Got a good one today for you………. ready for a great big belly laugh??

Hubby and I spotted this in downtown Auckland, New Zealand, in a recessed-shop-front-door on local business. In case you cannot read it, here’s help:

“If you do pee here it is safe to assume that you have no concept of literacy or common decency.  P.S. If you do happen to understand “big city talk words” and are close enough to read this, then Congrats! You just made the Baby Dick Cam Wall of Fame!”

Are you laughing? Big time laughing??

Find-A-Grave tidbit:  Did you realize this? When you go out and volunteer to photograph a gravemarker and upload it to Find-A-Grave, YOU are the “owner” of said photo even though likely you don’t really have a personal interest in that person or their marker.

BUT if a person who does have a personal interest in that person or marker, they may (they should) ask YOU to either add some biographical information to the page or ask your permission to do it. If such a person/request surfaces regarding a photo you’ve uploaded to Find-A-Grave, you can ask that person (who is likely a descendant) if they want to assume management of that page??

Right along with that, if you want to take over the management of the Find-A-grave page for your ancestor, ASK. Fully 95% of the time the owner (who has no real personal interest, remember) will say yes. I did not know those details.

In 2009, the City of Washougal endeavored to create a connection between the downtown district and the Columbia River.  The SR-14 Pedestrian Tunnel is now open.  This tunnel provides safe passage from Pendleton Way to Steamboat Landing, William Clark Regional Park, and the Steigerwald National Wildlife Refuge & footpath – all connected by the US Corps of Engineers 3-½ mile long levee trail.

(The words over the tunnel read Gateway to the Columbia. I stopped at the Pendleton Woolen Mills outlet and could walk right through this tunnel from the parking lot.)

The tunnel passage between downtown Washougal and the Columbia River takes visitors back into ancient times.  The City of Washougal created a “petro glyph design team” consisting of nine students from Washougal High school, several adults, and led by artist Rex Ziak.  The design team researched Columbia Basin rock “art” to develop concepts for seven hand etched basalt slabs.  Ziak designed the images and had them hand etched by local craftsmen.  The pieces provide glimpses into the ancient Columbia River Corridor.  It’s up to you to determine the story behind each petro glyph.  For more information on the “petro” team’s journey and to learn more about this ancient form of communication, log on to http://culturewatchnorthwest.blogspot.com/

(Info and quote from Google-search-website; photos from Donna.)

Our paper’s 100 Years Ago Today had this: “Several autos made it over Snoqualmie Pass ‘under their own power,’ marking the opening of the rocky, treacherous highway for the summer. One auto driver said that he made the drive from Seattle to Yakima in seven hours.”

What intrepid travelers they were in 1918! This image is from HistoryLink.org, the website for Washington State History.

Do you by any chance remember the address of where you lived as a child? Say in the first, second or third grade? I do:  311 Great Jones Street, Fairfield, California. My Dad was stationed at Travis AFB there. I Googled that address and wow! it’s still there and looking good!

Back where the garage is, Dad build a playhouse for us and even added house numbers: 312 Great Jones Street.

Why don’t you try asking Google to see if you can view a photo of your old home??? Fun exercise.

Trivia #1:  Did you know that Queen Anne’s bowlegs (1665-1714) inspired a furniture style???? Or so stated a TIDBIT in that freebie thing of the same name.

Trivia #2:  Did you know soap was considered a frivolous luxury of the British aristocracy from the early 1700s until 1862….. and there was a tax on those who used it in England?? Really? Again, thank you, TIDBITS.

Guess if you had 16th or 17th century English ancestors, they were some stinky folks. Unless they were of the aristocracy. Sorry.

I’ve shared with you Parts 1 & 2 of Carol Buswell’s presentation to EWGS (Eastern Washington Genealogical Society) back on 7 April 2018. Here is the final part:

“One good use of archival records is for furnishing background to enrich the timeline of life for an ancestor. “So they were born in 1851 and died in 1910, what was going on around them in their lifetime?” Carol asked. “A wonderful feature of the National Archives is the website www.docsteach.org.  At this website you’ll have access to thousands of primary sources…. Letters, photographs, speeches, posters, maps, videos and other document types…spanning the course of American history and we’re always adding more,” as was shown in Carol’s slide from the home page of this website.

The best method for using DocsTeach is this:

• Click to DocsTeach.org
• Create a free account
• Click to search first by time period and/or location
• Results may or may not be name-relevant but will be geographically relevant
• “It’s like asking what was going on in America and the world in 1906?”

Carol Buswell was an informative and interesting speaker and kept us all awake even after a delicious potluck lunch. She is the perfect ambassador for the National Archives at Seattle.  She welcomes questions and comments from us anytime at carol.buswell@nara.gov. She lives in Omak and works from home most of the time.

She ended her time with us with this:  “ALWAYS never happens; there is ALWAYS an exception; that’s the way ALWAYS works.”  Advice worth pondering. Thanks, Carol.

NOTE:  DO NOT pester Carol about Parts 1 & 2…. this is MY summary and notes from her talk to us. Scroll through earlier Tuesday Trivia posts for these first two installments. 

Tomorrow, May 16th, is the birthday of my only granddaughter, Aleena Christine. We live 300 miles apart and don’t get to hug nearly often enough. Here she is about age 10:

My purpose here today is not to brag, but to tell you about a something project I’ve done for each of my grandchildren. I wrote up my memories of “The Day You Were Born.” For instance, she was born in the middle of the night, in a very nighttime-quiet hospital, and both of us grandmas were blessed to hear her first HOLLER echoing loudly down the hall right after she was born. Now don’t you think she’ll want to know that someday??? I just wrote what each family member was doing that day, and especially what Gramps and I were doing in eager welcoming anticipation of her arrival. I happily pass the idea on to you all.

Today’s Trivia is Part 2 of my notes compiled from Carol Buswell’s talk to EWGS on April 7th:

“We genealogists must remember that governmental archives must, by mandate, keep and preserve the records of the governmental doings of that agency and that’s mostly pretty boring stuff,” Carol smiled and said.

How do you figure out which libraries, historical societies and museums might have the information you seek? “Take the papers of the famous architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, for instance,” Carol said. “Some of his papers are in the National Archives, some in the Library of Congress, some in the Frank Lloyd Wright Museum, some in the Getty Research Institute….well, you get the idea,” she quipped. “No one repository or source will furnish all there is to know or that you want to know on a given topic; you MUST keep looking for new sources.”

On the other hand, government archives keep EVERYTHING created in government offices that is deemed “permanent.”  The rest is destroyed.  So it is easier to figure out exactly where government-created materials will be than it is in a library, historical society, or museum.  It will be in the archives of that government!

Critical to finding anything in an archives is using the card catalog. In the case of our U.S. National Archives, that address is www.catalog.archives.gov .  “Just go there and poke around,” Carol advised, “and use a different mindset than you’ve used before.” With 27 billion documents of primary sources, using the catalog is a must, so we must learn to use the catalog and use it creatively.  “Looking at something without understanding what you’re looking at is like looking at a black hole,” Carol laughed.

Carol shared some statistics with us. “Less than 1% of material held by the National Archives has been digitized; most stuff is still in boxes and some of those boxes are opened, on average, once every 87 years! NARA has the records of every federal agency that ever existed….. If those records survived and were turned in.”

One good use of archival records is for furnishing background to enrich the timeline of life for an ancestor. “So they were born in 1851 and died in 1910, what was going on around them in their lifetime?” Carol asked. “A wonderful feature of the National Archives is the website www.docsteach.org.  At this website you’ll have access to thousands of primary sources…. Letters, photographs, speeches, posters, maps, videos and other document types…spanning the course of American history and we’re always adding more,” as was shown in Carol’s slide from the home page of this website.

(to be continued/completed next week)

I DO NOT KNOW WHY
BUT MY TRIVIA PHOTO WON’T COOPERATE
AND APPEAR WHERE I TOLD IT TO!

NOR WOULD THE PHOTO I WANTED
TO ACCOMPANY THIS TRIVIA BIT

DANGNABBIT

Did you know that on May 6, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order creating the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The WPA was just one of the many Great Depression relief programs all designed to put unemployed American to work in return for temporary financial assistance.

If you live within driving distance of the TriCities,  Donna Potter Phillips will be presenting a program on the WPA to the Tri-City Genealogical Society on Wednesday, May 9th. Come on down!