Jarrett House NorthNow with 80% less politics!

My grandfather worked at an old fashioned water-powered mill, making flour and animal feed for the county, during the first years of his post-college life and of his marriage. The family has always known where the mill was—right around the corner from the Brackbill farm—but not what has become of it in its post-mill existence.
This [...]

There are three texts that have been in my mind since my grandfather’s funeral service today. One, the morbidly funny Laurie Anderson line from “Gravity’s Angel”:

And at his funeral all his friends stood around looking said. But they were really thinking of all the ham and cheese sandwiches in the next room. And everybody used [...]

I got a call from my mother this morning informing me that my grandfather, Herman Brackbill, passed away earlier today at the age of 90. He would have been 91 next month.
As regular readers of my blog know, my grandfather’s health hasn’t been that great over the past few years, and it took a significant [...]

I uploaded a bunch of photos last night to Flickr, including some from our vacation in North Carolina: some purely family photos and one large set of a visit to the place I will always remember as Grandmother Jarrett’s house.
As you can see in the photos, it’s not really a house so much as a [...]

To those of you who know what’s going on with me and Lisa: all is well with our world. To the rest: you’ll find out soon enough.
But here’s a note from last year’s Christmas mix to tide you over:

I heard the bells on Christmas day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of [...]

Reading today’s Cary Tennis advice column (one of my guilty pleasures, btw), “Does less of a paycheck make him less of a man?,” I find myself thankful for how lucky I really am.
When I was between jobs after moving back east, it was extremely difficult. Financially it was OK, though not great; Lisa was chomping [...]

Since I’m still on the road, I would like to take a moment to say a quick word to my wife on our 9th wedding anniversary: it feels like it was just yesterday, and it feels like it has been since the beginning of time. Happy anniversary, dear, and I’ll call later.

New on Flickr, a set of photos from the Brackbill picnic. I was in more of a hurry than last year, since I had a long drive ahead of me, but I managed to capture a few things.
One that surprised me was how many kids there were… and how grown up they were. This shouldn’t [...]

Continuing the festschrift in honor of my parents’ 35th wedding anniversary, as started on my sister’s blog:
…erm, well, no one could possibly have said it better than my sister did. But I’ll just say this: When I think about how two unpretentious farm kids from opposite sides of the Mason Dixon line managed to raise [...]

I had a great weekend in Pennsylvania with my parents and my grandfather. I’ve written a bit about his health from time to time on the blog: the stroke, his struggles with diabetes. When I saw him last summer he was withdrawn and uncommunicative, and had trouble moving, though he did respond when I talked [...]

My wife decided to surprise me last night. We won’t be able to spend Valentine’s Day together this year—I will be at the Pink Elephant IT Service Management Conference—so she decided that we would celebrate it last night. I had already been planning to grill some steaks, but she added a surprise to the mix: [...]

Not much to report today. I survived my last Pops concerts, Esta is here, and we’re just enjoying time with family. More updates later; have a merry Christmas until then.

I may not be using their software, but I definitely appreciate the work that Family Tree Legends is doing in putting free databases of death dates on line. So far the most comprehensive one looks to be the Social Security Death Index—that is, provided the person had a SSN. Other free databases are listed on [...]

Lisa got stuck in the Logan radar mess this week; a quick day trip down to Richmond via National Airport turned into an extended travel trauma when her flight back to Boston was cancelled. Fortunately her flight was early enough—and she learned that it was cancelled early enough—that she was able to take [...]

It was good to see my extended family over the last two days, but sad as well. My great-uncle Hershey Brackbill passed away on Saturday. What was originally going to be just another annual family reunion turned into a commemoration of Hershey.
To back up: My grandfather had eleven brothers and sisters, of whom all but [...]