Tag Archives: Morsching

Favorite Photos- learning the story.

There are always a few family photos that bring larger smiles to your face when you look at them.  This is one my mine.  A photo of the North Elysian Kitchen Band.  My Great-Grandmother is in the second row, 3rd from the right.

North Elysian Kitchen Band, Elysian, Minnesota

North Elysian Kitchen Band, Elysian, Minnesota

I have been told that they had concerts and were even on t.v. at one time.  What an unusual way for the women to get together and have fun!

But was it unusual?  I wanted to learn more about kitchen bands so…of course I turned to Google.

I found an interesting article entitled “Kitchen Kabinet Band” in a Popular Science magazine that was on Google Books. Not a resource I would have thought to search for information about kitchen bands “Thank you, Google!”

It described how some of the instruments were put together.  Since the design of each instrument was only limited by imagination – there were lots of varieties.  But the article did describe how they would use kazoos in many of the instruments and attach them to other pieces to create different sounds.  This helps me understand Grandma Morsching’s instrument that has a flour sifter at the end of something else.  It also confirms my mother’s memory that it sounded a lot like kazoos.

A Morsching Kitchen Band for an upcoming Family Reunion, could be a new event!  Time to stock up on kazoos!

Now if I could only locate a video of their appearance on a news program.  That would be exciting.

August – a time to prepare

Time seems to fly by in the summer.  This August is going to be a month of preparation.

We are currently preparing to finish our basement remodel after the excessive rain that led to flooding all over the midwest area.

The end of the month holds the reserved weekend of the Morsching Family Reunion.  My grandma’s family has been holding it for years.  The attendance has dwindled in recent years but I always try to attend.  This year I hope to share the journals of my Great Grandmother wrote over a couple of years.  My Grandma Ruth recently found them.  I hope to digitize and transcribe those pages so they are easily shared.  A couple of them are not in great shape.

This time of year is also a time to prepare for genealogy conferences.  I am looking forward to attending the Federation of Genealogy Societies Conference in San Antonio at the end of the month.  As president of the Germanic Genealogy Society (GGS) I am involved in planning our Fall Meeting in September.  This year I will be presenting at the meeting a couple of presentations on the FamilySearch.org website and how it can help Germanic Researchers.

I also have the opportunity to prepare a couple of classes to teach at my local Family History Center, one about using Online Newspapers and one about using the website Find My Past.  It is fun to teach such a variety of classes.

At the end of which I hope to complete all of my presentations, connect with other researchers at the FGS Conference and GGS Meeting, and I hope to finish at least one room in our basement remodel.