MGC Memory Lab: A Chat with Chelsea Clarke

Episode Overview

Hittin’ the Bricks with Kathleen is the genealogy podcast that features your questions and her answers, with a focus on clear reasoning, historical context, and practical research methods. In this episode, Kathleen and John Brandt sit down with guest Chelsea Clarke from the Midwest Genealogy Center to explore how a free, do-it-yourself Memory Lab helps families preserve and digitize their personal archives.

From VHS tapes and cassette recordings to slides, photographs, film reels, and even floppy disks, Chelsea explains how the Memory Lab allows patrons to convert aging media into digital files. The conversation covers real-time capture, planning digitization sessions, storage decisions, and how these tools help communities preserve family stories before fragile media is lost.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn

• What the Memory Lab is and how to reserve time to use it
• What formats can be digitized, including video, audio, photos, slides, and negatives
• Why many formats require real-time capture and how to plan multi-slot sessions
• How to think about file sizes, storage options, and potential cloud limitations
• What quality expectations to have when working with aging media
• How library staff help patrons inspect, prepare, and capture their materials

Topics Covered

• Digitizing VHS tapes, film reels, cassettes, photos, slides, and negatives
 • Batch scanning photographs and converting legacy media formats
 • Transferring data from 3.5-inch floppy disks
 • Overhead scanning tools and storytelling features such as VividPix narration
 • File management, storage choices, and digital preservation considerations
 • Access, equity, and the community value of public digitization resources
 • A local project highlight involving tracing ancestors and birth records

Episode Discussion & Key Moments

Chelsea explains how the Memory Lab at the Midwest Genealogy Center gives community members access to professional-grade digitization equipment without the cost of private services. Patrons can bring their own tapes, photos, slides, negatives, and disks and convert them to digital formats using specialized equipment while receiving guidance from knowledgeable staff.

The conversation also highlights the realities of digitization: many analog formats must be captured in real time, file sizes can grow quickly, and planning storage ahead of a session is essential. Kathleen and John explore how these tools support not only preservation but storytelling—helping families transform fragile recordings and images into lasting digital archives.

Key questions examined include:

• What should researchers bring to a Memory Lab appointment?
 • How can families plan ahead when digitizing large collections?
 • What risks do aging tapes, slides, and disks pose if not preserved soon?

Why This Episode Matters

Countless family histories remain trapped on fragile analog media that deteriorates over time. This episode highlights how accessible community tools—like library Memory Labs—make it possible for anyone to preserve recordings, photographs, and documents before they disappear.

About the Podcast

Hittin’ the Bricks with Kathleen is hosted by Kathleen and John Brandt and helps listener

Be sure to bookmark linktr.ee/hittinthebricks for your one stop access to Kathleen Brandt, the host of Hittin' the Bricks with Kathleen. And, visit us on YouTube: @HTBKRB with Kathleen John and Chewey video recorded specials.

Hittin' the Bricks is produced through the not-for-profit, 501c3 TracingAncestors.org.

Transcript

Meet Chelsea And The Memory Lab

John 0:00

Ladies and gentlemen from the depths of Fly-over Country in the Heartland of America, the Kansas City on the other side of the Mighty Moe, welcome to Hitting the Bricks with Kathleen, the Do It Yourself Genealogy podcast with your questions and her answers. I am John, your humble hubby host, and today we'll be talking with Chelsea Clark of the Midwest Genealogy Center's Memory Lab. There's a lot to cover, so let's start hitting the bricks.

Kathleen 0:26

So, Chelsea, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Chelsea 0:30

Sure. So my name is Chelsea Clarke. I'm one of the two assistant managers at the Midwest Genealogy Center. My personal background is in genealogy and libraries. I've been at MGC for about five years now. And so I work here in a general capacity for operations. So things like making sure there's staff in the building, toilet paper in the bathrooms, data in the spreadsheets. And then beyond that, I have taken on the obligation of the memory lab, which is a true joy.

Kathleen 0:58

Chelsea, do you also teach any of the classes or no?

Chelsea 1:00

I do. I have a background of doing that kind of work. And so when I came in, uh filled that gap a little bit as well when needed. And the class I currently teach is either the memory lab class or the kind of intermediate level for genealogy research called Clues to Conclusions.

Kathleen 1:16

We get lots of emails in the mailbag for the memory lab or this kind of service and where can people get it? So I want to make sure our listeners know exactly what the Midwest Genealogy Center can offer them. And of course, this is in the Kansas City area.

Chelsea 1:35

So we are located in Independence where the memory lab is, but we're part of the MidConnet public library system that covers eastern Jackson County, Clay and Platt. So any individual in the area, you don't have to have a library cart, don't have to live within the district. Our service covers, yes, the Kansas City area Broadway.

Kathleen 1:50

So, John, I'm gonna turn this over to you.

John 1:52

No, you're not. I'm not? What are you gonna do? Go for coffee?

Kathleen 1:57

Stop.

Chelsea 1:58

She's taking a breath. She's gonna go through some deep breathing exercises.

Kathleen 2:01

That's the extent of what I can do on an inch.

John 2:04

She probably has to at this point. She's been dealing with me all morning, so she probably needs some deep breathing exercises. Chelsea, uh, my question would be what exactly happens at the memory lab?

What The Lab Does And Why It’s Free

Chelsea 2:16

That's a good question. So the the memory lab is a free service we provide. And the reason you would use it is I think there's people among us, all kinds, where everybody has stuff in their attic, stuff in a storage closet somewhere. That's our family photos, home movies, recipe books. And the idea with the memory lab is that it's a free service where anyone can come in and use a DIY station to access equipment and kind of the know-how through instruction guides to digitize their own stuff in for free.

John 2:45

That's really interesting. So I this is a place where I can get all of that stuff that's sitting in my closet that all my family members dumped on me, and I can bring it into the memory lab and actually get it digitized.

Kathleen 2:58

Exactly. So one of our biggest questions, and before we talk just about like the scanning types, is something about VHS players or tapes. That's what I'll everyone wants something that they can do that is free of charge.

Chelsea 3:14

I think it's because a lot of people captured their family memories, their childhood memories on VHS because it was the most common kind of consumer product. And so now a lot of people have those VHS tapes sitting in a closet or in storage and they want to do something with it. But the problem is that we are in a day and age where maybe the playback equipment for that is harder and harder to find. So how do you play a VHS tape if you don't have a VCR? Um, or how do you digitize it if you don't have access to the equipment so that you can play it on, you know, a CD or save a digital file somewhere else? So the memory lab provides access to the equipment uh to make that possible so that people can access their home movies, their family memories, you know, slide photos from a family vacation from their childhood. They can access those in this day and age with modern equipment.

Kathleen 3:59

John, the VHS is that big square thing that we used to stick in a machine, right? Watch movies on from blockbusters.

John 4:07

Yeah, you know, maybe I could have just met Chelsea for this one. Yes, it's one of the big square ones you put the boxy ones. You put it on the rectangular, yes. Yes, you put the rectangle, the one rectangle in the larger rectangle and it makes the pictures, yes.

Kathleen 4:25

Okay, but I only knew that as movies. Like you would go to Blockbuster, you pull out a VHS movie. If I have one of those old movies on it, I can also do it with a movie, or does it have to be family history?

Chelsea 4:39

That is a really good question. So, as part of the appointment, what people do is they they complete a release form, which kind of goes through the liabilities, the legal stuff, um, their responsibilities, and part of that is acknowledging that they are responsible for any copyright concerns. So if they do bring in something that might be copyrighted material, like a movie on VHS, in theory, they are responsible for making sure they're following copyright law for how they reproduce those things. Uh, but beyond that, if it's a home movie, if it is something that your parents produced, your grandparents produced, there's less of a concern about copyright, and that's kind of a decision they're making on a case-by-case basis.

Kathleen 5:14

So, Chelsea, as you can tell, I'm just such a tech whiz. The reason they have home movies is because they had those kind of cameras.

Chelsea 5:21

Yes.

Kathleen 5:22

So not these kind of cameras.

VHS, Camcorders, And Copyright Basics

Chelsea 5:24

So like camcorders. Um, a lot of people starting in kind of the 90s, um, and even before that, would have had potentially uh a camcorder at home that they owned, and they may have had a you know a father or an uncle who was big into capturing family birthdays or reunions, and they might have those on tape. And through the lab, they can then bring those tapes in and and digitize them. But beyond that, there would have been other camcorder formats later on. In the memory lab, we are limited to VHS and VHS C tapes. Um, but we are always hoping to expand, and so potentially we might be able to offer more recent camcorder formats.

Kathleen 5:59

Those are my very important technical questions.

John 6:02

You know, those are actually really yeah, I was gonna say those are actually really good questions.

Kathleen 6:06

The idea is that they're sticking really to family, their home movies. Okay.

Chelsea 6:11

Well, it's the same thing for like audio cassettes. People will bring in audio cassettes usually with personal recordings um on it rather than like commercially produced audio cassettes to come in. That would be again a different thing entirely.

Kathleen 6:22

So, John, we are switching roles because I can talk all day long about genealogy. And although I am a data communications expert, I know nothing about this kind of technology.

John 6:33

It's it's data. You're good with zeros and ones, but maybe not so much with the rectangular boxes. That rectangular thing.

Chelsea 6:41

Well, don't feel too bad, Kathleen, because before I started kind of really focusing on the memory lab, I did not have a background in analog equipment or uh very niche digitization that's happening in the memory lab. And so a lot of it was a learning curve, a lot of it I had to kind of sit down and figure out myself. And all of the instruction guides, um, all of the uh you know material around it, the troubleshooting information. I had to learn that myself when I first got started. And so it is learnable, it is teachable. That's kind of the idea behind it being DIY is that the station can be used by anyone. We hope you know we've provided them with enough information and enough assistance that again it is truly a DIY process, that anyone with any level of background in technology or equipment or computers uh can come in and successfully digitize their materials.

Kathleen 7:30

I come in with my VHS or I come in with my camcorder thingy. And with that, what do I leave with?

Chelsea 7:39

Yeah, so when people come to the memory lab, the service is free. However, we ask that the individual who is making the reservation provide storage. And so that is a flash drive, that is cloud storage. They could also use an external hard drive if they've got that instead. Um, and then they leave with a digital file, and that depends on the format. So with VHS, you might leave with an MP4 file, uh, with audio cassettes, um, it would be an MP3 once you've compressed it. And so it really just depends, but it you'll end up with a digital file, depending again on the format.

John 8:08

And you need to bring your own storage media in order to take it with you.

Chelsea 8:12

Yes, yes. The one thing we ask customers provide is the storage option.

Kathleen 8:16

So is storage option also like Dropbox, or if I have a paid subscription or Google Drive or whatever comes with the Apple phones?

Chelsea 8:26

Yeah, absolutely. And so the other alternative if you don't want to do a flash drive or an external hard drive, because again, that's a physical thing you're having to keep track of and maintain, uh, you do have the option of cloud storage. And so the computer allows you to like get on the internet and log in to whatever service provider you use. So again, that could be Dropbox, could be Google, uh, could be any other third-party cloud storage you use.

John 8:46

Aaron Powell Cloud Storage, yeah. You have to be careful with the the duration, especially if you're doing a VHS. A long VHS that's digitized might exceed the amount of the file size you can transfer up to a cloud storage depending on accounts and things like that.

Chelsea 9:01

Aaron Powell That is a limitation potentially, and if you do an hour-long VHS tape, you're gonna have a longer or larger file size at the end, and that's a consideration. Another consideration, especially with VHS or the um audio visual station formats, so that would be VHS tapes, VHS C tapes, audio cassettes, and then eight millimeter and super eight film reels, is you are capturing those in in real time. So if you've got an hour-long VHS, you're gonna be sitting there for an hour capturing that tape, and then there's extra work at the back end there. Same for audio cassettes, and then for eight millimeter film reels or super eight film reels, you're capturing each frame individually. And so if you're sitting there for about five minutes of real time looking at your watch, uh you'll end up with about 30 seconds of footage. So it does require some time. Sure.

John 9:47

Let's uh let's do that. Um for now, let's talk about um since we're into video and movies, what what can you handle?

Chelsea 9:55

Yeah, so for audiovisual materials, you would use the audiovisual station. And there we have equipment to digitize VHS tapes and VHS C tapes with an adapter. And then there is audio cassettes in that station, along with eight millimeter film reels and super eight film reels.

John 10:13

That that covers probably 80%. Anything older than that is it might not make it through the process if you go beyond those, which is always an issue the older the uh materials get.

Time, File Sizes, And Real‑Time Capture

Chelsea 10:26

Yes, and we take that very seriously. We try to communicate that concern to customers when they are signing that release form so they kind of understand the risks. We are dealing with at times old materials that have not always been stored in the optimum conditions. Right. And so magnetic tapes like VHS or audio cassettes have a lifespan. You can extend that with with good archival storage. Uh, but we are always concerned about how fragile materials are and do often provide uh advice or counsel to people when they come in. We look at your materials and give you advice as far as what we're seeing or what we're identifying as concerns there.

John 11:05

Is there typically somebody there at the memory lab where if I'm coming in, I'm not just gonna be on my own without anybody to ask a question of? Not that I would ask you to digitize my stuff, but is there somebody to answer the big questions?

Kathleen 11:18

The big questions like where do I stick this thing into the what do how do I start?

Chelsea 11:23

Yeah. So yes, when people come in for their appointment, um, and again, these are free three-hour-long appointment slots, uh, open every day a week, and so you can book that online on our website, uh, which is preferred because walk-ins, we can't guarantee the lab is available, but it's it's an option.

John 11:39

Good to know.

Chelsea 11:39

So when they arrive at the Midwest Genealogy Center, they will come to the front desk and they will check in. And that involves again that release form, and then uh staff will inspect their materials very briefly. Obviously, we're not experts, but we were looking for some things like damage or fragile materials. If it's got a strong smell, often with audiovisual materials, you're dealing with a vinegary smell when it starts to break down. And so, again, we're trying to protect our equipment, um, but also protect everyone else's materials uh to prevent the you know contamination from mold or or damage that is not immediately apparent.

Kathleen 12:13

So you're going around sniffing and inspecting and don't be alarmed.

Chelsea 12:18

Don't be alarmed if they sniff your tape. I explain why I'm smelling their tapes when I'm doing it. Don't just be on if I didn't.

Kathleen 12:28

Okay. When they bring in one of these old tapes, let's say a family-made film, what is the quality that they're getting when they're copying it? Is it degradated? Is that the right word? Degraded. Degraded. Yeah, degraded. That's the word.

John 12:44

Degradated.

Kathleen 12:46

I don't know what degradated is. I bet it's a great word.

John 12:53

I like degradation.

Supported Formats And Material Risks

Chelsea 12:54

Yes, it's a very niche, very expertise-level word. We just didn't know it because we don't have the expertise. Uh but uh it is possible that maybe they are coming in with tapes with some level of degradation, and so that is a consideration. The quality of the capture is ultimately dependent on the quality of that tape. Often people might come in and they've not looked at this tape, they didn't have playback equipment for it, so they've not seen what's on it and they don't know. And then they view it, and maybe there is uh some visual distortion because of it or audio distortion, but the equipment itself is gonna capture the level of the tape. And so it really just depends on that.

Kathleen 13:30

So I've heard about the audio and in picture or visual side. What about scanning documents?

Chelsea 13:39

Thank you for bringing that up because I I feel like I should also uh mention the scanning station and the overhead scanner station. And so there are three stations in total, and so these two scanning stations offer a variety of equipment uh that will help you digitize traditional physical photos, documents, you know, vacations on slides. So 35 millimeter slides will be compatible with our equipment, and then a variety of fill um like negative film formats are also compatible with that station. And then the overhead scanner also allows for bound materials and uh 3D objects to be scanned.

John 14:10

Oh wow, interesting. Um tell me more about the 3D objects.

Chelsea 14:14

Is that that VividPix or something? Yes, and so the overhead station, overhead scanner station is our newest station. Uh, it has an overhead scanner along with uh VividPix memory station software. And that is the one feature where we kind of offer a little bit more of um user-friendly, beginner-friendly software in VividPix that allows for some editing and additional tools like recording voice recordings with your scanned photos and then creating like a narrated video with those materials. And that's all through that software.

Kathleen 14:44

So on the scanning the documents, while I'm scanning it, after I scan it, do I go back with the narration or do I do this as I'm going through the scan?

Chelsea 14:55

So in VividPix, um, the software has you scan your materials, and then you have the option to edit them using their restore tool. And then after you've done that, you have the option, you can always opt out, but you have the option to do the stories tool, which is that that uh voice recording, and you look at the picture and you record either a story or a memory or just captions. And then there is another tool at the end that does the videos that kind of combines the voice recording and the scanned images.

Kathleen 15:22

Chelsea, what about your users so far? Are you finding that people are really coming out and doing this? Yeah.

Booking, Check‑In, And Staff Support

Chelsea 15:28

So ultimately the goal of the memory lab and the idea, it really does fill a need. We've seen there's a lot of public interest, and I'm sure you you've seen it as well, that people have all these materials they want to digitize, but they either don't want to send it away because they're worried it might get lost in the mail or damaged, or it's just cost prohibitive to digitize their materials with a company. Um, that people who are coming in maybe need the access to the equipment, but also need a little bit of that information, an education piece to be able to navigate the process. And so the goal of the memory lab ultimately is to democratize that access to digitization so that you know, if if the money is limiting for you and you can't afford to uh send it off, we have an option for you for free as a public service because we believe that that is serving a really important need. And I think it dovetails really nicely with genealogy and our mission there here at MGC. A lot of people who come in mostly are using VHS tapes. Like that's our most common um format. People come in with that a lot. But there's also a lot of people who have uh slides and they use our batch scanner, the slidesnap pro, and that makes that very quickly something that can be accomplished. We have a batch scanner for photos as well, and so when people come in, they have varying levels of technical expertise or comfort with computers. And so we are trying to provide the right instruction, provide the right assistance, and that includes staff assistance, answering questions and troubleshooting, uh, so that anybody who comes in has a positive experience and is able to successfully complete their work.

John 16:58

You can also do uh negatives you mentioned. Is there a specific type, like the 35 millimeter negatives?

Chelsea 17:05

Yeah, so uh for that station that's in the scanning station, uh, we have a flatbed scanner uh that does up to 11 by 17 with a transparency unit, which enables us to put in trays with those negative film strips or two other formats of kind of the larger formats or medium formats of those negative film. So we can do the strips, we can do the individual kind of frames. Without that, you can also get kind of more creative and digitize slides or negatives, even if they're irregular formats.

John 17:34

If somebody had a large project, would would you suggest, like if they had, let's say, a box full of things they wanted, uh, and maybe there's a VHS tape and some negatives and would you suggest them coming in? Could they make an appointment and come in and kind of project plan and and figure out that because probably one three-hour session might not cover it all. So could they project plan with one of the people there or you to find out how to plan that out?

Chelsea 18:01

We don't necessarily uh advise on like planning how to do it, but we do with appointments have the option to um allow the public to make consecutive appointments in a day. You just can't make uh appointments at the same time. So you can't have the audio visual station and the scanning station at the same time. But you can do the audio visual station, the first slot, the second slot, and the third slot of the day if you've got a lot to do. I think it's ultimately a matter of if if you've got a lot of materials to digitize and you're overwhelmed. Staff can always answer questions about informally guiding you on kind of here's some suggestions you can try, or you don't have to do everything in one setting. Um, and so you've got options. I should mention at the scanning station the other format we can do there is floppy disks, 3.5-inch floppy disks.

John 18:44

Oh, seriously.

Chelsea 18:45

Which is a very niche type of a storage device, but uh most computers don't have a floppy disk drive anymore. Most computers don't even have a CD drive anymore. And so as an option to transfer files off of floppy disks, we offer them as well.

Kathleen 19:00

You mean the old-fashioned floppy disks we put in our computers?

Image And Document Scanning Options

Chelsea 19:03

Mm-hmm. The little ones, the three and a halves, yeah.

Kathleen 19:06

That's really cool because I get a lot of people asking me these questions who are my age and older, also. So I really want to thank Chelsea John for explaining it to me so I can tell them everything wrong, but I have the concept in general before I send them to the right place.

Chelsea 19:24

Direct them to that place, yes.

Kathleen 19:29

But that is very good, and people really are. I just did a presentation uh locally last Saturday, and that was one of the questions that came up at one of the tables was how can I get my stuff, my family stuff, where I can preserve it? And of course, that's our whole goal is to preserve history. So, and family history, of course, is the best.

Chelsea 19:51

Yeah, I think that one of the biggest or most important points about the memory lab for me at least is the question of uh people might ask is like, why is personal archiving important? Why should I care? Uh especially as people get older and they have those materials, they don't know, you know, their kids maybe don't want them or don't yet recognize the value of those materials, but they will later, is that personal archiving is very important because for me, at least with the memory lab, this is an opportunity for people to get involved with preserving their memories, their stories, their family stories, in a way that maybe traditionally or historically for certain people or certain groups were not included in uh institutional archiving work. Maybe they were not included in the scope of those collections, but they hopefully can feel empowered through this process to do that work for themselves, preserve their own stories, and we hopefully are providing the right equipment and the right uh information that includes programs and classes. Our archivist teaches a class about archiving a life, and some of that is covered here. And so I think it's it's a really important mission, the memory lab, and I think it it matches up really well with our mission here for uh helping people connect with their stories here at MGC.

John 21:03

We we just love the Midwest Genealogy Center for specifically that reason. The mission is so community-centric, and so much of this is free to the public, which is just a value that is wonderful.

Chelsea 21:16

And we do track that just because out of curiosity, I keep all of the stats about memory lab usage. And I was curious kind of how much value are we saving the public based on um on evaluations we get. They're they're optional, so this is an under sh an underestimation of um we've undershot kind of how much people have used it because it's really just dependent on who completes the evaluation and tells us how many things they digitized, how they interacted with the lab. Uh, but from the information we do have, the value we've saved people, that was discovered by going out and getting quotes, what it would cost to do VHS tapes with a professional third party company, or slides, send them away and get them done, is that uh since the memory lab began, obviously we don't have the first year stats, but for last year and then this year so far, uh the total value saved by our customers is over $150,000 just by using the memory lab for free.

John 22:04

That is incredible.

Kathleen 22:06

With the scanning project you just did for tracing ancestors, which is Dr. A. Porter Davis from Kansas City's Kansas, that collection that was uh gifted to us, you s sit in the office and scanned all of these images. Can you tell us a little bit about that and how it might have been better or helpful for you to go to this scanning lab at Midwest Genealogy Center.

VividPix Tools And Narrated Stories

John 22:31

Well I mean the advantage was I could do it at, you know, any time of the day when I was here and I do have a good flatbed scanner. However, it's slower than probably most. And so whereas I took four hours uh scanning at 600 PPI into TIF files, which it took 30 to 40 seconds each, uh it might have gone a lot faster with machines at Midwest Genealogy Center.

Chelsea 22:57

We do have a batch scanner in our scanning station. And so it does do up to 36 photos at a time. It's maybe meant for more um kind of those classy five by sevens that you have if you have documents you can still use that as well. Uh and it does speed up the process. A lot of the questions that folks have is is figuring out whether they can afford to purchase the equipment and use it from home. And it's great that you had that opportunity. But we do offer a lot of equipment that may be cost prohibitive to folks at home who there are benefits from doing it in you know in the privacy and comfort of your own home. But if if it is a matter of needing access to the equipment and maybe not being able to to afford it yourself, that is a benefit of the memory lab.

John 23:36

Yeah and I mean I stole my wife's scanner for that.

Chelsea 23:40

It's always good when you can do that.

John 23:42

It's always good when she's got a scanner sitting in the next room and I'm like oh let me bor this for a sec.

Kathleen 23:46

So John I do want to invite our listeners to visit the Tracy Ancestors website also in order to see that project of Dr. A Porter Davis and the maternal sanitarium in Kansas City, Kansas especially people who might have a base out of this region.

John 24:03

You're thinking that they if you're doing research then you might actually check into that because there's birth certificates but they're not certified.

Kathleen 24:10

They are his copies of the birth certificates but they may never have been registered with the state the women that yeah 1925 to 35 I think was the range of those. Right. It's a wonderful project.

Chelsea 24:24

It does sound like a really great project and I think it speaks to the importance of of digitization work uh either if you know for organizations or for individuals is that stories like that need to be preserved. People's information needs to be preserved so those stories are not forgotten. And I think that is one of the biggest impacts of the memory lab as well is providing that opportunity to do that.

Kathleen 24:44

Thank you Chelsea for making me look good in this podcast.

John 24:48

My pleasure Chelsea did such a great job that I could I could use a little bit of editing tweaking okay yeah all of us will get tweaked a bit here. Well congratulations you made it to the end of another episode thanks so much for staying thanks to Chewy Chewbacca brand for his unwavering lack of interest in anything we're doing. The theme song for Hittin the Bricks was written and performed by Tony Fisknuckle and the Bloodstones. Watch for the next appearance at an intrusive igneous rock near you. Do you have a genealogical question for Kathleen? Drop us a line at hitting the bricks at gmail.com and let us know