Feedback from the family...

Some of the members of my family are incredibly supportive of my many years long foray into the past.

Some, like my sisters and my 26 year-old son, couldn't care less. Their eyes glaze over when I start talking about genealogy. They are prone, as are many other people who are not into genealogy to ask...hey - you've been working on that family tree for years...aren't you about finished?

I always try to keep the snark out of my voice when I respond to that particular one. I mean, if you aren't into genealogy, maybe you are into math, and if you just go back to our paternal grandparents on both sides, with twelve and seventeen kids in the family, well...just do the math.

One of my first cousins follows this blog. Her mother (my dad's older sister) does not, because she doesn't have a computer, and doesn't want one. My cousin prints entries my aunt wants to have, and takes them to her.

My step-mother got a computer and got on the internet last summer, so she follows the blog also. My dad doesn't like reading anything on a computer, so he has my step-mom print blog entries for him to read upstairs at the kitchen table, where he does all his reading. On paper, thankyouverymuch.

My cousin printed the entry about my paternal grandparents and took them to my aunt. She emailed me last night with her mother's comments about Granddaddy Burris.

One thing she wanted me to pass along about Granddaddy's recuperation from his illness. He told her that his family had him stay with an old man in town who was immune from the diseases. He stayed at his house and at one point they thought they could starve the disease out so he didn't get any food for days. He said one time he asked someone to bring him an apple - and they did. He said he was so hungry that he put the apple under the covers and dug his fingers into the apple and ate it little by little so no one would see him eating it. That is what mom said he told her. His family also had a little bit of money for the time. Grandmother's family didn't but his did.

Also, when he was in Panama, he sent his mother a dozen beautiful white roses for her birthday one year. His mother rooted the roses and grew a beautiful white rose bush...Wouldn't you love to have a cutting from that bush? I really wish I had.

Just thought I'd pass along those stories.

(Supposedly, one of our aunts got a cutting from that rose bush. Neither my cousin or I have ever seen it.)

Both of us are going to work on the folks to get them writing down these memories and stories...

Do not like Facebook...

I used to be on Facebook. One of my sisters ragged me about it for so long, I caved.

I almost instantly regretted it.

I am a writer. I do not write in sound bites that fit on the wall.

So I always ran out of characters before I ran out of something to say.

Then, the little wet-behind-the-ears Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, declared that privacy was no longer a "social norm," and that was all I needed to deep-six Facebook.

And yet, many of the bloggers I follow are on Facebook. Even when they post that they don't really like it.

So I want to know...is there an advantage from a genealogical perspective to being on Facebook?

I frankly do not have any desire to re-connect with people with whom I attended grade school. I don't play games, or send cyber-gifts to people.

But, for those who have done it, is there a benefit to creating a surname or family page on Facebook? Have you made connections that helped with your research?

Wordless Wednesday: Two Burris Brothers

Fred and Paul Burris, circa 1930, Pope Co., AR

Sons of Richard Benjamin Burris and Allie Jane Hurst.