Last time I wrote it was almost Thanksgiving. Now Thanksgiving is history and next up is Christmas. Incredible.

Just thought I’d post a reminder about the Chappell’s Google Sites Home. It’s sort of a duplicate genealogy site, not as complete as the Ancestry section of the regular Chappells Site, but different and kind of interesting. In the left column there are some day counters, one of which shows how many days since Izzy was born.

Good grief. I thought Kansas might be gonna win the “Border War” but with less than two minutes left it appears they’ve blown it. If a miracle happens, I guess I’ll log back in and edit this.

There was a specific day I could tell summer was over and winter was here, time to think about buying presents, buying tickets, wearing heavy coats, shovelling the driveway, all that. It was about two weeks ago; might’ve been September 1. Seemed early this year.

Always reminds me of that Pogo frame, wait, it’s not a “frame” it’s something else; what’s that word? Dammit, seems like this happens more and more. It’s that word for one “frame” of a comic strip. Ah, “panel”. That Pogo panel with “Spring has sprung, fall has fell, winter’s here, and it’s cold as heck.” Well, I think it was Pogo, anyway.

When I was a kid, I marked time by hours. Later, I began marking it by days. Seems like not that long ago I marked it by weeks. It amazed me how quickly one Thursday came after another (Thursday is trash day – seemed like all I did was take out the garbage cans). Now it seems to go by the year. The incredible part is it seems there’s about the same amount of time between years and there used to be between hours.

<sigh>

On account of striking up an email acquaintance with a new distant cousin across the pond, I got fired up to add letters from “Louie” Cook, written in 1900 and 1930, to the Ancestry section of the Chappell Family Website. Louie’s position in the genealogy picture had been less than clear, although the evidence was there had I examined it sufficiently. Having recently added the Genealogy Documents page, which I think makes a kinda cool presentation by use of javascript, I decided to employ the same method to showcase Louie’s letters. Well, it snowballed. Quite a few “letters from the past” are sprinkled throughout the ancestry pages of the site, mostly as “pdf” files. I thought presenting them in the same fashion as Louie’s letters would make them more accessible and readable. So, it became a project, culminating in the Letters From the Past page. There are more letters yet to include; but I need to take a rest from the project and deal with them later, like after I get a little caught up on my “day job” and get my taxes done.

Meanwhile, I think it’s much easier to enjoy the letters that are there, and see how they overlap with common references, yielding a more dynamic view of our “living” ancestors.

I uploaded several genealogical documents I obtained during investigation of Jesse Chappell’s ancestry. They’re accessible in an “album” sort of format. On the Chappell Family Ancestry page there’s now a button marked Genealogy Documents. Click the button to get the documents matrix. Click on individual documents for enlargements. I would invite people to look, in particular, at Charlotte Chappell’s birth certificate. If anybody can make out the date of birth, let me know. It’s clearly February of 1840; but the date in February? I’m leaning toward “Seventh”. Still doesn’t look right, but I can’t come up with anything else.

There’s plenty to write about now that Christmas is upon (past) us, but I wanted to post links to a couple of videos. In a recent email, Bev Medling wrote, “For your Christmas enjoyment, Karina’s Choir made the news, you have to listen to the commercials first but hang in there and you will see our girl perform.”

So, check out http://www.keyetv.com/mediacenter/local.aspx?videoId=16433 and  http://www.keyetv.com/mediacenter/local.aspx?videoId=16434.

Saturday we learned that Marjorie passed away during the night. This news was received with great sadness, but it was also occasion to reflect on a special and remarkable person. Marjorie was a woman who, possibly more than any I’ve known, could not have been faulted for a nihilistic view of life, from the hardships and tragedies it dealt her. But, that was not Marjorie, not at all. She was always buoyant, animated, even exuberant. I can’t recall her complaining about anything; I can recall her enthusiasm about family, golf, cards, everything. She could talk about anything; the breadth of her knowledge and scope of her conversationalism often left me hard pressed to keep up.

I don’t think anybody could intimidate her; yet she was unpretentious and unassuming. She could cut through any kind of hodge podge and make a point with succinct and incontrovertible insight; yet she was empathetic and open minded. I think above all else she valued and treasured family. In this regard, I feel like I let her down. She would never say so, of course; if somebody sought forgiveness she would insist there was nothing to forgive. So, let me add magnanimous to the list of qualities that made her so special. As so often happens at the loss of a loved one, I wish I had spent more time with her, in person or even just by phone. Any time spent with Marjorie was time well spent. I miss her already; a lot.

You can click on the “thumbnail” images to see larger pictures.