Live from New York! It`s Silliyak and Moonrabbit!

I want to make clear that anything that might appear as whining here, is done with the understanding of the great suffering areas of the country have and are continuing to endure. Our hearts go out to everyone who has suffered in this terrible time.


It was a rough start on Thursday. reservations were made for a vacation rental for 2 weeks which included being picked up at JFK.
After a smooth flight, it was a bumpy arrival due to bad weather. Despite this we were 30 minutes early. 90 minutes later, after 3 unanswered calls and an email to the "landlord" we caught a shuttle, "Straight to your door" They didn't mention that there was a transfer, and that was a smaller bus that we couldn't get on and had to wait another hour for the next one. THAT bus dropped us off on the wrong street, but we caught the mistake before he got away. When we finally got to "our" rental, there was no one to meet us, no one knew the name we had or anything about a vacation rental in the bldg.It was nice having my Ipad to make a reservation right then, we got the last room.There are Brits EVERYWHERE here.
By 7pm, we caught a taxi to the Wellington Hotel near Times Square. We have still not heard from the scam artist, and it's pretty clear it's a scam. We have filed a dispute with Paypal, and will make a police complaint next week if we haven't heard anything.
We spent Friday morning watching the royal wedding and filing the dispute. We wandered down to Times Square and ended up in a crowd watching on a bunch of large screens with commentary by "Say Yes To The Dress" from TLC channel. We also started shopping for another hotel, ending up Friday at the Sheraton 4 Points Chelsea. Not exactly saving money.
Our stress level has lowered and we are enjoying the trip. Pictures to follow It's interesting to note that our usual pattern of taking massive amounts of pictures the first several days has NOT occurred.

A thoughtful neighbor

put this up for our lost friend, an "ex" (no such thing) Marine.

R.I.P Norma

Our wonderful neighbor is gone, almost a year to the day after her diagnosis.

Lost again in a genealogical fog

Late last night, a bunch of "hints" came up in Ancestry.com. I had some free time before my yoga class this morning, so I thought I'd start winnowing them out, I find them slightly annoying, something that has to be dealt with. About half were on a line I'm not following anymore, but half were on my dad's line. As I perused the information, I found Samuel Maris Wilkinson. Born 1897, died in France 1918. So I checked military records, and found that he had enlisted in the Marines in Dec 1917, was wounded in June 1918, and died of his wounds. So few facts, but one can imagine so much. I may research June 1918 battles, but next thing I know I've missed Yoga.

I feel like my heart got exercised a bit, and a bit of poor Samuel has resurfaced.

Update, this happened in June of 1918.

The Battle of Belleau Wood. 

Genealogical Critical Mass

I have been working on my genealogy tree for a couple of years now, joining Ancestry.com as needed, partially because one brother is a Morman, and also out of curiosity. Typically, I would make great strides, then get stuck for a LONG time.  Last year,after a long hiatus, I hired a genealogist via Ancestry.com to try and break through on the male line of my dad.

We got "over the pond" back to Antrim, Ireland in 1712. I found that when they came over, they were Quakers in North Carolina, near Raleigh. Sad to say they were slave owners for a time. I'm not sure how to feel about that. One ancestor married a Presbyterian and got kicked out of the Quakers.

The family fortunes seemed to have declined, and my line moved to Arkansas for a few generations. The only nagging question left for me is the date of death of my great great Grandfather and the circumstances. (And why he was named "Egbert", it's not surprising that he's the only one!)

Anyway, the point I wanted to get to, is that after all this struggle for bits of information, you come to a point  where you start intersecting with other peoples trees and are suddenly FLOODED with new distant relations and the information about them. And every time you enter them, Ancestry.com gives you new links, which lead to even MORE new relations. These people knew how to have babies! I'm talking about 8-10 with the first wife, then a few more with the next! Then maybe 60% live to breed and have another 8-12 kids!

So I've stopped entering "new" people, unless someone shows up who is "closely" related or otherwise interesting. I have one relation with the nickname "the kid" who was killed by a bushwacker. I'm guessing that nickname predisposes you to that sort of thing, versus longevity. Another was a minister who founded a church in Arkansas, who was kicked out of the same church for drunkeness.

It's been interesting.