Found this oh so familiar. Deborah Byrd MISSING LINKS: A Magazine for Genealogists Vol. 8, No. 5, 3 February 2003 Circulation: 17,658 http://www.petuniapress.com/ (c) 2001-2003 Julia M. Case Editor-at-Fault: Julia M. Case juliecase@prodigy.net POINT OF VIEW: Bloodied but Un-Cowed By Beth Maltbie Uyehara BUYE@aol.com Apples usually fall down from the tree, not up--except during hurricanes, tornados, and earthquakes, when they whiz through the air every whichaway. The sun normally rises in the east and sets in the west, but who knows how long this will continue? I'm sure somebody's going to pass a law soon reversing the direction during Daylight Savings Time to benefit some little interest group or another. In our ancestors' day, death was a certainty, but, from what I read in the papers, Baby Boomers have declared a moratorium on the Grim Reaper while scientists work on an immortality pill (which we'll all have to order from Canada, because we won't be able to afford the prescription here in the U.S.). The one sure thing left--taxes--used to be universal, but it seems that, these days, there are an awful lot of people getting off the hook. Not you or me, of course. Just corporations and the very, very rich. Those of us left paying taxes are just a few no-account suckers who don't know the right people in Congress to call. In short, nothing is for certain these days except (drum roll ….) the Ten Laws of Genealogy. Here, at least, are a few things we can count on never to change. 1) If you have expended an enormous amount of time, money, and energy getting to a far-distant repository, it has been decreed that you will find exactly what you have been looking for all these years at the exact same moment that the closing bell rings in the repository on your final day in the area. That night, as you reluctantly fly home, the repository will burn down. 2) When your local genealogical society publishes its latest "acquisitions" list, the name of the long out-of-print book that you have searched for for 25 years will unaccountably be lopped off the bottom of the page. 3) Whereas, Mother Nature has decreed that a backed-up hard drive never crashes-- 4) --the one time you forget to back up your data, a freak electrical storm will cause a power surge in your state that will fry the wires leading into your home, and your computer will melt into a plastic puddle, taking your years of research with it. 5) In Ye Olde Family Bible, all the vital records will be entered in indelible India ink, except those concerning your own ancestor, whose existence will be noted in faint pencil in a quavering, undecipherable handwriting on the edge of Deuteronomy, Chapter 8. 6) The passenger list for the ship on which your immigrant ancestor arrived will have been used for kindling in 1898. 7) The parish records covering the decades for the ancestor you are researching were eaten by a cow.* 8) You will become fascinated by a far-flung collateral line approximately 20 minutes after the oldest living member of that line (unknown to you at the time) dies. 9) Of the thousands of fascinating old photos in your collection, the only ones that will have any identification at all will have notes such as "Mama's Great-Aunt 'Muffie'," and you won't have a clue as to whose writing it was and thus who "Mama" was, let alone Great-Aunt "Muffie." But you keep them anyway. 10) None of this will matter in the least, and like any good genealogist, you'll sail on into the past brimming with optimism that this time, things will be different. *Actually, "eaten by a cow" is the most frequent excuse for there being no extant parish records in any particular locale. The next most popular explanation is "moldy and mildewed beyond recognition." (Well, aren't we all.)