Books, Bones and Beyond: Pinterest and Vital Records

"Pin" from Pinterest: Vital Records

Genealogy tip for the day: Social Media – Pinterest – Vital Records
The more doors you have to a building, the more access you have to the rooms inside. The same thing is true regarding information. The more ways to access knowledge, the easier it is to get to it and vice-versa.

When having difficulty, sometimes searching for knowledge is kind of like approaching a building, and seeing a door frame on the building wall. You hack your way through the brush, the undergrowth and maybe the overgrowth, only to get to that doorway and find it’s all bricked in. So then you have to fight your way out and go around and find another, maybe easier way to enter. We don't want that to be the case.

The easier we make it to find information, the easier it will be on the searcher. The avenues of Social Media are just such an example. It is a grass-roots-up method which means some every day Joe discovers a great find and wants to tell all his friends about it. This creates another way to access information easily.

Well guess what? Pinterest comes to the fore once again. If you are trying to find Vital Records for your ancestor, try typing ‘vital records’ (without the quotes) into the search field on Pinterest. There is a growing collection of websites and blogs that cover this very thing. This just may be the path of least resistance for which you have been looking. If you are a member you can also add more pins of places that fit the category, which will in turn help other people.

When you can’t find something, try to think of every conceivable way to hunt it down. Pinterest is yet another option in that search.

“History is who we are; Genealogy is who I am” sg

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Today in History

Today in History
March 31

1282		The great massacre of the French in Sicily The Sicilian Vespers comes to an end.
1547		In France, Francis–king since 1515–dies and is succeeded by his son Henry II.
1776		Abigail Adams writes to husband John that women are "determined to foment a rebellion" if the new Declaration of Independence fails to guarantee their rights.
1779		Russia and Turkey sign a treaty by which they promise to take no military action in the Crimea.
1790		In Paris, France, Maximilien Robespierre is elected president of the Jacobin Club.
1836		The first monthly installment of The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens is published in London.
1862		Skirmishing between Rebels and Union forces takes place at Island 10 on the Mississippi River.
1880		The first electric street lights ever installed by a municipality are turned on in Wabash, Indiana.
1889		The Eiffel Tower in Paris officially opens on the Left Bank as part of the Exhibition of 1889.
1916		General John Pershing and his army rout Pancho Villa's army in Mexico.
1917		The United States purchases the Virgin Islands from Denmark for $25 million.
1918		Daylight Savings Time goes into effect throughout the United States for the first time.
1921		Great Britain declares a state of emergency because of the thousands of coal miners on strike.
1933		To relieve rampant unemployment, Congress authorizes the Civilian Conservation Corps .
1939		Britain and France agree to support Poland if Germany threatens to invade.
1940		La Guardia airport in New York officially opens to the public.
1941		Germany begins a counter offensive in North Africa.
1945		The United States and Britain bar a Soviet supported provisional regime in Warsaw from entering the U.N. meeting in San Francisco.
1948		The Soviet Union begins controlling the Western trains headed toward Berlin.
1949		Winston Churchill declares that the A-bomb was the only thing that kept the Soviet Union from taking over Europe.
1954		The siege of Dien Bien Phu, the last French outpost in Vietnam, begins after the Viet Minh realize it cannot be taken by direct assault.
1960		The South African government declares a state of emergency after demonstrations lead to the deaths of more than 50 Africans.
1966		An estimated 200,000 anti-war demonstrators march in New York City.
1967		President Lyndon Johnson signs the Consular Treaty, the first bi-lateral pact with the Soviet Union since the Bolshevik Revolution.
1970		U.S. forces in Vietnam down a MIG-21, the first since September 1968.
1980		President Jimmy Carter deregulates the banking industry.
1991		Albania offers a multi-party election for the first time in 50 years.
Born on March 31
1596		René Descartes, French philosopher and scientist.
1621		Andrew Marvell, English poet and politician.
1693		John Harrison, Englishman who invented the chronometer.
1732		Franz Joseph Haydn, Austrian composer.
1809		Edward Fitzgerald, American writer.
1809		Nikolai V. Gogol, Russian writer (The Inspector General, Dead Souls).
1811		Robert Wilhelm Bunsen, chemist, inventor of the Bunsen burner.
1854		Sir Dugald Clerk, inventor of the two-stroke motorcycle engine.
1878		Jack Johnson, first Africa-American boxer to become the world heavyweight champion.
1914		Octavio Paz, Mexican diplomat and Nobel Prize-winning writer.
1915		Henry Morgan, comedian, radio performer.
1926		John Fowles, English novelist (The Collector, The French Lieutenant's Woman).
1936		Marge Piercy, poet and novelist.
1948		Al Gore, Vice President to President William J. Clinton (1993-2001).

Franz Joseph Haydn

Henry Morgan

Word for the Day

A school principal may not behave in an autocratic manner, but he or she is a prince or princess, etymologically speaking. Both have descended from the same parents: Latin prime (first) + capere (to take).

The antiquated custom of royalty, with inherited offices, divine rights, and privy purses is thankfully becoming rare. Yet they live on in the language. Things royal are big, such as a royal pain. In chemistry, we have aqua regia (literally, royal water), a highly corrosive liquid. A king's ransom is a very large sum of money. A royalty was a right granted by a king to a person or corporation, especially the right to mine an area. From there the term extended to payments made to authors, composers, etc.

This week we'll regale you with five other words tracing their lineage to royalty.

PS: If you see someone confusing the words principal and principle, cut them a little slack. The two words differ by only a letter and have the same (princely) heritage.

interregnum

PRONUNCIATION:

(in-tuhr-REG-nuhm)

MEANING:

noun: The period between the end of a reign and the beginning of the next; a time when there is no ruler.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin, from inter- (between) + regnum (reign). Ultimately from the Indo-European reg- (to move in a straight line, lead, or rule), which also gave us regime, direct, rectangle, erect, rectum, alert, source, surge, recto, prorogue, arrogate, abrogate, regent, and supererogatory. Earliest documented use: 1579.

USAGE:

"Janet Yellen was acting chairwoman during the weekend interregnum."
Binyamin Appelbaum; Bernanke Starts New Role as Yellen Takes Fed Helm; The New York Times; Feb 3, 2014.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Whenever anyone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the offense cannot reach it. -Rene Descartes, philosopher and mathematician (1596-1650)

Today’s Recipe

March - Breakfast Foods

Breakfast Lasagna

Ingredients

1 pound lasagna noodles

8 eggs

1 cup mozzarella

1 cup cheddar

1 cup ricotta

SAUCE

3 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons flour

2 cups milk

1 pound raw loose breakfast sausage

1 onion

1 (14 oz) can Muir Glen diced tomatoes

Directions

1 Make the sauce: Brown up the sausage and remove from the pan. In the same pan, cook the onions to lightly brown. Add in the butter and flour and stirr well, cooking for about 2 minutes. Whisk in the milk and bring to a simmer. Remove from heat and add the sausage back in. Strain the diced tomatoes and stir into the sauce.
2 Cook the noodles in a pot of boiling water until tender.
3 In a small bowl, crack and whisk two eggs. Prepare a frying pan to cook the eggs that is the same size as your round baking dishes.
4 In the baking dish, start with a thin layer of sauce, followed by the first layer of noodles, then some more sauce and all three cheeses. Cook the first egg round for only a few minutes without flipping until it has just barely set on top. Transfer the egg to the top of the noodles then repeat with another layer of everything.
5 Top with a final pasta layer and a little more cheese and sauce and bake at 400 for about 15 minutes.
6 If you want to save this in the fridge or freezer, that's fine, but I would suggest boiling the pasta a little less and baking it for a bit longer before serving.
7 Recipe makes enough for two 8-inch baking rounds.