Vernal Equinox Musings

The vernal equinox is upon us. The sun will sun due west -- if I'm not mistaken, everywhere on earth this evening (I guess somewhere far the the east it is already on its way down).  Every place will have 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of dark -- possibly give or take a few minutes because of orbital anomalies I don't understand.

So, while I should probably be working on my regular Thursday blog, it seems a good morning to break away from the usual and share a few fun experiences of the past several days.

First, this past week I had the pleasure of speaking about writing in a webinar for the Writer's Special Interest Group of the Association of Professional Genealogists. We talked about how editors help broker the idea exchange between authors and readers.  What a nice group of writers and aspiring writers this is. I'm going to join the SIG. If you are an APG member and an aspiring writer, I recommend you do the same.

Second, this morning I found a very nice comment on my March 10 post ("My Favorite Question -- Why There?). The commenter shared that she also is intrigued with what I call geo-genealogy -- why ancestors did what they did where they did them. I enjoyed the story she related about her grandmother's body was transported from the Oregon Coast to Idaho for burial.

Finally, I received an interesting email that I nearly overlooked. The email was titled "Erik Andersson and More" -- which should have immediately grabbed my interest, but that I at first took as likely spam. The first sentence read "Today -19th March 2016 -- is the 130th anniversary of Erik Andersson's birth." Then it clicked: Erik Andersson was the Swedish-American farmer who applied for citizenship in Ringgold County, Iowa, the same day as my grandfather. The email writer is Erik's granddaughter. She had stumbled across my 19 November 2015 post. She said she learned from my blog things she had not known about her grandfather. In turn, she told me a few things I did not know. Most fun for me, she recalled memories of places in the small Iowa town where my grandfather lived -- the same places and people I remember from the 1950s.

Mornings like this make me glad that I am blogging regularly about family history. The clock is ticking, but I do hope to post my regular blog at its usual time later in the week. I will be picking up the story of George Fawkner after her came home from the Civil War.