My First Computers

February 15 marks World Computer Day, which the computer industry uses to celebrate computers and make sure everyone knows how wonderful they are.  The event apparently always has a theme; this year's theme is the 80th anniversary of ENIAC, the "first programmable, electronic, general-purpose digital computer."  Well, I don't have anything to do with ENIAC, so I'm going to celebrate by reminiscing about my first two computers instead.

My very first computer was an IBM XT.  The Wikipedia page for it says that the official name was IBM Personal Computer XT and that it was released in 1983.  I think that I got mine just after I graduated college, so that seems to fit.  I remember that the really big deal about it was that it came with an internal hard drive of — wait for it — 10 MB!  Wikipedia also says that it cost a little over $2,000, which I know I didn't have at the time, and I don't remember how I got the computer.

IBM XT photo by Remember the dot; used under license

I was just starting to play around with the XT and figure out how to use it when the brother of a friend said he really, really wanted it.  He was doing some heavy-duty number crunching and could really use the hard drive and faster processor to help speed up his computations.  He offered to trade me his IBM PC and $500 in cash for the XT.  Well, how could I pass up a deal like that?

So I very quickly was on to my second computer, which was definitely a step backward from the first.  The IBM Personal Computer had 16 KB of RAM and two floppy drives but no internal hard drive.  I became quite adept at popping floppies in and out, as I recall.

IBM PC photo by Rama; used under license

It was around this time that the staff in the School of Letters, Arts and Sciences at USC, where I was working, also started getting individual desktop computers in our offices.  I still remember when the administrative assistant in another department called and asked me to help her figure out what had happened to her computer, which was showing only a blank screen.  I quickly determined that she had actually reformatted her C drive and deleted everything on it (yup, people really used to do that).  I was able to restore it for her and earned a reputation for being the computer "fix it" person in our building.

In contrast, I'm typing this post on a Dell Latitude 5580 laptop with 16 GB of RAM and a 476 GB hard drive.  My, how things have changed.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: What Are Your Genealogy Highlights for the Last Month?

I'm a little late, but not too behind to jump in for Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge for the week.

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.

1.  What genealogy fun have you had this past month?  What is your genealogy research highlight of the past month?  It could be attending or watching a Webinar or local genealogy society meeting, finding a new ancestor, reading a new genealogy book, or anything else that you have enjoyed.

2.  Share your January genealogy fun in your own blog post or in a Facebook, SubStack, BlueSky, or other social media post.  Leave a link to your post on this blog post to help us find your post.

I haven't had much time for genealogy during the past month, because I've had to keep an 8:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m. schedule, and that is way too early in the morning for me.  It makes my brain mush for the rest of the day.  But one recent blog post encouraged me to rethink a question I had posed previously.

For my mother's yahrzeit, I considered things that my mother hadn't told me, including the name of our poodle (Pepe) and how I acquired a scar on my left arm that I've had since I was very, very little.  Writing about those two items together made me suddenly wonder if the reason my mother never told me the name of our dog was because he in some way had something to do with the scar.  I'm sure I'll never be able to determine if that hypothesis is accurate, but it had not occurred to me previously, and at least it gives me a possible reason for why my mother "didn't remember" how I got the scar.

Not the most momentous discovery, but it's an example of how writing can help you look at things in new ways.

Errors of Omission?

Today is January 19, 2026, which corresponds to 1 Shevat on the Jewish calendar in the year 5786 (thank you, Steve Morse, for the handy-dandy Jewish calendar conversion tool).  My mother died on 1 Shevat; it is Jewish tradition to commemorate a person on the date of that person's death on the Jewish calendar, called the yahrzeit.  Part of how I remember my mother is by writing about her on my blog.

My mother is probably the biggest reason I became so interested in family history.  She and her mother (my grandmother) were always talking about family members, relating family stories, celebrating birthdays and anniversaries.  I grew up knowing so many relatives' names and birthdays because of this.  But something I have been thinking about recently is things that my mother didn't tell me.

One of the most glaringly obvious things she never talked about is how she and my father met.  I heard about this from my grandmother several years after my mother had died.  I wrote about it ten years ago for a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge.

My mother and her best friend (who happened to be my cousin) were on their way to a party when the car broke down.  My mother was fretting about how they would get to the party when her friend said, "Don't worry, my uncle is a mechanic.  He can help us."  And that uncle was my father-to-be, and that's how my parents met.

I have not yet filled in any of the holes in the story which I mentioned in that 2015 post.  One thing I did determine, though, is that my parents were apparently anxiously waiting for my father's divorce from his first wife to be finalized, because it was only about four days afterward that they were married.  I figured out when I was in 8th grade that my mother was three and a half months pregnant with me when they were married, and once I noticed how quickly the wedding came about, I figured they knew at the time that she was pregnant.

So did my mother never talk about how she met my father because it resulted in her getting married on short notice because she was pregnant?  I'll never know the answer to that question, but it is not an unreasonable hypothesis.

Chronologically in my life, the next thing my mother didn't tell me was the name of a dog we used to have.  She often told me about the dog, though.  I wrote a little bit about him for another Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post.

This was when I was just a little baby, possibly up to young toddler.  The dog was a standard poodle, and he protected me as I were his own puppy.  If my mother was upset with me about something and yelled at me, he would stand between me and her.  And he died of an epileptic seizure.

And that's all my mother said about him.

It occurred to me after my mother had passed away that she had never mentioned his name.  Lucky for me, my father was still alive, so I asked him.  And he knew exactly who I was talking about and told me the dog's name was Pepe.

Why would my mother tell me about the dog multiple times but never say his name?  I can't come up with a good reason for that.  It's possible that she didn't remember, but she had an excellent memory, so I have trouble with that idea.  Maybe she just didn't like him?  Is that a good reason?

A very frustrating thing that my mother didn't tell me about is how I got a scar on my left arm.  I blogged about it for National Scar Appreciation Day a couple of years ago.

I've had this scar as long as I can remember, going back to when I was really young.  I have no recollection whatsoever of how I got it, what kind of injury caused it, nothing.  That suggests to me that I must have been pretty young when it happened, because I have a good memory.

I asked my mother once how I got the scar.  She said, "I don't remember."  And I took her at her word.

Many years after that, well after she had died, a little light bulb went on over my head.

My mother became hysterical any time one of her children was bleeding.  The size of the scar and its longevity indicate an injury that must have bled, probably quite a bit.  So it would have been noticeable and my mother would have been hysterical.  And yet she didn't remember how it happened?

blink blink

Um, that doesn't make sense.

Unless, somehow, she had something to do with it.  Because then it wouldn't really be that she didn't remember, but that she wouldn't want to talk about it.

There was no abuse in my family, so it wasn't anything like that.  Maybe she turned her head and I cut myself on something?  Maybe she dropped something and it hit my arm?

Maybe it had something to do with Pepe, and that's why she never said his name?

Another question that shall remain unanswered.  At least until either time travel or talking to the dead becomes more reliable.

What else didn't my mother tell me?

Poodle image by MissKaren via Pixabay.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Your Ancestral Home Description

"Ancestral" might be a bit exaggerated for my answer to this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver, but at least I have an answer.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music), is:

1.  Do you recall the layout of one of your family homes (a parent's home, a grandparent's home, your first home with your spouse/SO, etc.)?  Can you estimate the size of the house and the size of the rooms?  What features were in each room?  Can you draw the floor plan, showing doors, windows, etc.?

2.  Tell us about your selected family home in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, or in a Facebook comment.

As I have reported previously on this blog, by the time I was 21, I had lived in 22 different places.  So it's hard for me to think of anywhere I have lived as an "ancestral home."

I thought about writing on the one home for which I have always remembered the address, the last place my family lived before moving to Australia:  434 Randy Street, Pomona, California.  We probably were there for a year to two years.  But I already wrote about it for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun in 2020.

So this time I think I'll write about our customized double-wide mobile home, which we had in Villa Tasso, Florida.  I don't think we had an actual street address, because Villa Tasso barely had streets.  We had roads made of Georgia red clay, none of which was paved.  We had our mail sent to a post office box in Niceville.  We lived in Villa Tasso from about 1975 to 1979 (or at least I lived there until 1979, when I moved back to California for college).

Our "double wide" was a 60' trailer and a 40' trailer with a custom addition joining the two together.  We had the longer trailer in a mobile home park in Niceville before purchasing the property in Villa Tasso.  I don't remember the history of the shorter trailer.  The longer trailer was moved to the property first, and later we bought the shorter trailer.  Then my father started working on the addition, which of course took longer than planned.  But eventually it was finished, and we had a spacious home.

The main entrance was the door to the longer trailer, which had a wood porch and stairs.  You entered the trailer in the living room, and the kitchen was to the right.  To the far left was a hallway that went most of the length of the trailer.  The first room on the left was originally my and my sister's bedroom.  Then came my brother's bedroom, the bathroom, and my parents' bedroom at the end.

The 60' trailer while it was still in Niceville.
Walking up the stairs and onto the porch, right to left:
My mother, my sister, my brother, and me

When the addition was completed, a large chunk of the wall on the right side of the hallway went away and opened to the addition.  At the left end, my father had a piano, which I liked to try to play.  I could pick out melodies, but chords have never made sense in my head, so that somewhat limited how well I could play.

The other side of the addition opened to what had been the living room in the shorter trailer.  It became the family den.  We had a big TV in there.  When I won a copy of the home version of Pong in a K-Mart coloring contest, we used to play it on that TV.  That's also the TV I was watching when I heard someone's arm break during an arm-wrestling contest.  I've never watched arm-wrestling since then.

There was a room to the right.  At first I wasn't 100% sure about that, but you can see the doorway in this photo from my high school graduation day in 1979.  The photo was taken at the opposite end of the den from the TV.

Back row:  My mother, my sister, my grandmother
Front row:  Me, my brother, my mother's Sheltie
June 1, 1979, Villa Tasso

At the far side of the den to the left was a short hallway.  The first room, to the left, was a small bathroom, and my new bedroom, which I did not have to share with my sister, was at the very end.

It just occurred to me that there was no kitchen in the smaller trailer.  Maybe the room to the right of the den had originally been a kitchen before my father adapted the trailer for our use.  I do not remember what we used that room for.

I have no idea about measurements beyond the lengths of the trailers.  I suspect trailers were made to fairly consistent specs, so it might be relatively easy to find that information, if I am inspired to do so someday.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Your (or Your Ancestor's) Personal History Timeline

Tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver (via Taneya Koonce, one of my genealogy buds) sounds like a fun exercise.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music) is:

1.  Taneya Koonce wrote a happy birthday post about her own life in Quick Tip:  Create Your Personal History Timeline:  The Birthday Edition 🥳.  What a great birthday idea.

2.  This week, write your own personal history timeline:  every 5 or 10 years, or the most important events.  If you don't want to do yours, write a history timeline for one of your ancestors.

3.  Share your personal timeline in your own blog post or in a Facebook, SubStack, BlueSky, or other social media post.  Leave a link to your post on this blog post to help us find your post.

Thank you, Taneya, for the idea!

Here's mine!

1962 (age 0):  I was born in Los Angeles, California in the County Hospital, the first child of Bertram Lynn Sellers, Jr. and Myra Roslyn Meckler.  My mother listed her address on my birth certificate as being in Whittier, which is where my godmother lived.  I don't know if my parents actually lived with her or if that was strictly a contact address.  I don't remember anything about Whitter.  I do remember County Hospital, only because many years later I volunteered in a pharmaceutical test and went there for the visits.

1967 (age 5):  My family was living at 537 Lochmere Avenue, La Puente, California.  We apparently were at that address at least from sometime in 1964, when my sister was born, until some point in 1968.  Also in the family was my brother who was born in 1963.  At the age of 5 I was probably in kindergarten.  I don't recall anything about kindergarten.

1972 (age 10):  In 1972 when I turned 10 my family was living in either Maroubra Junction or Pagewood, both suburbs of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.  I was attending 5th grade at Woollahra Demonstration School, a school for advanced students that had 5th and 6th grades.  I remember having a sewing class and a physical education class, although I don't remember the names of my teacher(s).  Somewhere I still have my school uniform and my physical education uniform, along with some of the projects I made in my sewing class.

1977 (age 15):  My family lived in Villa Tasso, Florida and had been there for about four years.  I was in 10th grade, attending Niceville Senior High School.  I was in advanced classes; I may have taken calculus that year.  I think my elective was French.  My siblings and I took the school bus 10 miles into Niceville to attend school.  I was a social misfit and did not attend school events.  I think I was working at my grandfather's stamp and coin store.

1982 (age 20):  I was living in Los Angeles, California in the dormitory at the University of Southern California during the academic year.  I was a junior and was on track to graduate the next year as a French major.  I was a work-study student in the Office of Overseas Studies; my boss was Connie Horak.  That summer I went on a student exchange program to Bordeaux, France and managed to take a one-day trip to San Sebastian, Spain.  At the end of the trip, when all the students gathered in Paris, we found a theater that was screening Pink Floyd — The Wall, which was even more surreal with French subtitles.  We went to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show in another theater, where we totally flummoxed the French attendees by doing all of the participatory things people do here.  When I returned from France I went to San Antonio, Texas to visit my family; I almost didn't recognize my mother at the airport, as she had gained a significant amount of weight after quitting smoking.  Back in Los Angeles I worked in the dorm cafeteria at the end of the summer and lived in one of the fraternity houses, which rented out rooms to bring in some money.

1987 (age 25):  In 1987 I was still in Los Angeles; I was either living in a small apartment or had moved to the lower half of a duplex with three housemates.  I had a female gray Russian blue-Persian mix cat named Tamara.  I was working at USC in the French and Italian Department and was in the Trojan Marching Band (The Greatest Marching Band in the History of the Universe).  One of my work-study students in the department was Brian Rhodes; we were co-uniform managers for the band.  At the beginning of the year the band had gone to Florida to support the USC football team, which had competed in the Florida Citrus Bowl.

1992 (age 30):  In 1989 I had moved to Berkeley, California; in 1992 I was living in an in-law house at the back part of a property there.  I still had Tamara.  I was working at Chessex Manufacturing in Berkeley, where I was the assistant production manager.  To celebrate my 30th birthday I took a trip to Hawaii with my then-boyfriend.  We were there when the Rodney King riots occurred; it was surreal to watch the news and see parts of Los Angeles where I had lived being burned, etc.

1997 (age 35):  I bought a house in Oakland in 1993, and I was still there in 1997.  The boyfriend from 1992 was now a former boyfriend but still one of my best friends, and he was my housemate.  I was working at Chaosium in Oakland, where I was an editrix and the convention schnook.  I think the pets in the house were dogs named Cody and Kirby and cats named Hank and Napoleon.  I don't remember anything distinctive about the year, though.

2002 (age 40):  I was still in the house in Oakland, although who else was living there had changed.  The housemate/former boyfriend had moved out; I had had two other housemates in the interim, but I think I was the only person at this time.  Hank and Kirby were still with me, but I had surrendered Cody to the Humane Society because she no longer got along with Kirby.  Napoleon had died a couple of years previously.  I had added a new cat named Sassafras, Sassy for short.  I was no longer working at Chaosium but had moved on to the Seismological Society of America, a scientific membership association, where I was the publications coordinator and the junior Web geek.  My friends helped me celebrate my 40th birthday by throwing a big party at a Mexican restaurant whose name is not coming back to me at the moment.  I also had started volunteering regularly at the Oakland Family History Center two years earlier, and I spent a lot of time there researching and helping others.

2007 (age 45):  Still in the house in Oakland, but at a different job.  I was working for a transcription company in downtown Oakland, where I learned a lot about the history of Kaiser, who was one of our major clients.  I also commuted for the first time in my life by bus, which was a much better choice than trying to find parking near the office.  Hank, Sassy, and Kirby were still there, along with another cat, Noodle, plus a guinea pig named Pulga.  I also had added birds:  Peaches (blue and gold macaw), Ray (sun conure), and Zach (green-cheeked conure).  Having eight pets was enough to keep me busy when I wasn't at work or the Family History Center.

2012 (age 50):  Still in Oakland, amazingly enough, considering how much my family moved when I was a kid.  The pet line-up had changed, though:  Ray, Zach, Hank, Sassy, Kirby, and Pulga had all passed away.  I still had Peaches and Noodle, and Caesar and Brandy had joined the family.  Just before I turned 50, I started training to become a train operator at BART, which I really enjoyed.  My friend Anne set up a huge surprise for my 50th birthday; at a costume event commemorating the launch of the RMS Titanic, she managed to coordinate having a band play "Happy Birthday" and about 150 people singing along.  I had announced I wanted a fuss for my birthday, and I certainly got one!

2017 (age 55):  The big event for me in 2017 was moving from Oakland, California to Gresham, Oregon, which I did at the end of the summer, arriving at 9:30 a.m. on September 1.  I still had the same furred and feathered children:  Noodle, Brandy, Peaches, and Caesar.  I sold my house in Oakland and found a similar-sized one in Gresham that had enough room for me, the pets, and all my belongings (which took more than an entire truckload to bring here).  The early part of the year was spent preparing for the move, and the months after arrival were taken up with unpacking as much as I could.  But I did start volunteering at the local Family History Center within two weeks of arriving, and by the time I moved here all five of my grandchildren were within relatively easy driving distance.

2022 (age 60):  This was during COVID, so not a lot was going on anywhere.  I had shoulder surgery in 2020, during the heart of COVID, and was still recovering from it for the majority of the year (it usually takes about two years to fully recover from shoulder surgery, and it did this time).  So on top of COVID, I wasn't doing much of anything else anyway.  The list of pets changed again.  Noodle died in 2018, only a few months after we moved, and I added Frankie to the household to be company for Brandy.  Then a macaw needed a home in 2020, and I welcomed my first female bird, Angel.  Later that same year Brandy passed away, and I fell in love with a gorgeous little female Siamese.  Unfortunately, she and Frankie didn't exactly get along, so they lived in two different parts of the house.

And that's my life broken down into 5-year synopses.  As usual, Randy remembers far more details than I do, but I hit the highlights.  All my grandchildren were born in in-between years, and I couldn't figure out how to weave that in well.  Maybe I'll revise this post later after thinking about it for a while.

National Motorcycle Day Rolls Around Again

When I first posted about National Motorcycle Day, I had plans to write every year about my motorcycles and my adventures with them.  But I somehow skipped all the years between now and 2019, that first post.  I'm not sure how that happened, although I suspect COVID had something to do with it.

But here we are again!  The day is still a pretty blatant marketing push by the insurance company that created the event.  This year they emphasized supporting charities, but they included the suggestion that you could post on social media about your motorcycle story, and blogging is one of the social media, so I guess I'm okay.

This year I decided to write about one of my adventures while riding a motorcycle.  Riding inherently always carries some danger, simply because you are exposed on all sides, but sometimes there are twists.

Many years ago when these marketing techniques weren't quite as common, I received an invitation in the mail to visit California City (I think) as a come-on to purchase land while they were continuing to develop the area.  (Quite an interesting history on the Wikipedia page.)  I decided to go, listen to the sales pitch, and collect the freebie they were giving away.  I am pretty sure I was still riding my Honda CB750K at the time.

This was set up so that you drove out the night before, stayed in their hotel, and listened to the marketing spiel the next morning.  I made my reservation well ahead of time and headed out the evening before, looking forward to spending the night in the nice hotel and taking advantage of the amenities.

I don't remember if I didn't plan adequately for how long it would take me to get there (which I'm usually pretty good at), but I ended up driving through the desert in full darkness.  The area was not developed yet, and much of the trip was on unpaved roads, which are never fun on a motorcycle and even less so on one like that Honda, which was very top-heavy.  There were a few times that I had slight skids and thought I was going to drop the bike, but somehow I prevailed.

After taking far too long and worrying myself far too much, I finally made it to the hotel — only to be told at the desk that, even though I had made a reservation, sorry, they were full.  I was given the option of driving back part of the way and getting a room at their overflow property (don't remember how far back, but it was too far), then returning in the morning for the presentation.

Over those dark "roads" again?  Gee, thanks.  I didn't think that sounded like a good idea.  So I decided to sit in their lobby all night and wait for the morning presentation that way.  I think I had my helmet next to me the whole time.  I got a lot of dirty looks, but I stayed put.

The next morning I was pretty tired, as could be expected.  My solution?  As soon as they started serving it, I drank about 20 cups of coffee in quick succession.  I hate coffee, by the way.  I was drowning each cup in sugar and milk.  I still managed to give myself a stomachache, probably just because I wasn't used to drinking that much caffeine.  Eventually they started serving breakfast, at which time eating something helped settle my stomach a little.

When they finally did the sales presentation, I somehow managed to resist giving them any money.  As I recall, the giveaway was a fur jacket, which I tucked in my trunk.  I then carefully headed back out over the lovely unpaved roads and returned home to Los Angeles, swearing I would never do anything that crazy again.

Ever Hitched a Ride?

Since 2020, apparently, July has been celebrated as National Hitchhiking Month, at least according to National Today.  What's strange, however, is that when I Google "national hitchhiking month", I get a hit on the Chicago Tribune site that shows a date of July 5, 1995, five years earlier.  Unfortunately, I don't have a subscription to the Trib, so I can't see the page and figure out if Google is steering me wrong.

I searched for the origin of the word "hitchhiking", and the earliest that the Oxford English Dictionary (which I love!) records it is 1921, which is very recent.  I had been wondering if the concept went back to the days of horses and wagons, but apparently it does not.  It seems firmly connected with cars.

Anyway, National Today suggests that people should celebrate National Hitchhiking Month by hitchhiking or by giving a hitchhiker a ride, but I don't feel that adventurous in my old age.  Instead, I'll mark the occasion by writing about the only time in my life that I hitchhiked, which was in France, of all places.

During the summer of 1982, I visited France on a student exchange program.  The woman I was working for at USC, Connie Horak, was the coordinator of the program, which was part of a sister-city alliance between Los Angeles and Bordeaux.  High school students alternated yearly between Americans going to Bordeaux and French coming to Los Angeles.  I spent a good amount of my regular at-work time that spring typing lots of paperwork for the program, including lists of students who had applied for the first time or who were participating for their second summer.

At one point, Connie learned that a female American student who had hosted a French student the previous summer had decided not to go to France.  She asked if I wanted to go to France in the place of the American student, so that the French student would have someone to participate with.  I jumped at the chance.  Not only did I figure this was a great (and relatively inexpensive) way to visit France, but I was actually a French major, so it was also a way to practice and improve my speaking skills.

I know we flew to Orly from Los Angeles.  I think we traveled by train from Paris to Bordeaux, where we met our students.  Sylvie, the student with whom I was paired, had decided that the perfect way to spend the summer was at a campground in Biarritz (more details of which is a story for another day).  While we were there, I don't remember why, but at some point we wanted to go somewhere else.  We didn't have a car, so we hitchhiked.

I was very nervous, because the reputation of hitchhiking in the United States by that time was that it could be very dangerous.  I remember the man who picked us up was driving a Citroën.  I think it was a 2CV.  No memory of the color at this point!

And somehow, we survived.  Nothing untoward happened to us; we arrived wherever we were trying to get to, and the driver let us leave the car with no problem.

I only recall the one hitchhiking trip, so we obviously found a different way to get back.  And I've never even attempted to hitchhike since then.

How about you?  Any good hitchhiking stories?

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay.  Used under license.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Celebrate World Music Day

Well, I better like tonight's topic for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, since I'm the person who suggested it to Randy Seaver!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music), is:

1.  According to Wikipedia, today is World Music Day!  How should we celebrate?

2.  How has music affected your life?  What is your favorite music type?  What are your favorite songs?

3.  Share your World Music Day efforts in your own blog post or in a Facebook, SubStack, BlueSky, or other social media post.  Leave a link to your post on this blog post to help us find your post.

[Thank you to Janice Sellers for suggesting this challenge to me.]

I grew up with music and it has always been part of my life.  My father was a musician — he played piano and guitar and sang credibly well.  He used to play guitar and sing for my siblings and me when we were little.  We heard "Sixteen Tons", "Mairzy Doats", and "Aba Daba Honeymoon" often enough that we knew all the lyrics.  Then as we got older he would sometimes try to cut out a verse, but we knew the songs too well and caught him.

I don't remember Daddy singing so much when he played piano, but I remember listening to a lot of boogie woogie and blues.  One year when I posted on my blog for Father's Day, he commented and said that he started piano lessons when he was 8.  And piano was what he played when he competed on Ted Mack's Amateur Hour with Court's Jesters, although that was swing music.

My mother loved music also, but for listening to.  She unfortunately couldn't carry a tune in a bucket; when she was in a singing class, they decided her part was turning pages for the accompanist.  But she adored Broadway and movie musicals and played cast recordings and soundtracks a lot.  Those were more songs that I learned lyrics to.

At least by the time I was 8, possibly earlier, I was taking piano lessons.  Even when I was that young, I had long fingers ("piano-playing fingers", I have often been told), and instead of holding my hands in the correct upright position and playing the keys with my fingertips, I could stretch my hands out and fudge a little.

I wanted to play guitar like my father.  My hands were big enough when I was young that I could handle an adult guitar, rather than one scaled down in size for children.  Daddy was ready to teach me, but then I discovered that you had to cut your fingernails to play (and I couldn't cheat as on the piano), so I gave up on that for a long time.

Once, for some reason I absolutely cannot recall, I had an accordion lesson.  I took the one lesson and decided I never wanted to try to play accordion again.  That I have stuck to.

When my family moved to Australia, I learned to play recorder (an instrument I still own and can play!).  I also sang in some sort of school musical in the 4th grade.

After we moved back to the States, I had chorus for two years.  The first year was great, but then my voice changed, and I couldn't sing alto anymore.  The teacher, Miss Foster, eventually told me I could stand next to the boys and sing tenor, but I used to sing bass.  After that I had a fairly regimented class schedule, and I didn't have room for any more music classes through the end of high school.

When I went to college at the University of Southern California, I had heavy class loads and still no time for music.  But after I graduated, I started working at USC, and the next year, I joined the Trojan Marching Band (The Greatest Marching Band in the History of the Universe).  I didn't play any band instruments, so I started as prop crew (kind of like roadies).  During the spring semester, when we were at a women's basketball game supporting the team, none of the cymbal players had come, and Mark Laycock called out for someone to play the cymbals for "Fight On."  And thus I started on percussion.  I marched three years in percussion in the band, playing cymbals (and occasionally bass drum for some small gigs when a regular bass drummer couldn't make it).

Working at USC, I was able to use tuition remission for classes.  One of things I did was take percussion lessons.  I had a really great teacher.  I think his given name was Dale, and I cannot remember his surname.  He was a spokesman for Sabian cymbals.  He was allowed to go through the warehouse and choose his own, matching them for tone.  His cymbals sounded so beautiful!  I learned I do not have a good enough ear to play timpani and that my broken right index finger severely hampered the way I hold a drumstick.  Or, as I routinely tell people, I am not a drummer; I am a percussionist who can drum a little.

But in the band I had also become enamored of saxophones, because they just sound so cool.  Jeff, one of the tenor sax players, recommended that I start with flute, then work on clarinet, and finally move to sax.  So I started using my tuition remission for those lessons.  I think I took two years of flute (with Gary Anderson) and then two or three of clarinet (with Yehuda Gilad).  Sadly, I never did take up saxophone.  But my fifth year in the band I played clarinet (and learned, after stabbing all the way through my left thumb with an Exacto knife, that there are exactly seven notes you can play on a clarinet without using your left thumb).

Something else I used my tuition remission for was voice lessons.  I sang with groups, I sang solo, I did recitals, I sang anytime I could.  I still love singing.  I participated twice in Songfest, a big student group singing competition.  Both times the group with which I sang placed.  I think I still have the music from both.

A friend of the teacher in one of my group vocal arts classes came around to recruit people to help fill out a new choir she was hired to create in a local church.  I think it was in Hollywood.  As is common with this type of activity, the number of men volunteering were far outnumbered by the women.  I ended up being a bass soloist for the Christmas concert.  Unfortunately, one of my voice instructors tried to make me a mezzo soprano, and I lost two octaves at the bottom of my range, so I can't do that now.

I played in the USC Community Orchestra as a percussionist for several years.  General percussion, no drums.

Oh, and one semester I took a guitar class.  I actually cut my fingernails and made the effort.  I discovered that chords did not make sense in my head.  I was the only student in the class who preferred to pick out melodies.  And then I decided I liked my fingernails more than the guitar.

Eventually I left Los Angeles and moved 400 miles north to Berkeley, where I had an entirely different musical routine.  But I think I'll save that for next year's World Music Day.

I got a little carried away, didn't I?  But music makes me happy.  Let's see, what other questions did Randy ask?  Well, favorite music type — hmm, I suppose "E, all of the above" is probably not a helpful answer.  I really do like almost everything, but if I have to pick favorites, probably show tunes and country.

And the last question was favorite songs.  Wow, that's even harder.  Anything I know the lyrics to and can sing along with ranks high.  "Danny Boy", because that was one of my mother's favorites.  "Sixteen Tons" is probably my favorite of the songs my father used to sing.  "Even Now" always makes me cry.  "Light One Candle", even after all the revelations about Peter Yarrow.  "Do You Hear What I Hear?", even though one of the most well known versions is by Robert Goulet.

Investigation: Disneyland

Ever since my cousin told me that the location of the photo with her, her mother, and me in it was at Disneyland, I have been wondering where exactly at Disneyland.

I was talking with friends a couple of weeks ago, and I realized that one of them, who grew up in Burbank, always talks about Disneyland, which got me thinking about the photo.  And it suddenly occurred to me that Disneyland, being the big multinational conglomerate that it is, has to have a corporate archive.  And it does!

You can find the Walt Disney Archives site at https://d23.com/walt-disney-archives/.  According to the home page, it was "established in 1970 to collect, preserve and make available for research the historical materials relating to Walt and the company he founded."  And it even has a page called Ask the Walt Disney Archives!  So I did!

On May 27, I sent the photo of me with my mother that I posted for Mother's Day.  (The questions page did not allow me to send more than one image, or I would have included the photo with my cousin and aunt.)  I wrote that my cousin had identified the location as Disneyland and that I had estimated the year to be 1963.  I asked where at Disneyland the photo was taken.  And then I waited.

And waited.

And almost two weeks later, I still have not heard anything.  Not even one of those automatic responses:  "We have received your inquiry and will be happy to answer you, blah blah blah."

Well, foo.  I want to know where it was.

And today's brilliant light-bulb moment was that I should try searching for the image online myself.  (Yes, I should have thought of that earlier.  Sometimes I'm a little slow on the uptake, but I get there eventually.)

I ran the photo of my aunt, my cousin, and me through Tineye.  And the answer was "TinEye searched over 75.6 billion images but didn't find any matches for your search image."  So much for Tineye.  But I think it looks for the exact image, and I probably have the one and only copy of that photo (well, a scan of it).  On the other hand, it is posted on my blog, which is public and has been available for more than a month, so Tineye should have found it there.  But it didn't.  (I've had that happen before with Tineye.)

Then I tried searching for the photo using Google Lens.  It started off by wanting to focus on the lower left corner of the photo, which is just some of the flowers.  I didn't look at those results.  Instead, I dragged the search square higher and made it larger, so the search image was the upper left corner of the photo, including the yellow flower cart.

Bingo!

Suddenly I had several images that looked very similar to mine, and they are all identified as being at the Flower Market on Main Street in Disneyland.  Two of them are even from 1963, like mine.  And after seeing two photos where the "Flower Market" sign is not in bright sunlight and the words can be clearly read, I recognized that in my own photos.

One photo from 1963 (which was posted on Found some pictures from my grandparents 1963 Disneyland trip!)

Disneyland, People at Flower Market in 1963 (an original slide for sale at eBay)

The Cook family at Disneyland, 1959 (which has the same yellow flower cart as in mine, plus you can read FLOWER MARKET on the sign)

Flower Market - Disneyland 1950s-1970s (#29) (two yellow flower carts in this one, and again you can read FLOWER MARKET on the sign; no exact year, though)

So I answered my own question.  On the other hand, now I know that Disney has an archive.  And if Disney does get back to me, I'll post here what they say.

My Feathered Children

Today is World Parrot Day, and by coincidence, all of my feathered children are or were members of the parrot family, so I'm celebrating them.

We had lots of pets of various types when I was growing up, but we never had any birds.  I don't know why that is, and I never thought to ask either of my parents that question before they passed away, so I'll never know the answer.

My family went to Las Vegas on a regular basis because my mother's parents lived there, and I fell in love with macaws by seeing them at the Tropicana Casino on The Strip.  There used to be a long, long hallway with cages of macaws and cockatoos on both sides.  Big, beautiful, gorgeous, and loud, and I always wanted one, but especially a macaw.

When I was living in Los Angeles after I had graduated college, I finally had enough money to think about buying a macaw, but by then I also had a cat — one who had shown she definitely liked to pursue prey.  I somehow didn't think that was going to make a good combination with having a bird, so I did not try to find a macaw at the time.

After I moved to Berkeley, I discovered a bird rescue organization that specialized in parrots of different types, including macaws.  I learned from a woman who volunteered with the organization that there are ways to have cats and birds coexist peacefully.  So after never having had a pet bird of any type, I dove in the deep end and adopted Peaches, my blue and gold macaw, who is on my left hand in the photo above.  He had been surrendered by his first owner, who apparently was more than a little OCD about cleaning and finally decided she was tired of vacuuming the house four times a day to get rid of Peaches' dander.

Peaches was my first, and he'll probably always be my favorite.  He talks a little but has a limited vocabulary.  He does make lots of noises, just not often words.  He does sing, though, because when I was taking voice lessons, I would have him practice my vocalizations with me.  (Many people would question whether you could actually call his vocalizations "singing."  He is certainly not a canary.)  He was hatched about 2001 and came to live with me in 2004, so I have now had him for more than 20 years.  He should live to be between 60 and 80 years old and therefore should easily outlive me.

My second bird was Ray, a sun conure, who is on my shoulder in the photo.  He was purchased from a Petco store by a man to give to his girlfriend, but he didn't bother to ask her ahead of time if she wanted a bird (bad idea).  And she didn't!  So poor little Ray, who was originally called Sunny (a common name given to sun consures), was returned to the store, which is where I found him.  A friend convinced me to buy him and bring him home.

Ray is the only bird I have ever trusted to sit on my shoulder.  It isn't that I don't love my birds and trust them in general, but birds don't have hands to grab things.  If they start to slip or lose their bearings, their beaks act as something to grab with to hold on.  And if that beak happens to grab your ear, which is usually the closest thing that looks stable to hold onto if the bird is on your shoulder, well, that can make for a lot of blood spurting all over the place.  The only problem I ever had with Ray on my shoulder was that sun conures have a particularly piercing screech, more so even than most macaws, and oh, I hated that in my ear, even with the earplugs in (and I always use earplugs when I am around my birds).

Ray suddenly became ill one day.  I took him to the vet, and they tried different therapies, but he didn't get better.  He died on Christmas Eve day of 2010.

Zach is the third bird in the photo with me, on my right hand.  He was a green-cheeked conure.  Talk about a bad start in life:  I was at least his fourth owner in less than a year.  My friend's daughter was given Zach but quickly lost interest in him; she was probably a little young to take care of a bird.  When I took him in he had a strange "thing" hanging down the middle of his chest, which my bird vet was able to take care of easily.  But he was a little nippy thing, always trying to bite me.  Given his background, he probably had some serious trust issues.

Eventually Zach figured out that I was not going to dump him as everyone else had.  He mellowed out and turned out to be a friendly little guy.  But one morning when it was time to wake the birds up, Zach was down on the bottom of his cage and couldn't stand.  I rushed him to the vet, but he didn't make it through the day.

So far I've been talking about friendly, happy birds.  And then there's Caesar.  That's the guy in the photo above.

Caesar is a severe macaw, which is one of the mini macaws.  I like to say he is half the size and has all the personality.  And boy, does he have personality.

After Ray and Zach had died, Peaches was a little lonely.  He was used to having other birds around, and now he was the only one.  So I went looking for a new friend for him.  I found Caesar at the bird store where I bought my bird food.  He seemed like a friendly little guy.  He stepped up for me without hesitation and didn't try to bite.  I probably should have been suspicious because the store was charging only $200 for him, but I went for it and brought him home.  I eventually found out that he had been returned to the store, which is where he was hatched, because he had shown some territorial and aggressive tendencies with the couple who had first purchased him, especially after they had a baby and did not pay as much attention to him.

At the beginning, everything was great.  Before Caesar went through puberty, he was happy to come out of his cage and play on his playgym.  He was always territorial; I couldn't put my hand in his cage, or he would attack.  But I could open the door, and he would come out and stand on the top of the door.  Then he would step up on my hand, and I could carry him to his playgym with no problem.

And then puberty hit, and everything changed.  He would try to bite me when I was opening the door to his cage.  He would fly off the playgym and try to land on Peaches' cage or on my shoulder.  He started trying to bite me all the time.  He turned into one mean little a$$hole.  I asked my vets what was going on, and they couldn't tell me why this had happened.

One day someone asked me why I called him a severe macaw.  She was wondering if that was the official name or something I had come up with.  So I looked it up.  And there it was in black and white:  "In the wild their typically gregarious personality can become more aggressive at puberty giving them the name Severe.  This tendency can be curbed in captivity but the species requires significant handling to make a tame pet."  Now, why I had to find this on Wikipedia instead of my vet being able to tell me, I have no idea.  But at least I finally had an answer.

After lots of advice from my vet and lots of patience from me, Caesar did become slightly easier to deal with.  He still doesn't really like being handled, and he is still incredibly territorial.  But he no longer tries to bite when I give him food and water, so that's a vast improvement.  And that's a good thing, because he might live to be 80 years old, and he's only 20 now, so someone else will definitely have to be able to put up with him.

That pretty girl above is the fifth bird I've owned.  Her name is Angel, and she is a ruby macaw, which is a hybrid between a scarlet macaw and a green-winged macaw.  You'd think that macaws are beautiful enough as nature created them, but man specializes in hubris, so people crossbreed macaws to come up with different looks.

Angel came to me when my daughter-in-law's uncle and his fiancee needed to rehome most of their pets after moving into an RV park with a limit on how many pets you could have (they had fourteen, and the limit was two).  I took in Angel in 2020 when she was just shy of 4 years old.  I'm still not sure how old hybrids live to be on average, but I've been guessing at least 40 to 60, so I'm sure she'll be around a while.

After having gone through the hell of puberty with Caesar, I was quite worried what it would be like with a female macaw, especially with two males in the same room, albeit with everyone in their own separate cages.  But Angel was very mellow, and we had no problems (hooray!).

Angel is much quieter than Peaches and Caesar.  I was told by my bird vet here in Portland that females do tend to be quieter and calmer than males.  She also doesn't talk as much as the boys.  Her favorite thing to say is "Uh-oh", which she actually learned from Peaches.  She loves apples and will say "apple" for almost any kind of food.  And occasionally she will make kissing noises and say, "I love you," which she learned from me, because I say that to the birds all the time.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Celebrate Mother's Day and Show Us Some Photos

Tomorrow is Mother's Day, so it was to be expected that Randy Seaver would have that as the focus for tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post.  (Today's topic revisits the same one from 2018, with updated social media links.)

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music), is:

1.  Sunday, 11 May, is Mother's Day in the USA.  Let's celebrate it by showing some of our photos with our mothers.

2.  Extra credit:  What did you call your mother during her life?  What did your children call your mother?

3.  More extra credit:  Have you written a biography or tribute to your mother?  If so, please share a link if you have one.

4.  Share your photo(s) on your own blog post or in a Facebook, SubStack, or BlueSky post.  Leave a link on this blog post to help us find your mom photos.

1.  I remember that the last time Randy challenged us to share photos of ourselves with our mothers, I could only find a couple.  Since having received the photo bonanza from my sister, however, I have many, many more!  Here's a small selection.

This is the earliest photograph I have found of myself.  The photo was developed in October 1962, and I was born in April, so the oldest I can be is 6 months.  The shadow on the skirt of my mother's dress has to be the head of my father, the person likely taking the photo.

I've estimated I'm about a year old in this photo, so it's probably from 1963.  I was told by my cousin Beth (who is in a different photo with me in the same location) that this is Disneyland.

I like the whimsical nature of this one, which had to have been taken by my father.  It's June 1964, and my mother seems to be pregnant, so the absolute latest the photo could have been taken is June 16, and then only if she gave birth to my sister Stacy later on the same day.  This photo might have been taken in La Puente; I'll ask my sister Laurie if she recognizes the house.

This photo was taken in June 1969, when my mother took all three of us kids to Florida for our cousin Gail's wedding.  From left to right we are my brother, Mark; our mother, Myra; me; and my sister, Stacy.  My brother looks miserable for some reason.  I look happy, though.

This photo was developed in June 1973 and was taken at the trailer park where my family lived in Niceville, Florida.  I believe, from left to right going into the trailer, it is me, Mark, Stacy, and our mother.  I'm pretty sure my father took this photo, but I can't imagine why.

This is me and my mother standing on the porch of my Aunt Dottie's house in Niceville.  I'm about 16, so it's roughly 1978.  We're obviously dressed up to go somewhere (I remember that dress!), but I don't remember this at all, so I don't know what the occasion is or why we were having our photo taken at my aunt's.  I'm going to be asking my brother, my sister, and my stepfather what they recall.  If my aunt were still alive, I'd ask her also.

I find it interesting that the three photos I'm pretty sure my father took are black and white.  That means he probably developed them himself at home.

2.  I called my mother Mommy her entire life.  My stepsons never met my mother, as she died young.

3.  I have written a tribute to my mother, as a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post in 2017.  I have also written about her many times for Mother's Day separately from SNGF posts.

Was There Really a Ghost?

I grew up believing in things such as ghosts because my mother did.  Ghosts, poltergeists, vampires, hauntings, déjà vu, superstitions, my mother believed in all of it and taught me to also.  But I was always more than a little disappointed because I had not observed nor experienced any of it myself.

Until I did.

I was living in Los Angeles, just on the edge of East L.A., at 459 East Adams Boulevard.  It was a beautiful three-story Victorian house.  The house was owned by my friend's uncle and his partner.  After buying it they needed renters to help pay the mortgage, so five of us moved in:  my friend and three more prior-enlisted Navy, all now attending USC as Navy ROTC midshipmen, and me.  I lived on the uppermost story and had a huge walk-in closet which I loved.

I never heard what made my landlords curious enough to do this, but one day they hired a medium to come and check out the house because they were wondering if it were haunted.  And the medium told them it was.  A young boy who had died in a train accident was haunting it.  He didn't die there — no railroad tracks right next door or anything like that — but he had spent many happy times there visiting his grandfather.  So that's where his spirit was drawn when he died.

After hearing about the results of the seance, my housemates decided we would try to contact the ghost.  We set ourselves up in a room on the second floor with a Ouija board and a candle, and they started asking questions.  Nothing had happened, and they were getting frustrated.  Then someone asked, "If there is a spirit here, show us a sign", or something pretty close to that.  Suddenly the candle went out.  Which normally wouldn't be that big of a deal, but all the windows were closed, and there wasn't any breeze going through the room.  So we took that to be a sign, but it made some people nervous, and we wrapped up pretty quickly after that.

Okay, one little candle goes out.  Not much of an experience, right?

Ah, but there's more.

Some time after that, Bill and I were on the ground floor on a Saturday.  No one else was home.  I was reading a book.  I don't remember what Bill was doing, but he was in another room.  And suddenly I heard footsteps running downstairs from the second floor.

I looked toward the stairs, but I didn't see anyone.  I was starting to wonder where whoever it was could have gone, when I remembered — Bill and I were the only ones in the house, and he was already on the first floor.

It had to have been the ghost!

I ran over to find Bill and asked him if he had heard the footsteps also.  He hadn't, of course, but I knew what I had heard.

My only experience with a ghost.

Today, May 3, is National Paranormal Day, so it's a good day to record that experience.

Nobody seems to know how National Paranormal Day started or who created it, but it's listed by several of the sites that track events.  National Day Calendar and National Day Archives don't say anything about when it started.  Days of the Year, National Today, and There Is a Day for That agree that the observance began in 2013.  But according to Holiday Calendar, it began in 2011.

Image by Aberrant Realities.  Downloaded from Pixabay and used under the Pixabay Content License.

What Do You Mean, You Don't Like It?

I'm celebrating National Beer Day by reminiscing about drinking Guinness at the brewery in Dublin, Ireland.

I'm shocked to realize that it has been almost 30 years since I was in Dublin.  How did that much time go by?

But that's how long it has been.  In 1996, I managed to wrangle Gaming Guests of Honor invitations for GaelCon, the national Irish gaming convention, for myself and one of my best friends, Chris Williams.

While both Chris and I had been working in the adventure game industry for several years, neither of us was of the stature of the big names.  I knew that, so I worked a different angle to nail down those invitations.  I submitted our gaming resumes and asked if we were going to be in the United Kingdom already, perhaps the convention would consider flying us over from London.  And our resumes were definitely good enough to carry that.

So we flew into Gatwick, got through customs, and trundled immediately over to the gate where we boarded our Ryanair flight to Dublin.  Even now, my strongest memory of that flight is the one flight attendant who was very, very tall, but the flight attendant jumpseats were very, very close to the deck.  That poor girl had to fold her legs totally under the seat, and she looked so uncomfortable.

I don't really remember the details of our arrival in Dublin.  I think we were picked up at the airport?  We somehow arrived at the bed and breakfast that was to be our home base for the next week and a half.  They had incredibly good, homestyle food, and we loved eating there.  That was the first time I ever had milk that still had the cream on top.  Heaven!

The first several days were spent attending the convention, and we had a great time.  John Tynes was the major guest of honor, and I vaguely recall something about him having to shave his head because he didn't remember to bring Hamish back to Ireland with him.

After the convention was over, we spent a few more days in Dublin being tourists and sightseeing.  And one of the things we did was visit the Guinness brewery at St. James's Gate to take the tour.

I have been a fan of Guinness for many years.  I like my beer dark and chewy, and Guinness is the epitome of that.  So I had been looking forward to the tour since we arrived.

When we bought our tickets and checked in, we also received two coupons, each good for a half-pint of Guinness after the tour.

At this point I unfortunately don't remember the details of the tour, but I recall that it was interesting and had a good amount of history about the making of stout in general and about Guinness in particular.

I do remember that at the end of the tour everyone was pointed toward the tasting room and given instructions on how to redeem our coupons.

As I mentioned, I like Guinness, so I quickly gave both of my coupons for a full pint.

Chris, on the other hand, redeemed only one coupon and got a half-pint.

We sat down and I happily started drinking my Guinness.  Yum!  I decided that it really does taste better in Dublin.  Now that I think about it, that is one thing I remember from the tour:  We were told that the reason it tastes better in Dublin is because the water comes from the River Liffey.  I'm willing to concede that's the case.

Chris, however, took two sips from his glass, pushed it away, and said, "I don't like it."

Shocked, shocked I was!  And I said, "What do you mean, you don't like it?"

"I just don't like it."

There's no accounting for taste.  But I wasn't going to let that good stout go to waste.  I took his glass and finished that along with mine.

The ironic thing is that after we returned to the United States, he started drinking Scotch.  I guess there really is no accounting for taste.

Image by Aneil Lutchman and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

The Second Tuesday of Next Week

The International
Date Line

While I was growing up, my mother was known for using interesting turns of phrase.  She would talk about the "oneth of the month" (the first day of the month).  She and my father both used Spoonerisms deliberately, so we saved Chublip Stamps instead of Blue Chip Stamps and ate chotato pips instead of everyday potato chips.  One of my favorites, though, was my mother threatening to knock us into the second Tuesday of next week when we were being, um, precocious.  But, of course, there is no second Tuesday of the week.

Until there was!

When my family moved to Australia in 1971, we flew on a Pan Am 747 and crossed over the International Date Line.  When we did that, the day we lost was a Tuesday.

When we returned to the United States in 1973, we took a Greek cruise ship, and of course we had to cross the International Date Line again.  On that trip across the date line, we happened to repeat a Tuesday.  So not only did we make up for the Tuesday we lost, we finally had the second Tuesday of next week!

And yes, we gave my mother a bunch of crap about all the times she had said that to us.  She had somehow finally succeeded in knocking us into the second Tuesday of next week.

Unfortunately, my parents have both passed away, and neither my brother nor I remember the specific Tuesday we repeated.  But we know we came back in March, and the Tuesdays in March 1973 were 6, 13, 20, and 27.  So I picked today to write about it.

And I am pretty sure my mother would love the fact that I still remember.

My First Musical Instrument Was the Recorder

I bet it was for a lot of people.  Wasn't it a standard thing around 3rd or 4th grade to introduce young students to music by teaching them to play the recorder?

I always figured that had become established because the recorder is a relatively easy instrument to learn to play (although it does take time and effort to learn to play well, without sounding like a screeching cat; recorders are kind of like clarinets in that way).  Once they were available in plastic, they were also pretty affordable.

Whatever the original impetus for schools was, I think I learned to play in the 4th grade, while I lived in Australia.  I don't remember the recorder from when I was in the 3rd grade in California.

And why am I writing about recorders today?  I guess you didn't know that today is Play the Recorder Day, did you?

Play the Recorder Day (PtRD), celebrated on the third Saturday of March, grew out of a one-day event held in 1989 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the American Recorder Society (ARS).  ARS started PtRD in 1992, to be an annual event.  Play the Recorder Month came after that, just to promote the recorder even more.

I have to admit, after originally learning to play recorder, I didn't do too much with it, even though I kept my instrument through several moves (kind of like keeping my Barbie dolls).  That was until I started participating in the Renaissance Pleasure Faire (the vestiges of which are currently called the Original Renaissance Pleasure Faire and owned by a for-profit corporation, but not the for-profit corporation that bought it when the original in which I participated ran into financial problems and was sold).

And hey, I suddenly had a place where I could play my recorder!  So I did!  And I had a lot of fun!

We didn't use plastic recorders at the Faire, of course, because they wouldn't have that "period" look.  I found a very nice wood recorder and played in the opening and closing parades.

I continued to play for several years.  I became interested in expanding my range from the standard alto recorder and picked up a soprano recorder.  I experimented a bit with tenor and bass recorders also.  I could produce decent notes on a tenor, but I had problems with the bass.  I never invested in purchasing either one, though, sticking to my alto and soprano recorders.

I haven't played either of my reorders in many years, but when I found out about Play the Recorder Day, it encouraged me to reminisce and document a little bit more of my personal history.