The Nice People Thread, No.16: A Universe of Niceness.

PasturesNew

vivatifosi wrote: »

I have a meeting coming up with a librarian from the county archives. I must ask her about digitization projects and what's happening both where we are and across the country. Will report back if there's anything interesting.

Where I used to live there was a library - and there was a floor on it called "The Collection", but nobody went there .... it was a "secret glory hole that contained everything" and the 2-3 people behind the desk were "a bit strange".... I had to go once.

In short - over the years they simply accumulated everything and recorded not a lot.... but they had it all.

Over 25-30 years or so one chap who was interested in stuff worked there, or was there a lot - and wrote the local newspaper column of "Looking back 25 years" "Looking back 50 years" and some similar small pieces. What he did was kept his own little notes/records of what's where.

He's now publishing, online, on archive.org full documents of snippets of his notes and some references on where more can be found. That's "interesting".... but his focus was more about "The Council, buildings, local decisions" and not "the people", so his many documents show how the local area and social norms changed over the years.... his published booklets are labelled by subject, so "Waterworks" "Electricity" "Transport". Taking an example, under "Transport" he might have 1-2 lines saying "There was a tram crash on the main road in 1929", but the actual newspaper would have said "Bertie Buggins, the driver, and Mrs Martle, an elderly passenger of 37 High Street were injured".... but you'd not know that from his snippet.

I even found my grandfather's wife's scandalous bigamy mentioned in one, but without any names whatsoever. So, while interesting, his publications from a "named person" perspective are informationally useless to me. They'd only be of benefit to a student writing a thesis on the social and cultural changes within the area 1880-1990 who wanted a quick overview and starting list for research resources/ideas.

I'll probably have to wait 15-20 years for somebody to decide to get round to digitising those newspapers..... that are sitting in a room .... untouched, unindexed .... but if you know which paper you want to see and go and ask them for it they'll get it out from the pile and let you read it. The thing with online/digital searching is you can toss a name in and find every instance of it since the papers started in 5 seconds flat

With digital searching you discover things you'd have never guessed at looking for .... it's magic!

SingleSue

Pyxis wrote: »

Good news about your dad, Sue.
What does the treatment involve?






Since I've grown my hair a bit, I've noticed that longer hair that is shed is very good for trapping dust on laminate floors.

Simply put, blood thinners but on a specialised plan and regular checks to make sure things are going ok.

Just rang mum and the bloody man lied about no pain to the hospital yesterday when it turns out he had some mild pain in his leg which has increased today. We both think he 'forgot' to mention it because they were talking about him possibly going home after the scan results...not reporting pain would have made it more possible in dad's eyes and probably did make a difference.

He is so frustrating, it was his not reporting his leg pain on Monday that led to it being an emergency on Tuesday afternoon! Does he never learn?

PasturesNew

SingleSue wrote: »

Does he never learn?

Put simply ...no.

It's what they do - behaviour that ends up in your life being in turmoil endlessly because they're "hiding" stuff and being in denial.

You've now got all the hassle of getting him back/settled and all the unexpected/sudden upheaval of having him removed again .... and repeat all that, plus the anxiety of "has he lied again" to receive him back another time.

It's endless once they get to a certain age. Keep a handy bag of everything you'd want at the drop of a hat by the door ....

Parents ... who'd have them??

LydiaJ

SingleSue wrote: »

Does he never learn?

From my observations of my own elderly relations, I have come to the conclusion that most people become, in old age, an exaggerated version of themselves at 40-odd.

All the character strengths and also all the character weaknesses that my parents had in middle age were still there but much more pronounced once they were old, and I think the same is true of my in-laws, although of course I don't know them so well. When I realised this I found it quite terrifying to consider that my own little flaws are probably going to get much worse if I live to that kind of age. :eek:

SingleSue

It's a nightmare isn't it. He should have learned from his heart attack where he was downplaying his symptoms, so he got diagnosed with a dodgy shoulder rather than it being a warning sign that he was having small heart attacks....until of course I spoke to the receptionist and reported all of his symptoms before he could get a word in and not a moment too soon, he had a major one at the doctors surgery.

He was moaning to one of the doctors yesterday that nothing was being done on the stroke side, I had to point out to him that if he actually reported to his doctor or anyone else about his funny turns instead of saying I am ok now, there probably would have been more input from them.

We just can't get through to him how lucky he was this week, if he had delayed any further he would have been dead by now. He did try by ringing the wrong number accidentally on purpose initially (his consultant's secretary....dad knows she doesn't work on a Tuesday) and only rang the correct one when we nagged him.

I know none of us want to go into hospital but he takes it to the nth degree..arrggghhhh!

silvercar

LydiaJ wrote: »

From my observations of my own elderly relations, I have come to the conclusion that most people become, in old age, an exaggerated version of themselves at 40-odd.

All the character strengths and also all the character weaknesses that my parents had in middle age were still there but much more pronounced once they were old, and I think the same is true of my in-laws, although of course I don't know them so well. When I realised this I found it quite terrifying to consider that my own little flaws are probably going to get much worse if I live to that kind of age. :eek:

Agree. Add to that one being on their own means there is no calming influence, so character traits become more pronounced.
Yesterday parent not feeling well, nothing specific. No doctor appointment made. Met a friend in town, so not that ill. But something may be wrong or it may not. If you were ill you would go to the doctor, or not. Sighs.

Pyxis

LydiaJ wrote: »

From my observations of my own elderly relations, I have come to the conclusion that most people become, in old age, an exaggerated version of themselves at 40-odd.

All the character strengths and also all the character weaknesses that my parents had in middle age were still there but much more pronounced once they were old, and I think the same is true of my in-laws, although of course I don't know them so well. When I realised this I found it quite terrifying to consider that my own little flaws are probably going to get much worse if I live to that kind of age. :eek:

Oo-er!! I think in my case it might already have started! :eek:

PasturesNew

In trees, what is very frustrating is "people who simply disappeared" - many are "in plain sight", if you only knew where to look.

Your tree, as it grows, becomes littered with them. All you have is a name and date of birth .... and they could be anywhere... married? moved? emigrated? Who knows.... you just hope there were descendants who one day will join into your tree and you can see where they went. But many don't have descendants....

One I've only recently found out about "disappeared". He married, he had a child, wife died 1909, child handed over to his brother to bring up and she died in 1912. So where did he go?

There's a family story that a little nephew remembers mum/dad going to his funeral "during the War" and thinks it was berks region ....

But we may never know. He's not "my blood", he's the uncle of my first cousin once removed (my mum's cousin).

Trees are full of dead ends... and no clues.

In short: If you have an Albert who was born in 1878 and he moved .... and you look, you discover 100 Albert marriages (he could have married, or not); you discover 100 Albert deaths (he has died ... but was he even still Albert?). Given a bottomless purse you'd simply write off for every birth certificate until you got one that looked promising. But, even if you had bought all 100 (£1000) and waited for each one .... it could easily be that the informant wasn't a known family member.

So what then .... send off for a copy of every Will that existed? Another cost.... say 20 Wills .... not sure how much they cost, but that'd be another wedge. And what if he never wrote a Will?

What if he's "Stranger, buried, aged ~60", although there is the thought of the small child remembering his parents going to the uncle's funeral - but was it the same uncle, or an uncle at all? Certainly the twin brother of the disappeared man died in 1945, which to a child would be "during the War", so he could've misunderstood/overheard something and made up what he didn't know. It seems strange to me that they could've been going to a funeral on, presumably, a day trip .... and not going away with the child, or having him farmed out.

You kind of need them all to go out in a blaze of glory, with their life details published in digitised newspapers so you can know

michaels

Pyxis wrote: »

Since I've grown my hair a bit, I've noticed that longer hair that is shed is very good for trapping dust on laminate floors.

I am now picturing you crawling around on hands and knees using your head to dust the floor...sorry

silvercar

Doozer, I saw on another post that you have had a stressful time. Hope all is OK.