AI, Here I Come!

How many times have I started out a new year on this blog saying this is the year I'm going to write up the family history? Too many to count. And what have I got to show for it? Nothing. 

I'm not going to make that mistake this year! 

Instead, I'm going to venture down the road of... AI (artificial intelligence)! The techie part of me is so very curious about AI but I've struggled to figure out how and why I would use it in my everyday life. I've pretty much been sitting on the sidelines, reading about some people's "hits" using AI and some peoples "misses". My curiosity has been building. Earlier this month I took some online lessons via Roots Tech. That gave me some basic technical information to build on and some practical ideas to start with. 

I've been practicing, here and there. I've tried planning a vacation trip to Florida (miss), generating some images (hit), looking into some military history in Poland (hit), and looking up an old business in Detroit from the early 1900s (miss). I've had mixed results. I've tried a couple different platforms but not nearly all of the main ones. I have much yet to try and many platforms to test out. But I've gotten my feet wet. I'm not feeling intimidated anymore.

In regards to genealogy and family history, I have a few ideas about how I might use AI. 

• Perhaps I could use it to delve into Poland's history for a background on farming methods and crops from previous generations (I come from a long line of farmers). 
• Maybe I could use it to create an outline for a book. 
• It would be very helpful if I could get it to proofread and/or edit a draft of a book chapter. 
• Maybe it would generate an interesting way to weave together the family stories that I want to share. 
• I definitely think it would be helpful in analyzing old photographs. (I have a lot of those. ;-) 
• It would be fascinating if I could figure out a way to get it to look into some of the mysteries/questions that have plagued me from the beginning of my research. Maybe it would generate some theories I hadn't considered. 

AI could be just the catalyst I need to get myself writing again, if not about genealogy maybe about using AI. 

We'll see what develops...

New Year 2018, Looking Back and Looking Forward

Every now and then it's a good idea to take a step back and look at where you're at relative to where you've been and where you want to be. The beginning of a new year is a popular time to do that. With that in mind, here's my take on where I'm at regarding my genealogy...

My goal last year was to write up a family history and I chose my Mizera family line to start with. My intentions were good. I thought I had a good plan although I didn't get far before the plan fell apart. I tried to construct a new plan but that didn't work either. Then I got distracted with other things and never got back to trying to write up the family history.

I did add some names to my family history database last year, some from the Mizera line and some from the Lisowski line. I found some new (to me) sources for information about the lives and times of my families in Poland. And I hired some Polish researchers to help me with finding records and translating them. So that's all good. I helped some friends research their families too. I feel good about that. So I did have some accomplishments last year to further my genealogical journey.

So that's where I'm at looking back on my genealogy-related activities in the past year. Very recently, I came to the realization that I'm not really interested/motivated in writing up my family history. That was a bit of an eye opener for me. I enjoyed writing in the past. I have written two NANOWRIMO novellas, and I've written blog posts about my genealogy, digital scrapbooking, and photography for several years. I remember the writing process to be quite enjoyable to me. But somewhere along the way I lost interest in writing. I used to think of creative writing as one of my hobbies. I don't anymore. It may well be that I just have too many "balls in the air" so to speak. When I make choices of what to do with my hobby time, I never choose genealogy-related writing anymore. Notice I said "genealogy-related" writing. I still write every day but it's rarely about genealogy.

The most recent hobby I've picked up was bullet journaling. I've been doing that for about 15 months now. It's not creative writing the way I do it, it's more like a combination to-do list, planner, tracker, and diary. And the diary entries are most often about the activities of the day. I do spend a good bit of time decorating the pages of my journal (yep, this is old school journaling with pen and paper, not digital) and in that way it's been a good creative outlet for me. But, it takes up a good bit of my hobby time. And it's not genealogy related.

And then there's my painting. The amount of time I put into painting hasn't been as much as I would have liked either. Whenever you try to learn something new you need to apply yourself... practice, practice, practice. I need more practice time painting if I'm going to improve. But the more hobby time I spend painting, the less time I have for genealogy research or writing. It's always a trade off.

The one hobby that I have spent what I consider a fair amount of time on this past year is my photography. I've worked at it and I've improved as a result. I'm happy about that! My photography isn't in any way genealogy-related. It does get me up and moving; most often outdoors, in nature. And that's good for my creativity, my mood, my spirit, and my mind. So it's all good.

So that pretty much sums up a review of all my hobbies over the past year. Going forward, I need to find a way to manage my time better, I guess. I want to do it all but then there's the grocery shopping, house cleaning, bill paying, tax return preparation, vacation planning, house projects (for 2 houses) to manage, etc. And that stuff has a way of interfering with my hobby time all too often, LOL!

Looking forward to 2018, I don't have any specific goals for my genealogy hobby time. I want to continue my research... that's the most fun part of genealogy for me. It's like solving puzzles and I love puzzles. Organizing what I've already found is boring. Writing up the family history doesn't sound like fun anymore. Just an obligation. Quite frankly, I'd rather be painting, or photographing extreme weather, wildlife, beautiful landscapes, butterflies and flowers. But I'm not giving up on my genealogy hobby altogether. I can't see myself ever doing that.

I'm entertaining a dream of one day merging all of my hobbies together... that would require a trip to Poland, so I'll have to overcome my resistance to flying. But I'd love to photograph and journal about the beautiful churches where my ancestors were baptized, married, and buried and the prayer/adoration chapels along the roads to the villages where my ancestors toiled in the soil to put food on the table and a roof over their heads. I'd love to see the parks, the country fields of wheat, the train stations, the castles, the museums, the amber beaches, the snow-covered mountain ranges, the folk art and the folk. My folk. My people. And then come home and paint it all! And then I'd like to put together a photo book of the trip as a companion piece to the family history that I will no doubt be motivated to write after experiencing all that inspiring stuff, LOL! That's my dream. Some day, but not likely in 2018.

Progress is Slow

Good news! I did find those Slownik Geograficzny entries I was looking for! Yeah!

I've also been able to find some family information on a website I visited. By Googling "Wojnicz", one town my Mizera family is from, I found a link to Nekropole.info. I'd heard of the site before but hadn't made the effort to check it out. It turns out that it has the burials listed for the Wojnicz Municipal Cemetery. I was able to find the death date for one of my grandmother's brother's. Yeah! And I may have found the death year for her other brother too but I need to have that confirmed by another source to be sure. No luck finding the death date for grandma's sister yet. And it looks like if her parents were buried there, they aren't anymore.

More good news. I received some information from the Wojnicz parish priest via the genealogist I'd contacted in Poland. I was sent copies of the birth/baptism register entries for one of my grandmother's brothers and her sister. I already had these images from LDS films, BUT, these same entries from the priest had notations of their marriages including the names of their spouses. Yeah! Sort of. Because they aren't marriage records, they don't have all the regular details you would expect to find on a marriage record from the 1920s and 1930s... like the names of the parents of the bride and groom, their ages, addresses, witnesses, etc. So I have some information but not enough info for me to be able to trace the spouse's ancestral lines. :-( Oh well, I am still hopeful that the genealogist I hired will be able to find the actual marriage records for me. Until then, I'm grateful for the progress made. :-)

And one stellar bit of good luck to add! In going through my brother's old slides (taken during the years he was in Vietnam), we came across a family photo taken when he was home on leave. It's a picture of my whole family, both of my parents, my two brothers, and me. What's the big deal, you wonder? It's the only one I've ever seen of all of us in the same room at the same time. I know. Sad, right? Well, mom was almost exclusively the picture-taker and she didn't have a camera with a timer. So she was never in the family pictures, not that there were all that many pictures taken of family events. I screamed and jumped for joy when I saw the slide photo. I didn't think to take a picture of the projected image at the time but my brother was kind enough to do the slide show again and that time I had my camera with me. It will take a LOT of work in Photoshop to make a decent photo from that projected imaged but it's all I have to work with and I'm so very happy to have it. One day my brother may get around to having his slides scanned but that's not in his plans in the near future.

And the last good bit of info I acquired this past month was my Aunt Helen's marriage record from a trial subscription to FindMyPast.com. My mom told me that her sister eloped to Ohio when she got married (1940) but until now I wasn't able to find a record of her marriage. I have it now! Yeah!

The bad news is, this is about all I can say about my genealogy endeavors for the past month. I wasn't able to put in time getting more comfortable with Scrivener. I fear that I will have forgotten what I learned by the time I get it fired up again. And I haven't made any progress in searching my hard drives.

I got sidetracked with Bullet Journaling (BuJo) and that took up the time I might have spent in Scrivener. Let me say a few words about BuJo. I'm excited about the idea of it but the real world practice of it has left me a bit underwhelmed. I created a personal BuJo, tracking my meals, sleep, steps, mood, general health and including task lists and a calendar for future endeavors. It all looks good on paper but I find myself repeatedly recording the same things over and over again (I already track much of this digitally in phone apps). To me, redundancy means wasted time. If I eliminate the stuff I'm already tracking digitally all I'm left with is a standard journal of daily thoughts and activities. Not that that's a bad thing, but I don't find it necessary. And my days are full enough of necessities (my To-Do List) that I already struggle to find time for my painting, photography, and genealogy. Much as I'd like to add daily journaling, it just isn't in the cards right now. I may try to keep it going through October (in a modified version) because I have some exciting personal stuff coming up then but I'm thinking after that I'll let it go in favor of a genealogy BuJo to help me stay on top of my genealogy-oriented organization/research/family-history-writing prep.

I will be spending much of October doing non-genealogy related things so I've not made up specific goals for the month. I'll just have to fit time in here and there as I can. But, I did send in my DNA test kit, and gave my brother his test kit. So I may see some kind of results from those in October. Hope so!

Till next time!

The Plan's Beginnings

It's been roughly a month since my last blog post. I thought I'd update the status of my family history writing project over the last 30 days.

1. With loads of help from my genealogy friends on Facebook, I made the decision to write about my Mizera family line first. That was a big hurdle/decision and one I'm feeling good to have made. 
2. I've made a sincere effort to learn my way around Scrivener. I started with the "Quick Start" video tutorials first and once I felt comfortable with those basics I made my way through the rest of the video tutorials. I have not "memorized" everything about the program but have familiarized myself with much of it. I think that is satisfactory for now. 
3. I started assembling some online information about my grandmother's ancestral village in Scrivener. I'm still a little unsure about how to use (where to put) info that I'm collecting. But, I'm moving ahead and will adjust the way I'm doing things as necessary. 
4. I met with a friend who gave me the name of a researcher who lives in the area of my Mizera ancestral village (Wojnicz). I contacted that individual by email and he indicated that he would need to write a letter to the local parish to obtain the records I was interested in. We are waiting to hear back from that parish to see if they will allow him access to their records. The records I'm hoping to get are: the marriage records for 3 of my grandmother's siblings, their death records as well, and the birth records of any/all of their children. 
5. I was able to structure my genealogy time one week out of the last four. It was a bit more difficult than I thought it would be to plan the time and stick to the plan. 

My goals for the next month are:

1. Continue to collect information about Wojnicz and assemble it in Scrivener. I'll need to practice importing digital photos, text, and web pages. 
2. Start combing through my hard drives for the vital records and digital photos of my Mizera family. Finding them will be a chore since I haven't consolidated my data files over the years... some are here, some are there, etc. 
3. Start looking for printed photos, handwritten letters, and email regarding my Mizera family. I know that stuff is around here somewhere...
4. Continue to familiarize myself with Scrivener. Watching a few more videos wouldn't hurt.
5. Hopefully move forward with getting those vital records from the parish in Wojnicz. 
6. Structure my time and make genealogy a priority.

And now I'm off to find those Slownik Geograficzny entries I translated a while back... where the heck did I put those anyway??? Wish me luck!

A Plan for Writing a Family History

The time has come to begin the process of writing my family history. The Polish government archives' online project hasn't gotten but a few of my family's vital records posted online (which is what I've been waiting on) but I'm feeling the urge to move forward with my writing anyway. I can always hold up after the first drafts are written (before editing) and wait for more records to come online at that point. No reason to keep procrastinating before even starting, eh?

To begin a project of this size I need a plan and here's what I've come up with.

I'm thinking I'll devote 2 afternoons a week, for six months (Aug.1, 2016 - Jan. 31, 2017) to organizing my my genealogy information for one of my family lines (which line is yet to be determined) and getting familiar with Scrivener software. Then, for the month of February 2017, I'll join the Family History Writing Challenge and see if I can't get the first draft of one family line written in 28 days. I participated in NaNoWriMo a couple times several years ago and really enjoyed the camaraderie and motivating tips I received. I'm hoping the Family History Writing Challenge will do the same for me.

If this plan works, I could have the first draft of the history of one line of my family written early next year. Yeah! I don't know if this is a good plan, a realistic plan, or even a lousy plan, but it's a plan. And that's what I'm starting with.

My big decision at this point is which of my 4 grandparents' lines to write about first. I can make a case for any of the 4 but no case is stronger than any other. Should I tackle the family line I have the most info on first and get that out of the way? Or perhaps I should write about the family line I have the least info on because it would be the easiest to do and good practice for the other lines... Maybe I should write the histories in the order I researched/discovered the family lines. Or maybe I should just go with my gut. Checking gut... Nope. That won't work. My gut has absolutely nothing to say on the matter. ;-)

What do you think? Have you written your family histories? How did you decide which line to write about first? Are you glad you did it that way? What advice do you have for me?