Accenting the Positive

In an old song, we're urged to "accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmative, and don't mess with Mr. In-Between."

 As we approach the year-end period when we traditionally take stock, Jill Ball, blogging as GENIAUS, has posted an annual meme urging us to review the past twelve months of genealogy and "Accent the Positive".  Tip o' the hat to Jennifer Jones, who responded to Jill's challenge in her blog "Tracking Down the Family".  It was through Jennifer's post that I became aware of Jill's meme.

So here are my positives for the year.  One note: I've been experiencing increasing levels of stress over the past several years, from events outside and inside the family.  I'm in therapy.  One part of my therapy I have come up with and applied, as a means of inserting more positive perspectives, is to finally get back to investigating the family histories of myself and my husband, and to revive this poor neglected blog.  In this entry, I have left out many of the items Jill suggests we answer because they don't apply to me.  I've renumbered the remaining ones.

1. On revisiting some old research I found some wonderful information about my grandmother's third husband, and I finally identified her second husband.  Her first husband was my grandfather.

2. I was the recipient of genearosity from my cousin John, who lives near our ancestral stomping ground in Indiana, and who has offered to do research lookups for me.  I plan to take him up on that offer.

3.  I am pleased that I am a member of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, in which I was voted membership last year, along with our older daughter.

4. I made a new DNA discovery, that my aunt (my mother's biological sister) had not been accurate when she maintained that their mother was adopted.  DNA shows that my connection to grandmother's family is intact, and that she was not adopted at all.  

 

5.  AI was a mystery to me but I learnt that I can do just about anything better than AI can at this stage of its development.  I am a thoroughgoing skeptic when it comes to AI;  I've read Karel Capek's R.U.R.  With two books under my belt, with glowing reviews for each, I know I am a better writer than any AI or computer genealogy program.  Believe it or not, you are, too.  We humans write our family histories from the heart.  AI has no heart.     

6. The best value I got for my genealogy dollars was the recent sale by the New England Historic Genealogical Society.  They gave good discounts on books about New England genealogy, where my paternal roots lie. 

7. I wouldn't be without this technology: The computer, what else?  And the internet.  I have done genealogy the old-fashioned way, and still do from time to time.  But as I have gotten older, and my options for travel and just getting out and about have become limited, I do appreciate having so much wonderful information available from reliable websites and databases. 

 
9.  Another positive I would like to share is that genealogy is good therapy!  It makes you aware that you are not the only one who has suffered tragedies and hard times.  It assures us that we, too, can survive these times.  Seeing the thread of life down through the decades, and for some of us, the centuries, puts it all in perspective.