Archive for February, 2011
Crisscrossing the Atlantic
Sunday, February 27th, 2011Getting back across the Atlantic is always a challenge. Immigrants’ names changed under the influence of English phonetics and naming patterns. Some intentionally picked names easier for their new neighbors to pronounce, names less foreign and more easily accepted. It was a long voyage and the great separation made it seem unimportant to record, with [...]
Presidents’ Day
Sunday, February 20th, 2011I started out to write a post about George Washington’s and Abraham Lincoln’s families in honor of Presidents’ Day. I soon learned that just defining what is meant by “Presidents’ Day” is not so easy. Presidents’ Day The Federal holiday this Monday is officially called Washington’s Birthday, remembering his birthday of February 22nd. Oddly, when [...]
Two Words, Too Many Meanings
Sunday, February 13th, 2011I like thinking about thinking. A few lines I wrote and then deleted in a report reminded me of some concepts that come up when thinking about proving a hypothesis. The sentences that I erased went something like this—”Though the year in her birth record is two years before the one claimed or implied by [...]
A Tale of Three Blizzards
Sunday, February 6th, 2011Like many people in the central United States, I’ve spent the last few days digging out. Clearing two feet of snow is a workout. This storm was a few inches short of being the worst in Chicago’s history. That title still belongs to the Blizzard of ’67. One weather forecaster made an interesting observation in [...]