Catching Up: Doctors, Holidays and Everyday Genealogy!

Where to start?

I spent 4 weeks this fall on short term disability. I went through various doctor appointments and procedures in an attempt to find a resolution for the problems with the nerves in my neck and arm since the car accident. There was the culture shock of going back to work. I picked Thanksgiving week to return so I would be able to ease into work with a short week. It was a good plan and I am now back at work full time.

My granddaughter, Tori had an recurrence of CRMO (a rare bone condition) and had to spent her birthday in All Children's Hospital. She is a real trooper and if a child has to be in the hospital All Children's Hospital is the best facility around. She is now on a new protocol and doing much better.

Then came the biggest problem of the holiday season. How do you decorate for Christmas with cases of calendars in the living room!

Yes, Everyday Genealogy calendars are populating the area in the living room where the Christmas Tree usually stands. With some creative arranging and a hand truck Chuck has managed to move the calendars so we can put up the Christmas Tree!

Chuck's parents will be arriving soon so I am busy converting the office into a guest room. They are here to celebrate the holidays and warm up from the cold and snow of Minnesota. We are also anticipating the 100th birthday of Theresa Steigerwald Steinkellner, Chuck's great aunt the day after Christmas. The genealogist in me is waiting to see how many 'new' relatives I can find at the party!

And this morning I received a great birthday present! In today's Sunday Tampa Tribune Sharon Tate Moody wrote about the birth of the Everyday Genealogy Desk Calendar! If you would like to read the article follow this link: http://tinyurl.com/33evp7k

Everyday Genealogy: Ice Storms, Snow Storms and the Next Generation of...

Everyday Genealogy: Ice Storms, Snow Storms and the Next Generation of...: "I remember the winters growing up in the northwestern suburbs of Chicago as if they were yesterday. Ice storms, snowstorms and those beloved..."

My Wish List for the Holidays: Bluetooth, a Heat Lamp and Nellie Evans Album

The holidays are here and everyone is busy making their lists and checking them twice. I make it even more difficult for family and friends because my birthday is also in December. What to get Pattie?

This year I am asking for practical items - my new car came with Bluetooth so I have asked my son to 'activate' it or whatever needs to be done so I can use it. I may suggest he start with Chuck's car first to make sure mine goes smoothly.

I asked Chuck to install a heat lamp in the master bathroom. It seems either the winters in Florida are getting colder or I am getting cold easier.

While both of these items are all about me I would give them up if only someone would locate Nellie Evans photo album! I saw it once and should have grabbed it, but I didn't and now I don't know when it will surface again.

Nellie Neilson Schultz Evans is Chuck's great great grandmother and quite an elusive figure. She was born in Philadelphia in the 1856 and died in DuPage County Illinois in 1935. The one and only time I saw the album I had not started researching the Schultz family.

One afternoon Chuck's mom showed me Nellie's photo album. The only people she could identify was Nellie and her second husband Wilson Evans. I remember that Nellie was always the shortest person in the pictures. There were others, but at that time I had no idea who they might be. Now years later I think I might be able to identify more of the people and possibly date the photos based on the clothing and surroundings. So, what is stopping me?

Chuck's parents moved to Minnesota soon after I saw the album and never finished unpacking. Nellie's photo album is packed away and stored in the rafters of Chuck's younger brother Carl's garage. There is no time table as to when the boxes will be unpacked. The other issue is what the condition will be when it is found.

If there is a genealogist in your family the most precious gift you might give them is sitting in your closet or locked in your memories. Family pictures, original records (birth certificates or service records) diaries or a platter used to serve holiday meals will be appreciated much more than something bought at the mall.

If you do not have a family artifact to share I will put in a plug for my 2011 Genealogy Calendar - Everyday Genealogy. With 365 tips, hints and ideas it will aid everyone in their genealogy research. If you use the promotion code BLOG shipping will be free. You can click on the title of this article or go to http://www.everydaygenealogy.com to check it out.

Happy Holidays
Pattie

Thanksgiving - Then and Now

Black Friday, Cyber Monday, whatever happened to 'Over the river and through the woods?"

I remember sitting in the back seat of my parent's car driving to Grandma and Grandpa's house on Thanksgiving Day. It was not a long drive, maybe 15 minutes but the anticipation was great. I remember singing the song in my head wondering how long it would take to get there in a carriage and how would the horse know the way?

Grandma made the best dinners and I always looked forward to them. Plus I would get to see Perry and Eddie (Aunt Mabel's sons) and Butch and Cathy (Uncle Newt's children). I was the youngest but they did not seem to care. Sure Eddie pulled my ringlets one year and Butch teased me but since I was an only child it was great to be part of the extended Pahlke family.

All the adults and children were in their Sunday best - shirts and ties for the men (old and young) and dresses or suits for the women/young ladies.

There would be a bar set up and Uncle Sandy would be making cocktails for the grownups. We would take out the Chinese Checkers and all five cousins would play. I learned quickly that being the youngest did not mean I would get any special treatment.

Finally it would be time to eat. There was a grownups table and a children's table. Sometimes there would be additional people there to share our meal and they would usually eat at our table.

It was a very traditional Thanksgiving meal and I always ate more than I should. There was one dish I never tried... Mince meat pie. I never understood what a mince was and had never heard of that type of animal so I stuck with pumpkin pie!

It is important to remember and record our family traditions. I have many pictures of Thanksgivings and Christmases at Grandmas and I treasure them and the memories. My cousins will always be young in my memories,Grandma will always have that twinkle in her eye and my dad will be napping on her couch after dinner.

Now that I have my own family what is our family tradition? I am hosting "Turkey and Texas Hold'em" for our family and friends on Saturday! Not quite my grandmother's Thanksgiving.

BTW - my sister Mary was born when I was nine years old. She and I both consider ourselves 'only children'. Mary's traditional Thanksgiving dinner is pizza. Her husband Tony is an expert at creating incredible pizzas.

The Continuing Adventures of my eReader and Me

Oh that eReader of mine! I have been working with it for the last week trying to decide if I was going to keep it or send it back. At one point I was VERY happy I had bought the 'extra' warranty because I almost threw it against the wall.

Then I started thinking - why did I have to read books with it? That was when it became fun.

I am going to have a vendor table at the Florida State Genealogical Society Conference to sell my pet project "Everyday Genealogy - the Desk Calendar" and was trying to come up with display items. AH!!!! My eReader supports jpegs and has a 'Slide Show' option.

Since my friend Pam Treme and I will also be promoting our 'Technology Tamers' training programs I set about gathering jpegs. For Everyday Genealogy I collected the various jpegs I have for the calendar and the iPhone app. For Technology Tamers I went into our PowerPoint Presentations and saved various pages as jpegs (an option in the Save As feature in Powerpoint).

Within an half hour I was loading these jpegs onto my eReader and WHAM I had a slide show. The eReader has options for the speed of the slide show and the transitions. And best of all my eReader came with a stand. I now had a display for my vendor table.

So, what else is my eReader good at doing - besides reading books? It also has a web browser so I decided to set up some of my favortie genealogy websites (Mmmm www.everydaygenealogy.com) to help answer questions that may come up.

Last but not least, I did load some books - mine and Pam's. The eReader can import PDFs that you, the everyday person creates. Pam and I have both created Family History Books and Pam has created work books for some of our classes. Now we will be able to show these books at our vendor table without carrying them around.

So, I guess I'll keep the eReader - I may even read a book on it one of these days!

eReaders and that Calendar Project

A while back I wrote about my ambivalence towards eBooks and eReaders. I did download the Kindle reader onto my son's iPad but never managed to actually read the one book I purchased online. I later just ordered it from Amazon and read it.

Last weekend I was channel surfing and saw that QVC had an eReader as a TSV (Today's Special Value). While I was watching the demonstrations and listening to the testimonials from the viewers I realized I had to buy one. Not because I wanted to read the latest David Baldacci best seller electronically or because I really needed to cut down on the number of bookcases in the house. That was all too practical! It was those PDF's that are floating around my laptop, blackberry and other workstations.

PDF's have become the 'new' newspaper. Not only are genealogical societies cutting costs and using them to distribute their newsletters but the majority of old books I download from Google Books are in PDF form. I also PDF larger documents (e.g. pension files, family memoirs)so I can read them later. So, for 5 easy payments and the ability to try it until January 31 I bought it.

My new Pandigital eReader should arrive Friday or Saturday - about the time a semi will be delivering 2500 calendars to my doorstep. You might have heard of it - Everyday Genealogy? It goes on sale this weekend!

Birth of Everyday Genealogy

Everyday Genealogy
What are you suppose to do with all the notes and handouts you accumulate while attending genealogy meetings, seminars, or just surfing the Internet?

I had asked myself this question just after coming home from an excellent presentation and wondering where to put my handout. There was the pile of unfiled family documents. This would be a logical place, but they were in no immediate danger of being filed. I found another stack of papers; these were copies of magazines I thought might come in handy and print outs of websites I did not want to forget. As I went through the stack, I found so many great sites I started making notes for myself and friends. I realized I had to organize all this valuable information in some manner, but was not sure how or where.

Flash forward a couple of weeks
My friend Pam Tremé and I do technology-related genealogy presentations under the name of the Technology Tamers. One Sunday I was surfing the net and toying with some ideas for presentations when the proverbial bolt of lightning struck me. Could we come up with 365 genealogy tips? I opened Excel and started typing in the titles of some of our presentations and articles we had published. Then I listed the 50 states, 5 or 6 countries one of us had researched and the major wars and conflicts in U.S. History.

I forwarded my list to Pam and told her I thought we should put together a desk calendar with a tip a day for genealogists. Pam showed mild interest and said, “This would be a good project for you.” It appeared that this would be a solo project. The winter in Florida was unusually cold. So, for the next few weekends, I was curled up on the couch researching and composing.

When I had over 200 tips, I started to put together proposals to send to various calendar publishers to see if they would be interested in producing my calendar. I researched the ratings for Who Do You Think You Are? and found statistics about the explosion of genealogy as a hobby. Encouraged, I formatted my first spreadsheet with the topics and my first 200 tips. Days became weeks, and finally, I received the publisher’s responses—Thanks but no thanks!

While not completely surprised, I was disappointed. I searched the various self-publishing sites but none of them accommodated my idea for a tip a day. I told my family I was giving up on the idea and put my spreadsheet away.

What happens in Vegas…?
My husband goes to Las Vegas a couple of times a year with his brother to play blackjack and bond. This year when he came back he had an announcement; Bill would find a printer for my calendar. My brother-in-law’s company prints cards (hotel keys, phone cards, etc.) but not calendars. Therefore, it had never crossed my mind to ask for his help. I was now entering the world of self-publishing. Oh, and I was about 165 tips short of my goal of 365!

It has been a long four months since that trip to Las Vegas and I have learned more than I ever wanted to know about ISBN numbers, selling on Amazon, creating my own website, and even translating this project to an iPhone application. Pam has been there encouraging me, offering additional topics, authoring the ‘New Year’s Resolution’ tips, and coming up with the title!

Everyday Genealogy
While putting together Everyday Genealogy, I learned so much about military research, the formation of the United States, and historical events I never knew. When I open up the latest edition of Family Tree Magazine or Internet Genealogy, I can smile at a ‘new’ website they are featuring and remember when I discovered it and added it to my spreadsheet.

Everyday Genealogy will hit the stands (that is, be shipped to my house) October 20th. Will it be a success? Can I sell 3,000 copies? I am not sure what the fate of Everyday Genealogy will be but 2010 has been one year of research I will never forget.

If you would like to see the results of all of my hard work—that is, order a calendar—email me at everydaygenealogy@gmail.com. Or, visit my website at everydaygenealogy.com to see sample pages from my calendar.