My new year started off on Thursday morning in just the right way.  First, my daughter texted me to tell me that her baby, my grandson Remy, had slept through the night for the first time.  Then I checked my email and saw there was a new post from one of my favorite bloggers, Pancho of The People of Pancho.  She’d been nominated for The One Lovely Blog Award and was very excited.  I was excited for her because I really enjoy her blog about her family research and about her childhood growing up in the Panama Canal Zone.

But imagine my surprise as I read through her blog post to see that she had in turn nominated me for The One Lovely Blog Award!  I am so honored and flattered to have received this nomination.  So Pancho, thank you so much for this nomination and for starting my year off with this great ego boost!

Now part of the deal in accepting this nomination is that there are certain rules to follow.  Here are the rules for this award:

 

1. Thank the person who nominated you and link to that blog. (Thanks again, Pancho!)
2. Share seven things about yourself.
3. Nominate 15 bloggers you admire (or as many as you can think of!).
4. Contact your bloggers to let them know that you’ve tagged them for the One Lovely Blog Award

 

So… seven things about me? In no particular order, here are seven rather random thoughts about who I am:

 

1. My family is the center of my life, and not just my dead ancestors! My living and breathing family—those who have known me since birth and childhood and those I’ve only known since adulthood. I have been married for 38 years to the guy I met working at a day camp back in 1973. I still am amazed by how wonderful a man he is.  My children and grandchildren give me endless joy.  I am writing this blog for them, whether they realize it or not. 
2. I taught law for 32 years—copyright, trademark, antitrust, and contracts law. I retired last spring, and so far retirement has been wonderful! I have more time to pursue genealogy, and I am exploring various volunteer projects that give me a chance to work with children and use my teaching skills.
3. I love animals, especially cats and dogs. I have never met a cat I didn’t like. They are all beautiful to me. I love dogs also, but not as much as I love cats. Except my dog. I love her as much as my cats.
4. The Outer Cape in Massachusetts—the location of the towns of Wellfleet, Truro, and Provincetown—is my favorite place in the world. No place else is as beautiful to me. Put me on the beach in the National Seashore or overlooking Cape Cod Bay, and my mind immediately clears. 
5. I am a die-hard Red Sox fan and have been for 39 years…ever since 1975 when the Red Sox lifted me out of the doldrums and stress of my first year of law school. This year might have been the hardest season ever to be a Sox fan, from last to first to last again. Go Sox….2015?
   

   English: Boston Red Sox Cap Logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

    

6. Reading has been my favorite pastime since I was very young. I am always reading something for pleasure. My tastes are pretty eclectic, but mostly I read novels, biographies, and memoirs. I thank my mother for getting me hooked on books at a very early age. My favorite two books from childhood are The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster and Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White.  The first taught me that books could create a whole imagined world where anything can happen; the second taught me that books could make me care enough about well-developed and well-written characters—even a spider—that I would cry over them.  I still cannot think about the ending of Charlotte’s Web without getting choked up.
   

   Cover of The Phantom Tollbooth

   

   Charlotte’s Web (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

    

7. Since I first started reading books on my own as a child, I have always been inspired by good writing. I have always, always, wanted to write. Work, family, and life got in the way.  This blog has been a gift for me—I finally get to write what I want to write the way I want to write it.  Thank you to all my readers and followers for giving me an audience and the encouragement and the inspiration to keep on writing.  I share this nomination with you all.

 

And now my turn to recognize some of the blogs that have inspired me and that teach me something about genealogy, about writing, and/or about life.  First, Pancho already recognized three of my favorite blogs: Bernfeld Family of Galicia & More,  The Genealogy Girl, and Shaking the Tree.  I  would also have  nominated these three as all are wonderfully written, very expressive, and very well-researched genealogy blogs.  All three touch me and help me all the time.

I would also re-nominate The People of Pancho for all those reasons and also Jana’s Genealogy and Family History Blog, though I know that Jana nominated Pancho thus must herself have been nominated.  So those are five genealogy blogs that I would also have  nominated even though they’ve already been nominated.  But I will spread the wealth and nominate a different group of fifteen.

These are in no particular order, but the first group are all genealogy blogs that I enjoy reading, find helpful, are amazingly well-researched and well written.

1.  Root to Tip

2. The Family Kalamazoo

3. The Lives of My Ancestors

4. The Legal Genealogist

5. Genealogy Sisters

6. Moore Genealogy

7. Genealogy Lady

8. One Rhode Island Family

To demonstrate that I do have interests outside of genealogy, here are seven non-genealogy blogs that I enjoy:

9. wmtc:  formerly, We Move to Canada, a blog originally (not surprisingly) about Laura Kaminker’s move to Canada from the US, but now much more than that: politics, books, travel, personal reflections, dogs, baseball, you name it—all clearly and beautifully written and often very provocative.

10. The Joy of Sox:  the very first blog I ever read—all about the Red Sox.  Allan Wood’s latest book about the Red Sox, Don’t Let Us Win Tonight,  has made me an even bigger fan.

11. BJJ, Law, and Living–the thoughts and experiences of the blog owner, who is a recent law graduate and mother

12.  Wellfleet Today—the ins and outs and ups and downs of running a B&B in Wellfleet, Massachusetts.  Amazing photographs.

13. Rex Parker Does the New York Times Crossword Puzzle—ever since I discovered this site a few years ago, I no longer have to wait 24 hours to find out what obscure answers I missed, and I also get to read all the rantings of Rex and his followers.

14. Over the Monster–another Red Sox blog

15. The TTABlog–a blog I followed regularly while teaching trademark law.  Although I am retired and no longer reading it regularly, I want to recognize it because it was tremendously helpful to me while I was teaching.

So those are my fifteen nominations.  Now I have to go tell them all they’ve been nominated.  I hope they are as pleased as I was by my nomination.