Dear Folks, Genealogy and Jigsaw Puzzles For those of you who have been subscribers to mailing lists with a primary genealogy focus, you may have run across someone who got furious that some of the members weren't concentrating solely on genealogy. As a result he made his anger known to the list and of course a fight broke out on the list. I have an idea that I sent the following message to the list that was getting out of hand with shouting and downright threats in late 1997. I had had enough and so this what I posted to the list. The minute after it was posted, I unsubscribed. * * * I feel that we have all been intrigued by the co-relationship between genealogy and jigsaw puzzles. You put the picture together one piece at a time and many times you can't find the missing piece. During the 1930s putting together jigsaw puzzles was the main source of family entertainment. The family would gather around the kitchen table or dining room table or card table and enjoy the challenge together. Sometimes it would generate exciting comments over finding an elusive piece that everyone was looking for or sometimes the family would just chit chat about the day's events while continuing to concentrate on the puzzle. The only rule in our family regarding the puzzles was that the outside border would be put together before anyone started filling in the picture. We all knew that, in spite of idle chit chat, the picture was still being put together and because of that, no one was ever brought even close to coming to the point of actually shouting at someone in obvious anger because of lack of exclusive attention to putting the puzzle together. We didn't have a rule that demanded such focused attention. In fact, if there had been such a rule that you couldn't talk about anything else but the puzzle, it would cease to be fun and the only person left to work on it would be the angry complainer. Everyone would just up and leave. With this list the rules have been set down and well-spelled out from the moment a person subscribes to it, rather similar to the above. Well, we continue to have a chronic angry shouter and complainer on the list and as a result, I'm pushing my chair away from this dear family table and I'm getting up and leaving. Unsubscribe vee