Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
The Oak Tree and the Priest
O modern priest,
J. C and your Oak tree,
For a pilgrim, as a tourist,
Just once upon a life
Can approach and see
Your “venerated” marvellous tree,
Only the priest preaches a rock, a cave, a temple or a tree.
Your “Eden” anima your ancient giant,
Lodging its earthly image
Eight centuries ago
“On the edge of a wood”.
Terra mater,
Testimonium of man and history,
The mighty tree celebrates
A prior wood of her blood,
Stands there, a cornerstone,
Extending its branches into
Enough arms to its pilgrims,
A sublime for its beholder.
You fused into the ancient adorner
The tree of the trees
Behold it and surrender
Like a newborn to his lifegiver.
You crossed the desolate life
You found consolation
you found amusement
Unlike the others,
But in solitude, like a priest,
Fleeing the scorching crowd
You heard the solemn words of
Madre natura in her…
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The Old Country: Lombardia, Italia
Fascinating!
Although it is now Week 31 of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks writing challenge, I am skipping both this week’s writing prompt (Large) and next week’s prompt (Small). Instead, I will be blogging about last week’s challenge, The Old Country. (Yeah, time just got away from me… again. SMH!)
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Monday’s for Me ~ Beware, I Warned You!
😉
Back in 1960, we had some relatives come to visit us in Tucson, AZ. To be totally honest, I don’t remember who they were or whose side of the family they belonged to. I have only met them this one time, and what I do know is there was a husband, a wife, a son about my age, and a daughter who was in her early teens. So, you may ask why would you write about people you don’t remember. Well, I may not know their names but I sure remember the visit.
I know they had made their first trip “out west” from the mid-west. It
was wintertime in the desert, and they were amazed at how warm the weather was. For us, it was a little chilly at about 63 degrees. The incident I remember most was us packing up stuff to go and have a BBQ out…
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Full Moon in Aquarius, August 3, 2020
A Mars-Jupiter square can rile the unwary!
This Full Moon at 11° 46′ Aquarius on 3 August 2020, 08:59 AM PDT is poised to deliver a powerful jolt, acting as a serious wake-up call for many who have been floating along in denial. The main agent of change for this is Uranus in Taurus creating an exact fixed T-Square with the Leo Sun and Aquarius Moon. The natural balance between caring for our personal well-being and our involvement in the collective we associate with is being challenged by abrupt changes in our reality. Like it or not, we will eventually have to make adjustments to accommodate those changes.
Two of the personal planets, Mercury in Cancer and Venus in Gemini, aspect Saturn in Capricorn. Mercury and Venus are semi-sextile with Mercury opposing Saturn and Venus inconjunct it. Venus in Gemini has little in common with either planet. She is a social creature and loves to be with…
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Freaky Fridays ~ Calm Down, Please!
Hopefully calm has been restored!
Over 10 years ago I discovered Find-a-Grave by accident. I was immediately hooked. I loved the idea of seeing tombstones for the ancestors in Cemeteries that I may never be able to go and visit. Over the years I have taken thousands of photos and I have also added hundreds of memorials. Also, over the years I have asked for and received control over memorials that belong to my ancestors.
A couple of weeks ago, I got a message from someone through my 
personal Facebook page. My personal page and my Find-a-Grave account have the same name on it and this person did a search for me. They were very upset about one of the memorials I had transferred to me 10 years ago. They started out asking me why I had their Grandfathers’ memorial and accused me of putting the wrong wife and kids’ names on it. They were…
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Hometown Tuesday ~ Watertown, Middlesex County, Massachusetts
So love all the early history Valerie brings with her family genealogy research!
The year 1630 was distinguished by the arrival of “Winthrop’s fleet” which was owned by the Governor of Massachusetts Edward Winthrop, bringing a colony, well qualified by their spirit of self-denial and perseverance, to form new settlements in the wilderness. The first winter after their arrival, the food was scarce. All they had was shellfish, groundnuts and acorns to eat.
Watertown, first known to settlers as Saltonstall Plantation, was one of 
the earliest of the Massachusetts Bay Colony settlements. Founded in the early part of 1630 by a group of settlers led by Richard Saltonstall and Reverend George Phillips, it was officially incorporated as the settlement of Watertown in September 1630. Watertown initially encompassed the present communities of Weston, Waltham, and large sections of Lincoln, Belmont, and Cambridge which was one of the largest American settlements of its time. It soon grew to be an important center for trade, commerce…
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My DNA Breakthrough and Looking for a Needle in a Haystack
How brilliant!
For those of you that follow me online, you will have no doubt seen the post I made on Father’s Day, about the amazing DNA breakthrough that I made on my Family Tree, to say that I was excited is the biggest understatement of the year!!!
To give you some background, after I started researching my Family Tree, I quickly discovered that one of my Great Grandparents, Marguerite Longland Lukes had an ‘Unknown Father’ and this remained the case for around 20 years.
I left that in the ‘Too difficult to do box’!
Fast forward 20 years.
Like many Genealogist’s, I decided a couple of years ago, to take the plunge and take a DNA test with Ancestry. You can follow this series of earlier blogs here to flow my whole DNA journey.
What I…
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“The Old Country” ~52 Ancestors 52 Weeks ~ Week 30
I had always been told that my heritage was that of the English, Irish, and Native Americans. Growing up I was told to never mention the latter because it was a shameful thing to be. Our family was void of traditions or customs, so I really had no sense of being anything other than me.
Researching my family history has really surprised me and has given me a new outlook into who I am. I can now count England, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Germany, France, and Switzerland among my “Old Country” homelands. I have yet to discover any proof that I am Native American, but I am still searching!
Because most of my ancestors arrived in this country in the early to mid-1600s, I feel a tad disconnected from their place of origin. I have however found a few that arrived in the mid to late 1700s and I find myself…
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blue new moon
Evocative words inspired by the July 2020 Blue Moon!
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A Tale Of Sarah Hood And The Salem Witch Trials
A dark era in early America:
Richard Hood was born in England in 1625. He, along with his parents, made the long voyage to the Americas sometime before 1650 and they settled in Lynn County, Massachusetts. He met and married Mary Newhall here in 1652. Over the next several years they added 13 children to their family. Among these were 2 girls by the name of Rebecca and Sarah. Rebecca is my 8th Great Grandmother and the younger of these two girls. This story is not about her, but about my 8 times Grand Aunt.
In the spring of 1692 there was an increasing rise to accusations of Witchcraft in and around Salem, Massachusetts. The hysteria had actually started over in England several years earlier and spread across the sea, brought over by ever increasing newcomers. Several young girls of the village began having “fits”. They screamed, threw things, uttered peculiar sounds and contorted themselves…
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