All Soul's Day - Honoring Saints and Ancestors

Dear Diary,

Today I begin my three week self-guided e-course, Honoring Saints and Ancestors: Peering Behind the Veil   which is offered by Abbey of the Arts.  It seemed so fitting for this month of remembrance and after my nearly two year journey in genealogy.  This photograph is a collage of several of several of my ancestors' grave stones, many of which I photographed in September when I traveled to Dutchess County, New York.

I like the fact that it is self-paced and I plan to take the entire month for it.  It also suggests you create an art piece as part of your experience.  The courses creator, Christine Valters Paintner, who I met last year in Galway, Ireland, suggests building a shrine but I've decided to do something different.  Something more in keeping with my interests.

Over the next several weeks I will be making an accordion book using photographs and texts.  A long time ago, during a class on making artist's books, I created one called "Family Groups".  I will use that idea as a basis for this book.  This is an excerpt from the first day of the course and a text I will use in the book:

Within me is a sacred thread that ties me to everyone in my ancestral past. I carry within me the wounds and unfulfilled longings, the hopes and dreams of everyone who came before me. Learning their stories means I come to know my own more intimately.