Shredding

 I have been shredding Edward's correspondence over the 54.5 years of our marriage. We were barely married when he got a name from his uncle I think and they started corresponding back and forth through the years. That fellow died a long time ago now but he was the first of hundreds of people that Edward wrote to on paper first and then email. Edward scanned all of that correspondence through the years  but he did like to hold on to everything he ever owned for sure. After checking to make sure material was scanned I started into shredding last summer but there is so very much of it. It will take me about six months to get it all shredded but I do need to give it that second look over before I shred it. 

I discovered during the shredding process that Edward's cousin Gordon Riddle had also given him a name to write to (and he did) and I have all of that correspondence now shredded. They were discussing their mutual cousinship - the individual both were writing to would write one and enclose a letter for the other one so a bit of back and forth with that. All scanned and now all shredded. I had forgotten how they were related actually through the years. I am not sure that Gordon, after he took Edward to a meeting of the Ottawa Genealogical Society (Edward's first actually he never could persuade me to go to the OGS in London when we lived there) went to all that many after the couple that they went to together. That was the early 1980s.

Years later after I took on the Pincombe Profile (2003) for my cousin George Dekay (my third cousin) we did go to an OGS meeting in London (2010). I was actually a member all those years as I did discover at that time that Edward had acquired family membership at some point when he was attending OGS Ottawa (My Ancestors now I keep forgetting). However, we were asked, since we were visitors from Ottawa Branch, to tell them what names we were researching in London. So of course I said Pincombe, Gray and Routledge (my mother was a Pincombe, her father's mother was a Gray and her mother was a Routledge. No one remembered them which was somewhat of a surprise (George DeKay was related to the Gray family) although when I said that my great grandmother Grace (Gray) Pincombe was a first cousin to Sir John Carling everyone of course knew who Sir John was. But that was many years after my Pincombe uncle who was quite well known had moved to Toronto (in the early 80s) and then passed away in 2003. Amazing how quickly people are forgotten actually  and the Westminster and Delaware History books (I wrote the Pincombe Profile and contributed it along with my cousins as they attended a meeting to help to put it together) had been published in 2005. We went in 2010 so even the History Books had passed into time. However, I wasn't surprised as I barely knew anyone in London by then except for my siblings, their children and their grandchildren both of my parents by then also deceased. 

The shredding is a huge project but I still have many gigabytes of files which I have to resave every once in a while just to be sure that the backup copy does not get corrupted. One day one of Edward's cousins might want all that material (or it would be amazingly perhaps one of his descendants). 

I am going to publish everything that I have done. I will make at least one printed book for each one I write so that the work doesn't get lost. But in general all of my work will be published electronically under a Creative Commons License. 

Cleaning brought all that thinking on. I still have so much to go through and cleaning day I try to do a little. I have three upright three drawer cabinets (wooden) that are full of material from Edward's genealogy. This is more recent than what is in the boxes so have gone into the boxes first because I know he scanned all of that. Maybe I will be finished in five years working through everything. Not sure really but in the meantime I am very strict with my time and only work on his for a limited time period. For one thing it is dusty and I can only stand so much dust before I stop. The old letters are particularly dusty with a number of them over fifty years old. 

One item I am looking for is the gravestone pictures as I am going to put them up on his blog starting soon - when I find them! I know they are there just have to locate them. We went into so many grave yards way out in the bush in New England I just feel I need to publish them on his blog perhaps with a map if there is one with them. Edward did tend to be thorough but I was using a GPS to locate items so it could be he just left that with me and entered the GPS co-ordinates. Time will tell once I find them. 

I see Russia is trying to put fear into Ukrainians that everything is going to get so much worse for them; I wonder now if things are going to get much worse for Russia and they are afraid. Really they should just grow up and leave their childish Nazi ways behind and get out of Ukraine. The Nazis were like two year olds - I want I want and they bludgeoned their way across Europe into France and the Low Countries and then East through Poland (which they convinced Stalin (they even had a joint agreement in 1939) that they could divide and he agreed although claimed that he only did it so that he could be ready. But the psychopathic Nazi Putin has proven that maybe that was a lie after all. Just a short time later the Nazis were on the move into the half of Poland that Russia took, the Baltic States/Ukraine and Russia which was to be the Nazi prize but with the help of the West Russia threw back the Nazi armies - tons and tons of material were shipped into Russia to help them fight the Nazis. No gratitude there for sure; just threats of nuclear war. Does Homo sapiens have a chance with these psychopathic Nazis Putin and his enablers in this world; one wonders. There is so much else to do that they are definitely a roadblock on the way to defeating Climate Change.

It is true that many many Europeans who had been part of the Nazi movement in Europe came to Canada; they were not likely wanted in their own countries and needed  to go somewhere. It was our duty as a human population to take them in. Because of the actions of the upper echelon of the Nazi war machine did all of the people who were part of it have to be imprisoned or executed? No, that is not forgiveness. If they did not take part in the Concentration Camps or getting people to the Concentration Camps or commit other war crimes then the power of forgiveness takes over because that is what God commanded that we do and He sent Jesus to reinforce that forgiveness that we must take on. Remembering Canada in the 50s Nazis were hated when I was a child so the atmosphere was not friendly here. Some Canadians asked that the names of their loved ones who went from Canada to fight with the Nazis and died be on monuments - that was denied. It was denied again and again through my growing up years. They were traitors. I do not believe that there should be any monuments to Nazi soldiers in Canada - they killed our soldiers. We could forgive but we could not forget; they could not be on the monuments with our heroes. Should the individual (and I will not type his name) have been given a standing ovation in parliament - absolutely not. For his children and grandchildren the forgiveness is there but for him we simply tolerated him along with other Nazis (and some did change their names and pretend to be other than they were) and gave him a place to live unless he was involved in the Concentration Camps in which case he should be in jail if he wasn't incarcerated already and permitted freedom at the end of a sentence. If Canada found them to be other than they said they were they were sent back for their punishment in their country of origin. At 20 years of age this individual of current note made choices that were anti-civilization (Nazism is a Satanic Cult) and so his life was forever changed; his choices were wrong and he should have known that he was old enough. He has lived a long life and was only 20 at the end of the war; God will be the ultimate judge of anything that he did because for his unit. We did not find when they were admitted as a group in 1950 that they had been involved in war crimes apparently. Canadians are said to be naive and one wonders who pushed this idea of having this individual to the speaker of the house (that might be an interesting tracking trail); CSIS did warn us that there could be undercover Russian operatives creating havoc during the visit of President Zelenskyy. We needed to be cautious. These operatives could have been in our country for a long time waiting to strike when we would be most embarrassed.

Cleaning day on the two floors is always tiring but I slept in so invigorated for the cleaning of the basement and then my research week is back. Jumping Jacks and then teatime. On to the day.

As I drink my tea, an interesting paper "The last Neanderthal: transition end extinction between Middle and Upper Paleothic in the Iberian Peninsula." It is in Spanish so will be a slow read. Our dry spell is letting us look at so much ancient history. Fascinating stuff.