Genealogy Blog Family History

The Joy of Home MoviesPosted by Administrator on October 2nd, 2009

8mm was our family’s medium of choice when I was a kid, low-quality, jerky, soundless images that moved a little too fast, making everything seem like slapstick. We used to roll on the floor with laughter watching our older siblings in 70s-era clothes, aunts and uncles in black-rimmed glasses, and grandparents that still had their hair color. Then we upgraded to camcorders and suddenly, we could hear what everyone was saying. Somehow these were less funny and more embarrassing because now they were about us and the camera captured the things we hoped other people didn’t see. Or maybe we were just growing up and getting more self-conscious in the process.

Well, the video camera persists today on phones and digital cameras. I still hate seeing myself on video, but I have found a subject I never tire of: my kids. I will film them for great lengths of time just playing, wrestling, dancing, or otherwise making merry. We can watch those images again and again and find pleasure in them. I think I understand now why my parents made so many recordings of us. The video is a moment in time captured forever as they grow up and their young-child innocence is covered up by the veil of adulthood, a way to preserve those little kids we gave so much for.

So keep the cameras rolling, everyone. There is joy to be found in home movies.

What about when family history threatens offspring?Posted by Administrator on September 30th, 2009

A recent story on MSNBC told of Patrick Tracey, whose family has a history of acute schizophrenia. The disease ultimately took his older sisters, his mother, and his grandmother. Unwilling to risk passing the disease onto his offspring, Tracey has decided not to have children of his own. This story raises an important question: in the face of irrefutable evidence that your family carries a deadly or harmful disease from one generation to another, would you forego passing on your genes?

Personally, I see my children as central to my life. It would be hard to imagine life and fulfillment without them. But, loving my children like I do, I don’t know if I would want them to suffer if I could help it.

What would you do? Would you go ahead and have children, hoping that either the ovarian lottery would pass them by or that your family would somehow cope with their disorder? Or would you decide the risk was too great?

Places in our Family HistoryPosted by Administrator on September 28th, 2009

My family owned and operated a large board and care facility for the mentally disabled in Azusa, California. We called it Azusa Hacienda because of its white plaster walls, red-brick roof, stunning woodwork, and a huge mural in the common area of a Mexican fiesta. It was surrounded by a huge yard filled with fruit trees of all sorts and large hibiscus bushes- a real Southern California house. We found out after several years that it used to be a brothel and bar. Nevertheless, our family turned it into our gathering place, a place where uncles, aunts, cousins, grandparents, and second cousins congregated to bask in the glow of family. No other place could have substituted for it. A major character in the lives of four generations of our family, it was truly a member of our family.

Well, as seems inevitable nowadays, the business was closed down. We tried to keep the house in the family, but it gradually became too expensive to keep up. So last year, we sold the house and closed a major chapter in our lives.

This leads me to a thought: what part do places hold in our family histories? It would seem places (like houses) take on a character of their own, a spirit, if you will. They facilitate gathering and celebrating and memories. When they are taken away, it seems there is a disruption in our gatherings until we can find another substitute. In our transient society where we uproot every two years, are we constantly severing these vital ties with the past and memory.

Just a thought…