Travel Update

Thanks to the holidays, it has been a while since I last posted to this blog.  I have updated the Willis Davis chapter, and will post the update once we are somewhere with better cell coverage, as I need to do some additional edits before doing so.

Recent changes to the Affordable Care Act have prompted us to reconsider the nomadic lifestyle that we have enjoyed for the past two and a half years.  Last year we had high deductible insurance, with a maximum out-of-pocket expense of a bit more than $7,000.  For this year, the same policy has a slightly higher deductible, but the policy now differentiates between in-network cover and out-of-network coverage.  Now, the slightly higher deductible only applies in-network, which is generally most of Southern Idaho.  Everywhere else, our deductible is $40,000, with a max out of pocket of $70,000.  We are healthy enough that we aren't likely to need to use that much health insurance while outside of Idaho, but it simply isn't worth the risk.  After all, the purpose of insurance is supposed to be to minimize the need to take such risks...

(So much for the campaign promise of better health insurance, from the man who doesn't seem to understand the difference between health insurance and life insurance...)

Thus, we plan to be closer to Idaho for the next few years, while we wait for Medicare eligibility, at which point we will once again be untethered from health insurance concerns.  As a result, we will be moving into a rental property that we have there, which we plan to extensively remodel.  That means that book research will necessarily go on hold while we are in the midst of that.

As noted in an earlier post, the thought of indexing the book in its current state is a daunting and very unpleasant thought.  So, at some point, I will split the book into either two or four volumes.

The two volume option would be to basically take the descendancy lists out of the main volume, and put them in a volume of their own.  It would still be a very considerable task to provide a full name index, mostly because there are many, many folks with the same given and surnames.  So making it clear which individual was being indexed would be rather onerous.  A sub-option would be simply not to index the volume, but I'm not too keen on that option.

The four volume option would be to remove the descendancy lists from the main volume, and to create separate volumes for the descendants of Willis Davis, Aaron Davis and James Davis.  I am leaning more towards this option at present.  Indexing would be vastly simpler, and time could be spent on improving those volumes in different ways.

The big advantage of this option would be that I wouldn't need to complete all the volumes at the same time.  It would also make it more practical to consider including some of the many historic photos of the descendants of these men, making them essentially photo albums of our distant ancestors, all correctly labeled and available publicly, where future descendants can find and enjoy them.

Of course I have direct control of only a handful of photos for my own Davis line, so most of the photos would need to come from the collections of other researchers.  If any of you have any thoughts on this subject, please share them.

By the way, we are once again on the road, and are currently near the Florida Panhandle.  We will head due west once we get to the north end of the Gulf of Mexico.  When we get to New Mexico we will head northward through Utah to Idaho.  Our plan is to arrive in Idaho by the first of April.