Family history across the seas

In the past week I’ve been discovering other people’s blogs about family history, not just their specific families but general discussions as well. Among these I’ve discovered (belatedly) are Amy Coffin’s WeTree (http://wetree.blogspot.com/) and Geneabloggers (http://www.geneabloggers.com/). For 2011 Amy has put forward another year of topics for family history bloggers which is hosted on Geneabloggers and this year’s topic is “52 weeks of personal genealogy & history”.

I love the concept of writing up my own history for my family and will probably use the framework to make a gift for my family for Xmas 2011.

In general terms I struggle to reconcile blogging about family history, and especially personal history, with privacy concerns. Where to draw the line? How to maintain a balance?

Week 1’s topic is about New Year’s memories. New Year wasn’t big in my family -probably partly being anti-social but also affected by my father who worked shift-work and missed the “events” that other people take for granted. I do have a few memories of it though. One was an old-style party where people sang songs around the pianola (who remembers those?) and then sang Auld Lang Syne at the stroke of midnight. Or another neighbourhood party which was a little livelier and for which my prevailing memory is the Seekers’ songs being sung loudly and enthusiastically.

My most memorable New Year was my first as a young bride. We were living in Alotau in the then-Territory of Papua New Guinea and we only had power for 18 hours a day. We were hosting a party (or so the plan went) for New Year so I was up early to do some preparations. I had no sooner lit the kerosene lamp and turned to go to the kitchen when the kerosene exploded, the lamp shattered, and my nylon nightie caught fire and melted! My husband arrived to see kerosene in flames all over the floor! As I was pregnant at the time this caused a little consternation and a quick trip to the clinic. People’s reactions were interesting ranging from “someone’s shot his missus” to “why’s she going down the street at this hour”.

I learnt my lesson…I never did plan (or host) another New Year’s Eve party!

My most fun NYE as an adult was a party which turned out to be a surprise party for me and from which we returned about 4am. Our teenaged children were shocked, stunned and not a little amazed!