I Am Not My Own Grandpaw

It was right there under my nose, but I simply didn't see it.

I have been working on my mom's mom's family tree for 30 years. But only half of it, the reason being that there were some really dedicated genealogists working on my maternal grandfather's line. I figured that they had it handled.

So when DNA matching came about, I figured it was one more tool that could help tease apart the knots in the genealogy that were hard to unravel. But it also turns up some questions. I did not think that my family would be one of them, and here we are.

A woman contacted me years ago. Her own DNA test had proved that her dad wasn't her bio-dad. And she had two half-brothers who had the same bio-dad. They were related to relatives of mine, so she reached out. She thought my uncle was her dad. I told her that if we proved the relationship I was happy to tell her anything she wanted to know.

But she was a dna match of people that I expected to be related to. And I was not. It turned out that she was the daughter of a 2nd cousin of mine. But it seemed I was not related to him. 

There was another question. Also on my mom's side. A person showed up as a DNA match and I couldn't figure out how. I reached out to the person and he did not respond. I looked him up. He looks exactly like everybody on my grandmother's maternal line. Looks like my brother. Looks like my uncle, Mom's brother. We all have the same bulbous nose.

I hired an Ancestry.com genealogist to figure out the two mysteries. Who is this first cousin of mine, and where is the break in my mom's paternal line? I had so many theories. The truth blew me away.

The first cousin is, in fact, my uncle's son. Not a huge surprise. And the break in the family line? My grandfather is not my mom's bio-dad. More mystifying is that she and her brother have the same bio-dad. He just doesn't happen to be my grandfather. My siblings, who loved him deeply, would be horrified and I don't plan to tell them.

I sat with that non-grandpaternity information for a few days and hired Ancestry again. It's expensive, but I need to know. Unlike other parts of my family, where there was a bit of lore to go on, here I have nothing. Even with the Irish side of my family I had a (very common) surname. I just hammered at the research for a decade and found the answer. I have more money than time these days, so I hope to get some answers that will let me dig in to another family tree and do research on some new topics.

More as I know it.

Freedom and Determinism

Hey. It's me! Waiting for pathology in the offices of the world's tallest Mohs surgeon. I think this will be a quickie. But while I'm waiting, with a bandage on my face and a drippy nose, might as well catch up on the weekend.

It rained this weekend, which was glorious. The boy kitten thanked me for putting his favorite blanket on the sofa. Mrguy has been consulting Key Ideas in Human Thought, one of our best pre-Internet reference sources.

Saturday was Irish genealogy club day. Two hours of good times, hints, things to pursue. 

And then, a little jaunt with the rev. We went for a rainy ride and some hot tea in Sugar City, where mrguy and I got married. That's her fetching elbow on the right, and the bridge in the distance on the left. We drove past the old old place. They've painted it blue. In the window? One of the many neighborhood cats in windows in that town that are distantly related to our old cat, nose. Nose and eyes were, themselves, spawn of a neighborhood ragdoll, mrbrownballs. We didn't get nose until we moved into the house next door to this one, so it's nice that it's now populated with one of his mishpoche.

I totally forgot to mention that our friend from the extinct ukulele band came over on Saturday night. What a treat! He just moved to our town and we're excited.

Sunday was a bagel and lox feast at the house of that nice guy's brother. We got to talk a little bit by ourselves, but mostly the day was spent in stories of their close-knit community. They were so lucky to have one another, and it seems like that nice guy's mom was one of the neighborhood's adhesives. She drove the kids, she edited the newsletter, she was the person who connected and networked, before that word existed. I wish I'd known her better, which is the desired achievement of every memorial.

Her friend had a psychic connection with the livingroom carpet.

The spreads were divine. I even ate my first chopped liver.

And now...we wait.

But There's More

I know a little boy who is waaaay cozy today. There is something about this particular blanket that came from my mom's apartment that is even better than the previous blanket. Who knew? He sees it, he meows at it, he gives it two licks and then hops on or next to it. They have a thing going on.

In other news, I am no longer afraid that he will die from eating a salad plate-sized hole in one of my sweaters the other day while Cack and Blick were here. I believe that today he pooped out the last of it. Sheesh. Then he begged me to chase him around the house. Then he was happy.

It's a quiet day here at the manse. I've been doing some genealogy and laundry and I might decide to have some fun repairing that sweater hole. I feel like creating something other than food (although I like that too).

The update on mrguy is that he's spoken with his oncologist and neurologist. The news is basically positive. He's in remission and the doctor is going to halt chemo until we know what's going on. The doctor suggested that we go to Hawaii in the interim, because they need tourists right now. So basically we went from mrguy is going to die of a stroke to 'okole maluna. The neurologist says he did not have a stroke, but we want an MRI. He only had Herceptin when he was infused on Tues. He's still feeling the effects, so he's trying to stay awake and lively until baseball time later in the day.

Genealogy is going well. I am deep into the O'Neil family of Navan. I'm figuring out their scenario, but I'm still unsure of whether Mathew O'Neil is my great great grandfather. Many signs point to yes:

• My great grandmother was an O'Neil
• Last place in Ireland was in Navan
• A Matthew / Mathew O'Neil was the godparent of one of the children in my family
• Oldest / one of oldest children is named Mathew
• Family story is that the O'Neils were millers. M. O'Neil of Navan was a dealer of corn and oats
• Bridget was insane and her intake docs say that her father was also
• Mathew was in Mullingar Asylum for a while. They let him out. Shortly afterward he drowned himself in a barrel of his own making

Good times! If you like family history, anyway.

Genealogy Updates

After several months of waiting, the German genealogist got back to me. I am trying to determine the parents of my 5th great grandmother, who has an uncommon last name. I would really like to be able to tie her to Ferdinand Christian Touchy, but despite my research on him and his known descendants I can find no connection.

In the meantime, we have had no hospitalizations this past week, and mrguy is feeling much better and I've had time for a little genealogy and other puttering myself. I bought an Ikea shelving unit for the laundry room as a place to store extra cat food, cat litter, Ensure, and canned goods. It feels fantastic to get all of that stuff out of bins on the floor.

Another denizen of the laundry room is Ernst Gottlob's pastel portrait from 1775. I stashed it there until I had time to put it on the wall. I will say that this piece of art found a perfect home here with us. It's kinda ugly. It came up for auction in 2020 and nobody bought it. The fact that an unattractive pastel on vellum survived this long is kinda shocking. And somehow it made it 5,643 miles to our house in the US where an actual descendent of the artist could own and appreciate it. For a song. Did I mention that, inclusive of shipping, this thing cost me about $250? 

The other day after my Taskrabbit, Sarkis, left and I had put away many things in the new shelving unit in the laundry room mrguy pointed to the place on the wall in the kitchen den where I'd said I wanted to put it. He guided me in the pastel's placement, and I was way too lazy to get the real ladder from downstairs, so I got it as high as it could go. The goal was to get it high enough so that boy kitten couldn't reach. He immediately wanted to check it out. Hopefully he will not bring it crashing down.

And there it hangs, my mystery man gazing down on me, next to an Okiee Hashimoto print and a Katherine Sherwood.

Next, I have my eye on a portrait of Johnny Mathis.

Ernst Gottlob Arrived

It seems like ages ago that I bought the pastel. It arrived yesterday, in several separately wrapped pieces. It feels weird to acquire something so celebratory in the midst of life that feels dire. Is it ok to be happy? It felt calming to work on putting this artwork back together while listening to one of my many hours of the Barbra Streisand audiobook.

It is either a pastel or an aquatint. I don't know how to tell the difference. It was described as being on vellum.

The coolest thing is the hanger, forged out of iron. It makes it seem as if this was once hung in an important place. The subject was unidentified, but may have been a government official of some sort.

The paper covering the back of the work must have been pretty cool. There are still remnants of it on the framing.

Here is the pastel itself, unframed. It's pretty beat up, but cool. 

When I held it up to the light it looked super freaky. You can tell more about how it was drawn by seeing it this way.

I am guessing that this is his handwriting, which is crazy. 

I realized that the original spacer that belongs between the glazing and the pastel was in usable condition, so I just went for it and repackaged the piece.

I washed the glass. It has a big wave in one area, which is super cool, and also includes little tiny elongated bubbles. It seems like it would be original to the piece.

And here he is put together again, sitting in our non-fancy kitchen. I'm not quite sure where to hang him. I'd wanted to put him in the bathroom with the reproduction of the painting from art.com, but I really want to see him. Not sure. For now he lives in the laundry room.

Things I Bought: Ernst Gottlob

The other week I was looking at Liveauctioneers, as I often do. I decided to look for items from Leipzig. This is where my people lived for a few generations, and it's a town that mrguy and I have visited and like. So I ran a search and found a rather unattractive pastel portrait by my 5th great grandfather, Ernst Gottlob. His name was misspelled "Ernest", and that's why my saved search for his name in Liveauctioneers did not notify me. I bid on it and won. It was dead cheap. I'm sure it will be much more expensive with the auction house fee, tax, shipping from Berlin and custom packaging, but the base price is $216.

Sweet!

It will go in the lady bathroom, next to the copy on canvas of a portrait by him. My sister the painter was right, when she predicted that some day I would probably own a work by him. I'm psyched. I will be able to own something that he actually created one year before my 4th great grandmother was born. Super cool.

Pineapples

I kinda have a thing for pineapples. Mostly ever since we came home from family vacation with a pineapple and I forgot it in the beer fridge for two weeks and then opened the fridge and smelled the heavenly aroma. Best pineapple of my life.

I always thought they were a real pain. I don't know where I got this notion. They are no more difficult to prepare than a cabbage. I even got lucky at the thrift store and got an Oxo pineapple corer, not really thinking about the fact that I wasn't in the habit of buying pineapples in the first place. Or that they were expensive, and we were broke and that I routinely chanted "Put the mango dollar in Fred (our Fred Flintstone bank)!!" when mrguy would buy a mango. Who was *I* to chant when I was spending dollars myself on pineapples and pineapple tools?

We're in our pineapple years, now. I will buy and eat the occasional pineapple. 

Adding to my pineapple interest, five or so years ago I was watching an episode of "Who Do You Think You Are (UK)?" when a subject, on air announcer of the Chelsea Flower Show, was told about an ancestor of hers who grew pineapples in a greenhouse in England. This was during the Georgian era, and the ancestor would *rent* pineapples to people for use on fancy occasions. Fascinating! I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about them as an ornament in architecture,  furniture and decorative items, but once you see it you can't unsee it. A really great article about the glory days of pineapple can be found here.

My further interest in the pineapple comes from, of course, a genealogical connection. I have been trying to trace my ancestry back one generation further than my 5th great grandmother, whose last name was Touchy/Touchi/Touche. The only person I can find who is even a possible candidate is a guy named Ferdinand Christian Touchy. He was a farmer and author, and even descendants who lived in the early 1900s weren't able to figure out who he was or where he came from. He wrote under dozens of pseudonyms, which really doesn't help very much, but made him a little more fascinating. One of his books, written in 1801, purports to instruct ordinary people how they can raise fancy fruits and veg in a portable greenhouse (I think), even in winter (I also think). His pseudonyms boil down to variations on these names:

Anton, Karl Friedrich

Baer, C. F. 1736-1808

Blotz, J.F. 1736-1808

Claß, D. F. 1736-1808

Dietrich, Christian Heinrich 1736-1808

Düchänie 1736-1808

G., C. B. M., 1736-1808

Gaschütz, G. 1736-1808

Gaudich, C.F. 1736-1808

Goetz, Johann Friedrich 1736-1808

Meißner, C. H. 1736-1808

Tiessen, Christian 1736-1808

Touchy, F. C. (Ferdinand Christian)

W., C. F. 1736-1808

So when I see a pineapple, I often think of this family mystery. Nobody in my family cares about this, and that's ok. I can't really move the needle on what my family cares about. I think it's fascinating, but the thing about genealogy is that if you are into it, it lets everybody else think that they don't need to know about it because we're all going to live forever and you can just ask. Right?

Anyhoo, two days ago I saw a pickup truck full of pineapples on the way to work. A gigantic pile of loose pineapples in an old truck. Nothing to protect them. All of them bearing a hang tag saying "SWEET" in bold red type. I snapped this photo at a stoplight. Instead of turning right, in the direction of a famous tiki restaurant and bar, it turned away from the bay and into the hills.

I have so many questions.

Hawaii 2019, Day 8

Big finish, Peeps!

After days of hearing mrguy proclaim how much he loves Maui and planning for our next trip to Maui, *this* trip to Maui was coming to an end.

We had a lovely breakfast and noticed a songbook by Helen Desha Beamer on the piano. There was even a photo of Kimo Henderson, for whom she composed Kimo Hula, which our band loves to play.

We went to the library and looked at all of the local history books. Found the books about presidents, and mrguy couldn't help but make a tableau of contrasts for us:

We looked at a bunch of city directories and almost had a fight about it. Mrguy was right about whatever the argument was.

For the last two days we'd been trying to determine the GPS coordinates of the Wailuku Ditch, because that's very close to where the family house was. We went in search of the ditch, which is on the way to the dump. People really drive fast there, and crossing the road was treacherous but we did it.

Picturesque, innit?
After this we went to the Makawao Cemetery, and the military cemetery next door, because this is where some of our people are buried.

We were standing out in the cemetery with an electrical storm coming and I was pretty sure we were going to be turned into human yakitori, but it worked out ok.

And then we met farmer's daughter at Rock & Brew, which has a horrible name, but is so much better for hanging out at than the quaint place where we were supposed to meet. It was great to come together after we'd been to the places where she'd sent us.

So there you go. We had an amazing time. We learned interesting things about the family. Like Toshiko Takaezu was the family's maid for a while. I want to learn more about this experience from Toshiko Takaezu's perspective, of course.

And that's it. Hawaii 2019 is complete. We have plans to go back to Maui in October, unless we die before then.

Hawaii 2019, Day 7

Monday was the day we started our family history research. What could be better than genealogy in Hawaii?

In the morning we went to the sugar plantation in Puunene. We didn't know a ton about the family's involvement, other than there was an aunt who was a nurse and came from the Mainland to run the plantation hospital. She then married the foreman of the plantation. Her brother came over and was the facility engineer. We have sepia-tone film of the family on Maui in the 20s or 30s. There you go.

So we went to the plantation museum, and I sat down on a bench near a map and pulled out a binder they had for visitors to look at. There, a few pages in, was a map that showed the location of our family's house. So cool. This is the map but not the house:

They had sumo at the camp back in the day:

We took photos of the maps, and set ourselves the task of locating the site of the family house.

But first we met up with a friend of mrguy's who had recorded with him at the studio. He has a place here where we live, but he and his partner picked up and moved to Kihei. Go figure. It was nice to meet someone who was starting over in Hawaii. He bought a beat up house that was filled with termites and is gradually rehabbing it.

After lunch and a tour of his house, we went to the Friends of the Library store. I can't recall why, but it was interesting and full of treasures and mold. I sneezed a lot.

We met up with our friend Ramona for dinner. She's awesome and on our last trip she came all the way over to Oahu to meet up with us, which was a ball. I can't believe that I didn't take any pictures of us, our meal, whatever. We went to a local place, and the music wasn't really tremendous until a guy in the crowd came up and played one of the most beautiful versions of Hawaiian Soul I've ever heard.

The sunsets on Maui are terrific.

2019 In Review

Mrs Guy is behind already, but she's been busy. Here's a review of 2019:

Great Stuff

• I got the baby in the King Cake at Mardi Gras
• Our lime tree started producing like crazy
• We had the kickoff meeting for my book
• I had some truly cozy times with the mama
• mrguy and I discovered that we really like Maui (more on that later)
• My sumo friend and I watched at least one match of every basho together this year, while drinking sake and eating snacks.
• My favorite Christmas Cactus bloomed
• I did a presentation at a fan fest
• I got to spend much quality time working in the archives with the founder of the forklift company
• I acquired a taxidermed armadillo that's wearing a cowboy hat and gun holsters
• Rode a mechanical rainbow unicorn and lasted 5 seconds

Bad Health

• A cousin, a workmate and an ex-workmate are all dealing with super nasty cancers
• We lost our sweet boy, Nose. On the other hand we had him for 23 amazing years
• I have reflux and it is super painful
• mrguy has a nickel allergy, of all things, and the diet is bad for him but clears up his skin eruptions

Good Health

• Ears does not have cancer
• Eyes has been given a (relatively) clean bill of health by her cardiologist, in large part due to the tender ministrations of mrguy
• I got invisalign. Is that good health or just maintenance?

Current Obsessions

• Are we related to our family or not?
• Grafting. Ask me about grafting citrus and camellias
• Sewing. I have only gotten as far as mending things, but that is a start

New Faves

• Rust Valley Restorers
• Repair Shop
• The new Mexican restaurant nearby
• My Tahitian uke
• Discovering that even on Maui we can have fun doing genealogy

Things To Look Forward To

• Germany in September
• Maui in October
• Next generation family gathering which hopefully will be a) going on without me or b) will have a different format entirely

We Finished / Are Going To Finish

• Suits (and mrguy just bought a box set of dvds)
• The Good Place

Best White Elephant Gift

• Dvds of Iz and Ferris Bueller, a VHS of H.R. Pufnstuf and an ipu

 Best Christmas Stocking Stuffer of the Season

•  Foldable mini cat-eye magnifying lorgnettes

 Poopy Stuff

• Irish Citizenship Office rejected my application and keeps saying they'll refund my money and they don't.
• All that health stuff above

Family Time

And in other news, I have a genetic conundrum.

Earlier in the year I looked at my genealogy website and found a person on my mom's line who is identified as a first cousin. I had never heard of this person. My two theories were that either my grandmother had a child as a teenager, put the child up for adoption and this is the child of that child or, my uncle had a child with someone. Both of these seem like possibilities. I guess that a third could be that my grandparents put a child up for adoption. I used to be able to rule this third option out, until I figured out that we don't seem to be related to the people identified in the family tree as my grandfather's relatives.

Gee.

I was contacted by a person a few months ago who is fairly certain that she is the daughter of the same uncle. Again, seems possible given what I know. The lady contacting me was one of those folks who took a DNA test and found out not only that her father was not her biological father but that she had two half brothers she'd never heard of (they are both adoptees). This also meant that the brother she grew up with only her half brother. A lot of news.

I started trying to help this lady figure it out, and corresponded with the researcher who is helping *her*. The only problem is that when I looked through my DNA matches, I seem to not be related to the people in my grandfather's family tree. Oops! I am related to my grandfather, as is my brother, but we don't seem to share genetic material with any of the people on that family's line. Further, my grandfather and his older sister might have been born 8 months apart. I think this is where the break in the family line occurs.

Basically, none of my genetic matches seem to have the very common surname I'm looking for. On my mom's other side there are tons of relatives that I recognize. And on my father's side there is at least one person who I expect to be a cousin who is also a genetic match. 

Ironically, this lady *is* genetically related to the people I thought I was related to, and I am not. She and I do not share DNA.
 
This got weird and interesting without my even realizing it.

Politics and Phytobezoars

This post is woefully outdated, but I couldn't let it, half-written, go to waste.

Today is my last day of staycation. I should do this more often. I attended a four-day German genealogy conference, binge-watched the current season of Real Housewives of New York, made soup and lasagne, planted some new things in the garden, continued my work on cleaning out the Etsy closet, worked on the excel doc of the family vacation duties (mom day concierge, mom night concierge, cooking, cleaning) and had a great heart-to-heart with the oldest neph. I did not talk to the mama, except once.

Last week's German genealogy conference led to some awesome discoveries. I found my 5th great grandmother's death record, and did some research on her surname. It's so uncommon that only one fellow can really be her father. I still need to prove it by finding her birth record, with the help of a researcher. The putative dad is a guy who wrote many books  under at least 13 pseudonyms. Even though he is primarily known by one name, that name is so rare that I wonder if he invented it. Could one of the other names be his real name? Since I first wrote this post I have found traces of his great grandson who, in 1905, asked in German genealogy periodicals for help tracing the mystery man's origins. I'm not the only one who couldn't figure this out.

The day I was writing this post I paused to have coffee and discuss the state of world affairs with mrguy. He said that perhaps the body politic would surround the current occupant of the White House and eject him like a hair ball. Which led to a discussion of hair balls in general, and my love of the fact that there was a hair ball oracle in Huck Finn. Which is now un-love, after looking it up and reading some of the passages.

On to happier things. Turns out that hairballs are a type of phytobezoar. I love this name. Did you know that there are experiments with treating human phytobezoars with Diet Coke? 

Well now you do.

Antiques Roadshow 2019

It happened. We brought the things. We had the appraisals. We even ran into an appraiser who I've consulted for advice on behalf of the forklift factory. A few photos.

The queue for item triage:

The results of my triage:

Lunch of cold pizza next to the river after our Roadshow fun:

And then a swing past a location of genealogical interest: a building where two of mrguy's great great aunts lived at the time of the 1910 Census.

And In DNA News

I am an avid genealogist and user of the various DNA services available. With every DNA match I see, I can pretty much tell how these people are connected to me. I recognize their last name, or the name of the people they're researching. Recently, however, I found a new match that's puzzling. 

This person is male, and the amount of DNA we share identifies him as a first cousin-ish. He shares more DNA with me than my 1st cousin once removed, who is also a DNA match. So it's pretty likely that "new guy" actually is a first cousin. I sent him a message asking if he would like to share information. He has not responded and has not logged in for two months.

Similarly, a new DNA match showed up on a different DNA service. It's a woman, with the same last name as the man on the first service. She shares less DNA with me than the man, in a proportion which would make her likely his child. I have sent her a message and have not gotten a response. Interesting side note is that if you Google her name, it returns no hits. How often does that happen? Never.

I now wonder whether there is a deeper mystery.

I know of no genetic first cousins on my mom's side. The mama had a sibling who raised an adopted child from the spouse's first marriage. The only possibilities that I can think of for a first cousin are that there was a hidden child who was then put up for adoption. My grandmother did have a year in high school in which she went off to two different schools in different parts of the state for the two halves of the year. An out of wedlock child could have been concealed during the summers before or after that year. The man who appears to be a first cousin could be the son of that child. But that sounds unlikely in this family, where my grandmother had a half sister from her dad's first marriage who was raised in the same town by an aunt but considered a sibling.

Alternately, my mom's sibling could have had a child that we never knew about. I think that this is more likely the case, but the fact that I haven't had any responses to my messages makes me wonder whether this isn't someone researching their own roots, but that the DNA came from a crime scene and not living people.

I hope that this person (or these people) are living and get in contact so we can clear up the mystery.

Countdown To Irishness

I originally started the Irish citizenship quest in 2017. Because my grandfather was born in Ireland, it is possible for me to apply for citizenship. I first gathered a lot of documents. I had a lot of success on this, but then I stalled. My grandfather died at home. His house stood at the crossroads of three different municipalities. It took a lot of research to find the right one. And when I found it, the state of New York said that they would not give it without a court order.

That really knocked the wind out of my sails, so I stopped trying. Can't recall what finally got me off my keister again, but I decided to hire a fixer. She helped me navigate the problems, and there were many:

1. My grandparents never married, which was pretty unusual. Ireland assumes that parents will be married. So we had to write an affidavit about them not being married. And gather extra documents about my non-Irish grandmother
2. My grandfather's birthdate on his death certificate doesn't match the birthdate on his birth record in Ireland. I knew this was the case, but because of the combination of names of his parents, which are unusual, and the fact that those great grandparents are the parents of children whose names match many of my grandfather's siblings, he has to be that child, no matter his "wrong" birthdate
3. I had to call someone in a records office in Ireland and help him find the birth record while we were on the phone. I knew which page it was on in the registry book and where on that page. When he found it, he said he wouldn't have known that this was the one I was looking for. Sigh.
4. We had to write separate affidavits for the date discrepancy, as well
5. We had to hire a translator for the Norwegian documentation, and none of this was cheap

So many items had to be notarized, as well. Luckily the factory has several notaries, and their services are free. This was a huge relief. Having to go to a notary would have made me nuts.
 
At the end of all of this, there was the application fee. The application was received in the beginning of August and I have no notice as to where I am in the queue or whether this amount of time elapsing is normal or not.

Maybe before St. Patrick's Day? Not that I like that holiday, but it would be kinda fun to show up at my old Irish pub with my Irish birth registration to show it off to the owners.

Norway Day 4

Our last day in Norway was great. We weren't able to make contact with our cousin due to the previously mentioned Jurassic technology problem. Oh well. Instead, mrguy took us to Kode, where we got our first exposure to Hilma af Klint. Her paintings were awesome. Then we took in the Nikolai Astrup show. What I particularly enjoyed about his paintings is that the setting was a farm called Myklebust. My family also lived at a farm of that name, but I don't know if it is the same one (there were several by that name).

Nikolai Astrup's wife, Engel Sunde, filled their house with textiles, some of which she collected and some of which she made. This interior scene is really compelling. In addition to her groovy textiles this painting shows that someone in the household, presumably her, was growing an Easter lily, fuschia, and what looks like an aloe. In Norway, in the early 1900s. I wouldn't have thought, and maybe that's silly of me.

A few more paintings, now. First, mrguy identified this one from sight as a painting by Anton Graf. He was correct. He and I are now kinda experts at spotting late 18th century Eastern German court paintings.

And this painting I loved -- paintings of dead loved ones are both weird and touching, especially when the subject is a child.

After we were done at the museum, mrguy escorted me to the University of Bergen library, where I could look for bygdebøker. Once ensconced at the library, mrguy went off to buy more records. He didn't really have a mission at the library and doesn't read Norwegian, but knew of a record store he hadn't visited already.

Back at the library: with assistance from a librarian I was able to find the section in the library that contained the bygdebøker I needed. I had a great hour and a half figuring out the organization of these books and, really, confirming and extending the family history research I had done twenty years ago, and to take it back another few generations. Yay!

I felt guilty with my pleasure, and after an hour and a half I texted mrguy and we went to a great bar, where we had a few beers. Awesome chairs, there.

And then we went back to the apartment and I spent as much time as possible after packing and before falling asleep using my Norwegian ISP address to access resources on the National Archives digitized collections online. Oh now I wish I had a Norwegian IP address every day! They have digitized newspapers, which would be amazing to read and use for research.

So ends our trip to Sweden and Norway. They are both delightful and different from each other, and I hope that we some day return.

Norway Day 2

As mrguy said, this was epic.

We had rough plans to meet our cousin in the morning or afternoon. What I didn't know was that she'd drowned her phone that week and was using a loaner phone -- Jurassic technology. I'd sent her an email suggesting we get together around 1pm on Sunday. She didn't get it. And so we were drinking coffee in our jammies when the doorbell of our apartment rang and it was my cousin. She couldn't reach us and it was a beautiful day so she walked 6.5 Kilometers from her house to our apartment.

She's a delightful person -- smart, direct, knows everything about everything and is recently retired. She volunteers at a place that offers activities for people with Alzheimer's, so she understands what we've been going through with Mom's illness. We talked for several hours and then met up a few blocks away to go on the funicular to Mt Fløyen. The view up there is stupendous, the goats are adorable and being with my cousin after all of these years was amazing!

 

We came back down and went back to our apartment for a bit before meeting up with cousins again in the evening. We spent a lot of time at 7-11, eating margherita panini. Oddly satisfying, as was being able to scarf and get some rest, instead of using all of our time in restaurants. I had such plans for dining, but it wasn't going to turn out to be the best use of our time. Plus we got to see stuff that made us laugh, like this:

We hooked up with our cousins later on. It was so great. In addition to my younger cousin, who I had met before, we met an older cousin who is 85 or so and more spry than I am and completely hilarious. Sometimes intentionally and sometimes unintentionally. An even younger cousin, a college student, picked us up and drove us out to near the airport, speaking Norwegian most of the time. Just to be clear, my mind is being blown the whole time. I am *in* a car in Norway with *relatives I haven't seen in decades* and they're all speaking another language and we're all related.

When we got to a beautiful house on a fjord, we were at our destination. A cousin's house. Big, gorgeous, has a boat house, and the fresh water for the house was specially piped in from across the fjord. Children ride show horses and the wife is from Biarritz. And yet, these are the most down to earth people. So lovely. All interested in family, family history, and sharing stories. We sat at a long farm table and discussed family and family trees. And then it was time to go back to town.

 

We had made a pinkie swear earlier in the day to go to the beer bar / record store, Apollon, when we got back to town. Had to take a picture of the setting.

What a day.