As has been the case for the history of this entire blog, it is based on my recollections of my past and no blame can be assessed to any other in this regard.  I truly do love my family with all its good and bad and ugly members--bad being maybe too harsh a label.  I also love the family I married into, the Gilmore/Harry bunch.
    Pierson reunion in June 2009























The Gilmore reunion in 2005























 
     It seems that the world is getting smaller and our families are growing larger.  I don't put a lot stock in the term "in-laws", you're either in the family or not....there is no middle ground there for me.  My children are a part of both sets of kinfolk and I think it is only fair that both parents be included in both families too.  

     I don't do these postings to hurt peoples feelings or put out a lot of untruths, I do it as a historian and philosopher of a sort.  I think I mostly poke fun at myself more than others and try to relate the oral history that was handed to me to pass along to the next generations.  This mode of presentation can reach a lot more family members than talking one to one to pass on the stories.  I always enjoyed my parents, aunts and uncles and grandparents telling stories of their youth and later in life.  The older generation, which I am now a member of, will not be around forever and if you've an idea that you want to carry the oral history ball on into the future, look up or contact some of the "old timers" that are around now and pick their brain for stories. 

     I am very lucky to have known relatives that were born before the Civil War and before the 20th Century began to get a jump on the rest of you.  There are still many stories worthy of being passed down to the succeeding generations.  If you can get them recorded with just audio or both audio and video, you can capture them for nearly all time.  I made some audio recordings of my grandmothers in about 1973 or 1974, my parents in 1980's, my wife's grandmother in the 1980's and her dad in the 2000's.  These have been digitized and filed on CD's or DVD's for others to review somewhere down the road, when memories start to fade.  I can go into a dark room and put in the CD of Hallie Pierson and turn off the lights and listen to the conversation I had with her in the early 1970's and feel like I'm back in her living room the day we had the conversation.  A remarkable thing this digital technology...it still doesn't compare with the actual "being there" and talking face to face.  

     Give it a try if you get a chance, you will learn wonderful things about our family...