I’m surprised every time the blogiversary season rolls around and it is time to dig out the party hat. Blogiversary IV has really snuck up on me as I try to finish writing a couple books, start another and prepare to speak at FGS, my first national conference. Every year I joke about how it […]
Sticking Together and Blogiversary IV Read More »
I don’t remember when I first read Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy. Whenever it was, I have read it many times since. I won’t go into much of it here, it would be well off topic. Suffice it to say that it deals with a vast sweep of the future and the decline of a great
Fingered by the Index Read More »
A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting. —Henry David Thoreau Reading old genealogical works can be an almost mystical experience. Not mystical with a capital “M” as in a
Hinting at the Facts Read More »
A person’s memories are not created instantaneously. There is a process of assimilation. We think of our memories as if they are created by a recording device—formed instantly, perfectly and unalterably. That isn’t the way it actually works. Forming a memory starts in an instant but it can take a lifetime. Our collective memory works
The Genealogists’ Memory Read More »
I state the utmost force of the wild Yankees, as they are called, at 200 men They “came to her house and threatened to set fire to it. Being afraid for her life” she fled. When she returned “she found the roof tore off and the house plundered.” They “told me that my half hour
From a recent exchange started by an intentionally amusing comment from a client- “In genealogy we’re supposed to go backward to move things forward, so is backward actually forward or is backward still backward even though it takes things forward?” Somehow that reminded me of “Who’s on first?” at least in the level of potential
Who’s Ancestor was on First? Read More »
I never thought that I would ever use the heraldic visitations. Heraldry has that sort of “gravitational” attraction that always makes me somewhat uneasy. People have been known to make up heraldic arms for profit. Some think that there are “family coats of arms” and that everyone has one. People claim or are misled to
Royal Heralds and Simple Harolds Read More »
The famous biologist Edward O. Wilson has written that, “The ideal scientist thinks like a poet and works like a bookkeeper.” That is research in a nutshell. Poetry A poet asks the big questions and looks for the big patterns. What if this isn’t him in these records? What if they married in America not
Poetry + Accounting = ? Read More »
After a long day of triangulating families in Griffith’s Valuation, I needed a break and managed to take my first somewhat long bike ride of the year. I took a route that I have taken many times before. The deep forest and the slow-flowing river give a sense of timeless permanence. They were there like
Transience and Permanence Read More »
The other night my daughter borrowed the movie Angels & Demons and wanted to watch it with me. Part of the plot hinges on the theft of a container of antimatter from CERN, the particle physics laboratory outside Geneva, Switzerland. I think she wanted to get my reaction to the physics. Antimatter is in some
What’s the Antimatter Read More »