Kindo Family Blog

One way to share what data you have and note what data you need is to post your genealogy on the web. Before you do that, however, please read the Guidelines For Publishing Web Pages On The Internet. This document sets out the best ways to make your page findable and useable by other genealogists.

How do you publish? Why using the Kindo interface, of course, is one easy way. Just remember this important rule: Leave out data on living persons if you can.

That brings up another point, that is very, very important. Some folks are afraid that their hard work and research might be “stolen” from the Internet, so they deliberately insert factual errors on their web pages.

Dont. Do. That.

Ever.

If you have data you want to keep in reserve for future information swaps, simply omit it. If you have data you want to keep private until you publish your hardbound, limited edition genealogy, that’s fine. And of course, never publish anything that could be used to steal your identity.

But do not ever publish anything, in print or online, that you know to be false. It’s extremely difficult to remove all traces of anything on the Web, and that incorrect information may linger longer than you do!

Happy Family Tree Climbing!

EPC

It’s always interesting to get feedback from users - blame or praise. Thanks KL for sending us this mail which made us all happy!

By the way… we hope you have wireless internet back home so you can sit in the sun while building your family tree…

Subject: A wonderful website!

Oh my, how happy I was to find this page

I have for a long time wanted to make my family tree, but on paper it’s so cumbersome.

I’m so happy sitting here all days

Once again, THANKS - now I’ve finally got started with my genealogy!!!!!!

Best Regards //KL in Sweden

All of them are new faces in the section Kindo Celebrity Trees

New faces today are the golfer Tiger Woods (just announced that a wounded knee will make him miss the rest of the season), the tennis champ Roger Federer (now playing in Wimbledon) and the Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates.
We encourage all of you to drop a comment here if you would like to see a special celebrity’s family tree.

After me and Nils have tried to explain this more than one time to the rest of the Kindo troopers, I will here briefly tell you about how we in Sweden celebrate the summer solstice.

In Sweden, Midsummer’s Eve, is celebrated on the Friday between June 19-25, this year June 20, a bank holiday. Most Swedes would argue that this is one of the most important holidays of the year and we celebrate it in a unique way. People find their way out to the country side or the archipelago where they traditionally raise a huge maypole covered in green leaves and flowers. Summer dressed Swedes then perform ring-dances around the pole with singing and folk music in the background. Typical is the frog dance

Maybe even more important is the food: The year’s first potatoes, herring, maybe raw spiced salmon and strawberry cake is on the menu on many tables. Drinking songs together with this is popular. Maybe too popular.

Starting as a Pre-Christian ceremony to celebrate the longest day of the year, magic was believed to be extra strong. Still, many girls pick a bouquet of seven different flowers which they place under their pillow. The tradition say that they now will dream of their future husband to add to their Kindo tree

This is it for me, now I’m off for the west-coast!

Have you voted already about how often you are in touch with your mum? If not, do so now, it will only take a second. You scroll down a bit, you’ll stumble upon the poll in the right sidebar (looking like that pic here), tick on the right radio button and click vote. And don’t cheat

By the way: You can see the results as well, by clicking on the small results button below the vote field. Any you can start comparing it to the results in other languages, like Russian for example where the preliminary results are very different already.

We are looking forward to the final analysis in the next weeks!

Image via Wikipedia‘Finance + Family are going well’ thats the short and sweet message floating around the articles written by experts these days According to a latest article by Scott Burns modern parents can reduce their retirement worries if they raise their children. How does the cost of raising a family affect your retirement planning?

Scott uses an interesting mathematical derivation to arrive at the result. Parents, focus on their expenditures while raising kids (primarily their standard of living is affected) and this standard of living carries on once their job is over.

In mathematical terms for any household the cost of living is the square root of no. of people in the household.

The above derivations show that the cost of living is accounted for by 30% when parents have 2 children. So husband and wife contribute to 70% cost of living.

Scott has used another elaboration to explain his logic. For more on the interesting piece visit dailybreeze.com website here.

Yesterday I spent some time with Alexander, who is 3 years old. I don’t spend much time with kids normally, so I was unprepared for the raw energy he puts into whatever he does. There were no hesitation, no fear, just a frontal attack on life.

Equally impressive was Alexander’s mother. Even as Alexander smashed his nose into a heavy iron gate, and he started crying as if the world was about to end, she remained cool and made sure he got the attention he needed.

To me, this seems to be the biggest challenge of parenthood - how can you avoid worrying too much, when you know how dangerous the world is to a kid growing up?

I guess you just have to accept that these are lessons for life - painful, but useful. (And since the day I smashed my own head open on an iron gate when I was five, I’ve been quite good at avoiding them.)

It’s time to talk about the elephant in the genealogy room.

Be aware that when you shake the family tree, all the apples fall out…and no matter how astonishing, they are all “good” ones. There will be revelations up there in the far reaches of the family tree. Ancestors who had secrets can startle not only the genealogist, but other family members.   And family members’ reactions, as well as your own, may also knock you for a loop!

For example, in this story from the Montreal Gazette, a genealogist discusses finding out his ancestor was a “not so nice Jewish boy” in the Mafia. And in my book, I discuss trying to find out about my husband’s Cherokee ancestor, but being stymied by the generation that considered that to be the family scandal, as well as the story of a woman whose in-laws got absolutely livid when she tried to trace their family tree.

And I heard of a couple who found out with the birth of their first child that the father’s family was African-American, but had been living as European-descended Americans for so long, the young father was completely unaware of it. Until the baby was born, that is.

So the point of today’s blog: Your ancestry may contain surprises. And that’s OK. You’re still you. And, as Steve Olson says in Mapping Human History:

“The greater the number of generations taken into account, the greater the possibility that any two people … are distant cousins. By the tenth generation back, almost all of us have circles of inheritance in our ancestry.”

I highly recommend reading Mapping Human History, by the way.

Until next week!

Libbi

Image via WikipediaA recent study by researchers at Oxford University and the Institute of Education, London, has revealed that young kids are more happy if they’re taken care of by their grand-parents. According to the research, grandparents are increasingly looked upon as problem resolvers.

The study which was conducted amongst 1500 kids also showed that involvement with grandparents helps them to maintain cool during critical situations such as divorce. The statistics of the research say that out of every three grandmothers one looks after a grandchild.

According to the university, it is time for the government to take initiative in this direction and ensure that necessary steps are implemented for taking care of grandchildren.

According to Prof Ann Buchanan, the director of the Centre for Research into Parenting and Children in the Department of Social Policy and Social Work at Oxford University, “What was especially interesting was the link between involved grandparents and adolescent well-being. Closeness was not enough: only grandparents who got stuck in had this positive impact on their grandchildren”.

Star Community Newspapers brought a story about the texan governor Rick Perry, who is related to A. W. Perry. He got in touch with 84-year-old Mary Thompson who is the great-great granddaughter of A. W. Perry, and told her they proparbly are cousins, since Rick Perry traced his roots back to the same state as hers, Virgnia.

Mary Thompson spoke about her family’s story at the Atria Carrollton senior living community, where she is a resident, showing a lot of yellowedged fotos, and told an extensive story about the research she has done on her family. To read the story read the full article

Another happy genealogy story, which we just can’t get enough of. Sign up for Kindo now, and do your own research.