Saturday Serendipity (March 29, 2014)

Saturdays often allow a more leisurely approach to life than work days. I can more easily post links to some blog posts or other materials I have discovered during the week, or even to those discovered during a Saturday morning coffee and extended surfing of the blogosphere/internet. 

Here are a few recommendations for inclusion on your reading list this week .  .  .  

1.  Do you have ancestors or relatives who worked in the wartime factories of Detroit churning out tanks and other armaments for the "Arsenal of Democracy" that was America in the early 1940s?  If so, you should check out The Vault for photos from and information about a book featuring images of Detroit war factories. The images are a stark reminder that those who stayed home to work in these factories to produce the tools of war contributed just as much to the war effort as those who actually took up arms.

     

2.  I struggled for a while to come up with some hook to relate this read to genealogy . . .  and then gave up.  This is just an interesting (and humorous) post on Wait But Why about the world's combined net worth and how to try to conceptualize it.  Check it out if the subject intrigues you as it did me.  

3.  Anyone with Rhode Island roots needs to visit Diane Boumenot's latest post at One Rhode Island Family.  Diane walks us through what can be discovered in the 21 volumes of  "The Early Records of the Town of Providence."

4.  "Knowing where we come from is integral to knowing who we are." We genealogists know this perhaps better than most, but it is always good to see stories and resources that confirm the wisdom of this statement.  The Weekly Genealogist  by NEHGS provided a link to a nice story about a professor who discovered the correct story of her background and created a project and website for others to use for recording their family stories and photos about traveling back to the land of their ancestors.  See the story here and the website here.   

5.  A very popular blogging prompt provided by GeneaBloggers is the "Family Recipe Friday" prompt.  One of the most popular posts here at The Prism turns out to have been a recipe post. Well, we probably all have those recipe cards from ancestors, relatives and friends that over the years have become part of our family traditions and culture. These bits of family tradition are also family history artifacts, as this article points out. As the digital age continues to mature, these treasures are in danger of disappearing . . . so perhaps you want to consider adding their preservation to your list of genealogy tasks.         

6.  We who love genealogy often find losses to cringe about, but perhaps one of the most disturbing is the all too common vandalism of cemeteries.  Here is a wonderful post about a way to help prevent such behavior AND help children learn about death as an inevitable part of life. Read "Take Your Kids To Cemeteries (Please)" by Emily Kowalski Schroeder at Growing Little Leaves blog.   

7.  America's Stonehenge?? I never heard of this site and I lived in New Hampshire for many years growing up. Curious about an American Stonehenge? If so, then you need to see Barbara Poole's wonderful photo tour of the site here at Life From The Roots blog.      

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Copyright 2014, John D. Tew

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