An Academic Family?

2019 is a year of travel for Mr GeniAus and me. As we trot around the globe I try to keep up with Geneanews and most days manage to share some Geneagems on my Facebook Page.

I somehow missed the release of the video about The Society Of Australian Genealogists  that I am sharing below. The intended audience of the video was retirees or seniors so those (except for Heather Garnsey) who featured in the video were closer to 80 than 18.

I'm a retiree who volunteers on The Education Committee at SAG and each year present a few talks, webinars and workshops on their Education program.

The Society, however, is not just for seniors. I think that I am the oldest person on the Education Committee! Many of the people who attend my talks are below retirement age and the person at the helm of the Society, our President, Melissa Hulbert, is young enough to be my daughter.

The narrator in the video described the Society Members as an Academic Family,  that sounds a bit offputting and pretentious to me. We members are not all academics we are a diverse community of passionate people and lifelong learners who are keen to discover our roots and share our ancestors' stories.

Silly Me!

I set the Six Feet Under Downunder site up in February and then took off to a genealogy conference, Rootstech,  in the United States. I came home for a couple of weeks and then took a cruise around China, South Korea and Japan.

The site is a listing of Australian Burial and Cremation indexes and records available online. I hope that the many generous genies around Australia who know of such indexes of  memorials, headstones and burial sites will share them with me so they can be loaded on the site. I will initially only link to free sites that are available online, sites that one can visit via the internet.

Now that I am home for a few more weeks I thought I would see how the site stats were going and add a few more resources to the pages. I was flabbergasted, there were absolutely no visitors, not one person had accidentally stumbled on my site!!

I fired up a different browser from the one in which I usually work and pasted in the URL to find that this site was Private and I could not access!

The site settings have now been changed so that YOU can now access my site, https://6feetunderdownunder.wordpress.com/

Genealogists for Families.

You may have seen the Kiva tab on the top of my blog page but have you ever clicked on the link to see what it is all about?

I have been a member of The Genealogists for Families Team at Kiva for nearly 8 years and in that time I have made 188 microloans to people in third world countries. Genimates who have joined Kiva as a result of my invitations have made another 158 loans. It is so easy to make a difference.

This week I made two more loans. How about joining me in the team. Click here for details

DNA Reinforcement

When it comes to DNA I need all the help I can get. 

I started out on the DNA Trail when I purchased my first DNA kits in April 2011 and since Rootstech 2011, when I attended every DNA talk on the program, I have listened to umpteen talks and webinars  on DNA and the various tools available. It has been a steep learning curve especially in the early days when the talks were full of science and not really targeted towards ordinary folk like me.

Back in 2011 DNA as a genealogy resource was a novelty and there were many sceptics but the sceptics have been won over and now recognise DNA as a valuable additional resource. I am now at the stage where I know I could stand up and give a credible introductory talk on DNA for family history but I need to learn and understand more in this evolving field. As an old educator I recognise the value of reinforcement in learning.

Blaine Bettinger, a DNA Guru from the US, will be travelling to Australia in August to present a series of lectures with a field of Australian experts at The DNA Downunder Events being organised by Alan Phillips of Unlock the Past. Blaine will be joined by a team of local enthusiasts and experts at the events. In most cities the events are just for one day but in Sydney there will be a super dooper, Diving in Deeper,  3 day event. I am pleased that I live close enough to travel down to Sydney for that event. You can attend this on 1, 2 or 3 days. There is no way I am going to miss out on this mega learning opportunity.

I was pleased to accept Alan's invitation to be an Ambassador for The DNA Downunder Events. I commend Alan for bringing together such a great team for the program, its no easy task to organise such an endeavour.

I know many of my genimates will want  attend one of The DNA Downunder Events and get good value from their DNA dollars. You have until April 30 to snag the earlybird price for the event so, if you haven't registered, you had better move quickly.

Disclosure : In return for promoting the event (and a few other duties) I am receiving a complimentary admission to The DNA Downunder Event.