Tag: Books

  • I Will. Have. Order.

    I Will. Have. Order.

    With apologies to Dolores Umbridge, while in complete disagreement but feeling her frustration.

    If you are not a fan of Harry Potter (You’d better not be a fan of Professor Umbridge.), the screenshot of just five sets of files that I’m currently working with should at least be a clue of what I’m talking about. I expect that anyone who looks at it can figure out what Dolores was going through.

    The lists of events, people, places and ideas are an electronic visualization resembling Umbridge’s wall of educational decrees at Hogwarts. I really don’t want to try to visualize what’s going on in my brain right now. Spontaneous combustion frightens me.

    These five PPT files are evidence of my scattered research over the past decade. It will probably surprise you that at least four of the PPT files represent people, places, and events from Wales before Mary even existed and there is plenty more representing Mary, her family, friends, places and events. But there is a method to my madness, and it will be revealed soon. Everything that comes before sets in motion the series of events and even thought processes that set Mary’s life on the path across the ocean and into America’s “Wild West”.

    This is my chapters one through four. I’ll be ready to write once I have compiled them into two files: one a chronological list of events, people, and places, and the other a bibliography of research in the order it appears. Those two files will be separated by chapter as events and people begin to appear along Mary’s path. Every detail will be found in its correct order while I further compartmentalize information before, during, and after Mary’s lifetime.

    Until I have a sequence of events by chapter, I can’t write.

    For now, my goal is to pare down and combine at least two lists a day. That way, I’ll be ready to go for next week.

    In the meantime, watch for new profiles and a new “places” page for the following people and places:

    People

    • Rudolf ABELES
    • King(s) EINION
    • Mary EYNON
    • EYNON surnames and polities
    • Johannes “John” KWIATKOWSKI
    • King Arthwrys ap MOR/MAR
    • Peter SZADLOWSKI
    • King Henry VII, TUDOR 1457-1509
    • JORDANOWO, Inowroclaw, Kujawsko-Pomorskie, Prussia/Austria/Russia/Poland–depending on time frame and politics

    Places

    • Brooklyn, New York, American Colonies/United States–depending on time frame and politics
    • Brunn bei Pitten, Niederösterreich, Austria
    • D
    • Historical Llanelly/Lanelli, Carmarthenshire, Cymru\Wales, Great Britain/United Kingdom–depending on time frame and politics
    • Olean, Cattaraugus, New York, United States
    • Pitten, Niederösterreich, Austria
    • Tupadły, Inowrocław, Kuyavia-Pomerania, Prussia/Austria/Russia Poland–depending on time frame and politics
    • Wharton, Potter, Pennsylvania, United States

    Please remember that I am currently restructuring Stories From the Past, and these items are listed in alphabetical order. They do not necessarily relate to one another at all, and many of them have no connection to the Second Wife’s Story. Names and Places will likely be re-spelled, reorganized, and rewritten depending on the historical sources I pull from.

    Stories will be linked as they are posted.

    Personal knowledge of places, people, stories, input, and suggestions are welcome.

  • Mired in too Much Information

    Mired in too Much Information

    Do you remember DOS? I do.

    DOS was the early system for home computer operations which allowed users to do all sorts of really basic things, with instructions written in Medieval Martian. I never did figure out the language, and I was totally relieved when my very young daughter took a hairbrush to the keyboard virtually destroying the whole computer. It was useless to me and took up way too much space.

    Later I bought a simple word processor. It was a step up from a typewriter and a step down from a 1990’s PC. The biggest struggle I had with historical writing was that I was limited to libraries and card catalogues. If the library didn’t have the resource I was looking for, I had to apply for an interlibrary loan, which often weeks before I could either get a copy of the information I needed or get the actual book through mail.

    When I went back to school fifteen years after graduating high school, I was finally introduced to the wonders of Windows and the internet. I could save so much time looking if the information was available online. I felt lucky to have found most of the Second Wife’s information on the internet in 2002, giving me a structure for her story. New information was being posted daily from all corners of the world and exponentially speeding up research results .

    Fast forward to 2025. It was the year we finally bought a house in Kentucky and nearly the same month when I had my first epiphany. I did have a lot of roadblocks to my research at that time due to lack of internet for about a month, and later, another broken computer. But when I could get to a computer at the library, I was astonished to find that I could get answers to nearly every question I had and then some.

    That wasn’t good for my ADHD. I would find an answer and come up with two more questions before I could get the link to the first answer into my research table. My biggest frustration was that many of those questions were relevant to me but completely irrelevant to my subject. I had to leave several pages open on the browser while finding the correct files to store every piece of information with AI making more suggestions causing me to leave even more pages open.

    But enough was enough. I had to stop. The strange timelines created by my scatterbrained method of research caused the same information to be saved to several different locations or the wrong location, and occasionally the wrong external drive. Once I realized I finally had enough information to begin writing, I also realized that I would have to sort through more than a dozen files to get things into better order.

    It took a while, but once I could place everything into chronological order for the first three chapters, I announced that I was ready to write.

    Nope.

    I opened the PPT I had moved Chapter One’s information to and began writing my first bridge; by this time yesterday, I had come to the conclusion that I had so much information that my bridge to the first chapter had taken on a life of its own and that I needed to do some heavy editing before I could come up with a rough draft ready to proofread and publish

    In short, I had too much information to publish yesterday’s blog post on time. That is why you will get yesterday’s post next Wednesday and this post in place of what should have been posted yesterday.

    My goal is to have several posts scheduled for posting ahead of time so I can proofread and publish just before the Wednesday deadline.

    If you find strange errors in today’s post, you can thank ADHD combined with TMI and AI. I didn’t have time to proofread but I was determined to post; so I did.