The Family History Writing Challenge - 28 Days of Motivation, Education and Tools

"I am calling on all my fellow genealogist, family historians, beginners and advanced alike, to pledge to begin to write your family history during the month of February. Welcome to The Family History Writing Challenge," writes Lynn Palermo.

Because you have a passion to turn those dry documents into exciting stories about your ancestors. You've procrastinated too long and it's time to take up the challenge. Stop procrastinating; finally commit pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. Assemble those family facts into a format someone will want to read.

Have you been writing sporadically never finishing a story?
Have you procrastinated writing your stories for too long?
Do you need that nudge to finish your stories and finally publish?

The challenge will help you create some good consistent writing habits with support from industry professionals. Stop starting and stalling, stop procrastinating, make 2013 the year you meet head on your family history writing goals.

You will find more details on the challenge at
http://familyhistorywritingchallenge.blogspot.ca/p/challenge.html#!/p/challenge.html

I just wrote a piece on my Smith ancestral line on my family blog at
http://larry-family-history.blogspot.com/2013/01/one-of-my-smith-brick-walls-has-tumbled.html

In fact, I have written several pieces on various families on my blog. These pieces aren't Pulitzer prize winners, but heck I'm sure my family doesn't mind. They are fun to compile, a chance to show off the research I've done and write up/share some history on the lives of my ancestors. I do like the blog vehicle to present family history. If you haven't tried it, I say go for it and let me know your blog address so I can post it here on this blog.

Spring TCCC Genealogy Classes

I just talked to the college a bit ago. Looks like we have a sell out for both nights at TCCC for our Spring classes. We will be meeting in the Enloe Building Room 111 (computer lab) on both nights. I look forward to seeing you all in class this next week.

Larry

Spring Genealogy Classes at Tri County Community College

As of this morning we have one seat left in our Tuesday night class and 5 seats left on our Thursday night class for the Spring semester at Tri County Community College in Peachtree, NC.

Once these are filled, that will be it and no other class on another night will be offered. Both classes are our Genealogy and Internet class which goes into using the Internet in researching your family history. If you are interested and have not signed up yet, you can contact Lisa Long at TCCC at 837-6810 and she will help you sign up.

CU all next week when classes start.

Response to Fox News Story on Prayer

A story on the FoxNews Channel -- Fox and Friends Morning Show on January 3 has caused quite a stir within the ranks of the Daughters of the American Revolution. You can read about this on the NSDAR Archibald D. Murphey chapter blog by clicking here.

New Technology Will Make DNA Sequencing Affordable

By Jennifer Welsh and the Business Insider website

Ever since the human genome was first sequenced in 2003, researchers have been striving to make this laborious task cheaper and easier.

Genomes, and the DNA they are made of, are critically important to every piece of life on Earth. Differences in the sequence of DNA letters that make up an organism's genome are what makes a fir tree a fir tree and not a platypus. These DNA letters form genes — which are translated by cellular machinery to make proteins and other products that make up the majority of structures in a cell, and therefore the majority of things in a person, animal, plant or even bacteria.

Studying how different DNA codes translate to different proteins is important in clinical settings, as well as in research laboratories in almost every different sector of scientific research.

A company called Oxford Nanopore Technologies is about to release a set of technologies that could make reading this code quicker and easier. They are called the GridION and MinION systems, and could herald in a next generation of DNA sequencing on the cheap.

You can read the rest of this story at: http://www.businessinsider.com/this-new-technology-will-make-genome-sequencing-affordable-2012-8#ixzz2H0qr83RF