A Sunday Walk around the Blogs

Lee Carpenter writes about a new addition to Foxfire’s property over at Appalachian History, a German-style barn donated by Sam Beck, Warwoman Community, Rabun Co., GA.

In Looking around, Judy G. Russell offers a friendly reminder that not everything in a courthouse has been microfilmed and/or digitized in.

One of Elizabeth Shown Mills’ recent QuickTips covered sigillography. Can you guess what it means before checking her excellent discussion?

Sometimes, history can be downright bizarre. While rooting through a trunk inherited from his aunt Bonnie Revis, Frederick Cochran found a piece of cake left over from a 1924 wedding held at the Biltmore House in Asheville, NC, where Revis worked as a cook.

A Sunday Walk around the Blogs

Well, here’s what I’ll be doing this summer… (Hint: Not genealogy.)

Thomas MacEntee offers, Plagiarism: A Venereal Disease in the Genealogy Community, in which he discusses how a certain, known plagiarist is up to his old tricks again. Thomas also asks an important question: Why does the genealogy community continue to tolerate this person’s activities?

Elizabeth Shown Mills ask, Genealogy? In the Academic World? Seriously? in QuickLesson 18 on the Evidence Explained website.

Paw Martin and Daylight Savings Time

My father often tells tales about his maternal grandparents, Paw and Maw Martin, whom he adored. They lived right next door when he was growing up, so he saw them often and has many fond memories of them.

One story Dad tells is about Paw’s reaction to Daylight Savings Time, back when it was implemented in the US. Paw refused to go by the “new” time, so anyone who wanted him to be anywhere during the months affected by DST would have to convert that time to Standard Time.

I know, this makes Paw sound like a curmudgeon, but he wasn’t; he was actually a very good man. Possibly, his attitude toward a time switch had something to do with being a farmer. Animals have clocks in their heads, not on their mantels, and when a cow’s used to being milked at a certain time, that’s the time it needs to be milked. There’s a reason farmers work from day’s light to day’s end. It has little to do with the position of hands on a clock, and more to do with efficient use of light and other resources.

Every year when the clocks change, I think of Paw and wonder if I might have inherited a little bit of his practical nature where time’s concerned.