I stayed up until 3 am reading a fascinating blog my niece Cheryl put on the family site

This blog is written by a cousin of my ex husband Dean Shurtz who is related to him in 3 different ways. She is quite a bit younger than we are, probably by 11 or 12 years. It may sound funny to you to have a cousin related to you in 3 different ways but this is quite a common phenomenon in Utah, especially in Escalante where Dean came from. He has numerous cousins related to him in at least 3 different ways. My son Raymond Shurtz and my niece Cheryl (Roundy) Cox would be related to this blogger named Jill (Barney) Carpenter in 3 different ways. So I am urging him to put this blog on his list of favorites as he will find quite a lot of stories in it about his older relatives. This relative is also a professional writer and that should be of a good deal of interest to him, too.
She has degrees and writes about her field which is biology, but she is also a book lover who has owned a book store and she reviews books in her blog, just what I have been looking for. In fact I am going to look for a book of poetry that she recommended by a poet named Bill Holm the next time I go to the library, the title of which suggests that writers are all involved in writing 'chain letters of the soul' to one another as well as to the public. What is more this blogger has also learned to play a banjo and owns a piano on which she also plays. She belongs to music groups. So she is a woman of many interests and talents. I looked for some of the music they play to download but my computer balked. Something was wrong, so I did not get any of their music listened to or I might have stayed up even longer.
What is more I have been talking to the older sister of this woman a long time, who lives right here in Phoenix, not real often but still enough to have had many interesting conversations with her over the years. I have always considered her a very good talker, one of the best in Dean's family and she was my sister Margie's friend since she was her age.
One year when Margie and I were in the first and second grade, my mother moved to Escalante for a couple of months during the winter, and I was thrilled because Margie and I made friends with Joan and Jean, Jill's older sisters. Jean was in my grade and I thought she was very smart and cute, too. I was very envious because every single day their mother combed their hair into the most beautiful ringlets. Joan was dark and Jean was blonde and their mother dressed them in darling dresses she made I am sure since she was an expert seamstress. I wished that we could stay in Escalante forever so we could be best friends with these beautiful girls. They were so smart, too, we thought. Margie loved her teacher, Mrs. Lee, and I loved mine, Helen Schow. Later on I heard that a beautiful little blonde sister named Jill came along in their family quite a few years later, and she proved to be very smart, too, as this blog testifies.
I did not get to stay friends with Jean because she married and moved to Virginia, and I never saw her, but Margie connected up again to Joan when she was going to the U of U to become a nurse. Later Margie and I married their cousins, Dean Shurtz and Pole Griffin, of course related to each other and them 3 different ways. They both had beautiful curly hair and could sing and we hoped that our children would be just as musically talented and good looking as they were. Ringlets would be nice, too. Margie and I were sad because we could not sing.
Our dreams were realized when her oldest daughter Camille took up the guitar and wrote and sang beautiful songs, and my son Raymond bought a guitar and started writing songs and acting and singing. Raymond even had ringlets when he grew his hair long in high school. You never know who your childhood impressions will lead you to marry is one of my conclusions. Here is the link: http://roadkillblues.blogspot.com/