Living in the Past: A Family History

As you reach the status of elder in your family, you begin to understand on a fundamental level that life doesn't go on forever and that you'd better make the time you have left as meaningful and enjoyable and full of family and friends as you can.  It's one of the challenges of retirement, in a way, to make the shift from living and working for others to living for yourself -- how can I make this time a happy and productive one for me?  What do I want to do?  What do I like t o do, what makes me h appy? At my age, I am reminded of the shortness of life far too often, if you ask me.  In the past two months, I've lost three people that I cared about:  a fellow teacher in the Writing Program at San Francisco State, a colleague from the dean's office who was like a brother to me, and now, my Stanford advisor, Arthur Applebee. Those who have not gone through a doctoral program sometimes have difficulty understanding what the advisor/student relationship is like at t...

I can't believe it's been over a month since I posted anything.  So much has been going on that my blog has unfortunately fallen by the wayside. First, my sister and I enjoyed a fabulous trip to Alaska as part of the Federation of Genealogical Society's cruise.  The conference was very well organized, the speakers excellent, and the fellow travelers we met were wonderful.  I particularly enjoyed the sessions by Elizabeth Shown Mills and Judy Russell, but all were good.  We were so happy to be a part of this wonderful event. Canadian sunset When I came home, I immediately got sick (the very day I got home) -- on the ship, they were squirting Purell at us every other minute, but I must have missed a couple of squirts, because I came home with a horrible cold.  I'm still at the tail end of it. I've also been deeply absorbed in planning our November trip to Paris -- I've been putting so many events on our schedule and paying for them in advance that Wells Fargo...