A couple weeks ago a friend mentioned an interest in his family history, and I said I would see if I could find something for him on the Internet. I took what data he was able to provide in the way of names, dates, and places, and although it was nowhere near in-depth research, I still came up with a great deal after only a few days. I was able to identify all his great-grandparents, plus 35 other ancestors, one line going back nine generations to his 7th-great-grandparents. I found a couple obituaries, a will or two, some military records, plus his family in census records from 1850 through 1940.
The best part was how much I enjoyed doing it. Since I've been working on my own family tree for over 30 years, finding anything new is like pulling teeth. This seemed easy by comparison, providing lots of instant gratification when I discovered things.
I began to wish somebody else would ask me to do some checking for them, and that led me to think that there was no reason I couldn't actually solicit clients. I could offer basic research to get somebody started on their family tree, nothing in-depth, just what's readily available on the Internet. I could do like the lawyers -- I don't get paid unless I find something -- but unlike the lawyers, my fees would be ridiculously cheap.
But I'd need to get the word out, and the best way to do that is to create a web site and then spread the URL all over the Internet. So, off I go to do that.
Meanwhile, any takers? If so, email me at janknez@comcast.net.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Sometimes I just have to
There are some topics I try to stay away from in this here blog thing, but I simply cannot ignore monumental stupidity.
First we had Missouri Republican Congressman Todd Akin who (a) doesn't know crap about reproduction and (b) is able to distinguish between "legitimate rape" and whatever would be its opposite. (What would that be? What is illegitimate rape like? Never mind.)
Now, however, this nincompoop is being defended by a Missouri State Republican Committee person named Sharon Barnes, who apparently agrees with him that few rapes result in pregnancy. As if that were not enough, she is quoted in the New York Times as saying that "if God has chosen to bless this person with a life, you don’t kill it."
If God chooses to bless the rape victim with a baby? Are you bleeping kidding me?
I'd like to see Sharon Barnes telling a 14-year-old girl who gets pregnant after being raped by her uncle how blessed she is. I'm sure it would be extremely enlightening for both of them.
First we had Missouri Republican Congressman Todd Akin who (a) doesn't know crap about reproduction and (b) is able to distinguish between "legitimate rape" and whatever would be its opposite. (What would that be? What is illegitimate rape like? Never mind.)
Now, however, this nincompoop is being defended by a Missouri State Republican Committee person named Sharon Barnes, who apparently agrees with him that few rapes result in pregnancy. As if that were not enough, she is quoted in the New York Times as saying that "if God has chosen to bless this person with a life, you don’t kill it."
If God chooses to bless the rape victim with a baby? Are you bleeping kidding me?
I'd like to see Sharon Barnes telling a 14-year-old girl who gets pregnant after being raped by her uncle how blessed she is. I'm sure it would be extremely enlightening for both of them.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Philla Dilla
Comic Phyllis Diller has died, aged 95. I remember first seeing her on television in the late 1960's; she always cracked me up. I have never forgotten one of her funniest lines -- she said she couldn't wear a mini-skirt because her legs didn't go all the way up.
She always wore outrageous clothes, apparently to hide her figure, which was actually quite shapely, so she could make fun of her appearance. I also remembered her wild, spiky blonde hair.
I went to YouTube to look at some videos of Diller, and I was amazed at how not wild her hair looked. It looked positively conservative compared to some heads we see nowadays. She was just 40 years ahead of everybody else.
She always wore outrageous clothes, apparently to hide her figure, which was actually quite shapely, so she could make fun of her appearance. I also remembered her wild, spiky blonde hair.
I went to YouTube to look at some videos of Diller, and I was amazed at how not wild her hair looked. It looked positively conservative compared to some heads we see nowadays. She was just 40 years ahead of everybody else.
Friday, August 17, 2012
Shades of '88
I've heard this summer's excessive heat and drought compared to 1988, which was the hottest summer I ever experienced, until this year.
We were living in a townhouse then, which precluded the possibility of a garden, but I decided I could grow tomato plants in a box on the little front stoop. Well, maybe I could have, had it not been so hot and dry all summer. Despite trying to keep them well watered, they shrivelled up and died in no time. I never tried that again.
This year we have four tomato plants in the flower bed under the bay window. We kept them watered, so they have survived and are now beginning to yield their fruit. Still, the heat seems to have stunted the growth of the tomatoes. Here's yesterday's harvest:
Not worthy of the name beefsteak, which is what these plants are supposed to be. The biggest one is about the size of a baseball, the littlest the size of a golf ball.
It has cooled off and rained a lot here lately. We're having temps in the mid-70's for a few days. It did the same thing in 1988, which I remember distinctly because I bought a new car that year. I was all excited about getting it because it had been 100 degrees all summer long and this was going to be the first car I ever owned that had air conditioning. On the day in August I went to the dealer to pick the car up, it was 70 degrees. I ran the air conditioner anyway.
We were living in a townhouse then, which precluded the possibility of a garden, but I decided I could grow tomato plants in a box on the little front stoop. Well, maybe I could have, had it not been so hot and dry all summer. Despite trying to keep them well watered, they shrivelled up and died in no time. I never tried that again.
This year we have four tomato plants in the flower bed under the bay window. We kept them watered, so they have survived and are now beginning to yield their fruit. Still, the heat seems to have stunted the growth of the tomatoes. Here's yesterday's harvest:
Not worthy of the name beefsteak, which is what these plants are supposed to be. The biggest one is about the size of a baseball, the littlest the size of a golf ball.
It has cooled off and rained a lot here lately. We're having temps in the mid-70's for a few days. It did the same thing in 1988, which I remember distinctly because I bought a new car that year. I was all excited about getting it because it had been 100 degrees all summer long and this was going to be the first car I ever owned that had air conditioning. On the day in August I went to the dealer to pick the car up, it was 70 degrees. I ran the air conditioner anyway.
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Speaking of blobs and stripes
Once in the late 1960's on a visit to the Art Institute of Chicago with some friends, I ended up staring at a painting in the modern wing, only because it was right in front of the little bench I sat down on to rest. It was a huge canvas, probably 12 feet square, that was painted all black except for a large, perfectly round red circle in the middle. I muttered something like, "Even I could do that," and a nearby connoisseur of modern art who overheard gave me the old you're-an-ignorant-Philistine look and said meaningfully, "Yes, but would you?"
No, of course not. It is one of the bane's of my existence that I cannot draw, so if I could, I would not produce crap like that.
Sometimes I wish so desperately that I could draw, because I get these artistic inspirations that make me positively ache with creative impulses, but it's impossible because I can't draw anything that looks like what it's supposed to be. I can see it so clearly in my mind's eye, but if I try putting pencil to paper, I get something worse than a six-year-old can produce.
Right now, for instance, I see a picture that shows a king and a queen, both on horseback, both in robes of royal purple. Below them is an airplane, but its body is actually a banana with wings, with a slice of lemon for a tail, a half cherry for a cockpit, and a section of starfruit for a propeller.
I would title it "Purple Mounted Majesties Above a Fruity Plane."
No, of course not. It is one of the bane's of my existence that I cannot draw, so if I could, I would not produce crap like that.
Sometimes I wish so desperately that I could draw, because I get these artistic inspirations that make me positively ache with creative impulses, but it's impossible because I can't draw anything that looks like what it's supposed to be. I can see it so clearly in my mind's eye, but if I try putting pencil to paper, I get something worse than a six-year-old can produce.
Right now, for instance, I see a picture that shows a king and a queen, both on horseback, both in robes of royal purple. Below them is an airplane, but its body is actually a banana with wings, with a slice of lemon for a tail, a half cherry for a cockpit, and a section of starfruit for a propeller.
I would title it "Purple Mounted Majesties Above a Fruity Plane."
Monday, August 13, 2012
On to the Never-Ending Future
I wasn't able to post comments on the last couple days of the Olympics due to a computer malfunction, and now that I'm back in business, I find that I'm just as glad that the Games are over and I can get back to normal. But there is one thing I saw that I cannot let go unremarked.
At the Olympic stadium for track events, there were teams of what I presumed were volunteers whose job it was to provide each entrant in a race with a plastic bin for his or her personal items. The volunteer set the box down in the runner's lane, well behind the starting line, and the athletes would drop their warm-up clothes into it along with whatever other things they had with them that they would not carry or wear during the running of the race.
As far as I could tell, none of the runners paid the least bit of attention to these keepers of the plastic boxes who stood tranquil and solemn over the bins taking their custodial duties very seriously. When the athletes were introduced and about to take their marks and get set and go, the volunteers would pick up the plastic baskets and march off the track with them.
Before the start of the men's 200-meter dash, the cameras caught Usain Bolt as he took off his warm-up pants and jacket. The keeper of his plastic bin was a young man who looked to be about 20 years old and who was dutifully standing quiet and vigilant over the plastic bin, possibly ruminating on his great good luck in having been assigned to the famous sprinter. After tossing his clothes into the basket, Bolt held his fist out toward the young man, who hesitated just a moment, then reached out and bumped Bolt's fist with his own, grinning from ear to ear. Bolt turned away then, but the volunteer remained in the camera shot for a few more seconds. Twice his smile faded as he tried to regain his serious Official-Olympic-Runner's-Plastic-Bin-Protector attitude, and twice his face broke into a huge grin.
For the rest of his life, that young man is going to smile every time he thinks about his fist-bump with the legendary Jamaican champion who won that race at the London Olympics of 2012.
At the Olympic stadium for track events, there were teams of what I presumed were volunteers whose job it was to provide each entrant in a race with a plastic bin for his or her personal items. The volunteer set the box down in the runner's lane, well behind the starting line, and the athletes would drop their warm-up clothes into it along with whatever other things they had with them that they would not carry or wear during the running of the race.
As far as I could tell, none of the runners paid the least bit of attention to these keepers of the plastic boxes who stood tranquil and solemn over the bins taking their custodial duties very seriously. When the athletes were introduced and about to take their marks and get set and go, the volunteers would pick up the plastic baskets and march off the track with them.
Before the start of the men's 200-meter dash, the cameras caught Usain Bolt as he took off his warm-up pants and jacket. The keeper of his plastic bin was a young man who looked to be about 20 years old and who was dutifully standing quiet and vigilant over the plastic bin, possibly ruminating on his great good luck in having been assigned to the famous sprinter. After tossing his clothes into the basket, Bolt held his fist out toward the young man, who hesitated just a moment, then reached out and bumped Bolt's fist with his own, grinning from ear to ear. Bolt turned away then, but the volunteer remained in the camera shot for a few more seconds. Twice his smile faded as he tried to regain his serious Official-Olympic-Runner's-Plastic-Bin-Protector attitude, and twice his face broke into a huge grin.
For the rest of his life, that young man is going to smile every time he thinks about his fist-bump with the legendary Jamaican champion who won that race at the London Olympics of 2012.
Saturday, August 11, 2012
Go Team(s) USA
Lots of finals yesterday and today to wind down the Games of the XXX Olympiad, several of them adding to the USA medal count, which always makes me happy.
Yesterday's highlight for me was the women's 4 x 100-m relay in which the U.S. sprinters (Tianna Madison, Bianca Knight, Allyson Felix, and Carmelita Jeter) won the gold going away and smashing the world record while they were at it, coming in 55 seconds under the previous world mark.
Jeneba Tarmoh and Lauryn Williams, who raced in the semifinals on Thursday, were replaced by Felix and Jeter, medalists in the sprints here, so that the fastest team would be out there and have a better shot at beating the Jamaicans. I thought that was a bit unfair to Tarmoh and Williams, since they are the ones who got the team into the gold-medal race, but it turns out that they get gold medals too, although they don't get to participate in the medal ceremony.
Today I'll be in front of the tube for the gold-medal games in women's volleyball and basketball. And then I'll probably be pretty much tired of it all.
Day 14 Quote of the Day (Zhang Xi of China, hearing later that Prince Harry had attended the bronze-medal beach volleyball match she and her teammate lost): "If I knew that, I would have won the game."
Yesterday's highlight for me was the women's 4 x 100-m relay in which the U.S. sprinters (Tianna Madison, Bianca Knight, Allyson Felix, and Carmelita Jeter) won the gold going away and smashing the world record while they were at it, coming in 55 seconds under the previous world mark.
Jeneba Tarmoh and Lauryn Williams, who raced in the semifinals on Thursday, were replaced by Felix and Jeter, medalists in the sprints here, so that the fastest team would be out there and have a better shot at beating the Jamaicans. I thought that was a bit unfair to Tarmoh and Williams, since they are the ones who got the team into the gold-medal race, but it turns out that they get gold medals too, although they don't get to participate in the medal ceremony.
Today I'll be in front of the tube for the gold-medal games in women's volleyball and basketball. And then I'll probably be pretty much tired of it all.
Day 14 Quote of the Day (Zhang Xi of China, hearing later that Prince Harry had attended the bronze-medal beach volleyball match she and her teammate lost): "If I knew that, I would have won the game."
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