Jamboree This Weekend!

I got my bag packed, changed my purse to one that has a shoulder strap.  Want my hands free while at SCGS Jamboree.  I've been attending most of SCGS Jamborees' since they were held in Pasadena.  It's one of my favorite conferences each year.  The last few years I've been staying at the hotel next door.  It's been so convenient.

This year I'm meeting one of my local society's Board member.  She's staying at the hotel too, we're planning on taking in some of the same sessions on Friday, the Friday night banquet and similar sessions on Saturday. 

I'm bringing along my netbook and will try and blog during the session breaks.  I hope to meet some of my favorite bloggers I follow.

Hope to see you there!

Memorial Day 2011

This weekend I made the annual, traditional trek to visit cemeteries.  Growing up, our family always went to the cemetery to lay flowers on my grandfather's grave.  It was always a game between my sister, brother and I to see who could find grandpa first.

I drove east to Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills to lay flowers at my mother's resting place.  A truly beautiful park.  She's been gone almost 14 years.  Her tablet says:



Mom is in the 2nd row from the top



BERNICE J. FICARRA

DEC. 1, 1926 - OCT. 7, 1997

BELOVED MOM AND GRANDMA



Unfortunately, little did we realize at the time of picking out the wording for her tablet, that the tablet would be in the second row from the top of the wall.  We can only read it using binoculars.  I've yet to get a decent close-up photo.  To place the flowers next to her tablet I had to get a telescoping pole, balance the little vase (hoping the whole time the water in the vase wouldn't spill down onto my upturned face), and hook the vase to the little "button" sticking out of the wall.  Mission accomplished!

My second cemetery stop was further east to Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier, CA.  Here is where my grandma Jennie (we always called her Jean), and our aunt Dorothy are buried next to each other.  This park is also beautiful. 

Jennie is my mother's mother.  The reason grandma has the same last name as my mom is because my mother's parents (Henry and Jennie) divorced and my father's parents (Philip and Angie) divorced. 
Grandma Jean met and married my father's father (Philip).  That is how my parent's met each other.

One year I came to visit the park and I couldn't locate them.  The lawn had been recently mowed and most of the headstones were covered with grass.  I located them the next year.

Aunt Dorothy is my mother's sister.

Going to Jamboree!

I've registered to attend the 2011 SCGS Jamboree in Burbank, CA next month.  I've been going to this conference for the last 8 or 9 years.  I remember attending when the Jamboree was held in a "basement" (I think it was a basement, I remember going down, down stairs) in a hotel(?)  But they've "come a long-way baby." 

It's an event I really plan for.  I'm staying Friday and Saturday nights at the Marriott so I can attend all the dinner banquets, breakfasts and some of the lunch sessions.  This is a first for me, I usually only attend a dinner banquet or two, so I'm really looking forward to everything.

A friend from my local genealogy society will meet me there on Friday.  She's taking in the Thursday workshop (I have to work that day so I can't).  We're both attending the Saturday breakfast.  She's going to try and get a ticket for Friday night's banquet.  Hope she can.  It's really so much fun when you can share the same experience.

Daughter's B-day

Today, is my oldest daughter's birthday.  She's all grown up with a life of her own.  Very separate from mine and her dad's.  Her life is on a different track; different from mine or what I would have wished for her.  She only lives 4 miles from us so we see her almost every week; on facebook and texting phone to phone.  I didn't have this much contact with my mother, times have defiantly changed.  She is such a gift to us.  I appreciate each and every moment I share with her.  Happy Birthday sweetie-pie!


Well, I'm back.  Been gone for over a month.  After I posted last month my husband and I took a physical drive down my memory lane.  When my family came out here from Chicago (oh so many, many years ago) we lived in Riverside, CA.  Since we weren't too far from my old neighborhood, we took a quick drive to see the middle school my brother and I attended and the high school my sister went to.  We then drove over to see the house our family rented.  Neighborhood looked somewhat the same.  It was actually the last house we lived in as a whole family.  My parents divorced a couple of years later.

When we were leaving the street I wanted a photo of the street name sign.  My husband pulled over, I got out of the car and stepped up onto the curb.  Not looking where I was placing my feet I stepped off the curb and felt myself falling.  I could see it all in slow-motion.  I stretched out my arms to "catch" myself and only felt my smooth car and kept falling.  My left arm was wrench back as I continued my forward fall.  Felt my right arm hit the curb (long, bloody, scrape) on the way down.  Somehow, both my arms came forward and prevented me from hitting my face on the street.  Both shoulders hurt soooo bad.  My right knee was scraped too, what a mess!  I didn't hear any bones "pop" or "crack" so figured I was just bruised.

We got me cleaned up and a cold pack on my left shoulder.  I couldn't move my arm above my waist.  Two days later I went back to work.  The shoulder still wasn't working properly.  I went to my Doctor, he suggested an X-ray, then a MRI came a week later.  Make a long story short, my left shoulder is fractured.  I'll be in a sling and off work for three weeks.

What a way to get caught up on some needed genealogy backlog.

New NARA facility in Riverside County

Yesterday, several members of the Southern California Genealogical Society (SCGS) and I had a private tour of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) at Riverside.  The Regional Archives (formerly in Laguna Niguel, CA) moved to the new facility at 23123 Cajalco Road, Perris, Riverside County, CA in 2010.  This location will better preserve records for coming generations, at more affordable cost to the government and taxpayers.  All holdings are open for on-site research at their new research room and are available to the public.

The tour was conducted by Kerry Bartels, an Archives Specialist at the facility.  We were taken into two secured areas.  One was a processing room where some digitalizing  and preserving of records were performed.  The second area was one of the warehouse bays that was temperature controlled at all times.  There were rows and rows of ceiling high metal shelves of archival boxes that held thousands of files of original federal and regional records.  Mr. Bartels explained the process the records go through once they arrive at the facility. 

After the tour, we met him in the training room for a mini talk designed to show genealogists how they can use the National Archives website to determine what records are in the National Archives would be of use in their particular family research.  He'll be teaching a two hour class on this very subject at the SCGS Jamboree in Burbank, Saturday, June 11th.  I highly recommend, don't miss it!  NARA website is not user friendly.  Once you learn how to navigate, you'll be able to order file copies of your own.