A Positive Postbox

Are you like me when you discover something exciting about an ancestor? Sometimes I share my joy in a blog post or via social media but most times I just tell Mr GeniAus who doesn't  get too excited unless it's a story or photo related to one of his ancestors. I add the details to my tree, scan and file away the docs and photos and move on.

As I was preparing my response to my 2016 Accentuate the Positive Geneameme I had trouble remembering high spots to share. I thought of  the memory jars some people are making and figured I could do something similar for my Geneajig moments.

I'm going to find a little box or tin and some sticky notes and I'll be ready to go. I'll call this my JukeBox, because it will contain my hits for the current year.

The Wonderful Wayback

I extolled the virtues of the Wayback Machine in a recent post on the Worldwide Genealogy blog and expressed disappointment that, as I couldn't remember the URLs of my old websites,  I couldn't see if they were archived in The Internet Archive on the Wayback Machine.

As I was playing around in Rootsweb Mailing Lists this mroning I came across and old post of mine and in the signature was the URL of the website I had at the turn of the century. I entred the URL and to my absoute delight found archived copies of my website. Some of the images haven't saved but I can see the basic structure, plenty of pages and follow some links..

The Internet archive tells me that

http://www.ozemail.com.au/~theballs

Saved 31 times between September 19, 2000 and September 19, 2006."

So let's take a trip down memory lane.

2001

2003

2003

In 2006 I moved the site to a new server at http://users.tpg.com.au/welwel/theballs/ and our page looked like this:

I also had a couple of subsites. There was Jill's Jigsaw.

And there was my first attempt at a Surname page for Currys in Australia. Too Hot to Handle. I have started over again at http://curryaus.wordpress.com.

I  am going to record those old URLs in Evernote in case I want to visit my old sites via The Wayback Machine again.

Who wants memories?

"Nobody else will want them let's face it."

I happen to vehemently disagree with this statement made by a friend yesterday when we were discussing recording our memories. She has cleared the decks at her house so there will be no "rubbish" left for her children to deal with when she leaves this mortal earth.

I was telling her that I was finally going through and tossing 35 years worth of tickets, pamphlets and programs from 35 years of overseas travel..... BUT before I tossed them I scanned all that could be scanned. I am going to put all of those digital images on my hard drive in the photo folders to which they relate. I'm sure some of the kids will enjoy them. Of course I have saved hard copies of some important documents like the luncheon menu from when I dined in The Strangers' Dining Room at the House of Commons in London.

I have a bad  case of Hoarditis  and find it difficult to part with ephemera but I just don't have the physical space to store it all.

What's Next?

Although I have transcribed all of the entries in them into my online diary I still have a collection of my old physical diaries. Today I took a giant leap forward and tossed out all my old work diaries (I have been retired for nearly 7 years). I don't think I'll be quite brave enough to part with personal diaries ....just yet.

Maybe nobody else will want them but I'm giving my descendants the option of saying Yes or No.

Will you leave plenty of memories behind?

A Garage full of Memories

Mr Geniaus and I are bowerbirds, thankfully we have lots of storage at our house especially in the huge garage downstairs. Whenever the kids say they are throwing out a piece of furniture or disposing of some childhood treasures we offer to house them because "You never know when someone may need one".

Crunch time has come; we need to make space to store a houseful of furniture for one of the kids who is rebuilding and we are not going to add more storage space to our house.  So Mr Geniaus and I started a major cleanup (and throwout) in the garage.

And what did a find? - A Garage full of Memories. 

Holly Hobbie Fabric

My back is aching, my hair is full of dust, I am filthy and in need of a bath but I had a wonderful time clearing out and will continue to as I have more days of tidying ahead of me.

The Holly Hobbie material in my box of fabric reminded me of the doona cover and pillow cases I made for our younger daughter to match her Holly Hobbie wallpaper. She had a lovely little room at our house in Bronte. The scraps of rainbow wallpaper reminded me of the bedroom our boys had in our Maroubra house; the yellow chunky tube beds they had are resting on the other side of the garage.

Glittering in the bottom of a fabric box was a remnant from the purple sequined material out of which I made a formal dress for my elder daughter when she was at Uni. She had a very social time at University; I always seemed to be making formal dresses for hear to wear to balls and dinners.

Tucked away in a corner is the big posh metal English pram that I transported my first two children around in before I got a Mini Minor for a car. There was no way the pram that was nearly as big as the Mini would fit in the boot. Prior to getting the Mini I used to push that pram on a 5 mile round trip to have lunch with my Mum in her lunch hour.  Just along from that pram is my younger daughter's toy pram, I can offload that in a year or two when her daughters are big enough to push it.

Three young cousins

Still in boxes were some books belonging to my late father. As I offloaded these onto the bookshelves I found some other treasures in the box. There was a full copy of the Daily Telegraph from October 17, 1983. That is the issue that had a picture of the Geniaus offspring with Captain Mark Phillips, there was the order of service from a cousin's First Communion and a photo of some younger cousins playing dressups in their mother's wedding dress.

Trivial Pursuit, cricket bats, roller skates, an electric trainset and other toys from the seventies and eighties sparked further happy memories of a family growing up.

Do you have a garage full of memories?

Recording my life's stories

Do you keep a diary?

I have a couple of shelves of hard copy diaries in my garage. There are work diaries and personal diaries. I started recording a personal diary around 1980 but missed a couple of years in the eighties.

Around eighteen years ago when I first acquired a PDA I decided to move to an online diary as I realised that I could move entries from my PDA into a file on my computer, enhance these with anecdotes and keep them as a diary. In those early days there weren't many pieces of  journalling software around and I don't think blogs were around either. I decided to keep my diary in a simple spreadsheet. Today it is still in that spreadsheet and still using the headings I set up all those years ago

Diary Headings

It's not meant to be pretty just functional.


I started by importing all of my PDA calendar entries into the spreadsheet then I  transcribed all of my diary entries; these triggered memories so I was able to add detail to the dry dates and facts. Once this was completed I was on a roll. I then added entries for events prior to the days when I kept a diary. I added dates and memories of family events, looked at my dated photographs and recorded the stories these told me. My kids let me look at their old school diaries and calendars; these provided more dates and memory prompts.I have since gone through some of our old credit card bills and added details of important purchases.

From time to time family members make a comment about an event in the past and their recollections of it.  I note these on either a scrap of paper or a note in my phone and put them in the diary as time permits recording the source of the comment. I always record my sources, not in a formal academic sense but with labels like Aunt May, 1983 school diary, Letter from Fred to Sue, Current, Photo etc.

When my Dad passed away I discovered where my hoarding gens came from. He had kept every receipt from every purchase he had made. I added these and the memories I have related to these purchases: our first refrigerator, our first radiogram, our first television, holiday dates. One of my dear friends had saved all the postcards I have sent to her, when she knew that her days were numbered she gave these back to me. I have added all of the test to the diary; these entries demonstrate in my words the awe and excitement I had when visiting distant lands.

I cannot remember when my friends got married or had their 21sts or when their kids were christened but I have vivid memories of some of these events. Whenever I come across someone whose wedding I attended I ask when they got married and add this to the diary. I then record my memories of the event.

As technology has developed I have added entries from other sources. My daughter's emails from boarding school tell of the fun times she was having. My Facebook wall posts are wonderful sources of my thoughts and activities at a particular point in time. Each month I import my outlook calendar into the diary. Whenever I travel I record my doings on a spreadsheet on my smartphone as I go and import this into the main document on my return.

The diary now sits in a folder called OurDiary into which I paste scanned images of tickets, invitations, programs etc. I hyperlink to these from the Excel spreadsheet. I also add hyperlinks to information about people, places and events. I once started to transcribe old letters and didn't get far but now I scan and hyperlink them.

What started out as a simple spreadsheet has now grown into a multimedia resource that spans my lifetime. This diary is much richer than a simple paper based diary as it combines information from a range of sources to give a picture of our family and work life. When I finish digitising my photos I will add selected ones into the folder. Whether it will stay in Excel or migrate to some other product I don't know.

Hopefully some of my descendants will be interested in our family life and gain enjoyment and enlightenment from Our Diary.