When I first saw the picture of my Great Grandmother as a little girl, my breath caught and time transported me to that moment. Her eyes captivated me. She was so young, but I could see longing and sadness in those eyes. What was she thinking in that moment? What had she seen that could give her that expression? I wanted to reach through the picture and hug her. Put my forehead up to hers and wordlessly acknowledge her old soul in that moment. The second thing I noticed in the picture is the locket that is around her neck. I immediately wanted to find out what happened to it. I needed to know it was not lost to time. That where ever it ended up, it was being cared for. It seems silly to say such a thing, but it was the reaction I had.
Four years later, I have found out what happened to that locket. It is still in the family, thank goodness, worn by Italy's granddaughter and great granddaughter. They love that locket so much that they share it. One day, I hope to see it in person. This locket has been in my family for well over a hundred years, since at least 1910. I wish it could speak. What would it say if it could? Would it cry out for my great grandmother? Would it tell tales of adventures she had? Would it sing songs from her youth with a laugh and a twinkle? Would it cough, in remembrance of the time spent on the mountain, trying to get rid of the "bugs" from Tuberculosis? Would it weep at the memory of Italy's losing her siblings when she was young or for losing her mother? I wish it's shallow depth could hold the scent of my Great Grandmother. I would wrap myself around it and breath in the life that I am constantly reaching for.
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We are all connected. Bloodlines, common passions, causes we believe in, personality types- everything that makes us who we are can also connect us to others who share those beliefs, interests and familial roots. Though these things are not often easily witnessed, they run deep and make up the fabric of who we are.
I look to the past in search of connections that have been lost to time. I can't expect people to understand how strongly I feel to family that I find this way, as I myself do not understand it. I just feel these connections deep in my bones, in my DNA. Perhaps it is easy for me to be open to these connections, because of my sister and brother? As a child, my older sister, although she died before I was born, was a big part of my life. My mother and I would visit her grave, would light a candle for her when we went to church and would pray for her. She was our 'guardian angel' watching over us always. When I was growing up, I imagined her growing older with me. She was 16 when I was 14, and I envisioned sharing in her triumph over getting her drivers license and taking me out for a celebratory ride. I daydreamed about her often when I was young. What would her life have been like? What did she look like? I had so many questions and I filled in the holes through my daydreams. (She had blonde hair like the heroines in fairy tales and movies. She had creamy pale skin and blue eyes, the color of the sky, because when I looked up to the heavens I imagined her above me always. She was mostly nice to me, her little sister, because we were close in age, but we sometimes were cross with each other, like normal kids.) In this way, I have felt a strong connection to my sister even though I never met her. My brother, well, I feel connected to him for very different reasons... We grew up in different homes. He grew up with his mother and I grew up with our father. We didn't know about each other's existence until we were older, though he knew about me way before I found out about him. Our father decided to tell me about my brother when we were at a Perkins restaurant one day when I was 19. I had just moved back to Ohio from living in Texas for over a year. Why he told me, I will never know. I was instantly furious with him. I told him that this was the worst joke he has ever attempted. He said it wasn't a joke, gave me my brother's first name and said that my brother's mother used to live on the street that my father grew up on. I stormed out of the restaurant and went to my mother (as they had separated years earlier) to ask her. She confirmed it was true and said she had forgotten about it. Over the next 2 days I tracked my brother's grandparents down, came face to face with his grandmother and demanded (in my stubborn inconsiderate naivety) that I talk to my brother. I subsequently broke down into tears when I was face to face with his grandmother and barely was able to get out my name before I was an incoherent mess. (I am very happy she took pity on me and had a stash of tissues in her office). Well, my brother and I ended up meeting soon after and to this day I feel so much love and connection to my "big brother" that I don't even bother to identify that he is technically my half-brother. So, maybe it is for those reasons, my sister and brother, that I feel strong connections to 'strangers' who turn out to be family members. I don't need to know why for myself, and only explain it here so that others can understand. I especially would like you to keep this in mind if, one day, you get an unexpected message or email from a stranger asking about your ancestors. ;) Since my little trip to the city (NYC) I have been wanting to find an item I saw in a museum. It helped to identify a spot on a meteor, without hurting the rock, or marring it in any noticeable way. It was a thin piece of wire with a circle at the end; the circle was coated in a yellow plastic (see previous post for image). It looked like a thin wire bubble wand, basically.
After searching online at various museum supply companies, I could not find what I wanted. So, today I went out and bought some 16 gauge wire, pliers, and liquid dip. I wrapped the wire around a piece of PVC pipe I had laying around from a different project (the PS VR headset stand). The PVC made a perfect circle 1" in diameter on one end, and a Sharpie marker (for an oblong shape) and a round knife sharpener (for a smaller circle) on the opposite end of the wire. The wands came out ok, but how well will it hold up? I wonder if I should have gotten a heavier gauge wire? Need to field test this before I make enough to give out. I want to give one to my cousin who loves genealogy as much as I do. Oh- the Plasti Dip I bought ended up being black (even though the picture was yellow on the can and the guy at Lowes said they only had yellow in stock). Well, that won't work on this black coated wire. Ha. So, now I need to find and order some yellow PD online. My partner and I drove through New Jersey to New York City last week. As we passed one of the many factories on the way, I mused out loud, "I wonder what tastes they are making today." I had read or heard somewhere years ago that New Jersey was one of the largest taste manufacturers in the world. I am not sure if that is still the case. Tastes are manufactured in many other places. Cincinnati for example, has a large plant from a Swiss company. My partner had never heard of manufacturing tastes before, so I figured I would blog about it.
The manufactured tastes are labeled in food as 'natural flavor'. There isn't anything natural sounding about ethyl isovalerate and gamma octalactone, however. The secrecy of the flavor business is what I find hard to understand. I understand patents, which these companies do not seem to own of their flavors. But why not be open about your manufactured flavor 're-creations'? I heard that one fast food chain lost the flavor re-creation of their famous 'french fry' taste- which is part of the reason why their fries aren't the best any more. I still long for the taste that I remember as a child, salty baked potato goodness. If you are interested in learning more, this old article in the New Yorker is a really good one on the 'Taste Makers.' http://bit.ly/tasteinabottle We spent a couple days in New York City for my birthday. I wanted to see a planetarium show and Kristopher had never experienced one. We saw Dark Universe, which was narrated by Neil deGrasse Tyson. It was a new space show in the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space. The film projected across the 67 foot wide hemispheric dome and allowed us to 'travel' through space, different galaxies, to billions of light years away. It was very different than the star shows I gazed in wonder at in the Ward Beecher Planetarium at Youngstown State University. Those Ward Beecher Planetarium shows were off of a single Spitz star projector which seemed like a plastic ball that simply projected pin pricks of light out of it, and spun around to show different views of the night sky during the year. Even those (now low-tech) shows blew my mind and amazed me as a little girl. It was no wonder, then, that I throughly enjoyed the $54 Dark Universe show (price of museum admissions and 2 tickets to the show). The best thing that occurred from that trip to the American Museum of Natural History, however, occurred in the Ross Hall of Meteorites and Guggenheim Hall of Minerals. To be honest, I had no intention of going to those halls. They were on the other side of the museum and were hard to find, frankly. I didn't want to walk all the way there as my feet were already killing me from the 19,000 + steps we took that day. But Kris wanted to go there and it was the only thing he admitted to have interest in, so we went and I only grumbled about it in my head (not out loud). It was there that we came upon some mice running around ramped and this specimen- a fragment of a larger meteorite that landed on earth. The wire bubble wand (no clue what it's official name is) identifies a piece of matter in the rock that is slightly darker in color and the display identified that the matter is foreign and doesn't contain any iron (something unusual to find in a meteor). I don't recall all of what the little plaque said (and I didn't take a pic of it). The fact that this bubble wand unobtrusively identified an area on a flat 2D plain was what held my fascination. I have a scrapbook/photo album of my Great Grandmother - Italy M. Bond Grimes. I have studied the pictures so much that I know my Great Grandmother's face and can pick her out in even the blurriest photos. However, her granddaughter, my mother, cannot tell the difference at all. I have been wondering what unobtrusive method I can use to effectively 'tag' (a Facebook term which here means identify) people in the pictures, so that future generations will be able to know who the known people are. Well- this bubble wand would do nicely to identify people!
My plan is to get some 16 or 18 gauge wire and manipulate it into a wand with a circle at each end, a smaller one the size of a dime and a bigger one the size of a quarter. I could make a couple wands to identify multiple people at the same time, too. I wonder what I can use to coat the circular end..? I wonder if any coatings come in different colors. I could use different color coatings to identify different people- "The blue circle identifies Fred, red circle identifies Bill, etc". When I was younger, at camp we recycled old telephone wire (from downed lines) into bracelets. It would be nice to have that, as it was colorful and free, however it was not very sturdy and easily bent. I am going to look for Plasti-Dip, it is a rubber coating for metal objects. Shouldn't be too hard to find it in the hardware stores around here. I will take pics and let you know how this little "picture wand" project goes! |
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