When I saw this book listed on one of my usual book sites, I was imme­di­ately attracted to it. Geral­dine Brooks grew up in Aus­tralia, with a Cal­i­forn­ian father and an Aus­tralian (half Dutch and half Irish) mother. I grew up in the high­land jun­gle area of Peru, with Texan par­ents of Scots-Irish and, in […]

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Lately I have been involved in a project of scan­ning old let­ters from my par­ents’ attic and other stor­age places, to add to our fam­ily his­tory knowl­edge. These con­cern my father’s fam­ily, and I have been able to find all kinds of bits and pieces of infor­ma­tion about my great-grandparents, great aunts and uncles and grandparents.

The house my par­ents live in was built by my grand­fa­ther years ago, and many other old fam­ily things are in the attic and other parts of the house. My dad has recently become inter­ested in divest­ing him­self of some of the old books and ephemera he and his father col­lected and saved over the years, and I have been pon­der­ing on the best way to do that. I’ve come up with sev­eral ideas, but in the process I have been reminded of a poem I love dearly.

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