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Outbreaks, Epidemics, Pandemics

It’s official: The world is experiencing a pandemic with Covid-19, referred to colloquially as Coronavirus. The World Health Organization made that pronouncement today, March 11, 2020. I have been checking on the latest developments in my state of Ohio. Our Governor Mike DeWine is holding frequent briefings and they are broadcast in their entirety by

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NBC’s Genealogy Show: A New Leaf

I just became aware of a new half-hour genealogy show on TV: A New Leaf presented on NBC with major sponsorship by Ancestry.com. In the Cleveland area, it is broadcast on Saturday morning at 11:30 on WKYC Channel 3. Logo for NBC’s new genealogy series. According to the website for the program (click here), two

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Kimi Räikkönen Saves My Sports Weekend

The weekend just ended was turning out to be a dismal one for me sport-wise. On Saturday, the Ohio State University Buckeyes lost a college football game to Purdue University that they should have won. On Sunday afternoon, the Cleveland Browns lost their game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in overtime. And on Sunday evening,

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What’s New: Map Your Ancestors (on Your Smart Phone)

The headline is from a blog posting last month on the FamilySearch blog at  https://www.familysearch.org/blog/en/whats-map-ancestors/   What’s New: Map Your Ancestors January 9, 2018 By Alison Ensign You can map your ancestors on FamilySearch’s app. I grew up hearing stories about my ancestors. As I learned the details of their lives, I wondered what it

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Deed Research on Grandma Grace’s House

After posting my discovery yesterday that Grandma Grace’s house was no longer standing at 1911 E. 89th St., I decided to do some deed research and see if I could find out who ended up owning the property. Deed researchers in Cuyahoga County are very fortunate in that the county has an online database of

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Reconstructing International Conference Trips

During my career at Penton Media (aka Penton Publishing — see its Wikipedia page for a brief history) in Cleveland, I was fortunate enough to serve as editor-in-chief of  Metalproducing magazine (aka 33 and Metalproducing & Processing. Now defunct). This trade magazine covered the metals industry, including steelmaking. As a result, I attended meetings of the International Iron

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Voting By Mail Works

This morning I found on my desk the sticker (above) sent out by the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections with my mail-in ballot packet. I know that the 2017 election in Ohio was held nine days ago (Nov. 7), but I am creating this post today to state for the record that I believe voting

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A Blast from the Past: FinnFest 2007 Program Notes

I can hardly believe that it was 10 years ago that FinnFest was in Ashtabula. Having just returned from Minneapolis and FinnFest 2017, I was curious about what publicity for that earlier event might still be available. So I went online and checked the website for the Star Beacon, the daily newspaper published in Ashtabula.

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Take Your Ethnic Purity Business Elsewhere

This email was distributed to subscribers of the Ancestry Blog a couple days ago. Especially appropriate for us as genealogists is what Ancestry states in the third paragraph: The entire Ancestry family is horrified and appalled by the tragic events that occurred in Charlottesville. We not only condemn the violence that occurred but are deeply

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