Are you a drive-by reader?
I believe that by immersing myself in a day-long commitment to a single book, I probably get more out of it than I would if I were to read it over several shorter periods.
Do you have sufficient arrogance?
I don’t mean to ask, “Do you think you’re better than everyone else?” What I mean is, do you know just how knowledgable you really are, and do you believe in the value of what you do know?
Scott Hartshorn, who runs the Savvy Affiliate blog (for those of you who aren’t familiar with or interested [...]
Stone hunting for Bardricks in Adair County
Larry Lehmer has a great post about rural cemeteries this week, and it got me thinking about one of my favorite stone-hunting stories.
Grandma Verdie told me that her mother’s parents were buried “in Pitzer Cemetery” in the general vicinity of Winterset and Earlham, Iowa. Wanting to find the gravestone and see the burial site of [...]
Veering off the main road
I learned one of the core lessons of genealogy very early on: it’s easy to get distracted.
In a moment, you can wander off the main path (looking for direct blood-line ancestors) and start down any number of secondary trails that lead to aunts, uncles, cousins, skeletons-in-closet, or just historical context. One of my primary distractions [...]
Interviewing relatives is difficult for me
One of the things that’s really hard for me to do in genealogy is to “interview” relatives. I’m actually an experienced interviewer of other people, having been a radio show host and a freelance business writer in previous decades. But those situations are different – you’re expected to get right to the point because everyone’s [...]
Hopeless dependence shouldn’t be a way of life
The Delaware Curmudgeon has a great quote from Cal Thomas posted on her blog this week:
I am not robbed by people who have more money than I. I am robbed by a government that wants to penalize my industry and give increasing portions of what I earn to people who do not emulate my principles, [...]