Gene Notes

Some random and some not-so-random thoughts on family history.

Friday, February 11, 2011

Who Do You Think You Are?

First I want to say to make sure you watch tonight's episode of WDYTYA? because helping country-western singer Tim McGraw is Kathleen Brandt. Kathleen has left many kind comments on this blog and I am excited for her.I've seen a lot of "stuff" on blogs lately about this latest season's first program, and I will agree that I think it was a little flat. I don't really care about the longer/shorter lead-ins, but what I do care about is that enough attention is not paid to HOW the information was found and WHERE or HOW that information was accessed. I realize this is not necessarily a how-to program, and more of a "Look what I found" program, but I think more stress needs to be put on how the research was done. Maybe Ancestry/NBC could have a little extra online program for those of us who would like to know. It sure would be better than running those stupid ancestry ads, especially the annoying man who tells you he went on Ancestry.com and found someone had traced his family tree back before the Civil War. Can we say CLICK and CLAIM as cousin/friend Karen puts it? I just feel like I need a bibliography of the sources used in each episode.Some of the stories from last season were very moving, if a bit overly dramatic - maybe the celebrities should be given more direction on overacting. My favorite still was Susan Sarandon who was actually shown looking for a newspaper article on her grandmother. Family research can be extremely tedious, but it can also be highly rewarding.
Copyright 2011, ACK for Gene Notes

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