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| My 2025 Challenge Stats |
As I will be be travelling in March and attending and speaking at Connections2025, an Australasian genealogy conference, my reading time will be impacted. Being eight books ahead of schedule will help me to keep on track to reach my target of 100 books read this year.
You can follow my reading journey on Goodreads, here https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/2580847-jill-ball
Here are the covers of the eleven books I read in February.
I'm pleased to report that I managed to read 13 books in January towards the Goodreads 2025 Reading Challenge. Hopefully being ahead of schedule will stand me in good stead when Mr GeniAus and I are distracted when travelling.
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| My 2025 Challenge Progress Stats |
In efforts to clean up my stuff (personal assets) I am going through my genealogy folders and of course I'm unearthing some treasures of times past that had faded from my memory
Back in 1970/1972 I was the Children's Librarian at Randwick Municipal Library (now Randwick City Library). In those days, when many schools did not have libraries on site we forged strong alliances with local schools and hosted regular visits from there classes. We also cooperated with neighbouring Municipal Libraries on several ventures. One of these that I had forgotten was a small publication, Children Writing.
With the Children's Librarians from Waverley and Woollahra Libraries and support from local schools in our areas we edited and published several issues of Children Writing. I cannot remember how many issues were published or what happened to the funds raised from its sale.
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| Children Writing : Record on Trove |
When I fired up Trove this morning I was delighted to see that four Australian libraries hold copies of Children Writing a little project to which I made a contribution to over 50 years ago.
I grabbed my phone and took a few snaps of my copy of Issue 2, June 1971 this morning.
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| Cover of Children Writing |
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| Title Page |
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| Editorial |
I sometimes list Photography as one of my Hobbies but that's not really accurate. It's just an activity that, since smartphones came into my life, is a part of my everyday life.
A photo is an aide-memoire to assist my flagging memory - it may be a photograph, a business card, a memorable meal, a book for the reading list, treasured time with family, the changing moods on our Lake, an offer in a Facebook ad, an idea for a blog post.
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| For the reading list |
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| A meal to remember - not just for the food |
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| A sensational day out |
All of these images or snaps are reviewed regularly and either consigned to the trash (not many) or transferred to my image archive, an external hard disk drive, where I religiously catalogue add metadata: the who, what, why, when and where of the images.
When we are travelling my snapping activity goes into overdrive. I add a small digital camera with a long zoom and several batteries to my arsenal so that I have plenty of juice to get through the day. I try to process these each evening before I forget where they were taken. When I forget this task I create a nightmare for my return home
The result is that I have an external hard drive (and another for backup) with several terabytes of images. Whenever a family member needs a photo of a particular event or a selection to show at family event I can quickly search my collection and come up with the goods.
Recently I came across and joined a local photography group, Lake Macquarie Area in Photos, on Facebook that issues a weekly challenge or two to its members. I love a challenge so I very quickly entered some, it is an opportunity to share some of my better snaps. As I am mostly sharing photos of Carey Bay the focus of my One Place Study it may help me to connect with people from the local area.
I have received lots of positive reinforcement from members of the group and even received an honourable mention for my first entry. Since then I've had a few honourable mentions.
One of last week's themes was "Shimmer", I was overjoyed when my image of the moon's reflection in our Backyard (The Lake) was chosen as photo of the week. As well as gallons of personal satisfaction I was rewarded with my image being posted as the header image for the week on the Facebook Group.
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| My winning Image "Shimmer at Carey Bay" |
I recently discontinued active participation on Twitter and moved my social media activity from that platform to Bluesky (I am @geniaus.bsky.social). While my main focus there is Family History I have been reading unrelated posts. A weekly challenge from a Scottish Lass, Sheena, appealed so I joined her Alphabet Challenge in which one has to post an image related to a them related to the letter of the week.
Three weeks in I am enjoying this fun activity as it is helping me to meet new and interesting connections who participate.
On our recent European jaunt I was able to tick off a site on my Bucket List.
When we disembarked at dawn from our plane at Heathrow on October 18th we headed straight for Avis and collected a rental car. We set out on a leisurely drive via the coast to Dartmouth where we would be staying for a couple of nights. We were delighted to find our comfortable accommodation with a bay window looking over the River Dart, After exploring the town we purchased some provisions for a picnic dinner in our room before we hit the sack. We had been travelling for over 30 hours.
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| View from our Bay Window |
Jet lag had us awake bright and early for our big day out to Greenway, the country home of Agatha Christie. A ferry ride across the river and some winding country roads delivered us to the carpark ready for opening hour.
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| Ferry across the River Dart |
Armed with cameras and smartphones we wandered down the long driveway to Agatha's house. Let's see what was inside.
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| We started our visit in a Living Room |
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| Agatha aged four |
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| The doll in Agatha's portrait |
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| Impressive chest in Agatha's room |
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| A pretty collectible |
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| Agatha's Bedroom |
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| Clothes belonging to Agatha and her daughter Rosalind |
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| Agatha's throne |
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| The library at Greenway |
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| Agatha aged 20 |
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| Impressive door stop |
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| Nursie who taught Agatha to read and write |
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| The house is full of family collections |
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| On the kitchen shelves |
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| Agatha's favourite recipes within |
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| One happy old bibliophile with her souvenir |
