Category Archives: Conferences

NGS 2010 – Part 2

Categories: Genealogy, IAJGS
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 37 seconds

It was quite unfortunate that I missed the third day of NGS. I only had one session highlighted in my schedule, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t have gone to any others. It was just the lack of sleep all week that caught up to me. So I really had to make the most of Saturday.

I got started a little later than I meant to so I missed the first lecture I had planned to go to. As I was about to head to the next lecture session, Beau Sharbrough came around and I got to talking to him, was introduced by him to a few people including his wife, and missed another lecture.

Lectures

By the afternoon, I’d had enough vendor room socializing and found a new addition to the schedule: J.H. Fonkert’s Anatomy of a Genealogy Research Report. I followed that with Maureen Taylor’s Every Picture Tells a Story: Dating Family Photographs. Both research report lectures I attended were filled with good information. Photo dating is a weakness of my genealogy skills, so those lectures are always helpful. Maybe someday I’ll pick up some of the books on the subject and really learn something.

I missed all the evening events during the week like the concert at the conference center (I really wanted to go to that) and the group watch of Who Do You Think You Are?.

Social Networking

This conference further reinstated to me that when I attend IAJGS conferences, I go for the social networking more than attending lectures. At my first IAJGS, I attended as many lectures as I could, but found that I didn’t learn very much because I already knew so much. I viewed the NGS lectures about the same way. I’ve chatted with many Twitterers and bloggers online, but many of the ones I talk to the most weren’t there. I did get to briefly meet several of them including Dick Eastman, Randy Seaver, Ancestry Insider, Lisa Alvo, and Kathryn Doyle. I was upset that Megan Smolenyak only attended the day that I missed. I was really thankful that I had some friends tethered to their vendor booths so I could visit with them often. (I hope I didn’t drive them nuts.) I stopped at many other vendor booths just to chat a bit, which I rarely did at IAJGS.

Conclusion

I was really hoping to really meet the bloggers and spend more time with them, but we didn’t know each other so I didn’t get invited to their impromptu get-togethers. I know I judged some of the conference a bit unfairly due to my IAJGS experience. For instance, I know everyone who runs those conferences and many of the regular attendees, so there’s no lack of people to socialize with all week. Also, there were several times when I couldn’t decide what lectures to attend because I had no interest in any of them. At IAJGS, there’s usually something that I have at least a mild interest in learning about because it’s all on-topic for Jewish genealogy.

All in all, I enjoyed the conference. I will definitely consider attending future NGS and FGS conferences.

Hotmail Really Sucks

Categories: Accountability, Family History Library, JGSLA 2010
Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 20 seconds

Helped John Winders get his email working better today. Took hours. His computer went to Outlook when he clicked on email links in web pages and it wasn’t set up. He couldn’t figure out how to copy the email and use Hotmail. I actually found it in the context menu, but it was screwed up. In the end, somehow Eudora worked when Outlook wouldn’t. He’s better off with Eudora anyways. But how I got it to receive mail, and still not send, I have no idea.

Not much else. Still working on Budapest records for Cornelia. Meant to go to the FHL and stop by the JCC on the way, but John’s computer problem was uncooperative. To the FHL today then, after I wake up. Schedule is shifting back to more normal for me. I’ll need to shove it forward again soon for the NGS conference at the end of the month. I want to go to some earlier things at that. Their opening session is early in the morning.

JGSLA finally put up the schedule for this year’s conference. They’ve got me in the last slot before lunch on Monday. And Jordan’s doing Jeopardy again. I did that last year. As fun as it was, I don’t expect to repeat it, especially since I’ll have to be friendly to him. After last year, I don’t even want his friendship anymore. I wanted it for far too long and he never deserved mine.

Ron Arons – The Jews of Sing Sing

Categories: Genealogy, IAJGS
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 50 seconds

I met Ron Arons in New York at the 2006 IAJGS conference. I’ve been to a few of his presentations and they are always thoroughly entertaining as well as educational. When he spoke about his upcoming book (this book) I was especially impressed and intrigued.

At the 2005 conference, I was in the room next door to where he was giving a lecture about Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky, two of the characters who appear in this book, and that crowd was quite disruptive with bursts of laughter.

Jews of Sing SingI purchased “The Jews of Sing Sing: Gotham Gangsters and Gonuvim” from Ron at the 2008 IAJGS conference in Chicago. He signed it, “Stay away from this place!”, more evidence of his sense of humor.

The book started as a memoir to his great-grandfather, Isaac Spier, but when no one wanted to publish another personal memoir, his research took him much further into the histories of many Jewish criminals who spent time in Sing Sing Prison in New York.

Ron goes into great detail about their histories, sometimes a bit too much. I’m the kind of person who reads every word and every number in a book, so it got a bit tedious to read all the dates, addresses, census information, and other details. There are parts of the book where Ron fills in details about who was in each household in each census, their address, ages, professions, and such. While important to the research and to genealogy in general, it made it a little harder for me to read.

I’m also a bit of a casual reader, enjoying stories where I don’t have to concentrate much, and some chapters he introduced a plethora of characters. The stories were good, but I couldn’t keep all the characters straight.

My favorite chapters were the ones about Ron’s own family. Providing those same kinds of details, he also seemed to delve more into the narrative of the people, as well as giving more details about his quest for the information, mentioning each time he found a new clue or hit a brick wall. It seemed more casual and more personal, which better suited my reading style preference. Plus, I enjoy the hunt in genealogy, so reading about Ron’s research process was enthralling.

I found the last two chapters to be most enjoyable — the only time I read more than one chapter at a time. He wrote three chapters about Isaac Spier, including the penultimate one. The final chapter was about Ron’s visit to Sing Sing.

Lots of families have tales about the black sheep relative, the criminal, the person in the mafia — including mine — but Ron researched and learned the truth about his ancestors as well as many others. Once I got through the paragraphs of census facts, I enjoyed reading the stories. I look forward to checking out his second book, “Wanted: U.S. Criminal Records”, so I can research my own family mafia story.

Ron’s books can be purchased on his web site at http://ronarons.com/.

Disclaimer: Apparently there was some stuff going on before I started blogging whereas people were paid to write good reviews about products and such and didn’t tell their readers that is was more  of a paid advertisement than a personal opinion. Well, I wasn’t paid for this. If I was, I probably would have skipped over the less-than-favorable comments, don’t you think?

Hello World.

Categories: David Tennant, Doctor Who, Genealogy, Home Improvement, Hugh Laurie, IAJGS, UJGS
Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 51 seconds
1 Comment

Welcome to my blog. I am Banai. That’s pronounced like B’nai Brith, or B’nai Israel, or B’nai Torah, or if you haven’t heard of any of those or don’t know of any synagogues with those names, it rhymes with Renee.

I have been a genealogist since birth, but I got serious in 1998, moved to Salt Lake City in 2003, and soon became a professional.

I had been debating starting a blog for years. What would I write? Would anyone read it? Would I make the time to keep it up? What would I call it?

Well, the last question was answered first. I came up with the title somewhere in the middle of watching British TV shows last year. Even more recently (like, while editing this post) I added on the third word of my title, from the Ginger Jew to the Ginger Jewish Genealogist. I thought that might be going a bit too far, but I’ve decided to go with it for now. Any comments about that?

I finally decided to just go ahead and try it. So on New Years Eve, between the ball drop and midnight (’cause the ball drops in NYC two hours before midnight in SLC), I installed the blog, adjusted the design, and figured out how to use it. I have blogged every day this year so far. No, you can’t read what I wrote because I marked all the entries private. I was kind of testing the waters.

But now I’ve decided to go public with my blog. So here it is!

Just like my Twitter account, this will likely end up to be about more than just genealogy, but since that’s my profession and my hobby, I expect it to show up a lot. Other topics that will appear often will include UJGS, the Utah Jewish Genealogical Society (I am the president, newsletter editor, and webmaster); IAJGS and each annual conference; David Tennant, Doctor Who, and anyone else associated with the show; Hugh Laurie, House, and any other corresponding shows or people; any other TV show or celebrity that suits my fancy over time (those are just the current ones); and any home improvement projects that may be happening.

Let the fun begin.

Visit to my Second Home

Categories: Accountability, Family History Library, Genealogy, IAJGS, JGSLA 2010
Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 32 seconds

I finally went back to the Family History Library. It had been over two weeks, with all the early and total closings around Christmas, and it was my first visit this year. I got some work done for two clients in Polish records. I ran out of time to work in the Virginia records for another client. I was hoping to have the willpower to continue the work sometime after I got home, but as usual, I didn’t. But at least I got some work done.

I also visited the JGSLA 2010 web site and submitted a couple of lecture proposals. I left them in edit mode so I could tweak what they say. Given my history, albeit of only two years of IAJGS conference lectures, they won’t get much tweaking between now and the final deadline.

On the way home from the FHL, I picked up another box of hair color. If my title is The Ginger Jew, I really should be more ginger. We’ll see how this particular color works out. Instead of auburn, I bought strawberry blond.

I also just noticed the visibility option in the publish box. I can make all these accountability entries private and post other things publicly. I’m sure that’s the way to go. Now all I have to do it start posting things that other people might want to read. I just hope other bloggers don’t expect me to start reading their blogs more just because I have one now. I read some of them sometimes. Mostly, I just read blog entries when they’re tweeted and the title intrigues me.

Actually, I’ve decided to leave them all public instead. I can always change it later.

In The House

Categories: Accountability, David Tennant, Genealogy, Hugh Laurie, IAJGS, JGSLA 2010, UJGS
Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 57 seconds

After yesterday’s Doctor Who marathon, today had a House marathon on USA Network. I mostly slept through it, but I had it on for a while. So now my blog has hit upon my two favorite doctors and my current favorite actors, David Tennant and Hugh Laurie.

There has also been some work accomplished. While I didn’t feel like I had done much, by the time midnight came around, I was getting some genealogy work done. I did some data entry for a client. I’m searching Polish church records for Jewish records and hoping to find more information about his family. After typing up the last batch that I had handwritten last month, I finally compared the whole file (even though I have a couple more years to look through). Sadly, I didn’t find a single record that corresponded to what I already know about his family.

And it really does make me sad when I don’t find anything. The thrill of genealogy is not just the searching, but the finding after spending so much time searching. When I don’t find anything, I feel bad. Not just for the client but for myself. All that time spent and I didn’t find a single record useful to his family research.

In addition, I finally started to plan out my lectures for the 2010 IAJGS conference in Los Angeles. I have until the 15th to submit my lectures and I hadn’t really worked on it. My plan is to sort of repeat what I did last year, but try to do it better. Next Monday, I am presenting at the UJGS meeting, and I want to submit that to the conference. Instead of doing a computer lab about Facebook, I am going to do a lecture. My other computer lab from last year was about using Microsoft Publisher, and I want to submit that possibly as two labs, beginner and intermediate levels.

Not such a useless day after all. And there’s still a few more hours to go before I fall asleep, so maybe I’ll get some more work done for my genealogy clients, or I’ll update a web site. Or maybe I’ll just waste some time.