Not related? Prove it.
Sept 16, 2022 16:09:57 GMT -8
Post by Uncle Buddy on Sept 16, 2022 16:09:57 GMT -8
As we research the people of the past, we run into stories that are intriguing for one reason or another and may find ourselves pursuing trivia, relevant or not, about the old folks at home... well maybe someone else's home.
This is called "the study of history". Maybe they mentioned that in school. Can you imagine contacting a descendant of George Washington, the first president of the United States, for a document or an anecdote and being rebuffed for not being related? I can. Based on my experience of studying dozens of inventors--not "related" to me--inventors who should have been famous--this must happen all the time.
What's really going on? For the most part it's ordinary unfriendly, lazy, and/or paranoid behavior. The real reason many (the majority?) of genealogists ignore all queries from other genealogists falls into one of those categories, while the claimed reason is "we're not related [with the implication that the query-maker must be some kind of stalker]".
None of which is going to change anytime soon. Unfriendliness is literally fashionable in our times. I'm old enough to remember when this was not the case. As a child from small-town Colorado, we knew our neighbors. The closer our houses, the more time we spent with each other. We kids walked unsupervised from house to house on Halloween. Just being allowed to run around in the streets after dark was the best part. The candy was OK too. I remember when that changed. The news media spread a rumor about a razor blade in an apple, and suddenly we all behave as if there's a razor blade in every apple.
Last time I checked, kids don't play outside anymore, they are told to come home and lock themselves into their houses. No wonder we have "evolved" into a species who crave nothing more than a screen experience. I am actually in the first generation of children who grew up in front of a TV set, even though I was all growed up and out of the house before my parents even "got color". Color TV, you know.
Flaunting one's insecurities is now the expected norm, there's a stalker behind every bush, it's us against them and as long as this is true, no one is gonna win.
But hey, guess what? In spite of these sad realities, we are in fact all related. Don't bother trying to explain this to some tight-lipped genealogist who only sends scans of her grannie's family bible to "relatives", but here's the facts: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm0hOex4psA
This is called "the study of history". Maybe they mentioned that in school. Can you imagine contacting a descendant of George Washington, the first president of the United States, for a document or an anecdote and being rebuffed for not being related? I can. Based on my experience of studying dozens of inventors--not "related" to me--inventors who should have been famous--this must happen all the time.
What's really going on? For the most part it's ordinary unfriendly, lazy, and/or paranoid behavior. The real reason many (the majority?) of genealogists ignore all queries from other genealogists falls into one of those categories, while the claimed reason is "we're not related [with the implication that the query-maker must be some kind of stalker]".
None of which is going to change anytime soon. Unfriendliness is literally fashionable in our times. I'm old enough to remember when this was not the case. As a child from small-town Colorado, we knew our neighbors. The closer our houses, the more time we spent with each other. We kids walked unsupervised from house to house on Halloween. Just being allowed to run around in the streets after dark was the best part. The candy was OK too. I remember when that changed. The news media spread a rumor about a razor blade in an apple, and suddenly we all behave as if there's a razor blade in every apple.
Last time I checked, kids don't play outside anymore, they are told to come home and lock themselves into their houses. No wonder we have "evolved" into a species who crave nothing more than a screen experience. I am actually in the first generation of children who grew up in front of a TV set, even though I was all growed up and out of the house before my parents even "got color". Color TV, you know.
Flaunting one's insecurities is now the expected norm, there's a stalker behind every bush, it's us against them and as long as this is true, no one is gonna win.
But hey, guess what? In spite of these sad realities, we are in fact all related. Don't bother trying to explain this to some tight-lipped genealogist who only sends scans of her grannie's family bible to "relatives", but here's the facts: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm0hOex4psA