Two things happened to me the other day that prompted some thinking. I heard an ad for a BBC radio play about a fictional meeting between Thomas Edison and Alfred Lord Tennyson. Edison wished to record the aged Tennyson reciting some of his famous poems, such as The Charge of the Light Brigade. Tennyson wavered […]
Immortality, Genealogy and Technology Read More »
Something about this time of year must put me in the mood to write an odd genealogical list. I just checked and it was last year at this time that I decided to write about seven deadly sins. Now, how about ten commandments? There is something satisfying about a genealogical list, even one that is
Ten Genalogical Commandments Read More »
I find that family stories often take multiple forms as they are preserved. It reminds me of one of the truly strange things that one learns in physics—that a subatomic particle can take more than one path to its destination. It seems truly bizarre. Yet it is fairly easy to show, though it does require
Rated G or Rated OMG Read More »
Genealogy can surprise us. We often get quite different perspectives on the people in our personal past from what we might have gotten had we lived in their day. I think it would be an unusual genealogist that didn’t at some point wish that they could journey back in time to meet an ancestor. Often
Old Time Compassion Read More »
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.” -Albert Einstein That is an intriguing quote. When you first encounter it, that quote doesn’t have the feel of something that a scientist, a pursuer of knowledge, would say. Surely, dreaming of polka-dotted unicorns is not what he was putting above knowledge. It isn’t really. There is more to
Learning and Imagining Read More »
The other day my older daughter was talking with a friend about what her parents do. She told her friend that I’m a professional genealogist. After a moment the friend replied, “What does he do, study lamps?” When I heard the story it took me a moment, or perhaps two, in order to realize that
This is not the post I planned to write. In fact, given colds, kids activities, a four-day weekend from school, a surprise party for a daughter, several chapters of a draft of a book I’m trying to get ready for a test printing, a few talks I’m working on, etc, etc, my “plan” amounted to
Yesterday, I was reading National Geographic, which is an excellent thing to do when you have a cold and need to sit down and relax. Even better, it inspired a blog post I can fit in between sneezes. In the December 2011 issue, I noticed a wonderful diagram. It is a diagram that explains an
Footnotes on my Footnotes Read More »
In a big project that I’ve been working on, there has been a large cast of supporting characters. People who weren’t goals of the research but who were necessary to the research. Now, as I work on the book that is based on that research, I’ve realized that I have left a few people hanging.
Researching the Undead Read More »
Human beings are complicated. We all know that. We’re well aware of the complexity of our own lives, of our own times. We often think that life was simple and uncomplicated before. Part of it is that we were all children once and after we’ve blocked out the hard parts of growing up we’re left
Is it Ever as Simple as it Looks? Read More »