{"id":48990,"date":"2014-04-30T00:09:12","date_gmt":"2014-04-30T07:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/?p=48990"},"modified":"2014-04-30T00:09:12","modified_gmt":"2014-04-30T07:09:12","slug":"know-your-roots-merit-badge-intermediate-level","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/48990","title":{"rendered":"Know Your Roots Merit Badge, Intermediate Level"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tThe adorable, always humorous MBA Jane is my way of honoring our<\/span> Sisterhood Merit Badge program<\/a>, now with 5,892 dues-paying members who have earned an amazing number of merit badges so far\u20148,416 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! MJ\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Wondering who I am? I\u2019m Merit Badge Awardee Jane (MBA Jane for short). In my<\/span> former life<\/a> \u2026\u00a0<\/b>\u00a0<\/b>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

For this week\u2019s Each Other\/Know Your Roots Intermediate Level Merit Badge<\/a>, I combed the National Archives, Ancestry.com, my local library, and the depths of my Grandma Barbie\u2019s brain for some interesting and little-known facts\/anecdotes\/stories about me and mine. It turns out (as projects like this tend to do, my chickadees) that what I didn\u2019t<\/em> know about me could fill a book.<\/p>\n

Strange, no? You\u2019d think I\u2019d be an expert on my family\u2019s history, but it seems I paid about as much attention during holiday dinners reminiscing as I did in Mr. Potter\u2019s fifth-grade history class. So basically, I know my own birthday and the year the Civil War started. I think. (Don\u2019t quiz me. I get all twitchy and clammy when there\u2019s a test coming.)<\/p>\n

Finding your roots these days isn\u2019t as difficult as it used to be. Thanks to the ol\u2019 worldwide web thingamabobby, you can get started with something as simple as your mother\u2019s maiden name and birth date, and lo and behold, all sorts of data will practically fall into your lap(top). And once you start? Well, it\u2019s like homemade, organic, sea-salted kettle chips, ladies. It\u2019s hard to stop at just one.<\/p>\n

First of all, I opened up my grandma\u2019s box of scrapbooks. Grandma Barbie is a hoarder collector of the finest degree. She saves everything from carefully folded tissue paper to twist ties to greeting cards to wedding invites to baby announcements to high-school-graduation programs to … well, you name it, she has it pasted into a scrapbook somewhere. And then she puts that scrapbook into a box. And then she mails me that box.<\/p>\n

Thanks, Grandma.<\/p>\n

*sigh*<\/p>\n

Anyway, I figured there was more info there I could possibly need for one little ol\u2019 merit badge, and I was correct. I decided to get her on the phone and see if she could possibly whittle down some of our basic family history into something more condensed.<\/p>\n

Say, like Tolstoy lengths.<\/p>\n

What follows is a transcription of our conversation. Don\u2019t say I didn\u2019t warn you.<\/p>\n

Me: \u201cGrammy! It\u2019s me, your favorite granddaughter in all the land!\u201d<\/p>\n

G.B.: \u201cStacie?\u201d<\/p>\n

Me: \u201cHaha, Grandma.\u201d<\/p>\n

G.B.: \u201cTutti?\u201d<\/p>\n

Me: \u201cVery funny. It\u2019s me, Jane.\u201d<\/p>\n

G.B.: \u201cOh, I know, honey, I just like pulling your leg. You\u2019ve always been so flexible and bendy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Me: \u201cYes, well, I get it from you. Now, I was going through some old eh, priceless family heirlooms, and had some questions about my family tree. Are you ready?\u201d<\/p>\n

G.B.: \u201cShoot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Me: silence. \u201cPardon me?\u201d<\/p>\n

G.B.: \u201cShoot! Fire away! Proceed!\u201d<\/p>\n

Me, thinking the old-time expressions to be very odd indeed, hurried forward\u00a0(Isn\u2019t there a badge for learning another language? Does grandparent-speak count as an ancient language?): \u201cWell, I was wondering about this Blaine fellow, first off.\u201d<\/p>\n

I hear Grandma coughing suddenly on the other end. \u201cWhat\u2019s that? I can\u2019t hear you, sweetie! I think we have a bad connection!\u201d<\/p>\n

Me, suspiciously: \u201cThe connection is fine, Grammy. Now, as I was saying. I found these very interesting love letters to you, postmarked from Australia \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Garbled, incoherent noises fill my ear, and also what sounds like a really bad imitation of static sounds. Then …\u00a0click!<\/p>\n

What in the name of torrid Australian love affairs have I stumbled upon?\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The adorable, always humorous MBA Jane is my way of honoring our Sisterhood Merit Badge program, now with 5,892 dues-paying members who have earned an amazing number of merit badges so far\u20148,416 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! MJ\u00a0 Wondering … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gladsome_sisters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48990\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}