Dear Folks, While editing the stories I want to include in my book I came across one that I hadn't sent to you at the time. Now that 5 years have gone by, I thought you might enjoy my "boring" day. vee "Boring" Day March 24, 2000 It's late tonight and I've spent more than just a few moments going over the events of my day and as usual, I'm awed over the events. I received a phone call from Earl all the way from Oregon early this afternoon and we discussed the best way for him to send me the Gedcom of his Pearson family that ties into our local Pearson family and discussed his arrangements to come here to New York in May to meet his local cousins. I no sooner hung up when I got a call from "Ange" Angevine from nearby Lockport who wanted to touch base with me on his family and ask me questions about a distant cousin who was coming here for further research on her/their family (his cousin contacted me about the family) and he wanted to know just how they were related. I managed to tell him. It was then getting well into the afternoon and it was only then that I had the chance to get out of my door to head up to the Niagara Falls Library where they have a Local History Dept. I had called them yesterday and asked if they had any information regarding the 1867 Hotchkiss Murder(s) here in Youngstown. The girl that I had talked with, Linda, eventually let me know that she had dug up some newspaper articles on the subject (herself!) and so rather than have her mailing them to me I told her I would drive the distance and pick them up myself. When I got to the library this afternoon, all the photocopied newspaper articles were there, ready for me with my name on the envelope. I couldn't wait to read them. Then I realized that while I was there, there was other research I could do and I asked Mary, a staff member, if she would help me with a roll of census records. She did. While I was going over the 1850 census I had to ask another staff member if she could help. We looked at each other and I guess she recognized me only because of my request yesterday that had my name on it today. She let me know that she was Maureen-she's the head librarian of the History Dept. there. We've had many, many conversations on the phone over the past five or six years but have never met. Oh wow! Maureen! We finally got to meet each other! We had so much to talk about. But here's where it gets to be a bit involved. I mentioned to Maureen that the History Dept. actually contains the book I wrote on the history of the Town of Porter. Sure enough, she found that there were two copies there. Two copies? I had donated only one copy! She checked them out and sure enough there was an extra copy that obviously must have been purchased by the library! She insisted I sign the other copy. I sat down to the table and tried to figure out just what I should write into a copy of the book that I had published myself back in 1993, seven years ago. As I was trying to figure out just what words to write as author of the book, Mary approached me. You know Mary; she was the one who helped me with the roll of census records. She told me that I looked familiar to her and told me that she remembered me from when she worked as a librarian in Buffalo-she was the one in charge of the stacks where one needed a pass to even get see to the precious historical records down there! Oh my goodness! That was over 15 years ago! She remembered me! Oh, what a marvelous conversation we had about back in the olden days when you were privileged to have a pass to the stacks and then when the stacks were closed. Now the stacks are up in the grand new genealogy section of the Buffalo Library where there are volunteers from the Western New York Genealogical Society to help researchers on a daily basis! It was getting late in the afternoon, I had to go back home, and I had to let Maureen know how much I had appreciated all the help I had received today. At the same time I left her the book that I had written and had just autographed. Now wasn't that a boring day? :-)