Travel

Housing prices in Phoenix have skyrocketed with the influx of Californians. With their excess cash, they are “California-ing” the houses including the addition of concrete block fencing in front of the house, and sometimes all the way across the front of the property, albeit a low one.

Specifically, if you have an Android cell phone and have shopped for any new app, then you’ll have a Google account. There, you can find all sorts of useful things like email, maps, spread sheets and, it turns out, where you were any day since you got the phone.

My Paternal Line

Henry Skinner, 1822-unknown is pictured here. He is my great, great-grandfather on my all-father’s line. Born in England, he lived in Pilton, a suburb of Barnstaple on the Atlantic Coast of Devon. Presumably from a few miles north of there in the aptly named village of Muddiford, he packed up his family and booked passage for one and all to Canada on a sailing ship.

When you travel to a place that uses a language you don’t know, things can be challenging. Where’s my hotel? Where can I get something to eat? What sign means “Bathroom” and which is which?

So go the lyrics to a song from The Fantastics. I know because I sang them in a local production many years ago.

While cleaning up my work-office-at-home, I found a few memories that challenge a neat and tidy filing.

Picardy Place, later Picardy Street, is shaped like the letter “T” but laying down. In the picture, it’s slightly down and right of center.