A gave myself a couple of tasks to accomplish yesterday before the second session of my genealogy class. The first was to pick up the class packet from the copy center. The second was to pick up a Husky Card for access to the U.W. libraries. Both went swimmingly, so I got to my class early, hung out and read the text book.
The class was taught by James Rigali today. He’s the instructor for the history portions of the class. Topic was Organizing Historical Research Projects. After an overly long and fairly unimportant discussion of what is history? he delved into a basic method he wanted us to follow:
Pick a subject. At this point, I’m thinking of doing my project on either or both of my third great grandparents, Patrick Parker and Mary Murphy. (I’ve written about them on the blog before.)
Create an annotated chronology
Develop research questions, both historical and genealogical
Develop a bibliography. His overview included the following types of sources:
General books, including textbooks.
Scholarly articles (JSTOR)
Encyclopedias (he didn’t cover this one too much)
Historical books and magazines published at the time
Local histories
Historical maps
Historical photographs.
Newspapers of the time
History web sites
Sample Research Journal
Keep a research journal. He didn’t really cover what to record on this, other than keeping what he called a two-sided journal. In other words, record what you are searching and reading on one side, and notes and thoughts on the other. He didn’t really seem like he’s embraced computer technology like I do.
The following was written by my friend Erin, an active snowboarder. Erin does not
have a blog, so I have volunteered to host the article. This article is copyrighted by Erin, and all rights are reserved. I will
be metaphorically borrowing John Scalzi’s Mallet of Loving Correction for any comments
left. In other words, don’t be an asshole in the comments.
The other night, I attended the Seattle premiere of Dopamine, the newest snowboarding
movie from Absinthe Films. It was awesome and I loved it. After the movie, the director
of the film, Justin Hostynek, and several of the riders featured in the movie got
up onstage and gave away prizes. Most prizes were awarded in a raffle-style contest…
then a snowboard was given to the winner of a long-jump contest… and then, another
prize (I forget what) was given out to “the first bra onstage”.
For a good minute, the audience was effectively silent. I admit, I jokingly went
for my bra clasp as if I meant to toss it onstage… but then I thought about it.
I thought about it, and I was offended.
Snowboarding is largely dominated by men, a fact most of us are aware of. Men’s
snowboarding gets more press, more attention, has a bigger audience, etc. Famous
male snowboarders become so well known, even non-snowboarders know who they are
(Shaun White, anyone?) As a woman, accept that this is the way it is in most sports.
I don’t find it particularly fair, but I typically decline to get up on my soapbox
and preach to the masses about gender equality in this arena.
However, the request for bras onstage struck me as particularly distasteful. I was
really disappointed in Mr. Hostynek for (probably not maliciously and possibly not
even consciously) emphasizing the mindset that women are second-rate and best judged
by their hotness and sex appeal rather than their athletic abilities. What was even
more distasteful to me was watching the couple of women who raced up to the front
with bras in hand to receive a prize in front of a sold-out audience.
As a director, Justin Hostynek has a huge responsibility. Indeed, everyone associated
with a snowboarding film has a huge responsibility- they may not like it, but they
are role models for a vast audience of snowboarders, and as such, they have the
potential to influence the attitudes of thousands of young people across our nation
(most snowboarders are under the age of 35). Mr. Hostynek’s request for bras on
stage set the tone for everyone’s attitude towards women in that audience-
we all went from athletes who came together for the love of a sport to a bunch of
horny guys oogling a sexual object. His plea for women to throw their underwear
reinforced the fact that many people (men and women) don’t take
women in sports seriously. Why should women be taken seriously when it
is so easy to convince them to remove their bras and proudly wave them around?
I’ve been thinking a lot about this since the movie premiere, and I have been going
back and forth with being saddened and offended, and telling myself that I’m over-thinking
and over-reacting. I think this is yet another symptom of our mindset as a society
that tells women it’s okay to be a sexual object, that we should smile more, that
we should be flattered by any and all attention we receive from the opposite sex.
That it’s perfectly fine to have a double standard in sports, where men are judged
on their athletic prowess and technical ability, and women are judged by physical
attractiveness.
Photo by Fes
But you know what? I don’t think it’s okay. I don’t think any of that is okay.
I dream of a day when I can head to the mountain and feel the easy camaraderie
that I see my guy snowboarding buddies experience, when I can walk into a gear shop
and not be talked down to and insulted or just outright ignored by the
sales bro simply because I am woman. Someday I hope to attend the premiere of a
snowboarding movie that features an equal number of men and women, and someday I
will win some free schwag from that movie and not be asked to remove my bra for
it.
I can hear what you’re thinking; “Dude! Who cares what people think? Just ignore
that crap, I do.” And you know what? You have a good point. But this is not a problem
that is going to go away if we ignore it, bury our heads in the sand ostrich-style,
and continue to tell ourselves that it doesn’t bother us. Changing the way we perceive
women’s snowboarding will benefit everyone. How? Well, here’s what Capita-sponsored
Canadian badass Jess Kimura had to say about it, in an
interview in Transworld Snowboarding from November 2012:
“… The only way that I can possibly contribute to the overall progression of snowboarding
is doing tricks and making guys look at them and be like, “If that’s what a girl
can do, I gotta do better.” Guys are always going to have to be better than girls;
otherwise they feel like pussies. I can definitely contribute to pushing the level
in girls’ stuff, which pushes up the bottom level in men’s snowboarding. And I think
a lot of guys—regular dudes out there—feel like girls when they watch Travis Rice’s
stuff. But when they see someone who’s at a total disadvantage—a girl like me—they
can relate. And I hope that inspires people.”
While I internally wince when I hear Ms. Kimura equate the top of women’s riding
with the bottom level of men’s, I think she has an awesome point- encourage girls
to do better, to ride harder, to throw more tricks, and the whole of snowboarding
will improve.
If we can manage to change our perception of women athletes and start thinking of
them as athletes instead of just hot chicks trying to get guys’
attention, I think that might encourage more young girls to be involved in sports.
“Our culture traditionally views strength as masculine and a small, frail body as
feminine. Girls have historically been discouraged from participating in athletic
activities and strength development,” Gentile explains. “Such stereotypes, formed
early in childhood, can influence behavior and limit women’s ability to express
their full potential.” This crucial fact means that women could be on a similar
skill level as men had they been given the opportunity at an earlier age or relieved
of such cultural pressures all together.
Do me a favor and read that last line again. Can you imagine what the snowboarding
world would be like if women were supported and inspired to ride just as hard as
men? Can you imagine what the world would be like if women were supported and inspired
to tread where men are typically sovereign (ie, sports)? The mind boggles.
Encouraging younger girls to snowboard can have a drastic effect on their self-confidence,
self-esteem, and overall health. We all know that being active is good for you,
but studies have proven that “regular physical activity can enhance girls’ mental
health, reduce symptoms of stress and depression, and make them feel strong and
competent.” (reference)
Involving girls in a snowboarding program will give them more opportunities for
physical, social, and intellectual development, and that, in turn, can lead to young
women with reduced risk of chronic disease, who do better academically, and have
greater leadership skills. (reference)
Bottom line, snowboarding is fun, and we are all out there to have a good time.
Why disparage women who want to participate? Here are my pleas, and I don’t think
I’m asking a lot: Mr. Hostynek, stop asking the ladies to throw their bras onstage.
Ladies, stop throwing your bras onstage. Absinthe Films, get more women riders featured
in your movies. Guys, encourage your sister, daughter, girlfriend, mother, wife
to get out there and be active, to get involved in sports, and don’t make derogatory
remarks about female athletes based on their looks. Girls, get out there, get active,
and be fearless! Go snowboarding!
Tonight was the first session of my Genealogy and Family History class through the Continuing Education office at U.W. I don’t have a whole lot to report about the experience, as we did not cover any academic material today. The first half of the class the instructors reviewed the syllabus and their expectations. None of the work appears to be particularly difficult. Assignments include things like retrieving and printing a page from the census and requesting a vital record.
Wright County Iowa
The second half of the class was dedicated to student introductions. Not so much tell us a little bit about yourself as tell us a little bit about your family. Throughout the introductions, whenever someone mentioned Iowa the genealogy instructor (the other instructor focuses on history) asked what part of Iowa. She mentioned she had a lot of interest in one county. About the 4th time she asked about Iowa, I realized that her name has been ringing a bell in the back of my head, and I realized why. She runs the GenWeb site for Wright County, Iowa. As I’ve documented here, my third great grandparents Patrick Parker and Mary Murphy Parker appeared to have ended up in Iowa. Four or five of their children were in Wright County Iowa, two others in Franklin County, the next county over.
I’m being taught by a person who has expertise in the genealogy and history of a specific county I’m interested in.
I think I’ve found the correct passenger manifest which shows my great great grandfather Anton Weiss arriving in America.
Anton applied for a passport in 1886 stating that he emigrated from Bremen on 4 Mar 1852, however he forgot the ship’s name.
On 9 Apr 1852 the Agnes arrived in New York from Bremen with an Anton Weiss aboard. He’s 24 years old, from Prussia, and his occupation is mechanic. That’s doesn’t exactly match what I know about Anton Weiss, but it’s reasonably close. Anton was actually 25, from Bavaria, and worked as a tinsmith in the first references to his occupation in the U.S. Anton turned 25 on 27 Feb 1852. He could easily have been 24 when he first registered with the Bremen emigration bureau.
Anton Weiss on the Agnes passenger manifest
What clued me in to the manifest is an entry in the United States Germans to America Index, 1850-1897 for Anton Weiss. That lists a 24 year old Bavarian named Anton Weiss, occupation coppersmith, arriving in New York on the Agnes on 9 Apr 1852. I don’t know why this database lists him as Bavarian rather than Prussian or gives his occupation as coppersmith instead of mechanic. This entry matches what I know about Anton Weiss pretty closely.
Coppersmith, tinsmith, and mechanic would have been very similar occupations in the 1850s. That discrepancy doesn’t bother me.
The discrepancy that bothers me is the scanned microfilm image gives his origin as Prussian. Bavaria and Prussia were were not interchangeable countries in 1852. Indeed, several other passengers have their origin listed as Hesse, Hanover, and Germany. So where the Germans to America Index gets Bavaria, I don’t know. Stuff to research!
I have a great great uncle, Frank Weiss, who moved from the family home in Cassville Wisconsin to Pukwana South Dakota. He married Nannie Conaway in 1890, and they had 4 children. Robert died young, and the other three were Marion, Theodore, and Agnes.
I think I just solved some puzzles that in retrospect shouldn’t have been all that difficult to figure out.
The first is that I found a census entry for Nannie Weiss living with Agnes Weiss in Carlsbad, New Mexico in 1920. Nannie and Agnes were also listed in Pukwana in 1920. I found the New Mexico entry several years ago and wondered what that was about. Vacation?
New Mexico?
The next part of the mystery is the 1915 South Dakota state census. The only member of the family I could find was Frank Weiss.
1915 South Dakota state census card for Frank Weiss
I figured Marion being missing was because she was attending the University of Illinois, as she graduated in 1917. And maybe Theodore was off working somewhere. And not finding someone in the records in a place I know they should be is very common. Records are spotty. I got a letter just yesterday from the Social Security Administration saying they had no record of my grandfather’s death, so they could not release information about him to me. Missing records are a common problem. I didn’t think too much of the missing members of the Weiss family.
Agnes Benda obituary
The last puzzle was Agnes’ obituary. It mentioned that Agnes finished 8th grade in Wisconsin and then moved with the family to New Mexico for a few years. For some reason, I never connected that with the other pieces of information. The obituaries for Nannie and the other children never mentioned anything about New Mexico. In fact, Theodore’s said he lived in Pukwana his entire life save for the time he spent in the military.
It appears now that Nannie moved with the kids who were still at home. In 1915, the county assessor who conducted the census didn’t include them because he knew they didn’t live there. But the US Census in 1920 asks who normally lived in the domicile. And to Frank, Nannie and his children normally lived there, so he included them in his responses. At the same time, Nannie also answered the queries as if she normally lived on her own with Agnes in Carlsbad, New Mexico.
The questions the records don’t answer is why Nannie took the kids and moved out for a time? There’s all sorts of possibilities, from domestic trouble to plans for the whole family to move to New Mexico that fell through. Perhaps the family fell on harder times and Nannie took several teaching positions. And why New Mexico?
The last grandchild of Frank and Nannie died last September. A number of great grandchildren are still alive, but none of them were older than 4 years when Nannie died in 1959. Unless Frank or Nannie wrote it down somewhere, I won’t get a chance to hear the story from someone who heard it directly from one of the participants.
That’s why when I meet distant relatives, I don’t ask them about names and dates. I ask them to tell me stories.
I have bad luck with Costco detergent and cars. Two years ago I had a sweet smell coming from the back of my car that turned out to be one of those big Costco laundry detergent containers having popped open and poured liquid detergent all over the back of my station wagon. Had to pay to have car detailed. Extra even, cause the battery is back there.
Unloaded my car last night and saw a smear of white stuff in the back. I thought it was potato salad. Then I got inside and saw the container of liquid dishwasher detergent which I had unloaded from the car earlier in the day and left on my counter. A large portion of the detergent was in a giant puddle on the counter and a smaller portion dripped over the side onto the floor, all having leaked from a nail sized hole in the side of the container. I’m afraid to go back out to check my car because I don’t want to have to get it detailed again.
Kate Martin’s top priority for transportation is the following: Decongest bus and street car routes to improve reliability. The following blog post talks about how she intends to do that: Congestion Rx
(Credit: King County voters’ pamphlet)
Do you see any solutions in that? I don’t. What I see is a cranky neighbor who’s mad that bus drivers are getting overtime. Please explain to me how reducing overtime will materially improve bus service.
She’s got a few other blog posts on transportation as well.
Her solution to road rage? Take bikes off the roads and put them on “Greenways.” I love the idea in theory. In practice, this isn’t going to work for a number of reasons. First, Seattle’s geography means that there are number of choke points where bicycles and vehicles will have to share space. Second, given the realities of cranky car people, bicycle roads are going to be shunted to corridors that are a pain in the ass for bicyclists. Is she going to push to turn Roosevelt way or 15th Northwest from a car through-way to a bicycle through-way? I doubt it. Is she going to make it so that bicycle crossings have equal or higher priority at crossings with cars, or will it be like the Burke Gilman trail where every crossing means bicycles have to stop and wait for a cross-walk light? It’s going to be the latter, and that will make it impractical for bicyclists to commute on a greenway.
Rather than extend Link to Ballard, Kate Martin wants to add a Sounder Commuter stop in West Ballard. Where those tracks go is nowhere near the population centers of Ballard, and people aren’t going to walk that far. This would mean that the station would need a large garage for Park-n-Riders. The train ride would also put commuters at the Amtrak station at the very south end of downtown. That makes sense for people commuting a long distance (the nearest stations are Longacres and Edmonds) where the distance to offices from the station, while a chunky amount, are but a fraction of the total commute. But for commuters from Ballard who need to get to Belltown or north downtown? They’re not going to want a walk that is as long as their train ride to downtown in the first place. A Link route with stops in Interbay, Ballard proper, Loyal Heights and Crown Hill is going to serve commuters a lot better than a Sounder stop.
Or take for instance her priority of “Rebuild the Seattle Police Department”. Here’s how she would do that: SPD: A Path Forward.
Yup, her main idea is to get a strong leader. Duh. Nothing about body cameras, or tracking race to see if the SPD is biased, or getting people who live in Seattle to be officers, or new training programs. Those are ideas from other candidates. They may or may not work, but they are pro-active ideas at least. Kate Martin? In her other blog post on crime wants to target “incivility”: Crime and public safety. What that amounts to is that she wants all the people that annoy and scare her out of downtown, the poor people, the homeless people, the crazy people. Then women will come downtown again!
Sorry Kate Martin, you are a no go for me. A good portion of your policy ideas are dog-whistle items for NIMBYists, not forward-thinking prescriptions for an urban city.
It’s important to bear in mind I’m being called a traitor by men like former Vice President Dick Cheney. This is a man who gave us the warrantless wiretapping scheme as a kind of atrocity warm-up on the way to deceitfully engineering a conflict that has killed over 4,400 and maimed nearly 32,000 Americans, as well as leaving over 100,000 Iraqis dead. Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him, Feinstein, and King, the better off we all are. If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school.
Just under three years ago I started researching genealogy as a hobby. My girlfriend suggested Geni.com, and I signed up without knowing much about it. I kind of liked it at first, and even paid for a year’s worth of Geni Pro rather than their free service.
What Geni is trying to do is create one family tree for the entire world. I like that goal.
I don’t like how they’ve gone about it.
The way it worked when I joined was you entered people and information about them, and you became the manager of a profile for them. If you wished, you could merge that profile with a profile for the same person entered by another user. Then the two of you could collaborate on research about that person, jointly managing the profile. Any relative within 4 generations could be designated private, so that other users couldn’t see the information and it isn’t crawled by Google. This allows people to add close, living relatives to their family tree but keep their life details private.
Then a couple years ago, Geni changed policy. If the profile was for a person more than 4 generations back in time (i.e., your great grandparents or earlier in the tree), any Geni Pro user could edit them. This is a huge issue because there are a lot of really sloppy genealogists. I’ve no problem with sloppy research, but when it affects my research, I get cranky. I stopped using Geni for the most part, though I kept my account and periodically edited a profile or two.
Another aspect of Geni is that they have a class of users called curators. Curators are uber-users. They can manage popular profiles (e.g., Queen Elizabeth, Charlemagne) preventing sloppy genealogy work being done on them. They can approve merges made between abandoned profiles. Those are good things, mostly.
But recently, though I’m not sure when, Geni decided that curators should have unfettered access to private profiles. In other words, random genealogists have access to the private information about living people. Presumably the curators are now the unpaid customer service representatives. This is a huge problem!.
Also, those curators can approve merges and edits for private profiles. I had a first cousin entered, and so did someone else. A curator came along and saw that the information matched and merged the two profiles without the permission of either myself or the other person who had entered my cousin. So now that person can see a whole lot of private information I’ve entered where the 4 generations for both of us intersect. What does it matter, you’d think? They’re probably family. Except there was a divorce and I didn’t know the details. Now I can see some of that. And the other person can see similar pieces of information.
Allowing some random curator to decide on their own to make changes to private profiles, including merges, was the final straw. I sent an angry email to Geni and got back a really condescending response that I should ask the sloppy curator for help in fixing the mess that person caused. I replied back that I would do no such thing, that I wanted it back the way it was prior without me having to ask someone nicely. And then I got back another even more condescending response that I didn’t want to work on a collaborative site.
I never replied again. Had I, I would have pointed out that collaboration does not mean what that C.S.R. thought it meant. It does not mean making changes without telling other people affected. Working together means talking and discussing changes, none of which Geni’s designated curator did. Not to mention they shouldn’t have even been able to see private information in the first place.
I spent the next evening removing as much information as I could from Geni. I know they have logs of all the past information, so it’s futile if they decide to become even more evil than they already are. Rest assured Geni when you read this, if you restore that private information and/or make it available to anyone and I find out about it, I will sue. I don’t put it past them. The company has continually decided to make yet more information available to yet more people when people who entered that information did not expect it.
I will never put new information on Geni again. If you care about your family’s privacy, you won’t either.
Update: I saw that a lot of people visited this post from a curator forum discussion on Geni.com. That prompted me to go take a look at Geni’s privacy policy. And again I see they’ve updated it yet again to make previously private information public. Previously, up to four generations from yourself could be kept private. Now they keep private only information about living people. That would be fine if that’s how they started, but as I noted above, they keep changing it to reveal information that was previously private. Like I said: evil.
Tonight’s game against Portland was very disappointing. We were up one to nil for most of the game, and Portland tied it in the 90th minute to eek out a draw. I looked down and missed that last play. Our own goal was a nice play where Steve Zakuani anticipated a Portland pass, intercepted it, ran the length of the field, then placed a cross perfectly at the feet of Eddie Johnson for the score. I think Zak should have received the Man of the Match award, not Eddie.
Oba Martins entered the game around the 70th minute and played well despite almost no practice with the team. Zakuani is starting to look like the Zakuani of old. Andy Rose had a poor game, giving the ball away a lot and holding onto the ball for too many touches. And for god’s sake Sigi, please please please drill Eddie Johnson on getting his head back into the game quickly after a blown play. Blown plays happen. Eddie laying on the field in frustration or slowing walking back onside when the Sounders are mounting another attack is just not cool.
I have bad luck with Costco detergent and cars. Two years ago I had a sweet smell coming from the back of my car that turned out to be one of those big Costco laundry detergent containers having popped open and poured liquid detergent all over the back of my station wagon. Had to pay to have car detailed. Extra even, cause the battery is back there.
