After some months absence I was just wondering how I might return to the Scotch-Irish list again, and of course that 'wondering' lead me to 'wonder' what if anything at all I might be able contribute to the list. For many people, names and dates in data-bases are to be collected and treasured. But to me it's not only the collecting of facts and figures that matters ... perhaps it's the long ago words woven into stories set amidst familiar place names that form the fabric of a life once lived that excite me. Cold hard facts carved into stone and rock solid data-bases most often leave me wondering and wanting more. No! not necessarily more facts and figures ... just more information as to how the people in those data-bases might have lived. If I could have a wish granted, I would wish for a magic carpet ride so that I might be able to travel back in time to the days of my ancestors. I would love to visit with my wee granny when she was a young vibrant girl living her life amidst the green fields of an Ireland I can never really know, even though I was born in Northern Ireland and I spent my growing up years within miles of where my grandmother had lived out her entire life. Yet her Ireland and my Ireland were so very much different. She must have had dreams ... sure! didn't everyone have dreams no matter where or when they lived? I do know that she loved and lost, (big time) at least on two separate occasions, and a result of one of those encounters my father was born. You won't see that information on my grandmothers headstone or on my fathers headstone. Date of Birth ... Date of Death, all duly recorded for the record. But what about all of the unspoken words and the unfilled dreams in between? When I think of my wee granny I can still see her in my memory as a small grey haired women who should have been wasted by years of working in a hot and dust filled local spinning mill. I read somewhere in one of my books that the life expectancy of someone working in that particular department in that particular mill where she had worked, might very well be set at about forty five years of age. My wee granny beat the odds ... she lived until she was eighty three years of age. Maybe ... just maybe, reading the history of an area can help us form some insight into to what life might have been like for our ancestors. Like I said at the beginning of this email ... I was just 'wondering'.