I went through "Who Do You Think You Are?" withdrawal this week...anybody else? Fortunately, "Friday Night Lights" filled the vacated WDYTYA timeslot and allowed me to continue my crying streak uninterrupted, lol...
I was covering a lecture by Cardinal Edward Egan for work this weekend on one of the Gospel stories, and the he was going in-depth about some of the customs and actions portrayed that are totally foreign to a 21st century New Yorker, and the explanation really helped clarify what was actually happening in the story and the significance of them, and I couldn't help but compare it to genealogy (doesn't everything come back to genealogy? :)) and how important it is to try to get as much information as possible about the times and places our ancestors lived to get a better understanding of the motivations that might have been behind the choices they made and the things they did...I think we all try to do that, though.
I also wanted to note how the Ashley Judd episode of WDYTYA really made me refocus on my old American lines - my family has been here for so long on my mom's side of the family that I don't always feel comfortable saying I'm English and Dutch. On those lines, I just feel "American." Anyway, I have old New York ancestry, I have old New England ancestry, I have a lot of Quaker ancestry that I've never really delved into - once you reach a point in your family history that there are just branches and branches to trace, you have to pick and choose what to focus on when, and sometimes it takes awhile to come back and refocus on a particular line. So I think I'd like to learn more about my Quaker family and some of my "American" lines for a bit.
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