Wisdom Wednesday - Whatever Can Go Wrong...

This week is a particularly painful week.  I just busted out my calendar for the upcoming year and transferred all of my appointments onto it.  It's a Sandra Boynton "Mom's Family Calendar" and since it covers 18 months I can start using it immediately.  It tracks the whole family so I love it.  It's been a staple in my house for the past several years...well apart from the one year that I tried my hand at a Doctor Who calendar that just didn't work well for me, but that's beside the point ;)

Anyway, I started putting everything onto the calendar.  I didn't realize how much nonsense I had coming up.  Doctor appointments for me and my toddler (three this week! and one an hour away!).  PTA Cookie Dough Fundraiser distribution on Wednesday.  Driving an hour away to pick up Cub Scout awards on Thursday.  PTA t-shirt pick up on Friday.  The week pretty much is a train wreck for my business and my citations that are just waiting to be corrected.

To top it all off, my oldest woke up Monday morning with a nasty eye.  Add on another doctor appointment Monday afternoon...just to find out that it wasn't pink eye.  Just allergies.  However, since I couldn't get him seen until the afternoon I had already ripped apart his sheets, pillow cases, stuffed animals, pillows and washed and Lysol-ed them to prevent the spread of the ichy-nasties which never came. That's not a bad thing though!

This weekend it'll be the hubby's birthday and a matinee to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I.  I may have to spend a couple of late evenings working on my citations to not feel like the entire week was a genealogical failure, but so far it hasn't happened.  The down-time in waiting rooms is just too impractical to have my laptop and papers there (no matter how much I'd like to).  Luckily, I've got my Kindle for iPhone and Shakespeare queued up in it.  Maybe I'll be able to catch up on the 8 Shakespearean plays I've fallen behind on in those odd moments.  It would be nice to feel like I got something accomplished.

It is a bit frustrating to have the week shot, but there's not much to be done about it except hang in there.  At least I'll take some kind of warped pleasure in being the only person available to help out the cookie dough fundraising company while handing out the orders.  It's about time they earned their money and they'll be stuck with a very grumpy me!  I'm mean, I know.

I had hoped to be nearly finished with my citation corrections by the end of this week, but I can see that I will have to add at least another week to that.  The only wisdom I can glean from this week is that whatever can go wrong, probably will.

Oh wait...is that a sore throat I feel?    Bring it on!

(Please allow me to beg forgiveness that this "Wisdom Wednesday" and the series I will be including on Wisdom Wednesday isn't based in the past. It's any wisdom and experience I'm gaining as I travel down the road to accreditation. There are certainly tidbits of wisdom to be gleaned by anyone else that may choose to take the same path!)

Tombstone Tuesday - Surname Markers

The tombstone for Martin and Anna Blanchfield nee Boyle and 2 of their children.

For a few years I had been trying to locate the graves of several Blanchfield ancestors.  They had lived in Hazleton, Pennsylvania for a good portion of their lives before moving to and passing on in, Phillipsburg, New Jersey.  I had copies of their death records, but wanted to find the graves.  To be able to place flowers.  To just be where they were resting.  For those that aren't genealogists (professional or amateur) this may seem a bit odd, but it's not to us.  It's a connection.  A connection to people we love even though we never got to meet them.  When we find that grave, it makes a difference emotionally as well as in our research.

I had traipsed through Ss. Philip and James Roman Catholic Cemetery each time I traveled home, hoping that this time would be the time that I would find them.  I had found another "Blanchfield" marker, and it was a relative as well, but not my 2nd great grandparents.  I still felt empty and incredibly frustrated.  This past summer I found a kneeler.  A surname marker with nothing more than "Blanchfield" written on it.  I had to have walked past it for years without seeing it.  It's incredibly easy to miss (especially with little kids nagging you to get them out of a cemetery!).  The marker didn't make me feel much better at first though, because I still had no idea which Blanchfield it belonged to.

I took the surname marker and decided to post it on FindAGrave.com.  I don't know why.  I didn't really have any information to go with it.  I just posted a close-up and a picture that had details illustrating how to find it in the cemetery.  I didn't expect to get closer to solving the mystery of which Blanchfield lay buried beneath, but I did!


I received an email from a cousin I had never met and she saw the post on FindAGrave.  She told me that it was my 2nd great grandfather AND grandmother buried there (Martin and Anna Blanchfield nee Boyle)...as well as two of their children.  How did she know for sure without a name on the marker?  Her grandmother, a Blanchfield, is in her 90s and still going strong!  Just when things get frustrating there are angels that fly in and fill in the blanks!  Thanks, Becky!

Amanuensis Monday - Obituary Joseph Melzer

"Joseph Melzer

Joseph H. Melzer, 86, of rural Allenton (Town of Wayne), died Monday, Aug. 21, 1989, at St. Agnes Hospital.

He was born Aug. 23, 1902, in the Town of Wayne, a son of Frank and Mary Schweitzer Melzer.  On Nov. 15, 1927, he married Elizabeth Batzler at St. Kilian Catholic Church, St. Kilian.

Mr. Melzer was a member of St. Kilian Catholic Church and the church's Holy Name Society.

Survivors include two sons, Robert and his wife Janet, and Joseph and his wife Theresa, both of the Town of Wayne; eight  grandchildren; three great-grandchildren; and one sister, Sophie Weninger of Lomira. His wife preceded him in death on Feb. 6, 1962.

Funeral services will be held Thursday at 10 a.m. at Miller Funeral Home, Kewaskum, and at 10:30 a.m. at St. Kilian.  The Rev. Victor Kemmer will officiate. Burial will follow in the parish cemetery.

Friends may call today from 4 to 9 p.m. at the funeral home where a parish vigil will be held at 8 p.m."

This was a newspaper clipping that was handed down to me by my mother-in-law, Dolores "Lori" Cayemberg nee Kuehl.  There is no date on the clipping, although I would imagine it was near the date of Joseph's death in 1989.  There is no mention of which paper this clipping came from but the family is from Wisconsin and has been for generations.  Melzer is a family name on Lori's side, but I still need to figure out where Joseph belongs!

Sunday Supper - Booyah! It's a Wisconsin Thing!

Patrick Cayemberg's FAMOUS Chicken Booyah! If dad was making Booyah, everyone would be stopping by for a bowl! Booyah is a Wisconsin thing. As I'm told it's not even an ENTIRE Wisconsin thing. There are pockets of Booyah tribes all over Wisconsin. Our tribe is from Green Bay.

Now the Booyah recipe is enormous. That's not an understatement. If you try making this recipe in just a soup pot, it's never going to work. You'll have to halve the recipe or make it like a 'Sconnie does and get an enormous pot (or even an old beer keg) on the gas camper cooker and start that bad boy up! Dad used what looked like an oar to stir the doggone thing! It was awesome...and it took all day! It was a project. For dad, it was a passion.

After Dad passed this past May we all decided to celebrate his memory by making Booyah (sadly I have no pictures of Dad making the Booyah.  All of the pictures were of us making it in his memory).  We made the full recipe and served it up the day that we were supposed to have had Mom and Dad's 50th anniversary party (so many people had originally planned to be in the area for the party).  Friends and family came to offer support for our family and by the end of the afternoon there was one bowl of Booyah left!  Yes, it's THAT GOOD!

Patrick Cayemberg's Chicken Booyah

Cook 1st
2 (14 ½ oz) containers chicken broth
1-1/2 gallon water
1-1/2 lbs oxtail or beef bones
1 lb lean pork, cut up
10 lbs stewing chicken, quartered
¼ c. salt
1 tbsp pepper

Cook 2nd
2 lbs cabbage, chopped
2 lbs onions, chopped and divided
1-1/2 bunch celery, chopped and divided
1 small rutabaga, chopped
3 tbsp chicken base (Tones brand)
2 tbsp beef base (Tones brand)





Then
4-5 lbs red potatoes, medium dice
3 lbs carrots, large chop
2 cans peas
1 can whole kernel corn
1 can cut green beans
1 tsp accent
½ tsp rosemary
2 tbsp poultry seasoning
1 (40 oz) can vegetable juice
1 (28 oz) can chopped tomatoes
¼ lb butter (1 stick or ½ cup)
1 lemon, juiced (abt 1 tbsp)

Add meat, bones, water, broth and half of the onions and celery to the booyah or soup pot.  Add salt and pepper.  Boil meat until done.  Remove meat and set aside to cool.  Debone.  (This can be done the night before).

To the booyah pot add cabbage, rutabaga and the remaining onion and celery.  Bring to a boil.  Add beef and chicken base and poultry seasoning.  Boil 45 minutes.

To the booyah pot, add potatoes and carrots.  Boil 30 minutes.

Add deboned meat, tomatoes, tomato juice, canned peas, corn, and green beans.  Bring to a boil then add accent, rosemary, lemon juice and 1 stick butter.

I know the recipe may seem a bit odd in places, but seriously...don't change a thing!

Sorting Saturday - Photo Files

Benjamin and Daniel Cayemberg with their Papa, Patrick Cayemberg.

So last Saturday I was looking for pictures of my boys picking apples in Wisconsin. It was about 3 years ago that we went and I had some great pictures of my boys having fun with their parents and grandparents in the orchard.  I couldn't find the pictures on my laptop.  My desktop is a hopeless wreck and is soon to be replaced...I wasn't even going to attempt to log onto that thing!  But I swore that they should have been on  my laptop!  Couldn't find them.

Over the summer I had installed Windows 7 over my crap program, Windows Vista (an evil joke Microsoft put out that should have been labeled as malware considering how it wreaks havoc on everything).  I suppose because we tried installing it over top of the old program it took up more space and we had issues with me running out of room on the hard drive.  I'll stop trying to be technical, because I can only pretend to understand the headache that was my computer in past months...fixing the technological train wreck was my hubby's job.  The point is, after we resuscitated my computer and fixed the space problem I noticed pictures missing.

Benjamin Cayemberg - Wisconsin, Autumn 2007

All was not lost.  I do have a backup on an iomega drive (I do need to back it up more frequently though), so I pulled out the iomega and started transferring files back over to my laptop, and then actually backing up my laptop (not just pictures, but everything).  What I realized was that I needed to reorganize my files.  I had a good system, but grew neglectful of it.  So that's what I spent a few hours of my time doing last Saturday.  It felt good too.

So what's my system for sorting my photos?  Well, I used to file them by date when I was younger.  That's wonderful if you can remember when something happened.  I found that through the years I couldn't remember, but I could remember places. 

Daniel Cayemberg - Wisconsin, Autumn 2007

I haven't been outside the U.S. yet (apart from a couple short day trips to Mexican border towns that didn't include pictures), so my  folders are by state.  I upload my pictures to Shutterfly, so within each state folder I have at least 2 sub-folders..."for upload" & "uploaded".  Pretty self-explanatory.  I don't take a lot of video with my camera (I'm bad...I should take more), so if I actually have video, I put that in it's own sub-folder.

It's a system that works for me.  It may not work for everyone.  I mean, the bottom line is that you've got to be able to find your stuff.  As long as you can find your files, that's what really matters!

Funeral Card Friday - Richard List

I was given a treasure trove of funeral cards from my mother-in-law.  About 200 in all.  The artwork on some of them can be truly gorgeous.  This card is for Richard List.  He was a truck driver and my husband's uncle.  He died in a truck crash three years before my husband was born.  My husband was named Richard in his honor.

52 WTBG, Week 45 - East Bell County Genealogical Society

I've been a member of the East Bell County Genealogical Society since June of this year.  I don't have family (that I know of) from Bell County or Texas for that matter, but I'd never had the opportunity to join a society before and figured it was time to do so.

I'm still feeling my way around as the new kid, but everyone has been extremely welcoming.  Many were surprised that I was driving the 30 minutes from Killeen to Temple for the meetings as there had been a society closer to Killeen.  It didn't really matter if there was a closer one...I knew where EBCGS was meeting and had paid my dues so I wasn't planning on going anywhere!

I didn't know what to expect at my first meetings, and felt a bit awkward sharing my recent research at monthly meetings...knowing it wasn't pertinent to anyone else in the room (little to no chance of connections or shared names), they were all as respectful listening to me as any other member.  What I was surprised and delighted to discover (and had been clueless about) was that we got a lovely presentation/class at each meeting!

My first meeting had a class on organizing your files.  While I didn't share the viewpoint of the gentleman giving the class I was able to glean some information to use in my own organization (color-coding my files, but I only intend on coding my 2 husband's grandparents and my 2...the gentleman giving the course went on coding and I wondered when he'd run out of colors! :) )

The second class was presented by a lady, Dr Patricia Rye, who spoke to us about the book she had just researched and written called, "My Father's War" (although I have not been able to find a copy of her book yet...I will have to ask about that at our next meeting!).  She also introduced us to another book, "The Forgotten 500: The Untold Story of the Men  Who Risked All for the Greatest Rescue Mission of World War II" (an exceptional tale and I do intend on purchasing/reading it...it's on my "wish list"!).  She found information on some of her father's air crew in the 2nd book so they tied in nicely for a brilliant story.

Our last meeting was on the SAR (Son's of the American Revolution) and the process of joining.  While I don't believe anyone in my immediate family has even the slightest possibility of joining the SAR or DAR, I did find the information useful.  If I ever need to submit an application for anyone else, I've got some excellent starting information.

I look forward to our next meeting!  You can check out the East Bell Count Genealogical Society's website (through Rootsweb) at: http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~txebcgs/

The site gives you important information regarding joining EBCGS and what their preservation projects are, their library acquisitions, and much more!

I'm also a member of other local, state, national societies (The Greater Hazleton Historical Society, The Wisconsin Historical Society, The National Genealogical Society, etc) even though I'm too far away to attend most meetings.  These societies do so much and rely on your membership to do their good work.  If you haven't joined ones pertaining to your research, why not?