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To register for an event or for more information, click the link for any event. All times are Pacific Time.
Questions? Email [email protected]

It is likely no surprise to you all that I like storytellers.  I can hear the same stories over and over again and live them again and again.  While I’m not a great storyTELLER myself, I do love storyWRITING.  I’ve enjoyed taking a quick story of my grandfather’s and adding tidbits of facts, maps, and other things happening at the same time.  It adds color and cements the story in a time and place that otherwise just hangs in space.

I love reading and listening to stories, as they always pull a story out of me.  I listen to two podcasts in the car while driving to work: The Moth and This American Life.  I make SIRI put notes down for me to tell or write a story later.

I noticed that on May 20, CGS is hosting a class with Linda Okazaki called, “Once Upon a Time… Creating Compelling Stories Out of Mundane Facts.”  It’s both online and in person at the Oakland FamilySearch Library and I will sadly be out of town.  If it’s recorded, it will be one that I make time to listen to, but if you all attend, I’d love to hear the stories it sparks for you!

Here is the link:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/once-upon-a-timecreating-compelling-stories-out-of-mundane-facts-registration-1985416651651

And speaking of Storytelling, one of my favorite books is by Dave Grohl called, “Storyteller.”  It doesn’t really matter if you know him, don’t know him, love him, or hate him.  He’s a great storyteller and reading it sparked some stories out of me!  Link via Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-storyteller-tales-of-life-and-music-dave-grohl/c163a5666a03dd4e?ean=9780063076105&next=t

Helpful Links
Events: https://www.californiaancestors.org/events-and-education/
Special Interest Groups: https://www.californiaancestors.org/special-interest-groups-for-members/
Calendar view: https://www.californiaancestors.org/cgs_calendar/
Tips & Talk: Oakland FamilySearch Center Family History Classes: https://www.familysearch.org/en/centers/oakland_california/classes

To register for an event or for more information, click the link for any event. All times are Pacific Time.
Questions? Email [email protected]

I was in fourth grade, and it was nearly the end of the school year.  I lived in Northern California in a tiny town 50 miles west of Redding, and we had no movies or movie talk.  I didn’t know about Star Wars until later that summer when we moved to live with my aunt, uncle, and three boy cousins in their three-bedroom home.  Nine people in a 3-bedroom house did not leave much time or money for movies, but later that summer, my mom and aunt brought all of us kids to see Star Wars.

I confess that I didn’t really get it then.  Movies were hard for me because, in hindsight, I needed glasses and couldn’t really make out things on the screen very well.  But I for sure pretended to love it, and in all our spelling sentences that next year my friend and I used all the names (that she taught me) of the characters (“Luke and Han wondered at the gullibility of the Stormtroopers.”).  Years later, I rewatched all the movies, and now I’m a big fan, despite being a poser in 5th grade.

For my generation, when we think, “Family Tree,” we think of Vader and Luke, and Luke and Leah. A wondrous surprise family tree twist that left us all gasping in the 1980s.

Genealogy is, at its core, the study of how people are connected across time — by blood, by choice, by secret, and by loss. Strip away the lightsabers and you’ll find that Star Wars is obsessed with exactly these questions. Who are you, really? Where do you come from? Does your ancestry determine your fate? Can you escape what your family made you?

The saga keeps asking these questions because they’re the same ones that drive every person who ever sat down with an old box of family photographs and wondered about the strangers inside them.

In the end, Star Wars returns again and again to the genealogical question not because ancestry is destiny, but because understanding ancestry is freedom. Luke cannot choose his path without knowing where he came from. Leia’s effectiveness as a leader is inseparable from what both her families — biological and adoptive — made her. Rey cannot decide who she is until she knows, fully and painfully, what she came from.

This is why people research their family histories. Not to be defined by them, but to finally see clearly. Not to find out that they are special — though sometimes they are — but to locate themselves in the long human story, to know that they came from somewhere, that people before them lived and loved and suffered and survived.

The Force connects all living things. So, in its quieter way, does genealogy.

May the force be with you as you go about your MAY 4th.

Helpful Links
Events: https://www.californiaancestors.org/events-and-education/
Special Interest Groups: https://www.californiaancestors.org/special-interest-groups-for-members/
Calendar view: https://www.californiaancestors.org/cgs_calendar/
Tips & Talk: Oakland FamilySearch Center Family History Classes: https://www.familysearch.org/en/centers/oakland_california/classes

To register for an event or for more information, click the link for any event. All times are Pacific Time.
Questions? Email [email protected]

I was planning a road trip and was thinking about how easy it is.  I have Google Maps to tell me how to get from one place to another and then, while driving, my GPS gives me a play-by-play.  There are roads, reliable cars, and AAA (for if the car isn’t so reliable).  My grandfather didn’t have these things.

He lived in a small town in South Dakota and loved tinkering.  He learned how to work on machines by… working on machines.  No licenses required to drive but there were no cars.  Except the local catholic priest had a car.  But no tinkering skills.

Priest’s Garage in Capa, South Dakota

The summer after Grampa turned 15 (when he graduated from high school early), he drove the priest to his family home 1,850 miles away to Salem, Massachusetts for the summer.  On the way, they stopped by my grandfather’s grandfather’s house in Russell, Iowa, where these pictures were taken.

They did it again the next year, with Grampa’s friend, Pete, joining.  So for two summers, a car of teenagers and a Catholic priest road-tripped to Salem, Massachusetts where they stayed at 3 Milk Street with Father Kingsley’s family.

The priest had a non-priestly brother who worked all day. Grampa and Pete would impatiently wait all day for the brother to get home and then they’d all head to the Salem Willows.

From the Salem Willows website (http://www.salemwillowspark.com/history.html):

This beautiful wooded and hill peninsula jutting out into Salem Harbor became a municipal park in 1858. Graced with majestic, 200-year-old white willow trees, Salem Willows, a public park since 1858, has a special place in amusement park history.

In 1906, Everett Hobbs & William Eaton offered Americans the first ice-cream cone; “Blind Pat” Kenneally introduced Spanish “double-jointed” peanuts to America from his cart at the Willows.

Bavarian woodcarver Joseph Brown created the famous Flying-horse Carousel in 1866. in 1945, the horses were sold to Macy’s Department Store in New York City , where they graced the famous Macy’s Christmas displays. While the original horses have been replaced, the carousel itself still offers a thrilling ride.

A young Duke Ellington played here in 1923; Count Basie and Louis Armstrong performed as well, at the old Charleshurst Ballroom, now the Willows Casino. A tradition of popular summer jazz concerts continues to this day; jazz vocalist Cassandre McKinley performed here in 2003.

Do you have stories about your ancestors’ vacations?

Helpful Links
Events: https://www.californiaancestors.org/events-and-education/
Special Interest Groups: https://www.californiaancestors.org/special-interest-groups-for-members/
Calendar view: https://www.californiaancestors.org/cgs_calendar/
Tips & Talk: Oakland FamilySearch Center Family History Classes: https://www.familysearch.org/en/centers/oakland_california/classes