27 December 2010

TEENA MARIE DEJA VU I'VE BEEN HERE BEFORE


Teena Marie passed into the Next World yesterday at the age of 54, too young, in her own home in Pasadena, California, while napping - a peaceful way to leave. My belief in reincarnation helps me deal with the death of loved ones.

17 December 2010

SEARCH FOR AMELIA EARHART : DNA OF BONES FOUND ON ISLAND MAY ANSWER THE QUESTION

Link now to this new article on Amelia Earhart: DNA from bones found on a deserted island may indicate that she lived a while after crashing in the sea or the island nearby.

SEAN MURPHY, Associated Press reporter writes:

" The remains turned up in May and June at what seemed to be an abandoned campsite near where native work crews found skeletal remains in 1940. The pieces appear to be from a cervical bone, a neck bone and a finger.

"But Gillespie offered a word of caution: The fragments could be from a turtle. They were found near a hollowed-out turtle shell that might have been used to collect rain water, but there were no other turtle parts nearby.

"This site tells the story of how someone or some people attempted to live as castaways," Gillespie said Friday in an interview with The Associated Press. Bird and fish carcasses nearby suggested they were prepared and eaten by Westerners.

"These fish weren't eaten like Pacific Islanders" eat fish..."

15 December 2010

SMITHSONIAN ARCHIVES TO SPILL SECRETS

LINK NOW TO THE ARTICLE FROM SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE...

You'll have to wait till 2027 for this:

" The FBI spied on Martin Luther King Jr. in an unsuccessful effort to prove he had ties to Communist organizations. In 1963, Attorney General Robert Kennedy granted an FBI request to surreptitiously record King and his associates by tapping their phones and placing hidden microphones in their homes, hotel rooms and offices. A 1977 court order sealed transcripts of the surveillance tapes for 50 years."

10 December 2010

AMERICAN CATHOLIC OFFERS SAINTS OF THE DAY

Here's a link to American Catholic which offers SAINT DAYS for NAMING and also a brief bio of each saint.

This one links to an Italian Saint Rose of Viterbo

"Catholic saints are holy people and human people who lived extraordinary lives. Each saint the Church honors responded to God's invitation to use his or her unique gifts. God calls each one of us to be a saint.

Finding a coorelation between an ancestors name and birthdate as supplied by the Social Security Death Index helped me realize that this person most likely did start out life as a Roman Catholic in Poland.


click on title for link

06 December 2010

POLISH ANCESTRY NAMING PATTERN OR SAINT?

Recently I spent an afternoon at the SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY library. As it often goes, I came in looking to break through a brick wall on one line, but while going through books I found one that mentioned that Poles often named their children for the day they were born or baptized. There was a good list and so I decided to compare the names of some Polish ancestors with the Polish (or Eastern-Central European) saints lists.

To my surprise there was a true connection (birthdate and saints day) of 7 out of 10 of the people I chose. Now, does that mean they were simply named for the saint of the day when they were baptised rather than born?

Now, to this day in Poland people often celebrate their saints day as their birthday.

HERE IS WHERE IT GETS TRICKY: YOUR IMMIGRANT POLISH ANCESTORS MAY HAVE USED THEIR SAINTS DAY AS THEIR OFFICIAL BIRTHDAY on U.S. paperwork/records. It is possible that this will correlate with their baptismal in Poland but maybe not.

According to the book I read, POLISH ROOTS by Rosemary Chorzempa, parents sometimes picked a name within up to a three week period surrounding the actual birth.

Because 3 out of the 10 names I checked did not correlate with a saint day, I think this is possibly the name of a family member OR THEIR BAPTISM sponsor.

I'm linking to the Rootsweb list of Polish Saints Names; REMEMBER THAT THESE CATHOLIC CALENDER DATES MAY HAVE CHANGED OVER TIME and that you may be able to determine ethnicity within Poland or other countries by linking the name and the saint!

What this reinforced to me also is the Catholicism of this family.

02 December 2010

LOS ANGELES PUBLIC LIBRARY : HAS 10,000 TITLES FROM RESOURCES ALL OVER THE COUNTRY

Did you know that the Central Library genealogy collection has over 10,000 titles and "this exhaustive database is not duplicated in any other California library, and contains documents not even available through the Library of Congress!"