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Illuminated Heritage

March 30, 2006

The Sound of Music…

I just finished reading the Story of the Trapp Family Singers by Maria Augusta Trapp, “The Story That Inspired the Sound of Music”. I have to say, it was rather eye-opening on the immigrant experience from that time period and how they got around the States during WWII (buses, trains, hearses). It’s very little like the musical I grew up with and still love. Anyway, as I was poking around, I found that NARA has a long article about the von Trapp family with copies of related documents and some photos. This illustrates a nice genealogical research project! It pulls from a few different sources that just the book I read, but covers the differences fairly well. So, if you’re at all interested, check it out!

posted by Kay at 10:13 am | Comments (0)

March 28, 2006

Tuesday’s Treasure

I don’t know about you, but I was sure ready for the First Day of Spring! Think Spring! And when I think Spring, I start thinking about all those gorgeous flowers that are going to be out soon…sure we may only have some crocus, tulips, and hyacinths now but soon those peonies and irises are going to be out too. I went digging through the site for a garden shot and found this one of Busse Gardens (be sure to click on page description for the whole story!) from the Mount Prospect Public Library’s Digital Past collection in the History of the South Church, 1957 document.

posted by Kay at 2:00 pm | Comments (0)

March 27, 2006

Face Recognition for Genealogy

Ok, so I’ve been hearing about My Heritage which claims the lofty goal of eventually being able to help identify who you might be related to by using face recognition software. Even though I absolutely hate having my photo taken, for the sake of science, I uploaded a photo of myself and ran it through their software. Currently they only have their celebrity match database up so it matches your face to the most likely of several thousand celebrity photos. It displays the closest match first and then goes down from there. Apparently 80% is a high match and indicates a good possibility of relation. Well, the highest match I got was 70% and that was Meg Ryan. In descending order, it brought up Nancy Sinatra, Jennifer Love Hewitt, JK Rowling, Tara Reid and Kelly Clarkson. It will also bring up men but those were only in the 50s for me. Wonder what would happen if I took a better photo of myself…would it change? Stay tuned and one day maybe I’ll get brave again and give it another whirl.

posted by Kay at 12:38 pm | Comments (0)

March 24, 2006

While We’re on a Musical Theme…

I recently ran across Vault Radio, which now that I see it, I remember hearing about the collection on TV somewhere or another. The About states:

“Bill Graham and his concert promotion company, Bill Graham Presents, produced more than 35,000 concerts all over the world. His first venue, the legendary Fillmore Auditorium, was home to many of rock’s greatest performers – Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Doors, The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye, Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Prince – and the list goes on and on.

Graham taped thousands of live performances and stored the tapes in the basement of the BGP headquarters. These tapes and the concerts they captured lay dormant until the Bill Graham archive was acquired by Wolfgang’s Vault (Bill Graham’s given first name was Wolfgang) in 2003.

Vault Radio is now playing selected tracks from these concerts in an FM-quality, 128K digital radio stream. Songs will be added to and removed from the radio show on a regular basis. We will be broadcasting unaltered live performance music from many of the greatest bands of the last 40 years. The music you hear on Vault Radio has not been sweetened or polished. You’ll be listening to what the band played that night – nothing more, nothing less.

This is the real thing and we hope you enjoy it. If you like the music or would like us to add other bands to the playlist, let us know through Feedback.”

They’ve also digitized concert tickets, photographs, and some posters (some of which are for sale). If you’re interested in bands like The Doors, Bob Marley, The Allman Brothers, The Eagles, Madonna, and Led Zepplin, you may just enjoy a look around and a good listen. The station loads quickly and plays happily over a broadband connection.

Have a great Friday!

posted by Kay at 9:46 am | Comments (0)

March 23, 2006

Edison Cylinder Digitization Project

Thanks to Judy Hoffman here at the System for bringing the New York Times article about the Cylinder Digitization and Preservation Project from UC- Santa Barbara to my attention! I’ve purposely waited a few days to mention it here as they are having problems with all the traffic from the NYT article. Not a horrible problem to have! I am currently waiting for Stella Mayhew’s “I’m Looking for Something to Eat” which was mentioned in the article. I may be waiting a while…and so might you, but it’s definitely a very cool digitization project going on out there. They are hoping to digitize all their cylinder recordings and it looks like they have over 6000 already up there. They are not only available to listen to on the site using Quicktime but they are also available for download – free of charge – as mp3s or wav files. It’s really worth a visit and I hope you enjoy it as much as I have!

posted by Kay at 2:18 pm | Comments (0)

Wisconsin Deaths Now Online

A while ago I announced that the Wisconsin Historical Society has made their Birth index available online. Well, now they’ve made the Death records index available (marriages coming soon). It covers deaths occuring in Wisconsin before Sept 30, 1907. State law prohibits putting scanned copies of this information online so if you find someone, you will need to order a copy of it from the Historical Society. Complete announcement here.

posted by Kay at 9:27 am | Comments (0)

March 22, 2006

Pilgrimage to Mineral Point

So this past weekend, even though I was exhausted after the Banquet, I headed over to Rockford to meet up with my Mom and sister for a pilgrimage back to Mineral Point, WI. If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that my Mom’s maternal side were from Mineral Point being miners from either Cornwall or Oldham, England. My grandmother’s cousin, Elsie, turned 90 and since Grandma couldn’t be there, we decided to go. Besides the getting up early after getting home so late the night before, dear hubby and I managed to get over to meet up with them in fairly good time. From there we headed up to Monroe where we had a lovely time eating cheese sandwiches at Baumgartner’s and checking out all the Swiss decorations.

Next we headed up to Darlington. My grandmother’s sister (Aunt Ethel),, whom I’ve mentioned before used to live there. We drove through downtown, noting how it’s changed in the past 15 years since I’d been there last. It used to be heavily Swiss/German and now we noticed hispanic stores and churches in the area. We stopped by the cemetary, as all good genealogists do, to take pictures and to leave some flowers on her & Uncle Pete’s grave. Also, now that I’m paying attention, I may be able to find my way back there again. We drove by her old house, which is still standing, and poked around town a little bit. I need to do some serious research in Darlington as hubby’s grandfather farmed there for about 10 years before he decided to go back to Switzerland. I’m betting he and my Great Uncle Pete knew each other as they were Swiss farmers in the same town…I just need to prove it. On the outskirts of town, we drove by Pete & Ethel’s farm (well, where it was, nothing left but the underpass under the road for the cattle and a few trees). When they paved the road, they moved it some and it cut through their farm, so they had to create an underpass for the cattle to get back & forth from barn to pasture safely. I guess Pete also had to get rubber wheels for all his vehicles, instead of the metal he was used to. Interesting bits of history!

read more »

posted by Kay at 9:57 am | Comments (0)

March 21, 2006

Tuesday’s Treasure

Since my birthday is this week, I get to put a horse up. If you know me, you know I love horses, especially my own little Morgan, M’Lord Prince Charming (gratuitous Prince photo), who stands about 15.2 hands high and weighs about 1100 pounds unlike Big Ben here who stands 18 hands high and weighs in at 2500 pounds. For those not “in the know”, a hand is 4 inches and is measured from the ground to the withers (where the neck meets the back). So, Prince stands 62″, just over 5 feet, and Big Ben here stands 72″ which is 6 feet on the nose. You have to keep in mind that each inch doesn’t just go up, but adds on all the way around… Big Ben must have had to have had a special stall because there’s no way he would have fit in Prince’s! This postcard is from the Century of Progress postcard collection (plus other Chicago cards) digitized by the Lake County Discovery Museum. Be sure to click for the truly BIG picture!

posted by Kay at 2:00 pm | Comments (0)

America’s GenealogyBank – from Eastman

In case you do not read Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter, which I recommend to you, he announced this week a pre-announcement of America’s GenealogyBank. To whet your appetite, a quick quote from the article “new online database will contain images of millions of documents of genealogical interest. Ninety-nine percent of these documents have never been available before in electronic format, and perhaps 50% of the documents have not even been available on microfilm.” No reason to reinvent the wheel, so I’m sending you right on over for this fantastic news!!

posted by Kay at 9:58 am | Comments (0)

UNESCO & Flickr

I’m sure you’ve heard the term “Flickr” bandied about these days and perhaps you even have a Flickr account (I sure do, where else would I put all those cat & horse pics?). For those who are not as familiar with Flickr, I thought I’d find a good illustration of an institutional use for it. Today in my daily RSS feeds I found that UNESCO has set up a group photo pool of photos of UNESCO historic sites with a place for discussions as well. It’s very inspiring, some of the photos are absolutely stunning so I encourage you to visit.

posted by Kay at 9:12 am | Comments (0)

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