Thursday, April 07, 2005

Travel Journal, day 2

Everyone knows that you should avoid staying in a hotel where there's a Shreiners' convention in progress. Consider yourself warned about student nurses' conventions. We arrived at the same time as a large herd of young, robust women who move through the hotel in blocks of a dozen or so at any one time. When you see them head toward the elevators, you just park yourself on a chair in the lobby until they finally clear out. In the room next door to me, the shower ran the better part of two hours last night. There are at least 4 of the creatures to each room. The experience has inspired me to stay really healthy. They don't exactly instill confidence.

During the day we join our own herd at the Family History Library next door. There was a time when you didn't see many young people at work on their genealogy, but times are changing. You see just about every type of person, each with an over-stuffed notebook and most with a laptop, laying claim to an expanse of desktop for the day. We've seen young girls who, despite the repeated requests to refrain from cell phone use in the library, call up various relatives to inquire about granny's brothers and sisters. We've seen an elderly 80-something woman, dragging her rolling cart of research and giving us all hope that we have a few more decades to poke those recalcitrant ancestors out of their hiding places.

The first day of research was a success. We all found something. Maybe not all we wanted to find, but enough to make the day worthwhile. We had an excellent lunch at a rooftop restaurant where the ceiling had been retracted to let the fresh mountain air drift through. It was a good day.

Tomorrow we hit the microfilm readers again. There's ancestral gold in them thar hills of film. Gotta get me some.

LSW

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