Philip Weiss

Covers for Aicardi

Fantasy author Jim C. Hines did a thing a while ago where he tried to duplicate the contorted poses of female characters on various book covers. It was a hit. People offered money if he’d do it again. Now he’s doing it for charity, the Aicardi Syndrome Foundation specifically. Donate money and as overall donation levels are reached, he picks a a donor at random and attempts to duplicate the cover of the donor’s choice. So far, over $4,500 has been donated to help people suffering from a pretty shitty illness.

I kicked in $100. And my choice was selected. I asked for the cover of Jeaniene Frost’s At Grave’s End. This is the pose:

I attempted this pose before submitting it, to see if it was indeed possible. It is, but it isn’t easy. It’s also useless as hell. When done like the cover, I was unable to move quickly at all. There’s no balance, and my center of gravity is not over my legs. I just couldn’t spring up to take on bad guys from that position. I suspect the look they were attempting was hot and fancy babe ready to spring into action to kill you but decided to sexy it up well past realistic. As cover artistry does. And it’s just not that hot in my view.

Jim Hines posted the first two poses this morning, including A Groin Cramping Pose:

For the record, the hottest cover pose for me is this:

It’s objectifying as hell (legs and butt only please), but the pose is doable. Anyone wanna guess why I like it? Stompy fucking boots for the win.

Looking at a new kitchen

Now that I have unused capacity for stress in my life, I’m finally moving forward on remodeling my apartment. The big thing is to rip out the kitchen and put in an entirely new one. I’ve long griped about the limited cupboard and counter space in the kitchen. So that will be no more. In the mock-ups below, the kitchen extends out into the area where my kitchen table currently sits.

Mock up #2 is of the other side, where my refrigerator and range are currently. Part of the wall there will be removed to let in more light, and there will be counter space to either side of the range.

I am also planning on replace all the carpeting with laminate flooring and getting the popcorn ceiling material remove. I get that styles change and all, but whoever invented popcorn ceiling material and all the people who installed it need to have their heads checked. The shit is ugly, and it can’t be cleaned. It’s not like I walk on the ceiling and track mud all over it, but in an old building like this, all it takes is one water leak and the popcorn material has a permanent mark.

I’m excited about this.

The downside is this is going to cost me a lot of money. I had budgeted a lot for it, but the first estimate I received is about $1,000 over my budget and it doesn’t include replacing any of my appliances or furniture or the cost of storing my stuff for a month. One of my tasks this week is to find another contractor to give me a second bid. Thing is, the first bidder has done a lot of work for my family and it was really good work. I’d like to use them if I can, but it means I will need to find some extra money.

The Freedom to Marry passes in Maryland and Maine, and leads in Washington

I’ve put in a lot of hours over the last four months making phone calls for Referendum 74. I know people who put in far more hours than I did. Tonight, it appears as if our work paid off. Referendum 74 is getting approved at just under 52% of the vote. There are about 600,000 votes left to count in the state, and one quarter of them are in King County, which has Referendum 74 passing by 65%. I ran the numbers and put them in a Google Sheet:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AvAkwpHQfSD4dGQ2OFFuMmo3T0x2Yno1MnhSRENRaFE

Signs point to approve with the assumption that late breaking ballots do no worse than votes counted earlier. I think that’s a reasonable assumption, given the great last minute Get Out The Vote effort from Washington United For Marriage. What I don’t know how to project is how many more ballots will arrive for each county, as I have no idea what kind of turnout is reasonable to presume.

Meanwhile Maryland and Maine passed marriage equality. The tide has turned.

And on the fourth year…

Four years ago right about now mom died.

This year, I haven’t broken down at random times. So that’s a plus.

It doesn’t seem like that long though. I still remember the 48 hours leading up to her death very vividly.

But in other ways, it’s been forever. I finally got everything for her estate done, signed the final paperwork and sent it to the lawyer on Thursday. I hate to think how long this would have taken if the family had fought over anything. Being the executor has felt like it would go on forever. Now I wait for final notification and hope I didn’t screw anything up.

Tomorrow, I will drive to Lynden and leave flowers on her grave. I’d do it today, but I am leading a phone bank for Approve Referendum 74 tonight, and that is too important to skip. For the rest of the local family, I leave an evergreen branch on their graves around Christmas, to continue my grandfather’s tradition. However, mom’s buried too far away to do that if there’s snow. The flowers I leave aren’t elaborate. I’ll probably just buy a small marigold. Mom doesn’t care. She’s dead. This is for me to keep memories alive.

The whereabouts of Nels Sorenson

I think I now have a complete set of census records for my great great grandfather, Nels Hansen Sorenson. He’s part of my grandmother’s branch of the family; she was estranged from the family so everything I know I have to reconstruct from records.

Her grandfather Niels was born in Langelands Denmark to an unmarried couple, Johan Sørensen and Marthe Kirstine Nielsen. A couple years later Marthe had another child out of wedlock, though she eventually married that man.

Perhaps because he was illegitimate or perhaps because his parents were poor, but Nels was not raised by his parents. He is with his mother in the 1855 Denmark Census in Bøstrup when he is about 6 months old. But in 1860 he’s living with his grandmother in Skrøbelev, and 1870 he’s a servant/farmboy for another person in the same parish who at this point I do not know if is related.

Skrøbelev Kirke (CC Arne Alexander Fræer Eckmann)

In 1880, Nels is still in Langelands in Illebølle but he’s married to my great great grandmother. In 1883 they would emigrate to Madison Wisconsin, where he Americanized his name to Nels Sorenson. In the 1900, 1910, 1920, and 1930 United States Censuses, he’s living at 1118 E Gorham Street in Madison. I’ve also got the 1905 Wisconsin State Census for him as well. He died in 1931.

1118 E Gorham Madison Wisconsin — 1118 E Gorham St, Madison (Google Street View)

Assembling the Danish Census images was tough because it’s poorly indexed. I looked through them digital image by digital image. Luckily, the places he lived on Langelands are not particularly populated places. I think I only had to look through about 500 pages. Despite the use of patronymics, the name Niels Hansen Sorensen is pretty uncommon on Langelands. I’m not 100% certain the 1870 census I found is him though. The age, location, and birth place match with what he reported on other censuses, but I still don’t have a conclusive way to tie them together.

I am also missing the 1885 and 1895 Wisconsin Censuses for him. Those are theoretically well indexed, but he’s not in the indexes and Madison/Dane County are big places to search image by image. As those censuses include only the name of the head of household, I can’t search for other family members hoping that Nels himself was mis-transcribed.

Elizabeth Holler’s missing 1870 census

I love it when I find something that other researchers on Ancestry haven’t.

Spent the last couple days tracing my maternal 2nd great grandmother, Elizabeth (Holler) Hathaway. From the Hathaways of America book, I knew her birth place and date, date of marriage, and date and place of death (Seattle). Plugged those into Ancestry and started digging.

Using Ancestry’s tools I was able to easily find her census records for 1860, 1880, 1900, 1910, 1920, and 1930. For some reason, Ancestry doesn’t have her date of marriage, though it is in Wisconsin marriage registry that Ancestry has indexed. No matter though, I have other sources for that.

There are 8 other people who have her in their public trees on Ancestry. All of them have pretty much the same information I have above. But missing was the 1870 census. In the 1880 census she had a sister Nancy who was born in Illinois about 1865. There were also three nieces/nephews living with the family with last names of Curry.

I looked at older sister Susannah to see if I could find a marriage between her and anyone named Curry, but didn’t find anything promising. Then I looked at older sister Mary. There were some records of a Mary Ann Holler marrying an Isaac Newton Curry in 1869 in Shelby County, Illinois. So I jumped over to FamilySearch and looked at the 1865 Illinois census and found a George Holler living in Ash Grove Township in Shelby County. But that census is one of those where only the head of household is recorded, so I don’t know for certain if it’s the correct George Holler.

Jumped back to Ancestry and pulled up the 1870 Census for Ash Grove, and start paging through images, 38 in all. On sheet 30, I found a George Holler living with Mrs Holler, George Jr, John F., Mary A., Elizabeth, Matilda, and Nancy. The names match up with the Holler family in the 1860 and 1880 censuses. I suspect Ancestry couldn’t find it because the first name of George’s wife wasn’t recorded and the family name was speller Haller. Seems like the Soundex matching doesn’t match Haller and Holler. (This census record conflicts with Mary being the spouse of Isaac Curry, but it definitely is the right family.)

Now I have as complete of a census record as I’m going to get for my great great grandmother.

Citations to “America’s Obituaries”

I’m making an effort to update all my citations to something more comprehensive than my previous notes. They’re sufficient for me to find items, but probably not enough for other people. My current dilemma is how to cite obituaries listed in America’s Obituaries that’s part of the GenealogyBank service available through the Seattle Public Library. Unfortunately, I can’t find anything directly on point in Elizabeth Shown Mills’ Evidence Explained.

When a service has scanned images of a newspaper, I’ve been citing the article at the newspaper, available at the service. For example, article X from the Capital Times, date D, page Y, accessed at NewspaperArchive.com at URL, blah blah blah. GenealogyBank offers a similar service.

But the America’s Obituaries database is transcriptions rather than images, with a citation to the newspaper and day of publication. It does not always include the page number. As best I can tell, I should be citing the America’s Obituaries database with a notation that they cite a source. That’s because in this case I don’t trust the service to provide a 100% accurate transcription. There are other obituary aggregation services that I’m even less sure of.

There are additional complications. The database is made available through the Seattle Public Library. The database name is sometimes different when offered through other providers. For instance, if I bought a subscription to GenealogyBank on my own, they call it simply Newspaper Obituaries. And possibly the content of the database is different when accessed through different portals. So do I cite GenealogyBank or the Seattle Public Library. I should probably have both there somewhere, but I can’t find anything in EE that addresses this. It talks about citing the publisher of the database, but not the portal.

The following is what I have for an obit that cites a specific page, but I haven’t quite figured out how shoehorn the Seattle Public Library in there, though it sorta shows up in the URL.

America’s Obituaries, online database, GenealogyBank (http://infoweb.newsbank.com.ezproxy.spl.org:2048/gbnl/obituaries/ : accessed 3 Aug 2012), “Edward bender”, obituary, 7 Apr 2000; citing The Bismarck Tribune (Bismarck, North Dakota), 7 Apr 2000, page 13A.

Amazing Cake!

I apologize for posting this all over my social footprint today. However, this cake is just too amazing to not share pretty much everywhere. Today was the last day for my summer teaching gig. One of the students made this and brought it in for the class to enjoy.

The young man who made this is in high school. I couldn’t make macaroni and cheese from a box in high school.

Don’t Do This

I have purposefully left my wifi open and free to use for anyone close enough to do so. If you are in my building, look for the SSID ApproveRef74. No password, and for the most part, no restrictions.

Today I realized someone in the building has been running a server off my wifi and has been maxing out my upload bandwidth. I don’t know who, but his name is James. Or at least I assume so because his computer was named JAMES-PC. That computer is now banned from my network.

If you look at the graph, the green is me watching a very high quality video feed. No, not porn. A soccer match between DC United and Philadelphia Union. The blue is the dipshit who owns JAMES-PC transmitting nearly as much data as I was watching. Way to take advantage of my hospitality.

Since I can’t send a message to James, I’m leaving this out there in case he googles himself or the SSID or something. When someone offers free wifi, don’t make it unusable. Now you have to buy your own wifi. If you aren’t James and you are doing this to someone else’s wifi, stop.

A slight connection to Lawrence Welk

My step-father grew up in Emmons county, North Dakota. His grandmother was Katherine Feist from Strasburg. I’ve vaguely known that Strasburg was also the home of Lawrence Welk, but I hadn’t really thought about it that much. Today I ran across a map from 1916 that shows where her farm was. It’s marked in red in the map. Each big square on the map is one mile on each side. The Feist farm is a half-mile square.

About a mile and a half to the west is one farm owned by Ludwig Welk, Lawrence Wel’s father. And about 3 miles to the north is another owned by the Welks. Both are marked in green. The Lawrence Welk birthplace is just north of Strasburg, which is not either of the two properties.

I couldn’t tell you which of them actually had the family homes, nor do I know the exact time frame for the map. It was published in 1916, when Lawrence Welk was 10, and Katie Feist had married and moved away 2 years before. But another page of the atlas has a different relative owning property that I’m told he lost in 1911 or 1912, so there was quite possibly a few years lag from when the people listed as owning the farms actually owned them. The 1900 census has the Feists in Strasburg, but by the 1910 census they are in a township called Marie, which is quite a way away. So it appears the maps are quite a bit out of date when published in 1916.

Anyhow, for a couple of years, they were fairly close.