Halloween has always been a favorite time of year for me. I have fond memories of going trick-or-treating, bringing home the loot to my mom, and putting the candy in Halloween-themed tins. In the nineties, my brother and his friend Nathaniel created a haunted house in Nathaniel’s basement. I don’t remember too much about it, but I know that I looked forward to going every year because they did a great job and didn’t try to scare me too much.
In the later years, Micah and Dad would decorate our big front porch for Halloween. Even I would get in the spirit by volunteering at The Children’s Museum Guild’s Haunted House. I hope to write a couple more posts about my love of Halloween, but for now, here’s a short video showing Nathaniel and Micah’s haunted house. The video quality isn’t super great because of the haunted house being dark and the video being shot using VHS, but I still hope you get a feel for what the haunted house was like. Enjoy!
Okay friends, this post is going to be half rant and half tip… just fair warning for you!
In my quest to become more environmentally friendly, I have waged a battle against the Junk Mail Mafia (aka the United States Postal Service). I like to recycle, you see, but I realized I was recycling a ton of paper I didn’t ask for: circulars, credit card offers, coupons, etc. Well, I finally got tired of it.
In fact, just yesterday I got an offer from The Indianapolis Star. I politely wrote "Refuse / RTS" (Return to Sender), only to have a note from my mailman that said, "can’t take it back, if you don’t want it, throw it away."
Now this really ticked me off. It’s like these companies are paying the postal service to deliver crap that I don’t want and then making it my responsibility to throw it away. I wanted to give the postal carrier a piece of my mind, but he was correct, unless it says "Return Service Corrected," he can’t take it back.
And you can’t really blame the postal carrier, he’s just doing his job. After all, according to a Newsweek article in 2008, direct mail accounts for 52% of all mail delivered by the USPS. With all the money the USPS is losing, why would the postal service want to help me in my crusade against junk mail? That would mean lost revenue and an even bigger deficit for them!
Well, I do have to tell you that my junk mail has gone down in number and I am going to pass along this great advice to you. It will make your mailbox feel five pounds lighter!
Here’s how you reduce (and possibly eliminate) your junk mail:
STEP 3: Check your circulars to see where they’re coming from. For example, I get circulars from Red Plum (click here to opt-out of their list). You’ll also want to look at other places like Advo and Valpak, if they have a web site, they should have a link for you to opt-out.
STEP 4: Send it back when you can. With the credit card offers, I would just take all the stuff they mailed me, circle my address in big red marker, and write "REMOVE FROM BULK MAIL LIST." I’d stuff all that into the pre-paid envelope and send it back. So far, it has worked. With other organizations, you may have to go to their web site and send them an e-mail telling them to stop. If they don’t, you can go to the Post Office and fill out a form to block mail from them. For me, Citi Bank was the worst, they’d send me three or more credit card offers a week. They only stopped after I complained about them on Twitter (thank you interwebz!).
So there you go, friends. I think I covered all the bases. I’ve been on this crusade for a month or two and I have noticed results. Now if I can just get The Indianapolis Star to quit sending me their Carmel Star, I should be good. Just so you know, the Carmel Star (and the variations you receive on your side of town) is a horrible attempt to get you to read week-old stories and to bombard you with advertising. No thanks!
The more I work on my genealogy, the more I miss my Grandpa Kinnaman. He was a great man and I miss him so much. I can’t wait for the day that I’ll see him in heaven and he’ll greet me with that all-too-familiar greeting, "Hey there, Turkey!"
I’ll be sure to post some stories about him soon, but for now, I must get back to work. Miss ya Grandpa!
I have been on a journey lately, which probably explains my absence from blogging over this past week. Yes friends, I have been digging into my family’s past to find out where I’m from and as it turns out, my roots are right here in Indiana.
How I Got Interested
I have to give a good amount of credit to my friend and co-worker Dana who has been busy researching her own family. As she talked about all the research she was doing, it reminded me of how much time my Grandma Hicks spent doing the same thing: writing to possible relatives, going to cemeteries, searching through birth and marriage indexes.
So why did I get interested? The simple truth is that I was interested in who my family truly was. Living on the north side of Marion County and now living in Hamilton County, I’ve heard people ask, "are you related to that Kinnaman?" Up until now, I haven’t really been able to give much of an answer. Yet after doing some research, I’m beginning to see that it’s a really good possibility that I am indeed related to many of the Kinnamans living in Hamilton County.
What I’ve Found
My first task has been to find out about more about my namesake, the Kinnaman family. So I went to ancestry.com, signed-up for the free trial and went digging through records. It’s amazing how many records are being digitized! I was able to see census records from 1890, 1900, 1910, 1920, and 1930. And my great-grandfather Kinnaman? I found his draft registration card from World War II… with his signature and everything!
Long story short? I’ve found out that my 4th Great Grandfather was John C Kinnaman and that he settled in Fall Creek Township (not far from Hamilton Southeastern High School) in 1832. I also found and visited Kinnaman Cemetery near IN-238 and Florida Avenue where many of my ancestors are buried.
As I looked through books on the history of Hamilton County, I was able to find a map of Fall Creek Township and was able to see the land that my ancestors owned… pretty cool!
Where to go from here…
Now that I’ve gotten through the discovery stage of my research, I’m starting to go more in-depth in cleaning up my family tree: verifying dates, documenting my findings, and all that good stuff.
To me, genealogy is a discovery into the DNA of who we really are. I think sometimes we get so caught up in living our lives for today that we fail to realize how far our families have come.
Since I actually enjoy research and being thorough, I’m hoping that the fruits of all this labor will give my nieces and nephew (and hopefully my own children) a view into who they are and give them something to be proud of. And hopefully, someone will continue to add on to my research, so that 100 years from now or more, one of my descendants can have the same discoveries I have.
"People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors." – Edmund Burke
I decided to create a new blog category today called, "Random Memories." These memories are like old friends that I haven’t heard from in a while and they come to visit when a sound, smell, or familiar place entices them. Sometimes, these memories appear out of nowhere and catch me completely by surprise!
So I realized that I want to capture these memories in writing as best as I can so that if my memory should fail me later in life, I will have record of them. These posts probably won’t mean anything to many of you, but perhaps they’ll spark a memory in your mind or at least give you a little insight into who I am. And with that… here’s my first random memory…
Random Memory #1: Hardee’s Cinnamon Raisin Biscuits
Circa: 1994-1997
Yes, I understand that this is a weird memory to start out with, but taste and smell are just as integral a part of our memory as seeing and hearing.
Anyway, this memory came to me on a cold fall morning as my car’s heater blew warm air onto my feet. How does this evoke memories of Hardee’s Cinnamon Raisin Biscuits? Well, it reminds me of when our Dad used to drive us to school.
On those cold winter mornings he would go out into the garage and start up his car, a 1991 Chevrolet Blazer and let it warm up. I find this to be a pretty nice gesture on his part, since all of us boys had paper routes growing and he typically let us freeze our butts off delivering papers, telling us that "it builds character."
On Friday mornings, Dad would typically buy us a treat before school. I can still remember those cold mornings when he’d roll down the window at the drive-thru to place his order as we were temporarily blasted by the cold, only to be rewarded a few minutes later with a box of warm cinnamon raisin biscuits on our laps. Ahh, nothing like a warm cinnamon raisin biscuit glazed with icing to start the morning, not to mention the hot air blowing on my shoes as it kept the car warm.
I haven’t eaten breakfast at Hardee’s since those days when my Dad used to take us, and I don’t know if they still have those awesome cinnamon raisin biscuits. But I will always treasure those Friday mornings when my Dad would buy us a treat before school… loading us up with a sugar high before handing us off to our teachers.
Long story short? I’ve found out that my 4th Great Grandfather was John C Kinnaman and that he settled in Fall Creek Township (not far from Hamilton Southeastern High School) in 1832. I also found and visited Kinnaman Cemetery near IN-238 and Florida Avenue where many of my ancestors are buried.