I tend to roll my eyes a bit (figuratively) when bloggers apologize for not posting for a while. I can't imagine readers sitting on tenterhooks waiting for posts and getting offended if someone takes a week or two off! Perhaps taking over a year's break is a little more strange. However, I would bet my hat that no one has really cared all that much or been in the least offended, so I won't apologize, just explain a little.
Last summer was a large family reunion that's held every 5 years or so, with 100-150 attendees. 10 years ago I had offered to write a family history book, and had never actually finished it. Hence my entire spring was taken up with finishing this book. I actually lost a fair bit of eyesight, apparently permanently, with the many hours, days, weeks on the computer. I did genealogy research that found ancestors back to the late 1400s! To be accurate, my research consisted of finding other people's online research and figuring out where it fit into our family tree. This still took many many hours, days, and weeks, but was very exciting and rewarding. I also spent time interviewing my aunts, reading online history magazines to find articles about my ancestors, and, most time of all, harassing my many cousins for their stories. I wanted it not to be professionally bound, so that future reunions could produce updates in the family tree and address lists, etc., that could be easily added. So I decided to use binders with a clear cover page holder. It didn't look quite as professional but kept the cost down when I caught a local office supply store going out of business with binders at a dollar each.
As much as I loved doing this book, it completely burnt me out and I didn't want to look at a computer or keyboard for a very long time! Not to mention needing to rest my eyes. In the meantime my dear husband decided to help me out by changing my computer over for another, in which a lot of my stuff was lost or moved without trace. Later he helped out by taking my computer suddenly to reformat it, which lost more stuff. I did recently find some of my scans of old photos, and decided to give this another go. I don't have the money any more to buy more Ebay photos but still have two boxes of them which should keep me going for a while!
In the next post I will update on comments that have come in while I was taking my "Sabbatical." For now, I'll just get 'er started with a couple of photos.
As usual, please click on the photos to see them bigger for more detail. In the photo below, the children's faces and their clothing deserve a closer look. There's something about all the detail in these beautiful old photos. The second boy on the left has a retouched eye, too. I wonder if the camera caught him winking, and Mom was none too pleased.
Last summer was a large family reunion that's held every 5 years or so, with 100-150 attendees. 10 years ago I had offered to write a family history book, and had never actually finished it. Hence my entire spring was taken up with finishing this book. I actually lost a fair bit of eyesight, apparently permanently, with the many hours, days, weeks on the computer. I did genealogy research that found ancestors back to the late 1400s! To be accurate, my research consisted of finding other people's online research and figuring out where it fit into our family tree. This still took many many hours, days, and weeks, but was very exciting and rewarding. I also spent time interviewing my aunts, reading online history magazines to find articles about my ancestors, and, most time of all, harassing my many cousins for their stories. I wanted it not to be professionally bound, so that future reunions could produce updates in the family tree and address lists, etc., that could be easily added. So I decided to use binders with a clear cover page holder. It didn't look quite as professional but kept the cost down when I caught a local office supply store going out of business with binders at a dollar each.
As much as I loved doing this book, it completely burnt me out and I didn't want to look at a computer or keyboard for a very long time! Not to mention needing to rest my eyes. In the meantime my dear husband decided to help me out by changing my computer over for another, in which a lot of my stuff was lost or moved without trace. Later he helped out by taking my computer suddenly to reformat it, which lost more stuff. I did recently find some of my scans of old photos, and decided to give this another go. I don't have the money any more to buy more Ebay photos but still have two boxes of them which should keep me going for a while!
In the next post I will update on comments that have come in while I was taking my "Sabbatical." For now, I'll just get 'er started with a couple of photos.
As usual, please click on the photos to see them bigger for more detail. In the photo below, the children's faces and their clothing deserve a closer look. There's something about all the detail in these beautiful old photos. The second boy on the left has a retouched eye, too. I wonder if the camera caught him winking, and Mom was none too pleased.
Both of these photos are from an Ebay seller who got them from a photographer going out of business in a small town in the U.S. The shop made copies of old family photos during the 1980s, and these are copies that never got picked up and weren't able to be traced
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thanks for your comment! So glad to have you visit. :)