As you can see, this is my first post of 2021. Though for the past year I’ve been behind the scenes, fine-tuning other parts of the site and showing my presence at the LOY Group list.

After a few delays, I finally had cataract surgery last year. (The doctor says my cataracts are inherited. I’m not even retirement age yet!) Now that my natural lens was replaced by a prescription implant lens, it’s weird to be able to see at a distance without glasses or a contact lens. But just in that eye. Though my other myopic eye has some cataract, the doctor wanted to let it be until it’s bad enough for surgery.

If you’ve noticed, I’ve removed the Loy forum that was part of this site. Despite the Captchas (click all the cars in these squares), I was getting too much foreign address spam in the moderator inbox. The Loy mailing list I set up at Groups.io seems to bring the best of both worlds: an email list and a forum. And Groups.io can weed out the spam.

I also removed the register and login links from the site, since their main use was for that old forum. The only other need for a login here might be for comment posts. But that had already been set so people could submit moderated posts without logging in.

I’m still planning on changing the LOY masthead in the near future. This is the same graphic I had for the 1997 “grand opening” of this site. Back then, I thought the German “Fraktur” font was so cool, as were the flag graphics. But now it’s the 21st century and I’m sure everyone’s tired of looking at the same purple masthead.

So does anybody have any new masthead suggestions? Maybe we could have a contest to design the best LOY masthead? Where we all can vote which one we like best and the winner gets an honorable mention?

I’ve wanted to have a clearer copy (not the photocopy I have) of a photo of my grandma’s uncle Ezra B. Loy with his family, to use it as part of a new masthead. In an outdoor setting, his wife and kids are lined up like the letter “L” and Uncle Ezra’s hat shows the “O” and he’s leaning his feet on a tree that looks like a “Y.” I don’t know if any of the family members of today has caught that, but I’d noticed right away that they spelled out “LOY.”  I’ve asked a few of Uncle Ezra’s family about this, but they don’t know about it. I used to write Cousin Harry (the 2nd boy, standing right behind his mom) but couldn’t ask him about it. I hadn’t seen the photo until after his death. And his (now late) younger sisters that I used to write weren’t even born at the time of this 1908 photo. So they may have never heard the story behind this, to tell their children.

Has anyone else seen this photo? Here’s a scan I’d made of the photocopy. I highlighted the L-O-Y so you’ll see what I mean:

This may turn into a meme, but wouldn’t it be fun to get a photo collage of Loy families creatively spelling out the name LOY by posing similar to this and posting the results on this site? Maybe even as a family reunion project, where everyone spells out the name?