Rachel's Daily Diary

 

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Tuesday
28 Sept. 99

 

12 06 am edt
I realize that all of my creative interests are linked to documenting, and always have been.   I love research, because it involves compiling information.   When I was much younger I was rather obsessed with crystals and gems, and I compiled a 300 page document about different crystals (I really should have published that...).   My filmmaking always tends towards documentary (though, surprisingly, my first public screening will be of the only non-documentary I made my last semester at Berkeley).   This diary serves to document my activities and observations.   And then there is my fanatical dedication to genealogical research, despite the lack of support on the part of my family.   I wonder why I am obsessed with preserving moments.

1 28 am edt
I just made a ring of the [6] loveliest sites I have come across.   This is a really brilliant idea for a site, and the do apologize that it requires frames.   I am so glad that I stumbled across it here.

2 05 pm edt
Though I don't actually read others, I have noticed that online diaries use all sorts of nifty gadgets: notify lists (no reason, I update more than daily), mailing lists (I don't get much reader mail, so I'm guessing readers wouldn't want to be writing e-mails to each other), personal Imagine Radio stations (I have no interest in that), comment forums (I actually love this idea), daily images (I might get to that one when I get my camera), audio (I plan on adding that one soon) and video (probably).   Do you, gentle reader, have any interest in finding these features here?   E-mail me and speak your mind.

5 19 pm edt
I love postcards.   I must have had over one hundred postcards taped to the walls of my apartment.   Now that my walls are not my own, I am living in an environment bereft of my idiosyncratic decorations, but on a walking journey around New York yesterday, I couldn't resist the purchase of several fine specimens, particularly the work of Michael Sowa.   I shall now hunt for some prime examples of his unique style.

6 25 pm edt
I never did go back online to look for those images.   I received not one but two family tree invitations.   All of these amazingly distant relatives have been so delightfully sweet with their invitations to come visit.   I will be taking the train to New Rochelle on Friday to meet a cousin from my grandfather's mother's side, and the other phone call was from a cousin in Boston who is on my paternal grandmother's mother's side.   He said his granddaughter is 22 and lives in New York, so perhaps (hopefully!) I will get a chance to meet her.

9 01 pm edt
I spent more than an hour reading through a wonderfully lengthy e-mail from my aforementioned cousin Sylvia (who lives in New Rochelle), outlining a huge chunk of the family tree which I had no leads on.   I must have added 50 names today.   The stats for my paternal tree are now:

      2 Adoption cards
      58 Citation cards
      132 Death cards
      27 Divorce cards
      18 Document cards
      119 Event cards
      2 Family Event cards
      189 Marriage cards
      528 Person cards
      0 Picture cards
      120 Place cards

      Totals: 666 named cards, 529 unnamed cards, 1195 overall

I didn't leave the house all day, which was a total delight.   I also managed, earlier, to find the following Michael Sowa sites:

This is the Sowa postcard I sent my mother today:

 

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