I often reference the burden that carrying your family history entails. I usually dwell on the mental load, how it requires — and can drain — your time and energy and spirit. But other times, I’m talking about an actual, physical burden.
I’m talking about Gertrude’s window.
This stained-glass window currently lives in my dining room. I haven’t found a better place for it. I have somewhere in mind, but first, a little history.
Continue reading “Gertrude’s Window”
Feb. 16, 1921; Santa Barbara, Calif.
Caroline Townsend Comstock had been married in a bohemian ceremony, at dawn, on the top of a mountain. Her husband designed bookplates and was an expert lepidopterist. They began their married life in an artists’ colony. She knew about choosing a life outside the mainstream. And she also recognized that this was beyond even that.
“I knew something like this would happen,” she said with resignation.
Continue reading “Mother Love: The Townsends (Pt 2)”
Just trying to hold it all together.
In early February, when All This began pulling its long shadow over our lives, I joked to my husband that I might be particularly well-equipped to handle the situation.
I’m a homebody by nature. All my hobbies are domestic, or can be done at home. I can already make bread or provide a decent chicken soup for the invalid. And I’ve read plenty about the influenza epidemic of 1918. I was made for this, I told him. We both laughed.
Part 1 of the Inglis family story
Landlocked
Where else would the world-traveling, ship chandling Inglis family land but…Iowa?
When I think about my genealogy subjects — my dead people — I like to amuse myself by picturing a waiting room. By that I mean an actual modern waiting room, full of non-modern people.
Graveyard Snoop 
