¡Buenos días a todos from the Old Pueblo! It is 8am and 37F (2.8C) with an expected high of 59F (15C) with sunny skies in Tucson. I woke up to snow yesterday! It is something to see snow-capped saguaros and other vegetation in our desert. Snow in Tucson on March 1st. If I wanted to see snow, I would spend time with my family in Wisconsin this time of year. Thank you so much, California, for sending that storm of yours our way.
I am now enrolled in the AARP HMO POS plan as of March 1st. It was my way of celebrating St. David’s Day this year. I already have appointments for CTA scans of the head and neck, and an MRI of the lumbar spine on Monday. I called imaging to give them the new information yesterday and they had already been contacted by the new insurers. I called Cigna on Tuesday and explained why I was switching plans, expressed my ire at persons sitting in offices looking at my records (and not me) to make decisions as to whether they will approve care that my health providers (who do see me) have ordered. I also told them that I would be sending a letter of complaint to Medicare.
My office redo was NOT completed this past Monday! I have an office that includes a Murphy bed. I am having the Murphy bed removed to make space for more bookshelves. I paid the contractor in full (big mistake) toward the end of December and was told that the work would be done at the start of February. These are custom made shelves with cabinet doors. The company does excellent work, but this situation has been a fiasco. Two workers showed up on Monday solely to remove the Murphy bed! No shelves, nothing! It is going to be at least another month of inconvenience before these shelves are done. I should have known better than to pay them in full!
As to the new loos, installation has been postponed due to snow, which was my choice. I do not deal at all well with cold weather. The doors would have been open, only to let cold air in and I did not want to jack up the heat only to heat the outside. The plumber was very good about rescheduling for this next Wednesday. I can only hope we do not have yet another ‘snow day’ in Tucson.
I have a fair amount of genealogy-related information. First, I received my Winter edition of American Ancestors. For those of you interested in genetic genealogy, there is a very nice article that describes the use of FTDNA Y700 to examine kinship between Samuel and Captain Richard Walker of PGM-era Massachusetts. Citation: Walker, Eugene Allen. Samuel Walker, Kinsman of Captain Richard Walker. American Ancestors (NEHGS). Winter 2023, Volume 23, #4. Pages 38-41. S (Hill) Wilson also posted this on the Walkers’ respective WikiTrees.
The Baldwins of Buckinghamshire are going to be my death! I managed to complete Richard Baldwin (1468-1485), his uncle John ‘Baldewyn’ (1438-1469), and Richard’s niece Alice Baldwin (1509-1546). In between completing these profiles, which I adopted a while back, I have been working on Sir John Baldwin, MP, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas during the reign of Henry VIII. Richard is his brother; John is uncle and Alice one of his daughters. This profile is still somewhat of a crap-tangle. It was uploaded as a GEDCOM in 2011 and with very little work done on it. What was done had been barely sourced and conflated with my Baldwin ancestors and several of their children, who also lived in Buckinghamshire about the same time.
Sir John Baldwin presided over the trials of Bishop John Fisher, Sir Thomas More, AND Anne Boleyn, and her ‘conspirators.’ I am determined to complete Sir John’s profile this weekend so that I can move on to his children and grandchildren, who are a very interesting bunch. Hearsay has it that my ancestors are related, but we do not know the connection. Maybe I will be lucky enough to find the connection, although this Sir John was mercenary on behalf of Henry VIII. Included in Anne’s trial as a lustful conspirator was Sir John’s own cousin Sir Henry Norris, Groom of the Stool (do not even ask). He was found guilty and beheaded as well. I do not really know if I want to claim kinship with Sir John.
I do, however, want to claim Wiki-kinship with Andrew Millard, Nic Donnelly and Susie Officer of the England Team. I found that John Baldewyne (1438-1469) had a will. I discovered this in the Ancestry site, but the quality of the image was beyond poor. Susie obtained the pdf from The National Archives in London and emailed it to me. I could make out a few bits of information based on my old church Latin; however, Andrew and Nic really filled in some fine information as to contents. We get more than by with a little help from our friends (to paraphrase The Beatles).
Pip, thank you as always for wrangling the chat! Did Mike let you know about the snow? And to all my fellow Chatterers, I hope you enjoy a happy, healthy and productive first weekend in March 2023.