Well, I finally decided to dedicate some time to really researching the Kevish/Posa line. I have been staring at that brick wall long enough. After figuring out where the church records probably were (thanks for the help with that, cousin Tammy!) I spent some time poking around the LDS website to find the film numbers, so I could see if they were available at the local FHC here in Mesa, or order them to be sent there. I was prepared to spend a few Saturdays scrolling through microfilms. Was I surprised when I found they had finally digitized the images and put them online!

I also looked into the area’s history as much as I could; there is not much out there in English. The village of Radnot (I’m not putting the accent marks in here) became Nemesradnot at some point in time, it’s all so vague. Then the town was taken from Hungary and given to Slovakia, and the town name changed to Radnovce. Throughout history, it seems that there have always been about 600 residents. That is good for doing research, because I don’t have so many records to look through. But the bad part is, it seems like half the town has the last name Posa. When there are ten people with the name Janos Posa, it’s kinda hard to figure out which is the one Janos Posa that I’m interested in.

The other problem I got hung up on for awhile is the fact that only the baptisms are indexed. The website says that marriages and deaths are indexed also, but they are not! It took me awhile to figure out why I couldn’t get any search results of anything but baptisms, even when I restricted the search to marriage records only. I thought I just couldn’t figure out how their search worked, but that was not exactly the problem!

So, for deaths and marriages I have to page through the images looking for names of interest. Fortunately, there are fewer than 300 pages so it won’t take years. But of course, first I needed to translate the headings on the pages so I could tell what was a baptism record, what was a marriage, etc. I’m learning more about the Hungarian language than I really wanted to, and it is definitely not easy because their grammar rules are quite different. The record will say something like “Janos Posa, Gaspar Posa son” which means you have to take care that you understand who is the son in that sentence. Add to that the fact that the handwriting is terrible on some pages, and they have the weirdest spelling so that makes it harder to figure out words (can’t quite make it out, it looks like “ozvegy” and look that up, what do you know that is right after all–widow). Fortunately, from looking at so many old records over the years I’m familiar with old ways of writing letters (like the s that looks like an f), but some of the words are so archaic they are not in the dictionary, athough I can usually figure them out from context.

And I don’t know exactly how they group their records, because these records are in the Evangelical group, not the Reformed Christian group, or the Evangelical Reformed group. But most of the entries have Reformed on them. Another point of confusion.

When paging through the entries, I’m usually looking for one name at a time, and not paying all that much attention to what’s on the rest of the page, especially since it’s in a foreign language. But sometimes you can’t help but notice some unusual entries that catch your eye, like the smallpox epidemic that killed about 25 children from December 1835 through February 1836, pretty sad. You can tell that something devastating happened when the cause of death was the same for everyone on that page, and they were all children, even before looking up the word for the cause of death. Life was certainly more perilous back then!

I will only be able to get back to around the early 1800’s though, because at that point in time it looks like there are no women in town. Seriously, before that time the baptism records only have the father’s name. And the marriage records only have the father’s name. Julianna, daughter of Janos (John). No mother. Dang. So there is no way to follow the lines any farther back than that, without knowing both parent names. Perhaps if there is only one person in the town with that name, it would be possible to go back a bit more, but the names in our tree are too common. And anyway, it’s kind of pointless without the wife/mother names.

Oh well. I will post all the information when I get done as much as I can.

Last month we visited the Arizona-Sonoran Desert Museum just outside Tucson. Wish we lived closer, so we could go more often. It is just about the neatest place in Arizona. It’s hard to get good photos of the animals, because they usually don’t stop moving. But here are a few photos that came out ok, for using the camera on my Galaxy player. You should be able to click on a photo to see the bigger photo in a new tab.

Whenever we go to ASDM, the first thing we head for is the hummingbird aviary, especially in the spring to look for nests and baby birds. At this time of year it’s kind of late for babies, so we saw only one nest with a bird still in it, and the bird was very big, it looks very close to being grown enough to leave the nest. It is hard to see because the nest and birds blend in so well with the gray branches, but the parent bird is facing the camera, wings outstretched and very blurred, and with its beak inside the baby’s beak. The baby is stuffed into the nest, almost spilling out of it, with its back to the camera.

We spotted this little ground squirrel near the prarie dog exhibit. He had found a big white flower somewhere and carried it off to munch on. Several other squirrels were following him, watching both us and the other squirrels. Finally, a squirrel that was half again his size ran up and snatched the flower away, after he had eaten maybe half of it. The new guy was the biggest squirrel around, so none of the others challenged him.

And another animal that blended in very well with his surroundings, some kind of collared lizard. They are very plentiful at the museum, and they are very fast so it’s hard to get a photo unless one decides to pose for you, like this one. Like the ground squirrel above, they are not part of an exhibit, so most people just walk on by without even trying to see them. This is as close as we dared to get for a photo, so he wouldn’t run away.

Not to forget the plants all over too. At left is a passion flower, they look so fantastic and awesome! And I have no idea what the red flower is, I don’t remember seeing it before, but it’s pretty bizarre too.

And one of the last things we see before we leave is the aquarium exhibits; that’s because they are inside and we like to cool off some before the hike to the parking lot! We never tire of watching the spotted garden eels, which we call sand worms. It’s just so cool how they go up and down, in and out of the sand, and dance around (really kind of swaying) in sync. We tried taking photos of the seahorses and fishes, but they don’t stop moving so the photos didn’t turn out, darn.

We love to go to ASDM on summer Saturday nights, but those events have gotten so crowded that it’s not as much fun as it used to be. If you’ve never been, it’s probably still worth it to go once, though. Make a reservation for dinner at the Ocotillo Cafe, it’s fine dining but you don’t have to dress up. Eat dinner when they open at 5:00 and when you are done, the sun will be setting and it won’t be quite so hot for walking around. You can get some dishes there you probably can’t get anywhere else, and we’ve never had anything that wasn’t great. They call it regional cuisine, and their menu changes periodically. They used to have some kind of cocktail made with watermelon juice that was SO refreshing, but the prickly pear margarita is really good, and you get your electrolytes replaced after walking around in the heat all day!

By the way, the finches that made a nest outside my office window are still there. I named them Betty and Barney (’cause it goes with a last name of Birdy, don’t ya know), which anyone of my generation should recognize as a cartoon couple. However, darling daughter’s generation knows Barney as a singing purple dinosaur, so she said I needed to change it to Betty and Benny. 😀

This is what darling daughter did for Mother’s Day last month, she filled the hallway with crepe paper streamers, spiral foil streamers, some with Hello Kitty on them. Fun, and yes I was very surprised. They stayed up until the cats started jumping up and pulling them down.

Hmmmm, I haven’t posted much lately, hard to believe I’ve been that busy. Where does the time go???

Finches have made a nest right outside my home office window. They are so cute, but I haven’t taken any photos because I don’t want to disturb them.

A new year! I should write something witty or profound, about starting afresh in a brand spanking new year. Just like every other blogger. Bleh.

New year’s resolutions? Did I make any? Who else cares what resolutions I make? You shouldn’t care about mine, you should only care about your own, because you are the only person you can really change. There, is that profound enough for ya?

It’s actually kinda sad. The holidays are over, and the Godiva truffles are almost gone 🙁

In the spirit of the season, here’s the story of my very first Christmas memory. We were living in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and I was 6 or 7 at the time. In other words, getting to the age where I was starting to doubt Santa Claus. Maybe I had heard other kids saying Santa wasn’t real, I don’t really know, but apparently my parents decided to help me believe for at least one more year.

I went to bed on Christmas Eve like a good little girl, visions of sugar plums dancing in my head… well, visions of the toys I wanted anyway. My parents told me that Santa wouldn’t come until all good little kids were asleep, so it was not hard to get me to go to bed. Getting to sleep was a different thing, but I finally dozed off.

In the middle of the night, my older brother woke me up, shaking me quietly, with a finger to his lips, shhhhh. He motioned me to get up and follow him, and keeping as quiet as we could, we crept out of my room and down the long hallway to the living room. There we stopped and peeked around the corner to where the Christmas tree was sitting in front of the big living room windows. And what to my wondering eyes should appear but Santa Claus himself! He was bent over, pulling wrapped packages out of his big white sack and putting them under the tree. I probably gasped in shock, because all of a sudden he looked up, right at us, and said “What are you two kids doing out of bed?”

OH NO! Santa himself saw I wasn’t being a good girl! You never saw a kid move so fast as I did, turning around, racing back down the hallway to my room, jumping into bed, and pulling the blankets up completely over my head. I was so afraid Santa would take my toys back since he saw I was being bad! Eventually I fell asleep again.

I have no idea what my brother did, all I knew was I had to get myself back in that bed RIGHT NOW! I can still picture it clearly in my mind, Santa bending over his bag and looking up at me. Even now 50 years later, the memory is as clear as if it happened yesterday, that’s how much of an impression it made on me. Of course, years later I can see that it was my dad, dressed in a Santa suit, and holding a white pillowcase! But to a little 6-year-old girl, he was really Santa. Thanks dad 🙂