Ken Mondschein at Medievalists.net is saying good things about the SCA. No objections here, but it has me wondering how many medievalists have belonged to the Society of Creative Anachronism at some point. I did. Kind of. Maybe it would be more accurate to say I stopped by from time to time. I don’t think…
A Better Diaspora
What does it mean — a better diaspora? I started thinking about this a couple of weeks ago when a friend who is Latina mentioned how often people are surprised when they find out she doesn’t speak Spanish. At the time I just laughed. I don’t speak Swedish or any of my other ancestral languages,…
Excavating Identity
I get edgy when I think someone is too attached to a theory. They’re all theories in my book, some with better evidence than others. And, so often we as genealogists go through struggles about evidence and conclusions when someone really wants a particular result. “Humans add narrativium [“narrative causality”] to their world. They insist…
Modern Frauds
When I think of genealogical frauds I usually think about those quirky amateur genealogies published in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Lofty connections with little or no evidence. Lots of oral history. Then too, I think of the defenders of this old material. Generally people who fulfilled the requirements for a high school diploma…
Name of Jesus
I wonder sometimes. Genealogists are supposed to use the earliest attested name. The rule is often glossed as requiring genealogists to use the “birth name“. We had a debate on Geni.com a while back about the name of Jesus. I still don’t feel comfortable with the result. The Messianic Jews argued stridently in favor of…