Tag: family history

My Least Favorite City (although you wouldn’t know it from the photos)

Published on by Janet Sunderland15 Comments

 

I’m staggering back to what passes for normal after a week in Las Vegas. As a rule, I love cities: the structures, people, old shops, twisting roads. I do not love Las Vegas. It’s miles and miles of sameness: same style of houses/same color of houses/gigantic, confusing, under-construction-everywhere freeways/and impossible to spot landmarks (all streets/houses/shopping areas look the same–thank goodness for Google maps!). However, our grandson was graduating from a grueling year of nursing school and flying back and forth to San Diego where home and wife and newly born son were, and we are proud of him.

Ergo. La La Las Vegas.

Cliff and I ran away from the family one night and went to The Eiffel Tower Restaurant in the Paris Casino. From the top of the Eiffel Tower, I can deal with the city. And when I’m graced with exquisite food, I’m even nicer.

The tower restaurant has floor to ceiling windows and Cliff reserved a window table across from the dancing waters of the Bellagio; the same dancing waters made famous in various movies, especially Oceans Eleven and twelve and thirteen. At any rate, we had a ringside seat to dancing waters without having to stand with throngs of people on the sidewalk.

And the meal was extraordinary. I chose Dover Sole and Cliff, Veal Medallions. We shared a spring greens salad, which, instead of being in a bowl, was heaped inside a ring of paper-thin slices of zucchini, and a final souffle desert. And champagne and a perfect Negroni. Oh. My. Goodness.

Here’s the video that drew us in – watch it all the way and you’ll learn from a master chef how to make a perfect Dover Sole. You’ll also get a better view of the restaurant in general.

The first shopping trip we made after coming home? Trader Joe’s for Dover Sole. I followed the Chef’s directions from the above video. Not quite the Eiffel Tower Restaurant, but just as good and quieter.

So, all in all, a lovely dinner which, along with a fine grandson graduating from a tough program with a 4.0 and an eleven month old great-grandson and his mamma and visiting with son and daughter-in-law, made Las Vegas worth while.

Maybe that’s also why I’m still recovering!

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Help Me Out Here…

Published on by Janet Sunderland18 Comments

books-messyI need your help, dear reader. You see, I’ve begun another book before the first one is sold and so I’m once more doing research. “Captured by Wind,” it’s tentatively called, my book, not the books above, and ostensibly (meaning apparently but perhaps not actually) it’s to chronicle my love of storm and winds and wandering. I come from a long and illustrious line of wind wanderers. Here, for example, is the second paragraph of the manuscript.

I’m hardly the first. Wind and wanderers have a long and tumultuous history: Moses, Odysseus, Shelly, Wagner’s Valkyries and Washington Irving’s horseman, and long streams of pioneers and Native Americans, many lost to history. The list is endless, tossed by the wind. And lest we forget, there was Admiral Francis Beaufort, hydrographer and officer in the Royal Navy, who developed the Beaufort Wind Scale still in use today. 

You can see already what a complicated task I’ve set up for myself.

I began by ordering a book about Admiral Francis Beaufort, Gale Force 10, which chronicles his life from childhood to somewhere but I’ve only gotten to page forty-three because in writing in my haphazard way when I’m trying to figure out something, and many pages after writing about my wandering childhood and wind on the farm (yes, I know, it’s a leap but makes sense in the several pages of weaving and writing…one hopes…) I wrote:

While my early wandering took me across fields, Admiral Francis Beaufort began his wandering, at fourteen, on a ship bound for China. He was to comment later that his was “a strictly nomadic family,” although well versed in both scholarship and religion, as was mine: his Huguenot, mine Quaker. The beliefs of both the Huguenots and the Quakers made them outcasts, forced to keep moving until they arrived in more northern and less settled lands, his in Ireland in the mid-1700s, mine a century later in northern Kansas.

Well. Then. You see, my great-great-grandmother, Lucinda Moore, was part of that Quaker migration although she was born a Reich and likely Moravian (there’s not a lot of difference between Moravian and Quaker although Quakers were more persecuted), at New Salem, now Winston-Salem, so then I had to go find the article my great-grandfather wrote about his mother who married three men – the first two died leaving her with assorted children, and to a dugout with Mr. Moore in a hillside in Jewel County, Kansas where my great-grandfather was born.

However, in rising from my writing to go find the article, I was sucked into a black hole of years of saved writing: on Odysseus, on Kansas history, on prairie fires, on mythology, etc etc etc, having forgotten how much I’d accumulated years ago as I was thinking of writing Kansas Chronicles about my family and my step-family and Grandpa Albert telling stories of trading with the Native Americans who had an encampment just north of our farm.

Maybe that’s what I’m writing. The Kansas Chronicles, in a different form.

But there’s still that above pile of books, culled from my bookshelves dedicated to Kansas writing, and several file folders filled with newspaper clippings and stories and history and more pieces of writing. And I didn’t even add Gale Force 10 to the pile or a photo of the digital files I’ve saved and already written in the folder called Kansas Chronicles, saved since I wrote and published, in 2008, the first essay, On Fire and Family, about burning off the prairie after I’d returned to the Kansas farm.

And that’s what happens when you find out what you thought was a fresh idea has been simmering on the back burner for years.

Thanks. I calmer now. The task is daunting, but it seems to be the task I’ve embarked upon.

Unless, of course, I can convince myself to write the Mexico book which is also partly written.

I’ll update from time to time.

Family Trees and Reunions

Published on by Janet Sunderland16 Comments

My childhood was filled with family reunions. And family, for that matter: Great-grandparents, Grandparents, parents, siblings, Great-Aunts and Uncles, Aunts and Uncles, their offspring, my cousins, first cousins, first cousins-once-removed, and second cousins. Those last two were hard to figure out. The conversation wound back a couple of generations and I’d be lost in the family tree.

There were, of course, the formal reunions like marriages, deaths, Grandpa’s ninetieth birthday, holidays, 50th and 60th wedding anniversaries. Those were big! But mostly we got together because we liked being together and there were enough families and enough reasons to make it happen often.

This is a Sunderland family reunion with “Grandma and Grandpa Walt.”” No one said just Grandma, unless you wanted something real bad. It was Grandma Walt. I learned a lot about cooking from her, my hands look like her’s when I’m kneading dough. And I have her name, the name no one ever said. And I don’t say. Because it’s ours.

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Grandma Walt, feeding family

That’s the Sunderland side of the family. Four to six brothers, I lose track, came to Missouri/Kansas. My grandfather’s father was one of those brothers and they settled in Marshall County, Kansas.

Then there’s the story of the Ellis and Moore families. That’s my mother’s side. Her great-grandmother, (my great-great grandmother) Lucinda Moore, came across the country in a Quaker migration and gave birth to my great-grandfather in a newly dugout home from a hillside, Jewell County, Kansas, above a stream is my guess. The dugout, not the birth.

And then there’s Mr. Ellis, my grandfather, a railroad man up from Kentucky who seduced a good Quaker girl…and married her…and had children, my mother the oldest.

How that whole family got from Jewell County, Kansas to Marshall County, Kansas is a more complicated story…my mother born in Jewell County…but it came down to Grandpa the Railroad Man getting a transfer to Frankfort, Kansas. Her parents followed with the rest of their children. My mother’s mother the eldest. And they all grew up in Marshall County.

The Bad Boy and the Quaker
The Bad Boy and the Quaker
Grandparents
Mother’s Parents and Grandparents

 

Now you understand why it became confusing to sort out the first-cousin-once-removed from the second. There were a lot of us.

All of which, in a round-about-way, gets me to our family reunions this summer on our road trip. We stopped along the way visit family in West Virginia and I got to hold my brand-new great-nephew and teach him how to suck his thump. Great-Aunties have prerogatives. But it was the first reunion for my primary group, grandparents, children, grandchildren. Well, there was one other when my granddaughter-in-law-to-be flew here one Christmas to check out her new boyfriend, my grandson’s family. I was impressed. This reunion was a family vacation, in cabin in the woods outside Blue Ridge, Georgia, on a lake. We played poker again just like the first time.

A grandson’s arms long enough to love us all

We laughed and we cooked and we ate. My daughter-in-law and I both take pride in feeding people. So does my granddaughter-in-law, although she and grandson more inclined to take people out to dinner, and now we take selfies.

My sisters and I, and the cousins, all adults, talk of when we could have the next family reunion, but we are so wide-spread, from New York State to Hawaii, and points in between, the task to organize becomes daunting.

At least we’re all on Facebook. The oldest of our current crop of babies, three so far, turned one-year-old yesterday, a girl. The two younger ones, boys, are less than six-months old. Another arrives early next year. The cousins’ babies.

So will they be second cousins? Or first cousins once removed? There must be a formula for that. I don’t think I learned it, growing up.

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Songs I Never Sing

Published on by Janet Sunderland7 Comments

Three favorite songs? That’s not as easy as it sounds. I’m not a sound person. I have no auditory memory. So sounds get in my way more than they help. My writing room is silent. I’ve practiced writing to music, but alas, it never works for more than fifteen minutes. Songs. What songs stay with me? Well, this morning, when I saw it was a friend’s birthday, a friend who exceeds me in age by not so much, I wrote, “If I’d ‘a known it was your birthday, I’d have backed a cake” because the old song, If I’d known you were coming I’d’ve baked a cake; baked a cake; baked a cake…” I hoped my friend was old enough to catch the pun from a song my mother sang years ago. I remember those songs. Another that came to me just a few days ago was “June is bustin’ out all over, all over the meadows and the hills….” It always comes when June comes. Mom sang that too. My older sister has a great voice and sings. Me, not so much. When I lived in New York and part of the acting world, I took singing lessons. Voice lessons vital for New York actors. I studied with a reputable teacher but he decided I was a soprano. Not. I didn’t know it at the time and I worked hard to be a soprano, but I should have remembered my mother was an alto. I am too. He didn’t seem to recognize that or perhaps my voice was stronger in those days. I could almost sing bass these days. But I’m getting off track. Favorite songs. Favorite songs. Beatles? Oh, maybe. John Fogerty? Yeah, I like his work. Probably my favorite songs come from old blues singers. “I got a man, crazy for me. He’s funny that way….” Billie Holiday sang. No one could phrase like she did. Yeah. Several of hers are favorites. And Willie Nelson. “Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys….” But I did. Both of them. Abet 20th Century cowboys whatever that means. But what other favorite songs? What I like about the two I mentioned was the story in each of them. I like songs with stories. The rest? Oh, I can listen to classical music and soar with the sound, but it doesn’t stick. Words stick. “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine…” Mother sang. Me, I write words. Remember words. Stacks and stacks of words line up and layer around my writing space. And now I’m about out of words for remembering any songs and free writing is still demanded for a few more minutes. I can free write. That’s words. Songs? I only sing snatches of songs or listen for snatches and then I smile and remember the story and go on with whatever I’m doing. I don’t sing when I’m cooking or driving or walking. I think words. You’d think that having a mother who sang would have rubbed off on me some way or another. Songs for morning or afternoon, songs for dinner, songs for….well, anytime like this when asked what’s your three favorite songs. Duh. Not. Well, maybe if I can dredge some up. Oh, yeah, Mom’s songs. So that’s what I can do with the prompt today. But my fingers are warmed up for writing words…..Oh. Here’s one more….. “She’ll be comin’ around the mountain when she comes….” Yep. That’s me. On the road again… and that’s another Willie tune. I made a movie with Willie once long time ago. He kissed me as I left the set. One of many kissed he bestowed on various ladies. My friend Jessica says I should get a button made: I got kissed by Willie Nelson. But I haven’t.

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Daily Post: Futures Past

Published on by Janet Sunderland1 Comment

Twenty years ago, the premier advice, from givers-of-advice on job searches, was how to prepare for the question, “What do you see yourself doing in five years?” Sometimes the time frame in a very aggressive job search put the number at ten.

I had no idea. Usually I could figure out today and even a week in advance, but five years? What would I be doing in five years? Even pondering the question made me laugh out loud. Not to a recruiter’s face, mind you, but otherwise, yes. Laugh out loud.

I was asked to ponder the question in high school. And after I began college. Again, I had no idea so I took the basics and let it go at that.

Even twenty years ago, living a professional life in Washington D.C., I had no idea. I’d already had several careers. Perhaps I should say “faux-professional.” As a contractor for the Office of Personnel Management, I was, essentially, a part-time teacher.

But today’s Daily Post question asked “As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up? How close or far are you from that vision?”

Oddly enough, my future really was in my past. As a kid, I wrote all the time. A diary, mostly, that I hid under my pillow and was always surprised when my mom found it. And outraged, I might add. But I never expected to be a writer. That simply wasn’t on my horizon even though my mother wrote a column for the local paper and my grandmother was a poet. But my grandmother was dead and my mother annoying. Why would I be a writer? But I am.

What I really and truly dreamed about was a home, a husband, kids, and a picket fence around it all. Truly. So in high school, I got tired of the question and left school to marry a soldier. We moved all over the place but no picket fence. No marriage after a while either. But I did have kids. I was part of the way there.

In 2003, Cliff and I bought this 1924 two-story stucco and brick house with a privacy fence around the back yard. Taller than a picket fence, but nonetheless, a fence. In 2004 we married. In 2005 we got a kid. True, oldest kid who came to live with us and go to college, nonetheless, a kid.

And that’s how we’ve lived ever since, home, fence, kid.

Oh. And writer.

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