xtcian

Yikes! Is that girl's name Tara? Deep in the recesses of my brain, I remember that my KKG roommate Sarah had a KKG friend named Tara, and I think that is her. How I remember this, I don't know. Let me know if I am correct! My faith in my sieve brain will be restored.

I enjoyed today's post. A couple years ago, I logged onto an ancestry website, and I asked if anyone was related to Gottwald Winkler. . . that is as far back as my dad's known family history goes, and Gottwald is my great-great-great-great grandfather who emigrated from Germany to the US in 1849. A few weeks later, I received an email from William who turned out to be a distant cousin. Gottwald had 4 sons -- I am a descendant of one of the sons and William is a descendant of another. Turns out that we both had a copy of a big family photo from 1899 in which Gottwald and his wife are surrounded by their 4 sons and the families of the four sons. The photo was taken to celebrate Gottwald and Sophie's 50th wedding anniversary. We laughed about how stern and uptight our German ancestors looked, and then we really laughed about what Gottwald of 1899 would think about his two great-great-great-grandchildren meeting each other over the Internet in 2003 and making fun of him.

Anyway, you are right. As they say, "you can't take it with you." I find it very depressing that so much family history is forever lost after just a few generations! I like to think that Helen is my little piece of immortality, but the reality is that in four generations, no one will "know" me or care about me. This is part of the reason why I started a blog for her. Hopefully the internet will still exist in one form or another, and future generations (if there are any. . . Helen is an only child. . . maybe she won't have any kids?) will at least know that I lived and loved my family.

Have you ever read "One Hundred Years of Solitude?"

Hey, look! Gottwald made it to the Internet! If you have time to kill, click on my URL and read all about the esteemed Winkler family. I am descendant from musical greatness! Um, I myself don't know how to play any instruments, but Hey! The Winkler Band played at Presidential inaugurations! My favorite part of the article is the statement that Gottwald "made important contributions to the wholesome development of community life" in Trenton, NJ. Hee - hee! Whew. . . that's a relief! I would hate for the internet to say I came from unwholesome stock!

Hey Ian, where was that NYT photo taken?

Was that Wilson Library? I never actually studied there (well, I never really studied anywhere), but I would take campus tour groups in there because it looked pretty.

I've noticed the picture quantity change with my boys. First child, tons of pics and video, second child more of a "we really should take a picture of him" mentality. Not sure what changed but it did. Wondering if your older siblings have more old photos of themselves.

Also, in some box around here I have a picture from that same Halloween frat mixer. My roommate, the venerable Stephen Culp and I went with a friend of his (also a Sarah from KKG - same one LFMD?). Stephen and I went as frat boys - blue oxford, dark blue blazer, tan kakhis, Ray Bans, beer stein, Wall Street Journal, cigarette and condoms hanging down from the breast pockets. We almost were beat up several times that night, but survived unscathed.

I am currently scanning my entire photo collection into my PC, including the photos I raided from my elderly mother's archives. These go back to the early 20th Century. Is it quite the walk down memory lane. Where are they now, indeed, Mr. Morrisey. I am the youngest of six so, by the time I came along, no one could be bothered to take pictures of me other than on my birthday blowing at the cake with a dumb hat on or toddling around the Christmas tree. Oh, and there was the flood in the basement where a lot of photos were stored near the floor. Thank God for my one brother whose friend brought him a Japanese 35mm camera as a gift when he returned home from sunny, beautiful Vietnam. My brother took a few great shots of me and my family back when regular guys were hadn't started to grow their hair long.

LFMD, I bet you're related to Henry Winkler, AKA the Fonz -- anyone with an unusual last name in the US is probably related fairly closely to everone else with that last name.

Ian, that picture rules, for obscure family reasons:
1. How many other pictures are there of the back door to the 19th Street house, opening onto the mud porch? When we moved to Iowa, we all thought it was hilarious that such a thing as a mud porch existed.

2. Dad's bitchin tangerine Porsche 912. I rode in the back seat of that car from Norwood, CO, to Cedar Rapids, and my neck is still crooked from it.

Wow - Tessa looks a LOT like her grandmother!

when we were younger, my husband and i differed on the issue of taking photos at events when our kids were growing up. he seemed to always be missing the event because he was so busy finding just the right spot to set up the camera and get the great shot. i argued that i would rather have the memory in my mind than the photo because the photos never seemed to reflect the idealized version of the event that lived in my mind. now that my kids are adults i love that we have those photos (and they do too) and i am so sentimental now that the idealized version in my mind is only enhanced by the photographic evidence that it actually happened. so keep taking those photos. lucy will love them someday!

I'm amazingly lucky because my grandfather (remember, now -- I'm 53 and was born when my mom was already 41) was quite the photographer and took lots of photos of my grandmother, my mom and her siblings as they were growing up. These photos date from the turn of the 20th century, mind you. I gathered all of these treasures -- including some daguerreotypes of my great grandparents from the 1870s -- and scrapbooked them. Thank god. One of my favorite photos of my parents is from the 30s -- my dad is so handsome, wearing knickers and two-toned shoes and holding a cigarette, and my mom looks like the quintessential flapper, complete with cloche hat. It's really priceless to me -- a vision of them that I never knew.

Just Andrew -- my roommate's last name was Wible. Cute blond girl from Newport News, VA. Same Sarah?

Kent -- when I was in elementary school, I used to tell people that Henry Winkler was my uncle! It was my poor attempt to gain some social status. It all ended when I could not produce the requested autographed photos for my classmates.

The problem isn't just that people took less photos back in the day, it's that the number of people interested and the number willing to archive diminishes and disappear. Not unto every family is a geneaologist born, and even one generation of poverty and/or itinerancy and/or war can block the passing of the archive to the next. Landed aristocrats and ancient institutions (like Cambridge U) often have fantastic documentation. Generally preserving photos comes down to decendants, of course, because we care about our friends, but not so much about our friends great grandmother. So you see, there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for all of this. Ditto for orgasms.

The pic from the NYT was taken in Wilson Library, a place I thought might give the photographer the most opulence and make UNC look good.

Indeed, that is inimitable Tara Norman in the Halloween pic with me - she was one of the Robert Palmer girls from the "Addicted to Love" video, and I was Heatmiser from "The Year Without a Santa Claus." Tara's roommate was Carey Fitzmaurice and they did hang out with LFMD's roommate Sarah Wible, Julianna Hofeld and some of those other Krazy Kappas. Tara, if you're out there, write to me!

I thought you were trying to be a red-headed version of the Flock of Seagulls lead singer.

LFMD - I thought he was the Flock of Seagulls guy, too!

And, Ian, (heh) we've been watching The Incredibles several times a day now that it's Caleb's new favorite movie. And I must say, if you were ever to have an alter ego/Evil SuperVillian identity, it would totally be Syndrome. The hair alone does it.

i am totally tripping about this right now, not just the pictures but the whole history linking thing. my grandmother died yesterday and i am tripping on many many levels, but one in particular is the history connection. the past runs so deep and there are entire lives behind a single picture - and even pictures are kind of a luxury. i was listening to her tell me about growing up in the projects in south boston and there are like zero pictures. when she described things it was really hard to fathom but also eerily familiar somehow. anyway i'm going to go get a box of pictures she saved for me, and i know that if the house ever goes up in flames, if the kids are safe, i'm going back in for the photo album.

Tanya, I have had the same thought many times about Syndrome, but have not been brave enough to say it.

And how can someone be a Robert Palmer Girl with all that hair?

ian,

could you get me a make and model on the red car visible behind you in the '71 photo? it looks vaguely foreign or at least foreign-influenced; an opel maybe?

photographs have played a strange role in my life. with such a small family to begin with and a complete inability on the part of all involved to deal with or relate to anything that has happened, i found myself spending a lot of time as a child poring over my grandmother's photo albums trying to piece it all together for myself. she gave me most of the pictures from my own childhood, and most of them were sadly damaged in a flood at my house in chicago in 2001.

never feel any regret about clicking the umpteen- thousandth picture of Lucy. Photographs are incredible documents, and as our memories grow hazy, they often become the only record that anything actually happened.

I don't understand. How did all of these people meet their spouses and get married if they didn't have photos to send each other over the internet? Did they have to post their computer dating profiles in the '20s without a photo? That must have been HARD!!!

Grib- the car, as Kent mentioned, is a 1968 tangerine Porsche 912, which was basically a Karmann Ghia with sleeker lines and more cachet. For a while it had a tape deck with no fast-forward or reverse - just one button for PLAY. Porsche aficianados will know it wasn't a "Porsche" as we now consider them, but it was still pretty stylin' for Cedar Rapids, IA in the early '70s.

I can still hear the metallic timpani-rim sound of those doors closing.

thanks for the car i.d., ian. i was thinking a red sports car would have been exotic for cedar rapids. we had a fiat spider in ferrum, virginia (pop. 400) and people didn't know what the hell it was. yes, i remember the 912. basically an underpowered 911. still a cool car, though. i even liked the almost-universally-maligned 914. a friend of my dad's had two of them, and they ran just fine in my estimation.

Second the emotion re: pix of the little Lucy--there can never be too many as far as this godmother is concerned!!! BTW, I only just (finally) got her Xmas present, and will send it to you posthaste! Just in case she is worried that Aunt Annie is not thinking about her always in her utter cuteness.

I also second the emotion as far as family pix are concerned--for Xmas my mom did the coolest thing, which was putting some old super8s onto DVD for us--incredible footage of Greg riding Jim Jump the pony at age 2--all 4 grandparents (only one still survives) are featured, as well as prime beach and birthday moments--every movie prompts this lament from me to Mom: "What happened to those CLOTHES?? Why didn't you save them for me??" She thinks she looks 'tacky' and fat, whereas she actually looks timeless and gorgeous.

Oh man--the yellow scoop tee with the matching yellow-red-fuschia-green madras PANTS!! Where, oh where did they go?

I would love to make e'mail connection with "Laurie From Manly Dorm." My wife is also descended from Gottwald Winkler, through his son Gustav, who married Emma Dorn and begat Sophie Dorn, who married William Gloekner, my wife's paternal grandfather. I would particularly like a copy of the family photo, if you could scan it.

We just learned about Gottwald during genealogy research last night.

Thanks,

Jack Darr
(and Betsy Gleckner Darr)

I have just started researching the Winkler clan. My mother-in-law just gave me a wealth of documents including the 1899 50th wedding anniversary photo.

Gustav was the father of Harry who was the father of Mildred who was my husbands grandmother.

please contact me! gini@artfulhomes.com