general report
I was chugging along peacefully, somewhat burnt out on ESL, when our family decided not to go back to Texas in the summer of 2016 and stayed up here high in the mountains of southeast New Mexico. It's a slightly isolated environment, but we have a community, and though our online connection is spotty, we each get to use the internet when the others are asleep.
I have kept my online jobs: tutoring at the writing center at Texas Tech, and teaching Chinese children online, and pretty much let go of substitute teaching in the public schools, which I was doing in Alamogordo. I was getting older (65) and the kids were getting younger, and when we moved way out to the country, it became too far to drive for too little reward. Also, we have a situation at home that requires much more of our attention; our youngest adopted children have grown and require a unique kind of attention now. So, I'm down to two jobs.
In my writing, I've become somewhat absorbed in my ancestry; this happens sometimes when you are my age. In my case the line of Leverett descent is a little foggy, especially around the American Revolution (1760-1780) and the witch trials (1692). Those times were especially intense for those who lived in Boston (as most of the Leveretts still did) and they got caught up in things, rather than writing it all down carefully. There are two wild things about that: one is that much more is online now than ever before. In other words, I can find stuff that previous genealogists in the family had no access to, and I can find it without leaving my chair; most of the ones who did anything about it, including my parents, actually made trips to Boston or Salt Lake or wherever, and still didn't find any more than I have.
But second, there are really fascinating things that were happening back then, and it just gets thicker as I go. There was a movement among many of these relatives to go to Windsor, Vermont, a small village on the Connecticut River, as apparently there was land there and a fine old mansion not far from the village. This one guy had fourteen kids, but he was a gentleman farmer, apparently because his father had made enough money that he didn't have to worry too much about income. But the father, who had sold British goods in a warehouse on the Town Dock in Boston, lost everything in the occupation of Boston by British troops, when suddenly selling British goods was the wrong trade to be in. And somewhere in there, an ancestor is lost. Somebody ended up out on a farm in Needham, Mass., and the guy in Vermont, though he had fourteen, none of them seem to be ours at all. One of them started an axe factory, though.
So you see where my passions have gone. I'm not finished yet. I'll update this blog and put some of this stuff up here, for, as long as I have a professional side of me, I'll keep this going. I still have a
personal blog that collects the personal side of me and where I will archive what's going on with my family. What happens there is that I like to have family pictures, but I don't like the labels to make it easier for them to show up on google images. So I put the labels on other pages, and it's a little more tedious. But my genealogy work has convinced me that it's important to let future people sort out what happened and how. Somebody will tell my story, and when that happens, I want them to have some decent material.
trick or treat
Since I post so rarely on this blog these days, I'm afraid this post will last way too long, with the small-town rural world lurching toward Thanksgiving, Christmas and the New Year. But I have something to say about trick-or-treating before it's too late.
One aspect of trick-or-treating is way too much candy for all the children, though that's true of Easter and Christmas also, and often comes at the expense of a real meal or two, at least in my family. I wouldn't be sad to see that part go, but instead, that part is still here: kids are sick the next day; everyone's had too much; mom is hiding the candy, you know the drill.
I live way out in the country now and there is a lot less trick-or-treating out here than in town. In fact I would venture a guess that trick-or-treating is down to about 25% of what it used to be, and disappearing fast. There are neighborhoods in towns where it is alive and well, but there are whole swaths of towns, big or small, where it's all but gone. And I'll be the first to say, I'll miss it.
It's not the costumes, really. Those got worse over the years; they used to be homemade, and very clever, but over the years they became more likely store-bought, One year one of my kids was laughed at in the mall because his costume was homemade, not store-bought. What, I said, does everyone have to go out and spend $30 a kid now? But just the other day, I found one at the Family Dollar for five. I think they got onto the fact that, since they are only being worn once, or twice at most, they don't have to last forever.
What I will miss about trick-or-treating is the neighbor interchange. A set of parents answers the door, admires a kid, says he's cute, or clever, and gives him a piece of candy. All year long, the kid has been stepping in their garden; now, they look at him or her with recognition, and both relate as neighbors. In the modern world, if you are in a neighborhood that has trick-or-treating, you get maybe hundreds of kids who aren't even neighbors. If you live elsewhere, you have to take your car out to find that place. It's already not the same. The neighbor exchange is strongly diminished.
Out here in the country, you have to walk quite a bit just to find a neighbor. So, I don't think we were expected at most of these houses, although we have about the only kids. But we did have a little adventure about three weeks ago. A phone was supposed to arrive from UPS; it didn't, but UPS, upon being called, claimed that it had been delivered. This phone was important to us, so we went around, trying to see if, by chance, it had been delivered to neighbors.
Some neighbors were a little nervous, since they are approached by strangers so rarely, and we, being new to the neighborhood, were essentially strangers. They were friendly, though, and denied receiving a phone. One said, don't worry, we don't shoot anyone on sight, unless we already know them. But basically, it turned out to be a UPS error; they didn't know what their driver knew, and it hadn't arrived yet, and wouldn't, until about midnight.
What I remember about that day was the October weather. Leaves changing, air fresh and beautiful, dozens of deer out on the grass. October is beautiful everywhere, but especially in the mountains. And I do love our neighbors, though I can't blame them for being a little wary. You are generally left alone way out in these parts, and that's how people prefer it, or they wouldn't move out here. In town, I think, lots of people would love trick-or-treaters, and are disappointed at the silence every year, left alone with a large bowl of candy. The neighborhood is not what it used to be. Trick-or-treating, victim of a false razor-blade tale, victim of being appropriated by churches, which by and large didn't like some of those evil caricatures anyway, has gone by the wayside. And I'll miss it, at least part of it.
