That's why you get into family history research. How many of you know anything about your great grandparents?
Here is a great search site: http://www.familysearch.org/
Oh I've done that too. It was about 25 years ago. My Grandmother and I sat down and drew up a family tree. Many phone calls were placed to get more information. It was fun for the time. But now that it's been 25 years, I can't say that I recall any of there names. For how bad this may sound, the only importance they've had on my life at this point is in being my ancestors. Which brought life to more recent ancestors, etc.
Being that I'm mostly Italian and a little Greek, had my family stayed where they were, if I'd have even come into being, I most likely would have been an Italian farmer at this point. Not a bad life and no worse than what I have now.
It might be nice to know where you've come from, but I think it's ultimately more important to know where you are going to go forward in your life. Had I had this "insight" sooner, I don't think I would have pissed away some of the opportunities I was given, or that I would have just tried that much harder to succeed. Even then, it wouldn't have amounted to much more than being able to buy more stuff. As cramped as I am in my apartment now, I'm still pretty comfortable with where I ended up (so far).
We (Americans) seem to have a problem with material wealth in that we judge others by what they own, rather than the quality of life the other has. Quality of life is not just about material things. That's one thing I CAN say about our ancestors. While they didn't have as much, they still managed for the most part to have fulfilling lives. People 100 years ago got much more excercise, did more outdoors, such as plant their own gardens, and maintain them. Unfortunately (no matter how much we want to say no), we as a nation have generally gotten fat and lazy as things have become easier to own instead of working hard for them and appreciating them more because of it.
Things are going to get much tougher here in the next few years. We are already in a recession with mounting inflation. With other countries so deeply involved within our economy, we can't relie on just ourselves to get ourselves out of this mess. And unfortunately with many countries harboring bitterness towards the U.S. it's only going to make matters worse. Now is the time to seriously consider pinching those pennies. I know for myself I've down that by cutting in half my SW budget, but it may take even more than that in the near future.
The housing market crash "fueled" by the gas crunch (pun intended), has started to have an impact on the stock market. Major long-time GOOD business are going belly up. Investors are getting scared and stocks are starting to be sold off. If a major sell-off occurs, that could put us in a major depression close to if not as bad as the "Great Depression" of the early 20th century. If that happens, forget about SW toys.
Whew, sorry went off topic again, but I've just had this on my mind more this week than any ever before and had to get it out.
-Sal
