500

Including a short introductory post of Nov 29, 2013, this is my 500th blog post. I started doing a blog after undertaking entries on Facebook from June to November of that year. I first joined Facebook in June of 2013 in order to post photos of my trip that spring to the Middle East. After posting those photos, for family and my Facebook friends, I then started doing Facebook posts about historical events. I have to give my kids the credit for my joining both Facebook and writing a blog. I could not figure out an easy way for persons to see my photos of my Mideast trip, and they suggested Facebook. After doing my historical posts on Facebook they suggested a blog as a better medium. I have completed 500 blog posts in a period of eight months shy of ten years. 

My blogging has mostly been about historical events, but also includes items from the planning field and issues of present time interest. For the past few years have been doing a great deal on family history. My family history posts, over the years, has led, in a couple circumstances, to contacts by distant relatives. Relatives on the Hofmeister side of the family, who came across my post about a fire in a Hofmeister house in Big Flats, WI. I am still puzzled why some of the Hofmeister family left the rich farm land of Iowa to farm the sands of central Wisconsin, but some did. It could simply be a matter of affordability. One of the Hofmeister descendants, Edward Green my second cousin once removed, created the Streets of Old Milwaukee in the Milwaukee Public Museum. Much of that exhibit is said to be going away as they relocate the museum in a few years. I also was provided a connection to David Dixon, my second cousin once removed, who is a great grandson to the brother of my grandfather. His mother is a second cousin. I had contact with a few distant relatives before writing a blog to obtain data, but for most contact has been lost.

Grandpa Rudy and his two brothers

I was provided a DNA test by one of my sons as a father's day present several years ago. It shows a number of relatives with surnames I have never seen. This shows how a family tree grows.  A few people I find on the DNA site will respond back if I ask them a question, most will not. If they have family surnames filled out they are more likely to respond, so I now don't bother with those who do not list a family surname. In regard to family history, I have tended to go back in time rather than forward. 

First Cotton Bowl program cover

Due to being laid up with feet that will not heal, I have been doing a great deal of genealogy over the past two and a quarter years.  I have been fortunate that two of my great grandparents came from southwest Bohemia where a trove of information is available on-line. I have hired persons to translate the information for me. My Duscheck line, which is from northeastern Bohemia, I am not so fortunate and are limited to parish records. Parish records are first source material, but with changing surnames, and commonality of names, the Seigniorial records, and the land registers available for South Bohemia in the Trebon archives are very helpful. For example, I am stuck on my Duscheck line in northeastern Bohemia, because the father of a relative is named Jiri Duscheck, but there were two Jiri Duscheck's born in the same village within 8 months of each other. At this point, I am not sure which Jiri is my 5th great grandfather. I would not have been able to extend certain lines without the assistance of the land registers. If Seigniorial and land registers were available for the Duscheck line, I may be able to figure the correct Jiri, as perhaps a note on marriage, or heirs could lead to the correct person. At this point, I am not sure how to get out of that conundrum. 

Havel House in Dolni Chrastany, Bohemia

I often try to place my Bohemian ancestry lines into the context of the time in which a person lived. This has led me to research and read books and many scholarly articles regarding the second serfdom period in Bohemia. I wish I was able to read German, because much more is available in German than in English. I am fortunate that there are two scholars in England have done a good amount of work on serfdom in Bohemia. Most of my Bohemian ancestors were peasants--and serfs. There is a great deal of information in Urbaria records available for the 1770's which corresponds to my 4th great grandfather, Mathias Havel. This led to a few posts over the past year or two dealing with his condition as a serf. History is a great teacher and placing Mathias in the events of that era helps to understand and appreciate his condition. For example, it is instructive that flooding took place a few years after he acquired the farm from his father, which led to a famine in Bohemia. This was a critical event which focused attention of the peasant condition to Empress Maria Theresa, and he son Josef.

Martin and Amelia Hovel
Martin emigrated to the US in 1868

I like history and read it regularly. Several years ago (2014-2015), I did a great deal of reading about WWII,  and I did a number of posts related my Dad's service in the Counter Intelligence Corps during that conflict. Doing so, you can learn a great deal, and obtain a different perspective. It always helps putting things in the larger world issues of the day, but with a personal perspective. 

Bastogne, WWII
My Dad, a CIC agent, got out of Bastogne just
before it was surrounded by the Germans, Dec 1944

For personal stories I often rely on my wife for material. With her organizing, and reorganizing what she had organized, I get some great material. When the wife gets into an organizing or cleaning mode, there is no force greater. It is too bad her energy cannot be harnessed for heating and cooling the house. Maybe I could figure out some sort of heat exchanger device to make her energy usable. She is a woman on a mission, and no one should get in her way. I keep wondering when I will end up on the front porch to be left for pickup by a secondhand store. You can read about her organizing here. It does not always have to be organizing, such as a post last month about a water color class we both took. She was the class rebel, which goes with her hair color.

Having been a city planner, a number of blogs deal with planning issues. In 2021, for example, I wrote about the poor water quality in a lake in Vilas County, WI. The following spring I wrote four posts on protecting our resources, with the last being a sample development for northern Wisconsin. Planning involves balancing a variety of concerns, values and issues, and if northern Wisconsin is to survive, it cannot do the same old thing. For some reason humans are intent on destroying that which they most value and enjoy. So many lake shores are fully developed in northern Wisconsin that the water quality of the lake is now affected. Blue green algae is appearing, and it is not from agricultural activity in the watershed. Unfortunately, the insatiable desire to accommodate water front living has moved to rivers and streams. Lakes were near death in much of the southern part of the state until sanitary sewer was installed for homes on and near the lakes. Now, however, high use of agricultural fertilizers, urban development, and animal wastes are again laying waste to the waters of southern Wisconsin. 

Algae in a Vilas Co Lake, Oct 2021

Northern Wisconsin can, however, provide many good memories. In August of 2015, I wrote about Awesome Wonders, and how my wife had one of her many God-incidences, as she calls them. We had been camping at Day Lake and hiked up St Peter's dome and a side hike to Morgan Falls. On the way to and from Clam Lake we stopped at the highest peak in Wisconsin, Timm's Hill, which only added to the majesty of nature. While we also saw bears swimming and getting out of the water at the Clam Lake beach, the God-incidence came that Saturday night attending mass at a small log cabin church, and the concluding hymn was "How Great Thou Art". That hymn spoke to our hike up St Peter's dome. Heck that Saturday night we had a thunderstorm and heavy rain to top off our adventure. 

View from St Peter's Dome

One of my favorite posts is "Traits", written in June 2016, in which I offered up the wife-app as a replacement for technology on cars. We purchased a new vehicle in 2018 and the amount of technology in that vehicle compared to our vehicles bought in 2004 and 2006 is phenomenal. Anyway, I did not think I would find a spouse who commented on a husband's driving more than my wife commented on my driving. In June of 2016, I was proven wrong, my brother's wife outdoes my wife in this regard. I followed the Traits post with one two or three years later when we got a new car with much of the advanced technology. Sometimes, that technology just makes it worse, as now I have two wife apps, the electronics in the Jeep and the real one. If one isn't commenting it is the other. We often use the Jeep navigation map when driving even if we don't have an address entered. If I am over the speed limit a mph or two the speed level on the map screen lights up red. My wife does not need that to tell me when I am speeding, but she does. At least the wife will give me a mile or two of grace compared to the navigation device which does not. When we first got our Jeep in 2018 we made a long trip to New York for a family wedding. A few times on that trip we heard this beep and could not figure out what it was. A couple years later we figured it out, as we saw a message on the dashboard, about hands on the steering wheel. Not just hands, but a certain level of grip. Hands at 10:00 and 2:00, I expect it to say. I often drive with a few fingers on the steering wheel on a highway, and it catches me. Here the Jeep app has something over the wife app, my hand pressure on the steering wheel. That sound was different from the three beeps we heard every few minutes, which turned out to be my packed cell phone running low on battery power. I am now very attentive to beeps.

Every now and then I have been known to do something, well, not too bright. Not too often, less than a blue moon, and not as often as my wife thinks. For some reason my wife likes to shake her head. Hence, let me provide the post that she may like the most. "Get off the Bridge", which occurred when we visited Door County in the summer of 2016. You can find that post here. I guess I was holding traffic up a bit. 

Frieda and her naturally curly red hair
Like my wife

Will I be able to complete another 500 posts? Perhaps so, as long as my wife keeps giving me material.  I tend to now do a post about once a week, for which would take me close to 10.5 years to complete the next 500 posts. In December of 2013, that first full month of blogging, I did ten total posts. I am sure the few readers of this blog each have a favorite post or two, not to mention those that they find being some severe yawners. Cheers to post 500.