Modern Library

Hello, I’m your New Librarian. I’m sorry, you seem to be having some trouble with your PIN code. You need to talk to one of my colleagues.

Colleague?

Keep looking…

Yes, We are Modern Librarians too. We’ll take your books, if you want to return them. We can read bar codes. Oh. You haven’t borrowed the books yet? Then you’d better hold on to them… What you need is someone who speaks PIN!

Hello. No, I’m afraid I don’t speak PIN…

Well, finally I found a more human-looking kind of librarian behind a desk. I nervously confessed I couldn’t get the machine to register my loan, and she looked at me as if I had dropped in from another planet - and asked if I had a PIN code.

Yes, said I. I do have a PIN code and I use it all the time at home on the internet. But I couldn’t get that machine over there to accept it…

So the human Librarian walked over to the machine with me. And of course after just a stern look from her, the machine accepted my PIN code without protest; and the bar codes on the books as well.

There are few things that makes one feel as stupid as machines who like to play tricks with newbies but then pretend to be perfectly innocent when their Master (or Mistress) show up.

I still haven’t dared try to personally feed that huge green book-eating monster, by the way.

The reason why I still feel a bit lost at the “new” library (renovated and modernized last year) is that usually I do most of my borrowing and returning via the small branch library close to where I live; where they still have personal service behind the desk. I can also access the library catalogue at home on the internet, and order books to be sent to the branch library and pick them up there. So the only times I “need” to go to the big library is if I want to browse IRL and get a closer look at books before borrowing them.

Harvest Festival

Yesterday was the annual Harvest Festival in town,  taking place in and outside the Cultural Centre.

Help to learn to identify various kinds of mushrooms…

 

Poisonous [giftig] or Edible [ätlig]?
I wouldn’t have clue! (so I never pick them)

Apples. Well, at least none of them are poisonus!

Free apple pie and custard served in the theatre foyer

A peek into the theatre auditorium, where a lecture on gardening was going on.

Harvest festival market stalls with the impressive Gustav Adolf church in the background.

Linking to Straight Out of the Camera Sunday.

Another piece (or two) of the puzzle

At a Swedish family tree website I joined recently, this week they were offering free access to old American population censuses. I took the opportunity to search in the census from 1910 for my grandmother’s two half-siblings Gerda and Gustaf, who emigrated to the States in 1902. (They were both still living there in 1910, but moved back to Sweden a few years later.)

I knew Gerda lived in Chicago and worked as a servant; and in spite of her surname being slightly misinterpreted when transferred from the handwritten records (Ekman read as Elman), I managed to find her (I’m pretty sure) in the household of a physician Otto L Schmidt and family. Otto and his wife (of German descent but both of them born in the US) had three teenage children in 1910, and besides Gerda two more female servants (from Austria), one male servant (from Germany) and a chauffeur whose Colour or Race is given as “mu” (which I take to mean mulatto). The chauffeur’s wife (likwise “mu”) and their two children were also counted as belonging to the Schmidt household.

Gustaf I knew lived in Galeton, Pennsylvania. My first searches on his name gave no result, but after a bit of lateral thinking I managed to find him under the name of “Gust Ekmann” (the first name shortened and an extra n added to the surname). His occupation was “yardman” at the sawmill, and he was boarder to the borough’s tax collector, a Mr Near (and family); together with ten other workers also connected to the sawmill industry.

I’m not sure what a “yardman” did but three of his fellow boarders had the same title. I guess it must have included loading and various outdoors jobs. Two other boarders worked at a kindling factory; no doubt a spin-off business from the sawmill.  And two had the intriguing occupation “fireman/stationary”. At first I thought of firemen as in putting out fires, but it didn’t quite make sense that several people in a rather small community would have had that as sole occupation back in 1910. After snooping around a bit on the internet, I find it more likely that their job was to feed the stationary steam engines at the mill.

There is a lumber museum at Galeton, and I guess the map of their premises gives an idea what it may have looked like back in the days when Gustaf worked there. (Click on the map to visit the museum website.)

I did a similar post at my Greetings from the Past blog (my bi-lingual family history blog) but I decided to put some of my thoughts down here as well. One of the fascinating aspects that is growing on me is that a census like this goes beyond the boundaries of family and shows other social contexts as well.

It makes my head spin to think that behind every one of all those names is a person with a life story of their own. Can’t you just imagine an Upstairs Downstairs kind of story based on that Chicago household; or a pioneer one with timber rafting and competition between sawmills? ;)

Another Day, Another Year

Strange, isn’t it. One morning every year one wakes up to find oneself one year older than the day before.

I had a  good day. One friend took me out to lunch, and others sent postcards or parcels or telephoned or texted or left messages on Facebook. The parcels above were from my friends G & B who came to visit last week; I saved them to open at breakfast today.

It’s nice to be remembered. Thanks.

Birthday quotes:

Thirty was so strange for me. I've really had to come to terms with the fact that I am now a walking and talking adult.
C. S. Lewis

There are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents, and only one for birthday presents, you know.
Lewis Carroll

You know you're getting old when the candles cost more than the cake.
Bob Hope

‘We'll be Friends Forever, won't we, Pooh?' asked Piglet. ‘Even longer,' Pooh answered.
A.A. Milne 

 

Sunday Musings

To walk or to fly, that is the question…

If last weekend I felt that things were moving, now I feel a bit stuck again. Our presumptive buyers (of the House including some of our Stuff) turned out not to be able to offer anywhere near as much as we were hoping for; which means we’re back to… well, not square one, but a few more moves – and months – left before we’ll be ready to put the house up for sale the traditional way (and empty).

No doubt you’ll be hearing more of it…

Meanwhile, this week I’ve been out there again twice, first with an estate agent and then again on my own, by bus, yesterday. I thought I’d look for building drawings from the extension and renovation of the house that my parents did back in ‘92. Didn’t find those, but as usual I found some other stuff instead. Like the drawings of the house they sold in ‘92, and more stamps, and an old pocket watch, and a file full of newspaper cuttings about Sherlock Holmes…

I wish I had access to Sherlock’s brains for figuring out to whom the watch (not working) once belonged, because the monogram on the back does not seem to fit with any initials on the family tree!

Linking this post to Straight Out Of the Camera Sunday.