Archive for the ‘Family History & Geneology’ Category

Many things

Thursday, August 28th, 2008

OK, yikes.  So, I kind of took a vacation from the internet.  Several things took place in my life in the past month or so that deserved full blog posts of their own, but they’re just going to get briefly mentioned here in list form, ’cause this blog is supposed to be a release, not something I avoid because there’s so much I need to do on it.

  • Cousin’s wedding in Ithaca, NY.  A happy occasion, of course.  Also, Ithaca is Gorges (TM).  Saw my parents, saw waterfalls, hiked through a state park named after my relatives, learned a lot of family history from my grandmother, met my other cousin’s new daughter.
  • Had a lovely beach week vacation with my in-laws.  Sand, sun, ocean, boardwalk, pizza, monkeybread, and all manner of junk food.  Very relaxing and awesome.
  • Found a nice park/reserve not far from my house, with lots of hiking/biking trails and a mountain-top view all the way to Hartford.  Immediately made me like living here better.  Hope to get back there soon on my bike.
  • Got research funding for the fall.  Yay!
  • Veepstakes.  Way back in May I started a long entry about the Obama veepstakes, but never finished it.  Obviously, this is now totally dated.  But I think Biden was a reasonable choice.
  • Am buying a car.  That is, Julie’s parents and my parents have each contributed generously to fund the purchase of a car for us, to replace Julie’s broken-climate-control Ford and to lessen the 150-500 miles/week commuting burden on my 12-year-old, 203,00 miles minivan.  (Someday I’ll be a real grown-up, able to provide for myself and my family.  Someday.  I hope.)  We found/bargained for a pretty good deal on a silver 2003 Honda Civic EX sedan with only 38,000 miles on it.  I put the deposit down on Monday, we’ll close tomorrow, and I think we’ll have the car on Friday.  Process rather stressful, but exciting to be getting a new(er) car!  Photos should appear here soon.
  • Summer is basically over.  How the hell did that happen?

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Posted in 2008 Elections cycle, Family, Family History & Geneology, Life, Life in graduate school | 5 Comments »

I might not go blind

Saturday, March 15th, 2008

I saw a retinal specialist today. I was referred to him because I have a rare genetic degenerative eye disease. (In fact, it appears that my family has the even rarer adult-onset form of the already-rare condition.) Back when I was a teenager, my eye doctor at the time could see very obvious signs of the disease in my eyes. But today the specialist told me “if I didn’t know about your family history, I wouldn’t think you have Best’s.” Apparently at the moment there are only very subtle signs of the condition in my retina. Now, it’s an episodic sort of thing, so it’s not surprising that the accumulations that were visible when I was a teenager have dissipated, but the fact that they left so little behind can’t be a bad thing. I still have plenty of reason to expect things to get worse later in life, but for now my eyes look okay. So, that’s good.

To examine me, they had to dilate my pupils. I had been prepared for that to leave me blind for three days, ’cause that’s what happened to my dad and my aunt. Fortunately, it wasn’t nearly that bad for me. I couldn’t drive home, and I spent the rest of the afternoon in a mostly dark room — it hurt to look at a computer or out the window — but by late tonight I think my eyes are almost back to normal. Tired, though: you know how it feels for that instant that your eyes are adjusting to a big change in light, like when you walk out into bright sunlight, or into a dark room? Well, that’s sort of how my eyes felt for about the past 12 hours.

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Posted in Family History & Geneology, Life | 2 Comments »

The story of Anne Marie Louise LePine Paddock Treman, my four-greats grandmother

Monday, October 29th, 2007

So, about a month ago I mentioned that my grandmother re-told to me the story of my great-great-great-great-grandmother’s escape from Haiti in 1803 at the age of six or so. I said I wanted to share that story here after a bit more research, and behold!: I am actually making a small dent in the backlog (yeah, who knows if the wedding, honeymoon, new computer will ever actually make it up here…). My aunt was kind enough to send me the full text of this bit of family history, and now I’m putting it up here just ’cause it’s such a cool story.

The following text was written by Arianna L. King on a typewriter in the late 1800s (Arianna was the oldest sister of Cornelia Ann Treman, who was my grandmother’s grandfather’s mother).

(more…)

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Posted in Family History & Geneology, Meta | 1 Comment »

Congratulations Joe & Ilene!

Thursday, October 4th, 2007

Yipes. It’s been hard to get back into the habit of updating. I’ve got plenty of things I want to blog, but I don’t have time to make each entry the eloquent, multimedia masterpiece essay I’d like it to be. And then there are all those back entries from this summer that are now so far past that blogging about them seems a bit ridiculous. Oh well.

Last weekend Julie and I were in Ithaca, NY to celebrate her brother Joe’s marriage to his lovely now-wife Ilene. It was a wonderful weekend. Julie and I met in Westfield, ditched a car, and drove to Ithaca late Thursday night. Friday I had to stay and work in the hotel while Julie (and Elena) helped put the final touches on decorations and bouquets and the like. The rehearsal dinner was really really delicious (family-style at ZaZa’s Cucina), and we came home with three huge doggy-boxes of leftovers.

Saturday morning started very gray and dreary, but turned into a gorgeous sunny day by lunchtime. The ceremony was held after lunch in beautiful Sage Chapel on Cornell’s campus, where, it turns out, my great grandparents were also married. The ceremony was lovely: as Joe had envisioned, it was sort of a concert with a wedding sideshow. A string quartet played before the ceremony; Julie and two of Joe’s other friends sang for the processional (Ilene looked beautiful in her dress, of course, and the chinese-patterned red bridesmaid dresses were really cool, and of course they guys looked great, too); and there were at least three other musical performances, including another piece sung by my own wife, and a piece that Joe composed for Ilene for this occasion performed by a men’s choir of at least 30 people, all friends of Joe’s.

The reception was held at a beautiful B&B type place about half an hour outside Ithaca, with a huge green lawn overlooking a lake. Joe’s best man, Ken, gave a really excellent toast — it pays to have a playwright as your best man. Larry G. played and sang for the parent-child dance, and Marcia G. once again made the wedding cake (which was once again beautiful and delicious — and this time I got to eat some at the reception!). And the evening ended with a moonlit serenade on the lawn outside, a reunion of Joe’s college a capella group.

Sunday, after the brunch to send Joe and Ilene off to their Hawaiian honeymoon, Julie and I visited my grandmother and step-grandfather (but he’s been my step-grandfather all my life, so I don’t really think of him as ’step-’), who live in a retirement community in Cayuga Heights (which is basically an extension of Ithaca). It was a wonderful visit full of sharing of family history: paintings done by my great-grandmother and my grandmother, a visit to the plaque commemorating the founding of Cayuga Heights by my great-great-grandfather, and a retelling of the story of Anne Marie Louise LePine Paddock Treman, my (if we counted correctly) four-greats grandmother who escaped a slave rebellion in Haiti in 1803 at the age of 7 or so…but that’s a story that deserves its own entry, and a bit more research on my part. Ack! Another into the backlog!

Also on my list of things to do in my nonexistant free time is set up Gallery on this website, for sharing photos and videos of such events. Can’t promise that will happen soon, but I’m trying to get to it. And tomorrow it’s off to another wedding — Congratulations Lela and Joel!

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Posted in Family, Family History & Geneology, Life, Meta | 3 Comments »