Photos and comments from Arizona and around the world
This photo highlights the grandeur and mystery of the Grand Canyon. It is imposing in the day, but as evening falls, it becomes a place of shadows and unexplored depths. I suggest clicking on this image to see the detail.
I must be out of the loop for this cultural icon. I see cow statues around the country and haven't a clue as to why they are there. Now, horse statutes I understand. We had a horse statue just down the street from where we lived for years.
Like the end of a magnificent symphony, the sun slowly descends over the Grand Canyon, like playing sunrise on the mountains in reverse, the depths of the Canyon darken first and then slowly the shadows grow up the sides of the cliffs until only the tops...
A recent conversation with an elderly lady (someone older than I am) made me stop and reflect on the changes in technology. This lady was expressing her concern that her advanced age and limited computer abilities were a daunting obstacle to her continued...
A recent question by Barbara Mathews posted on the Technology for Genealogy page on Facebook, caught my attention. It asks the question, "Do we own ebooks the same way we own print books?" The question asks something that is very complicated. Ownership...
In my recent posts on the subject of using a camera or a scanner for digitizing, I have primarily considered the issue of resolution. A film photograph is usually considered to be a "continuous tone" image. However, all film photographs ultimately have...
You should always think about composing pictures to fit in a frame. Sometimes the frame creates its own frame and so on. This is not a Photoshoped image. If you would like to take photographs instead of snapshots, you spend a lot of time looking at light,...
With the new mountain lion operating system, Apple Computer has supplied a built in voice recognition program called Apple dictate. This particular blog post is mostly being written with Apple dictate. I have made no corrections to the text so any of...
JTF-Guantanamo_server_farm.jpg (172 × 240 pixels, file size: 25 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg)This image is a work of a U.S. Army soldier or employee, taken or made during the course of the person's official duties. As a work of the
Categorization is central part to some academic disciplines and the need or perceived need for creating categories is ingrained in Western Civilization dating back to Plato and Aristotle. I am sure that any effort I might make to counteract this tendency...
There is a tradition I have never understood of mounting the skulls of dead cows and other animals. I realize that this practice is almost universally observed and there are few icons of the Old West more pervasive than the cow or buffalo (bison) skull....
With some significant additions, and some significant deletions FamilySearch.org has made the past year interesting. Visually and functionally the program is essentially the same as it was at the beginning of 2012. The main addition to the program involves...
I have several conflicting reports of people both getting access to FamilySearch.org's Family Tree and not getting access. In the access category are definitely people who have used New.FamilySearch.org sometime in the past and updated their LDS Account...
We are back for the 9th annual St George Expo at the Dixie Center in St George, UT February 22-23, 2013. Take advantage of our early bird registration by November 30th for only $59. The cost will be going up after that, so don’t delay sign up today....
Genealogy is a not just an interesting pastime, for a few, it is a serious business and for a very few large organization and corporations, it is a big business. In addition to the individuals who consider themselves to be "professional genealogists or...
For quite a long time, I was very involved in weaving. Spinning and weaving are both very technical crafts. They both require a deep knowledge of the materials and an idea of what the final product will look like. I admire anyone who can learn to weave...
This is a plant that is called a Sago Palm. It is not really a palm tree, it is a Cycad. This is the cone which is stiff like a pine cone. These plants are originally from Japan but they grow very well here in Mesa, if they have enough shade. We have...
I am always extremely interested whenever there is a new online database of digitized sources. I was interested to see a reference to The California Digital Newspaper Collection. Here's a description of the database: The California Digital Newspaper...
Let's face it, some families are difficult to reconstruct and identify. I had one uncle who reportedly had eight wives and he wasn't a polygamist. Deaths, divorces, liaisons and more can make for complicated genealogy. The Springthorpe family that I have...
All categorizations of sources are arbitrary. Trying to pigeon hole any source as either "primary," "secondary" or some other shade of classification can obscure, by the very nature of classification, the real value or lack of value of the source. Let's...
This is another of those contrasts between the desert and the rest of the country. This old chimney is all that is left standing from an previous house or building. If this were in my part of the country, most of the structure would still be there and...
Some flowers have taken a direct marketing approach to their insect pollinators. They mark the spot dramatically, hoping they don't get overlooked.
They are a lot of us lurkers out there. We watch a long list of blogs and websites but hardly ever make comments. Well, occasionally I do make a comment. Why are comments important? If you disagree with the blog post, you can express your own opinion....
This last week's presentation at the Graham County Historical Society in Safford, Arizona generated an interesting newspaper article: http://www.eacourier.com/news/james-tanner-talks-at-eac-s-discovery-park-campus/article_45a9d4e4-35c0-11e2-a912-0019bb2963f4.html I...
The big mystery of the Internet for genealogists is figuring out who has what resources. We constantly hear of all the fabulously large colletions of records going online, but there doesn't seem to be anyway of keeping track of what is out there. Yes,...
