A co-worker had grumbled that work got in the way of life. Paid employment is what I do to support my ability to travel and do hands-on research. Fortunately for Bowen-Bennett, itinerant nurses are somewhat in demand. So, when she decided to mimic Charles Kuralt and hit the road, Bowen-Bennett signed up with an agency that provides temporary nurses to hospitals and clinics. The people she seeks all are dead, of course, but they still have interesting tales to tell.
Most genealogists are content to write letters and wait.
But Bowen-Bennett is a woman of action. She is impatient, and she likes to see and do for herself. Mo. My father was born there, but all records were supposedly destroyed in a fire. All of the land records still exist, and she found records of her great-grandfather's 1856 purchase of 160 acres. Bowen-Bennett makes mostly day trips and a few overnighters to do genealogy from her base in Ann Arbor.