The 12-hour, 6-part, series telling the background, history and story of the American Revolution was surely one of Ken Burns’ best efforts. It first aired in November, 2025. This was an university-level presentation and one that really needs to be watched a second, or third, time to fully grasp the whole story. And every American should know this story. 

There was so much more to this story than men-painted-like-Indians-dumping-tea-in-Boston-Harbor. Perhaps that’s the highlight taught in grade school. To quote Burns’ words, given in a September 2025 interview with David Leonhardt:

“I’m just offering a good story. I’m not offering it as anything other than an attempt to tell a complicated story, to make it come alive and to suggest that maybe it’s possible to coalesce around the complexity of our origin story….. to revel in it, rather than reduce it to something binary and simple.”

“Within that complexity, it may be possible to draw people to the ironies, the tragedies, the exultant ideas. Because this….the American Revolution…. is the most important event in world history since the birth of Christ. Period. Full stop. And I’ll defend that. Because for the first time, there was possibility, even for those who did not yet have ownership of themselves. And to me, that is the essence of the liberating story of the American Revolution.”

Yes, those are big words and deep thoughts. But that IS the story of America’s Revolution. I encourage you to watch it, perhaps twice.  

Have you spent some time with the fantastic FREE website, www.findagrave.com? Over the recent holidays, I spent some happy time looking up my ancestors to look for photos of their tombstones. Oh, the things I learned……… I knew Grandfather Mel died long before Hope but 28 years she was a widow? That’s a long time.

Ron Marvin. EWGS member,  gave a great workshop last November on this website. He offered several excellent tips:

* Understand that the photos have been added to FindAGrave by volunteers who live near that cemetery and have tromped around, photographed and uploaded the images. 

* Confirm that you do have the correct person.

* Review the listed links (if present) to parents, spouses, children and siblings……… often you can reconstruct an entire family here!

* Check to see who added flowers……. an unknown cousin? Consider adding flowers yourself so that cousin can contact you. 

* Once confirmed, you can snip-and-save the image to your computer clipboard and then upload it to Ancestry or FamilySearch. 

* If you wish to upload additional information for this ancestor, or suggest corrected information, click on Suggested Edits. 

* If the FindAGrave entry for your ancestor does not have a biography page, do consider compiling and uploading one. Ditto for an obituary or a photograph. 

Go spent some happy time with your ancestors and Find-A-Grave. You’ll enjoy it, I guarantee. 

Ever been to a real barn dance? Likely not….. at least not like the ones our ancestors enjoyed. 

In an old magazine, quoting a 1909 newspaper, I found this description of just what was a real honest-to-goodness barn dance:

“The barn dance is a country cousin to the schottische, and the music must be furnished in convulsive jerks. The man shoots out with his heavy fluke, grabs the girl around the waist and she places her lily white paw on his shoulder near his wishbone. The man then kicks out with his right pedal and his partner with the left. They jump many times like they are dodging snakes, then resume the first position. They then hop, three times on one foot and then on the other, like a fellow that has stumped his toe, and the first position is taken again. The dance commences with a bounce, and the dancers never cease bouncing until the music stops of the fiddle string breaks. At the conclusion of the south house the performers get a broom and sweep up the buttons that have been shaken off during the spasms.”

Wouldn’t we love to watch the 1938 movie “Old Barn Dance?” A horse trader named Gene Autry (Gene Autry) arrives in Grainville with his horses and outfit prepared to put on a barn dance to attract potential horse buyers to an auction. The horse trading business has been affected lately by the increased use of tractors to replace horses for farm work. Radio station owner Sally Dawson (Joan Valerie) approaches Gene and offers him a contract to sing on a program sponsored by Thornton Farming Equipment, the area’s leading manufacturer of tractors. Unconvinced that tractors could ever replace horses, Gene refuses her offer, but is still attracted to her and invites her to his barn dance that night.

This darling photo is not me but surely could be. I think I was born with gills behind my ears because I do love to be around water, especially the ocean. 

Why am I spotlighting me today? Because I’m really on a crusade to get all of us over-60 folks to write down your memories. One way to think about this is to image what do you want your great- great grandchildren to know about you??? 

I’ve kept notebooks and a simple journal for 40 years. With one spiral notebook, when my kids were teenagers, I wrote exactly what we did, went and ate every single day that year. Now maybe that drivel won’t pique their beaks but my memories of Big Events surely will.

I tell them WHY I say I was born the Year of the Black Penny. I say WHY I lived in Japan as a five year old. I relate being the wife of a Navy nuclear submariner for eight years. I can tell them my memories of that 1963 day when Kennedy was shot. I can tell them I was with my mother-in-law watching the first men walk on the moon in 1969. I can tell them how my three teens plus one lived in an ash-surrounded cocoon in 1980 during Mt.St.Helens. I certainly will tell them how my sister-in-law called from Kansas City at 5:00am on that fateful 9-11 day (before we were up) to scream “turn on the TV, we’re at war!” 

See how simple writing YOUR stories, YOUR memories can be? Hope I’ve tweaked your beak a bit. Tomorrow I turn 83; how old will you be tomorrow? Isn’t it time you sharing your life’s memories???