Saturday Serendipity (September 2, 2017)

After a hiatus of two weeks for some family events and an anniversary trip to South Carolina to view the total eclipse, Saturday Serendipity returns this week with a few recommendations for your weekend reading.

1.  The Weekly Genealogist of NEHGS cited to an article in Smithsonian Magazine that provides a new theory on why Benjamin Franklin lived in Europe estranged from his wife Deborah for almost two decades -- repeatedly promising to return home to her -- and returned only after she had died as the result of her second stroke in five years. You can read the article here.  

2.  Gina Kolata, a science writer for the New York Times and author of Flu about the deadly 1918 influenza pandemic, had an article this past week about the effect of DNA testing on family histories and discusses the limitations that DNA test providers do not always acknowledge.  It is worth the read and you can view it here thanks to NEHGS and The Weekly Genealogist citing to it this week.

3.  Judy Russell -- The Legal Genealogist -- posted a very important piece this week that is getting a lot of attention.  For example, UpFront With NGS gave a major shout out to Judy and her post.  You can read Judy's post about ethics in genealogy by going here.  I agree that it is not just a should read, it is a must read.  After reading Judy's post, I recommend you go to the UpFront post by Diane. Richard for additional considerations and links to further reading.    
        
4.  If you heard or read about President D.J. Trump's re-tweet regarding General John Pershing's  mythical mistreatment of Muslim rebels in the Philippines in the early part of the last century, then you might want to check out this post on The Vault by Daniel Immerwahr.

5.  Bill West of West in New England blog just posted the initial notice about his upcoming "Ninth Annual Great Genealogy Poetry Challenge."  Bill will post links to submissions on Thanksgiving Day. You can read the Challenge rules/guidelines here. There are various ways to participate, but I think my personal favorite is to find and post a poem created by an ancestor. It is a way to give that act of creation a new life and an audience that your ancestor never could have anticipated.

6.  As readers of this blog might recall, I have long had an interest in and fascination with the 1918 influenza pandemic (see #2 above) and I have blogged about it on more than one occasion. My maternal grandfather survived the first wave of the 1918 flu (called "the grippe" at first) and I have his postcard home to tell his mother about being laid low by it and being the 56th man out of 360 to end up in the hospital while stationed at Watervliet Arsenal in upstate New York in March - April, 1918. [See my post of March 11, 2014 here and learn more -- including why the pandemic was erroneously named the "Spanish Flu." See also my post of January 20, 1913 here for more about the horror of the pandemic.]  As we approach the 100th anniversary of that deadliest of all epidemics this coming March (up to 100 million people died world wide), there was an interesting post this week on Cow Hampshire blog by Janice A. Brown titled "100 Years Ago: Cures for the Spanish Flu."  You can read her informative post here.       
     
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Copyright 2017, John D. Tew

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