Saturday Serendipity (September 21, 2019)

Saturday Serendipity returns this week with the following recommendations for your weekend reading .  .  .  

1.   Among the "Stories of Interest" in the most recent Weekly Genealogist newsletter by NEHGS is a brief article by Daniel Klein titled, "Academic Journals Help Armchair Genealogists Up Their Game."  As pointedly stated by Mr. Klein, "Genealogical education is most successful when researchers ingest as much as possible about the subject. . . One aspect of this is reading articles in the various academic journals published by genealogical organizations." And with a shout out to well-known genealogist William B. Saxbe, Jr., Mr. Klein presents the proposition that one of the important reasons for armchair genealogists to read academic genealogy journals is that it can be the first step to learning how to write one's own journal article to share research results.

2.   It is to be hoped that many reader's of Randy Seaver's prominent blog Genea-Musings (and perhaps Saturday Serendipity on this blog) are familiar with Randy's weekly feature "Best of the Genea-Blogs," but readers should also be aware of Randy's "Genealogy News Bytes" feature.  While the "Best of . . . " feature is a weekly survey of posts in genealogy blogs that catch Randy's interest, "Genealogy News Bytes" aggregates more broadly and provides links to news articles of interest to genealogists, new or updated record collections, webinars, podcasts, videos, DNA stories, and bargains to check out.  If you are not yet familiar with this feature on Genea-Musings, you can go here to see Randy's latest genealogy potpourri installment.      

3.   James Tanner of Genealogy's Star blog has a "time-to-time series" called "The Rules of Genealogy."  I was not previously aware of this series, but I think the list and Mr. Tanner's commentary make for interesting reads.  The most recent entry in the series is Rule Five: You cannot get blood from a turnip.  To see a listing of the twelve Rules of Genealogy and read about Rule Five, surf here and have a read.  If you find the recent Rule Five post of interest, you can also find Mr. Tanner's earlier July 1, 2014 post about his first six Rules here.     

4.    Long time readers of this blog know that from time-to-time I recommend posts that stray from any direct connection to genealogy, but can be very interesting and have a deeper tangential relationship to history, genealogy, or biology.  Many times this means recommendations to the writing and blog postings by Tim Urban of "Wait But Why" blog.  My older son recently asked if I had seen Tim's latest series and I had to admit I had not due to our move and my absence from blogging.  Well, during my absence Tim took on a huge project to write about "society."  I am still making my way through the accumulated posts, but have seen and read enough to recommend it to past readers who found Tim's posts to be thought stimulating.  Go here to see the full content of "The Story of Us: Full Series."

5.   Another sometime recommendation on Saturday Serendipity has been the writing of Rebecca Onion at "The Vault" on Slate.  An intersting piece by Rebecca during my absence from blogging is this August 2019 article on the complicated history of Emma Lazarus, author of "The New Colossus" poem that is on the Statute of Liberty.

6.   For those who use Family Tree Maker to sync with their trees on Ancestry, you should check out the very recent (and very brief) post by Russell Worthington (aka "Cousin Russ") of Family Tree Maker User blog titled, "Reader Question: What is included in the FamilySync."

7.  And finally, a brief cautionary tale by Nancy Messier of My Ancestors and Me blog.  Have a look at "When It Seems Easy You May Be Making a Mistake."  Most, if not all, of us at some time have leaped at a Eureka moment when we think we have solved a brick wall in our genealogies and belatedly find out we should have looked before leaping.  Nancy gives us a reminder to look hard (i.e. do more research) before leaping.  This is a reminder we all need to have perioically. 

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 

Copyright 2019, John D. Tew

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _