I had to look up the spelling for Kismet, but there was no other word I could think of to explain this picture.

It is the wedding picture for a new member of the Association. Having visited the Isles of Shoals at a conference every summer for many years she grew to love its austere beauty. Visit after visit she would return with new pieces of memorabilia from the Shoals and slowly filled her house with bric-a-brac from this “Desired Place”.

She loved it so much that she convinced her Fiancée to travel to Star Island for their wedding. They took this picture on the day of their wedding gazing at Appledore Island, which she had never visited. What she couldn’t have known was that her history lay just across the water.

She joined the Babb Family Association in August with no idea of where she came from. She contacted me and just judging from the location I immediately told her that she was a descendant of the one and only Phillip Babb, the legendary Sheriff of the Isles of Shoals.

We compared notes and I was able to detail her as his 7th Great-Granddaughter. The place that she was so drawn to all of her life turned out to be her own. If that isn’t the definition of Kismet, I don’t know is. I won’t even get into that whole Alanis Morrisette Ironic thing, but it just fell like fate intervening and it put a giant smile on my face to be able to connect her to the past she deserved.

Cheers to the new couple in “This Desired Place”.