Evernote, Kindle and George Washington Smith

February 1973 - 75th Birthday party for my grandfather,
George Washington Smith.
Pictured with his three surviving siblings.

I've been doing a fair amount of genealogy-related "stuff" lately, just nothing very blog-post-worthy.

A couple of weeks ago I ordered the new-ish $50 Amazon Kindle Fire. After a negative experience with the top-of-the-line Kindle last summer, which I just didn't feel was worth the money, at least for my purposes, I'm much happier with this model. It does most of what I wanted the other model to do (on a smaller screen) for only $50.

As soon as the Kindle arrived two weeks ago I began channeling my bibliophile father and reading three books at once: "Your Swedish Roots: A Step by Step Handbook" by Kjell Andersson and Per Clemensson, a genealogy thriller by M.K. Jones called "Three Times Removed" and Kerry Scott's "How to Use Evernote for Genealogy."

Although I have been a Premium subscriber to Evernote for months now, I was not entirely convinced that it would become for me the all-important genealogy tool that it is for so many. Kerry Scott's impressive book has changed my mind. If you are considering making Evernote part of your genealogy toolbox, I highly recommend this book.

I just finished the book this week and have only had a chance to put a small fraction of what I've learned into practice but so far it has even inspired me to clean out my email Inbox and to become a paid Feedly user so that I can save posts directly to my Evernote note which I just love. I have saved dozens of posts on Feedly itself, some just because I didn't have a chance to read them in depth at the time and others because they might be useful in my research, but I knew even as I saved them that there was little chance I would find them again when I needed the information, if I even remembered saving them. Now I am reviewing those posts again, and I am able to save them to the appropriate notebook in Evernote and tag them so that I can find them when I want to make use of the information in the post.

I can't wait to put more of Kerry Scott's suggestions into practice and see how else Evernote will help me organize my genealogy and even my personal "stuff".

Champagne chilling in the snow in preparation for my
grandfather's 75th birthday party.

Finally, tomorrow is the anniversary of the birth of my maternal grandfather, George Washington Smith. He was born in Thetford Mines, Quebec on February 22, 1898 to a Canadian mother and American father, George Robert Smith.

The above photo was taken as the preparations were underway for his 75th birthday party in February of 1973. I did not remember that I looked so cold and miserable in this photo, taken in my grandparents' backyard. That is pretty much the face I was making last weekend anytime I had to venture outside!

I'm not sure yet what I will be doing in terms of genealogy this week, but I hope it won't be so long before I post again.