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Self-Writing

8/31/2013

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I was on Twitter today. I saw a tweet by geneabloggers concerning a writing prompt for family historians to participate in self-writing. What a fantastic idea! The project is going on for the next 15 months. A series of writing prompts will be listed on the geneabloggers site, allowing family historians to participate writing about themselves. 

Self-writing/ recording/ documenting has long been a concern for me. It is something that I am interested in, but I also feel kind of weird about. What do I really want to say about myself? I feel a lot like I haven't really done anything. I'm young. I'm not married. I don't have children yet...but I don't' give myself enough credit - and I don't think that a lot of people give themselves enough credit. I know I have had awesome adventures - traveling and with school. That's something to write about. I've received awards. That's something to write about. It's all about perspective! Finding the perspective can be a little tricky though! 

Think about this: I was visiting with one of my best friends the other day, and the discussion about audio recordings came up (as it so often does). She said to me that she acknowledges a weak spot in our own research - we spend a lot of time recording and interviewing older family members. What about the perspectives and experiences of our other family members? 

This got me thinking - what she said was absolutely true. Everyone has a life story, and sometimes you don't get to live it out in nine decades or ten decades. There are people that I have lost in my life that I wish I had thought to ask them questions or record their laughter. So, don't just consider older family members! Think about younger family members too. Think about yourself. 

I am going to start a project with the younger people in my family. I want to do a series of recordings. I've been thinking about doing this for a long time too. A few years ago, when I first started this site, I began to do a series of self-interviews. I asked myself the same questions that I would ask another family member. And then I deleted them and tried never to think of them again - they sounded so dorky. I couldn't believe that I sounded the way that I sounded when I tried to answer questions. And I became so distracted by the way that I could see myself in the camera that I didn't want to do the interview anymore - which made me sympathize COMPLETELY with older family members that I have recorded on video.

 So, now I'm going to change my approach. I'm going to have my set questions. I am going to interview myself and the younger people in my family. But here is the twist: ideally, these recordings could range - they could happen every ten years, every five years, every three years, or every year. They would document the challenges and joys that the individual has experienced. 

Talking about themselves can be a challenge for some people and some topics might be pretty sensitive - so take that into consideration. Try to capture stories, as well as facts. It has been my experience that people LOVE telling stories, but providing the specifics about where they were born isn't necessarily that much fun. 

It is a project that I am going to implement in my own life. Now, audio recordings, video recordings, or written word - that's up to you. 
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Digital Preservation 

8/28/2013

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I was on Twitter the other day and saw link for a youtube video by My Heritage featuring the Photo Detective. I thought that the entire video was interesting, and I think that it is something that all genealogists do - that we are all our own Photo Detectives. But that was not what really got my attention. 

You can see this as a plug if you want to. The representative for My Heritage emphasized the importance of digital preservation. Obviously, their website focuses on the creation of family trees and the sharing of information, and in his own way, he was encouraging those viewing the video to engage in his website. 

But the call for digital preservation goes beyond that. This is a topic that I feel very strongly about - for which the evidence is this entire site (and this one too). A lot of the work that I did for my History MA, and in my own family history work, has been with a strong focus on digital preservation. With the wide world of the internet available at our finger tips, why shouldn't we share what we have with others? It is the easiest way to include everyone in a project, and to allow them access to sources that were previously unknown or difficult to access. 

I know that there are a couple of issues with this, one being the decision of what to preserve and what to let go. My advice: as much as you can, preserve it and share it. Find a way for people to take joy in what you are able to share with them, and they will take joy in it! So many of my cousins see the pictures that I post, and they remember the picture being taken or they have a story about the people in the picture. It is a great way to make connections and learn about your family! 

Another issue might be what you do with material items. My advice is to take pictures and make those available as well. Shoot a 360 video of the item, if you can. Preserve it yourself, but let people know that you have your great-grandfather's baby shoes - and show them the baby shoes! 

I know that computer codes change, and that maybe one day these digital images will be gone, or morphed into something else other than a .jpg file - or whatever - but, at the same time, I have to acknowledge how many members of my family - close and distant - that are able to see pictures and faces and people that they have NEVER seen before. 

I'm not necessarily telling you to take on creating a website for your family. But, what I am encouraging you is that you consider the importance of digitally preserving the physical images that you have. Put them on a hard drive. Put them on Facebook or Twitter. Make a blog for them. Do something so that someone else is aware that these pictures exist! Family history is an activity of collaboration...so collaborate! 

Okay, vent over :)
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My Grandfather! 

8/26/2013

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I made a book of memories for my grandfather (I'm pretty sure that I've talked about this before). In the book I told him that some of my favorite memories of him and my grandmother surround our goodbye ritual. 

After school, my sister and I would go to our Grandparents house (more times than not) and wait for our mother to get off of work. A lot of the time, we knew about what time she was supposed to come get us, and we would be waiting for her. 

She would load us into the van (she drove a Dodge Caravan), and my grandfather would stand on the sidewalk. My grandmother would start talking to my mom through the passenger side window (sometimes). More often than not, she would stand in the street and talk to her through the driver side window. Before we would pull away, my mom would tell my grandmother to watch her toes. The would stand together and wave at us on the sidewalk until we couldn't see them anymore. Depending on which direction we went, sometimes she would wave at us from the middle of the street. 

The other day, I gave my grandfather this book. When I drove away, he waved at me fro
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Who do I look like? 

8/20/2013

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One of the things that I love about doing family history research is seeing the resemblance between different members of my family! I love looking at different pictures of family members, for example, I can tell that my maternal uncle looks strikingly similar to my maternal grandfather. 

One of my friends looks like his paternal grandfather. His father looks nearly identical to his maternal grandfather. My best friend has the exact same color eyes that her aunt has. 

I was on Pinterest this evening (as I often am, that site is SO addictive), and I saw a picture of a grandmother and her granddaughter. They looked surprisingly similar. Now, I am a Pinterest fiend, and I love completing projects that I have seen on there. One of them was the combined faces picture. So...I became completely obsessed with it, and wanted to do it too. So, I did. Although the pictures that I have combined above aren't the best, there are moments when looking at pictures I see my own face staring back at me (what I'm trying to say here, are that there are better pictures but that I am too lazy to dig them out of the trunk right now, so these are going to have to do). 

I think that there are a lot of people interested in where they came from or who they looked like. For my friend, who had had little contact with the paternal side of her family, to find aunts and cousins that shared strikingly similar features was a real treat!  Ulric Collette has done some pretty serious portraits representing family similarities. And while I am COMPLETELY fascinated by the repetition of genetic code, I don't see myself trying to do an exhibit of family similarities. I do think that it is awesome that sometimes the combinations repeat in just the right order to carry on a really specific heritage. 

So, with your own family history, I think that you should try to combine pictures too
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A Box of Treasures! 

8/16/2013

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I am truly blessed. My grandfather is restoring his house by going room to room. He is always finding new genealogical information! Today, he called me to see if I was able to come to his house. When I did he gave me cigar boxes,a suitcase, and this tin box. They were filled with amazing family history 
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My trunk

8/11/2013

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The storage of family history information is always on my mind, especially when I keep accumulating information. Initially, I got a trunk from my grandfather and planned to use that for family history. I love the idea of using trunks for storage. They have a sense of history themselves. One of my best friends tells an AMAZING story about her grandmother and her trunks. 

Her grandmother had three trunks. One that had been her hope chest, one that had been her mothers, and one that was her grandmothers. Every year, she would gather her granddaughters around them and go through the hope chests. She would talk about the items in the chests, showing them plates that represented their last name and salt and pepper shakers from her wedding. It was a mixture of things that they had been given and things that they had purchased. Once, she had paper dolls and allowed her granddaughters to play with the paper dolls. There were shoes and clothes and letters and books in these trunks. 

So, every year she would orally pass on the stories and the heirloom history to her granddaughters. 

When I went to my grandfather's house and saw a trunk on the front porch - one that I had passed by every day all of my life - I decided that that trunk was the one that I wanted for my own family history. How neat, I thought, it would be for me to go through a trunk with my children and grandchildren one day (in addition to being a beautiful place to store family history). My grandfather had found the trunk in the basement of an old building in town. The man that had owned the building took pictures of soldiers and stored his photography equipment in the trunks. 

My trunk was moldy when I first opened it. My grandfather tried as hard as he could to convince me that I could have any other trunk that I wanted, if I just would allow him to throw it away. But, I couldn't bring myself to do it. I told him that that trunk, mold and all, was what I wanted. 

I began up-cycling my trunk by getting rid of the mold. I used a bleach mixture and set it unto the sun. I sprayed the lining of the trunk with the mixture, saturating the trunk and allowing the bleach to do its work. Then, I came back and scraped out the lining. It was mostly a weak paper lining, and what hadn't disintegrated with the bleach mixture came right off. I think used gesso as my base paint, going back over the areas that still had paper or visible traces of mold. I removed the canvas from the drawers, and Johnny, my Grandfather's contractor, cut drawer bottoms for me - there hadn't been drawer bottoms, the entire thing was solid canvas. 

I moved the trunk to my house. I painted the inside of the trunk butter cream. I used a complementary color - Robins Egg Blue - for the drawers. At the house, we set to work on the drawers themselves. Initially, we wanted to decoupage the trunks (and possibly add ribbon to finish it off). My friend had a pretty good idea how to do this. We tore up pretty, feminine, vintage-inspired scrap-book paper. She used spray adhesive on the drawers, positioned the paper pieces accordingly, and then she used mod-podge to secure everything. For one of the drawers we used old cards that we had purchased from an estate sale. For another we used a copy of a love letter that my paternal grandfather wrote. For me, this makes my trunk even more sentimental - not only does it have a letter from my paternal grandfather, but the trunk was given to me by my maternal grandfather. 

My trunk is finished now. I need to move it from the garage into my bedroom to begin storing my family history information in it. I love that this trunk looks so old on the outside, but as soon as you open it you see bright, clean drawers and beautiful 
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My family's hands

8/6/2013

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I saw a picture similar to this one on pinterest.com, and my best friend Becky and I both agreed that it was a fantastic picture. The picture on pinterest had a baby hand added to the generational stack, but because I do not have children, and at one time I was a little one, I wanted to take the generational hand picture now. On the bottom is my grandfather, my mother's hands are in the middle, and mine are on top. I think that this is now one of my favorite pictures. These hands are the ones that helped me walk, changed my diaper, comforted, and fed me. 

I love looking at my grandfather's hands. He has a condition that is similar to parkinson's disease, which causes his hands to shake. His hands are the hands of a radio technician, a computer repairman, a husband, a father, an artist, and so much more. These are the hands that make the best brownies in the world. These are the hands that made colored pancakes and waffles for all of the grandchildren. His hands are scarred and wrinkled. They are rough, but soft. I love them. 
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This is a picture of my grandmother and her grandmother. When I look at my great-great grandmother's hands, I see my own - my thumb is the same shape, my knuckles do the same thing. I talk with my hands the same way that my grandmother spoke with her hands, the same way that my great-aunt speaks with her hands, the same way that their mother spoke with hers...
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My hands look like my mother's, and her hands look like her father's. She has a scar on her left thumb where she had surgery to repair the joint. These are the hands of a child, a wife, a mother, a hard worker, a leader, and a teacher. These are the hands that rubbed my legs at night when I woke up with growing pains. These are the hands that make holiday meals. These hands held the books that took my sister and I to different worlds at night. I love them. 

I used to think that my hands were ugly. When I was younger I had warts, and was embarrassed by them. My father's mother, Nonna, gave us porcelain dolls; my sister and I loved them. I found a woman who taught porcelin dolls. I approached her and asked her about classes. She grabbed my hands and exclaimed, "Bud! [Bud was her husband] look at her hands! They are beautiful hands!" Anne became one of the most influential and most loving women in my life. She taught me that hands do not have to be perfect to create beautiful things. My hands are the hands of a child, a student, a writer, a researcher, a dreamer, and an artist. These hands prepare meals. These hands create.
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    The Blogger

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    I love family history and the various ways that it can be approached by researchers! I hope that this blog is interesting and inspiring! 

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