Holidays and New Year celebrations are when messages about what family should and shouldn't make me want to gag. They generalize everyone into one big homogenous lump. That's when I step back and take stock of the people I know. It does my heart good to see that we're individuals -- and that includes our… Continue reading Who is Family? by K E Garland: Reblog→
Who will your search turn up? Photo thanks to Ryan McGuire of Gratisography.com
Writers and readers alike, for times we’d like to look into our histories, author Margaret Lossi offers tips for how to get started. My two novels are works-in-progresses! Lossi says that when it comes to looking up one’s family background, be prepared for surprises…
Warning: family history can lead to emotional discoveries.
It may seem counter-intuitive, but you begin at the end! That is, you begin with you.
Check your birth certificate, verify your parents. It may seem like a given, but just sometimes people find they are adopted, or their mum is really their grandma. It pays to check.
Check your parents birth certificates, to verify your grandparents. Then work your way back through the generations, verifying birth certificates.
These first steps build the strong foundation of your family tree, so worth doing well.
It is not a case of how far back you can go, but the quality of your data
You may wish to answer a family question. I knew my parents were second cousins, so wanted to find out about this link. Set yourself a goal to work towards. Whatever your motivation, make sure you verify each…
Life with dogs... The twin puppies we adopted ate and ate and ate. And pooed and pooed and pooed. Six months later, they'd grown to 50 and 50 pounds! Plus, I'd learned nothing about training them. One day... As usual, for 10 deafening minutes, they barked at the mailman across the street. Later that day,… Continue reading Part 3: What Has Your Pet Taught You? by da-AL→
Deciding... My husband and I agreed to adopt a dog. This was followed by months of discussion. What type of dog would harmonize best with our two cats? We settled on these dog requirements: It should be a puppy, so that it would learn early on to respect cats. It shouldn’t mature to larger than… Continue reading Part 2: What Has Your Pet Taught You? by da-AL→
