Bits of This and That

No new foals have arrived since 30 June.  We're still expecting quite a few, so there may be a few more before Pony Penning Week (July 20 - 27), and there will probably be about 10 or so born after Pony Penning.  It's hard to believe that two weeks from today the combined herds will be getting their final assessment by the veterinarians before the Pony Swim, and decisions will be in the making on which foals to keep as Buy Backs for the breeding pool.  It also seems very strange not to be gossiping about the foals with Maureen Beebe this year...  Gosh, I miss her!

At the old Beebe homestead - left to right: Paul, Ricky and Clarence (Grandpa) Beebe; 

a Jeffries cousin, and Maureen Beebe.

 
Spent the last week in Old Town Louisville with two black Labrador Retrievers, Ivy and Esmé.  Esmé's owner has allowed her to revert to grabbing her hand with her mouth again - and she asked me to work with her on it while I was there.  I believe that the problem is the dogs don't see the owner as the pack leader...  As soon as I entered the house to do my week's stay, Esmé tried to grab my hand in her mouth.  I pulled it back, said "No!" in a loud voice, and stomped one foot at the same time I said 'no.'  Esmé did not try to grab my hand again during the entire stay, nor did she reach for peoples' hands as we walked around town and folks petted her.
  Not sure I'm going to continue working for this client. On Friday, the company that mows the lawn and does the edge trimming arrived, and I made certain the dogs were inside and closed and locked the doggie door to the back yard.  I had stepped out onto the porch to let the men know the dogs were safely inside, when the owner called me.  She was in a panic - where was Esmé?  Someone down the street had sent her the photo of a dog she found wandering down the street, and insisted it was Esmé.  I told her that her dog was inside the house, and she asked if I was sure.  I went back inside and sat down on the sofa, and I told her I had a dog sitting on either side of me, and that the identity tags said "Ivy" and "Esmé" so I was pretty sure the dogs were at home and with me...  It was crazy.

Old Town Louisville Main Street - I house-sit 6 blocks from here

A black bear on the outskirts of Boulder found an unlocked Subaru on a hillside driveway.  There were discarded food wrappers and a few left-over snacks in bags on the car's floor.  The bear opened the door of the car and climbed in.  The door closed behind him.  He made a mess of the interior trying to get out, and somehow, finally (using the police description) "butt shifted" the vehicle into reverse.  Since the parking brake was not on, the car rolled down the driveway, across the two lane road and on into a field, hitting several trees before stopping.  The striking of the trees caused the driver's door to pop open and the bear escaped, apparently undamaged....

Been working on genealogies for four sets of people - when I hit a roadblock on one family I switch to another and then head onward again. It's definitely not boring, though some people may think that looking at old records is a terrible way to spend a day and/or night.  My cousin asked me to look at someone in her husband's family, and I started at 2 in the afternoon; at 8 she told me she had named the wrong relative, so I switched my search over to the correct man and worked on him and his family until 4 this morning.  Found myself looking at Tribal Records from the Cherokee Nation, since the family was originally Shawnee, but had been adopted into the Cherokee.  It was extremely interesting!

Blue Jacket, a Chief of the Shawnee

Family Genealogy and Stuff...

It's a sunny Monday, 25 degrees out, and something spent a lot of time on my patio last night. Whatever the something was, it had both kits looking out the window and the door off and on all night long. I looked out, myself, a couple of times, but never saw anything except leaves blowing around. Both kits spent a good deal of time this morning sniffing the edges, legs, and seats of my three rattan chairs that stay on the patio - but I haven't a clue as to what was out there. It could have been a raccoon, fox, cat, or skunk - who knows....

  Yesterday I watched the Broncos game, then the Jets game, and, finally, the Texans game. The Jets lost, but the other two teams won; and the Saints beat the Falcons - so I had an enjoyable day of football. And I didn't put a toe outside my doors... had on warm, woolly socks; blue Gators sweatpants, and a long-sleeved orange Broncos shirt - a nice way to spend a day where the high temperature was all of 29!

  I'm doing some genealogy research for family members, and I need to get back into transcribing the family tree onto the web. I must say that in following my family tree, I have found some very interesting connections, and have run across some memorable names... My sister likes Marmaduke de Thwang, a very old Norman ancestor in England; I still like Hepzibah Starbuck Hussey, and, in Jim Snow's family, Eliphalet Pease. Seeing that I am distant cousins with Presidents Franklin Pierce and Grover Cleveland had me delve into their histories; and finding the same distant cousin connection to James Dean and Mary Ann Mobley had me viewing films.

  One of the things that fascinates me most about genealogy is that how there seems to be the tale of an "Indian princess" marrying into the family in a majority of family stories. The most usual tale is that it was a Cherokee maiden who married outside the tribe, and completely gave up the Native American lifestyle. I have had ten genealogy clients who were very certain that this was true. I told each of them from the outset of my research that I would only report what I could document - I was able to trace all ten clients' families back to England, Scotland, or Ireland - and none of them had a Native American in the family tree. Now, I admit that there are gaps in histories, especially in the South where a lot of records were destroyed by fire during the Civil War - but I always note that fact. My mother told me that we might have some Indian blood in her side of the family - but that it would be Native Americans native to the Eastern Shore peninsula, if it was true. I have not been able to verify any Indian blood there. My father told me (as he had been told) that his mother, whose surname was Lancaster, traced her family tree back to John of Gaunt; and that his father's family had "some Cherokee" in it... Grandma Grace's Lancaster ancestor was a man of French descent (according to the National Geographic genome program), who had lived in England, and then moved to Virginia. Dad's family can be traced back to John of Gaunt, but on his paternal side, not maternal.  And there is a possibility that we have some Native American blood on his side of the family - but I'll write about that tomorrow.

Seen At the 2012 Nanticoke Powwow

Louis Campbell, a member of the Lumbee tribe, today the largest tribe east of the Mississippi River

 

Closest to the camera is Paul "Two Feathers" Browne, a member of the Pocomoke tribe

 

John "Little Hawk" Pollard, a member of the Cherokee

 

John "Laughing Wolf" Moore, is a Cherokee-Sioux  -  his father worked on set with Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels (The Lone Ranger and Tonto)