Genealogy

Genealogy sounds to me like a word that, had they lived longer, the Ramones would eventually have used in a song, like “lobotomy” and “psychotherapy”. Alpha and I have somehow gotten interested in researching our family trees. It’s a good way for me to finally brush up on my two weakest subjects, geography and history. So far I’ve been relying on the famous Mormon genealogy site familysearch.org and have found out a lot more about Alpha’s relatives than about my own. It’s like there are a couple generations missing right after my grandfather, and then I find all these possible ancestors from the 18th century but it’s hard to be sure.

Alpha’s in better shape, as are all Austrians and Germans, and possibly other Europeans. Not only did they move around less, and have access to church records: during the Nazi era, they had to do genealogical research to establish their Arian pedigrees. This information they were required to compile in little booklets, called an “Ariernachweis” or “Aryan Certificate” (crudely translated); this has all the information, going several generations back.

It strikes me that blogging is memoire writing. Maybe I should print out this nonsense for future generations…

4 responses to “Genealogy

  1. sue

    You certainly should save a hard copy of your blogs. Historians can’t write history without information, and unfortunately the preponderance of memoirs comes from the “movers and shakers.” But history is more than what has been written by the winners–to get a more complete picture of just how the movers and shakers were able to move and shake society, we need to know about the moved and shaken–the so-called ordinary people. And that’s most of us. We tend to regard ourselves as being of little importance outside our immediate circles of existence, but we are not. What we do is incredibly important. Without us, little would happen.

    So, keep hard copies of your writings somewhere, and tell people that your papers are to go to a library so others may see what your particular kind of life was like.

    (My daughter knows that all correspondence I’ve saved and the hard copies of my journal are to go to a major women’s studies library.)

    S(one of these days when I stuck for something to write, I’ll rant on about this in my journal.)

  2. miguel

    That is without a doubt the *nicest* and *smartest-sounding* way anyone has ever called me a loser.

  3. sue

    well, I consider myself in that category of anonymous “moved and shakens” so you’re in good company!

  4. Miguel

    sorry, i forgot the smiley in my last comment.
    :-)