Getting past writer’s block

Since my last post on this site was 363 days ago and I’m feeling a bit bad about that, I want to post at least something to break my writer’s block streak today before a whole year has gone by.

History: Not holding any info back!

First, I have not made any truly groundbreaking discoveries about new ancestors through historical records. But then, I’ve not really been actively working on that, either–part of the reason I’ve not posted.

Science: Intriguing but hard-to-pin-down relatives discovered via DNA

Since I got the results from the Family Tree DNA (FTDNA) test a few years ago, others who have used their service have turned up as a distant cousin. However, in none of those cases have we been able to figure out the relationship via historical records. Most recently, just a few weeks ago, a close match (perhaps a 2nd or 3rd cousin) contacted me, who has ancestors in the Molotschna settlement in Ukraine, but we are still working on who our common relative might be. The surnames Wiens and Dueck have floated to the top so far.

Metaphysics: Dream visitations from forebears

My reply this evening to my first cousin Orris in the “Where do you fit in the family tree” post that is stuck to the top of the blog about visitations makes me wonder if any other readers here experience those. On quite a regular basis in my dreams, some or all of the nuclear family I grew up in are visiting together, sometimes in what kinda-sorta seems to be the house I lived in from age 7-18, sometimes on a trip to an unrecognizable destination, but we’re all traveling together–in many of these although not all, my Dad, who died in 2011, is still with us.

A couple years ago, I had such a vivid dream of my namesake, Oma Mary Janzen, that I posted about it on my Facebook page, saying, “During a Sat. a.m. sleep-in dream, our family was just going to start having a party and attendees included my Mom, my siblings, my late Dad (who was taking a nap in a side bedroom–I had to go in there at some point, woke him up, and apologized), and Dad’s mom, Oma Mary, vibrant and standing tall as she looked at about age 60 in a pretty blue print dress (not diminished how I last saw her in the nursing home at age 89 in 1994), and I was so happily surprised and said, ‘Oma! It’s so nice to see you!'”

What, if anything, do such visitations have to tell us? (Other than that we really miss our lost loved ones.)

Culture: Grandmother hats?!

Last summer, I visited my sister and brother-in-law and they took me to see Mennonite heritage hot spots in southern Manitoba, Canada including a reproduction village as it might have appeared in Ukraine a century ago. A couple months later, my much more genealogically-savvy second cousin did much the same, then afterwards she made a reference to our foremothers donning a “grandmother hat” at some undefined life stage. Evidently this was akin to what my great-great grandmother Susanna Mathies is wearing in the picture I have of her. I had never heard of a grandmother hat before, and would love to learn more about this custom for women “of a certain age.”

Remembering Mary Senior

Today is the 105th anniversary of my Dad’s Mom Mary Dirks Janzen’s (Oma’s) birth, July 16, 1905, so I’ve been remembering her.

Oma’s voice in her German accent will never leave my mind’s ear. I will always be able to call it up, I think. (OK, getting a little verklempt; talk amongst yourselves.)

Throughout my childhood, our family got to see Oma and Opa as much as we could, although it was not so easy, since they lived in Washington state and we lived in Illinois, Ohio, then Kansas. I definitely saw them enough to love them very deeply and have lifelong memories, even of Opa, who died when I was 15.

Oma loved knitting, sewing, and other needlecrafts, so on holidays, we always got gifts like knitted house slippers (in her signature loud, clashing color combinations), aprons, and such. Also, I still have the hardbound Aesop’s Fables book I got from her and Opa at age 5 inscribed “With love to Mary from Opa and Oma Christmas 1967.” And for one of my few known loyal blog readers–besides my Mom–(you know who you are): each of us three kids got a gray, white, and RED sock monkey she made from a kit–I still have mine, named Mickey, but the fabric is disintegrating.

One childhood memory especially stands out: when my parents went to the 1972 Mennonite World Conference in Brazil, followed by a South American tour, when I was 10, Oma by herself came to Kansas to stay with us kids for a couple weeks. Does anybody remember peanut butter coming in big, maybe 5-pound glass jars? (Does anybody remember glass jars?) (Does anybody remember when no kids were allergic to peanut butter?) Anyway, according to the thrifty ways of our people, myself included, one always washes and reuses jars and bags of all kind. But I digress. Her little joke or fun thing for the visit was that she’d filled a large 5-lb.-size recycled peanut butter jar with butterscotch candies that she placed in a kitchen cupboard and we had to beg for them to amuse her.

After Opa died, Oma, who’d lived in Ritzville, Washington (in the flatter eastern farming portion of the state as opposed to the Seattle side with the Cascade Mountains) for many years alongside my Uncle Herb and Aunt Terry and kids, took a huge step when I was halfway through high school and moved several states away to live in the same town as us. She lived in an apartment in a quiet 2-story building. That is when she and I truly bonded and became “buddies.” Anyway, since I was named after her and her name was also Mary Janzen, she started calling me “Mary Junior,” and she was “Mary Senior.” Every Sunday noon after church my parents and I (because my older brother and sister weren’t at home anymore) went to her apartment for dinner (I’m curious linguistically–does anybody else’s dialect refer to a hot noon meal, especially on Sunday, as dinner, as opposed to lunch? Our family’s did.) The menu was predictable, but always very delicious: baked chicken coated in corn flake crumbs. Those are very lovely memories, and these Sunday noon get-togethers with Oma and my parents continued through my college years, as I went to college in the same town. As a side note, for her other meals, not with company, she could come up with some really weird health food concoctions involving brews of carob, wheat germ, soy, etc., which fortunately, she did not push on her guests!

I’m going to end my reminiscences there, but I’d welcome other family members to comment with other little anecdotes and memories.

I am beside myself

For the last couple months, I’ve been spending a great deal of time (OK, I’ve been completely obsessed) retyping, re-editing, and researching Oma’s book The Batum Story. Because our department at work engages in a lot of discussion of copyrighted vs. free content (we’re hosting a big symposium March 29 that centers on that topic), yesterday I posted to our internal staff blog asking advice on whether I could claim to copyright the new edition, even though I’m not the author. I said I wanted a statement to the effect that anyone could copy it unmodified for nonprofit purposes, but just wanted to make sure no one defamed or misrepresented our clan.

Well, don’t even mind that! It pales in comparison to a discovery I made this evening that gave me an awful feeling in my stomach and completely took the wind out of my sails. I did a Google search for “Batum warehouse 88.” As as result, I found that a Canadian woman named Irmgard Epp included all the text from The Batum Story in her published and copyrighted! 2006 book Constantinoplers: Escape from
Bolshevism without making any effort to contact our family or obtain permission. I just sent off an e-mail to the publisher basically asking what the hay.

I mean, does that imply if I share my new edition, I’ll violate the copyright of this person who stole Oma’s book? Mostly, I feel our family has been violated.

Update 3-12: The Batum Story is in the Bethel College Mennonite Library and Archives collection, and Oma is listed as the publisher. Trafford Publishing of Victoria, B.C. has passed on my request to correspond with this woman. Our department’s director wrote: “Copyright is inherent. In other words, with or without an explicit
copyright statement your grandmother owns the text. This other woman is
in violation of copyright law. I think ;-)”