SAROO MUNSHI KHAN BRIERLEY FINDS HIS BIRTH MOTHER USING GOOGLE EARTH : VANITY FAIR ARTICLE LINK HERE

VANITY FAIR : A HOME AT THE END OF GOOGLE EARTH

The power of Google Earth!

Have you tried it?

You put in an address and enter.  You watch the screen as the camera focuses in on the location - often the exact street address - that  you want.  You get to see a picuture of that place as it was, say a few months ago, frozen in time.   This story, featured in November 2012 Vanity Fair magazine is quite wonderful.  A boy was separated from his brother and became an ophan in Calcutta, India.  He was adopted by Americans but years later, using his memory and Google earth, was able to locate his mother and sister!

ANCESTOR PHOTOS : WHY ISN'T ANYONE SMILING?

Why isn't anyone smiling in those old photos?  You know the one's from the 19th century and some from the early 20th century too?  Since when have people tried to appear friendly, like they're having a good time and are happy when they strike a pose?

I thought about this while looking for ancestor photos to use on this blog. 

I think I have some answers for you!

First of all, early photography required that people hold the pose for much longer than we do today when our cameras are capable of freezing the image even as we are moving.  I think having to hold a pose caused a sort of rigidity and formality to the way people held themselves. 

Don't laugh but I have one friend who holds himself this way when he takes pictures today.  He has a whole wall of such ancestor photos and well, maybe it's cultural.  There is NO SAYING CHEESE FOR THIS GUY!  He looks like the FOUNDER OF A DYNASTY and twenty years older than he is, because he just doesn't smile for photos.

The main reason people didn't smile in those early days of photography has to do with - I'm feeling sure of this - because they were ashamed of their teeth!  Dental work wasn't what it is today, and you know dentures weren't what they are today.  No, even George Washington had some choppers carved of wood, some were made of bone, even whale bone.  And he was a very privileged person.

PEOPLE, rich or poor, GENERALLY LOST A LOT OF TEETH.  They pulled teeth that hurt. Every filling you have in your mouth would probably have been a pulled tooth a hundred or more years ago!

The first I see people in photos smiling is around the Gibson Girl era when commercial images of beautiful women used for selling products appeared in newspapers.  The newspaper was affordable for the common, ordinary citizen, and I believe that when models and actresses were shown in the newspaper smiling in ads, society brides followed.  I think women started smiling in photos before men did.  By the 1920's, the Roaring Twenties, there was a change in attitude about what was decent behavior and attitude.  By the Great Depression a great many people were depressed and in photographs it shows.

Long ago I heard that an American traveling to the Society Union as a tourist should never smile on their American passport, because to the Russians a smiling person was suspicious!  Last week I heard that Russia is asking people not to smile in any passport or ID photo for another reason which is because their technology that scans these can not deal with a smile.  Very interesting but is it true?

C  2012 Ancestor Worship Genealogy - All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

ARTIST PAUL GUAGUIN : PAUL VON WARD : REINCARNATION STORY OF ARTIST PETER TEEKAMP

   This is one of the more fascinating reincarnation stories I've heard about.REINCARNATION EXPERIMENT SITE  link here!

SHINING ARMOR AND NO KNIGHT...

THE PLAGUE : HISTORY CHANNEL DVD : FILM REVEW

ONE THIRD of Europe's population was wiped out when the Plague (otherwise known as the Black Plague) was through killing people off, and the Jews were made scapegoats in some locations.

This DVD by History Channel is excellent. It has a bit of focus on the personal physician of the Pope of those times, a physician who did catch a dose but lived, after refusing to stop doctoring even as so many other doctors ran for their own lives.

Watching it I'm reminded that religious hysteria and scapegoating can go together.

I'm reminded that many of us of European ancestry are descended from those who escaped or survived the Plague, though I don't know if that means we have immunity. (Maybe there will always be a new disease to conquer?)

I'm also reminded of the fear we have in 2012 of biological warfare and the emphasis on end times.

I can say this: I have no fear that the world will end in December of this year. The Mayan calender is round - a wheel - and I believe it's a wheel that can be given another twirl. However, I meet so many people who are invested in End Times and it's always possible that some humans will cause there to be exceptional times out of fervor and expectation. I hope not.  I hope this too shall pass.

I plan to live through the year because with the 1940 census out, even with all the help of databases, it will take a while for me to document hundreds of people I expect to find on it. (As a matter of fact I have to live many more years because I want to be here for the 1950!)

C 2012 Ancestry Worship Genealogy - All Rights including Internet and International Rights Reserved

A SPIRITUAL TIME OF YEAR : NO HALLOWEEN HORROR FOR ME!

Halloween is coming and I will not be participating in the ghoulish aspect of it, the horror, the violence.  I won't be watching fright films meant to keep me awake or contemplate evil or decorate my home with  plastic spiders, rubber ghouls, or foam gravestones cob-webbed with spun foam.  A harvest wreath is more my style.

I'm not sure what the evolution from spiritual time of year, when communication with the dead was thought to be especially good in Pagan traditions, to dream upsetting horror as a celebration was. 

I feel sure that our ancestors who lived an agricultural life were much more acquainted with death and the cycle of life that includes death than we, who buy our meat in supermarkets far from the reality of raising animals and killing them for food, or digging the graves for those who died and burying them on family property.  Recently I was excited to hear about a discovery of a burial not far from where I live of some Colonials, which was under railroad tracks that had been removed.  I wonder where the skeletons were taken!

Checking to see if FIND A GRAVE has added anyone related to me to their database is more my style.

Halloween is coming and I will not be participating in the partying, the outrageous, the costumes and masks. It seems to me there are other, better times for masked balls, for displaying alter egos.  Using an old family recipe for pumpkin pie and having a single goblet of wine with a special dinner is more my style.

Halloween is coming and I will be participating in remembering the dead.  I'll be doing that by working on my personal family history story, by photographing old photos (something I've been meaning to do for such a long long time) so that I can upload them onto a genealogy program I use, and by lighting a candle for those friends who passed in the last year.

C 2012 Ancestry Worship Genealogy  All Rights Reserved Including Internet and International Rights

QUESTION : WHAT CAN I USE TO SUBSTITUTE FOR A BIRTH CERTIFICATE I CAN'T FIND SO I CAN APPLY FOR SOCIAL SECURITY FOR MY GRANDMA?

Question for ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY

Grandma was born in a foreign country and has no birth certificate. She doesn't know where she was born. She came here as a small child and doesn't know for sure if her parent's were naturalized. To be honest, we are not sure how old she really is. She might have been adopted informally - brought over with relatives. She doesn't drive. She doesn't vote. Grandpa had his own business. We don't know if he paid taxes or what. None of this was a problem until, reckoning she's 65, we decided to help her apply for Social Security. How can we document Grandma?

Answer: If Grandpa had his own cash business and never paid into Social Security or didn't pay into the program long enough, Grandma may not be eligible! Have you asked Social Security? Does Grandpa or Grandma have a Social Security number? If so there must be some record of him and her, so my guess is she does not. I would check on grandpa and a legal marriage first.

OK. I would try using church or temple records, some evidence of her having a child who was born and baptized long ago, her wedding record, something like that. Social Security used to accept this kind of evidence that a person was old enough to mother or father, but these days who knows just how old is considered old enough! Pull up census records and anything else you can to BUILD A TIME LINE full of evidence of Grandma's life.

INTERNATIONAL READERSHIP OF ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY

Readers from France, Venezuela, Germany, Columbia, Ecuador, Netherlands, UK, Canada, ...

Welcome to my blog!

Are any of you hoping to locate relatives in the United States?

GOOGLE BLOGGER UPGRADE CHANGES WHERE YOU CLICK TO GET TO A LINK

Until now links were under the title, so you clicked on the title and there you went.  Now links will have their own separate place within the blog post. 

I liked links under the title, but I must admit I often coaxed readers to click there, incase they didn't know. 

Old posts will retain their links on the title. 

It's my hope that everyone will get it!