An upgraded library card

If I wasn’t so obsessed with thumbing through original documents from the 19th and early 20th century, I could save myself the road trip and use interlibrary loan to request documents from the Washington State Library and Archives. But I can’t wait to stroll through holdings for myself. It’s the difference between buying a book on Amazon.com and going to the bookstore to browse every shelf before heading to the cash register.

My new library card to the Washington State Library and Archives arrived just in time for a road trip to Centralia, a small city just off Interstate 5, located smack dab in between Portland and Seattle. My excitement about spending a day in the Washington State Library & Archive and another at the Lewis County Historical Museum leaves me giddy and counting down the days until I get a chance to ‘Ask the Librarian’ everything I know how to ask and listen for answers to everything I never thought to ask.

It takes a village to raise the dead

“Funeral notice from March 20, 1944, newspaper issue of The Daily Chronicle, found on microfiche, Timberland Regional Library, Centralia, WA.”

This is the caption I wrote today on a profile page for Thomas Willis Lackland in my Ancestry.com tree. I posted photo images of newspaper clippings from the The Daily Chronicle edition that announced that Thomas Willis Lackland, of Centralia, Washington, died of a heart attack at age 79, and that graveside services would be held on the upcoming Tuesday at Greenwood Memorial Park, now Sticklin Greenwood Cemetery.

I wrote the select few words in the caption above because a librarian at the Timberland Regional Library in Centralia, Washington, looked up the newspaper for me on microfiche records and emailed me pdf images.

And because I emailed the @asklib email address posted on the Library’s website and asked if they had archived records of that day’s newspaper.

Also because:

A librarian copied that day’s edition of The Daily Chronicle onto microfiche.

Another librarian preserved a print issue of the March 20, 1944, edition of The Daily Chronicle.

A local publisher printed a daily newspaper in Centralia, Washington, where Thomas Willis Lackland lived and died.

Numerous people worked countless hours to print that day’s edition of The Daily Chronicle.

There were readers of a daily newspaper.

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A PNW transplant like me

The Virginian Lacklands go back in the United States, before the Revolutionary War. One of them, James Lackland (1756-1816), served as second lieutenant in that war. Best estimates peg the arrival of Scots-Irish Lacklands (John Locklan) around 1730.

Some two hundred years later, one of those Virginia Lacklands, Thomas Willis Lackland (1864-1944), made his home in Washington State, far from his birthplace. Thomas arrived in Washington State around the turn of the 20th century, appearing in 1903 and 1910 census records, in Everett.

Thomas was single and childless, living in boarding houses, and working as a self-professed saw mill engineer. Census shows he resided in several Western Washington logging towns (including Everett, Cloquato, Chehalis, and Centralia). He retired around 1835, lived to be 79 years old, and died in 1944 on March 17. Records show he is buried in Greenwood Cemetery.

The cemetery is run by volunteers after decades of neglect. Record of Thomas’s burial plat have been lost. Cemetery documents and an obituary state that this cemetery is where his remains were laid to rest.

After scouring the Greenwood Cemetery for hours looking for his headstone—in blazing heat, and, more recently, in a gentle but persistent rain—I finally found this headstone which, although badly eroded, shows key letters in the right positions. As is the style of many older, simple headstones in this cemetery, no dates are included in the paver-sized headstone.

I continue to research archives to determine if this headstone is, in fact, verifiably that of my ancestor, Thomas Willis Lackland.

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I started hearing this expressionfrom my son and my son’s friends starting in the 4th grade. Of course, I’d heard the expression before. My own family used to use the expression right to my face even after I’d come out to them.

But that was a while back and I’ve gotten married and had kids since then. I never hear it anymore from family or friends and I guess I’d hoped that this particularly hurtful expression had disappeared. But I just must be travelling in different social circles, because I’ve had to have this conversation, almost word-for-word with my son. In fact, I’ve had this conversation with my son’s friends. It’s pretty funny, because the open-mouthed goldfish reaction was identical to that shown in this public service announcement.

I think this expression is a social virus for a myriad of reasons. Each of us need to give this short and sweet speech to everyone infected.

In a previous post, I offered praise for audiobooks because they opened up a world of books for my twins that they would likely otherwise have never read.

One year later, we are still listening to audiobooks in the car, which is a great goodness, because—sad to say—I’m not sure how much reading either of them would be doing otherwise.

My son isn’t reading much because he is a “reluctant reader.” Given a choice between reading or doing anything physical with his body, he will always choose the physical activity. In the car, however, when he’s a captive audience, so to speak, he enjoys listening to a variety of audiobooks. He definitely prefers The Lightening Thief or Peter and the Starcatchers, but even action-boy can find himself being drawn into the magical story line of A Single Shard.

My daughter isn’t reading much because the rigors of 5th grade have sucked up much of her free time. She is normally a voracious reader, but these before she can crack a book, she must go to school, do her homework, practice cello; then comes sports and girl scouts; and finally—the activity that trumps all other activities—playdates. But when we listen to an audiobook in the car, she and her brother become so engrossed that they sit in the car listening long after I’ve parked the car and gone into the house.

There are many forces that keep children from turning into bookworms. These days, videogames and television are given much of the blame for both low literacy and childhood obesity. Recent trends to keep kids active encourage parents to sign up kids in multiple sports instead of hanging out together in the library and curling up on the couch together with a good book. Active lifestyles and bookworms aren’t ready bedfellows, it seems.

But listening to audiobooks in the car can help to combat low literacy and childhood obesity in one stroke! Exposure to literature expands children’s minds whether they are reading the book or listening to the story. Even though kids are signed up for two or three sports, they still need to find time to get lost in a good book!

So next time you are driving your kid to school, soccer, ballet, chess club, swim team, tae kwan do, whatever! turn on an audiobook instead of a DVD. Go to the library, pick out a blockbuster and get started. Audiobooks are great entertainment, and they promote literacy while you all stay active!