Archive for March, 2012
Tax Time
Sunday, March 25th, 2012Like so many others in the U.S. I’ve been working on my taxes. It is that time of year. As a family historian, my mind naturally drifts to a time before TurboTax, stacks of receipts even before real tax forms. When Congress approved the first ever income tax during the American Civil War, it was [...]
You Never Know Until You Ask
Sunday, March 18th, 2012Last week I asked a cousin if she had some pictures that had belonged to her mother, my Aunt Melva, who recently passed away. My cousin’s husband said, “Oh I have those scanned and put on CD. Do you want one? I can get it to you next week.” Yes, I certainly did want one. [...]
Urban, Ethnic America, The Irish Way
Wednesday, March 14th, 2012In American genealogy, unless you only have Native American blood, you will eventually run up against an immigrant. At least you probably hope to reach back in time however far as is needed. We all have roots elsewhere. Culturally, we even have roots in places where our ancestors never lived. Many of those physical roots [...]
Life, Death and Genealogy
Sunday, March 11th, 2012This week, true to the name of the blog, I’ll be meditating. It has been a busy week. I’m working on several projects, gave a talk and have three more coming up that need preparation. I attended a genealogy get-together at our library, have an article for a quarterly to write and on Wednesday I [...]
Learning and Imagining
Sunday, March 4th, 2012“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 [...]