Passing Time

The Valley and Blue Ridge look absolutely incredible this evening.  The ice storm from yesterday left the area looking like the planet of Krypton.  You definitely feel as if you fell into a cotton candy machine with beams of light penetrating your very soul.  It’s stunning.  I took a couple of pictures in front of the homestead this afternoon upon my arrival home.  I’m thinking that I may make it up early to catch the sunrise on Afton mountain but don’t hold me to that as I’ve had a tiring few days.

I’m ecstatic to share that it looks as though there is an end in sight to my job search.  Most importantly, there is a new RFTS ’07 mix in the works.  Actually there are two new mixes in the works because our summer mix contest is on and the winner for the past two years is in the cross hairs.  But I digress… Ole Lazy Acres may be transplanting in the near future and we are surely looking forward to that as the RFTS ’07: Movin’ On Mix can attest.

Speaking of proclamations, I got back into my genealogy hobby this past weekend.  Yea, ya know this early Adelphia retiree has so little time on his hands that it only took seven months to pencil in some time to continue the quest for heritage and family lore.  I had to get my elbows dirty but it certainly looks as though John Adams (and his son, John Quincy) is a distant relative.  A long story, but my 3rd Great Grandmother is a descendent of the one and only Henry Adams, one of the fathers of Massachusetts.  Can you believe that?  A boy born in Birmingham having Founding Fathers in his family, albeit distant, tree?

It’s kind of neat.  It started making a formal connection to the Newell family.  My grandmother is a Newell from Medway, MA.  I had been stuck on my 3rd Great Grandfather when a gentleman responded to my posting on an ancestry board and tipped me off to another family tree in a publication from the early 1900’s.  To make a long story shorter, I was able to find vital records that connected my Newell ancestors to another father of Massachusetts, Abraham Newell.  Once I had that all the dominos fell into place.

I find this genealogy stuff fascinating and I feel somewhat humble.  I appreciate all the stories and sacrifice more than the glory.  For instance my grandfather James Riley just off the boat from Ireland enlisted in the Union army and marched through Georgia burning the South with Sherman.  He kind of liked the place and met a southern belle before settling down in Morgan County, Alabama.  It’s ironic because his son eventually married a daughter of the Confederacy.  I can only imagine the wedding ceremony.

This leads me to the last paragraph of this posting and my point… Everything happens for a reason.  It’s like the very insightful comment from Wind in His Hair to Dances with Wolves on his wedding day, “You know the man she mourned for was my best friend…It’s been hard for me.  He was a good man.  I am not the thinker Kicking Bird is.  But I think he went away from her because you were coming.”