Posts Tagged ‘Mishpocha’

Genealogy

Tuesday, July 14th, 2009

I recently installed PhpGedView, an open source genealogy application, and am learning to use it, with some help from Terrell. Yvonne and I got heavily into genealogy research back when we were living in Syracuse, probably 7 or 8 years ago now. But then we got sidetracked by, you know, finishing our graduate programs, and put it aside & haven’t picked it up again until just recently.

In the last few days, though, we’ve been making spectacular progress on our genealogical research… largely, I think, due to the fact that Ancestry.com has increased its holdings dramatically in the past 8 years. It also helps that we have some relatives who have done some genealogical research of their own — in Yvonne’s case, one relative has done a huge amount of work.

Anyway, Yvonne has found that one of her ancestors — her great great aunt, I think — wrote a book, A Steele Tribe of Virginia. And moreover, the author, Eva Belle Steele, worked at Duke. And moreover, the book is in the Duke library’s collection. Small world. And I’ve put in an ILL request for another book about a different branch of Yvonne’s family. That book was in the Syracuse library’s main branch, and come to find out it’s one of only 7 copies in existence. We had no idea how good we had it back then!

Anyway, as cool as this is, it kind of bums me out that none of my ancestors ever wrote a history of their families. In my family, we get a lot of “We left the old country to get away from all that, why would we ever want to talk about it” from my grandparents’ generation. So I’m able to track my ancestors back to their immigration to the US, between the 1880s and 1920s, and then all trails go cold.

Charlotte Ada Pomerantz

Thursday, April 27th, 2006

For those of you who haven’t heard, allow me to introduce my daughter, 5 days old today:

Charlotte

No, Charlotte isn’t a family name, & no we didn’t name her after Charlotte’s Web, much as we have always liked the book. The Ada is after Ada Lovelace.

So, if I take a long time to get back to you by email these days, this is why. Good thing it’s almost the end of the semester.

For those of you interested in my family life, I’ve started a baby blog: Charlotte, NC.

My mom is a geek

Wednesday, September 14th, 2005

My mom sent me an email yesterday: she recently bought Harry Potter 6, & she’s re-reading numbers 1-5 before reading 6. Now that’s willpower, man. I thought about re-reading 1-5, for about 10 seconds. Then I actually picked up #6 & opened it & that idea went right out the window. Anyway, she emailed me because something was bothering her:

The Ministry goes to a great deal of trouble to keep Muggles unaware of the magical goings-on of wizards & witches. How, then is it possible that Hermoine’s parents accompany her to Platform 9 ¾ and she is allowed to bring them back goodies from the stores in Hogsmeade? What explanation can they give to their friends as to where their daughter goes to school and what her talents actually are (although they appear quite proud of her) We know how the Dursleys respond, but aren’t there other half- and whole-muggle-borns? Has there ever been an explanation of how Muggles can produce magical children? (recessive genes, no doubt)

Anyone have any explanation for this? I suggested a non-disclosure agreement.