Living on the frontlines

It has been a while since I've posted an update. Sometimes it takes time for people to work their way through the testing phase etc. We have added four more new HPSers to the registry. This puts us at 90 to go on this year's Hundred People Search (HPS). Outreach is harder during the pandemic. We can't attend conferences or hold conferences and outreach events. It is a worry because there is actually a lot going on in research just now, and soon we will really need all HPS hands on deck to push things forward. We need to get creative! 

When I was in elementary school, if an adult had asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I’d given them an honest answer, I’d have told them I wanted to grow up to be a pioneer in the later half of the 1800s. I never gave this answer to inquiring adults, time travel being impossible. It was, however, what I really wanted to be. I LOVED the Little House on the Prairie series. I read them over and over. It didn’t hurt that I was lucky enough to touch this era of history, literally touch it, pretty often. My dad was stationed at the Air Force Academy then. Our family spent many weekends on four-wheel drive roads in the back country of Colorado. The mountains were littered with “ghost towns” from the 1800s gold rush. If you went to the towns (and the mines) that could only be reached with an off-road ready vehicle, or more remote still, only by foot, there was so much to find. We were like amateur archeologists. We found town buildings and cabins, some still creakily holding on t

I’ve often thought how lucky I am that I’ve gone through life able to avoid direct experience with any major negative world event. I’ve been blessed to have a front row seat to several world events, but not negative scary ones. If you look at history, the usual time between things such as wars, and it really is quite extraordinary. Yes, we’ve been at war, even attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, but I’ve never really felt my life was in direct peril – not really. I’ve never had to think about going without anything I could afford. I’ve never worried that my house would be bombed, or that I’d be kept a prisoner for some, hopefully, unjustified reason.  I still count myself very blessed in this respect. History has marched on though, and it might just have caught up with me.  For these past few months our world, yes the whole world, has been experiencing a pandemic. It has impacted every aspect of our lives no matter where we live. Personal liberties have been curtailed for the good of society a