Tombstone Tuesday: Matthew, Mary, and Marcus McCormick

Thanks to Kathy Rogers, a thoughtful Find A Grave Contributor, I finally have headstone photographs for someone in my KANE family. My great-grandaunt, Mary "Mollie" (KANE) McCORMICK, was only 21 years of age when she died from tuberculosis. She had been married only a few months and had just had her son, Marcus Emmet McCORMICK, two months prior to her death. To compound the sad circumstances of her brief life, her son died less than one month after his mother as a result of inanition (exhaustion from lack of nourishment; starvation.) Her husband, Matthew McCORMICK, who was the superintendent of The New York Life Building in Chicago, moved in with Mollie's parents, James and Julia (McCORMICK) KANE, following her death. Matthew (born 20 Aug 1862 in Canada) died 23 Feb 1911 from pneumonia with walking typhoid being a contributing cause. Each time I think of this family it leaves me feeling great sadness.

Related Items:

• Mt. Olivet Cemetery
• The Kane Family (biographical blog entry)
• KANE Family Photos (Flickr Photo Album)
• Kane Family Documents (Flickr Photo Album)

(rev. 07/14/2022)

Music to My Ears

 

It may have taken three stores and a bit of a wait, but these songs from my latest wish list are all mine and I am stoked! Special thanks to my husband for his, um, help!

• The Black Crowes- Before the Frost...Until the Freeze*
• The Black Keys - Brothers*, The Rubber Factory* [already had When the Lights Go Out]
• Broken Bells - The High Road, October, The Mall & Misery
• Carolina Liar - Coming to Terms, Last Night
• Elvis Presley - The Essential Elvis Presley*
• The Goo Goo Dolls - Home
• Howard Shore - The Twilight Saga:  Eclipse Score*
• Howie Day - Longest Night, She Says, Everyone Loves to Love a Lie, Stop All the World Now*
• Katy Perry - Hot 'n Cold
• The Killers - Shadowplay
• Radiohead - High and Dry
• The Script - The Script* [already had Breakeven]
• Various Artists - Love Actually Soundtrack*

*denotes entire album

What say you?  What are you listening to these days?

What I Do/Use (Genealogy Meme)

My Pretty Purple Tools!

The original meme may have been around the Web for awhile, but Thomas MacEntee adapted What I Do for those of us with a keen interest in genealogy.

This is a fairly comprehensive list of the things I use to research, record, and publish my family history.

* Hardware: Dell Studio 1558 Laptop Intel Core i5-430M 2.26GHz with Windows 7 and loads of other amazing features.

(Without my computer god husband keeping our network going I wouldn't be able to accomplish much. Thanks, Honey!)

* External storage: Western Digital My Passport Essential SE 750 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive

* Backup: Western Digital My Book World Edition II - 4 TB (2 x 2 TB) Network Attached Storage

* Firewall: Windows Firewall with Advanced Security

* Virus protection: Webroot Anti-Virus w/Spy Sweeper

* Spyware: see virus protection

* File cleaner: Disk Cleanup

* Printer: Dell V725w Wireless All In One Inkjet Printer 

* Camera: Olympus SP510UZ but mostly my iPhone

* Phone:  iPhone 5 16GB

* Mobile media: 64 GB iPod touch 4th generation

* Music player: see mobile media

* Car audio: the amazing system that came with our vehicle - AM/FM, CD, cassette. I use a Belkin iPod Mobile Cassette Adapter and Belkin TuneBase FM to play music and videos (while charging) from my iPod touch.

* eBook Reader: iPod touch (Kindle, iBooks, Nook, and Overdrive apps)

* Browser: Firefox v. 20.0.1 and Chrome v. 27.0

* Blog: Blogger (one public, one private)

* RSS: Protopage

* FTP: no longer needed (using Blogger)

* Text editor: Dida

* Graphics: Corel PaintShop Photo Pro X3

* Screen capture: using what I have - Prnt Scrn and paste into PaintShop Pro

* Social media: Geni, Flickr, YouTube

* Social bookmarking: Diigo

* Social profile: Facebook and Google+

* URL shortener: bit.ly

* Office suite: Microsoft Office 2010 and Google Drive

* E-mail: Gmail (primary) and Ymail (for Yahoo! services)

* Calendar: Google (family), iPhone (personal), and RootsMagic (genealogy) calendars

* Accounting: multi-column pad (all I really need)

* Web conferencing: Skype or Google Video Chat

* PDF generator: anyone know of a free (or reasonably priced) PDF converter that does web pages?

* Genealogy database: RootsMagic 4 (PC) and To-Go. Shrubs app on my iPod.

* Genealogy tools/sites: Fold3, Family Search Labs, Find A Grave, online perpetual calendar, online county directory, online birth date calculator, character map, Notepad, Word, Dida, PaintShop Pro, RootsMagic

* Other tech stuff: BookCollector software (for PC and iOS) for of all the books I read/own, including my history and genealogy books.

*updated 04/28/2013

Total Eclipse of MY Heart

My daughter and I saw the first showing of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse at our local theater on opening day. I was surprised by the micro-conversations surrounding us—none of them sounded like "Twi-Hards." They didn't seem very familiar with the books, and only mildly so with the previous movies. Yet, they were there waiting well over an hour to see Eclipse. Was it merely a case of curiosity? Wanting to see what all the fuss was about? Hmmm. It was definitely not the case with my girl and me. We've each read the books 3 or more times. I've watched Twilight at least 50 times! (Seriously not kidding.) New Moon, I've seen maybe a dozen times...so far.

The theater seating was highly uncomfortable and we were concerned over the obnoxiously loud boy accompanying his mother and sister. We were thankful when he calmed down. This is important stuff here. This is TWILIGHT!

Of course, most "Twi-Hards," like myself, will (or, want to) see it several times before it is released on DVD/Blu-ray, probably in November [December 4]. I count myself extremely fortunate that I got to see it again. The second time with my husband in an amazing megaplex complete with outstanding sound system, wide aisles, and loge seating. Wow, what a difference! 

My review with NO SPOILERS: 

The wait is over. My doubts over the choice of director are no more. The script finally shines and makes sense. The words that are merely spoken by the actors in the first two movies appear felt in this one. When Bella and Edward are together it feels like they should be, and not just because it is written that way. The Big Three (Kristen, Rob, and Taylor) turn in performances that are worthy of their much loved characters. The supporting cast deliver their limited lines competently and with feeling. Billy Burke (Charlie Swan) is still perfect. The scenery is seriously stunning! The soundtrack (and score, to a lesser degree) play less of a part in Eclipse than they did in Twilight and New Moon, but the music is well chosen/created.  (Stay for the credits to hear the final three songs.) The scenes I was most looking forward to were right on—the tent scene, the proposal, the battle, the back stories are all amazing! The presence of the Volturi was a tad undramatic, as was the building of the Newborn Army; but I totally forgive these tiny "imperfections." It is the big picture that is important, right? Overall, Eclipse blew my mind and secured my continuing devotion to this world that Stephenie Meyer created. I can't wait to get the movie companion book, music score, AND DVD when it comes out [UPDATE: I have 'em all!]. They 'done' GOOD and I want to experience Eclipse over and over!