Genealogy Anyone?

First I should probably clarify a little about the last post. Several people thought I was dissing on myself about the NEW pillow and offered kind words of encouragement about it. Actually, I was dissing myself about letting OLD pillow get into such a deplorable condition before I finally gave up on it. I just took a class at PSU about communication and apparently didn't learn much. I hope my boss doesn't read this - LOL!
So, on to the next project, or at least the beginning of it. I think I might have mentioned that another one of my hobbies is genealogy. I like to say I collect dead relatives, to which some people reply "you mean like in the cellar?". Well, no. They are on the floor in the closet, which isn't much better! My project for this winter is to get all this stuff sorted, off the floor and out of the closet. Did I just say that? Dang, there goes that communication thing again....
I bought the gorgeous boxes you can see in the background early last spring at Michaels. I finally sorted a portion of the vintage photos into two families and stored them WAY up on top of the very tall desk hutch in my art room. Step one.
My plan is to find (read: thrift store) some sort of armour and move all the boxes and albums and suitcases into the spare bedroom so I can make space in the art room closet for a chest of drawers. To store art crap. Family heirlooms out, crap in, makes perfect sense, right? But the family WILL be nicely archived and in a much safer location that on the floor next to a water heater.
I wish I could show you close-ups of some of these photos. There are some great ones but I don't know how to do the "watermark" and I would feel terrible if my dead relatives turned up on some one's collage sheet. I have used copies of a few of them in my own artwork but somehow that feels like honoring them.
A social studies teacher in Junior High School (big sigh - 40 years ago) got me interested in the hobby and I suspect it has something to do with the reason I am drawn to the mixed media art that is so popular nowadays. I look into the faces in those old photos and I see people and lives and stories.
Along the way I became the keeper of the family archives. The oldsters pass on and the old pictures and photo albums make their way to me. I can't imagine I will ever get it all "finished" in spite of modern technology and the Internet making the research so readily available. I do have one son who respects it and I have asked them both to please not discard it when I'm gone. If they don't want it then just box it all up and ship it all to Utah. That isn't my faith but they are good people and they will take care of it until someone who is interested comes along.
If any of you are interested in genealogy I would love to hear about it. Oh! and be sure and stop back later this week. I'm going to be doing a post about Grandma's hankie box!