"Every action which has ever taken place--every thought, ...

every emotion--has taken place only once, at one moment in time and place. 'I love you.' 'I rejoice.' 'I suffer,' have been said and felt billions of times, and never twice the same. Every person who has ever lived has lived an unbroken succession of unique occasions."
- Thornton Wilder

This is probably one of my most favorite quotations of all time. I came across it in the program for the play "Our Town," which my friend Shannon and I saw at UNC-CH a few years ago.

I love it because it's incredibly true! This past weekend, we had a fantastic bridal shower for Callie. She got lots of cool stuff and we had a great time with family and friends.

Mom, Callie, and I stayed at my nanny's (grandmother's) house and Saturday night we all stayed up until midnight looking through two boxes of my nanny's old pictures. I mean like REALLY old pictures. There were lots of my mom, Aunt Dianne, and Uncle Danny (OK, a lot more of Danny than the other two, but he was the first child and that's just how it goes!), but there were a billion more pictures of my nanny and papaw's wedding and pictures of their parents. There was one incredible picture of my great-grandmother's family portrait when my great-grandmother was probably 6-8 years old (she was born in 1908 and just passed away last April--2 months shy of her 100th birthday) and another really cool picture of my papaw and my great-grandmother when my papaw was a newborn. And so many more! My nanny gave me 3 pictures and my mom took home a folder-full, so the next time I am in Ocean, I am going to scan the ones that mom took. The three that I was given are online at

http://picasaweb.google.com/lsleblanc82/FamilyPhotos.

I am absolutely mesmerized by photographs. I could literally stare at them for hours on end. I just think that they are incredible. It's so amazing to think about who all the people are and that there's a snapshot of finite moment in time and what that person was doing that very specific moment and then I love to think about everything else that the person did in life. One the pictures that I was given was of my nanny and papaw when my papaw was stationed with the army in Florida (prior to going to Germany for World War II ) and my nanny was still in high school and went to visit him:




They are absolutely the cutest couple on the planet and were for their 50+ years of marriage. I know that y'all won't believe me, but if they ever had a fight, no one else on the planet knows about it.

A couple of years ago, I got really interested in genealogy and started researching my family tree. I was very lucky to find a lot of information that allowed me to trace my lineage back pretty far. In fact, on my dad's side of the family, I can trace one line back to the year 1090 in England (seriously!). Genealogy on the Internet is fascinating because once you can trace your lineage back a few generations you can usually use names to link up with other genealogists who have done other research and then piggyback on their research. Of course, there's always a chance that something could be wrong, but you do the best you can.

My online version of my family tree is at

http://www.gribblenation.com/personal/laura/eng575/Genealogy/default.htm.

Unfortunately, you can't see the actual "tree" unless you download special software, but the HTML output is pretty cool too. And when I was in grad school, I took a Southern Writers class and I was able to use my genealogy research for my final project, in which I took a few people in my lineage and did a bit more research into their lives:

http://www.gribblenation.com/personal/laura/eng575/projectindex.htm.

It's all pretty interesting. My mom's family has lived in Catawba County since sometime before 1790 and another genealogist was able to find wills and ship manifests and other primary sources, which she let me incorporate into my Web site. If you're bored, you might find it interesting--just ignore the Southern literature analyses and any typos (I did a lot of the writeup over the course of 48 hours, so there's probably some issues!)

I really need to get back into more research--it's incredible.

I think what fascinates me the most about it is that if just one of my ancestors made a different choice and married someone different or never mate his or her mate, I (and LOTS of other people) would have never existed. Pretty crazy!

In fact, so interesting that I thought about it all the way to work this morning and I was thinking so hard that I completely missed the exit for work and had to drive down to 15-501 to turn around!!! :-)

Oops.