Got an unexpected phone call from my cousin Michael in Canada two days ago. He was calling to see how Mother is doing, because he wanted to know if she could accept phone calls. We had a long chat, and he suggested I sign up for a Skype account. Skype subscribers can call other Skype subscribers anywhere in the world via pc and talk free! I took his advice, set up my account, and called him back. This time, he turned on his webcam, and I was able to see him as we were talking, and also his wife, Debbie.

Well, I can't abide being even a step behind, and I decided to connect my little 5 yr. old web-cam, but discovered the OEM drivers aren't acceptable to WindowsXP and the new driver I downloaded from the manufacturer's web site doesn't seem to work either. So I bit the bullet and purchased a new web cam. As soon as my daughter finishes transferring her iTunes from Dad's computer to mine, I'm going to install it and call Mike back.

I also bought a flash card reader so I can transfer photos from my camera without physically tethering the camera to the laptop. That will make it much easier to phost photos here.

During our trip to Ireland at the beginning of this month, Laurel, Marty and I visited Marty's cousin Eugene, who drove us around the Cork area to see the sights. He is Marty's dad's first cousin. He and his wife Helen had ten children, a couple of whom live in the United States, one is in Europe, and one is living at home.

Helen died three years ago. As Eugene put it, they had two christenings, a wedding, and a funeral all in the same week! After the christenings, Helen and Eugene danced at their daughter's wedding, and went to bed at the hotel. When Eugene woke up in the morning, she had passed away.

Pictures from the trip are at Picasa, and I blogged the trip at Halona, the Peering Place.

My co-worker, Beth, recently shared this photo of herself and Mom, taken during her visit to Hawaii at the end of June . During the week she and her sister were on Oahu, they went to visit Mom in Kailua.

Got such a shock today! I was doing my occasional "google search" for Simon Soutar and came across a web site that seems to have digitized the book written by Leslie Purkis called "The Fire Kindlers". I have copies of this book and its two sequels that Leslie Purkis sent me, and I had no idea anyone else might have had a copy.

In any case, there was a mailto: link on the site, and I will fire off an e-mail to j.purkis@virgin.net this evening to see what the connection is.

Yesterday, I used my Godfrey Library card to take another look at their databases. I see that they now have EBSCO's Newspaper Archives, and that it includes the Jamaica Gleaner, past and present! I found many articles about my mother's parents and other relatives, including photos.

I found the death notice and obituary of my grandmother, Una Crosswell, as well as the obituaries of Dr. Louis Oliver Crosswell, my grandfather's brother, and Noel A. Crosswell, my uncle. The obits were pleasantly chatty, listing many who attended the services and their relationships to the deceased - providing clues for piecing together the extended family.

Cutting and pasting the articles into Word was a disaster - they are not readable. Transcribing them into Word while reading the pdfs online is a pain, and can't be discretely done at work. The best option is to save the page to the hard drive, and use Acrobat Reader to look at them offline. Then you can zoom and transcribe to your heart's content.

Godfrey Memorial Library is a genealogical library that sells "scholar" memberships for $35 per year. You then get a library card that entitles you to use all the wonderful resources they make available online. The list of genealogy-related databases is extensive and expensive - so your local library may not be able to provide them. I highly recommend that anyone who wants to do research online should become a Godfrey Scholar!

This article appeared in Midweek on Friday, February 3, 2006: "You Practice on the Days You Eat." It features Hawaii teen musicians featured on the PBS radio show "From the Top".

Earl sent the following in response to the photo in the previous entry:
"Rosemarie gave me these 2 photos. They were dated: 11 March 1956. The family had a get-together in Waianae Town @ Jacinth's house. I was in Japan w/da US Army, when Rosie sent these to me. It was to tease me to come home, cause I had told them I was getting married to a japanese wahine, boy did I receive so many threats of being dis-owned, etc. Only when she came home before me, they adopted her w/open arms & they took care of her better than me."

This is the other photo he refers to. Front: Julia Harris and Lucy (my grandma) Schulmeister; back: Bill (Earl's dad), Jacinth and Frank Picadura.

Cecelia Bragg, Rose Kallmyer, Julia Harris, Lucy Schulmeister - the four Costa Picadura sisters, name order is left to right; age order is right to left. The other eight kids in the family were all guys! I'm not sure where or when this photo was taken, but I'm thinking it must have been in the 1950s or 1960s. I know Julia was the first to move away from Hawaii permanently, and this must have been taken on one of her visits home.

January 6, 2006. The family got together at dinner for Fay Schulmeister's 93rd birthday. Click on the photo to see a larger image.

Seated around the table, from the left, are Mary, Laurel's friend Lisa, Mom, Lea, Aunt Jo, Laurel, Kathy, and David. I took the photo. Absent: Claire, James, Marty, and Patrick. We are at Mom's house in Kailua, and the dining table and chairs came from the house at Surbiton, in Jamaica.