Introducing the Curator Team

How you managed to get "Lacan," "Akhenaton," " Carolingia" and "vuvuzelas" in the same post I'll never know.

Clearly genealogists are associational if nothing else.

In case it wasn't clear from the dizzying spectrum of our polymath / curatorial abilities and interests ... Sharon will focus initially on the project she already started to straighten out King Chuck AKA Charlemagne and his extra children; Hatte is trying hard to extract herself from Rev. Lathrop-land and join some medieval work.

But we want to do a Golden Age of Spain project most of all, waaaahhh.

Welcome! I'm a former teacher, too (first grade) and find doing research for Geni is a great substitute for researching lessons. I loved pulling lessons together, and find working on projects especially enjoyable. Just one of the things I love about Geni! I'm sure you'll be a great asset to the team.

Hi Daniel: I think Ternopil (pre-1944 Tarnopol) is considered to be western Ukraine, though it is on the major railway between Lviv and Odesa. There is kind of a big cultural divide between western and southern Ukraine (occasionally you get alarmist reports of the country splitting in two, though I doubt anything so dire will ever happen), so it does seem to make a difference at least to the people still there.

Hi Hatte: Suwalki seemed kind of a nice area. Have wanted to spend more time in that area of the border zones between Lithuania, Poland, and Belarus, but sometimes life takes you in different directions (now, for me, Argentina is just across the mountains). Really liked Vilnius, that much I can say.

Erica: Golden Age of Spain? What are the parameters?

Sheesh! I knew we shouldn't have mentioned t-shirts!!

Sharon, you are so welcome as a member of our team. Now, when you are missing teenagers, you can join the various curator discussions and think you are right back among them!

Folks, Sharon has already been a valuable person to your curatorial team. The first two South African curators twisted our arms behind our backs until we brought Sharon aboard. You will all enjoy working with her.

Ben - I was planning to go to Prague, Sulwalki, Kalwarja, and Vilnius for my birthday this year and do a personal Jewish Heritage tour, but the kids insisted upon Italy instead. Although I did step foot in a Venetian synagogue my 13 great grandfather also stood in and led prayer in. Or at least so I pretend.

Hatte, how you planned on going to all of those 4 places in one day is above my understanding. It sounds like a stressfull day to me. :-)

Reminds me of some american third cousins of my father that sent me an email that they would like to meet me during their visit to Norway in 2008. They were going to do Denmark, Sweden and Norway in 20 days. Well, their visit to me lasted approx. 15 minutes. I would have liked to show them some of Kongsberg, Norway, the church from 1761 where some of their family were baptized, married and burried, but did they have time?, NO, the had to reach Bergen the next day. The result was that they really didn't have time to do anything or meet anyone they were related to. That is what I call a stressfull vacation. And I'm glad I'm not planning those kind of vacations. Please don't plan likewise.

Ben,

I don't know that we've gotten that far yet. All I can say is that bed boy of

http://www.geni.com/people/%D8%A7%D8%A8%D9%86-%D8%B9%D9%85%D8%A7%D8... of Al-Mu'tamid ibn Abbad III, emir of Seville got me interested in learning more about the time and place.

Hate it when the links get so ugly!

Abenámar (Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Ammar) Visir de Sevilla

And that Remi is why I didn't end up going to Eastern Europe and beyond. That needs a lot of time and careful planning. I'm a 3 day - 3 week kinda person. I prefer to get to know a town when I visit. I stayed 2 weeks in Beirut, 3 weeks in Buenos Aires, 3 weeks around Israel last time I was there and that was a whirlwind.

In fact 12 days for Italy for 3 cities was too little time.

Link got ugly for me too. I loved the "About Me" for Ibn Ammar. I'm pulling out my Spanish Portuguese North African books from that period now. And looking up Silves.

Welcome Hatte and Sharon. It's great to have you both on the curator team.

I'm thrilled with the newest curators to join our team. They bring a wide array of skills and talents to diversify Geni even more, and they are a delightful group of people that I look forward to working with. Welcome!

Thanks for the welcome, guys.

MARVIN, illusions and delusions are very different associations :-)

I am, however, very serious about documenting the black SA heritage lines. (I know the words 'black' and 'coloured' are pejorative in the USA, but here they're genuine descriptors along with 'white' and 'indian' that we all use to describe ourselves - in case anyone thinks I'm being rude.)
The 'older' black traditions going back may be oral - but the kingly lineages are proudly kept and many of our present politicians - like Nelson Mandela - come from those lines, so I see no reason why they should have any more difficulty than the rest of us in logging data backwards from present day.

The fact that before a certain date the Southern African tree might not link into the 'Big Tree' may serve to highlight a conceptualisation problem with the notion of what we think we're doing in creating One documentable World tree. It may be that the only Big Tree we're producing (or can produce) is simply the Big Post Colonial Tree ;-).

I think it's a good point, you make, MARVIN, because it raises the issue of what constitutes irrefutable sources - as though written history is always (or even often) automatically more than just what our peers will let us get away with saying.

Not until DNA trees will I be convinced of 'irrefutable lineage' - and we're a long way off even producing fewer than 7 separate DNA trees.

So, yes, I think it's valid to hope for the present day descendents of Shaka to map their Zulu heritage on Geni, and the grandchildren of Nelson Mandela to track his Xhosa ancestors for us before he dies, and - as the genetic links across the white and black communities in Southern Africa go back to the 1600s - perhaps Geni will be the first popular documentation proof that we all share more personally in each other's heritage sagas than we previously allowed ourselves to believe!

Sorry - longwinded, I know. It's a big idea, so difficult to talk about shorter, without devolving into allusions ;-). I would you like your thoughts, because mine are pretty much a work in progress.

TAMMY, you may have put your finger on the addictive attractions of researching on Geni. Maybe you and I can ultimately share our research as online teacher resources?

I am excited to be the newest member of the curator team!

My focus has been tracing the genealogy of Indian Kingdoms going back to the times of Vedas (almost 5000 years). However, like most Genealogy projects, most information is found for the last 300-400 years. Beyond these projects, I am assisting a few Indian communities connect, clean, merge and enrich there tree's.

While India related stuff remains my focus, feel free to reach out for any help that I can provide.

Welcome Anchit. We really need curators working on that part of the tree.

Welcome!

Anchit welcome to the group.

Welcome, Anchit.

I am excited to be the new curator. You know my full name, but most people call me by my middle name, Kwame. My first languages are English and Patois (Jamaican dialect). I have learned French and Spanish in NYC. I can read some German, Portuguese, etc. I've also tried to learn some Hebrew and Greek (to read old versions of the Bible). I have taken single or multiple classes for Kreyol (Haitian dialect), Nahuatl (Aztec language), etc.

I have been a lecturer in Native American, African, Colonial and Western U.S. history. I have also studied Military history, because some many family members were soldiers.

There is more, but we will talk about that as we work on projects.

Kwame, I am so happy to welcome you as a curator!

Welcom Kwame, glad to have you on board.

Good to have you as part of the curator team, Kwame!

And, Welcome to Anchit as well! I hope you and Kwame enjoy working as curators as much as I do.

Sharon, that's a good idea. I've seen students using Geni to complete assignments. Maybe we can add another dimension so teachers can use it for planning lessons.
Any ideas?

Private User , Sharon Doubell

There are some genealogy curriculum guidelines out there that we can use to help guide us. eg.

* http://dubois.fas.harvard.edu/african-american-lives
* http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aalives/about.html
* http://www.amazon.com/Links-Past-Through-Genealogy-Curriculum/dp/15...

K-12 professional book publisher Linworth Publishing, Inc., has released a new book focusing on strategies that bring creativity and enhanced genealogy learning to the classroom curriculum.

* I think it was Private User who asked re ideas for school curriculums in a previous thread a while ago, and I sent him the amazon link---he said he would buy a copy of the book. (at that time there was one copy left)

Tammy, and Sharon, Re using Geni to for class assignments,
Jadra plans to give a talk on History lessons using Geni.

See Discussion, "Ideas to Expand Geni's Membership Reach" http://www.geni.com/discussions/93049
plus more curriculum links.

I'm on a roadtrip investigating the French Huguenots - will be back to chat about history assignments in a weeks' time. Sounds fascinating

Sharon, Have a wonderful trip! We can't wait to read your blog project.