Squirrel in a Hole

I have been absent from my blog for a few weeks. I’ve been feeling like a squirrel in a hole (you really must click on the picture to understand the feeling I wish to express) and the creative juices seemed to just stop flowing. The result – no writing.

I’ve been reading other blogs, though.

A couple of weeks ago I hopped from one blog … to another blog mentioned in the comments … and on to another blog related to the story.

Do you ever hop down those internet trails?

Sometimes I think I shouldn’t do that – it’s a time waster!

It turns out this wasn’t wasting time after all. This was research! I just didn’t know it at the time.

I’m not going to tell the whole story here because the person at the end of that trail has done that for us and I’m sending you over to her blog to read about it.

Please visit the blog Past-Present-Future, where Smadar Belkind-Gerson has written about the serendipity of our blog hopping and how it led us to a greater understanding of our own family histories.

It involves floods and bananas.

We often hope for cousins to find us when we blog about our families. And we sometimes put something on our blog as “cousin bait.” But sometimes people who are not related can add another layer of information and texture to our own family histories.

What shall we call these people?

neighbors?
peers?
contemporaries?
non-familial persons of interest?
people-who-might-have-known-someone-in-my-family?
people-in-the-general-area-of-my-ancestor-at-about-the-same-time?

I think they may be worth looking for. Choose the moniker of your liking and send out a little bait.

And please – Go read this story!