White supremacists make a basic mistake about history. They imagine we live in the same world our ancestors did. They’re just wrong. Our ancestors in America had to learn how to live on the Frontier. The Indians knew how to live here, but the settlers didn’t. In the process of adapting the settlers created a new culture. They stopped being Europeans and became a different people with...
In modern culture wars one side thinks there is something sacred and eternal about our “traditional” family structure, while the other side wants to experiment. Medievalists just laugh. I think it’s safe to say most people don’t realize how family structures have evolved through history, even in our European diaspora. We don’t live in the same world our ancestors did...
Have you ever thought about the ways all stories are the same? They’re all about a “descent” followed by a “return”. Think about Joseph Campbell and The Hero’s Journey. Genealogists love stories. They’re the very essence of why we collect our kin, so I think it’s worth pushing our skill and understanding. We should want to get better at...
My dad Carroll Arthur Place (1920-2000) would have been 100 today. That seems striking to me but marking a parent’s 100th birthday will happen to many people. I just come to it a bit earlier than most of my generation because Dad was 35 years older than me. Headstone I was going to mark his birthday by getting a headstone. He doesn’t have one. And his ashes are lost. Unbelievable. His...
As we come up on the 2020 Census there’s a bit of a judgment call about where to register. Our old place at The Wellshire or our new place at Yale 25 Station. The official date is April 1st. We’re still straddling the two. I think we’ll say we’re at the new place, although I have a twinge of regret that we won’t go down in census history as living in a landmark...