In somewhat of a response to Carrie's posting of the lyrics to "Pressure" a few weeks ago, I'm going to post some lyrics by Ani DiFranco that sum up a lot of what I have been feeling about the world lately. The tone of the song is playful, but serious, although not nearly as destructive as the lyrics might appear when typed out.
"Fuel"
Music and Lyrics by Ani DiFranco
Little Plastic Castle 1998
They were digging a new foundation in Manhattan,
And they discovered a slave cemetery there.
May their souls rest easy now that lynching is frowned upon.
We've moved on to the electric chair!
And I wonder, who's gonna be President?
Tweedle Dumb or Tweedle Dumber?
And who's gonna have the blockbuster box office this summer?
How 'bout we put up a wall between the houses and the highway,
And then you can go your way, and I can go my way?
Except all the radios agree with all the TVs,
And the magazines agree with all the radios.
And I keep hearing that SAME DAMN SONG everywhere I go!
Ha ha ha!
Maybe I should put a bucket over my head,
And a marshmallow in each ear,
And stumble around for another dumb, numb week
For another humdrum hit song to appear.
People used to make records,
As in a record
Of an event.
The event of people playing music in a room.
Now everything is cross-marketing,
It's about sunglasses and shoes
Or guns and drugs.
You choose.
We got it re-hashed.
We got it half-assed.
We're digging up all the graves and we're spitting on the past.
And we can choose between the colors
Of the lipsticks on the whores
Because we know the difference
Between the
Font of 20% MORE
And the
Font of teriyaki.
You tell me, how does it make you feel?
You tell me, what's real?
Am I headed for the same brick wall?
Is there anything I can do about anything at all?
Except go back to that corner in Manhattan,
And dig deeper, dig deeper this time.
Down beneath the impossible pain of our history
Beneath unknown bones, beneath the bedrock of the mystery,
Beneath the sewage system and the PATH train,
Beneath the cobblestones and the water mane,
Beneath the traffic of friendships and street deals,
Beneath the screeching of kamikaze cab wheels,
Beneath everything I can think of to think about!
Beneath it all, beneath all get-out!
Beneath the good
And the kind
And the stupid
And the cruel
There's a fire that's just waiting for fuel...
There's a fire just waiting for fuel
There's a fire just waiting, waiting...
Okay, so I left out a few lines about being an alcoholic because that doesn't really apply to me here, but I really wish that I and everyone else could "dig deeper." Try to value life and art and the environment, try to remember how we got in the mess we're in now, try to be productive instead of destructive. To quote someone else, "The opposite of war isn't peace, it's creation!" ("La Vie Boheme", Rent, Jonathan Larson, 1996)
Just my take on a week of gorgeous weather here in NYC! Hee hee! No, it just seems like every time we make a few strides forward, some idiots come along and push us all back again. Most of the news recently about the economy, and the war, and the environment, and almost everything has been bad. It's hard, but I have to hope we'll eventually start to make progress again. Hopefully, after the Presidential election this year!
Friday, April 25, 2008
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Update
Just to let you guys know, my grandmother passed away on Sunday while we were all with her. I've never been in the room with someone when they died before, so I wasn't sure how it would be. It was very peaceful, and she actually slipped away at a moment when we were all laughing at something silly my grandfather was saying. We had all been very silent, just watching her and sort of crying, and then we started to talk and laugh a little, and she let go. Maybe she needed to just hear her family, know we would go on and be okay. Anyway, the funeral was on Tuesday, and a lot of family and friends made the trip, so it was very nice. Mentally exhausting, to have to be kind of sociable to people when you just want to go home and absorb things, but very nice. And people also brought over a lot of food, so that is always appreciated!
Thank you guys for your words of encouragement last week. We aren't ready yet to sell the house or anything, but we did take some photos and my aunt let me pick out a few pieces of jewelry. I took two things that I had given her.
My Grandpa is going to be going down to Florida with my Mom, at least until school lets out. Then I think she and Louie will be bringing him back up to Georgia for the summer, and also they might take him to Washington, DC, so he can go to the World War II Memorial. It's going to be a big adjustment for him, and for my Mom and Louie! He took this whole thing very hard, as would be expected. I just hope it doesn't make him want to give up. But I think the change of scenery, and being around my Mom and Louie will be helpful.
Thank you guys for your words of encouragement last week. We aren't ready yet to sell the house or anything, but we did take some photos and my aunt let me pick out a few pieces of jewelry. I took two things that I had given her.
My Grandpa is going to be going down to Florida with my Mom, at least until school lets out. Then I think she and Louie will be bringing him back up to Georgia for the summer, and also they might take him to Washington, DC, so he can go to the World War II Memorial. It's going to be a big adjustment for him, and for my Mom and Louie! He took this whole thing very hard, as would be expected. I just hope it doesn't make him want to give up. But I think the change of scenery, and being around my Mom and Louie will be helpful.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Life, Death, Family, Blah
Yesterday I received the news that my grandmother has terminal cancer. She hasn't seen an oncologist yet, so we are not sure how long she has left. My guess would be a few months, maybe a year? She has been in the hospital for a couple of weeks now because she couldn't keep any food down and was having stomach pain. They found some tumors in her colon, removed them, and did a biopsy, which showed them to be cancerous. Afterwards, they tested her lymph nodes and found that the cancer had spread to them. Apparently, there is no surgical option at this point. I don't know about any chemotherapy or radiation, but the woman is 87 years old, so I don't think they will very highly recommend those, either. My mother says they are going to let her recover from the surgery she just had, then send her home and start the hospice nursing process.
They haven't told her yet, either, because they're afraid she'll just give up immediately and we'll never get her home. She is on some heavy pain medication right now, too, and doing a lot of moaning and groaning. I am going down to Georgia on Friday and will be spending the weekend there, coming back on Monday night. It's strange to think it could be the last time I see her before she passes away. I hope that isn't the case.
Most people know that she isn't my biological grandmother. But she is the only grandmother I have ever known on that side of the family. My feelings for her are very complicated because of the way she treated my mother when she was growing up. My real grandmother died in 1956, when my Mom was three. My grandfather re-married to Minner (as we call her, her real name is Mildred) five years later. She was a widow with two children who were older, and I guess she didn't really want to raise some other woman's daughter. I'm sure she did her best, but my Mom always felt the difference. Other kids would have their school art projects hung up on the fridge, she never did. When she asked for help in her Home Ec. class, she was told she had to learn it herself. She had to do a lot of chores that her stepbrother never did, meanwhile, he was drinking and flunking out of school--she was an A student. On the day of my Mom's marriage to my Dad, Minner cried and admitted she had never done right by her. How sad that she couldn't reach out to a little girl who was yearning terribly for a mother.
Anyway, she was always good to me when I was growing up. She always made a chocolate cake for me when I visited, always bought me nice gifts for Christmas and birthdays. I won't lie and say it was the same way my real grandmother on my Dad's side made me feel. There just wasn't the same sort of connection. But I can't in good conscience say that no effort was made when it came to me. So, as I said, it's complicated.
It's probably not a good idea to revisit the bad feelings when she is about to die, but it can't really be avoided. I feel the worst for my Grandpa, who how has to go through the death of a second wife. He is blind, so after she is gone, he will probably have to move down to Florida and live with my parents, or perhaps in one of those assisted living communities. He might enjoy that, he has always been active and sociable. Who knows?
It's very sad how quickly life really does go by. Eighty-seven years sounds like a long time, and I'm sure at points it feels like a long time. But it isn't really. When I think of how fast thirty years seems to have gone, and the fact that after my grandparents have gone, it will be my parents who are next in line (theoretically), it does seem quite small and fleeting.
As for me, I kind of hope I die very quickly around age 75. I have considered just killing myself if I reach 80, because, while you might be robbing yourself of something, what are you really robbing from the rest of the world? Not that life isn't valuable, but the progress of society requires death. Is it more selfish to cling to something you know will end soon, or is it more selfish to end things before it gets too troublesome? I don't know.
They haven't told her yet, either, because they're afraid she'll just give up immediately and we'll never get her home. She is on some heavy pain medication right now, too, and doing a lot of moaning and groaning. I am going down to Georgia on Friday and will be spending the weekend there, coming back on Monday night. It's strange to think it could be the last time I see her before she passes away. I hope that isn't the case.
Most people know that she isn't my biological grandmother. But she is the only grandmother I have ever known on that side of the family. My feelings for her are very complicated because of the way she treated my mother when she was growing up. My real grandmother died in 1956, when my Mom was three. My grandfather re-married to Minner (as we call her, her real name is Mildred) five years later. She was a widow with two children who were older, and I guess she didn't really want to raise some other woman's daughter. I'm sure she did her best, but my Mom always felt the difference. Other kids would have their school art projects hung up on the fridge, she never did. When she asked for help in her Home Ec. class, she was told she had to learn it herself. She had to do a lot of chores that her stepbrother never did, meanwhile, he was drinking and flunking out of school--she was an A student. On the day of my Mom's marriage to my Dad, Minner cried and admitted she had never done right by her. How sad that she couldn't reach out to a little girl who was yearning terribly for a mother.
Anyway, she was always good to me when I was growing up. She always made a chocolate cake for me when I visited, always bought me nice gifts for Christmas and birthdays. I won't lie and say it was the same way my real grandmother on my Dad's side made me feel. There just wasn't the same sort of connection. But I can't in good conscience say that no effort was made when it came to me. So, as I said, it's complicated.
It's probably not a good idea to revisit the bad feelings when she is about to die, but it can't really be avoided. I feel the worst for my Grandpa, who how has to go through the death of a second wife. He is blind, so after she is gone, he will probably have to move down to Florida and live with my parents, or perhaps in one of those assisted living communities. He might enjoy that, he has always been active and sociable. Who knows?
It's very sad how quickly life really does go by. Eighty-seven years sounds like a long time, and I'm sure at points it feels like a long time. But it isn't really. When I think of how fast thirty years seems to have gone, and the fact that after my grandparents have gone, it will be my parents who are next in line (theoretically), it does seem quite small and fleeting.
As for me, I kind of hope I die very quickly around age 75. I have considered just killing myself if I reach 80, because, while you might be robbing yourself of something, what are you really robbing from the rest of the world? Not that life isn't valuable, but the progress of society requires death. Is it more selfish to cling to something you know will end soon, or is it more selfish to end things before it gets too troublesome? I don't know.
Monday, March 24, 2008
The Way of the World
So, this year's summer Olympics are scheduled to take place in Beijing, China. I'm quite morally opposed to this. The Chinese government has a terrible human rights record, terrible environmental record, and no transparency whatsoever in their processes or in their press. I'm sure it's a beautiful country, and I'm sorry for the people that are forced to live there in horrible conditions and would like to have something about which to feel pride, but if I were an athlete there is no way I would agree to participate. It's almost impossible to boycott items produced in China--I tried it in college when the whole Free Tibet thing was really big. And as many problems as I have with organized religion, I don't think the Tibetan monks really pose the same type of threat as Islamic extremists or Christian fanatics. I'm not even that anti-Communist really, I am just anti-secrecy and tyranny, and those are the things that seem to grow out of governments like the one in China, or what happened in the USSR, even if they start out with noble intentions.
I mean, I guess it's not as bad as trying to hold the Olympics in Syria or Darfur or something, but it's not far above. And of course, our reasons for participating are purely economic: to maintain good or at least cordial relations with a large, powerful country that we do more importing from than anywhere else. It's so hypocritical. But I shouldn't really be surprised, since money is at the root of almost all of the decisions our government makes. Money for large corporations that don't care to act responsibly, money for oil companies, money for drugs, hookers, designer clothes and haircuts for our elected officials.
Sometimes it's hard to be the amongst the smallest cogs in such a large wheel. And although I know I won't be able to do it 100 %, I am going to try to be more aware of where the money I spend goes. I'll try to patronize smaller, localized businesses, and do more research on the business practices of larger companies. To me, this is part of being a responsible, and even patriotic, adult. I already don't drive, so I feel good that I don't spend anywhere close to the amount of money most Americans do on gas. Of course, we all rely on it, and I wouldn't want to live without the opportunities it affords us for comfort, travel, whatever, but I would like it if the oil companies and our government felt a bit more pressure to come up with alternate energy sources. There's certainly no way of turning back the clock on the Industrial Revolution, but I'd like to be more progressive about the way we deal with its fallout.
I mean, I guess it's not as bad as trying to hold the Olympics in Syria or Darfur or something, but it's not far above. And of course, our reasons for participating are purely economic: to maintain good or at least cordial relations with a large, powerful country that we do more importing from than anywhere else. It's so hypocritical. But I shouldn't really be surprised, since money is at the root of almost all of the decisions our government makes. Money for large corporations that don't care to act responsibly, money for oil companies, money for drugs, hookers, designer clothes and haircuts for our elected officials.
Sometimes it's hard to be the amongst the smallest cogs in such a large wheel. And although I know I won't be able to do it 100 %, I am going to try to be more aware of where the money I spend goes. I'll try to patronize smaller, localized businesses, and do more research on the business practices of larger companies. To me, this is part of being a responsible, and even patriotic, adult. I already don't drive, so I feel good that I don't spend anywhere close to the amount of money most Americans do on gas. Of course, we all rely on it, and I wouldn't want to live without the opportunities it affords us for comfort, travel, whatever, but I would like it if the oil companies and our government felt a bit more pressure to come up with alternate energy sources. There's certainly no way of turning back the clock on the Industrial Revolution, but I'd like to be more progressive about the way we deal with its fallout.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Various & Sundry
Nothing too exciting has been happening with me lately. Just more of the same--work, reading books, tv, working on the genealogy stuff. Work is boring, frustrating, and stressful all at the same time. Sometimes just thinking about it makes me feel like there's a black cancerous maw just gnawing away at the organs in my chest cavity. I never thought about how such mundane crap would make me feel so sort of useless. At least as a server, I had some instant gratification, as usually (although NOT always) people were nice and thankful to you on the spot.
So, I already know that I want to leave after I have been here for a year. That's only about 5 1/2 months away now. I'm going to be getting some money from a life insurance policy my grandfather decided to cash out. It's not much, but it will be enough to put some into a CD or something that earns a good amount of interest, and then spend the rest on both my planned trip to England and Scotland and my planned time off. Hopefully, it will not be a lot of time off. I'm not sure what kind of job I will look for, but definitely something a little better-paying. I keep thinking about going back and getting a management position at a corporate restaurant, just because there is better money and more stability, more oversight. But at the same time, I know how crappy the hours are and how crappy it can be to have like, hundreds of corporate bosses breathing down your neck all the time. That is one thing I like about working here. I only have 2 or 3 people to whom I have to answer.
Anyway, I am sure I will figure something out. I always do.
I started re-reading Jane Austen's Emma the other day. I just love that book. It's definitely my favorite Austen, because it has the least amount of sturm und drang. It's just about a gossipy little village and a deluded, misguided girl attempting to be helpful. None of the women get scandalously seduced by a charming but soulless rake who refuses to marry her. No one dies penniless in a pauper's hospital. Everyone gets the marriage they wanted, and everyone takes care of one another. It's a lovely fantasy. The character of Emma Woodhouse is supposedly the least likeable of all of Austen's heroines, and I can definitely understand that, because she is quite smug and is certainly a snob. Her motives at the beginning of the story are self-gratifying, an attempt to prove to everyone around her how clever and talented she is, even though most people already feel this about her. But her better qualities do come through--her devotion to her father, her love for her friends, her offense at seeing Harriet snubbed by the Eltons, and her true remorse at insulting Miss Bates. And in the end she is honest with herself, and her Mr. Knightley, and everyone (except maybe Mr. Elton) lives happily ever after.
On the genealogy front, I am still stuck way back in like, 11th century England and France. It's getting a bit frustrating, too, because at a certian point I forget which family I am even tracing. I try to follow the male line until I can't get any farther, and then I have to go back and try to trace each of the mothers' lines, but that just leads to following a new male line back so far. It's seriously like taking twelve steps back to take one step forward, if that makes any sort of sense. I have a whole spiral notebook full of reminders of websites and information on names so I can try to keep track and not forget people I have already added (because there are certainly cross-overs).
Anyway, that is a fraction of the crap running around in my head this week. Yesterday was St. Patrick's Day, and I went and hung out with some friends in Woodside. We went to eat at Donovan's Pub, which is right around the corner (didn't even have to cross a street), and there was a full pipes and drums band entertaining us. It was very cool. One guy even did some Irish step-dancing, right in front of our table! It was the first time I've ever really felt like I was celebrating the Irish in America as opposed to just an excuse to go out drinking. I hope at some point I will be able to trace my grandmother Sullivan's family back in Ireland.
So, I already know that I want to leave after I have been here for a year. That's only about 5 1/2 months away now. I'm going to be getting some money from a life insurance policy my grandfather decided to cash out. It's not much, but it will be enough to put some into a CD or something that earns a good amount of interest, and then spend the rest on both my planned trip to England and Scotland and my planned time off. Hopefully, it will not be a lot of time off. I'm not sure what kind of job I will look for, but definitely something a little better-paying. I keep thinking about going back and getting a management position at a corporate restaurant, just because there is better money and more stability, more oversight. But at the same time, I know how crappy the hours are and how crappy it can be to have like, hundreds of corporate bosses breathing down your neck all the time. That is one thing I like about working here. I only have 2 or 3 people to whom I have to answer.
Anyway, I am sure I will figure something out. I always do.
I started re-reading Jane Austen's Emma the other day. I just love that book. It's definitely my favorite Austen, because it has the least amount of sturm und drang. It's just about a gossipy little village and a deluded, misguided girl attempting to be helpful. None of the women get scandalously seduced by a charming but soulless rake who refuses to marry her. No one dies penniless in a pauper's hospital. Everyone gets the marriage they wanted, and everyone takes care of one another. It's a lovely fantasy. The character of Emma Woodhouse is supposedly the least likeable of all of Austen's heroines, and I can definitely understand that, because she is quite smug and is certainly a snob. Her motives at the beginning of the story are self-gratifying, an attempt to prove to everyone around her how clever and talented she is, even though most people already feel this about her. But her better qualities do come through--her devotion to her father, her love for her friends, her offense at seeing Harriet snubbed by the Eltons, and her true remorse at insulting Miss Bates. And in the end she is honest with herself, and her Mr. Knightley, and everyone (except maybe Mr. Elton) lives happily ever after.
On the genealogy front, I am still stuck way back in like, 11th century England and France. It's getting a bit frustrating, too, because at a certian point I forget which family I am even tracing. I try to follow the male line until I can't get any farther, and then I have to go back and try to trace each of the mothers' lines, but that just leads to following a new male line back so far. It's seriously like taking twelve steps back to take one step forward, if that makes any sort of sense. I have a whole spiral notebook full of reminders of websites and information on names so I can try to keep track and not forget people I have already added (because there are certainly cross-overs).
Anyway, that is a fraction of the crap running around in my head this week. Yesterday was St. Patrick's Day, and I went and hung out with some friends in Woodside. We went to eat at Donovan's Pub, which is right around the corner (didn't even have to cross a street), and there was a full pipes and drums band entertaining us. It was very cool. One guy even did some Irish step-dancing, right in front of our table! It was the first time I've ever really felt like I was celebrating the Irish in America as opposed to just an excuse to go out drinking. I hope at some point I will be able to trace my grandmother Sullivan's family back in Ireland.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Everyone Else's Pedigree
Yesterday I read an article stating that a group of geneticists have found the mutation that causes people to have blue eyes. Apparently it traces to one common ancestor who seems to have lived in the Baltic region thousands of years back. So according to this study all blue-eyed people are distantly related.
This doesn't come as too big of a surprise to me since I started working on my genealogy. Families used to have so many children, and when one spouse died young, the survivor inevitably re-married and spawned some more. Not to mention all of the inter-family marriages. They say that something like 75% of the English middle class is descended from Edward III. While he hasn't come up in my family tree just yet, I have discovered that I'm possibly descended from Charlemagne at least three times over. There was a lot more information out on the internet than I would have suspected. People who have been working on their pedigrees for years have published their findings online and there is a lot of corresponding information. Of course, there is also a ton of conflicting info! Anything that seems too questionable to me I am leaving off. And of course it's all speculative, anyway. There are historical records to back up a lot of the info, but it isn't like people kept such careful track of what year things occured and a majority of records have been in some way lost or destroyed because either they thought no one would care, or because of war or just because sometimes things get lost. It's really only within the twentieth century that accurate records of births and deaths were kept by the states.
I only hope some record of my existence survives for a thousand years.
This doesn't come as too big of a surprise to me since I started working on my genealogy. Families used to have so many children, and when one spouse died young, the survivor inevitably re-married and spawned some more. Not to mention all of the inter-family marriages. They say that something like 75% of the English middle class is descended from Edward III. While he hasn't come up in my family tree just yet, I have discovered that I'm possibly descended from Charlemagne at least three times over. There was a lot more information out on the internet than I would have suspected. People who have been working on their pedigrees for years have published their findings online and there is a lot of corresponding information. Of course, there is also a ton of conflicting info! Anything that seems too questionable to me I am leaving off. And of course it's all speculative, anyway. There are historical records to back up a lot of the info, but it isn't like people kept such careful track of what year things occured and a majority of records have been in some way lost or destroyed because either they thought no one would care, or because of war or just because sometimes things get lost. It's really only within the twentieth century that accurate records of births and deaths were kept by the states.
I only hope some record of my existence survives for a thousand years.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
My Pedigree
I took a genetics class with Carrie in college, and our professor was this short, skinny, nerdy old Southern man who would always refer to family trees as "pedigrees." She and I had a lot of fun creating a pedigree for the white trash family we used to make up stories about. Let's just say, there were a lot crossed branches and twigs indicating learning disabilities.
Genealogy fascinates me, not that I have any really cool ancestors or anything--I just like to have an idea of where I come from, what life was like for the people before me, why they came to America, and what they would think of it nowadays. Why I am the way I am, I guess. It's really all about me, let's be honest here. So, I joined ancestry.com for a free trial of their like, deluxe package, where you have access to all sorts of records and other people's family trees to see if you have any matching information. It's pretty cool, and I've been able (if the information is accurate) to trace one line of my tree all the way back to France in the twelfth century! A lot of ancestors had Norman-English names, which is to be expected, since the conquest was so complete. Most of the tree dead-ends in various parts of England or Wales, which was cool because I didn't know I was at all Welsh. There were some people from Devon and Cornwall, too, which is kind of neat because supposedly they are from an entirely different tribe than the Anglo-Saxons. Although at this point they've all inter-married so much I suppose it hardly matters. There were some pretty crazy names, one being a guy called Oger Fitz Oger. There was also a woman named Amicia. That line of the family eventually moved to the Jamestown settlement in Virginia, then to North Carolina, and then to Georgia around 1800 or so. I had always assumed that because Georgia had been a debtor's prison colony when it was British that I was descended from some poor people who couldn't pay their bills! Looks like we're not such deadbeats after all! At least on that branch.
Unfortunately, I completely dead-ended on my Dad's branch after my great-grandparents. His mother was Irish and she was raised in Atlanta, but we aren't sure where she was actually born--she would say either Connecticut or Florida, but I don't know her mother's maiden name, and her father was one of about a hundred men named Jeremiah Joseph Sullivan that lived around the same time period. And while the site does have death certificates on file, they don't seem to have access to birth certificates, so that's a lot of missing information. There are no records from Mexico or Spain on the site, either, so nothing on his father's side.
My great-aunt did a lot of genealogy on my Mom's mother's side of the family, so I might give her a call and see if she can give me some more information there. Anyway, that's what I've been up to this week for the most part. The free trial is going to end soon, though! Maybe I should just print out all the stuff so that I have it. I think I will do that.
Genealogy fascinates me, not that I have any really cool ancestors or anything--I just like to have an idea of where I come from, what life was like for the people before me, why they came to America, and what they would think of it nowadays. Why I am the way I am, I guess. It's really all about me, let's be honest here. So, I joined ancestry.com for a free trial of their like, deluxe package, where you have access to all sorts of records and other people's family trees to see if you have any matching information. It's pretty cool, and I've been able (if the information is accurate) to trace one line of my tree all the way back to France in the twelfth century! A lot of ancestors had Norman-English names, which is to be expected, since the conquest was so complete. Most of the tree dead-ends in various parts of England or Wales, which was cool because I didn't know I was at all Welsh. There were some people from Devon and Cornwall, too, which is kind of neat because supposedly they are from an entirely different tribe than the Anglo-Saxons. Although at this point they've all inter-married so much I suppose it hardly matters. There were some pretty crazy names, one being a guy called Oger Fitz Oger. There was also a woman named Amicia. That line of the family eventually moved to the Jamestown settlement in Virginia, then to North Carolina, and then to Georgia around 1800 or so. I had always assumed that because Georgia had been a debtor's prison colony when it was British that I was descended from some poor people who couldn't pay their bills! Looks like we're not such deadbeats after all! At least on that branch.
Unfortunately, I completely dead-ended on my Dad's branch after my great-grandparents. His mother was Irish and she was raised in Atlanta, but we aren't sure where she was actually born--she would say either Connecticut or Florida, but I don't know her mother's maiden name, and her father was one of about a hundred men named Jeremiah Joseph Sullivan that lived around the same time period. And while the site does have death certificates on file, they don't seem to have access to birth certificates, so that's a lot of missing information. There are no records from Mexico or Spain on the site, either, so nothing on his father's side.
My great-aunt did a lot of genealogy on my Mom's mother's side of the family, so I might give her a call and see if she can give me some more information there. Anyway, that's what I've been up to this week for the most part. The free trial is going to end soon, though! Maybe I should just print out all the stuff so that I have it. I think I will do that.
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