Miscellaneous Stuff

Hi all.
What a beautiful fall weekend it was. I love this time of year and am glad that it is finally getting cooler and I can wear sweaters and turtlenecks and make soup. I like (and I know this is a bit weird) it when it gets dark early and the air is crisp and smells of wood smoke. From now until Christmas is my favorite time of year.

Of course, fall also means football and tailgating and homecoming activities at dear old Maine. In past years, I haven't really attended any official activities at UMaine Homecoming, usually just attending the game and/or the craft fair and visiting sorority sisters either at the chapter room or in the tailgate area. This year, a couple of friends that I haven't seen in about 25 years decided to come up for our class's 30th anniversary. We took part in several class gatherings and had a great time catching up. We even visited the Sig Ep house where we all lived in 76-77. The young men living there were very nice to us old ladies, asking questions and showing us around. Great fun.

I've pretty much decided to move to MyFamily.com for our family blog. It will allow any of you to add photos or stories and has many features that I think will be fun to use. I sent out some invitations today, to those I have good e-mail addresses for and I set it to allow any of you to invite other family members to sign in. It's a free website, so there is some advertising, but I haven't noticed it being really annoying. The other drawback is that everyone has to have an e-mail account and be invited to get into the site, so someone with internet access but no e-mail wouldn't be able to participate. The other side of that is that it makes it more secure and not just open to anyone browsing through blogspot or searching the name. If you didn't get an invite from me and would like one, send me an e-mail (betsyp55@yahoo.org) and I'll get one right out to you.

I went to visit Aunt Jeannette last weekend (and boy did I catch it for having been away for so long) and she mentioned that she had gotten a call from cousin Mary White Gadd - Joe White's daughter, and that she had mentioned that she hadn't heard from me for awhile. I finally sent an e-mail off to her today and I hope she will check out this blog to see some of the pictures on here. I promised her that there were Dubay family pictures and I found a few more on my computer that I hadn't posted before, so here they are:

This is great-grandfather Charles as a young man - well, at least before he was white haired. This is one of those photos that I took a photo of so it's a little blurry.

Here he is as an older man, sitting on the front step of the house on Hayes Street with his nephew Fred.
Here is one of Grammy and her brothers Jim and Bill at their first communion.

And finally, Uncle George in uniform. I have a great photo of him with his motorcycle, but haven't been able to get a clear enough photo of it to add. I'll have to bring it to my friends and scan it, I guess. Mary's brother Paul is interested in more information about Uncle George and I haven't had a chance to pull anything together. Sounds like a good project for the new family site.

Hope you are all well and enjoying this time of year as much as I am.
Betsy