I enjoyed your ref to articles re female teachers and what was referred to in early times as "out west" or "far west" such as IN, OH, etc. The series, "Little House on the Prairie" gave us views, also, and such other sources that attempt to portray teachers, and early teaching. I picked up on the CAUDLE & TERRY surnames: I had a student in the 6th grade by the name of Debbie CAUDLE, or Debra Caudle, which was in the 1960s. Does that name happen to mean anything to you, Rose? Then, there was a TERRY surname family who lived in Snohomish many yrs ago, among whom were several very good teachers. Does that ring a bell for you? One of the Terry men lived across the street from Averill Field in Snohomish as I recall. Just curious to know, as I have run into many Small Worlds over the yrs. * * * I came upon a Clark Line relative who lived in Everett, WA. the Hiatts, who loaned me several drawers of morabilia from their (& ours) ancestry. It was a "gold mine" of gen. material consisting of old diaries, autograph albums, pix, certificates, documents, all sorts of neat things. The locale was mainly Klickitat Co. areas, Ellensberg, and Ellensberg Normal info. Descriptions of WX, illnesses in the Fams., all sorts of highly interesting accounts of the Life in these areas, and genealogy fan chart info, etc. I had always wanted to try this, so I mounted my 8 mm. video camcorder on a copying stand (formerly used for 35 mm still camera work) & proceeded to prepare to copy the various gen charts, and memorabilia, diaries etc. in a sequential format that I had planned in my mind. Before, doing all this, I carefully layed out all the materials, and read through the various items. Then, I planned in my mind, w/o script what it is I wanted to accomplish. Once I did this part, I was ready to give it a trial run. Using a $10. yard sale 13" TV for a monitor of what I was photographing, I began following the pattern I had set out to do. The monitor allowed me to see what the finished view would be, and macro focusing was used in order to get close to the objects. As I photgraphed momentarily each sequence, I made verbal commentary of what I was photographing. After a few trial runs at this, I found that I could make corrections of both my photographing and commentary to my satisfaction. Mainly I used the natural lighting from windows, auxiliary lights wherever needed (used sparingly) and an old 20" TV protective glass for keeping diaries, etc. flat for photographing. Light reflections sometimes, were a problem. For that I had some non-reflective glass from picture frames that allowed me to rid reflections for some documents. I learned as I went along, innovating with various techniques that occurred to me. For instance, some of the pix were such that I could not get good detail or even legibility using the regular procedure. So, I thot of clamping a large magnifying glass into a small vice, and using that with my 8 mm. video camcorder lens, I could really enhance the detail by adjusting light sources and watching the monitor. In one instance, I was unable to make visible the names at the top of a tall granite monument at Centerville, Co. seat of Klickitat Co. which I had photographed with a still 35 mm. camera years before when visiting there. The lens of the camera would not allow the names to be visible, so using the magnifying glass, held by the vice, and adjusting the light a bit, I was able to make those names perfectly visible, and therefore usable. All-in-all after processing the materials I was fortunate to have access to, I was able to come out with a sort of documentary of all of the materials, visible, readable, and with commentary with each item for a full two hour taped genealogy. Wherever I reviewed the master copy and saw that I could make improvements, I did so. This master copy was mine, and I was able to make VHS format copies for the various relatives of the items, along with verbal commentary, telling a story that worked out better than I had originally thought. Oh, yes, it took days to do this and I could do as much or as little as I wished, but it all worked very well. By the way, when the camera is on there is usually sound picked up by the built-in mic. but I found that I could switch off the mic. at times when I wanted no sound. When garbage trucks, or the mail man or other hot rodders get into your sound system, it isn't very good, so I tried to do my taping in the quiet hours whenever I could find them. Another technique I used with success, is to use an audio tape recorder and tape music, or commentary, or whatever, and just insert that sound source into the scenes whever I wanted. I could just let the camera mic pick it up, or I sometimes could just feed the sound from the audio tape recorder directly into a plug in cord, or patch cord, directly into the audio input of the camera. Not all camcorders have this feature, but mine did but one can innovate this sort of thing. It does take a bit of time and organization, but it is well worth it and once it is done, you have a good record that can be copied in the future, using as much or as little as you wish by picking and choosing. It was a fun project to do and it satisfied my curiosity that it could be done and was not all that much work for what I was able to achieve. This item dealt with in part one of the ancestors who had attended, grad, and attained his teaching certif. and I was able to video tape his old teaching certifs. from Ellensburg Normal around the turn of the century as well as other late 19th & early 20the cent. items. He kept a diary of his early teaching experiences, YMCA attendance projects, and means of transportation. At one time, he was able to buy one of those large front wheeled bicycles - there is a name for them. The way they handled the severe winters of snow, ice etc. were all in the diaries, along with members of the fam who had illnesses, which in those times were quite severe - life threatening! Thank goodness, I made that video documentary because those people now live in Texas, and I would never get the opportunity to have access to those genealogical items, which as I say were a Gold Mine of info. The Pix were very well labeled and legible which helped - some were even tin-type, & other examples of early photography which I taped from. Another idea which has occurred to me but which I have not done as yet is to include postage stamps in my genealogy, or even in a video version of it. Postage stamps are so excellent examples of history, places, dates, and events that one can readily find commemorative stamps from various ages to help enhance and illustrated the genealogy, and make it more palatable for the non-genealogist types to, perhaps, enjoy. Helps to make history and family history to come to life, along with your text accounts. Happy Thanksgiving! (No sermons, please) Carroll of Snohomish. &&& Storm '98 is Upon Us! &&& Batten the Hatches! ___________________________________________________________________ You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail. Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com/getjuno.html or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]