I'm starting March without a photo of food! That feels so good to say! I did get a very nice surprise this morning on my 5th weigh-in with 2.5 more pounds lost this week for a total of 13.7 pounds to date. I was absolutely shocked because my scale would not budge downward for 5 days. And then, bam, it just plunged. I don't expect this average to keep up, but my meal planning will!
Ok, so onto next project that I have been wanting to do for a long time: tackling the monumental number of papers, old photos, newspaper clippings, ancient letters that I am the guardian of in the family. I have been wanting to make family trees, record things that others in the family would love to know, and expose things that are not so endearing from our southern lineage. I have the old family Bible, with some things actually "cut out" from there; I have a speech or recollection delivered as a speech I believe from my slave-owning great-great grandfather that predates his publication of Memoirs of a Southerner; I have daguerreotypes, countless letters, things no one can even decipher, but I want to start getting them all logged and digitized in some coherent way. Eventually, I'll make it a book for my family.
So, I want to start with something fun. And purely accidental. As a somewhat natural "archivist," this find was great to put 2 and 2 together.
I first found the "itinerary" in some of the boxes I've saved under my mother's/grandmother's things. It is called "Scandinavian Student Travel Service: Hotel Mailing List Tour 803."
I wondered if this was the grand European tour my mother mused about once; she went after she graduated from Vassar college in 1958 (with her best friend growing up). I put it aside, and I kept going through papers--I was going to put all things in piles that had relationships to one another. At some point, I was rummaging through some photographs, and this post card popped up. On the back, it reads: "Well here it is - the highest pass in all Europe. A feeling of exhileration unknown before! Driving is quite a feat, too. But Kjeld is a perfect master of the car! Love, Me" Addressed to my grandparents Mr and Mrs. F.C. Hunter, Spring Rock Farm, Woodbine, Maryland, USA.
I looked at the post stamp, which indicated it was sent from Vitznau with a beautiful black and white stamp of a cable car going toward some mountains (in Switzerland, I presume). The stamp says "50 Helvetia."
I stopped and realized that this just MIGHT be associated with the grand European tour list I had found earlier (the tour lasted from Aug. 7--Sept. 30). Sure enough, Sept. 1-4, My mother and friend stayed at Hotel Terminus in Vitzau, Switzerland. The note on the itinerary says "See Vitznau, Vierw." I believe it's a typo for Views, but who knows?--Added note: And now there is an answer thanks to a fellow 365er (see below)!: "Regarding the itinerary, the “am see” means “on the lake” (Frank’s GG grandfather came from a town on Bodensee, which is called Lake Constance in English) I did a Google search for Vitznau and find it right on the shore of Vierwaldstättersee, which would explain “Vierw.”"
Anywho, I promptly scanned the itinerary and the photo to send to my mother AND to her dear friend (who is like another mother to me and a grandmother to my children--she lives in NYC). My mom told me about how after the trip ended, she and Judy R. went to East Germany on their own and stayed with someone who made them leave their shoes out at night to indicate they had come home--all of this was secret because they didn't want to tell their parents they were going "off grid" back then.
So this is a fun find. It's logged in the files now.
Some things I may post will not be so fun--in fact, I will have to weigh the appropriateness of some things, but this is the month to get to the heart of all matters family that keep living in boxes. I'll try to use my archivist tendencies to look at it with a new sense of disclosure and history. It's been way too long.
Additional note: this trip went to England, Holland, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, and France. WOW
I used to "interview" my grandmother about her early days and all the people in our family (the photographs on her walls). I still have the scribbled notes and I was smart some days to actually write on the backs of the framed photos who was actually in the photograph! I wish I had done it all the time. Now, I'm digging for info where there are very few people who remember well enough.
Need I say that I hadn’t followed you before but am now!
Regarding the itinerary, the “am see” means “on the lake” (Frank’s GG grandfather came from a town on Bodensee, which is called Lake Constance in English) I did a Google search for Vitznau and find it right on the shore of Vierwaldstättersee, which would explain “Vierw.”