high school in 1961. That was 50 years ago; gollygeewhiz. Neither of us has been to any of the reunions; just not our thing. But it was grand to connect and exchange hugs with her again.

With the Jefferson Co (WA) Gen Soc group we talked about our ancestors' emigration, immigration and migration and the myriad of reasons and push-pull factors influencing their movements. Then we talked about online resources for finding these immigrant ancestors. They were a fun group. And the cookies they brought were out of this world.

Tika was all wiggles when I got home and I got a million kisses....... and only one from our Handy Man. So go figure.