Serendipity Day

** Genealogy’s Star: A Must-Read Blog (in my opinion) & YouTube Channel

** Washington’s Colville Tribes Selected For The Next U.S. Census Test

**Insects: Future Or Past Food?

**How To Ensure All Will Be Lost

James Tanner crafts his Genealogy’s Star blog nearly two times per week and I read every post and learn something new each time. Back on 5 Mar 2016, he posted about the BYU Family History Library Channel on YouTube. He was discussing a new uploaded video titled, “Why You Can’t Trace Your Family Back To Adam.” Who would not want to view this video?? Here’s how: (1) Click to www.youtube.com;  (2) select the BYU Family History Library channel; (3) Chose what you want to view from the list of over 400 videos; and (4) Click the subscribe button to get notification of new videos as they’re uploaded.

May I, as your serendipity teacher today, give you two homework assignments today? First click to www.genealogysstar.blogspot.com (note the two “s”) and sign up for James Tanner’s blog. Next click to www.youtube.com and get going with your home learning from there!

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An AP blurb in our local paper by Regina Garcia Cano, and from Sioux Falls, SD, read: “The Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation is one of two National American reservations selected as test sites ahead of the 2020 census, as officials mull whether to ask for the first tie about tribal enrollment.” The two reservations are Standing Rock Indian Reservation, which straddles North and South Dakota, and the Colville reservation. “By selecting these geographic areas, we are allowing ourselves an opportunity to test our methods and procedures in areas where it is difficult to deliver questionnaires by mail,” said Deirdre Bishop, chief of the bureau’s Decennial Census Management Division.” I found this tidbit fascinating for many reasons. I’d not realized that the tremendous amount of decade-long work went into the taking of a census.

For more information on this (census taking) Google “Decennial Census Management Division.” Or “2020 U.S. Census.”  And ditto for more info on the two reservation test sites.

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According to an article in the Delta Sky magazine for April 2016, the foods in our future may include insects……..bugs. Here is a link to a short video about Andrew Zimmern’s views on eating insects:  http://www.travelchannel.com/shows/bizarre-foods-celebrates-100/video/the-bug-eating-guy from the Travel Channel. There has been plenty of buzz about “how are we going to feed the hungry millions on our planet in the future…and are insects the answer?” in the media. But I was not prepared for the picture that accompanied that Delta Sky article: a lollipop with a nice fat caterpillar inside of it! Yum?? Now, you might say, what does this have to do with family history? Let me ask you this:  Did our ancestors eat insects? I think they surely did but not in the way you think. I think poor eyesight, poor lighting in homes, and creepy-crawlies everywhere and in everything ensured that there were insects in our ancestor’s food. Yum.

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How to ensure that all your genealogy, your life’s work, will be lost. Eight thoughts from Donna.

1.      Do not ever make time to take to relatives and collect their memories and memorabilia.

2.      Do not make time to share photos with relatives and get positive ID for them.

3.      Do not bother to scan in old photos and memorabilia and certainly do not bother with backups.

4.      Do not both to compile a list of who-in-the-family gets what of all the family treasures you’ve collected over the years.

5.      When cleaning out grandma’s house after the funeral, just bring lots of big black plastic bags for everything to take to the dump or Goodwill.

6.      Do not bother with transferring all the family information you have stored in binders and boxes to an online program.

7.      Do leave so much stuff stuffed in your office that your kids will be overwhelmed and not really know what to keep and what to toss.

8.      Don’t make a plan for without a plan you surely will fail and your genealogy will be lost.

Sad Facts:  Your local genealogy society DOES NOT WANT all your binders and boxes of un-organized papers and stuff. Neither does the Family History Library. And neither do your kids! They want the information and not all the stuff and they want it organized.