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????