Wow, you just never know what reach some random blog writings might have. But a few months ago I wrote about the time capsule we buried under our new addition. And a couple of months later I was contacted by a writer working on an article about time capsules for a parenting magazine, and tonight I found the article he produced.
Enjoy.
Preserving Memories with a Family Time Capsule
By Mark Stackpole, Babies Today
Today my wife Jennifer and I mark our 19th wedding anniversary. Our life together so far has been better than I ever could have imagined, and I look forward to all that lies ahead in our 20th married year and beyond.
I love you Jennifer!
We have a new member of the family today, an upright piano that we found on Craig’s list. The price was right. It was offered for free to whomever would come and haul it away. After sharing the link with my piano-playing brother (who advised us to go for it), and visting it with my wife and daughter, we agreed to take it. Wisely, I hired a moving company to pick it up and deliver it, a decision that was well reinforced by watching the effort it took to unload it and get in into our house.
The piano is a ‘Kingsbury’ model upright, manufactured by the Chicago Cable Company. Based on its serial number, it’s likely this piano was built between 1905 and 1910. It needs some work. Several of the keys are missing their ivory, and it needs to be tuned. A bottle of furniture polish will go a long way to reveal some beautuiful wood. And we’ll need to find a matching bench or stool. I’ve been promising my wife a piano for years, and with our addition in the works, we will soon have the room needed to accomodate it. We always had a piano in my home growing up, and so did my wife. So it feels right having one. And I’m intrigued by its age. How many owners has this particular piano had in its 100 years? How many parties have gathered around it? How many players have pounded its keys? Then again, I’m apprehensive. I’m not raising any little Mozart’s here. Will I be able to bear the “music”? I worry this may join ‘keeping one of the kittens’ as a decision I will regret. Time will tell.
For me, one of the most satisfying parts of my hobby of exploring family history is finding and visiting the burial sites of my relatives. And I have a growing album of photos from such visits. While these visits sometimes can provide new information, more importantly they give me a sense of connection and satisfaction. Regardless of anyone’s individual beliefs in an afterlife, I know that one sure way to live on after death is in the memories of others. And I like that.
As nice as these cemetery visits are, it’s not always possible to make them. And that’s where a great site for Genealogists and Graveyard enthusiasts can be a big help. Find-A-Grave is a virtual cemetery in which information matching burials in real world cemeteries. For example, you can find information about my brother Sean, and my Great Grandmother Myrtle on the site.
One feature that’s available on Find-A-Grave is to request a photo. If there is a burial for which you’re interested in seeing a headstone photo, you can submit your request on the site. The request will be sent to registered users who have agreed to be photo volunteers that live near that cemetery. I have submitted a few such requests, but to earn the favor, I wanted to do the same for someone else. And I recently got the opportunity when a request to visit Hardens Hill Cemetery and photograph a particular headstone arrived in my email.
Thanks to the Google Map that showed the location, it was easy to find our way to Harden’s Hill Cemetery, unexpectedly nestled in some woods at the end of a cul-de-sac in a development just minutes from our home. My daughter Colleen joined me on the hunt, and we quickly found our subject, Theodore Reid. I took a bunch of photos, and added all of them to the appropriate internments on Find-A-Grave. The oldest burial we spotted at Harden’s Hill was in 1905, the most recent in 2005. And by the flowers all about, it was obvious this is not a forgotten cemetery. But even when there’s not human visitors, we learned that there are others keeping watch.
A strong and fast-moving thunderstorm had just passed, bringing dramatic dark clouds, major lightning bolts, and a much needed downpour. As it started to let up, I ran out to snap some photos and was rewarded with a very cool rainbow. I just couldn’t get far enough away to capture the whole thing in my photos!
Then I went inside to drag the kids away from their video game for a minute, to come outside and take in the rainbow (and stand in an open field during an electrical storm) and give Mother Nature her due.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day to you all. This one is a couple of years old, but it is a genuine Irish toast to all of you, that I promise will be repeated this year.
P.S. This is blog post #300. They come in waves, I know, but somehow they keep on coming.
The buildup has been fun this holiday season. From decorations, parties, Christmas movies and caroling… and it has all led to a very Merry Christmas.
With best wishes… We Wish You a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
We are the third owners of a house that was built in 1982. You can tell by the cool date brick. Earlier this year, while I was out doing some yard work, a man that looked to be in his 20s approached and told me that this had been his childhood home. He was about to head on an extended trip to central America, and since he was in the area he thought he’d come by and pay the place a visit. As one that has been know to make pilgrimiges to previous homes myself, I appreciated his desire to drop by and was glad to show him around.
I learned something very special about the large pine tree in our yard from our visitor. It has been a wonderful climbing tree for our kids, and a place to hang our bird feeder. The family we bought the home from told us they used to decorate it with Christmas lights until it grew too large. But what I learned was that during their first Christmas in our house, they had a live Christmas tree, and following the holiday they planted that tree in the yard of their new home. I love the fact that their 1982 Christmas tree became a gift to this house, and now it’s grown so large, our house almost looks like a gift beneath it.
As a kid, there were a few holiday traditions brought over from the old world family roots in Bohemia. Some were food related, like the braided Hoska bread, or the Kolacky pastries. But the other meant gifts, and that’s why I enjoyed the fact that we celebrated St. Nicholas day in our house.
St. Nicholas of Myra lived in the 4th Century in what is today the country of Turkey. According to Wikipedia, he was known for secret gift giving and “is revered by many as the patron saint of seamen, merchants, archers, children, prostitutes, pharmacists, lawyers, pawnbrokers, prisoners, the city of Amsterdam and of Russia.” Happily, as a child, I fell into the child category and so was glad to celebrate his feast day on December 6th.
Although I’m not sure we really celebrated it as they did in the the Czech Republic. To me, celebrating St. Nicholas day meant an early visit by the historical predecessor to the coming visit by Santa which followed three weeks later. We’d get some toys and some candy (always a Lifesavers Sweet Storybook). That’s all that mattered.
St. Nicholas was known to travel with some less appealing companions. Good children would receive gifts from St. Nicholas, while bad once received beatings. My mother recalls that her Grandfather would dress as Black Pete to scare his siblings and later his children. Presumably they were beaten.
Yesterday we had enough snow that today the schools were closed and my wife and kids enjoyed a bonus day off. There was candy and gifts in their shoes (thanks folks), as there had been in mine. And while, like me, they know little more about the day than I did, I’m glad to carry on the tradition. Maybe this year I’ll try and make a Hoska. Next year, I’ll be Black Pete.
