Monday, January 4, 2010

No news is good news.

First, I'm going to do a clean-up post with all of my “explanations” and a few apologies. My computer at home is not working right. It has become more and more cumbersome to use. I’ve been working-around all of it’s minor glitches, but the latest one is like somebody is holding down the “ctrl” button. Everything that I type goes to a control point. I changed the keyboard and it does the same thing. I’m not used to Windows Vista so I don’t know where to start fixing it… But I will!… I’m using the computer at my office now. It has a Windows program that I understand, XT, and it works so quickly and smoothly that it is refreshing to be using it again. In fact, it works so good that I find myself getting comfortably windy again.

I digress…. I’ve been gone from posting for awhile, because my home computer became unusable. I was home Thursday, because it was New Years Eve. It was also it was my wife and my anniversary. Then Friday was New-Years day. Of course Saturday was a regular day off… and Sunday. It probably sounds like a life of leisure, but as anyone that is married, and is a home-owner, knows that there is always a “Honey-do” list, and mine has become quite plump and well-rounded this fall, almost as long as this run-on sentence. My wife saw a grand opportunity to get some much-needed chores around the house done. Those chores removed me from blogging for awhile, because I was too far away from a working computer. There I go again, enjoying a good smooth-working computer, and getting too windy.

Back in 1843 Henry Ellsworth from the U.S. Patent Office reported to Congress. In his report he states, "The advancement of the arts, from year to year, taxes our credulity and seems to presage the arrival of that period when human improvement must end." Thus implying that everything had already been invented, and that there was no need to keep the patent office open anymore, because, everything had already been invented. I told my wife the other day that my blog is really slowing down lately, because everything that I’ve wanted to say, or was important, had already been said. I told her that I was considering not making any more posts, because I’ve run out of things important to say. In her great wisdom she said “Since when has that ever stopped you?” I’m still rolling that around in my head. My “credulity” has been taxed. I’m sure that there must be a compliment in her statement somewhere.

Anyway, thanks to some of my blogger friends, I have tons of “new” history. If there is such a thing.

Sam Gitchell, Jade gatherer, made a comment here. I wish he would do more. Then it occurred to me that maybe I should have more things that interests the “Rock hounds” out there. We have some pretty amazing rocks here in the Eel River drainage, for a variety of reasons. I intend to delve into rocks in a post. Sam is from Anderson Valley, which is one of my “Node Points” which I will also post about.

I miss Ol’ Man River. He recently came out of his self-imposed retirement to place a comment here. I understand that he burned himself out researching my family history, and that of the Indian People, but I know that he would not exchange the knowledge that he gained by researching our local history for anything in the world.

Robin dropped by again to “peep” hello. She always has something interesting to say. Oregon made a “punny note” that she stops by once in a Blue Moon… Last Dec. 31st being a Blue Moon. HAHAHA.

Most of all, Ben sent me a copy of some very great research that he has done on interpreting an old Indian legend on how flint came to the north coast. I will be posting it here as soon as I can get it all together.. So stay tuned. It is seminal. (I know that I promised that I would not use big words on this blog, but I wanted to impress Ben with my linguistic ability.)

....And… I have a whole bunch of stuff about the Eel River, and some local town stuff. Janis is right, when has not having anything to ever say stopped me???

11 comments:

Rose said...

I look forward to it! Happy Anniversary!

Ekovox said...

What Rose says....and remember that quote from Dwight David Eisenhower: "Things are more like today than they have ever been before."

omr said...

Hi Ernie, thanks for the welcome back, but I must take issue with your explanation of my blog retirement. Those Long Valley families were too small to provide a research challenge any more....I have been doing local area research all this time. The original Wood family had upwards of 17+ children, now there is a family tree for a genealogist to climb!

There are large gaps in the telling of early Sohum and Northern Mendocino which I hope to address. Meanwhile catch me at the HSU Humboldt Room, the Humboldt Historical Society or the Eureka library.

As you know, I had the temporary possession of Mary Anderson's interviews and research for her Backwood Chronicle book and newspaper articles.

There are remarkable interviews with our areas oldtimers in the 1980's that provide wonderful glimpses into the early days of the area. I know locally rooted families would enjoy the flavor and content, so I may have to figure out a way to bring those to the blogosphere...

I just returned from burying the last major branch from my own family tree. All those from my mother's generation are gone, just distant cousins and my sister and myself. As you know I am somewhat up thar in age and getting brittle so recording lost history seems important to me. May have to start my own blog, taking my typos elsewhere and saving you from local disdain for my newcomer perspective.

Ernie Branscomb said...

OMR,
Researching the Laytonville family tree is more like researching “The Family Pole”. There is no inbreeding, but it comes about as close as it can get. Everybody was related in some form or another, but most of us have teeth.

Hopefully you don’t take my harassment of the “Newcomers” that seriously. The juxtaposition of the newcomer ideas against the local ideas make for great conversations. It’s is a love-hate relationship, as witnessed by the fact that my wife is one of those dreaded Newcomers. She is from San Jose, but she is a native Californian. I had to insist on some standards!

Ernie Branscomb said...

Also OMR,

Anything that you want to write is welcome here. You have taught us much!

If you read the fine print at the top of the page you will find that it says "Language has never been about correctness, it has always been about communicating". So typos are no excuse, you communicate quite well!

Robin Shelley said...

Hi, OMR! I've been missin' you. And Suzy. Any word on her?

Mr. Nice said...

Erm, I saw Suzy's car or what used to be her car parked a couple of weeks ago so she couldn't have gone that far or whoever owns that vehicle or whatever. In Garberdank accourse.

Ernie, the problem with your computer is Windows is garbage and you need to switch or you can try pressing both control keys at once and/or both shift keys and F7 at the same time. It is the crappy Windows accessibility feature which is supposed to help disabled people use Windows like that is going to help since Windows is a disabled system in the first place. If you accidentally hold shift for 7 seconds in Vista this windows comes up and is like "did you mean to turn on accessibility Okay/Cancel" and if you hit "okay" then you can turn it off, but if you hit "cancel" it messes up and turns it on but won't let you turn it off. Same thing happens in XP. You've seen the commercials with the dorky Windows guy, they're funny because they're true.

Ernie Branscomb said...

Thanks Mr. Nice
I haven't seen anything from Suzy on the blogs lately. Maybe cleaning out her body cleared up her thinking and she realized what a waste of time we are.

We have 12 PC computers and they are tired into a master operating system. the only one we have problems with is "Vista", but as it turns out it really was just a bad keyboard, which was a "Dell".

Mr. Nice said...

Same fix if "Alt" or "Shift" get stuck by the software on a good keyboard. At least it is not an Amiga where replacing the keyboard meant taking everything apart. I miss my Amiga.

Did she go on that lemon cleanse thing? That is all the rage in Laytown I hear.

And hey, if you ever run out of good material, just roll out the old stuff for a while. We'll still read.

omr said...

I got a forwarded email from Suz about some electronic sale. It was sent from SBB to SBB...maybe she has mastered her I and Thou-ness she used to talk about.

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