Well, we're into the 7th month of our "FINALLY GET ORGANIZED!" campaign. We are more than halfway there! Close to independence! Ha......I just got back from a huge research trip in MAY and I haven't done a thing with all my photocopies and pictures! <giggle> I guess I'd "better get crackin' " as they say down south! I realize this month marks the beginning of travel for many of us, so our genealogy activities are then changed from the usual home front to "on the road" activities. This month's ideas revolve around that theme. WEEK ONE: FIND OUT HOW TO SIGN ON TO YOUR COMPUTER SERVICE WHILE ON THE ROAD. Most of my readers are on AOL, but many other services also provide some variety of out-of-town access numbers. The ones that don't include local internet service providers. However, if your service is national in scope, you'll have options much the same as we do here on America Online. To my AOL readers, here are the easy guidelines to follow before signing on under your usual screen name in a new town: -click the down arrow by your screen name -choose NEW NUMBER from the list -click SIGN ON -your computer will then sign on to an 800# -enter the NEW area code when prompted -choose the closest city on the list by clicking on it -make your second choice for access from the list when prompted -your computer will ask if you want to save or swap these phone numbers before saving those choices -you will then be automatically signed off the 800# phone access inquiry number once you click OK (Your computer now has only the numbers for the new locality in its memory. Go through this procedure for each town you visit, and of course, one more time when you return home!) Neat! WEEK TWO: 1. PLAN TO TAKE LOTS OF PICTURES ON THE ROAD... pictures of important family sights including the old homes, schools, churches, and pictures of old pictures. Keep a steno pad on hand & number each exposure and describe WHAT you have taken a picture of. This is important for several reasons. First, if the picture fails to develop, you KNOW what you'll have to go back for! Secondly, you'll need to identify EVERYONE in the picture, so have each sign the steno pad in order of their appearance in the photo. With pictures of old pictures, ask everyone to play WHO'S WHO to identify the images! Be more specific than "great-grandma Dolly" Get the full name, including the maiden such as: Dolly (Yockey) Weiser The maiden name is in parenthesis. 2. USE YOUR HAND-HELD TAPE RECORDER. My readers will remember that my generous husband Harold bought me a GREAT hand-held tape recorder before our trip south last fall. Luckily it takes the regular size cassette tapes, so they are easy and cheap to find. Anyway, I find that during photo shoots, and WHO'S WHO, people share little bits and pieces of anecdotal history....and it helps just to pick 'em up on tape. 3. WRITE YOUR IMPRESSIONS ON YOUR STENO PAD. Seeing the old homestead, and walking through church cemeteries seems to get my memories flowing. When Harold takes his turn driving, I use this travel time to jot down my recollections. Someday I can transcribe them, but if I died tomorrow, these little notations provide little glimpses of the past not found in my current family history notebooks. WEEK THREE: PREPARE FOR THE FAMILY REUNION WITH COMPUTER PRINTOUTS. One fantastic new genealogy product I saw at the NGS Conference in May was a program called GENMATE (and PAFMATE) which can take GEDCOM files (or PAF FILES) and make huge pedigree charts with SIBLINGS listed. This would be great for your next family reunion! That way everyone can see their name on the pedigree chart! There is a service to have a wall sized chart printed commercially by this same firm. WEEK FOUR: TRANSCRIBE YOU TRIP NOTES TO COMPUTER. You'll want these ready to insert as notes in your genealogy program, or as entire chapters in your future family history book. If you handwriting is anything like my dad's, you and you alone can decipher them. You might even find that the process of transcription will trigger even more recollections. Use the lazy days of summer to computerize these anecdotes bit by bit. No pressure, no worries. Just ENJOY! Remember how in the olden days, our elementary school teachers asked us to write papers by that last title? Yes, those ol' school days... I used to walk through seven foot drifts of snow uphill (both ways) to get to a school room with a pot belly stove in the back! As a bridge between the laxy days of summer, and knuckling down to reading, writing and arithmetic, they'd have us do the usual summer vacation essays. Well, among the items on this months checklist are a few new fangled twists on that theme! 1. While traveling about, take your video cameras and tape recorders with you! Record what things look like! Tell how you feel about visiting that old homestead, or the cemetery hidden in the backwoods. 2. When visiting relatives who have possession of the precious family bible, ask if you can take it to the local photocopy shop. Invite them with you for lumch, if necessary. Just get COPIES of the original, don't trust yourself to transcribe the information perfectly. Remember there are 24 hour places like Kinkos to help you out! 3. As grandchildren visit, be sure to do a yearly interview with them on tape! As you splice together 10-15 years of video clips they'll be amazed at their changes and growth. And what a record for posterity! THEIR children will be able to see their parents as babies, and the the wonderful interaction with you, the great-grandparents! That is a window to the past I would certainly cherish! 4. As an extension of this activity, those of you with grandchildren could begin "grandchildren books." This consists of a personalized three-ring binder. Then, every week, compose an interesting letter on your computer and send copies to all grandchildren through the mail. They'll love getting something special addressed to them. You'll be able to share anecdotes from your childhood, old family stories, the lives of their parents, or little quote or stories you run across in the course of the week. Following these guidelines, you'll be able to accomplish your goals to finalluy make progress on the PERSONAL HISTORY side of family history research. Think how thrilled we are when we run across an original document which our ancestor held! Well, you are literally making memories and documenting lives in the process! Well, the kids are in school, most of us have finished our traveling and sleuthing (not necessarily in that order), and its time to settle down for a long winter's nap! NOT! Here's the lineup of this month's assignments! WRITE BACK and let me know how you are doing on these projects! Your comments keep Harold and me in stitches! Week One: At the family gathering on Labor Day, be sure to take LOTS of pictures, tape record interviews and post your descendant charts so people can SEE their name in print. Perhaps this will entice them to fill in the blanks for their birth and marriage dates, etc!!! Week Two: Transcribe taped interviews ASAP to NOTES in PAF (Personal Ancestral File) or whatever genealogy program you are using. Do this right away, while the conversations are still fresh in your mind! Describe the time of day, what your interviewee was wearing, etc; doing all you can as a reporter to describe the setting. You'll want your readers to be able to imagine they are right there experiencing this interview first hand. If your interviewee stumbles for words, or skips words use ... or (mumble) to deliniate. Do NOT fill in the gaps with your own words. If you MUST, add your editorial notes at the end, clearly labeling them as your own, and not the words of the interviewee. Week Three: Remember all that great stuff you gathered at the family reunions, summer picnics and such?!!! Well, this is the week to enter that information into your computer genealogy program. This may take a bit of doing, but do it NOW! Systematically, page by page, until like the Ragu Spaghetti Sauce, "ITS IN THERE!" Week Four: Write for copies of birth, marriage and death certificates on all this newly collected information. Sending a friendly, newsy letter to your extended family members requesting these will serve to strengthen the bonds you developed over the summer at your family gatherings. Send a photo or two! Gi ve, don't just ask! I realize this is a LOT to do in one month! But then this is the first chance after the hustle and bustle of the summer to get things really organized again! You'll feel a sense of accomplishment, and I'll certainly be proud of ya, too! Well, here we are in our 10th month of our new lives as organized genealogists! (No giggling now!) Harold has a really great idea, so I'll get right to the list! Week One: Before the weather gets too bad, take great-grandma's old rocker outside and take a picture of it! The same goes for quilts, baby cradles, pickle crocks, canning jars and other artifacts. Photo-documentation is a valuable tool for family historians. I remember visiting the Conrad Weiser Homestead in Womelsdorf, Pennsylvania. How I thrilled to see the walking stick and silver spoon actually used by my ancestor in the 1720's! I was also very touched to see the effort the restoration committee took to use period stoneware and other appointments to decorate his home. Without careful attention to these matters, visiting a restored home would not put is in the other century. More than just years separate us. Customs, life style and technology change throughout the decades and centuries. So, use those cameras to capture the images of the past. Photos make delightful and informative additions to our family history books! Week Two: Scan the photos for easy insertion as graphics in your family newsletter, or upcoming book. (You ARE planning to publish SOMEDAY!!) You can send the film of your artifacts to Seattle FilmWorks, or scan them in yourself, if you have the equipment. Thanks to my friend Barb, I have been learning about MSPicture Publisher which is a software program for scanning and editing photos. I also use PaintShop Pro (32bit) available for download in AOL's <A H REF="aol://4344:431.page_pgr.1369532.516864034">Graphic Arts Forum</A> . Week Three: By now, the original documents you sent for last month are beginning to arrive. Remember to put them in top-loading sheet protectors, and file them this week with the appropriate family group sheets in your notebooks or files for each family! Week Four: Plan an old-fashioned harvest party for family members, instead of the usual Halloween trick-or-treating! (That's getting too dangerous now!) How about a nostalgic hayride, and bonfire with marshmellows? Even a good old-fashioned square dance or simple songs by the campfire with a budding guitarist to accompany! Round out the activities with a few simple games like bobbing for apples, ring toss (on old fashioned coke bottles), and a cake walk! In the early part of the 20th century before radio and TV, people entertained eachother by singing and playing together, even as adults! 1. This is your 11th month of the organization checklist. To prepare for next month's assignments, you must make one last push before the holidays to get the last of your direct-line ancestors and their families into the database, using whatever genealogy management program you have chosen. NOTE: I am often asked what to do with INDIRECT (cousin) relations. I definately put them into the database whenever I run across them. It is short-sighted to put only direct (parent, grandparent) relations in the computer. One of my most exciting genealogy "finds" was when someone else had done work, on the ancestors of my mother's great aunt. If I did not have mention of her in my database, I would never see the connection to the other person's database. 2. Begin preparation for holiday gift giving, with genealogy in mind! :: Prepare gift-sized portions of chutney or pickles from great-grandma's recipe file complete with a bound photocopy of the entire recipe book printed on interesting parchment paper. :: Buy 4X6 inch wooden frames for the copies of old pictures you learned to make with your camera this year. Give the same photo to all family units on your gift list. Include a name list, and date on the BACK of the matboard. :: Prepare a family history video for your descendants. Take videos of old family portraits, narrating anecdotal information to spice up the sound track. One reader mentioned a unique way of combining old and new. He copies his old 8MM films to video, one segment on one tape. He makes a point of narrating the background, and funny recollections prompted by the old home movie. Interesting to hear grampa's voice recalling the "olden days" of the 1950-60's! He saves these until he has a chance to go to step two, below. During the last few years of his retirement, he and his wife have been visiting the same old haunts, to capture the "new look" of Hawaii, Banff, Canada, Ocean Shores, Washington, etc. on the appropriate video tape. In one case, he had his two grandchildren stand in the same pose eating sugar cane in the same field, as grandma had done in the 1961 8MM version!!!!! However, as he panned the background scenery (as in the earlier 8mm transfered to video) one notices the stark contrast of the former row of swaying palms with the so-called progress of modern development! Except for repeated references to Puffin Island in one video, his efforts have been applauded by his descendants. 3. Get an old suitcase to put your papers in if you need to clear off the dining room table for Thanksgiving. Then, force yourself to deal with 10-20 papers per day by filing, entering data, whatever is needed. When you work through that suitcase, reward yourself by ordering a subscription to your favorite genealogy magazine! Well, we are closing in on our last month of organization activities. (See the <A HREF="aol://4344:167.myrtfina.1412348.529459588">Finally Get Organized !</A> folder in my column area on AOL.) Several of you have written letters detailing your very human shortcomings in this area. But we all have fallen short to some degree or another. However, had we not started to follow any guidelines, we would be even less organized than we are at this point! I consider any forward motion, however slight, to be an improvement over things as they were at the beginning of the year. You will recall last month that I asked you to make a push to computerize the rest of your direct-line ancestry (grandparents, great-grandparents, etc.) , filling in the collateral lines (cousins, spouses, children) as you run across the information. For culminating activities, may I suggest that you: 1. Create a GEDCOM file of your genealogy data and send the floppy disk to the LDS Family History Library in Salt Lake. Use the following address: Family History Department Ancestral File Submissions 50 East North Temple Salt Lake City, Utah 84150 We want YOUR data to be added to the next edition of the ANCESTRAL FILE (tm) which is the huge CD-ROM pedigree database available at the over 2,000 local Family History Centers that are equipped with Family Search Computers. During the creation of your GEDCOM file you will be asked to include your name/addressand phone number. PLEASE add your e-mail address in the extra address line. (For example, [email protected]) This increases the avenues for communication with your distant and here-to-fore unknown cousins who may find your data in the CD-ROM collection. When you DO get a response, you will be able to exchange photocopies of documents that support your lineage claims and add names the cousin may have traced that you are unaware of at this point. OF COURSE, it will be easy to retrieve the documents, since you have them all neatly filed away in the top-loading archival sheet protectors! 2. Make a genealogy calendar to share with other family members. This can be done using programs like Calendar Creator Plus or certain add-on programs to PAF (Personal Ancestral File Genealogy Management Program). In this way, all family members will be aware of upcoming birthdays and anniversaries, as well as share recollections of such dates for important ancestors. Here are some additional ideas: :: print full page monthly calendars in horizontal page format :: print or photocopy on colored parchment-like paper :: on the back of the previous month copy a page with a decorative border and photos of ancestors or grandchildren :: bind all pages and cover sheet for roughly $1 each at Kinkos or Office Depot. They use the plastic spiral binding method which will work fine for this one-of-a-kind annual family gift. 3. Prepare special notebooks to give to each family member. These can be as simple or as decorative as you desire. They will use the binder to store the weekly e-mail print-outs and letters you are going to send. This idea worked very well for a friend of mine. Each Sunday afternoon he wrote a letter detailing a family story, anecdote, or tradition. Sorta like a Redbook's "Complete on this page" mini-story. In this manner, the gentleman was able to begin his personal and family history by telling stories of the old days on the farm, before radio and television, back in the horse and buggy era. Sometimes he would recall something he had done with his grandfather, sometimes he'd report on a current visit with a grandchild. Sometimes he'd embarrass his children by recalling their mischievous activities, much to the delight of the grandchildren. Other times he pasted up a photocopy of a DearAbby column or comic strip that caught his eye. Whatever struck his fancy that week he wrote about to his children and grandchildren. All he had to do was make one, then photocopy it for all the others. REMEMBER, this was in the days before e-mail, which will make your task even MORE doable! What a WONDERFUL way to begin a NEW YEAR!!!!! And that will be our MONTHLY assignment next year........ideas each month to help you write your PERSONAL HISTORY! Don't you wish you had even a small diary or a few handwritten letters from each of your great-grandparents? Any scrap of paper that they once held, however insignificant! Well, let's think of your descendants, and prepare an interesting personal history! So, there will be NO RESTING ON YOUR ORGANIZATIONAL LAURELS... soon we'll be on to the next year with new and exciting projects to tackle! Happy holidays, Myrtle :)