Just remembered I took pics of this bucket Tuesday... (I pasted the update info below from a recent thread where I was babbling about this plant, so don't feel crazy if you think you already read about this.) It is apparently a great scratching post for kitties. The barn cats at the farm have multiplied and the kitties are determined to make sure all of the plants look like strange Monstera cousins, with holes in every leaf. The flower stalks on the Callisia fragrans are gone, broken off. But the plants don't look like they are too bothered by it, and/or determined to outgrow the playful kitties. He is enjoying it so much he gave me an empty bucket and asked me to fill it with whatever plants I could spare that would enjoy his porch, and asked me to put all of the Callisia stolons the kitties have broken in another bucket. He had half a dozen plastic cups of water for them on his kitchen table, each with a tangle of roots already. This past Monday, as we sat there and ate McDonald's with the Callisia cups, he talked about these plants the whole time. All he ever used to talk about before was what an idiot his boss is, what scammers the politicians are, how his family only comes around when they want something, and just a lot of negativity in general. The next time anyone encounters a lonely old guy (or gal!) and you have a tough plant or two to spare, give it to them and say you need help with an experiment to see how it will grow at their house... Amazing!

Claudia, My DH's brother and my SIL didn't care about their ancestry either. Then, a couple years ago my SIL's mother passed away & a couple months ago I got a call asking me how to get started researching her genealogy. So, you never know. People get interested for such a wide variety of reasons. Now, my BIL and his wife are headed to Wales in June to vacation & do some research on DH's family that I've asked them to dig up. BTDT, my experience with the accuracy of LDS info has been poor, at best. There's stuff on LDS's website pertaining to my family that's just not true. My grandmother's name is even wrong. There is a German-Russian Historical Society that has been working with the Russian government for over a decade now & their work is invaluable for researchers. I never would have found the Russian professor if not for the GRHS. Time will tell on the LDS project. For now, I'll wait & see how they document their information. Here's a couple pictures of 'Family Ties', the book on Mom's genealogy. I wrote well over a hundred articles for the book describing the history behind the people. A bunch of dates and places don't really tell the story of a family. I wanted to make the story come alive. I wrote the Introduction last believing it would be a slam dunk after all the research. Wrong. It took 3-4 months & ended up 31 pages. rofl Revolutionary War (I used various flags depending on the war) Just an example of an article and picture of a family crest. There are over 200 pictures... In order to make Dad's book come alive I decided to write a short novel as an introduction to the nuts & bolts of the genealogy. I used my grandfather's life as the foundation. I thought this book would be substantially shorter since I cut off research in 1767 but it's going to be close...I'm about 640 pages now & unfinished. It's hard to stop. Fortunately, binding contraints impose limits or you end up with multiple volumes. lol /tricia

I've watched both episodes, and will continue to watch the rest of the 7-episode series (Lisa Kudrow, one of the exec producers of the show, will be this week's episode), but I have mixed feelings. As an avid genealogist, I think the series is great in that it shows folks how fascinating genealogy can be -- how it can help you to learn more about yourself by learning about those who came before you. On the other hand, I think it does a bit of a disservice by making it appear that it's so easy to find information to go back so many generations. Sarah Jessica Parker and Emmitt Smith both have a lot of money, and can afford to just jump on a plane to head off to a totally different area of our country, not to mention another country altogether; when the vast majority of us simply don't have that option. Another sticking point is that Sarah Jessica Parker and Emmitt Smith (and the other five celebs to follow in the coming weeks) have the benefit of several professional genealogists and archivists searching for information long before they arrive in town. The information is simply handed to them. They aren't spending hours upon hours looking at rolls of microfilmed records, etc. I have a World Deluxe membership to Ancestry.com. I have access to every record they have. Plus, I'm an arbitrator for submissions to Ancestry.com - both from the World Archives Project as well as corrections/suggestions that folks submit regarding records that are already online. Yet I continually hit a total roadblock when it comes to ancestors/family in Pennsylvania, because Pennsylvania has close to nothing available online. I wish it were as easy as the show makes it appear...

Well, I know that my Great Great Grandmother was a Spanish Marquesa. A Marquesa is one step below a Duchess and one step above a Countess. My Great Great Granfather is Edmund Stephenson and he is the one who got the railroads up and running in Mexico.