Up and Coming

SOON, folks...

Very soon (like first-of-the-year?) we will have a bona-fide website for you to visit and this blog will settle down into playful banter and shop talk... so to speak.

Features you will find on the new site, www.familyology.org (not up yet!)

Individual Log-in accounts so that the only information Joe Public sees is for people who are too dead to care. Seriously, this is terriffic. Privacy is a good thing.

Real working family group sheets and pedigree charts so all this information will make sense, courtesy of the brilliant software The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding by Darrin Lythgoes. Best of all- for me- I'll only have to input the information once, cite my sources and so forth, the family relationships will be automatic and I won't have to do all these hyperlinks by hand... (You have no idea...)

Photos, photos, photos! I hope to have too many photos to possibly post, but I also hope to have some sort of image representation for every individual. This includes cemetery photos, and yes, I'm fully aware of what a daunting task this will be. But I have YOUR help, don't I?!

There will also be a Mystery Gallery for those photos you know must have importance because someone was saving it all these years, but you may not know what it's significance is- anymore. Some of these are just beautiful to look at, whether you know them or not. Sometimes it's only a matter of asking everyone who looks at you before someone says, "Yeah, I know who that is, that's my grandfather.", or "That must be a Krauser, look at the nose and eyes..."

A message/ discussion board where we can meet and chat over whatever we like.

Articles, found or written, about how we can preserve what we know now without losing our marbles in the process. This would include involving the kids, making them a little excited about history maybe even... What to do, and what not to do (don't sit Grandma down in front of a video camera and grill her with good cop/ bad cop behavior) from people who have actually tried these things. Family traditions fall into this category, too.

Adopt an obscure family member or in other words, find a pen-pal! Email is acceptable, but remember the feeling of actually getting something in the MAIL (other than nasty-gram bills?) hand written and addressed to you? Extra bonus if someone includes little details unique to their situation. Cousin Leilani writes about the sound of tropical birds just outside her window, how the bay looks at sunrise, the taste of the fruit locally grown on her island... Uncle Frank writes about his war stories and how they just don't make 'em like they used to... You know, we may be related by blood and by chance, but we can choose to be friends, too.

These are the key elements I'd like to have. We're open to suggestion for other functionalities that would relate to the wonderfully diverse Family-Ology.

As a matter of fact, why don't you post your comment right now?