CLEARWATER, FL—I’m in Florida visiting Rebecca. In talking through our plans for the weekend, we figured the most fitting way to start it off was with a sunset photo shoot on Thursday. I let Rebecca pick the spot.

She wisely selected the Belleair Causeway, mainly because its elevation (a much-sought-after quality in this very flat part of the world) would give us a spectacular view of two bodies of water—the Florida Western Intracoastal Waterway, which you’ll see in the foreground, and the Gulf of Mexico, which is in the background.

Sometimes, when the sunset is this stunning, you have to cut back on the words to make more room for the pictures!

I drove over to Dockweiler State Beach late yesterday afternoon. Dockweiler is the beach you see out the airplane window as you’re taking off from LAX. It’s an open stretch of sand that runs for four miles.

I had an idea for a video for one of my other blogs, Shoreline5089.com, which is a chronicle of my quest to see the more than 5,000 miles of ocean coastline in the continental U.S. But as long as I was up on the bluff making a video of the sunset, I couldn’t come up with a reason why I couldn’t also be using my trusty DLSR.

It was a little cold and windy on the bluff (at least for a Californian), but I was on a mission. And nature didn’t disappoint me.

Just north of where the sun was sinking, there was a huge flock of birds. They seemed to be making decent progress against the crosswind, but I really couldn’t tell where they were headed.

If you’d like to see what this scene looks like in motion, have a look at it here.

Kristie Weiland Cohen appeared just as several Strauber-Strober-Struber relatives were beginning to discover each other online. Her first contact was through a genealogy message board with several of us who listed ourselves there as looking for information on our family. Is it possible, Kristie asked, that her great-grandfather William “Bill” Struber was part of our Struber family?

Those more knowledgeable than I in these matters quickly deduced that William Struber, Kristie’s great-grandfather, was the second child and first son of Mendel “Max” Struber, a son of Yoinaton Folic, who was a son of Abraham Aaron Strober.

Kristie was “in the club”… and lucky for us. She has proved herself to be an ambitious and skilled researcher, often making connections when those of us with more cobwebs in our heads couldn’t see them. And she also discovered a treasure-trove of photographs in the basement of her grandmother, Catherine (Struber) Weiland. Here are some of those pictures.

A classified ad Max Struber placed in the Omaha Morning World-Herald on April 4, 1900 advertising a room for rent.

A brief newspaper article from the Omaha World-Herald July 18, 1898 about Max Struber being assaulted while sitting on his stoop.

School ID card from Kellossa (sp?) in Omaha, NB dated June 23, 1899 for William Struber, then in the 7th Grade.

Letter of Recommendation from Edw. Schumann, commercial photographer, St. Louis, MO, for William Struber, dated March 2, 1900, saying his was leaving because his parents were moving away from the city and that he would do as well as any boy his age.

Letter of Recommendation from Harry Rowley, foreman of the composing room at Rees Printing Company in Omaha, NB, on behalf of William Struber, dated July 17, 1902.

William "Bill" Struber (third from left) at print shop with colleagues, probably in the early 1900s.

William "Bill" Struber (third from left) at print shop, a cigar in his mouth, probably in the early 1900s.

Sam Struber in sailor uniform on deck a Navy ship off Veracruz, Mexico in December 1913.

Group of sailors in uniform, including Sam Struber, on the deck of a Navy ship in 1913.

Sam Struber, three years younger than William, on battlefield in France in 1918 during World War I. Sam was 19.

Sam Struber on the battlefield in France in 1918, apparently in front of the battlefield stores.

Formal portrait of William Struber with cigar in hand, probably around 1910.

Jacob "Jack" Struber, probably around 1910. Unknown location

Florence (Grundman) Struber and Cecile (Russel) Struber. Florence was the wife of William "Bill" Struber and Cecile the wife of Jacob "Jack" Struber. Probably around 1910.

Florence (Grundman) Struber probably about 1910.

Florence (Grundman) Struber, left, with woman identified as "Gladys" in writing on scrapbook page, probably about 1910.

William "Bill" Struber and his son Edwin "Eddie" Struber in bathing suits, probably in 1914 or 1915, unknown location.

Florence (Grundman) Struber with son Edwin "Eddie", who is possibly 1 year old, at beach. Probably in 1914.

Frieda Struber, daughter of Jacob "Jack" and Cecile Struber, and Edwin "Eddie" Struber, son of William "Bill" and Florence Struber, in strollers, probably in 1913. Unknown location.

Frieda Struber, daughter of Jacob "Jack" and Cecile (Russel) Struber, and Edwin "Eddie" Struber, son of William "Bill" and Florence Struber, in strollers, probably in 1913. Unknown location.

Edwin "Eddie" Struber in shorts at about the age of 2, which means this photo has to have been taken in about 1915. Unknown location.

Edwin "Eddie" Struber, probably at about the age of 6 or 7, probably in 1919 or 1920. Unknown location.

Edwin "Eddie" Struber at approximate age of 5, with hat and large collar. Presumably his younger sister Catherine Struber in the foreground.Unknown where photo was taken, but probably in 1919 or 1920.

Catherine Struber and her brother, Edwin "Eddie" Struber. Judging from their ages (Eddie was born in 1913, Catherine in 1918), this portrait was probably taken about 1923.

Catherine Struber eating ice cream with her mother, Florence (Grundman) Struber, obviously in a park in winter, unknown location, probably 1930s.

Catherine Struber in the sand at the beach with her shoes on, unknown location, probably 1930s.

Catherine Struber with her parents, Florence (Grundman) and William "Bill" Struber, location unknown, probably in the 1930s.

Catherine Struber Weiland at beach with another (unidentified) woman, probably in the 1930s.

Catherine Struber on beach towel in sand, unknown location probably in the 1930s.

Catherine Struber at beach with waves in the background, unknown location probably in the 1930s.

Catherine Struber in boat at lake, probably 1930s, location unknown.

Edwin "Eddie" Struber at high school graduation, probably about 1931.

Edwin "Eddie" Struber seated in full-length portrait at high school graduation, probably about 1931.

Edwin "Eddie" Struber in WWII Army uniform - 1940s, unknown location

Edwin "Eddie" Struber in WWII Army uniform - 1940s, unknown location

Catherine (Struber) Weiland and Edward Weiland in uniform, obviously during WWII. Unknown occasion, date, or location.

Edward and Catherine (Struber) Weiland with dog in rowboat, possibly late 1930s in unknown location

Catherine Struber, with blanket over her shoulders, possibly late 1930s.

Edward and Catherine (Struber) Weiland on couch, possibly 1940s.

Florence (Grundman) and William Struber on park bench, unknown date and unknown location, possibly 1930s.

Florence (Grundman) Struber with her daughter, Catherine Struber in park, possibly in late 1930s.

Florence (Grundman) and William Struber dressed up, obviously in park, unknown date and unknown location, but possibly late 1930s.

I wasn’t much into the game, so I made my way instead to Signal Hill to see what the sunset might have in store. It didn’t disappoint, that’s for sure.

There’s been so much chatter from my last post about the Catskills that I decided to post several pictures from Carol Strober. Carol’s grandparents owned a rooming house in Ellenville, NY known as Campbell House. And for a large part of the Strober family, it was a country destination they remember. So here are Carol’s pictures, in no particular order.

Harry "Tzvi" Strober and Louis Strober in barn of Campbell House, the family's guest house in Ellenville, NY, probably in the 1930s. (Collection of Carol Strober)

Harry "Tzvi" Strober and Pauline Strober, brother and sister, probably near the family's guest house in Ellenville, NY sometime in the 1920s. (Collection of Carol Strober).

Harry "Tzvi" Strober and his wife Pearl in 1939. (Collection of Carol Strober)

Harry "Tzvi" Strober and his son Steven in approximately 1948. (Collection of Carol Strober)

Steven Strober and his grandparents, Louis and Bertha Strober, in 1945. (Collection of Carol Strober)

Louis and Bertha Strober circa 1910. (Collection of Carol Strober)

Louis Strober and his son Harry "Tzvi" on a park bench in 1940. (Collection of Carol Strober)

Louis Strober and grandson Steven Strober walking down street circa 1948

Harry "Tzvi" Strober and wife Pearl, with Harry's father Louis and Harry's younger brother Emmanuel "Manny" Strober, probably about 1940. (Collection of Carol Strober)

Jack Novik, center, with Sam Dagan and his maternal grandfather Louis Strober, probably in the 1940s. (Collection of Carol Strober)

Carol Strober, in the arms of her mother Pearl Strober, in front of the family's music and TV store, Ellenville, NY, in 1949. (Collection of Carol Strober)

Pearl and Harry Strober at the Campbell House lift in Ellenville, NY, in the late 1940s. (Collection of Carol Strober)

Pearl and Harry Strober on the lawn at Campbell House in Ellenville, NY, in the early 1940s. (Collection of Carol Strober)

Harry Strober (third from left) and Pearl Strober (fourth from left) with friends, probably in the 1950s. (Collection of Carol Strober)

Pearl Strober with her son Steven, behind the family home in Ellenville, NY in 1945. (Collection of Carol Strober)

Steven Strober with his mother, Pearl Strober, in 1947. (Collection of Carol Strober)

Carol Strober, in the arms of her mother, Pearl Strober, while Carol's brother Steven looks on in 1949. (Collection of Carol Strober)

Carol Strober and Steven Strober, mid-1950s. (Collection of Carol Strober)

Steven Strober with his younger sister Carol Strober and grandmother Bertha Strober (in background) in mid-1950s in Ellenville, NY. (Collection of Carol Strober)

Pearl Strober on the lawn in front of Campbell House, Ellenville, NY, probably in the mid-1940s. (Collection of Carol Strober)

Harry and Pearl Strober, probably in the 1970s. (Collection of Carol Strober)

Pearl and Harry Strober, photographed in the 1960s. (Collection of Carol Strober)

Pearl Strober in the garden of her home in Ellenville, NY, probably in the early 2000s. (Collection of Carol Strober)

Pearl Strober at the home of her son Steven in Tucson, AZ in the mid-2000s. (Collection of Carol Strober)

Steven Strober with family friend Doris Summer (in background) in Ellenville, NY in summer of 1944. (Collection of Carol Strober)

Again courtesy of Jim Ostroff’s seemingly inexhaustible supply of family history, here are three more postcards sent by his grandmother Clara (Skolnick) Rosenblum to his mother Thea (Rosenblum) Ostroff. These are from the summer of 1948, when Clara was in Swan Lake, a few miles southwest of Liberty in Sullivan County, in the Catskills. This evokes an age now long past—a time when those who could got out of the hot city in the summer for the slightly cooler mountains a hundred miles outside New York City.

If the penny postage wasn’t a tip-off that this age is long past, nothing will be. Postcards were in that day, before telephone tolls got so inexpensive that cellphone companies stopped tracking them, the most efficient and economical way of keeping in touch with distant loved ones (about the same distance as New York is from Philadelphia, or Los Angeles is from San Diego).

One other thing: Jim tends today to use every available space on a piece of paper. He and I have corresponded for more than a half-century, and I know that whatever is typed in the body of a letter is only a part of the message. The rest of it will be written longhand across the bottom and usually up at least one side margin. His mom, Thea, who may have been one of America’s epistolary greats, did the same thing. So when I saw his grandmother’s postcards, I could tell this wasn’t a new habit. It’s undoubtedly a genetic one!

It’s largely because of my cousin Jim Ostroff that I’m at all interested in genealogy. Jim is two years older than I am. Technically, he and I are second cousins (we share the same great-grandparents). But we have been close friends all of our lives, share a profession, and an alma mater.

But there are some areas in which our interests diverge. I tend to be pretty scattershot. I get interested in things in bursts of energy, and then move on to something else. Jim has always stayed focused. He seems to remember every conversation he ever had with his grandmother about family, and probably has detailed notes from the ones after he was about three or four. By contrast, I have trouble remembering which shoes I’m wearing right now without looking down to check.

A few weeks ago, Jimmy (which is what his family calls him) emailed me a pile of pictures from decades ago. I don’t know how this stack eluded him this long, because I thought he’d already scanned all of his pictures. But they make for pleasant viewing. And as an example of the power of photographs to keep us connected.

*8:30pm PT two corrections in one of the captions: Thea was the middle daughter of Jacob and Clara (not the youngest, as I said), and Jacob’s postcard was sent two months before he died.

A postcard from Jacob J. Rosenblum (Jim's grandfather) to his middle daughter Thea and her husband Herbie (Jim's parents), postmarked Monticello, NY, on June 16, 1943, slightly more two months before Jacob died.

Text of the postcard from Jacob J. Rosenblum: "Best regards to you and husband. Be good and well. J." Postmarked in Monticello, NY, on June 16, 1943.

Photo of Charlotte Rosenblum, Joe Altman, and Thea Rosenblum. (Charlotte and Thea were the sisters of Joe's wife Virginia.) Note on back indicates it was taken at 1935 Pitkin Avenue in Brooklyn, which is where Joe Altman and Virginal (Rosenblum) Altman lived.

Note from Jay Altman to Jim Ostroff on previous photo. (Jay is the son of Joe and Virginia Altman, and Jim's first cousin.)Note is dated June 17, 2009.

Picture postcard of the Sunrise Hotel in Livingston Manor, NY.

Text of postcard dated July 13, 1941 and postmarked July 14, 1941 in Livingston Manor, NY. From Herb Ostroff to Thea Rosenblum. ("Thea Ross" is a pen name Jim's mother sometimes used.)

1935 photo of Virginia (Rosenblum) Altman with friends, presumably in Brooklyn, NY.

July 1959 photo of Virginia Altman with Ostroff kids, presumably in Douglaston, NY. L to R: Jim Ostroff, Ellen Ostroff, Matthew Ostroff, Virginia Altman.

Virginia (Rosenblum) Altman with her sister, Thea (Rosenblum) Ostroff and kids, presumably in Douglaston, NY. L to R: Thea (Rosenblum) Ostroff, Virginia (Rosenblum) Altman, Herbert "Herbie" Ostroff, Matthew Ostroff, Ellen Ostroff.

Virginia Rosenblum and her sister Thea Rosenblum, circa 1935.

The Rosenblum sisters, circa 1938. L to R: Virginia Rosenblum, Thea Rosenblum, Charlotte Rosenblum.

I was sitting around this afternoon pushing a bunch of words across a computer screen. I had one eye out the window the whole time, wondering how I could pass an 80-degree cloudless January Saturday afternoon and have nothing to show for it.

I made myself a cup of coffee in a to-go cup and headed for the beach.

My friend Bryan Frank is always saying you have to get out of your photographic comfort zone, and the whole way to the beach I wondered what I might do differently today than I’ve done on all the days in the past.

Well, I figured, I could get under the Manhattan Beach Pier. I’ve never done that with my camera.

It turns out it was the perfect day for something new. A woman who showed up with her camera and a tripod right after I arrived told me this is one of three days when the setting sun would cross right in front of the end of the pier. So not only was the weather perfect, but it seems the circumstances were, too.

Some days, everything just clicks. I think this was one of those days.

Yup, some days it just clicks!

I promised, after my visit to Curly’s grave in Boyle Heights almost a year ago, that I’d make it to the rest of The Stooges’.

Today, running around town taking care of errands, I passed right by the entrance to Hillside Memorial Park on Centinela. Ordinarily, I zip by on the freeway with a nod to Al Jolson, in whose memory there’s a landmark mausoleum with a waterfall. But today, there I was at the front gate with a couple of extra minutes in the schedule.

The guard directed me to Moe Howard‘s tomb, but I wasn’t able to find it, so I headed for the office. The woman there was kind enough to point me in the right direction, give me a map, and a bottle of water.

It was a short walk from the office to the Alcove of Love. And the crypt was right where the woman told me it would be—C-233.

I sat down for a few minutes on one of the benches in the Alcove and pondered this man I didn’t know and about whom the marker said next to nothing. Born Moses Harry Horwitz, he had an incredible show-business career. A high-school dropout, he supported himself for almost a half-century doing schtick with his brothers (Curly and Shemp) and their friend Larry Fine. His career was buoyed along by technological changes—when Columbia Pictures stopped making shorts in the late 1950s, those shorts found a market in the emerging television medium. They also found a whole new audience in Baby Boomers.

Was making people laugh a fun career? Did it make Moe happy? No telling. I didn’t know the man. According to Wikipedia, when show-business evaporated for Moe in the 1970s, he went into real estate. Would you buy a house from this man? He was married for more than 50 years to the same woman, and had two children. That’s an accomplishment!

As with my visit to Curly’s grave last February, I came away from the Alcove of Love without any deep thoughts, no great insights on the Meaning of Life. What I saw was an unadorned monument to a man who spent 77 years on the Earth. I don’t know if he met his own expectations in life. But he has given me hours and hours of laughter. And that is a greater marker than can ever be made of brass.

I happened to be outside when the rain ended yesterday. I grabbed the camera and figured it was the perfect moment to work on a few areas of photography that I’d been forced by the southern California climate to neglect.

The storm ended rather abruptly. One minute it was raining; the next the clouds parted, the blue sky peaked through, and the rain was done. I was on the east side of Rancho Park, which is one of the great resources of my neighborhood that I make far too little use of.

My goal was to capture with the lens as much detail of the water drops as I possibly could. It was a little unnerving. In many cases, I had to switch off the auto-focus altogether—a big step for a rank amateur like me—and do the best I could with minute movements of the focus ring.

And even though I had boots in the trunk, I hadn’t bothered to put them on for fear the time changing would make me miss the shots I was after. In retrospect, that probably wouldn’t have happened. But the result was a fair amount of sloshing around in mud beneath the trees.

I liked the shots I was getting, but I can’t help but think how much closer they could have been had I not given the macro attachment I once had in my camera bag (and never used) to my daughter.

See, sometimes it pays to not be smart enough to come in out of the rain.