That Thing Al Gore Invented

My favorite subject in school was math. It's the one discipline where opinion and vagueness don't count. (Well, at least until you get down into calculations of quantum physics. And maybe statistics; after all, I've played Lotto enough that the stats say I should've won by now...but I'm still broke. Sigh.)

In English class, the teacher was allowed to assert that Shakespeare was better than Gene Roddenberry, even though any moron knows that "Alas, poor Yorick" doesn't hold a candle to "He's dead, Jim," in the literary pantheon. And History teachers could only speculate as to whether wars were driven by economic or political forces. But in the math classroom, X plus 2 = Pie, and that's that.

I bring this up because I'm involved in an ongoing project to scan and archive thousands of old family photos. The last batch I did were over 100 years old, and contained images of my grandma and her parents, as well as assorted great-aunts and great-uncles. It occurred to me that other descendants from those particular ancients might be interested in seeing those photos, and the Internet would be the logical place to share them.

My highly casual research seems to indicate that the archive of choice would be Ancestry.com. I have thought about getting a membership, because it does appear that their resources would be of value in completing my genealogy charts, as well as the aforementioned archivery. But it's too expensive. Perhaps it would be worth it when I retire and can spend all day wandering around on the site. But right now, I could only get there once every 4 months or so, and I'm not wealthy enough to pay dues for months I don't use. So...no.

Snapfish lets me upload photos for free. But those don't get indexed by the great Googly Moogly. So those theoretical inquisitive relatives wouldn't be able to find the relevant pictures. I suppose that my current best option is to upload them onto my own website, with some keywords that might make them accessible to searching genealogists.

We really do live in amazing times, though. I searched Google Images for my great grandfather, Asa O. Gere, and not only found a newspaper in which he was quoted about hanging out with Abe Lincoln, but also saw the headstone of my paternal grandparents. That's some smart algorithm that can take an obscure great grampa and connect him to descendants who don't share the name.

Anyway, the point is that I am the sole source for a whole trunkful of ancient photos that I can upload to the web. This gives me the power to write some small bits of history as I see fit. If I label a picture of great uncle Homer as "Buckwheat Dharma, composer of the HotLine ringtone," his name could eventually end up as a Wikipedia entry.

I wouldn't do that, though. Everything I have ever posted on the Internet has been 100% true and accurate. I intend to continue my mission of spreading enlightenment and knowledge to the masses, and if ancestral photos are a part of that...well, I'll be sure to label them correctly. (As for great-grampy Asa hanging out with Ol' Abe, I'll just have to take his word for it. Since I have documents verifying that his parents owned a hotel in Illinois, it's certainly plausible that the top-hatted rail-splitter passed through at some point in his pre-Presidential wanderings.)

But I'm still really busy with proposals, and Tanner is in town for a visit...so uploading those photos may not happen for a while. Some of them are kinda cool, though, so I'll try to include that -- mixed in with trivia contests and griping about politics, and all the other weighty topics that we address here. Please keep checking in; I do appreciate your visits. Until then, stay warm, and have a great day!