Distractions, Webinars, Freedmen's Records and Slides

Iran Hostage Ticker Tape Parade - Jan 30, 1981

This has seemed like a week of distractions when it came to anything to do with genealogy. Almost none of my goals were met although I did watch two webinars and finally get started on some indexing on Family Search.

The first webinar was Thomas MacEntee's "Pinning Your Family History" which was offered over on Legacy Family Tree Webinars. This was the first webinar I watched at Legacy. I guess I was vaguely aware of their webinar offerings before this but hadn't really looked into everything they offer. I was pleasantly surprised by the cost of a membership (on sale right now for $49.95 annually). That gives you unlimited access to members-only webinars, all archived webinars (which are only accessible for a week after for non-members) and handouts.  I think it is a great deal and already see a few webinars on the schedule that I'm looking forward to.

Thomas' webinar, which was excellent, is available to watch for to non-members through Wednesday. I have been using Pinterest since it was in beta (testing) and I still learned quite a bit about the site that I did not know and quite a bit about a few other sites that were new to me.  One of those is a site called What Was There. What Was There is an online project with the goal of creating a photographic history of the world.  It looks a lot like Google Maps except that in the locations where a photo has been uploaded you can see a present day street view and the same view at some time in the past. And you can upload your own photos, too, which is what makes it a "pinning" site. While you can tell that the project is in its early stages, it is still very cool, and all of us who contribute to it, will make it even "cooler".

On Thursday night I watched a webinar at Family Search which I found through DearMYRTLE's Genealogy blog and her GeneaWebinars Calendar. Family Search makes some recordings available afterward as well and the handouts that the live attendees receive. All of these appear to be free like the rest of Family Search. The webinar I watched was United States Naturalization. I don't see a recording of this webinar, but I have to say that I don't find the Family Search very easy to navigate sometimes and I could be missing something. Webinars seem to be presented and linked by the research team that they fall under, so the naturalization webinar was under the US/Canada research team and the Wales Naming Conventions webinar that I missed today was under the British Isles team. If you know of a better way to find these webinars, please let me know in the comments.

Anyway, the webinar was packed with information. So much so that I wish a recording were available because I'd love to watch it again, but I do have the handout.

Thursday when I was trapped at home after the "Check Engine" light in my car suddenly said, "Hello!", I finally spent some time getting familiar with indexing records on Family Search at the behest of DearMYRTLE who is encouraging her readers to get involved in indexing the Freedmen's Records. I think a separate post on that is in order once I get a bit more comfortable doing it.

Then it was Friday and I was able to catch only a few glimpses of the ticker tape parade for the USA Women's Soccer Team between surgeries at work. But it reminded me that one of the carousels of slides which I had yet to digitize contained photos from the day my father took me to the ticker tape parade for the Iran hostages in 1981. So, that was my big distraction over the weekend. I digitized the 97 slides in that carousel, organized and named them and moved the slides into archival slide holders.  One of those slides is above and below are a few more. Unfortunately I can't share the photos of me at the parade because I am sporting a button that my father bought me that contains an expletive aimed at Iran. Not exactly appropriate for a 12-year-old, but that was part of what made it so funny to my father, God bless him.

When enlarged you can see WELCOME HOME in some of the windows.

So that was my week, genealogically speaking. Of course this week's goals are the same. Backing up my data and making a will. Hopefully I'll have more to share on that soon.