Author: marionvermazen

I am a traveler, hiker, avid reader, Sun alumnus, computer geek, Spanish and French language student, knitter and genealogist. I am retired after working for almost 30 years in the Computer Industry. I live in Reno, Nevada with my husband Duke.

Basin and Range by John McPhee

Every list of suggested reading to learn about Nevada includes John McPhee's book Basin and Range. Basin and Range is about Nevada's landscape and geology along interstate 80. 

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People who've never been to Nevada often assume that Nevada is one big flat dessert. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Driving across Nevada you pass mountain range after mountain range separated by flat basins. It is a stunning landscape. Mcphee describes how this landscape was formed and how geologists came to understand it. Duke and I recently took another road trip exploring northern Nevada. I finished reading Basin and Range on the trip. It was fun to see some of the formations McPhee describes and to understand what we were seeing. Basin and Range is about geology, the history of geology and the history of Nevada.

 

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McPhee is a fantastic writer. His descriptions are lyrical and his science is engaging and understandable. Many years ago I read his book The Control of Nature. In it he describes our attempts to control mud slides in southern California and Lava flows in Iceland. That book has stayed in my mind as very few books do. Basin and Range was as compelling and memorable.

Blogging Again After a Two Month Break and A New Blog on the Blog Roll

It has been more than two months since my last post, perhaps the longest I have gone without posting since I started blogging back in September of 2004. One of the truths about blogging and for that matter about many things in life is that there is nothing wrong with taking a break for a while and then starting up again.

I've added my nephew's blog to my blog roll on the right. Steven is currently studying at Oxford. I am very proud of him. His blog does a marvelous job of conveying what an amazing experience he is having.  I am a bit of an anglophile and I love learning all about what it is like to actually attend university at Oxford. His golfing tales are pretty cool too.

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Steven with my Dad

 

M.E. Harrigan – Author of 9800 Savage Road and 27 Year Veteran of the NSA – Episode 11 – Marion Vermazen Podcast

M.E. Harrigan – Author of 9800 Savage Road and 27 Year Veteran of the NSA – Episode 11 -  Marion Vermazen Podcast

The Marion Vermazen Podcast is now available in the iTunes store!! You can
click here if you would like to see the podcast in the iTunes
store. I don't have any reviews yet so you can help me out by going to
the iTunes store and and reviewing the podcast.

Betsy Harrigan Picture I recently read and reviewed 9800 Savage Road  by M.E. (Betsy) Harrigan. It is an exciting and engaging book.

9800 Savage Road is the address of the National Security Agency, a super secret agency of the U.S. government that collects signals intelligence. NSA has been around for almost 60 years and Betsy is the first insider ever to publish a book about NSA. In this eleventh episode of the Marion Vermazen Podcast I sit down and talk to Betsy about her experiences writing her first book and working at the National Security Agency.

You can also listen to my interview with Betsy Harrigan by clicking
below.

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Here are links to some of the things we discussed:

Almost a Genealogy Blog and searching for the Erb Family in Richland County, Ohio Land Records

The Separate Genealogy Blog Question

In a post about a month ago I pondered the question of whether my genealogy posts should be in a separate blog. I really appreciated the comments, including one from the king of genealogy blogging, Thomas MacEntee, who manages a
group of over 900 genealogy bloggers at GeneaBloggers (http://www.geneabloggers.com). He clearly has a Google alert set up for the words "Genealogy Blog"!

Thomas recommended a separate blog and others said they would like all the content in one place. For the time being I've compromised. I've added a link in the navigation bar at the top of this blog to my genealogy content. You can also go to the genealogy content directly at

http://marionvermazen.blogs.com/marions_blog/genealogy/.

Searching for the Erb Family in Richland County, Ohio

My Dad's Mother, my Grandma Ruth was an Erb. She told me that her Grandparents were Joseph Erb and Mary Harris Erb but she didn't know a lot more about them than their names and the fact that they lived in Wabash County, Indiana.

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Over the years other family researchers and I have discovered that Joseph Erb's father was also named Joseph. Joseph Senior was born in 1788 in Maryland. His wife's name was Elizabeth. They show up in the census in Allegany County, Maryland.  He was drafted and served for a few months in the war of 1812. In the early 1830s Joseph and his family which by that time included 8 children moved to Richland County, Ohio. In the mid 1850s they moved to Wabash County, Indiana.

In my genealogical digging the questions about Joseph Senior and Elizabeth that I am working on right now include:

  1. Where and when did Joseph die?
  2. What was Elizabeth's maiden name?
  3. Where and when did Elizabeth die?
  4. Who were Joseph and Elizabeth's parents? (An Ancestry.com family tree may take the Joseph Erb family back several generations. The tree shows that Joseph's father was Michael Erb. There is a Michael Erb of about the right age on the same page as Joseph in the 1820 census but I'd like some real proof.)
  5. Did Joseph have siblings?

In addition to these specific questions I like to fill in details about my ancestors to make them more than just names.

So……. I am currently working on finding the land records for Joseph and Elizabeth and their children in Richland County Ohio. I ordered the microfilm of the Grantee Index for the Richland County Ohio Deed Books (film # 388652) from the Family History Library and it arrived while I was gone on my road trip. A couple of days ago I spent several hours pouring over the index and extracting all the entries for the names Erb, Arter, Caldwell and Calwell. I created a Google spreadsheet of the relevant entries and I took digital pictures of each page that had an interesting entry.

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The next step is to search the Grantor index and to start looking at the Deeds. I have the microfilm of the Grantor index to the deed books and  the microfilm of deed book volumes 13-14 on order. I love doing research and solving mysteries. I'll keep you posted on what I find out.

Her is a picture of Joseph Erb Junior, my Great Great Grandfather.

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The Retired Ladies Road Trip to Zion National Park – Part 2

My friends and I just returned from our Retired Ladies Road Trip to southwestern Utah. My post for part one of our trip is here. It covers the first three days of the trip.

On day four we hiked to see some petroglyphs at Anasazi Ridge above the Santa Clara River west of St George.

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After lunch we hiked in Snow Canon State Park to a natural amphitheater set in white sandstone.

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On day five, Saturday, we hiked again in Zion National Park. We hiked the Angels Landing Trail. It was amazing and spectacular. The first part of the hike is up, up, up a trail cut into the rock of the canyon wall. You can see my friend Amy on the trail about two thirds of the way up the cliff.

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From the first cliff top we switched back through a narrow canyon.

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And then along the cliff face and up using chains to hold on. This was the part of the trail that was scary although if I didn't look down it wasn't too bad.

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We stopped for lunch at a flat spot with a fantastic view. From there the trail goes up a very narrow crest to the top. We decided to go no further. The trail is challenging enough without adding ice and snow! The picture below is of our lunch stop. You can see the top and the crest that the trail goes up to get there.

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I think the Angels Landing  trail is perhaps the most amazing trail I have ever hiked.

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On day six of our trip we headed home across Nevada on Highway 50. It is a beautiful drive. We saw very few cars but we did see plenty of hawks, some pronghorn, and a very unusual weather phenomenon, hundreds of little mist columns coming from the clouds to the ground. It was beautifully unearthly. Here is a picture of some of the pronghorn from the truck window.

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