Tag: covid

Genealogy Lemonade – a Reflection on the Year

You might be thinking I’m being a prolific blogger this morning as this is my 5th post but the truth is I only planned to write about the one year anniversary of changing practices due to the pandemic.

I started the morning on routine maintenance to my website – genealogyatheart.com and in the process, somehow noticed that 4 older posts, 3 since June, had never posted. I don’t know how that happened so I hit the “publish” button and see that 3 of the 4 are live. Going to figure out when I’m done with this blog what’s up with the last one! Three were on strange events and one was on volunteering to identify WW2 vets. Since the past year has definitely been strange and there has been so many unnecessary deaths it seemed fitting I discovered the drafts this morning.

Was it the technology or the person (me) that was responsible? Don’t know! I usually like to find out the reason for mistakes to prevent them from reoccurring but on this beautiful almost spring morning where I’ll be losing an hour this weekend anyway, I’m choosing to focus instead on the future.

It was 1 year ago today, Friday the 13th, that I spent my last day in person at my education job. I was supposed to meet a genealogy client and do volunteer work on the 14th at a local library but that was cancelled due to the unexpected covid-19 closures. Like most of the rest of the world, I had spent March 11th bringing home items from work that I thought would be essential to use to continue doing my job from home and on the 12th, discovered there was NO hams, turkeys or toilet paper left in the first 4 grocery stores I stopped in on my way home from work.

A year ago, my guess was the pandemic would last about 6 weeks. Yeah, don’t ask me to make any forecasts! I based that assumption on the amount of time since I had first heard about Wuhong’s cases – towards the end of January – and watched with amazement how quickly they were building hospitals. By March, they had stopped so I guessed wrongly that it would just take a short time to get up to speed in providing medical assistance and our lives would be back to “normal”.

That gets me to the ham and turkey on my shopping list – I thought I’d hunker down at home and my meal planning to get through lockdown was influenced by my childhood upbringing. The grandchild of immigrants and the child of a Great Depression parent, we always had a large pantry in the basement known as the fruit cellar. I’ve blogged before how it got it’s name – that’s where my grandparents kept the illegal vino they were producing during prohibition. By the time I came along it held canned goods, soda “pop” bottles in case company came and spices. An extra chest freezer was housed on our enclosed front porch with a doily over it so it didn’t stand out. It was always filled. This was all beneficial to avoid panic buying before a snowstorm hit. Cooking a huge meal mid day Sundays resulted in having food for the rest of the week. I figured we’d have a ham with the fixings and then Monday, use leftovers for sandwiches, Tuesday would be omelets, soup from the hambone on Wednesday and Thursday, any remains mixed with macaroni and cheese on Friday and the week was almost through! I would do something similar with the turkey and chicken to get through 6 weeks of lockdown. Except, I couldn’t find turkey and ham.

I do have a large pantry and an extra fridge in the garage but I never kept them as well stocked as my grandparents did theirs. My shopping foray last March changed that practice and I scrounged for whatever I found left in the store – 3 corned beefs, 2 whole chickens, some ground beef and hot dogs. I found the ham and turkey at the 5th store I went to which was the one closest to my home. The toilet paper was discovered by a suggestion from another shopper at Big Lots. My bookkeeper at work had found hers at Staples. This was clearly a tipoff that that world was changing in a strange way.

I pivoted my education job by working through what was supposed to have been my week off for spring break. I was up and running with that quickly and easily with a plan to keep the students engaged the week we were transitioning to online learning to give the teachers time to get their lessons prepared. My genealogy business was placed on hiatus but I decided to keep writing the blog.

Reflecting on the past year, my biggest surprise is that I’m really okay with working from home. This has been the longest time since adulthood that I haven’t been on a trip or to a visit to a library. I’ve got several ideas of where I’ll do research once the world reopens fully. I’m okay with being patient for when that happens. In the meantime, I’ve created a list of where I need to research, what I need to find and some of the archives I’ll be visiting.

Thinking back, I now have no idea how I endured for years the long commute I made 5 days a week. I’ve only topped off my car with gas 4 times since last March 13th. Sometimes I would have to stop for gas more than once per week. I have spent the over 2 hours per day that I had lost driving on other tasks. Initially, I spent a lot more time on my education job but now that I’m in the groove, that has lessened. I’m now using the extra time to listen to podcasts and do my own personal genealogy research. I updated my family’s cookbook and included a section on Pandemic cooking for future generations. It’s got a great substitution chart – can’t find cake flour, here’s what you do! We also switched our hydroponics to aquaponics, took in 2 hens that were hatched 2 weeks before the pandemic at my school and froze the loquats and lemon juice from our neighbors tree for use the rest of the year.

I am amazed at how much genealogy research I have been able to do by being housebound. Granted, much has been because of the dedication of staff at archives who have done look ups for me over the past year. Due to the special offers that were available last spring, I took advantage of mining through online resources I hadn’t explored before. That was an awesome use of my time and money.

I donated some of my time by volunteering and I’ll blog more about that soon. I also donated some cash to organizations who were extremely helpful and are now in desperate need of funds. I plan to do more of this in the future.

By working fully from home I was thankful that hubby and I had renovated our home in the past few years, especially our office. We had to make some adjustments but that was mostly due to our primary jobs. I use a whole lot less paper (and printer ink!) then when I was working outside of the home. I’ve cleaned all of our closets and reorganized the kitchen and bath cabinets for efficiency. Those tasks I always put in “some day” category as in “after I retire.” Now they’re done and that will give me more time later.

I also now understand why my grandmother always washed her hands when she came in from leaving the house and why she changed her clothes after attending a funeral. The lessons she learned from the 1918 flu epidemic stayed with her 40 years later. I wonder if I’ll be doing the same.

Take this week and think about how you and your family have changed routines and practices. It is amazing how flexible and versatile we all are. No matter what the future holds we will be taking these characteristics with us. That gives me hope.

Turning lemons into lemonade takes some amount of work but it’s worth the refreshing result. As my grandparents would say, Zdravlje – To Health!

Lessons Learned From A Past Pandemic

My backyard poinsettia is in full bloom, the radio is playing holiday tunes and I should be baking and partying with those I love.  Except I’m not.  I hope you aren’t either. With a reported 16,000,000 million cases and nearly 300,000 deaths in the U.S. from covid as of today per Google, I can’t stop thinking about the picture above.  

Yes, it is morbid, depressing and haunting.  Taken outside the Croatian Church, then located on 23rd Avenue in Gary Indiana on the 21 February 1919, the deceased man in the center in the coffin is my maternal great grandfather that I never met because of his untimely death at age 43 of broncho-pneumonia brought on by influenza.  Joseph Kos was one of the estimated 675,000 U.S. deaths from the 1918-1919 H1N1 Pandemic. 

We’re approaching half way to the number of deceased from 100 years ago and we’re not yet close enough to see the end of the spread of covid.  That saddens me immensely!  For all of the advances in health care in the past century you would think the current death rate would be low.  Interesting how we rely on modern medicine when simple old fashioned hand washing, distancing and masks could have significantly lessened the death toll.

My mother, Dorothy Koss Leininger, didn’t remember her grandfather as he died when she was an infant but his death changed the course of her life forever.  History is repeating itself again and still we haven’t learned.  

Joseph emigrated from Croatia, then part of Austria-Hungary, in January 1910.  This was not his first time in the U.S., as he had initially come in 1893 but returned home to marry Ana Katherine Grdenich on 10 February 1895. Family lore says he joined the military and served in the cavalry but after sustaining a kick to his head from a horse while it was being reshooed, he developed epilepsy and was forced to leave the service.  With jobs scarce he decided to return to the U.S. After his arrival in New York he worked as a laborer for the Pullman Company.  He’s found in Chardon, Geauga, Ohio in the 1910 U.S. federal census as an alien speaking no English.  

With his Pullman job, Joseph traveled the country and ultimately ended up in Chicago in 1913.  Residing in Pullman housing, he sent for his wife and two children, Mary, my grandmother, and Joseph Jr. (Josip), to join him.  Ana was soon pregnant and gave birth to daughter Barbara on 14 Sep 1914 in Blue Island, Cook, Illinois.  

Joseph arranged for daughter Mary to wed John (Ivan) Kos, a villager and purported second cousin who had happened to also arrive in Chicago and worked for the Pullman Company. Mary and John wed on 28 January 1917 in Chicago; their first child, my mother, Dorothy, was born in Pullman housing on 14 April 1918.  

The family moved sometime in the latter part of 1918, renting a home at 1521 Garfield Street in Gary, Lake, Indiana.  Joseph and John found work with the I.I.B. Teaming Company which supplied laborers to U.S. Steel Corporation.  To save money, instead of using the available street car, Joseph and John commuted the 1.5 miles to work and back daily via bicycle.  With contract tracing unavailable in those days, it is not known where or how Joseph contracted the flu.  My grandmother believed it was from work which was likely, as the conditions inside the mill were brutal – unheated, with poor ventilation and large numbers of unmasked men toiling round the clock and then riding home exhausted in a cold rain would lower anyone’s resistance to infection.  As an immigrant with WW1 being fought overseas and knowing you are the bread winner your family depends on added further stress.

The last photo taken of Joseph, shown above, shows the funeral attendees maskless and not socially distancing.  I have no idea why.  Perhaps they were mask slackers but I doubt that as my grandmother always washed her hands as soon as she came in from any errand.  I suspect they didn’t know they should.  I suspect that U.S. Steel did not mandate that workers wear a mask.  By clicking through the death certificates on Ancestry I can see many men who worked as laborers dying of the same conditions during the same time period as Joseph.  Possibly Joseph caught the flu from one of the men who died shortly before him, perhaps not.  John also was ill but he recovered.  

The man on the far left of the photo was the funeral home director; maskless, he clearly did not require a face covering be worn.  The man holding the wreath to the back left of the coffin is John Koss, Joseph’s son-in-law.  The young man holding the wreath on the right is Joseph Jr.  Next to Joseph (look closely) is my grandmother Mary, hidden by a black veil. I like to think she was the only one with any sense to wear the face covering but knowing her well, I think her choice was due to a fashion statement.  Next to Mary was her mother, Ana, Joseph’s widow.  The others in attendance were neighbors and parishioners of the Croatian Catholic Church.  Missing was my infant mother and Barbara, Joseph and Ana’s youngest daughter.  Who was watching those girls is unknown.  

How Joseph’s untimely death affected my mother was profound, though as a baby she was unaware of the event.  John became the only breadwinner in the family and with the loss of Joseph Sr., the family’s income was cut in half.  Joseph Jr. was forced at age 17 to leave school and seek work.  Money would become even tighter as Mary was pregnant with her second child, Anne Marie, who would be born 6 months after Joseph’s death.  

More tragedies came in quick succession to the family – a scarlet fever epidemic that infected both children required the family to quarantine.  With no money for a physician, my grandmother relied on her neighbor’s home remedy advice to treat the family.  John then had to have a leg amputated as a result of an injury at the mill.  When recovered, he could no longer ride his bike to work and had to spend money on the street car. The KKK threatened the family and burned a cross in the empty field in front of their home.  A fire started by a candle caused extensive damage and burned my mother’s only toy, a doll.

A little over 10 years after Joseph’s death the Great Depression hit.  John’s wages were cut, the family took in boarders, raised vegetables, rabbits and chickens to survive but it wasn’t enough. Dorothy, as the eldest, quit high school at the start of grade 10 to work in a hardware store.  Her lack of a diploma hindered her job prospects for the rest of her life.  

During the current pandemic I’ve been thinking a lot about the 1918 one.  If Joseph hadn’t succumbed to the flu would my mother have been able to finish high school?  She had always aspired to be a dietician but going back to school was out of the question.  Her working enabled Anne Marie and her younger siblings, George and Marilou to obtain their diplomas.  How would my life have been different if my mother had found a career she loved and that paid better than the minimum wage jobs she held?  Would I be the frugal genealogist I am today if money hadn’t been so tight while I was growing up?  

My memories of my great grandmother are of an old woman always wearing black who sat quietly in deep thought.  What was she thinking about?  Never remarrying after the man she loved so dearly died, she spent the next 47 years of her life residing with her adult children, changing residences every few years depending on the needs of their growing families.  If Joseph had survived, how would her life have turned out?  

My grandmother, the apple of her father’s eye, missed him the rest of her life.  His death was a loss that could never be replaced.  The extra burden of being the sole breadwinner put a strain on my grandfather, John.  Would his health have been better and would he have lived a longer life if Joseph had lived?

The pandemic fatigue I’m feeling is put into perspective whenever I compare it to the 1918 pandemic my ancestor’s experienced.  I do not want my adult children to miss my husband and I as my grandmother missed her father for the remainder of her life. I do not want any grandchildren I may someday have to wonder about the grandparents they didn’t get the opportunity to know.  I’ve learned from my family’s experiences that thriftiness is beneficial.  I don’t panic over shortages of goods.  I’ve always kept a fully stocked cupboard and supplement with my garden.  My children do the same. 

The holidays will be different from past ones for all of us. In a season that personifies hope, I’m remembering the past and hope 2021 will be brighter.  I am taking the next two weeks off from blogging but will return in the new year.  Be smart – stay safe!

Education in a Pandemic

Today’s blog is not about genealogy so you can stop reading now if that is your interest  Instead, it is my take on the current state of the educational environment.  I am writing this because I am furious. Our today becomes tomorrow’s history; I want the future to learn from the past.

I missed writing last week as I was consumed with my newly designated title of ESSENTIAL WORKER and due to the lack of communication, cooperation and consistency in government policy, was working 16.5 hour days with no compensation for the overtime or weekend work so that children can go back to school and die alongside their teachers.  It makes my heart break.

My long time readers know I try very hard to not to be political in my weekly blog.  I understand bureaucracy moves slowly.  I respect free speech and differences in opinion.  I have been an educator since 1977.  I did not choose that career to get rich or for the summers off (we don’t get paid and we work most of the summer unpaid planning and taking training).

That said, I will not stand by silently when peoples’ lives are needlessly risked.  Don’t believe it (like one of my neighbors who insists there is no reason to wear a mask), here’s the facts – a 6-year old girl died Monday of covid in the same school district that the person WITH NO BACKGROUND IN EDUCATION who is UNELECTED but APPOINTED by the governor and who, like those currently tweeting that the virus will magically go away, refused to allow the school district where this child died to deliver educational services for an additional 3 weeks online because “Step aside, folks, there is nothing to see here!”  These bullies threatened to withhold all state funding if school does not resume with a brick and mortar, aka traditional, model by the end of August.  

Due to the wavering decisions and the utter lack of concern for children, their families and the public school staff, I, along with my colleagues across the country, have worked tirelessly to try to make the smallest classes possible for social distancing and to quickly trace students from period to period WHEN THE VIRUS ATTACKS.  This is not an IF, this is most definitely a WILL. 

For those that don’t believe that, here’s the truth…in my small school that opened to teachers only 3 weeks ago, we have already had 1 teacher with a covid diagnosis in the second week.  At my previous school, in the same time period, with about the same number of staff, they’ve had two.  My husband’s school has had two since April, one in the last two weeks.  If you have this many infections with educated adults all wearing masks and social distancing, using hand sanitizer and washing their hands well, you don’t think you’re going to have a problem when the students return?!  Think of yourself as a kid.  Instead of playing cooties the elementary kids will be playing covid.  Middle schoolers can not stay out of each others faces and forget social distancing with high school and college – they are huggers!  The children are doing developmentally what is normal but these times are not.  If we can’t save them from themselves their is blood on all of our hands.

I am outraged at the system that allowed this to happen  I also question how a teacher became an essential worker in the last week.  If that’s the case, why do we close schools for weather problems?  

Just come out and tell us how many in power view our role – you want cheap childcare and if you lose a few, well, that’s life!  You never cared about educating children before; if you had, you would have funded us adequately so the little darlings didn’t have to go door to door selling overpriced junk.  My husband and I wouldn’t have had to spend our own money for years on items our students needed.  If the value of education was really a priority there would be no threats to withhold funding.  I am so sick of the lies.

If I read one more article or hear one more news story about teachers being happy to return to school this fall I’m going to scream.  NO THEY AREN’T.  Like the rest of humanity, they long for the good ole days, last seen this past February, when they could make a difference face-to-face with their students.  Those days are gone for now and what is needed more than anything else is prioritizing life over what once was.  

If everyone had done what was the right thing to do we wouldn’t be faced with this problem today.  Children wouldn’t be dying.  Those kids that return to school and live through this will not have to have the burden for the remainder of their lives of knowing they brought home an illness that killed their family.  They won’t have to face the grief at the loss of their beloved teacher.  This madness can be halted and I’m praying someone, somewhere has the power and the sense to do the right thing.  

I’m also sick of hearing about students falling educationally behind.  Here’s a quick and simple solution for that – just have everyone attend year round once the virus is behind us.  Cut out the electives for the summer term and just teach the basics.  Duh!  If we can have students skip a grade then the whole issue of learning loss is a moot point anyway.  Studies have shown that students who do not start school until age 8 can compete academically in a short time.  Funny how our leaders, and I use that term loosely, pointed to Nordic countries who kept schools open last spring as what we should do.  Those are the same countries with well funded educational systems that don’t have young children in formal education.  They have physicians and dentists available for the children.  Heck, I can’t even get Walmart to donate free eyeglasses to my needy kids anymore.  So again, I ask, if education is so vital, then why are the basics not provided for our children?  

No electronics in the home?  Seriously, except for the last two generations NO ONE WAS EDUCATED BY USING THE INTERNET.  Here’s a novel solution – have local districts pay the local newspaper for a subscription for every family.  The lessons can be incorporated in the newspaper.  It’s delivered daily to the family’s door.  You’re developing a generation who will learn more about their community and the world. They are practicing reading and math by analyzing the charts and graphs.  Vocabulary is enriched.  You’re insuring that the press remains a vital and important partner in the community.  Why are we not doing this?  As much money as schools saved on paper and ink they can certainly afford to purchase a year newspaper subscription for their students.  Actually, in my community, the newspaper is already free electronically for our students.  If schools wanted to save even more money, they would just need to purchase a paper edition for those that don’t have electronics.  

I am fortunate to be able to be eLearning but several of my fellow teachers were not granted the same privilege I was, even though several has serious medical conditions and two are still recovering from covid’s long lasting side effects.  

If you have taken the time to read this I want to thank you.  Send good thoughts or pray or whatever you believe in because my colleagues, my students, their families and the greater community needs all the help it can get.