This morning I am sitting in the light of the rising sun, listening to the High Mountains of Portugal audio book, and crocheting a warm blanket. I will breakfast later, when my stomach wrenches me out of this circle of warmth.
I will briefly mention here, in this record of the events and small passages in my life, the property dispute that arose at the Rideau Camp during our vacation early in September. We had erected No Trespassing signs in the spring of this year, where someone had cut down trees on our property at the roadside. To our dismay, a person unknown to us made entry while we were there, doing additional damage to the property. The authorities were called, and we discovered that our neighbour claimed the property to be hers. The issue evolved over the month of September, culminating at last in an amicable meeting with the neighbour, who acknowledged our rightful claim, based on surveyor’s stakes, and apologized for the mistake. An understanding had been reached and the matter closed. I dealt with the entire matter myself, and found it to be extremely stressful. It certainly took the shine off the vacation! Maybe next year’s vacation will be better, one can only hope. At this point I feel I have highly overrated the concept of vacations.
My backup drive arrived on Monday, and the Cloud drive has been successfully backed up to it, the files are now easily available and have been catalogued for easy searches. It helped to work on the book while setting up the backup drive, experiencing immediately any issues, that would make using the drive to access archived files difficult. The new drive is very small, and light. It will hold all of the files I have saved since 1985. I was lucky enough to have most of my academic work, which was created on the technology of the time, floppy disks, transferred first on the smaller diskettes, and then on to hard drives. The changes in technology have been amazing.
My book it beginning to take shape. I have moved on from editing sources to setting up thumbnail images to be included beside the text description for each individual. Most of my images are very low quality. The copies sent to me are photocopies, the originals belonging to individuals who do not own scanners and find the photocopy machine the best way to share them. Poor quality images are better than no images. I spent yesterday scanning the photocopies at 600 dpi, which is the highest quality my scanner will produce.
I am thinking about how to actually publish this book. Epub is interesting, paper will be preferred by many family members, but the cost of shipping is a big concern. My first book shipped as oversize letter, which was only around $5 postage per book. The second book will be longer and heavier, and will have to ship paying for package postage, at a much higher rate.
I do not publish anything on ancestry, or on the any of the sites on the internet. These are corporate organizations seeking profit, and they may not have my research to charge my relatives, and future generations, for access to their own family history.
Recently on Facebook a fellow mentioned that he had been in the area, where my ancestors pioneered, for fifty years. I am not really sure why he mentioned how long he had been visiting the area, it wasn’t relevant to the posting. At first I replied that my family had lived in the area for 147 years, give or take a few months, and their presence was preceded by the Aboriginal people who hunted and fished in the area for generations unknown. The “who has been here longer” discussion has very little to offer in the way of building present healthy communities. I deleted my response. I found out a little bit about the person who posted the comment. He has a cottage, a recreational property, and does not make the area his primary residence. He has vacationed in the area for 50 years. Vacations are not the same as living in an area. More relevant to me is that the Aboriginal people relied on the land for survival, my family survived by building a community in which people worked, lived and died, and that non-resident, recreational use of property does offer the same opportunities to support viable communities. I say this of course, as a person who owns two Camps, two recreational properties, and as such I am very aware that the people who live in the areas surrounding our Camps form a community, which I would very much like to support, but am not committed to as I would be if I lived there. It is in my best interest to honour their commitment to the area.
It is interesting to think of the land my ancestors farmed. Humans first moved through it in temporary shelters, hunting and fishing. Then humans created modest permanent homes and farmed it. Then humans lined the water bodies with small recreational seasonal buildings. Then humans replaced most of the small recreational seasonal buildings with large, sometimes palatial, “cottages” on the water, and bought up much of the rest of the countryside for large country estates. I witnessed the last progression, and it hasn’t been pretty. I wonder what will evolve next; perhaps it will be like the Scottish highlands, with lords on estates where most of the local inhabitants have been evicted, to fill the ever growing cities.
And finally I feel like writing about a blue bowl, a blue cereal bowl. I took it out of the china cabinet last spring, and it is now sitting on the kitchen cupboard. It is a patient bowl. It has never been used. It was made just for me, by a friend who is a talented potter, almost 25 years ago. I am thinking that now might be a good time to start using it. Thanks goodness I have the time to use the blue bowl.
Worldly Distractions
Weather
18°C
Date: 7:00 AM EDT Wednesday 4 October 2017
Condition: Mostly Cloudy
Pressure: 102.5 kPa
Tendency: Falling
Temperature: 17.5°C
Dew point: 14.3°C
Humidity: 81%
Wind: S 31 km/h
Visibility: 24 km
Quote
“Fortune does not change men, it unmasks them.”
Suzanne Necker
1739 – 1794
I believe this statement would have been based on keen, first hand observations, over a long period of time.
A bowl that a friend made just for you is certainly to be treasured but also to be used!
So sorry to hear about the distressing property battle. Glad it turned out well for you. Please don’t give up on vacations yet! I really think things can only get better and any conflicts will become fewer and far between.
Maggie, please check out wikitree.com as a home for your ancestry info. It’s a large, active group of souls that seem like-minded in their wish to preserve family connections – and it’s free. I started out on ancestry.com but I’ve moved all my info over to wikitree, and have had a number of interactions there, helping me to increase and strengthen the info I have on my family.
Yes, sounds like it’s time to start using your blue cereal bowl. How lovely that someone made it especially for you! Maybe we could get a picture of the first time you use it, if it’s not an imposition of course? 🙂
Bex, I agree, the bowl needs my attention! It is beautiful, so I am looking forward to it.
Teri, property battles are a misery. I’ve been in a few in my time, always in the right, and have always had things resolved favourably, because I do my homework and document, document, document. But getting all the documents, doing all the research, and having to take less than pleasant measures to ensure my rights are respected is not a good time.
Teri, wikitree.com sounds interesting. I had a look at it and can see that it is an excellent place to make connections. I won’t post my research there, reasons in next paragraph, and I notice none of the other researchers in my family have either!
I keep my data in a database on my computers, and prefer to keep it there. In my family there are multiple researchers, and I find that there are a few that are very competitive, don’t share, only take, and then claim to have done the research themselves. I avoid that by keeping my own records, and publishing books with my name on them, and quoting all my sources so interested family members can see where I got the information. I find the discussions with other researchers largely fruitless, with a few notable exceptions, as my standard of proof is far more rigorous, so that anything I do publish is accurate. I find that on ancestry and around the internet, some information that the other researchers have put online is simply incorrect, and then a multitude of people copy it. I have been offered as proof of an incorrect “fact”, that x number of other researchers have published this, so it must be true. I have evidence, sound, reliable evidence, that it not true. So I just avoid the whole sorry situation and carry on with my carefully researched, thoroughly documented project.
A picture of the blue bowl sounds in order Teri!
The nice thing about wikitree is that someone can offer changes to your listings if they think they’ve found different info or if they think they have a duplicate entry, but you can reject the connection or change. But I do understand your concern.
Regarding authoritative sources, I ran into a similar problem while factchecking as an editor for the encyclopedia. I relied mainly on the internet at first and found that many websites would copy from other websites, word for word, and not name their sources either! Incorrect repetition was abundant.
-Kate
I think wikitree is a great resource Teri. My research seldom needs to be changed, although there have been a few conjectures that didn’t pan out, and a few duplicate entries that needed looking into.
I just discovered, while adding image links to the data entries, that an enterprising distant cousin had two wives, many children with each, and wasn’t legally married to either. They lived in different school zones in the same city, and I wonder if they knew about each other. Then I found him in a census with a different woman before he met the two he had children with. Not legally bigamy, but darn close.
Kate, it is discouraging how an incorrect piece of information becomes accepted due to repetition!
A person who should know better tried to correct my work, basing his source of information on an incorrect piece of information that he said, “mulitple researchers have found this, they can’t all be wrong.” In that specific case I knew who first posted the incorrect information, had interacted with the initial author, who cited no sources, and tried to get him to correct his online information. He did so eventually, but dozens and dozens of people still have the misinformation posted on the internet.
Another instance was when a relative said, after one week, “I have researched the family tree!”, and he sent me a copy of his “work”, which he had copied from the internet, and then claimed it was his own research. He honestly did not know the difference between copy and paste and doing the research. The people who did all the work were given no credit whatsoever.
I don’t post 25 years of research on the internet for others to claim authorship. I know my work because it has significantly more accurate information. I can tell, in most online copy and paste postings, who they lifted the information from, the errors are the author’s signature.