As the world becomes more digitalized, we are at of risk losing our history. We are saving files everywhere, often with little idea of how future generations will find them, or whether they will even have an appropriate application to open them. Most digital preservation strategies feel like the digital equivalent of the massive warehouse in Raiders of the Lost Ark -- petabytes and petabytes of information that we'll "someday" go back and sort through.
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On October 25, 2019, I finally made it. To my first World Series game. It was only 24,493 days after my father made it to his only World Series appearance. It took a while. As Terrence Mann said, “America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time.” Yes, 24,493 days is a lot of “time marking.”
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Here’s what I have discovered about my mystery Italian family…
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My wife Mary Glenn and I often walk in Chestnut Grove Cemetery in Herndon. Which may sound odd to some people, but when you live in a place for over forty years, there are just so many friends to visit.
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Rising masses of amounts of data PLUS Exponential increases in computing capability EQUALS … What?
According to my printed directions -- this is a pre MapQuest, pre-GPS era -- my quest is just four miles away.
“People will come, Ray. They'll come to Iowa for reasons they can't even fathom. They'll turn up your driveway not knowing for sure why they're doing it. They'll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past.”
I didn’t expect to wind up on an Amtrak train to New York, a week after the due date for our second child, but before child number two decided to make his formal appearance. But I also had not expected to get one of those phone calls. The late at night -- uh-oh, why is the phone ringing?-- phone calls.
What IS on my mind this Thanksgiving -- this totally weird Thanksgiving without my own family around the table -- are the family members that WERE around the table for my father after his parents disappeared in the 1930s. A village of mystery family members who undoubtedly had problems of their own, but somehow gave my father a home -- and a safety net.
My 9th grade English teacher, Miss Porro, used to say, “Just tell them what you’re going to tell them. Tell them. Tell them what you told them.” I realize in retrospect that this was hardly unique advice in high school English classes.
We lived a fairly typical life in the suburbs. Pick up the Wonder Years from its fictional location and move it to New Jersey, and you can get the picture.
Ezekiel tree skeletons on Cape Hatteras conspire to bring Elizabeth’s bones to life.
It looks like Elisabetta came to the U.S. in a bit of style — on the Titantic’s sister ship.
“Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” Well not exactly.
Out of the blue, an actual picture appears of Frank and Elizabeth.
My father enters the record books — 15 days old and in the New York State 1925 Census.
All seems well in 1930 for the family of four at 70 First Avenue in Manhattan.
Just when I thought everything seemed OK with this genealogy project, our WTF moment.
Frank slips into the abyss and lands at the Rockland Asylum.
The Rockland Asylum would appear to be a pretty scary place.
The official diagnosis is in — dementia praecox
