HORATIOS DRIVE : AMERICA'S FIRST ROAD TRIP directed by KEN BURNS

Horatio's drive is about Horatio Nelson Jackson, who left San Francisco in 1903 determined to drive an automobile across the continent of the United States on what was mostly dirt roads that were for Wagon Trains or Horse 'n Buggies.

He had been on the road a short time when other men, who were sponsored by automobile companies, decided that they would beat him or perhaps make it to the east coast if he gave up. These men failed.

Nelson did it for a $50 bet, which he never cared to collect, and racked up thousands of dollars in expenses, and the automobile he was driving was not one of the notables.

A fun film  with lots of vintage daring-do that will inspire you to take some back roads on your summer vacation, which begins any moment, since today is MEMORIAL DAY!

FAMILY PHOTOS : THE OKLAHOMA RECORD BUSTING TORNADO

Another natural disaster - another episode of record busting and destructive weather.  I'm not going to get into END TIME predictions here, though I meet people who believe that's where we at - the end of time on earth.  Instead I'd like to say that I think it's fantastic that there is an effort - on FACEBOOK - to reunited people with the family photographs that are being found in rubble, in trees, all over, and sometimes far away from the 17 mile, 1.3 wide path of the Tornado.

(By the way, I notice that Hurricanes/ Super Storms have names but Tornado ands do not!  Why is that?!)

This has gotten me thinking about photographing all my family photos with my digital camera which has a setting called DOCUMENTS, and which allows you to take close up pictures, and holding all of them on a CLOUD or other photograph holding site, so that if ever my own rare family photos are destroyed by fire, flood, earthquake, tornado, etc.  they will be somewhere else.

Of course I've uploaded some photos as I use a FamilySearch product, but my paperwork (handwritten notes, photocopies, etc.) are bountiful and valuable too, and I want to preserve all that so that whomever inherits my research work and family history writing will be able to follow what I did to get to that point. 

And I'm ever more concerned with privacy issues as NO I do not want my photographs to be open to the viewing of anyone else without my knowledge and permission. 

BIO CHANNEL LOOK-A-LIKES : TED DANSON AND ANDREW JACKSON?

lookalikes BIO CHANNEL link  YOU WILL ASK YOURSELF " HOW ARE THEY RELATED?"

Take a look at these look-a-likes and tell me what you think.  These people are not supposed to be related.

If a genealogist researched them, I wonder, would they still be considered not related?

Some time ago I contacted a person who may have a relative in common with me.  It's been a while and perhaps she was just being polite when she said she would go through some pictures.  I have to admit I WANT TO SEE WHAT THIS PERSON LOOKED LIKE!  If I saw them out shopping at the mall, would I instantly guess they were related to me somehow?

Seems from the time a baby is born, people are trying to figure out who it looks like.  Some see the mother.  Some see the father.  Some see a great uncle.  It is really strange when you don't look at all like your siblings.

IRENA SENDLER : IN THE NAME OF THEIR MOTHERS : PBS VIDEO REVIEW

As it says on the back of the pack, this film is the story of a group of Polish Woman who outwitted the Nazi's during World War Two.  More to the point, Irena Sendler and some of her social worker friends were gentiles and are now gifted with the title Righteous of All Nations, by Yad Vashem.

Over 2500 Jewish children were saved from death by being taken from the Warsaw Poland ghetto where they and their families awaited deportation and death.  They secreted these children mostly in Catholic Convents with the nuns.  Everyone involved risked death as punishment for their heroic activity if they were caught.  Of course the children were required to learn new Christian names and act as Catholics and it was all very stressful and confusing for them. But they lived.

This is a PBS video but there was a lot of financial help behind it which is noteworthy.  The Polish and Slavic Federal Credit Union.  The Foundation for German Polish collaboration,  Rafal Obinski and the Legion of Young Polish Women are just some of the funders.  I realize I had never heard of these people or organizations before this film. 

Winner of the Best Documentary Audience Award in the UK Jewish Film Festival 2012, I am always glad to know that historians are trying for a balanced view of history, because I've heard a lot of Catholic bashing and Polish bashing in my lifetime.  Yes, an estimated 6 million Jewish civilians were exterminated by the Nazi's in Occupied Poland, Occupied Hungary, and so on, but so were millions of Catholic Poles and Christians in several countries.

THE JEWISH AMERICANS : A SERIES BY DAVID RUBIN : PBS DVD

I think COLONIAL JEWISH HISTORY, because it is most obscure, is of most interest to me these days. (That's one of the reasons I was so fascinated with the work being done to understand the Melungeons from multiple points of view - DNA, genealogy research, and family history stories. See my past posts on them!)

*****
The JEWISH AMERICANS is a two set so this film series can be an evening of learning.  Here is what I learned:

The first Jewish synagogue was in New York City (New Amsterdam) long before the United States was formed, in the 17th century.

Charleston South Carolina had the largest Jewish community during slave times.

There were only about 2000 Jews in the US in 1776, at Declaration of Independence time.

Jews fought in the Civil War on both sides.

Among the many early business people and entrepreneurs was Joseph Speigel who eventually owned the catalogue company of the same name. Peddlers traveled on foot visiting farmsteads until they could afford a wagon until the catalogue went door to door through the mail.

The Ten Gallon hat, so associated with the Old West was created manufactured and sold by Jewish people.

By 1870 there were a quarter of a million Jews in the United States. Colonial Jews had a difficult time finding marriage partners and keeping their faith with no synagogues. This became the time of great synagogue building. Some of these synagogues are the most fantastic in architecture and ornamentation. Some communities however, created plain buildings that would not obviously be synagogues.

Rabbi Weis introduced organs, family pews (rather than separation of the sexes)... This was the founding of Reform Judaism, attributed to the German Jews.

German Jews were citizens and thought Russian and Polish Jews from the old country in the Industrial Revolution needed some help to become more American.

DVD put out by C 2008 Greater Washington Educational Telecommunications Association.

SADIA SHEPARD'S MEMOIR "THE GIRL FROM FOREIGN" IS A SEARCH FOR ROOTS AND RELIGIOUS IDENTITY : ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY BOOK REVIEW

THE GIRL FROM FOREIGN

"A Search for Shipwrecked Ancestors, Forgotten Histories, and a Sense of Home."
Copyright Sadia Shepard 2008

Published by Penguin Press

Sadia's grandmother, Nana, revealed on her deathbed that she had started life as Rachel Jacobs, Jewish in India from the Bene Israel Community. Nana married a Moslem and moved to Pakistan (where she was one of his wives) and converted to be Moslem.  Nana considered herself both religions, seeing them as the same, as amazing as that may seem to us Americans.

Sadia herself is the daughter of a Moslem mother and Christian American father, grew up in Colorado and Boston, and won a Fulbright scholarship (circa 2001) that she used to trace not only her roots, but her grandmother's story.

Her stay extends (with some visits home) for more than 2 years, of interviewing, traveling, and unearthening the family secrets. Sadia wanted to see the places that beloved Nana told about in her stories, meet some of the relatives, visit the ancient Jewish community Bene Israel, believed to be one of the lost tribes. She wants to understand and live within the cultural differences of the religions and countries. In the mean time there is a man who comes to love her. Can she really come back to live in the United States?

I loved this book and I think you will too. You'll be especially interested if you're interested in the Jewish people and the social and cultural forces they have and do face in leaving India for Israel.

ON THE SLAVS and ITALIANS and JEWS IN THE 1870'S : THE HISTORY OF WHITE PEOPLE

pages 234-235 Nell Irvin Painter Author

..." Economic hard times further aggravated labor tensions. In the 1870's Slavic and Italian coal miners in Western Pennsylvania suffered abuse, ostracism, cheating, incarceration, and attack. The U.S. Army massacred Lakota (Sioux) at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1890, as lynching that scourge of black Americans, took the lives of eleven Italians in New Orleans in 1891. Elsewhere labor conflict brought out company private militia (such as the Pinkertons) and state and national guards to course striking workers, as in the Homestead, Pennsylvania, steelworks in 1892...

A notable instance of anti-Semitism occurred in 1877 when a Saratoga Aperings hotel refused to admit the New York financier Joseph Seligman, whose bank had helped fiance the Union during the Civil War. Organized outbreaks of anti Jewish violence occurred for the first time during the Depression of the 1890's.  In Lousiana and Mississippi night riders attacked Jewish families and businesses. Personal abuse like stone throwing, hitherto occasional, became common throughout the North. When their employer hired fourteen Russian Jews, five hundred New Jersey workers rioted for three days in 1891, forcing Jewish workers and residents to flee..."

*****
Commentary from ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY

I you're writing an authentic family history, it's important to relay the memories of relatives and their experiences with ethnic and religious prejudices. Placing the story in history can help the reader's modern perspective.  If there are various stories that do not agree, it is good to publish them all, crediting the story teller and their relationship to the story. 

JON ENTINE ARTICLE : JEWS ARE A RACE GENES REVEAL

This is a long and important article by a book author I've read before, Jon Entine, who wrote "Abraham’s Children: Race, Identity, and the DNA of the Chosen People."

Entine is reviewing the book LEGACY by Harry OSTRER and examines the question of DNA - GENES and ANTISEMITISM.  (For previous posts on Jon Entine use the SEARCH feature on this Google Blogger!)

JEWISH DAILY FORWARD : JON ENTINE : JEWS ARE A RACE

EXCERPT: "Like East Asians, the Amish, Icelanders, Aboriginals, the Basque people, African tribes and other groups, Jews have remained isolated for centuries because of geography, religion or cultural practices. It’s stamped on our DNA. As Ostrer explains in fascinating detail, threads of Jewish ancestry link the sizable Jewish communities of North America and Europe to Yemenite and other Middle Eastern Jews who have relocated to Israel, as well as to the black Lemba of southern Africa and to India’s Cochin Jews. But, in a twist, the links include neither the Bene Israel of India nor Ethiopian Jews. Genetic tests show that both groups are converts, contradicting their founding myths..."

DID YOUR GRANDMA WEAR A ONE HUNDRED POUND DRESS TO THE DANCE? :RESPLENDENT DRESS EXHIBIT : FOWLER MUSEUM UCLA :

SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE : RESPLENDENT DRESS UCLA FOWLER link

Did your grandma wear a hundred pound dress to the village dance?  She may have embroidered that dress all her childhood years so that one day she could!

EXCERPT: "Resplendent Dress From Southeastern Europe: A History in Layers" ― on view at the Fowler Museum at UCLA from March 10 through July 14 ― explores the traditional garments of 12 small countries and shows the major historical and cultural influences that have shaped European rural dress.


(THE MUSEUM IS ALWAYS FREE!  If you take the bus  to UCLA you can forget about the $11. UCLA Parking fee!)
"In the past, girls in rural southeastern Europe spent their childhoods weaving, sewing and embroidering festive dress so that when they reached puberty, they could join the Sunday afternoon village dances garbed in resplendent attire...features 50 stunning 19th- to 20th-century ensembles from Macedonia, Croatia, Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Kosovo, Serbia, Hungary, the Slovak Republic, the Czech Republic, Montenegro and Romania ― nearly all from the Fowler Museum's substantial collection ― plus 100 individual items, including aprons, vests, jackets and robes. To complement the outstanding examples of women's dress, the exhibition also includes several men's garments. "

I'm making it a point to go to this exhibit as soon as possible.  The museum is open Wednesday to Sunday, noon to 5 PM and stays open Thursday nights till 8 PM.