Idacat

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Posts posted by Idacat

  1. I have a similar problem with my maternal line. If you are simply looking for evidence that Claude existed, census data would do it, but a census does not document a marriage and in many areas the recording of marriages was ecclesiastical only until fairly recently so civil records are lacking entirely.

    I have obituary, multiple census, death certificates and, just recently was able to find a "delayed" birth certificate for my maternal grandfather.

    My grandfather was my grandmother's third husband; I have always been told she was widowed twice before marrying him. I do find records to support marriage to the first husband, and for his death in 1907; I find census records for him prior to his marriage to my grandmother and of my grandmother following his death living in a household with the children of her first marriage and through her second and third marriages she continues to live at an address next door to the parents and then to the living siblings of the first husband and their families. I'm pretty sure my grandmother was married to her first husband, but still, I have no "proof" as in civil or ecclesiastical records and at this point am not going to hold my breath until I find any since I do have this family otherwise reliably recorded.

    I only find this grandmother actually living with any of her three husbands in one census, that of 1920 in which she is living with her second husband, two children from that marriage and the children of her first marriage. The second husband, however, apparently exists nowhere except for this one census year; in this census it is listed that he was born on VA, but states his parents' birthplace/state as "unknown", so I have no record of his birth, death, or existence other than that one census and the fact that in my youth I knew his two daughters, now deceased, and one of my brothers was left the possessions of one of the two daughters. Marriage data aside, I'd love to simply find any evidence that the second husband was born and died. Parents would also be nice.

    By the 1930 census I find my grandmother living with her children from first, second and third marriages including my mother. I have always been told that my maternal grandfather was injured in WWI and spent the remainder of his life in veterans' and other public hospitals, spending only short "furloughs" at home; with my grandmother often taking the children by train to adjacent states to visit their father for holidays, etc. I am, in fact, able to find this grandfather in census records for 1920 and 1930 in these hospitals; he did not die until 1963 and then, in a VA hospital. Good records of that, including gravesite, buthe is buried in a veterans' cemetery so gravesite info isn't useful when it comes to proving marriage. But, in both the 1920 census and the 1930 census his marital status is listed as single. For 1920, this is most certainly (I hope) true, because in 1920 my grandmother is living with husband number two, his two children, and the three children from her first marriage. But, by 1921 she has borne my mother's only full sibling, a brother, and in the 1930 census, where my grandmother is found living as HOH with children from first, second, and third marriages, my grandfather is found in a military hospital in another state with his marital staus listed as "single". So, who knows....in my grandmother's obituary, the third husband is the only one mentioned, and no children are mentioned.

    I now do genealogy professionally, and can tell you that finding a marriage is not always easy. If the relatives in question lived recently, you won't be able to find census records since those after 1930 are not public. In such a case, your best bets are church/ecclesiatical records (including LDS if the persons were LDS, but also referring to other church records) and relatives who may be able to help you to directly find civil marriage and/or death records, gravesite and obituary records.On my paternal side I have a couple of second or more distant cousins who have been a very valuable source for me, but in many cases family records like family Bibles and old genealogical charts scratched on the back of butcher's paper, and, even moreso, family "lore", can also be inaccurate, but, they are a good start. If you need to find primary records that are not, or apparently not yet, digitized and online and have a good idea, at least the state, where these people may have married you can often contact that state's genealogical society via their website. They will often have local volunteers who attempt to find the original record for you although you may have to pay to get an actual copy. This is assuming you really don't want to make a trip yourself to say, South Carolina, and don't have a sister,brother,cousin who lives in the area in which you need to look........been there, done, that, use whatever means you can.

    One place to start is to try building a tree at Ancestry.com, entering yourself as the index person, then as much as you know about both your parents and your grandparents and seeing what comes up, or doesn't come up.You do not have to be a paid member to do this, but it may give you a hint as to where else to look and is a good way to start. I have many,many times failed at locating a person or family at FamilySearch.org and been able to find some kind of information using Ancestry.com since what is available online at FamilySearch is accessible through Ancestry, but the reverse is not true since the Ancestry database of compiled records includes not only LDS submitted material, but the material submitted by non LDS sources and you can directly access primary records, like census and draft, which is not possible using ony FamilySearch.org.

  2. With what is directly accessible online now I see no need to purchase any software. I actually didn't realize people still purchased those programs,

    I've found most of what I have needed for at least the last two years using my Ancestry.com membership......worth its weight in gold !!

  3. .............Idacat, I disagree with you on this. Ancestor.com is not for the novice who is just starting out. It also costs.

    For the novice they really need to start with the basics, to start at the beginning with your immediate family. Go here FamilySearch....................

    I started with FamilySearch. That's how I ended up using Ancestry. I do the work on Ancestry, then print it out (group sheets and pdf's of hard records) from there. Using FamilySeaqrch I was able to access exactly.........SSDI records for the two generations preceding mine, with one of four grandparents being absent even from that, and those had to downloaded using GEDCOM rather than directly viewable.

    You do need to be a paid Ancestry member to directly access and download hard records/documents. In the long run this $20/month has been much more efficient and economical for me, and I suspect for the majority, when you compare it to sending away to multiple agencies, states, cities, and counties and paying a fee for documents you can download in PDF form directly using Ancestry. Ancestry will also reference you to microfilmed records.

    Not to mention the fact that Ancestry.com has the potential of putting you in contact with others researching the same lines. For me this has been a journey of discovery and I am now active in the family associations of three of the lines from which I am descended.

    I see Ancestry.com, and the direct access of records in online databases (which have grown exponentially just in the years in which I've been doing genealogy) as the future of genealogy, and downloading reams of FGS's, penciling them in, then sending away to Morris County, or where ever, for a marriage certificate, or a probate record, etc., as the past.

    As for a beginner, well, perhaps beginners should try each way for themselves, then decide. Personally I don't think there is much doubt, and I think that is fairly obvious in the difference needed to basically reach the same end given the "old" way and utilization of online databases via Ancestry.com.

    I DO defintely agree about "family lore" even if there is no crazy cousin, but, unfortunately the history of LDS genealogy is littered with people whose sole goal was not "family history", but the mass gathering of names for temple work, giving LDS genealogy a pretty bad rep among serious genealogists. JMHO, it's up to "us" to change this.

  4. Start by going to Ancestry.com and start a tree (or two if these names are not connected by direct descendancy) using the latest person you know by each name as the "home person", then work backwards to see what comes up in terms of public records like census,SSDI, obituary, death records, birth certificates, immigration records,marriage records, draft registrations, military records. etc..

    You will need to register at Ancestry to do this, but it will not require a paid membership. If you end up "hooked" and want to access the information available in online databases (ie, images of original census records, birth certificates, other member trees or One World Tree data) directly through Ancestry.com, you will end up needing a paid membership. Some databases such as the Social Security Death Index can be accessed directly but I have found that using Ancestry.com is the best way to at least get a good start. You can try the church resource, FamilySearch.org which will enable you to download some public records (ie here again, the SSDI) using the GEDCOM program, to access some compiled information which has been voluntarily submitted by LDS church members, and/or to find where this information is located on microfilm at the church's family history libraries. I actually started at FamilySearch.org and got as far as the SSDI, period, for the initial names I entered, so I went to Ancestry.com and it was like discovering gold. Much more information is directly and easily accessible via Ancestry.com at moderate cost for a paid membership ($20/mo for US records). I have used Ancestry.com for about two years and have found that ultimately that $20/mo has saved me hundreds in allowing me to directly view/download public records I would normally have to pay to get a copy of, not to mention saved me time and money I would have spent on travel to search records in places like New Jersey and South Carolina.

    Neither of the names you cite are unusual, just mentioning them here is not likely produce any information except where to go to find out more.

    Another good place to look (although ultimately you'll end up being directed right back to Ancestry.com) are the State and County USGenweb sites. If the family names you are searching were prominant, and/or early settlers these county websites can provide histories and some biographies, but in any case they will refer you directly to the address(es) to which you may apply for the specific vital records you are searching. Here again, many of these public records are accessible online through Ancestry.com; I personally exhaust the Ancestry.com sources before paying to have any public record mailed to me, so I do not do this often.

  5. ......... It took me 6 years and a very large slice of luck to discover that I had been given the wrong name..............

    Too true that so much "first hand" family lore is so wrong.

    I listened to my mother and father, now deceased, and my aunt, still living.

    But, my Dutch ancestors turned out to be German, my British branch mainly Dutch, my French connection really German, but I have a French connection.......on the Dutch side.

    My "adopted" grandfather wasn't adopted at all, but raised by his natural mother and a first generation son of Irish immigrants of whom both sides of the family disapproved and swept under the rug. This man not only raised my grandfather, but his two sisters and then one sister's son after she died very young.

    My mother's "olde South" forebearers were carpetbaggers:o from NJ and PA, and her "French connection" was also really German.

    JMO, and certainly in my case "family lore", or received wisdom is often romanticized. In my mother's "olde South" case this was certainly true......she spoke often of Confederate "roots", note carpetbagger reference above. She also spoke of French Heugenot ancestors, and a "Devereaux" uncle, a doctor in Denver. He was a German "Durboraw" optician descended from a PA carpetbagger:lol:

  6. I admit I am just getting into this but who wants to go back that far? Do you really think that there were good enough recording procedures then?

    (Hi there, SF, I haven't been here in ages but I have thought of you)

    Okay, back to the subject.

    How far back you can go (speaking strictly of doing the genealogy not the work for the dead) depends a lot on the locality and family status. I have one of my paternal lines done reliably back to the year 825 CE. This is a Scandinavian line (patronymic) that has been particularly well documented and also has a familial heraldic surname making it somewhat easier.

    Scandinavia in general, as well as lowland Europe (now the Netherlands and Belgium) seem to have kept very good records even during what was, for most of Europe, turbulent times. For me, these have been the easiest. In the Americas also the Dutch records are very good even compared to the early British settlers and the French excepting the French Walloons who arrived with the Dutch West Indies Co. to found New Amsterdam.

    No one can reliably trace their ancestry to Adam and Eve and I cringe every time I hear anyone say this, although Grandma Zelda, my DIL's maternal grandmother who actually got me started doing serious genealogy says she has. This is the kind of thing, along with sloppy and overly inclusive LDS genealogical records (think IGI) that make LDS genealogy, and LDS genealogists somewhat of a laughing stock among truly serious genealogists.

    Since I come from a family (actually families) with a significant number of serious, organized, genealogists who are not LDS, it is important to me to use reliable methods and records........play by their rules so to speak.

    JMHO, since we now live in a society in which serious genealogy is the number one hobby in the US, not something elderly Sisters do on Sunday afternoons it is really important that we raise the bar of LDS genealogy to currently accepted standards and away from the haphazard mass gathering of names towards the singular goal of Temple work.

  7. Do you mean trust other genealogies as in merging others' data from Ancestry or One World Tree for example into what you have done yourself?

    This is NOT A GOOD IDEA. When one person has made an error, which everyone does, it magnifies and perpetuates it. Not that that hasn't always happened, even before online genealogical databases. I know in my own direct paternal line one optimistic assumption became the given word and not only has this been shown by more serious genealogists to be wrong, but DNA studies are now being done to try to sort it out.

    I don't merge any Ancestry or One World Tree data at all without first checking it against what I already have and verifying with at least one hard record. I DO attach this data as source data and I can always go back later and look at it closely.

    I've seen some trees that are so poorly done the errors just jump right out at you, like fathers born before sons and parents mixed up with children or siblings, but it isn't always that easy to spot.

    JMHO, don't merge, but use those other trees as supporting material to your own research or as a jumping off place to look further for supporting hard records.

  8. I strongly believe that LDS are closeminded and judgemental at times

    Is that all bad? I don't think so. We have to have a separation line between ourselves and the world. That will probably be a little different for each of us depending on our individual experiences.

    We have to judge for ourselves what is right and wrong..........................

    For ourselves, each of us personally.

    Not for others, in or out of the church.

    This is what sends the message that "we" are closed minded and judgmental.

    JMHO, not a message any of would consciously care to project.

  9. Some people CAN be, but I wouldn't generalize this as "we".

    And, every ward has its closed minded judgmental stereotypes, some more than others.

    This is also true of a lot of other groups with a spiritual, moral or ethical bond, it certainly isn't restricted to LDS.

    And, it isn't that these Mormon cultural peculiarities are not recognized and don't sometimes become the brunt of humor. If you haven't yet seen it, watch the movie "Mobsters and Mormons". Everyone I've ever known was in it, LOL.

    Part of this, IMO, and much of the hypocrisy in the LDS Church, I think, stems from the fact that there are so many external measurments of faith (mode of dress, paying tithing, having a temple recommend, culturally Mormon things like family size, etc.) by which some judge others, not realizing that it is what is in our hearts that counts, and no one can see into our hearts, nor do they have the right to judge.

    Long ago I bought my then 4 year old daughter a red and white checked bathing suit with ruffled trim, two piece. My EX husband brought her to tears (we were already divorced, he was both physically and emotionally abusive in our marriage, but sure did toe the outward church line.It eventually caught up with him though)by telling her that "good little Mormon girls did not wear bikinis".

  10. But again, saying no to a search is not probable cause to get a warrant.

    Very true, and, I think that this is why it took so long to get that warrant.

    I suspect that the refusal to search and the suspect's history of dislike of children and domestic violence together probably convinced some wise judge to issue the warrant. and, it took a bit to put those pieces together.

    IRL I'm a true crime junkie :rolleyes:

  11. The thought has occurred to me why they just didn't demand to search the house of the suspect like they did in the homes in Southern Utah. :dontknow:

    Because, had they done this, any evidence found, up to and including the body, could later be dismissed as evidence aquired without due process, without either the consent of the suspect, or a warrant to conduct a search.

    Your landscaper's wife had every right, under the law, to deny them entrance without a warrant. Sounds like the St George police bullied themselves into people's homes to conduct searches, which can backfire bigtime when it comes to the trial.

  12. Im just sick. The SLC police said they had searched this home. WTH?!!!

    No, the police did not say they searched this home.

    In fact, they were admitted to the home by the suspect, very early on, in the first hours of the search, but the suspect refused to allow them to search the home. That would have raised my eyebrows, and my suspicions, how about you?

    IMO, given the ensuing lack of enthusiasm for the search effort on the part of the authorities, the seemingly random nature of the search itself, the cancellation of the amber alert the day following the disappearance, they pretty well knew early on what had happened to Destiny and who to suspect as having been the perpetrator, but needed to strictly follow due process in obtaining the appropriate warrants to search the suspect's home without his consent.

    This is not an instant process, especially when they needed to keep all i's dotted and T's crossed in order to avoid mishaps in the upcoming charges and, hopefully, in the prosecution.

    I heard all sorts of ranting and railing about how poor a job the police were doing, but, really, it was obvious to me, and I'm not a law enforcement professional, that they knew, really early on, something that wasn't being released to the public and they wisely sat on it until they had the proper legal formalities taken care of.

    In the end, I think it will be well obvious that the SLC police did a stellar job on this investigation, probably because they have learned from their mistakes.

    Last night, on the KSL news, they showed some of the messages on the KSL message board regarding this case. While almost all were sympathetic, one poster actually posted something like:'bad people, bad neighborhood, bad parentling".

    Made me queasy.

    Here's a quote regarding the search of the suspect's house from the KSL web page:

    However, a U Search volunteer said police and federal agents scoured Gregerson's apartment three times after Destiny disappeared. All three times, however, he refused them access to his cellar and demanded they obtain a search warrant, she said.

    And, Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson said police did search the home, but that Destiny's body was hidden. And, he says, those facts will come out later on.

    I think most of us would invite the police right in to search our homes, upstairs and down,if we were innocent.

    And, the police had to be very careful about not letting their suspicions become public in order to prevent the suspect from developing his own suspicions and taking off.

  13. Ditto Shantress and amen Dr. T.

    I see NO connection between decimating the shoreline of more than one island nation and a couple of continents to bring wreak "divine retribution" on a very few involved in a despicable criminal activity and the consequences we SHOULD ALL bear for our contributions to destroying the ozone layer and otherwise raping our planet.

    Perhaps God should wash away New Jersey, along with millions of innocent population just to "get" the American mafia?

    And, oddly enough, it is the exception, rather than the rule, that the LDS practice energy and other resource conservation, who support movements and legislation aimed at good stewardship of our planet earth.

    "We" should all definitely be listening to the Prophet in Salt Lake City, and not the President in Washington.

    What of the evil that is happening to good people?

    I lived though that and my son asked the same questions.

    We cannot know all things in the greater porpoise are, and then you mix up free will and then there is always a victim in the mix.

    We could wish and even ask for HF intervention but that does not always happen.

    In my sons case it was the police arrival (HF intervention), that saved him. I thought about this a lot. But then the years have passed and I seen what the damage has done and I know your going to jump on me for this but if my son had died by the hands of the monster who took him, he would have been at peace not tormented by the memories.

    You see things as what you like to do, jump in a save them, not knowing the long term affects of the damage. Our prayers were answered and our son returned to us but our son has never been the same. I would have given anything to have him back, back then but Oh what I would not give for my son to have peace.

    So if HF removes his protection and innocents die who are we to say why?

    Have you considered therapy? For yourself and your son, although I am not familiar with your son's story, there ARE therapies for PTSD, you know.

    At the very LEAST, talk these views over with your Bishop.

  14. I just wrote a book on polygamy so I only have time for a few, uncharacteristically terse comments.

    1) Heaven help any one of us who dares believe that a massive disaster killing thousands of innocents and destroying their homes and livlihoods, devastating families, decimating lives, happened as divine punishment for a criminal practice undertaken by the few, who, by their actions, brought mass destruction simply by committing their crime in "that part of the world". I have never heard a more despicable comment. In my life.

    Perhaps WinnieG might want to talk with her Bishop about this, or maybe the General Authorities who urged us all to give as we could to aleviate what small part of the suffering we could in the wake of that "divine retribution". I'm sure they'd appreciate her broad minded and compassionate views.

    2) Christians, Jews, and Muslims all worship the same god, the God of Abraham. So who is this one God supposed to be out to get?

    3) Every US citizen needs to brush up on the history of the Israeli State, as it is called. As my Hungarian friend says:"cookie cutter countries never work", and, he should know. Israel is just that, a cookie cutter country, carved out of land populated by Arabs AND Jews (for centuries), displacing Arabs from family homes and lands and relegating these PEOPLE to refugee camps except for the ones who could, and did, have the resources to flee to places like, um, Detroit. If someone took my family home, my property,moved right in , called it theirs, and shuffled me off to Juarez to live in a tent camp, jobless, the family business gone along with the home and land, I'd be unhappy, real unhappy.

    Then, when those folks who removed me from the land I legally owned, that had been in my family for generations, that provided my livlihood, and that of my family, started throwing missiles at me with "MADE IN THE USA" stamped in block letters on the side, willingly and graciously provided to them by the USA, then I wouldn't like the USA much either.

    4)9-11 had nothing to do with Islam, and everything to do with radical Islam, and radical Islam was born and bred out of the establishment of the State of Israel and the Israeli imperialism that followed and continues today.

    5)FYI, at least 30% of the Arabs were, and are still, not Muslims, but Christians, mostly Eastern Orthodox.

    The freak tornado that clipped the salt Palace was "divine retribution" for a gay bar??

    Twisted, just twisted.

    Sometimes I understand people who think all Mormons are narrow minded nuts.

    .........Again removing his protection, we all know that innocent people were killed in the Tsunami’s for those it was time to return home, for wicked they know better now don’t they? For those who are left behind it was a wakes up call...........

    I'm sick, just sick that anyone could think this way.

    Sick in my heart and sick in my soul.

    "We all know"

    No, we don't, some of us know the meaning of compassion.

  15. .......... My point was to discover where his family of orgin (roots) were from. Are they Native American? Mexican? European? When they came to this country, were they kept out? .......

    I am all for border security and regulating immigration. IMO, illegal immigration needs to be a felony and illegal immigrants agressively deported. Although I live in Twin Falls, I work in Jerome,ID...in the past a pleasant small farming town, now a literal barrio fraught with drugs and crime. And, tuberculosis.

    Probably the most poorly understood aspect of the nineteenth and twentieth century great immigrations was that the US blindly accepted anyone's "poor and huddled masses". This has never been the case. That is what Ellis Island was used for. Incoming immigrants needed to prove they were of sound body, submitting to actual physical examinations. Also, of sound mind and character. What we'd today call "criminal background checks" were done, inasmuch as then possible, on every incoming immigrant. And, immigrants had to prove, at Ellis Island, that they had jobs and at least temporary homes waiting.

    Many were kept out, even for the most trivial of reasons. I have a friend whose grandmother immigrated from Lithuania in the early 1900's. She came as a young single woman with a job as a household servant in Manhattan waiting and she traveled with a friend who had a similar arrangement awaiting her. At Ellis Island it was determined the friend had trachoma,an eye infection that can lead to blindness. This friend was sent back to Lithuania as were hundreds of thousand of others just for health reasons, usually tuberculosis.

    We now have, all over the western US, a burgeoning epidemic of tuberculosis imported from Mexico, and, it is resistant to treatment by many of the common drugs used to treat tuberculosis in the past, as well as combinations of these drugs.

    If you look at statistics you can also see that these hard workers and their families, in the end, collect much much more in entitlements than they ever pay into the system in taxes, because if you work and are paid "under the table" in cash, you don't pay taxes. Illegals CAN pay taxes, but who does? They think that the paperwork necessary for filing taxes will get the caught and deported, but the fact is that nobody really cares and even multiply incarcerated felons are generally released back into our general population rather than even brought to the attention of the INS for deportation.

    So, the US has never had anything even remotely approaching open immigration. And we have enough home grown criminals that we don't need to be letting those from south of the border set up shop within our borders.

    Don't labor under the impression that these are "just hardworking folks who are willing to do dirty jobs that our own unemployed will not do". Don't kid yourself that the illegal immigrant population represents a cross section of the Mexican population. Nothing could be further from the truth. A more proper analogy would be that they are analogous to the multigenerational welfare, crime ridden underbelly of any large US city, say Baltimore, being rounded up and shipped off to Mexico.

    And, it you have not spent considerable time visiting and living in Mexico, don't think Mexico is h*ll on earth and we NEED to let these poor souls come here to escape living there. Yes, there ARE slums in the large cities and hard scrabble subsistence farmers (among whom I lived for a year) in some pretty desolate outlying areas. The same could be said for the US.

    Don't think there are no jobs in Mexico and those that can get work are working for pennies an hour. The current minimum wage in Mexico is $4.00/hr, which is, adjusted for cost of living, somewhat higher than the US. People IN Mexico who are NOT criminals CAN get jobs, although they may have to move, but that move would not entail illegal immigration into a bordering country. Mexico has scientists and professionals and a growing middle class while the middle class in the US is shrinking to the woint where we are becoming a more and more economically polarized society.

    Mexico also has some of the most strict immigration policies in the WORLD. If you want to imigrate to Mexico,it's darn hard. You cannot be a criminal and you must be able to prove a monthly income (net) of 1000 times the prevailing Mexican minimum wage, or, at this time, $4000/month. In only a very few areas (medical and scientific) is it possible to get a visa allowing one to work as a resident alien in Mexico.

    There's also a more humanitarian flip side to this. Illegally here, illegally hired, illegally paid Mexican workers in the US are also exploited workers.

    A whole other, very ugly, topic.

    My point being, of course, that this is a topic about which it is easy, seeing only one side from a distance, to make erroneous snap judgments based more on emotion than the actual facts.

  16. From my experience, there is also a color thing amongst Latino subgroups. Darker the skin the more prejudice. I know that is a generality. I'm only speaking from experience.

    Dr. T

    Having spent time in Mexico, I can only say that this is also true there.

    Ethnically, the darker skinned Mexicans have a more indiginous heritage than the lighter, who have more DNA with it's origin in Spain.

    Each one also ended it with "see, we don't like them anymore than white people."

    I somehow got the impression that latino racism was a misguided attempt to identify and share beliefs with white people. Turn issues of poverty and violence into a "latino/white vs. black" thing.

    I think he means "see, we don't like them (African Americans)any more than (you) white people do".

    But, the fact is that like classic Black "reverse racism", many Hispanics living in the US are very, very prejudiced against anglo Americans.

  17. Just a couple of comments in reply to specific folks, I don't actually have the time to specifically reply to individual posts or quote.

    It isn't "the church"; it is the pride and predjudice of certain members. Had what I experienced in the church as a single mom in the '70's been atributable to church policy I could not have remained active.

    There is also a geographical component here. I lived in Utah until 1989 when I moved to rural Oregon where I noted a world of difference in tolerance towards "the imperfect family". This might be the basis of the opposing views of Snow and Strawberry Fields. I don't think this attitude is as prevalent outside of Utah as it is in Utah.

    Of course SF has it nailed when she relates this to the LDS emphasis on the "perfect family". There are programs and awareness now, but in past decades I truly do not think the church, and thus the members, quite knew what to do with single parent "imperfect families".

    Along with the LDS emphasis on the perfect family goes the fact that most single parent families resulting from divorce have the mother as the head of the family and the father and priesthood holder moves on. Something about this scenario implicitly places "blame" for the dissolution of that perfect family on the mother, since it couldn't be that priesthood holding returned missionary father at fault, now could it? Ergo, prejudice against the divorced mother raising her children alone.

    Divorced men are not and never have been discriminated against nor otherwise poorly treated by ward members.

    IMO, this is because they hold the priesthood and cannot therefore be seen as the party at fault.

    This was certainly true in my case. My ex divorced ME when he had his next wife squarely in his sights, although, during the course of our marriage he was criminally convicted of both spousal and child phyical abuse. He left and moved on just before I discovered I was pregnant with my third child and had remarried before she was born.

    If he had not divorced me I would have stayed married to him until he killed me, because I also was a believer in "the perfect family".

    If you want a real eye opener sometime, go to one of those LDS singles sites and read what the divorced guys in their fifties with five or seven children are looking for. They all want young slender active women in their thirties who enjoy camping, fishing and GOLF.Sometimes rock climbing, hang gliding, or sky diving.

    A marriage firmly headed for eternity based on GOLF? Yeah, right.

  18. Oh, Pushka !! I HAVE read everything of Catherine Cookson's !!

    Now there's definite "women's reading",LOL.

    It always struck me how her books are just about the everyday, the ordinary, yet the stories are capivating.

    PS- how about a movie? I watched Vera Drake a couple of weeks ago. It's like that, an ordinary woman.

  19. Maureen...... for your hubby I think I'd go with the Kellermans and definitely Stephen White.

    I love the Nevada Barr books, but the main character is female and they are kind of "girly".

    I don't think I've ever met a mystery fan who had read a Hillerman book who did not love them.

  20. I love reading, just popular novels, escapist fiction mostly, and particularly like psychological or forensic themes.

    I like anything by Tony Hillerman, who writes whodunits set in the Navajo Reservation at Four Corners. These books appeal to all sorts, meaning they are not "chicklit". I pass my Hillerman books on to my grown son, also a fan; Hillerman just cannot write fast enough to keep either of us satisfied.

    But, for chicklit, I highly recommend Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series. I just finished the tenth book in the series and wil be reading the eleventh soon, already have it.

    For medical/forensic type whodunits I much prefer Kathy Reichs Tempe Brennan to Patricia Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta, more believable characters and plots. I'm looking forward to the fall TV season for the first time in years; there will be a new series, Bones, based on the Tempe Brennan character. Tess Gerritsen and Michael Palmer also write unfailingly good medical mystery fiction.

    Jonathan Kellerman's Alex Delaware books are great psychological mystery fiction, as are his wife Faye Kellerman's Peter Decker straight "cop" whodunits in an Orthodox Jewish context. One of my favorite authors of the psychological thriller is Stephen White, terrific plots, and excellent character development. I just finished two of his latest,Blinded, andBest Revenge, neither one of which I could put down.

    Last, but not least, are Nevada Barr's Anna Pidgeon books, all set in different National Parks where Anna is a Park Ranger become sleuth.

    I do not read non fiction, nor do I read "literature", but read only for escape and enjoyment. I think I paid my literature and non fiction dues during the hundred or so (OK, I exaggerate :D ) years I went to school. But, even then I lived for the semester breaks when I could read my mysteries, and often hoarded books for those treasured weeks sans education.

  21. How does this Bishop treat other single moms in the ward? Does this seem, to your knowledge, to be a pattern??

    If he is elderly, I can say that this has, in the past, been the traditional LDS attitude towards single moms, so maybe he isn't up with the times, which are even now not perfect.

    I was your mom once, raising the three children of my abusive marriage alone in the 1970's and '80's. Despite the fact that even then there were not just a few divorced single moms raising children alone, I, and others in the same boat were generally treated terribly by the entire ward, including the Bishop.

    Oddly enough, my abusive ex husband, tried and convicted in a court of law of both spousal and child abuse,the returned missionary who promptly remarried following our divorce.......then divorced again and who has now been married five times to four different women (one idiot married him twice) has never been treated like a pariah.

    It took me years to get over my resentment of the Church's treatment of divorced women following my divorce and years as an outcast, but at least now I do see it getting better, more in line with reality.

    Sometimes people cannot easily get past preconceived notions. Maybe this Bishop is one of those and a better person to ask for help might be the Relief Society president, a home teacher, or a visiting teacher.

  22. Originally posted by Taoist_Saint@May 17 2005, 05:19 PM

    Since I am so far the only one who has been irresponsible with the edit button, I vote that it be given back to everyone else.

    If it can be restricted from me alone, that is great, but I suspect that isn't possible.

    Ah so, that is why it is gone??

    I moderate at another board using Invision software although it might not be the same version. When we had trouble with people editing post content after the fact we set a time limit on how long after the post has been posted it can be edited.

    This allows people, like me, who have terrible keyboarding skills, to fix mistakes, but doesn't allow troublemakers to edit the content of their posts hours or days after it incites a riot.

    So, how about leaving a fifteen or thirty minute window for post editing??

  23. Originally posted by butsam@May 8 2005, 04:49 AM

    Please forgive me for being in and out of the board...are you referring to our members in Twin Falls, or was there a different attack as well?

    Sam

    What happened in Twin Falls?

    Whatever it was I didn't hear anything.

    Then again, I watch KSL news and not internet, my ISP was down over the weekend.

  24. Originally posted by Jenifer@May 4 2005, 01:06 AM

    Was mormon underwear displayed inappropriately, in some manner?

    ANY display of garments is inappropriate, and referring to them as "garmies" on network TV was inappropriate, not to mention silly, and something only a Mormon would "get", which means that to "get" it would be to find it offensive.

    There were also numerous other "sound bytes" in which the church and its beliefs/theology were inaccurately portrayed, in a manner that could only perpetuate some of the more sensational misconceptions about the church.