About Me

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Lake Mathews (Perris), CA, United States
Born in Illinois, I grew up in Wilmette, a northern suburb of Chicago. I have one sibling, an older brother. I am married, for the 2nd time now, to Butch & got 4 children in the deal. They have gone on to make me grandmother 25 times over & great-grandmother to over 20!. After many years working in industry, I got my bachelors and masters degrees in speech communication, & was a professor in that field for 13 years. I retired in 2001 & returned to school & got my doctorate in folklore. Now I meld my two interests - folklore & genealogy - & add my teaching background, resulting in my current profession: speaker/author/entertainer of genealogically-related topics. I play many folk instruments, but my preference is guitar, which I have been playing since 1963. I write the "Aunty Jeff" column for the Informer, newsletter of the Jefferson County NY Gen. Soc. I work in partnership with Gena Philibert-Ortega & Sara Cochran as Genealogy Journeys® where we focus on educating folks about Social History. More about that: genaandjean.blogspot.com. More on our podcasts: genjourneys.podbean.com. More about my own projects: Circlemending.org.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Sunday Singalong with Circlemending - Songs about Endings

2 of my amazing grandchildren (FYI, all 24 are amazing, but these 2 have the spotlight today . . .) are graduating with honors from Georgia Tech. This is no easy feat. So while they have much to look forward to (both have been hired for good jobs!! Yay!!), it also marks the ending of 4 years of hard study, some serious play, and a lot of networking on all levels. I am so proud of them! So, in honor of our 2 graduates, Brad & Kati Schmidt, I am proposing that today's Singalong Sunday focus on songs about endings. Endings of childhood, endings of relationships, endings of war, endings of jobs, endings of life, endings of anything. Not all endings are bad, either, as they often mark beginnings. I remember being very happy when my school year was coming to an end and skipped and sang (with many others) all the way home, "School's out, school's out, teachers let the monkeys out!"

So my selection will deal with the end of the Civil War (I'm working hard on this topic for a number of magazines; one to be published a little later this month in GenWeekly - an on-line newsletter - will be an expose on "When Johnny Comes Marching Home"). I figure that is a perfect song about an ending that was bitter sweet (not all Johnnies came home and many who did were forever changed). My GenWeekly article compares the American Johnny at the end of the war to the Irish Johnny, "Johnny I Hardly Knew You," which is decidedly less celebratory.

Check out one version on YouTube. I have also recorded it on my Songs of the War of the Rebellion CD.

Now it's your turn - any songs of endings come to mind?

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