This and That

The wind began to blow yesterday afternoon around 2 o'clock, and it's still blowing.  The National Weather Service station here says we'll have sustained winds of 25 to 40 mph all day, with gusts of 45 to 75 mph.  We still have snow and ice from the two snowfalls (more than 10 days ago) in our parking lot, and snow is clearly visible on the Flatirons and Front Range.  And in the last few days, the high temperatures have been in the 50s and 60s.  So it seems incredible to also read that we are under a Red Flag warning for extremely high danger of fire...  Current temperature says 34 degrees, humidity is 23%, and the wind is blowing at 25 mph.  It's a day that weather means I'll stay inside....
 
   Almost finished with Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen.  I had to look up the story about Ed Watson and Belle Starr to see what was "really" what.  Ed was a sharecropper on Indian lands he leased from Belle Starr.  At a dance, she refused to take the floor with Ed.  He had been drinking and was angered by her refusal, according to witnesses.  She was found dead the next day.  Ed Watson was arrested, but, as there was only circumstantial evidence against him he was tried and acquitted.  He left, returning to Florida soon after his acquittal.

  I think that the 45th President is not sleeping well...  It seems that Special Investigator Robert Mueller's team is getting closer to naming him as a defendant each day...

  Had my taxes done by AARP-IRS volunteers at the Boulder Senior Center on Thursday.  I don't owe anything to either the federal or state government, but I'm not getting back either.  Since my birthday is in June, I'll have to wait for another 2 years before I can apply to the City and County, and get my food tax refund.  Last year they paid back $62; this year it's $83...  Since I need a crown for a dead tooth, and it's going to cost $700, it would've been nice to get a little bit of cash back!

  Still working away on my family tree, and my room-mate, Beatrice's.  I'm lucky that there are so many church and tax records for most of my family.  I have to admit that I've divided my family tree into three parts, not four.  That's due to the scarcity of Swedish records for my mother's paternal side.  I have over 4,000 entries for my father's paternal Nocks family; and I have over 2,000 for his maternal Lancaster/Mobley/Washburn side.  I have about 1,500 for my mother's family, in entirety...
   For Beatrice, I started with her parents names, her maternal grandmother, and her paternal grandfather's names.  As they are African American, and the families were slaves on plantations in Louisiana, I am very happy to have found more than 1,100 hundred relatives so far.  Her second-great-grandfather was the son of the plantation owner, and I have been able to trace the owner's family back to the late 1500s in Europe.  But we're still stuck at her grandfather Bell - we don't know his parents' names, and I've found 12 different Henry Bells that were born around the same time and near the right place....  I'll continue to look, and hope to have a break-through.