When are we??

I can't believe this is my first blog on Lost since I started the page. In my defense, and Lord know I probably need one, when I looked at all the blogs, message boards, TV interivews, etc., I felt that anything I could add to the Lost luv would be redundant. That was until last week...


In the first two mind-blowing episodes of the season, we dealt with the Island consequences of Ben turning the frozen donkey wheel. We already knew that it threw him forward 10½ months into the future but we were wondering "What about those folks who were on the Island??" Well, we got the answers (sort of). It seems that activating the exotic matter in order to move the Island destabilized the time element there and it started flashing through time. Was it every 108 minutes? I thought so at first but there were a few scenes when this didn't seem applicable because too much was happening between flashes.


We learned that there were Rules to time-travel.

1. You can't change the past. Does this mean the broad strokes of the past but not the nitpicky details? For instance, if I go to my parents, there are two different routes to take. One, involves a highway turning onto a couple of county roads and coming to their house from the south. The other involves a windy farm market road and you come to their house from the north. Both get you to the house but the scenery is different along the way.
2. You can't change the future.
3. Anything you have with you or has been done to you will go with or carry over with you when the next flash happens, ie, the Zodiac raft, the compass that Richard gives Locke, the wound on Locke's leg from the gunshot, etc.

My first thought on rule #1 is then why bother?? After I got to thinking about what I would do if I could go back in time and I knew the rules and thinking about it from a genealogist and history buff perspective, I thought, "Well, if I can't change any of the big strokes of the past, then maybe I could visit ancestors or be a part of their background and find out some things that have been driving me nuts!" As a amateur genealogist, here are some of the people I would hope to be able to find and get information on:

• Lancaster County, Pennsylvania - about 1774-1775: See if I can have a conversation with Stephen Goff to find out if his father is definitely Samuel Goffe and Elizabeth Hollister of Hartford County, Connecticut. All the circumstantial evidence points in that direction but it would be nice to have confirmation. The biggest problem with gathering this information is that it's in the American Revolutionary infancy and they would probably be very suspicious of anyone asking question. This mission would take a lot of finesse, that's for sure. If I could get another question answered, I would see if he knows who his great-great grandfather was and where in England his family came from but that may have to wait until another time jump.
• Washington Parish, Louisiana - about 1810 or so, see if I can find John A. Fisher (my gggg-grandfather) and see if I can find out who his parents are and if there's an even earlier connection to the Corkern family than we know now. I also want to know what the A. stands for. I've been thinking it's Adnell because that's a name passed down through the family but that's all the evidence I have for that supposition. Hopefully, through that conversation, I could find out more about how the northeastern part of Louisana was settled and why they came to that area in the first place.
• This would be a lot more tricky to manuever - Elijah Alexander. Who are his parents? What is his first wife's maiden name? In another time further down the road, did he die in Yell County? I think you get the idea. In order to get these answers, I would have to go to Columbia County, Arkansas in 1860 and then hang around 1880s Yell County for a while. Another question would be - who played the fiddle that his daughter, Ruthie, ended up with??
• In that same part of the family, what did her husband, Joseph Lewis Bradberry, die from? Where was he buried? Where was his family in 1860 and 1870??!! This is the family that I've joked about being on a spaceship hovering above Southern Illiniois any time the census take came to visit. I would also like know if his father's name was Jus, Joseph, or Ius.
• Leon and Freestone County, Texas, about 1880 or so - see if I can find James W. Wade and Margaret Tryphena Moore. Where was James born? Who were his parents? Maybe I can get to the Leon County courthouse in time to prevent the courthouse from burning. This is a wish for several courthouses in my family locations - Leon County, TX; Washington Parish, LA; Randolph County, IL are among the most pressing that come to mind.
• Is Elizabeth who married Thomas Stuart and later Daniel Goff, the daughter of Reuben Young and Ann Wharton?? If not, who were her parents??

I'm sure there are more questions but these are the major ones that come to mind. As a genealogist, amateur or otherwise, who would you like to go back in time and find out about? I'm going to try to figure out how to send notices that there's a new blog up here. Wish me luck and please let me know your ideas even if you aren't into Lost.

Good grief! Over a month's gone by and I haven't added anything new!

It's hard to believe that over a month's gone by and I haven't added anything to the blog! Most of the people I sent the blog to didn't know how to comment or subscribe but I hope that as time goes by, they will figure it out.


Let's see...in getting my sources uniform and correctly cited, I'm on Family...there's a lot of the alphabet left so my goal of getting my gedcom reloaded by the end of the summer isn't looking that good at all.


I've answerend inquiries on Paulsells, Hobbs & Orr, Moore, Harlan, Hollingsworth, Goff and a plethora of other inquiries. It's very important for me to try to answer these inquiries in a timely manner and add the information but it sure cuts into the time I need to get my database in line.


My nephew Nick married a wonderful woman about a week and a half ago and it was great seeing the family and we had a good time. It took any starch I had outta me though and so I've been spending more time resting. It's just the nature of the beast that's CFS.

Tomorrow's my dad's birthday and we will also be having an addition to the family - a niece!! My brother Patrick's little girl will be born tomorrow so all prayers on deck. We couldn't be more thrilled! And now my dad has a granddaughter to spoil.

Our oldest son and his family went on vacation to the coast in SC. Our granddaughter doesn't like the water on the beach that much but she loves the pool!

It's been unbelievably hot here!! Yesterday, the heat index was 101° at noon! I thank the Lord that someone was smart enough to invent air conditioning, that's for sure.


In working on the Mary Kay newsletter, I found a great font site http://www.fontdiner.com/. There are several fonts there that are free and are really cool. Check it out. Look what I was able to do with the font Fontdinerloveable and WordArt in Word.

After I got the text done in WordArt, I clicked Print Screen. Open Paint, pasted the image, saved it as a .gif so that the background's transparent, and then opened the image and cropped everything that didn't pertain to the image. This is a really cool way to make the most of some of the neater fonts and dings and it only took about 2 or 3 minutes after I figured out that you can't just click on the art and copy that.

I will probably post a Lost Blog in a day or two. There's new stuff going on. I just think I'm lucky to remember to post this stuff. Until next time...

May God bless you abundantly!

Blogging Noob

Hi! My name is Gwen and this is my first blog. I'm a housewife on the backside of 45 with two grown sons and one grandchild. I've been dealing with Chronic Fatigue Immune Deficiency Syndrome (CFIDS or CFS for future reference) since 1985. Hubby is a funeral director/mortician as is our oldest son. Youngest son is an actor and customer service rep. I'm the oldest of 5 children and my life has pretty much revolved around family. Through the enforced bed rest in the early years of the disease, I became much closer to the Lord even though I was saved as a child. During that time, I also learned patience and anyone who has children and siblings knows that's a trait that will always stand you in good stead. For some time, I've thought about using a blog to detail things I find interesting or to rant about stuff that gets on my nerves. I also thought it would be a good place to write about things I've found in my genealogy research; my thoughts on my favorite TV show Lost or just stuff that comes to mind that, most of the time, defy categorization. I'm also addicted to podcasts. Podcasts about genealogy, Lost, pop culture or history are my main interest in that area. I've been researching my and my husband's various families for almost ten years. Yes, we have a few famous people in our families but that isn't what has driven me. The majority of our ancestors were farmers. I love piecing together lives that have been lived with no thought to posterity - they were just trying to survive and maybe even make a better world for their children and grandchildren. Why did they move from a farm they had been on for three generations and move to Washington (or California or Texas, etc.) to farm there? What personality traits and talents have been handed down? What names are common in my family or my husband's family? Why, if they consistently tell the census enumerator that they were born in Illinois, can I not find them by any means in the 1860 and 1870 censuses?? Had they been taken aboard a space ship and nurtured there after their collective births?? How did our families end up here?? So many more questions and mysteries... The cousins I've discovered and the friends I've made have certainly added much joy in this endeavor. My husband and I watched the very first episode of Lost and we haven't missed an episode. We said it was the fastest hour in TV and we still hold to that assertion. In fact, I tape them and re-watch them while I'm resting. Then, when the DVDs come out, I buy those. While he's not as involved in the larger Lost world like I am, he looks forward to each new episode as much as I do. The way they weave character development and an ongoing story that draws you in and makes you think is something that's totally new and, I'm beginning to believe, a unique television experience. I'm also a voracious reader. This can encompass everything from historical romance to history (mostly medieval but certainly not limited to that era) to travel narratives to Christian narratives to biographies. Well, I guess that's enough for now. I hope to add to this blog at least once a month and, hopefully, more often than that.