James Calvert - The Next Chapter

My last blog post was in regards to James Calvert, my 3rd Great Grandfather. That post was over 2 years ago. I have more news on this, and it is very awesome, to say the least.

I had mentioned that I had someone dig up information on James Calvert via his military records. As part of that digging, it was discovered that James listed his city of birth as "Rockcerry", county Monaghan circa 1824 and was a farmer by trade prior to his joining the Dragoons. His marriage certificate listed his father as Michael Calvert who was also a farmer by trade.

First, let me emphasize that my family has been searching for ANY information on James Calvert and his family for many, many generations. Up until my discoveries with James' military records, there has been precious little known about where James was born or anything about his family. I am totally excited to say that there is even more known now than ever before, and it may be the opening door to an exciting vista of my family's heritage in Ireland.

I took my information about James and did some contacting around to try and get a better bead on his family in Ireland. Ireland is a difficult nut to crack for genealogists. The majority of Irish people were/are Catholic, and it was technically illegal to be Catholic in Ireland until the mid- to late 1800s. So records going that far back are difficult to locate, as it was also illegal to keep such records. When the Irish gained some measure of independence and were able to practice their preferred religion, they were able to keep and maintain better records. Even so, the Catholic Church has been very suspicious and reluctant to allow any access to their records for people researching their families. You can speculate to the reasons why, but the simple fact is, that for a long time, it was hard to access any such information.

Even so, it was not a solid given that the Calverts were Catholic. In fact, given that James joined the British Dragoons, it would seem that he, at least, was loyal to the Crown, and thus unlikely to be Catholic. Regardless, Irish records are difficult to access, even for the Protestant records. Unlike the willingness of the Church of England, in England, to allow digitizing and indexing of birth/christening/marriage/death/etc. records. Even so, the number of records in England alone are staggering. I believe I've heard that less than 15% of the records in England have even been digitized yet.

But I digress. The popularity of genealogy now has opened new doors and allowed people to research things more, even in Ireland. After some digging, I made contact with an independent researcher in Ireland who took on my project and began to dig on James given the information I had from his military records.

And it seems I hit the jackpot! The were able to locate solid proof of James' christening, and also identified his mother, father, and 7 siblings, including one other brother who also joined the British Dragoons.

So, here is the family found by the researchers:

• Thomas baptized 18 November 1811 of Michael Calvert of Tanmacnally
• George baptized 24 September 1815 of Michael Calvert and Jane Burnie of Milltown
• Elizabeth baptized 14 February 1817 of Michael Calvert and Jane McBurney of Milltown
• Susanna baptized 15 August 1819 of Michael and Jane Calvert of Tanmacnally
• Margaret baptized 14 November 1821 of Michael and Jane Calvert of Tanmacnally
• John baptized 8 September 1822 of Michael and Jane Calvert of Tanmacnally
• Edward baptized 5 October 1828 of Michael and Jane Calvert of Tanmacnally

In the same parish registry, they found James, who was baptized on 1 May 1823, to Michael and Jane Calvert, which the name matches to the name on James' marriage record. 

This opens new windows. I have been out to an Irish records site and have confirmed the existence on that site of the records mentioned above. I haven't dug in yet to find any others or any other records; the site requires a subscription and I want to get my act together before I pay to dig through records. It's not terribly expensive, but I want to minimize my time subscribed to get the maximum information out of it before I start to transfer information to familyhistory.org. 

The information I had was enough to establish the existence of the family and qualify them as being eligible for submission for temple work. I took the 9 names (7 siblings and mother/father) this week with me to the temple and performed the baptisms with my son Ethan as proxy for the males and my daughter Savanna as a proxy for the females. 

Now, I can tell you that in my over 20 years of experience as a Young Men's leader, I have performed baptisms and confirmations for the dead many, MANY times. I haven't ever had a problem getting through the prayers for those ordinations. But doing these names, knowing it was me, a great-great-etc-grandson performing the ordinance for them with my children as proxies, and also knowing the GENERATIONS of my family that have been searching in vain for this family, was deeply emotional for me. I also believe it was something more than just that. This family has been found and has had the work done for them in the temple. I can't say they will accept it, or they would even want to, as it's still their choice. But I just have a very, very strong feeling that at least a few of them were very interested in the events of that day. 

I have heard stories of members of the church doing this kind of work and KNOWING those people were there for their ordinances. Some even say they could see them there. I have had no such experience. But I can tell you, that I am not really that emotional of a person, and I felt something there for those ordinances. I can't deny that at all. It was real; I know that much. And I really firmly believe that there are members of James' family that have waited a long, LONG time for what was done for them that night. And they are very happy now.

I believe this is a new door opened for my family. The Calvert family has been found. There is more to find, and the hints and clues are way more available and tantalizing than ever before. New technologies are available, more availability to records are there, more ability to find families are a new reality. There is more to do here, and I intend to continue my efforts. 

Once again, my post is getting long, but I hope you have felt some of the joy I and my family have experienced in this journey. I am humbled that I have been given this opportunity to open doors that have been closed for so long for my family. I know my Mom for one would be overjoyed to know that James' family has been found and their work is being done. In some ways, I would suspect she had a hand in this. 

James Calvert - A Brick Wall?

I decided to dust off this old blog, mostly because the story I want to tell you guys would never fit on Facebook. It's a pretty neat story, so I have to tell you it's pretty long. Stay with me; it is interesting.

Let me get you into perspective. The person I have this cool story to tell you about is James Calvert, our great-great-great-grandfather. We connect to him from this direction: go to your parent (my Mom, Cheril, Ann, Judy, or Gene), then to Grandpa Peterson. Then his mom, Maria Worley, her mom, Mary Jane Calvert, and then her father James Calvert.

What did we know about James Calvert? Well, not very much as it turns out. He became, what the genealogists call, "a brick wall". That's a person where the ability to go back any further just stops and you can't get past him to go any farther.

What we did know was that he joined the 3rd Dragoons (a sort of mounted infantry unit in England) when he was about 19. He joined in Dundalk, which is a port city in Ireland. That puts his birth year about 1824. At some point in his service, he transferred to the 5th Dragoons and ended up in Warwick, England around 1853. There he married Elizabeth Hiley. In 1854, they had a son they named James Thomas Calvert. James' family must have followed him around during his military service because in 1857, a daughter - Mary Jane Calvert - was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. Our linage comes through this daughter, Mary Jane.

James died in 1858 at the age of 34 and was buried in Aston, Warwickshire, England; the same place his son was born, so he ended up coming back to that location. This also appears to be where his wife, Elizabeth grew up. Elizabeth was born in Birmingham, which is close to Aston. There was a census showing Elizabeth, James Thomas, and Mary Jane in Aston in 1861, but the census of 1870 has Mary Jane and Elizabeth in Utah. The son did not come with them as he only lived to 8 years old and was buried in Ashted in 1862, which I believe is somehow close by Aston.

 But what of James Calvert? Where was he born? Where is his family? No one seemed to be able to provide any information on him and his line in our family history came to a screeching halt. There has been no new information on him for some time; our family history merely named his father as "Thomas Calvert" with no proof of the existence of this person.

Recently, a marriage certificate was located showing James' birth location as "Ireland" and listed his father as Michael. It also said that Michael was a farmer by trade.

A few months ago, there was a Rootstech conference in SLC that I went to the last day for. They had several speakers and I noticed one in particular that focused on researching Irish ancestors. I got excited at the prospect of being able to delve into James' situation and maybe break something loose. The conference was excellent. Genealogy is fairly new to me, but given my computer "geekyness", I always felt like if I invested myself I could get into a groove and make a difference. I have been successful in other areas, so I thought I'd take a shot at James Calvert.

I came home from the conference energized with great ideas on how to find things out about our Irish ancestor. Jumping on my computer, I dug around using the techniques taught at the conference. Several hours later, I struck out completely. Apparently, I ran face first into the wall, just like everyone else that had taken a shot at James in the past.

You see, the problem with Irish genealogy is first, very little is digitized. Even what they have, if you don't know a city or, what they call a "town-land" (in Ireland they call what England would call a "township" a "town-land"; they can be anywhere from 2 or 3 houses to 6,000 acres in size) - if you don't have that, you really can go anywhere, and we had no such information on James.

But I stuck with it. I went to the National Archives web site for the UK and started digging there to see if I could find something by keying on James' service in the Dragoons. Apparently, the English were pretty good at documenting their military people, even dating way back to very early years. I found several references to the Dragoons, with a lot of places I could look into to find information, but, as the vast majority of most of these records are, they are not digitized. That means, you have to go and look at them in person.

A trip to London? Sounds like fun, but that could take a while to come up with the funds! I actually decided to do just that; start saving to make a pilgrimage to London to find info about James! Well, not quite.

In my poking around the National Archive website, I found a link to where you can hire independent researchers to dig through the documents for you, if you can't get to London yourself. I emailed 4 of these people, hoping to hear back from someone who could help me. Only two responded, and they both told me they were too busy to help.

Except one referred me to a friend that specializes in British military research. I got with him and he dug in immediately.

And the results were oh-so-exciting! In a matter of hours, he had located James in the Dragoon's records and felt like he could come up with a detailed history of his military career! 11 hours of his work, and about two weeks later (and about 185 British pounds), I had in my hands, a documented,  detailed history of his entire military career.

Included in that was his transfer from the 3rd Dragoons to the 5th Dragoons. This is significant because for whatever reason they had for it, they listed his EXACT birth city as well as his previous occupation! Which was a farmer, and that fits with what we knew on the marriage certificate. No doubt at all, this was our guy!

We now know what city James was born in. My next steps will be to dig into the Irish records where he was born to see if I can find his birth certificate. If I can, and I feel pretty good that it will yield more information, it could open up a huge door that will lead us to his entire family in Ireland.

I am excited by this development, but I have to be a little reserved knowing what roadblocks lay in store for us right now. Ireland, as you know, remained Catholic and so the parishes where we would be searching are in the hands of the Catholic church. They are more open now than they have been in letting information out, but it could be a challenge to get some of that information. I have Dad helping me in getting the documentation on James loaded and then will help me get going on digging up James' family.

While I am reserved about the challenges ahead on finding out more about James' family, I can't help but think that the divine intervention that helped me get this information will lead to more breakthroughs. Someone is wanting this information found. It has sat dormant for a long time, but the Calvert family wants to be found, and soon!

This post is getting really long, so I am going to wrap this up. I will post in the future to let you know about James' military career and some interesting things associated with it. To help with your curiosity, no - he did not go with the company when they went on their campaign to China about that time frame; he stayed home at headquarters. I don't know if it was because he was injured; (he did spend some time in the hospital around that time frame), and he ended up dying shortly there after; there really is no record as to why he died. But there are other items of interest in his military career that may be of interest to you. I'll get that, as well as other updates, as soon as I come across them.

How often should you blog? Ok - maybe more than once every 4 years...

16 years?

TO: Kathryn - the best wife EVER!

Well, here we are. 16 years later. What a different world we are in now, don't you say? 16 years ago, I thought I loved you and felt like I couldn't be closer to a person than I felt like 16 years ago today. How wrong I was, but how pleasantly surprised I am to find out that I had no idea how great it is to be married to my best friend in the world (universe really) and how much I could love someone as much I as I love you.

We have seen a lot, you and me. Some of it has been awesome. Some of it has been horrifying. Some of it has been challenging. Some of it has been downright nasty. But somehow we made it through and we're still best friends; even better, really.

I don't know what to say today to let you know how I really feel. I have never been good at it. But let me say this one thing to you, Kathryn:





Now, and forever.....

Love you!

Morosity - is it really a word?

So, it's been a while since I last posted. How many blog posts start that way? No idea. Well, here's one more.

It's not that I haven't wanted to post. I have had thoughts about it. Many, in fact. But how do you post something without talking about the one thing that has dominated your time, thoughts, efforts, and emotions for the past 5 months? I don't know. Maybe that's why I haven't posted.

Scout camp was great. Tim did really well. Mostly. He did get 6 merit badges. I guess I could complain that he could have got more, but for a 12 year old first year camper, 6 merit badges is awesome. I thought that he was really going to set a world record when he came back with his first merit badge before lunch the first day. But then, he fell victim to Archery and spent about 2 days working on that. Then the "Oops, I lost it again" bug started on him and he lost his score sheet. Well, at least he moved on and did finish up other merit badges. That was great. I was proud of him, although there were many "learning moments". I guess those are important too.

Camp New Fork, in the Wind Rivers of western Wyoming, is a great place for a Scout Camp. I have been there at least 5 times with troops (it may be more; I keep losing track). The most striking thing about that camp is the forest there. It was just awesome.

Sadly, the pine beetle has taken a huge toll on that forest. I'd say at least 50% of the trees in the camp are dead now and we saw many areas that either were totally dead or at least 90% dead. There are a lot of factors that have contributed to it, of course. The best way to put it is that it's all a natural cycle and the forest will come back. It may take a generation, but it will be back.

As fun as it was to go on the Camp, particularly the first camp with a son of mine, it was great to come home. I am so lucky to have the best kids in the world. I missed them all.

It's hard to believe I have a 14 year old daughter now. I hope she knows how proud I am of her. She is a great kid and I know she has great things ahead of her.

Sierra is just so cute, even though she did cut off her beautiful hair! Well, she is still cute and looks great with shorter hair, but I am a Dad that likes long hair on his daughters. I know, I don't have to wear it, so I shouldn't say anything, but I am allowed to have my biases.

Savanna is the bravest, most wonderful birthday present a guy could ever hope for. She still wants me to tuck her in at night. Sometimes I get annoyed and wish she would tuck herself in; then I realize my tucking in nights are numbered. Then I just am grateful she still gives me a hug, smiles, and kisses me on the cheek when I tuck her in.

Ethan is a super, awesome, medium big-ish boy that I just don't know how I could possibly live without. He keeps us all happy, and if you are feeling down, those medium big-ish boy hugs are tonic and balm for the soul.

I like to post stuff that is funny, and I do try to make those posts from time to time. This one won't be as much, but I am sure I'll dredge up some funny stuff sooner or later. It's too ingrained in my personality to make people laugh, I think. I guess that is because laughing is so much better of an emotion; if you are laughing you aren't crying. Sometimes life throws curves at you that make you cry a lot, even when you are tough "manly man". Hopefully, those are the times you learn, grow, and move on so that you can laugh again.

I will be back with more posts, I am sure. There will be funny ones; there may be other ones like this. So for now, so long and thanks for all the fish.

Roto Rooter - Sinus Style

So, maybe you have heard I went in and got the 'roto-rooter' job done on my sinuses. Honestly, it was a long time in coming. I have dealt with sinus infections off and on for years and I really had enough of it. So, after suffering for yet another round of it this year, I went in and had an appointment with an "Ears, Nose, & Throat" Specialist. After taking a look at the CT scan of my sinuses, it was pretty clear that they, well, weren't pretty clear.

I could give you the long list of technical/medical names for the procedures, but I doubt it would mean much to you. It doesn't mean much to me either, other than they stuck something up my nose, rooted around for a while, and figured once enough was rooted out, they would call it a day.

I took a somewhat casual approach to this. I knew it was going to be fairly major - probably the most intrusive procedure since I had my ankle operated on just after my mission. Still, all told, this shouldn't have been nearly as bad as all that, and I guess from an overall standpoint, it really hasn't been. But what it was, it was interesting.

One person I work with had this same procedure done a few years ago. She swears it was worse than having gone through childbirth. I can't speak to that, obviously. But since she actually experienced both, I would say she may be in a unique position to gauge it. Either way, I had my trepidations about the process.

I had to go in early on the 4th for the procedure. I say early, but it wasn't too early. I was supposed to be there at 8:45 am, and was the second procedure scheduled for that day. The plan was to go, get prepped and ready, then off to the surgery at about 9:45 or so. Well, things never go as planned and I was not taken in until almost 11.

I remember going down the hall to the operating room. We left the pre-op room at about 10:50. I was trying to keep careful track of time for the 'memory gap' - the time when you get stoned beyond the ability to remember anything and when you start coming back out of it. Well, I made it to just about the time when the cart stopped and they locked the wheels in place for the surgery. The very next second (at least at my point of reference), I was making jumbled noises about being thirsty, and hearing someone tell me something to the effect that I couldn't have anything to drink just yet.

I don't know who it is that covers the post-operation recovery, but I bet they could have some serious fun with the people coming out of anesthesia. I only remember bits and pieces of it, and everything I said, I am positive was important, and cognizant. Reality could beg to differ on that point, I am sure.

Anyhow, the procedure went longer than they expected. It was supposed to take 1 1/2 hours, and ended up taking closer to 2 1/2 hours. I heard something about having a hard time with the ventilation tube they stuck down my throat (could be hearsay. I don't remember anything about a tube down my throat). I just knew that I felt very much like I had got a good swift kick in the face. It didn't really hurt, because I was so doped up, but I knew it had been hacked on. Plus, I couldn't breath through my nose, as it was packed almost to bursting point with some sort of gauze packing stuff. More on that blessed little piece of equipment later.

After a while of getting myself to the point I could actually sit upright and try and walk, I was released to go home. Fortunately, Kathryn was there as I really doubt the drive home would have been a good experience for me if I had to do it on my own.

And thus started the 4 day journey into discomfort and recovery. All told, it wasn't so bad - just long and uncomfortable. After switching to pain pills (from the lovely IV stuff they were loading me with), I got really strange in my sleeping patterns. I would sit on a chair and doze off only to awaken 2-3 minutes later. I could engage in real conversation with Kathryn or the kids for a while, and once they stepped out I would konk out for 3 minutes or so, they startle myself into being awake. I was supposed to sleep on an incline, so I 'slept' in our Lazy-Boy recliner, which was an adventure in and of itself. But of all the things that it was, the most unusual aspect was that I had nothing coming in or out of my nose.

Have you ever tried to swallow without having the benefit of your nose? It's easy to simulate. Just pinch your nostrils together and try to drink something and actually swallow it. It isn't so easy. Without having the benefit of your nose, things don't go the way they are designed to. Water that is supposed to go down the throat, end up partially coming up the nose. Or the pressure differential ends up "popping" your eardrums - you know, like plugging your nose and trying to blow out - what you do when driving up a canyon and the altitude changes.

After 4 days of this, I was ready to get rid of the nose plugs. I had no idea what this entailed. Fortunately so, because if I did, I would not have been willing to even go to get those things out.
Talking about an amazing experience. Let's see, how to describe it - I can't. What I can say is that the removal of those plugs were FAR worse than anything else I had done during the course of the procedure.

I went into the exam room, and the doctor hiked up the chair I was in so he could an angle on these plug things. I guess they have improved this process, as they used to take gauze strips and stuff them up your nose to pack them really good. This removal was pretty bad - my Mom had it done, and she didn't have many glowing things to say about it. The gauze strips they used to use were 6 foot long pieces, soaked in Vaseline, then crammed into the sinus cavity. Removal entailed grabbing a hold of the end of a piece and pulling on it until all 6 feet came out. The picture I am painting is of a magician pulling a scarf out of his pocket, only it is coming out of your nose - and it keeps coming, and coming. I think Mom's description was something to the effect of, "How did they manage to get all that crap in there?"

Well, my friend, times - they are a changin'. That sort of thing isn't done anymore. Now, they stick this foam thing up there with a straw in it, and once it's in, they inflate it to pack in the sinus. The foam is absorbent, so any liquid gunk can get caught by it, and thus we don't have to go through the magic trick when taking the stuff out.

For mine, they had a total of 4 of these things up my nose; two in each nostril. The doctor got the little string cut that was keeping track of the ends of them, then got the little straw thingie out and let it sit for a second or two to deflate. That's when the fun began.

He took what looked like a pair of needle nose pliers and grabbed the end of the first one and gave it a small crank to one side to get it loose. Inside my head, this sounded a bit like a chisel being hit by a sledge hammer, and a bunch of crackling, popping noses that indicated a significant chunk of my face had dislodged. He then grabbed the end of this foam blob thingie and pulled it out. Only it was bigger than my nostril. If I could visualize it, I would imagine someone using needle nose pliers to try and pull a grape through a straw.

As all fun does come to an end, the foam thinigie finally came out. As I have a somewhat morbid curiosity, I had initially wanted to see what the thing looked like, but my entire body was in the middle of a complete panic attack, afraid that someone had initiated a deadly assault on my skull and had just ripped a chunk out of it. Hot flashes like I never felt before crashed over my body from head to toe. I started sweating, the room started spinning, and I started to go to tunnel vision. At the peak of this pleasant experience, the doctor plunged on with the next foam plug. Despite my surprise at the second wave of the assault, my body at least knew this time what to expect and thus very completely panicked at the cracking, popping noises as the second foam plug was wrenched free from it's original position. A grape-in-the-straw moment later, and foam plug #2 was gone.

I had hoped for a moment to get the license plate number of the bus that just blind sided me, when the doctor plunged in for plug #3. At this point, I realized that plug #2 at least had the benefit that plug #1 was gone and had some room to move for plug #2, because plug #3 took some work to get the cracking, popping noises going. Do I need mention how much my body loved this particular experience? By this time I was seriously questioning my thought process that brought me to be wearing a long sleeve shirt to this procedure. I was certain to have soaked through that in seconds. Follow a grape-in-a-straw moment, and soon plug #4 was doing it's creaking, popping thing. Finally that one came out and I was left to try and gather up the pieces of my face and figure out what the crap had just happened.

The doctor used his suction thing to get some fluid away (he assured me it wasn't blood - not sure why I would have cared with half my face missing, but it was important to him). Then he said in a satisfied voice, "Well, how's that? Can you breath?" I recall taking a moment to soak this question in. It had all the relevance of having someone dropping a nuclear bomb and then asking if I thought it smelled pretty after wards. All I could think of was that I seriously wasn't going to stay in that chair once I passed out and we better make arrangements before I face plant on the floor. So, I feebly said, "Yeah, I can breath, but I think I am going to pass out!"

The doctor sort of chuckled and got me a cold washcloth to try and help me recover. He then launched into his reasoning for going after all 4 plugs with a gusto, saying he had tried to take one out, give his patient time to recover, then going after the next, but he said this way was much more humane. 2 minutes and we were done, as opposed to 20 minutes of drawn out agony. Deep down inside, I would have to agree.

After 5 minutes of discussion about "what's next" (to which I seriously hope Kathryn was listening as I had no idea what he was talking about. I was still trying to unscramble my brains), I was able to get up on shaky legs and to leave the office. I fully believe that the plug removal was FAR worse than the surgery, at least for my personal experience.

Everyday shows improvement, and I am thinking I'll be back up and around by the end of the week. Not bad for having my face re-arranged, I guess.

An Ode to January

Ahh, January. How do we love thee? Let me count the ways!!

First, there is.......







Hmmm.....what to start with. Think.....

Ok. First there is......






What can I put down for the first. Hmm....I am at a quandary here.

Shoot - I seemed to have lost my train of thought. What was I talking about? Oh yeah. January. This is supposed to be a blog on why I like January so much. How do I get this ball rolling....

Ahh - got it! Ok, here goes:

First......








Dang, lost it again.

Well, the best I can say is this. Have you ever wondered why December goes so fast and February seems to drag on forever?

It's because





JANUARY SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


There is just nothing more to it than that. You know how sometimes people refer to the month as it's closing out as that month "dying"? As in, "the boy born as the month of July dies" (vague Harry Potter reference here). Well, if it were true that a month could die, once January died, I'd do a happy dance on it's grave!

I hate January. If you could rank all 12 months on order of goodness, you would not be able to rate January because #12 out of 12 is just far too kind for that month. You'd have to allocate about 35 blank dates to give January it's proper ranking of #38 out of 12, and I feel that would be even a bit too kind.

Why is January so bad you ask? First off, I'd say "DUH!!!" But if you were really clueless, I'd have to tell you my reasoning. First off, it's cold here in January. Too cold. As in, so cold that your nose hairs start to freeze together while you are trying to walk around and actually breath like a normal human or mammal. Generally, you find yourself minimizing the time you spend out of doors because it takes so long to bundle up to the point where you don't freeze to death by walking outside. You run from your car, to get into a warm house or store, or workplace, then when the business of whatever you were doing is done, you run back to your car and cuss it for not staying warm while you were gone.

At this point, various folks begin to tell me that the real solution is to move to somewhere warm. I am not fooled by this argument. In fact, I have a stronger argument against it. You see, by moving to somewhere like this, it does indeed make January tolerable from an "outside warmth" standpoint. But in effect, you are swapping the nasty January for a nasty July or August where you can't go outside without various body parts literally melting off. Then you find yourself running from your car to your destination in hope that heat stroke doesn't set in while you are out there, then running back and cussing your car for not staying cool while you were gone. It may make January more tolerable, but I love July & August and I could never make myself hate it as much as January. Trust me, I have been in Arizona in July. 116 degrees in the shade? No thank you.

Now back to the January bashing. The other day, I looked directly at the Sun. And I stared at it for an extended period of time. "Aarggh! What were you thinking" you are saying at this point. "Didn't your Mom ever warn you not to stare directly at the Sun?!?!? You'll melt your corneas off!" Well, don't you worry your little head, dear, there was no melting (it's cold out here, remember?) No, it wasn't because it was cold. It was because there was 54.5 miles of airborne garbage for the sunlight to travel through before it made it to my corneas. By the time the sun rays made it to my eyeballs, it was a shell of it's former bad old self. It couldn't barely muster a tear from the old tear ducts due to it's complete lack of intensity. In fact, you could look directly at that blob of a sun and you could almost see the face of the sun, verging on the edge of weeping, big old bottom lip sticking out and feeling sad being repressed behind a sea of airborne gunk. I felt sorry for it. I almost wanted to shout to it not to worry that some day this horrid month would be over, and he'd be back on his feet melting corneas off like it never happened!

Yes, there is an unusual amount of gunk in the air in January around these parts. In fact, I would say of the 31 miserable days of January, perhaps 10 of them have any real extended periods of unobstructed sunlight that makes it to this part of the world. It's not uncommon to go for weeks at a time without being really sure the sun had imploded, or just taken it's ball and gone home because it couldn't play anyhow. When it finally does show up, I find myself closing my eyes, feeling the tingle of actual sun rays on my face and remembering what it was like to be summer again. Then the smog bank rolls back in, I am yanked back into reality, and have to pull my hoodie over my ears before they freeze off again.

I have heard the argument as well that I should take up something like skiing to overcome these January blahs. The rational is that going up to the ski slopes is refreshing because the sun is most always shining up there and you can go enjoy the outdoors. Really? Is it that drastic to take those measures? You see, you have to take on all the other risks associated with skiing.

Skiing. Who came up with that idea? Did someone wake up and say, "You know, I am going to go strap some wood boards on my feet, go to the top of the highest mountain, and slide uncontrollable down the side of the mountain, and hope I don't hit a tree on the way!" Of course, being the top of the mountain, the snow is around 65 feet deep, and as you are going down the luge of death, the wind chill hits -55 degrees and any exposed flesh is immediately frozen. Not to mention should the inevitable happen, and you wipe out. Then joints that aren't meant to bend in ways that get bent in such a collision begin to make you notice they are there. If you are lucky, you don't end up being hauled down off the slopes in a stretcher.

I know - it's not that bad. It just seems like a harsh thing to do to go get some sunlight in the winter. I haven't actually ever skied before, so I have to admit I am making that whole argument against it up. I could do it and really love it. If I could associate anything with cold as being something I would love to do. It would be hard to overcome the psychology of it, is all I am saying.

And so, as of today, January is dying. True, tomorrow is February who's only real saving graces are that for one thing, it's only 28 days, and for another thing, it's not January. But come, let's join in and have a moment of silence for the death of January. Then the celebration can begin!