Rebel Yell Redux

Here is why I love genealogy. Out of the blue I recieved the gift of a portrait of my great-great grandfather, James Vaughan, and his wife, Elizabeth. Sent from Alice, a cousin I have yet to meet. (Thanks, Alice!)

Alice had clues and stories I had never heard or even suspected about James. She mentioned to me that he had gone to Cuba and brought back some sea shells. Cuba??? In the 1870's? She conjectured that he had gone as a soldier of fortune in the Cuban and Spanish wars. I had to do some research, as I had no recall of learning about such a conflict. I realized that if James had indeed traveled to the Spanish West Indies during this time period, he would have had to apply for a passport. I went to the NARA archives index found on Footnote.com and searched for James. Sure enough, I found his passport application, complete with a description of him and his signature. He was authorized to travel to the "Spanish West Indies", AND this was not his first trip, as the application is for a renewal.

The plot doth thicken.

Mister M

I'm hanging out in Florida again, visiting my sis and her hubby, and missing my mister. So here's a shout out to Mark, my dream come true once in a lifetime love.
It is a very wonderful thing to be married to your best friend, I highly reccomend it.
Mark is unique, reserved yet funny, lighthearted and independent, guileless and capable of surprise. Practical and yet very romantic. I'm a lucky woman indeed.

Tis a gift to be simple

It seems that I have entered a phase of time where I am to be under a certain way of learning, a discipline from Jesus that He has been gently leading me to, now more insistent. I know the time is NOW, because I am gaining clarity, urgency and peace about it. Not that I expect it to be easy. Not at all. But Simple, yes.

I don't want to explain much, because that goes against the very strictures of the discipline. This post is to leave some breadcrumbs on this path. And just to say I am listening.

Peace.

Kandice

The first time I met Kandice, my mother and dad came home from the hospital with her, but before mom Sylvia would get out of the car with the new babe, someone, I think my grandmother, was instructed to get the camera. Hence the initial meeting was recorded on film.
Many years have passed since that day, but I still have a pleasant memory of it - my other sister, Shelley, and I giggling with excitement to meet the new little girl, who would become our playmate, our friend and a witness to our lives, as we are to hers.
Kandice has been waging a valiant battle with a debilitating and frustrating disease, a battle I can only imagine. She is still one of the most creative, kind and generous women on the planet, and I'm very proud to call her friend.
Last Christmas, her husband  wrote this amazing poem about Kandice, and she has given me permission to share it here.

for kandice

a man climbs to the highest ridge of the mountain,
and stares
astonished.
at the highest tree .

only this tree has survived
the stingy soil
the blasting wind.

and lightning has struck.
only here
only the rarest tree,
cleaving, gut-wrenching the trunk
with the explosion of rapidly expanding essence.

does this tree fathom its own beauty
razor-silhouetted on the heights ridge
absent the bland symmetry of its crouching neighbors
recording the constant insult of gales and bolts in seared bark and half-dead branches?

once upon a time a spore caught in a rocky cranny,
a sapling struggled to life.
the highest tree would have chosen some safer berth in the lower loam,
no doubt.
but choiceless, it carves itself alone against the high sky
indifferent to any notion of picturesque valor
visited only by the highest climber.

steven taft, december 24, 2007

Flower Fairy Princess

A shout out to Kandice - thanks for the cool artfully enhanced photo. This is little Marsyl, age 9.

Comes at a good time, when I am needing to remember that this girl child deserves the best, and deserves kindness and respect. And I intend to see she gets that.

O Pioneer

My great great great grandfather, John Leonard Dickinson was a pioneer, true to the Dickinson way. Moving from New York State to Wisconsin in about 1856, he and his wife and several of their children remained there only a couple of years. By 1858 they had come to Minnesota, where he remained the rest of his life. Three of his sons, including my great great grandfather Theodore (husband of Emma) joined the Union Army for Minnesota. All three miraculously survived.

I've been searching for John's parentage for several years. Yesterday came a breakthrough from the researchers in Salt Lake City. They found land records indicating that John and his wife Harriet sold their New York property to Harriet's brother, Lawrence Mason. The land had previously conveyed to John by Joseph and Orrin Dickinson. I have other evidence that Joseph is John's father, and this could be the confirmation.

One more piece of the puzzle is coming into place, the research team at SLC will do a little more digging, and it's like waiting for Christmas to see what they unearth.

I feel time ticking away, I want to get this history into some sort of order to preserve it for whomever, in the next generation, or the next, becomes the "chosen" one, bitten by the genealogy bug. Made acquaintance this week with another cousin, a descendant of John L. Dickinson's brother, Richard. I have been seeking him for over a year, and finally had a response. He has some treasures to share as well, and I think again of how lives are entertwined like shiny and fragile threads forming a faint, almost invisible pattern over our country, and over the world.

Walden

I went to Walden Pond on one of my trips to Boston. We walked around it on the still primitive trail, along with a few other folks. There seemed to be a sort of reverence still attached to it - folks were very earnest looking, mostly quiet. The pond was not as large as I expected, and seemed rather modest especially in Minnesota terms.
Thoreau's cabin replica stands not too far off from its original site. My husband and I went to take a look, and I will never forget the sensation of peeking inside. I encountered a feeling of peace, completeness, and a sort of relief. It was so simple, small and snug, yet sufficient. Well, I would want indoor plumbing, I admit.
I've been going through a restless bit, or maybe a bit of stuckness. Not sure what the solution is, because I'm not sure I've identified the problem. I keep waiting for it to pass, and perhaps it will. I am also waiting to see what God wants to communicate to me through this. It's hard to wait. It's hard to listen.
I've put the little cabin on my screensaver, to remind me to keep it simple, to be ok with the waiting, and most of all, to "live deliberately."

"I come home to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home.I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are,grand and beautiful. I have told many that I walk every day about half the daylight, but I think they do not believe it.I wish to get the Concord, the Massachusetts, the America,out of my head and be sane a part of every day." Henry David Thoreau
from the Journal (January 7, 1857)