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Hi Everybody,
Hope everyone had a great weekend as I had. Including hearing from the 2 best daughters in the entire WORLD. Now that I've totally annoyed them by mentioning them here, "MOMMMMM", I'll get on with it.
Madness Monday .... sounds like a cutsey title doesn't it? Like a sale at the store, bingo day of the week, whatever. Madness - we've all heard it runs in families, maybe it's inherited. Not sure I totally agree with that, but it does seem to surface thru the generations in families.
So you always heard relative X went into an institution or was kept in the attic or what? Have you just stopped with that. NOOOOOOO I never just accept the story. How are you going to get anywhere if you just think of things as brick walls. Stop thinking about brick walls. That kills your creative thinking & whoever came up with that phrase !
When you think of it as hitting a brick wall, that's like being in your car on the side of the road with car trouble. You put up the window sign "NEED HELP!", then wait and hope someone pulls over to assist you. You could sit there and turn into a pile of rust before a good samaritan comes along.
Get out and start walking .. remember good old walking! Stand in the middle of the road and make someone stop, call for help ( guess almost everyone has a cell phone or those car computers now ), light a fire, throw something at a passing vehicle and make them see you, .......... ect. START THINKING! Use your noodle. Almost every day I send letters, email or postal, looking for different information. I PICKUP THE PHONE AND CALL. What are you waiting for? Why do you think people & offices have phones? So no-one will call them? I bought my first Everton book, geesh over 40 years ago, and now with the internet I barely open it any more. So many offices and places are getting websites and more all the time.
Don't give up because someone was in an institution. My ancestors weren't always 'insane'. If you look at the records, some people were. There were also those who in todays world would have gone to a clinic for rest and therapy. They just had breakdowns, got ill and were run down, or were overwhelmed for a time. Some were old with no family, or homeless and destitute. Many institutions were like self sufficient little villages. I think the practices of gardening & farming should never have been taken out of such places. These places weren't jails. People could go visit home and come back.
Some were afflicted with senility, sometimes dangeously to other family and so were taken out of their homes. Very sad, and not even all of todays pills can help everyone.
Study up on the subject. Old San Francisco used the abandoned ships the gold hunters left in the bay, to house patients. Before the various asylums in California were built. Anything and everything can lead to records or places to look for information.
The point is no-one is going to come rushing up to your face and say, "Here is the information your looking for", and just hand things to you. You have to look - look - look and along the way like I did, happily learn a lot of history, geography, and genealogy. Even genealogy about totally unrelated families to you if that 's what it takes. Don't be an information snob if you want to succeed.
Happy Trails, Katiebird
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