Hart St. John was a total babe-cutest dimples you ever saw and a good friend of my Dad's despite the extreme difference in their ages. Tragically, Hart died before the age of 30 from a heart attack- leaving Maggie with 2 little girls, one born with a pretty severe birth defect to her legs. I wish I knew where she ended up- could ask her sister-in-law, Rita Jones.
Call me crazy, but there are two things I wish communities would start considering.
1. Establish a town wiki to collect and capture a town's history, but also provide a place for people to contribute their histories with photos and videos. Centralize the information and a place to share. What a rich archive that would provide.
2. That town newspapers, all editions, get digitized with online access. The Kearney Daily Hub is the one I have in mind, again. But the same could be said for the public schools..class photos, yearbooks, school newspapers.
Maybe some day this will happen. We do have some of this buried in this forum, but think how cool it would be to organize and link it, so you could find it again.
Candi: There is a 50 state program on-line similar to what you are talking about. It is called genweb and all 50 states are linked and then divided into counties. This is strictly a volunteer project and some, like the Buffalo County site, are full of information, while some have little input.
This was started as a free alternative to "pay" genealogy sites and can include early land records, cemetery internments, census information from 1790-1930's, births, deaths, marriages. I have found newspaper articles and biographies. The problem is that it is a volunteer project and either from lack of interest or lack of technical ability some sites which are rich in history are seriously lacking in information. Case in point, my maternal grandparents came from neighboring counties in Iowa; Lucas and Wayne counties. One has a plethora of information and one has next to nothing.
Genweb is how I found my paternal grandfather's family still living in Windsor Co., VT and have made lifelong friends because of it. If you have not checked out the Buffalo county site it is a treat,... of course there is much more earlier information available because the population grew exponentially as did the information. J
O.K. Crazy,
This thing you are talking about, Wray was also excited about getting involved with, but you two seem to be the only two that understand what you are really talking about. Wray was saying something about scanning and proof reading and making corrections and........ time involved. Even the longest journey starts with a single step. What would be the first step on a small project?
And which project?
Sure Sis,,,,,
Before I am done typing you jump in and join the TWO, (now three).
Still the same question, Where would we start and with what?
Candi- Thanks so much! It was great, wish he'd drop in at one of our bonfires! Had a Neil Diamond impersonator at arena last nite. He asked if anyone remembered 1969? It was a pee your pants moment! He belted out "Sweet Caroline" while riding Zamboni. Sounds weird,but I enjoy weird! Thanks again, Magic Music Woman. Luv ya, BarbFM
Tom Brokaw had a program on boomers, what they went through, what they're doing now. Our forum is not only rich in history events, but how we lived through them, emotions, olfactory remembrances,clothing styles, education and our upbringing in a small community. How one group,joined together in May of 69,is still connected, over 40 years later... Sounds like a good read to me. Luv ya, BarbFM
...and I still say our class has enough interesting story threads to make a fantastic movie and there's an enormous audience of kindred souls out there.
Wikipedia is an example of using wiki technology...it is collaborative software, because multiple people can add and edit the material if they have access. Wikipedia is also volunteer driven and they have rules about content.
"Media Wiki" is wiki software we use at work to document our work and projects. Sharing and collaborating knowledge creation...making it fact based, tagging data, linking. We have in this forum thread buried information, but if we had a wiki we could have a section for each elementary school, or for each year of the class of 1969. As you accumulated information you would further categorize it. Anyone who had pictures or stories would contribute to that section. Anyone with access to the wiki could see all the information. People would have to be ok with sharing it. CENTRALIZING the information is the ROI, as it is very powerful to see it in one place.
Wikipedia being a prime example. It would not surprise me if a portable wiki would eventually take the place of a yearbook that you could download to a device like the Kindle.
You would need wiki software, server, storage and people to administrate it...maybe there is service provider that would put it all together for you. A town would need to consider if they wanted to keep and preserve a digital archive like this as part of a public service.
Digitizing the Hub would be a shortcut, since it already has a lot of history. As far as I know they are just scanning the paper pages, like a photo, then making the scanned pages available online. I do not believe they are scanning text content to index keywords and make it searchable. Digitizing and providing online access would still be cool, because you know what years you might be interested in looking for information. Searching it would be heaven. The Kearney Public Library is doing this, but I figured it might take about $500K to get the scanning of the pages done. I do wish the town would campaign to get this done, as I think it would be a valued resource for many.
I wonder how much it would cost to digitize our yearbook or the Echoes from our years? Anyone who has internet access, could see it whenever they wanted.
If you were a history major I would think you would start encouraging people to use this technology to write their family histories, town histories, state, etc. Teach people how to become historians of their lives.
Stopped in to see Janelle and Scott today. Posted a picture of them on my page checking out the class web site. I have plans to have lunch with Georgenne tomorrow. (will try to get a picture)
I get irritated at some of the propaganda from environmentalists and animal rights extremists, but I was thinking back on how bad a lot of people I knew were on some of that stuff when I was a kid. I seem to recall that people routinely went down the country roads casually pitching pop bottles, all sorts of paper products, etc into the ditches along the roadsides. I remember walking with my cousins along country roads, setting up the beer and pop bottles we found so we could throw rocks at them. I remember my uncle (Barb FM, you remember uncle John) taking me along to change the oil in his car. He drove out to some farmer's windbreak where he could position his car over a little ditch, then he just opened the plug and let the old oil run out on the ground. I suppose folks handle that stuff differently now - or do they? And maybe my uncle was a bit out of line even then. I think the wide open spaces invited pitching the trash; there was so much room what would one little bottle hurt? I seem to recall that some (or a lot?) of people thought it was OK to put unwanted kittens in a bag and toss them in the river too; anyone else recall hearing about that procedure? Now I guess you would land in jail for dealing with the excess cat population in that way.
Terry,
Susan R. and I were just talking about trash dumping. (nothing about cats)
The Kearney canal was a "big ditch" where people dumped all types of trash. We would spend hours down there south of the railroad tracks with our B.B. guns shooting those bottles of which you speak.
We were also looking for old "girly magazines"..... few and far between!
Shonk...
Celia and I had a long phone conversation about the weekend, meeting dates are still in the works for me, Painer, Bix, Chuck and Celia...more later!
Youtube -Amazing! But can imagine what the guy's families' got for an answer, "What are you spending all your time on, in that warehouse?" and "You need another TV for what?" I love that kinda stuff!
Terry- Oil is still used as dust control on country roads. As for pop bottles,my brothers and I all had baskets on our bikes, to carry the bottles we picked up on roadside. 2 cents a bottle, funded our penney candy, fireworks,fudgecicles. Turned in bottles at George's. We were green, before green was cool. Only used tin cans for target practice. Country roads are still a dumping ground, even though all farm dumps are required to be covered with dirt and no longer used as such. I cash in aluminum cans, recycle newspapers and mags, plastic jugs. It's a trip to Kearney, but well worth it. Farmers have always been green. Very little goes to waste, or isn't reused. License plates for roof repair, baling wire, 5-gallon buckets, coffee cans etc. Everything fed to animals is recycled for fertilizer. Garbage disposer has 4 legs. If anyone needs extra cash, every country road I've driven after snow melt, has a gold mine of cans, blown out of pick-up beds. Bud light sales were good. We have had dogs dropped off in such terrible shape, I'm sure they were probably put down after I took them to the shelter. PS Did you know outhouses were used as family dumps? This sight has gone down the pooper!! People were dumping baby pigs few years ago, like cats, because of the low price for hogs. Luv ya BarbFM
I am not sure if any of the recycling efforts of our parents were "green" or were, in fact, a result of the "GREAT DEPRESSION".
My parents were in their 40's when I was born and had come through their early years of marriage in the 30's. With no money for gasoline they would only go to town on Saturday night to sell their eggs and cream. Bits of cloth were saved for quilts. Food was never wasted. Clothing was made on the sewing machine with sugar and flour sacks. Anything which might serve a function was saved.
By the time I was born the depression was over everywhere except in their minds. Their old habits never died including hating debt. They never had a mortgage or financed a car...the only time my dad would borrow money was in the spring when he would go see Charlie Pratt at the State Bank of Riverdale to borrow enough money to put his crop into the ground. (State Bank of Riverdale was one of the few which remained solvent during the 30's)
I am a product of my upbringing. I have a hard time throwing anything away. I like to think I am making an effort to be green, but I just can't throw away Zip locks or a tablespoon of gravy. Did I mention my ball of twine??
Janet- Riverdale Bank kept alot of people around here from losing everything. Sadly it is losing it's hometown appeal with new ownership. They still have popcorn on Fridays and ask how the sheep are, but like everything else, becoming less connected. My folks were same as yours, buy it only if had the money, and my Dad would make a trip to the dump, and come home with more than he took. He always said it was "good stuff" others threw away. Luv ya BarbFM Twine is fine, I have a drawer full of rubberbands and twist ties..... Never know......
We still can't seem to get over making sure we have the money before we buy something. That means I have to shop and negatiate when I find something I want. Car dealers and other stores are somewhat shocked when we go in and say this is how much we have- will you sell it for that? Usually you can get at least a cash discount, sometimes more. Even got a cash discount on some dental work. (Went to Heike sp? as a dentist growning up. Other dentists over the years still admire his work.) I use a credit card, but only for the convenience. Mostly pay it off every month.
