I haven't written in a while. I plan on doing that soon, so that I can update the blog with more information and keep it a little, better organized so I can use it better. I often enjoy just typing, writing until my brain is emptied and then I can breathe again. Secrets from a writer with mild ADD who enjoys learning and ADD never bothered my academic skills, just staying on track and finishing things.
How things have changed is my theme today.
Sunday Morning Memories in Miami indeed was always linked with getting the Sunday Paper.
My childhood, my life with my parents growing up is a part of genealogy. It's the story behind the facts and figures of when someone was born and when someone got married and had kids and eventually died. I look through Ancestry and MyHeritage scrolling for data and it occurs to me over and over that I'm getting bullet style data and little about their actual lives. How they lived and what we did growing up and how it lingered in our memories is more than the date we were born in a certain place, who we married and when we died. Some trees are what are called Telephone Pole trees obviously written by self-absorbed people or ones that don't talk to siblings or relatives. They fail to mention when their siblings were born, they fail to mention if their parents had siblings or if there grandparents had siblings. Just the basic facts and I'll add that's better than those who take a test to make a "crazy uncle" happy and have no information and dont' respond to letters on Ancestry.
A life is more than just the facts.
When I was little my father would go out and get a Sunday Paper for my mother. The only real "news" section he read was the Sports Section and it is possible he was curious which dogs or Jai Alai players had won the night before, but the Sunday paper was more than just some news. It was a real, live breathing thing that made noises when you turned the pages and was a buffet of information that satisfied our many interests. We were allowed to read the Comic Section, if my mother was done looking at it though to be honest my father enjoyed the Comics more. You could hear him laughing through the bathroom door many times. I was inquisitive, asking questions always. Lord, I must have been so annoying.
"Daddy, what are you laughing at?" I'd ask my father through the door as if some how he was seriously going to die from laughter on the bathroom toilet. He'd yell back "I'm reading the Comics, what do you think I'm reading" and I'd roll my eyes and go back to my room safe in the knowledge he was fine and as a child who was never really much of a child I'd think how silly it was to read the Comics. Though I did always look at Peanuts. My husband reads the Comics. Did I marry my father? I digress.... which is what you do with ADD and yet it makes life richer, more real and is honestly the way life flows in real time.
When I was older we lived on Miami Beach, my father would go out late on a Saturday Night in search of a Sunday Paper for my mother. If I was good and he was in the mood for my incessant questions and some company he'd take me a long for the ride. After a while he'd figured out the best place to get an Early Edition that was not "Sold Out" was in fact in front of the Miami Herald building where they had a row of machines filled with the Sunday Paper that came out on Saturday Night. I can remember driving quietly across "the beach" as Miami Beach natives call Miami Beach, eventually he'd go across the causeway and the twinkling lights of ships out on the water were more wonderful than going to a museum. They took on shape, form and the night light bent the lights into magical points of light like diamonds glittering on the water. Sometimes, there would be people "shrimping" near the Miami Herald Building and if you don't know what that means, Google it but it was a thing back then. Little boats bobbing in the water under a Full Moon all doing strange things with nets.
We'd get the paper, peek through it as she liked it new, pristine and untouched; my ex-husband ironically was like that too. My father would just ruffle through it for the Sports section after she carefully took it apart and placed it across her bed. The sound of rustling newspaper pages is a memory stuck in my brain. We'd sit around as if the Sunday Paper was something huge, larger than life watching this weekly scene a new every week. In the Morning I usually got leftovers of crumbled pages as I surfed through it, reading articles that were interesting with a cup of coffee. As I got older I'd walk over to 41st Street aka Arthur Godfrey Drive and get a New York Times from the Juice stand that also had coffee, if you asked, near the machine that made tourists fresh Orange Juice and obviously sold them their coveted New York Times.
I'd race home to our house a block or so away and rip open the paper, searching for the New York Times Book Review Section. This was very exciting to me as a young child that wrote long and saw myself as a poet ... a writer I really needed to know what books made the Top Ten List. Then I'd look savagely through the Arts section to see what was playing on Broadway, who was peforming in what play, what musical and read which theater it was being performed in and I enjoyed doing that immensely. It made me feel excited, connected and I suppose good about myself that I cared about what books were on the Best Seller's List that week and which play was performing at which theater even though I was in college and not going to make it to a show on Broadway any time soon. But, hey I knew... I was aware!
Note I did see shows on Broadway on trips to New York to visit my father's family. And while I didn't study acting the way I thought I would, I did live in Brooklyn for a while in Seminary and my best friend and I would go into "the City" and wander around enjoying being young in NYC. So in ways I did make it there. After Seminary I went back to Miami and finished college with degrees in Englisn and International Relations.
Time went by. I graduated from college. I got married. My husband I would often take a drive across the Venetian Causeway and get an early edition of the Sunday Paper on Saturday night, though generally down the road we got the papers delivered to our door. My husband liked it pristine, clean like my mother did and he loved reading through the articles on science especially (I know he still does but now he reads online) and we'd sit with a cup of coffee, the baby crying for his bottle or wanting us to put him in his swing.
This is real life. It's the memories and the world you don't necessarily see on the timeline on Ancestry when you click on a possible ancestor and it's often it's info that's partially true with little details such as where we lived the first year we were married or when we got divorced. Many times on Ancestry it'll say some Grandfather named Joseph was born in "Russia" but often they were born in Lithuania or Poland or even Latvia. Many kids didn't listen to their grandparents, they didn't ask questions or their parents were somehow not sure and it didn't seem important. Russia can usually mean anything, but mostly it means they do not know as there is no town, no specific information. If they are from Germany, they can tell you the city and which part of Germany they come from and I know that as my first husband's family was from Germany and they were rich with details. Again, I am digressing but it's important but details are important.
I woke up this morning, later than usual as I was up late at a Selichos service at Chabad that began at Midnight, after an hour or so of a party like gathering where we all touched based, listened to stories and sang songs. Bourbon and chocolate chip cookies were involved as well as old school herring, crackers, dips and olives with jalapenos in them that I did not touch. I do like Herring. Details are important. Bourbon because I live in the South and my mother's family goes back very far in the South so I am Southern Jewish. My Grandma Mary always had, God Bless Her, little chocolate chip cookies wrapped up in a handkerchief for an emergency. My cousin snuck some some chocolate chip cookies wrapped in a hankerchief in a small bag velvet Crown Royal Bag into her casket when the woman watching to make sure no one would do anything like that said "do it quick" as he said with sad tear filling his eyes "you know she never went anywhere without a little bit of water and chocolate chip cookies" and I smiled, once again 5 years old getting in trouble together with him and said "that is true" and so Aunt Ada had some chocolate chip cookies for her next journey after life the way her mother Grandma Mary taught her.
I'm being honest here as honesty is what it is all about, not made up facts and figures. Grandma Mary's older sister Jenny often wrote on the census she was born in America, but that's not true because I know the details of the family's journey. And, Aunt Annie who was married to a Falk from New Orleans of Falk Brother's Tobacco Fame would tell the census worker that Aunt Annie was born in Germany. That's not true but it says much about how true every detail on a census is so remember that. One census worker wrote down that my Aunt Ada was born in Peru which rattled my younger brother who called me at Midnight to tell me this news and I told him "Ronnie, she probably said Philly" or someone scribbled Penn for Pennsylvania and they made a mistake. He thought on that for a minute and said "oh, okay, you're probably right" and hung up the phone. Or perhaps we were texting, now that I think on it.
I found out on Ancestry that Aunt Aunnie's daughter Bessie Ruth's mother-in-law Jeannette Falk was actually a relative, probably on my mother's side and she lived in New Orleans in the Garden District and her family before New Orleans was from a part of France actually. When my Grandma's Mother passed away when she was a young girl she lived in New Orleans in the Garden District with her older brother Jake's fiance's family. And, yet I have yet to find out who that fiance was that might open more interesting doors. But New Orleans does play a big part in our family's life as it has mine.
And that is the bottom line here in this journey through my families addiction with the News before CNN came on and then MSNBC and then FOX and then Apps came alone and Podcasts... way back when there was the town newspaper. Miami had an afternoon paper called the Miami News that was tossed on our lawn every day around 3 PM there by the time I got home from school. The Morning News was the Miami Herald. There was a paper called the guide that turned into Community News that my daughter-in-law's family owns. We do love news don't we.... we are very news obsessed!
My family always loved the news. My mother would park her chair in front of the Nightly News and watch every detail. In her old age she followed the story of the Women in White who were protesting for freedom in Cuba. Being from Miami, old school Miami, having lived in Little Havana before it was actually called Little Havana everyone grew up with Cubans and followed news in Cuba. My grandmother was raised not far from her father's office in Ybor City in Tampa, both she and my mother spoke some Spanish. My father watched the sports scores. My father loved sports. He loved baseball, football, basketball and Jai Alai, but he did not like golf. Family facts that someone may want to know.
Now I wake up, and there is no more paper delivered to our door. My current husband used to love getting it every morning and we'd go through it while sipping coffee and watching the birds by the bird feeder on the deck by our home in North Carolina. I'm still in the South, but as I said "Up North" in the South. He really loved the newspaper, even when we were getting most of our news on Cable TV or on the Internet. But alas the paper was getting smaller and smaller, thinner and thinner more filled with opinions than news and this was before Monjaro....it just began to fade away and as we are both online often we stopped paying for the local news in Raleigh. Kind of sad, but things change, times change and my younger kids won't remember the fun of getting the newspaper on the lawn or delivered by their grandfather to their grandmother to make her happy. Okay, eventually he was allowed to read the paper too ;)
There is something wonderfully tactile about opening up the newspaper, laying it out..holding it up or folding it to the section you want to read. It has a smell, a feel, a texture that promises exciting news, tidbits of information that would amuse you and offer you there's a One Day Sale MACYS that starts on Friday and ends on Monday and that should tell you all you need to know about not believing everything you see in the newspaper or on the news.
I woke up this morning, tangled under the covers in my husband's arms and part of me really wanted to get up and see what was going on with the new area of convection off of Africa known as a Tropical Wave with a strong chance of development. I had peeked earlier when I woke up around 5 AM for a moment and saw it was elevated to 70% and fell back to sleep. It's a slow developer, nothing is happening fast I went back to bed. Finally awake I lay there thinking on how "back in the day" I'd get up and go check to see if the paper was here, put it on the table for him or bring it back to bed. It's something my kids won't ever remember. They have other memories. We all have memories.
And, that is the point. We all have memories. But do we include those memories in our genealogy research. Then I also thought for a moment, why don't you blog on it. Then I remembered I have this blog also and I could literally type until I get it all out of my system while waiting to see what the NHC does at 2 PM when they update on the strong tropical wave with high aspirations.
What have your learned from this blog? No, it's not a test, it's a rhetorical question.
My mother loved the news and taught me to watch the news. Actually Aunt Ada her sister, who lived next door and was my "second mother" where I often hung out also watched the news. She'd get up, seriously walk over to the TV and put on the Nightly News watching carefully while telling me and my cousin to "eat our carrots they are good for your eyes" and you also know was my cousin growing up was my friend "partner in crime" and life was good. Grandma Mary, whose husband died before I was born and before I could ever saw my grandfather lived with my Aunt Ada and was an integral part of my life. I'll explain in another blog on my Uncle Oscar, my mother's brother-in-law, and how I found out how I am distantly related to his family. But that's another story for another day. Miami back in the day was a bit of a Jewish Shtetl where I lived.
My grandmother Mary, the baby of the family, had an older sister Jenny that was born in Europe and came to America as a little girl. Jenny was actually about 16 years older than my Grandma Mary. Grandma's sister Annie was not born in Germany, but in America and raised in Tampa as was my Grandma Mary.
My father, by the way, born Up North in the Bronx, followed sports. He did go to the Dogs and as a mathematician he enjoyed the calculating of which dog ran best on a wet track or a crowded track, but he really loved watching Jai Alai. He played it at an Amatuer Frontons for fun until his bursitis kicked in and he gave up it up but he kept the Jai Alai Cesta above his desk in his office. My father liked to read the Comics, he laughed a lot. And while my mother could be difficult at times, he'd try hard to make her happy because he said "when your mother is happy we are all happy" and we actually called him Daddy and her Mother. Think on it a bit...
We all were informed on the news. I have a degree in International Relations aka Geopolitics. Follow the cookie crumbs. I got my ADD from both my parents, it's useful as I'm good at doing ten things at once and usually I finish at least 7 or 8. But as one my kids, whose an academic genius, reminded me "our ADD isn't the kind that stops us from getting good grades in school or learning. Yes, he's right on that.
Something I learned, sadly, in college studying the history of news and politics is that the New York Times, owned by a Jewish family, barely covered the Holocaust or what was going on behind the scenes in Europe vs the battles and generals and other parts of the story. Apparently they didn't want to look "too Jewish" and only cover news that impacted Jews and that's been verified and it was what it is or rather what it was but sort of sad they did not use their platform to reveal real news. But, I didn't know that growing up, all I knew was it had information on shows on Broadway and the NY Times Literary Section that I still sometimes read online.
My Florida family lived where Cubans have lived for 4 generations as they lived in Key West in the 1880s, then they moved up to Tampa as many did in the Cigar Business and somehow ended up in Miami in the Roads Section that later became "Little Havana" and I sipped Cuban Coffee aka Nespresso as I typed this post. Alas, I type loud on my laptop and woke my husband up. He thanked me for the article I sent him in Gmail that I read online earlier I knew he'd like and he's rattling around in the kitchen getting coffee. Some of my grandchildren are part Cuban Jewish so I get to be an Abuelito and if you know you know that's a big honor!
We all drink coffee. The Miami Dolphins will play at 1 PM (I read it online) and the Carolina Panthers will play at 4 PM. It'll be a miracle if either of them win this week.
Newspapers were really fun as you turned pages, made a mess of them while reading them in bed and they took you places you'd hope to go someday such as watching a play on Broadway. When my cousin and I were little we'd read advertisements for Yachts on sale and decide which one we wished we could buy. years later I'd peek at the Personals that were often boring, funny or poignant. Sometimes I'd read obituaries as they are often inspiring. I grew up reading the paper. Now I catch my news online, on Youtube and occasionally on TV which generally runs in the background, sound off in case there's something I want to turn the sound up for and often it's the weather.
I have a thirst for knowledge. I ask a lot of questions. I had an Advanced Placement Teacher in History in highschool in an "AP" class that would joke that in most his classes he taught "history" but to our class we learn what Benjamin Franklin really ate for breakfast. Another teacher taught us AP European History in 12th grade and along with way too much info on the Thirty Year War in Europe she'd describe to us what the sunlight looks like as it bounces off the rooftops of Florence and if we ever go to Europe we need to see that as it's better than even Paris. I learned doing genealogy that my Grandma Mary's father Wolfe, who was raised in England, but born in Europe, had shared ancestors with the Abrams Sisters who were all the rage in the 1770s and that in the 1800s one of the sisters married a Trollope and had a home in Florence, Italy where she was famous for writing long essays on Italian Unification or let's call it the "Italian Revolution" so obviously the interest in both music and political science is in my genes. My mother was an Opera singer, she had the same birthday (month and day) as one of the Abrams Sisters who was also a soprano. I have a son who was in Italy and he enjoyed Florence the most. What is it about Florence I wonder as I have not yet been there but curious. What goes around seems to come around in life and there's more in our genes than whether we have red hair or blue eyes or brown eyes.
Family History is more than a parent, that seems to have no siblings listed and who their parents were, where they might have been from, when they got married, when they had kids and when they died. Well, to me it is..... as my mother installed in me a love of history and more so a curiosity on family history. My Aunt Ada, a very practical lady, would say to her "what difference does it make if someone once had money in the family, they're dead they aren't paying your light bill" and that's also true. We are all different, unique and that too is important when gathering facts on our family history. My mother is an artist who was also a singer. Several of my kids are artists and involved in music. What really is in your genes? Is it nature or nuture? I wonder........
Thanks for reading this if you got down to the end you must be curious too. Well, you could be a stalker but I digress and won't go there. Smiling.
My youngest daughter gets her news from podcasts, my youngest son gets it on his phone on a multitude of APPs and of course everyone gets it on social media sites. I live on X I love news and weather. And, lastly I used to cut out the weather forecast sometimes, and paste it in my diary if it was important and relevant. Now I blog online.
How is your family history unique, special and interesting? What will you tell your children or nieces and nephews if you have any .......will they be interested and remember the way we were enraptured by Grandma Mary's stories about life in Key West and growing up in Tampa. Loved her so much.
At least I wrote, got it out of my head and can move on with my day. Might be delaying, as much as I love the Carolinas the thought of another Dolphin Debacle today is depressing. Love is forever ...
Have a great day.
Tomorrow will be Monday, plan on enjoying this Sunday, but truth is I kind of love Mondays!
