Generated with Bing Image Creator AI, 21 September 2024 A recent article which I can't seem to find again got me thinking, mostly about the title, which was something close to " coming together in order to disengage ." As I recall, it might have been about dissipating political tensions post-election. But it got me thinking about why we gather together in genealogy and historical societies and associated groups. Research and writing can be lonely. Just yesterday I spent hours imaging and downloading the 100+ pages of my third-great-grandfather's Revolutionary War pension application. Both my son and husband clearly didn't understand why I bothered! But I bet all our readers here DO understand, and maybe that is why we gather so often, even just to chat with other researchers.  I found one article on the web about children's education which says, Children & adults must first feel safe in order to feel connected enough to learn. The adult’s job  is to keep ...

  From Melanie Hinds: Growing up in Chicago we always had artificial Christmas trees, and my mom seemed to appreciate trees that were made of any material and any color other than a traditional green evergreen tree. One year we had a white flocked tree with turquoise garland and ornaments. (I thought it was so cool!)  This is a picture of a Christmas tree we had in the late 1960’s: silver aluminum with purple glass ornaments. What you can’t see behind all these presents is the color wheel that we always used to illuminate our Christmas trees. Many of you might remember the color wheel: it was an electric wheel contraption that was divided into 4 quarters, each quarter a different color (usually red, blue, yellow and green) that could reach temperatures of about 4000 degrees hot and cause 3rd degree burns if you were silly enough to touch it! (Don’t ask me how I know about that.)  And our color wheel squeaked as it made each revolution. I always wondered why my dad never o...