Author Topic: Judy grasswire wants to preserve, share  (Read 672 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline franksolich

  • Scourge of the Primitives
  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 58722
  • Reputation: +3096/-173
Judy grasswire wants to preserve, share
« on: July 17, 2014, 06:50:02 PM »
http://upload.democraticunderground.com/11561450

Oh my.

A topic near and dear to franksolich's heart.

<<<inherited all family memorabilia and heirlooms by the sheer dint of outliving everybody else.

Quote
(41,058 posts)    Wed Jul 16, 2014, 09:11 PM

how do you preserve an aggregate of family memorabilia...

.....to make it available to everyone and for future generations?

There are 13 cousins in my generation. Two subsequent generations have sprouted. Some family heirlooms are scattered here and there among the family. And an archive of historical memorabilia exists: 19th century collections of correspondence, photos, documents, war records and service medals through WW2, diaries, and so on. This archive is in the hands (unfortunately) of a near hoarder. She has scooped up everything for decades, and the rest of us never see these things (which are as much everyone's as hers). And they have NEVER been available for the boomer-millenial age members to see.
 
How do families deal with the items that should be commonly available?

I have begun a conversation asking family members to think about what should be done. I suspect the hoarder is very disturbed about now.

Quote
NYC_SKP (59,699 posts)       Wed Jul 16, 2014, 10:01 PM

1. Certainly, family photos are increasingly easier to preserve and to share.

For larger, non-2D, artifacts, one could publish/share photographs of these and any research results associated with them, ie: "Here are some links about grandma's brooch, grandpa's pocket watch".
 
For those with the funds or equipment, 3-D scans could accompany the photos!

Quote
JimDandy (3,843 posts)    Wed Jul 16, 2014, 10:10 PM

2. Hoarders don't want to give up the items,

but genealogical hoarders hoard family items because they want to preserve them. They often verbalize that they are the person in the family who will best be able to care for the items. It's hard for them to even temporarily allow others to take items elsewhere to be photocopied or photographed. In addition they usually have dreams of organizing, documenting and publishing the material in some manner, but can become overwhelmed quickly by the sheer volume of their collection and give up on those activities... but they keep collecting more as each person in the family dies.
 
It sounds like your hoarder is elderly, so they may not be as tech saavy as you. One proven way to start getting the info to other family members has been to offer to photograph/scan/copy the hoarder's material and enter it into a database at the hoarder's home. If they have any remnants of their organizing/publishing dreams left, suggest that your doing that would help them in their efforts.

Quote
(41,058 posts)    Wed Jul 16, 2014, 10:30 PM

3. good insight

In this case the hoarding has happened because to the hoarder, scoring and keeping the items = some sort of power. The person is the oldest in the generation. Her children, boomers, have little interest in the items and do not often come to family gatherings. So I'm feeling pressure to get something done about this in the next several years. Lord only knows what would happen to the stuff.
 
The hoarder would NEVER allow anything out of her possession even for copying. She is very acquisitive and has the possessions of five other people hoarded in her home as well.
 
What I am doing at this point is trying to rouse concern in the other family members, gently. It will only be through group concern that anything will happen.
 
I'm trying to develop some sort of guidelines as to the future of the "archive" items. Where should they be? Should the namesake of the war heroes receive the medals? Or should everything be in one complete archive? It would require a small room. And in whose home?
 
Details, details.

Quote
kickysnana (3,547 posts)    Thu Jul 17, 2014, 12:52 AM

4. Bring a computer, scanner printer in.

"You have done such a wonderful job of taking care of all this but it is always risky to have everything in one place. A fire, flood or other disaster could make it lost completely. How about we make a digital copy of it just in case and do you have your wishes known when far in the future you can not take care of it anymore? "
 
I remember reading about someone like this and in her later years she had too many cats. The authorities declared her property a health hazard and everything in there was destroyed. No amount of pleas made a difference to them. Disaster for sure.

Quote
kdmorris (4,853 posts)    Thu Jul 17, 2014, 07:27 AM

5. Is there anyone that this hoarder is particularly close to?

Someone that she would be inclined to listen to if they ask to archive some of it?
 
Sometimes you will have more luck if they don't feel like they are "losing" something, so much as helping others (though the description of the power thing does make it likely that there is something mental going on).

Quote
(41,058 posts)    Thu Jul 17, 2014, 11:52 AM

6. apt description

"something mental going on"

I hadn't realized it fully until the last year or so. The hoarder is "grooming" another family member who is 91 years old. The hoarder has gotten power of attorney over the auntie and is "gaslighting" her to some degree, continually telling other family members how confused and forgetful and irritable auntie is (which I don't see in auntie), and making choices for auntie that limit her independence instead of encouraging it. Recently I saw that some family heirloom items have been removed from auntie's apartment (and I know that it is against state law for a Power of Attorney to remove anything from the person's possession). The estate itself is not insignificant, but it is the loss of family heirlooms that worry me.
 
It's a really tough and sensitive situation. Most of the family has no idea what's going on. So that's why I am gently trying to work to get some protection for the family heirlooms.
apres moi, le deluge

Milo Yiannopoulos "It has been obvious since 2016 that Trump carries an anointing of some kind. My American friends, are you so blind to reason, and deaf to Heaven? Can he do all this, and cannot get a crown? This man is your King. Coronate him, and watch every devil shriek, and every demon howl."

Offline Carl

  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 19747
  • Reputation: +1498/-100
Re: Judy grasswire wants to preserve, share
« Reply #1 on: July 17, 2014, 09:46:37 PM »
They scream for 100% inheritance tax but all DUmbasses are hellbent on getting anything of value from family members. 

Offline GOBUCKS

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 24186
  • Reputation: +1812/-339
  • All in all, not bad, not bad at all
Re: Judy grasswire wants to preserve, share
« Reply #2 on: July 17, 2014, 10:52:27 PM »
Hilarious thread by poor addled grasswipe Judy Smith, but as transparent as one of Pam Dawson's bouncies.

Grasswipe has described to us countless times over the past few years her own hoarding, to the extent that she uses part of her government addle checks to rent storage lockers.

She's told about pulling her little red wagon along the sidewalk to collect junk put out for trash collection.

She described five generations of descendents already on the ground with more in the works.

And that's all to say nothing about her bizarre pie shop announcement.

Someone must have finally made her understand how embarrassing it is to her relatives to have the family derangement put on public display like this.

She's trying to point the finger away from herself, but making it all worse with this silly story about an insane cousin.

Someday soon there's going to be a serious meeting of all the great-great grandsons to decide what to do about poor addled Judy.


Offline franksolich

  • Scourge of the Primitives
  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 58722
  • Reputation: +3096/-173
Re: Judy grasswire wants to preserve, share
« Reply #3 on: July 18, 2014, 10:13:45 AM »

I'm having problems with this, and the old DU's too messed up to resolve it:

Quote
There are 13 cousins in my generation. Two subsequent generations have sprouted.

Just before the current DU came into existence, and shortly after hippyhubby Wild Bill forced hippywife Mrs. Alfred Packer to abandon the primitives, Judy grasswire posted something about making Christmas cookies, an endeavor in which apparently a descendant of hers was involved too.

She identified him as a "great-great-grandson," and she identified him two times, not only one time, as such.  So it wasn't any typographical error or brain-fart.  One got the impression he was pretty small, probably less than five years old.

Five generations in her lifetime.

Quote
.....This archive is in the hands (unfortunately) of a near hoarder. She has scooped up everything for decades.....

My story's similar; from a very young age, I was being presented by family relics by elderly relatives, including not only photographs, letters, and diaries, but also full sets of old china and silver and linen, clocks, and somesuch.

This happened simpy because of all my brothers and sisters, and cousins, and second cousins, and third cousins, I was the only one who expressed any interest in family history.

These things came to me; I didn't solicit them (in fact, most of the time I had no idea such things had ever existed, and in a few cases, I'd never even met the ancient relative who presented them to me).

I've taken very good care of them.

Quote
.....How do families deal with the items that should be commonly available?.....

That's the bitch of it.  I have all this stuff, and as my brothers and sisters died prematurely from the ailments and afflictions of the too-soft, too-easy, too-comfortable, too-secure sort of life, I'm the last one left.  I have six nephews, all of them adults (I also had two nieces, but they departed this time and place a long time ago), four of them married and with children.

This mountainous mass of stuff isn't worth donating to any museum, as it's mostly all related to Pennsylvania, and not Nebraska.  It's good stuff, great stuff, but it simply has no "relation" to where it's at, which is here, in Nebraska.

Over the years, I've doled out parts of it to the nephews and their wives, but I'm nervous about whether or not I'll be completely done with distribution before I spring loose of this moral coil myself.

I got nothing against Judy grasswire personally, and wish I could advise and counsel her on the matter, but I really can't.
apres moi, le deluge

Milo Yiannopoulos "It has been obvious since 2016 that Trump carries an anointing of some kind. My American friends, are you so blind to reason, and deaf to Heaven? Can he do all this, and cannot get a crown? This man is your King. Coronate him, and watch every devil shriek, and every demon howl."