Skip to main content

Skeletons


 


Sometimes you just take things out of context. It’s easy when you’re driving down the road, watching programs and adverts on television, or scrolling on social media.

Here’s what I saw:



Conference Keeper:  Jan 11 (VIRTUAL) Researching and Writing about Skeletons in the Family History Closet, with Diana Elder presented by Howard County Genealogy Society (MD) (Free) #genealogy

Here’s how my brain processed it: Columbia has skeletons in its closet.

Yikes.

Why? Well, first, because I have the current CA Board controversy on the brain, and second, because the logo of the Howard County Genealogical Society puts Columbia’s iconic People Tree statue front and center. It must be about Columbia, right? (Does HHC know they’re using that image?)

The Howard County Genealogy Society was organized in 1976 by a group of people with a common goal:  researching and preserving their family histories. Today, with a roster of over one hundred members, and growing, HCGS continues its tradition of promoting genealogy and family history research and encouraging the affiliation of people interested in the pursuit of their ancestral heritage. 

I checked their website and couldn’t find any more elaborate origin story that would explain the use of the People Tree. You know, something like:

In the back room of the old library branch in the Wilde Like Village Center, Bert Smith held the very first meeting of the Howard County Genealogical Society. Smith, recently retired from General Electric, and wife Betty (president of the Wilde Lake Garden Club) gathered together a group of seven eager amateur genealogists.*

Most local groups that have some kind of historical emphasis don’t focus on Columbia. You’re more likely to see images of old train stations, old churches, old bridges, old schools - - you get the picture.

Putting all of that aside, the topic of the presentation is, for genealogists, a legitimate one. If you’ve ever watched Finding Your Roots you know that undertaking this process may result in learning things about one’s ancestors that may be unsavory or deeply disappointing.

We all have them: ancestor stories that tend to be hushed up: illegitimate children, desertion, abuse, mental illness, etc. How do we discover the facts and what do we do when our family history research uncovers something unexpected? Recording these kinds of details can be difficult.

I have personal experience of this. The last person to write the Jackson family history, several generations back, went through all available information and compiled a narrative which omitted every single problematic issue. The end result is squeaky clean. And incomplete.

I do think it’s important to know where we came from and the truth of our own history, whether in personal genealogical research or through the kind of painstaking work being done by Marlena Jareaux and Howard County Lynching and Reconciliation. Skeletons in the closet are scary only so long as we are afraid to face them and invest all our energy in keeping them in the dark.

Meanwhile, back to the current Columbia Association difficulties. It was brought to my attention by a helpful reader that there’s more to the CA Board Work Session Agenda than was shared with Oakland Mills residents by CA Rep Virginia Thomas. 

Work Session Topics

(a) Audit Committee Recommendations to the Board of Directors regarding Governance and Ethics Matters

(b) Analysis of Draft General Plan - Focus on Possible BOD Statement

(c) Lake Elkhorn Stream Restoration Project

(d) CA Votes in Village Elections

You may remember from yesterday’s post that item (a) - - Audit Committee Recommendations to the Board of Directors regarding Governance and Ethics Matters - - was not included in Ms. Thomas’s email. I wonder why? Perhaps she didn’t think it was of interest to constituents, or too unimportant to share. Or perhaps it was problematic in some way and Ms. Thomas chose to omit it.

Since I’m in the dark about this topic I’m going to reach out to Ms. Thomas and ask her to shed some light on it for me.

The meeting of the Howard County Genealogical Society is today, January 11th, from 7 to 8:30 pm via Zoom. 

The work session of the CA Board is tomorrow, January 12th, beginning at 7 pm. You can follow along on their livestream. 



*Completely fictitious. Just made it up for my own amusement.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Teacher Gifts

Today is the last day of school before the Winter Break. It’s a good time to remember the far-reaching nature of our public school system. You may not have children. You may have sent your children to independent schools. It matters not. You will be impacted one way or another. Yesterday I read a long thread on Facebook about several waves of illness in the schools right now. There’s influenza A and norovirus, I believe. And of course there’s COVID. Apparently in some individual schools the rate of illness is high enough for school admin to notify parents.  When I was little the acceptable holiday gift for a teacher was one of those lovely floral handkerchief squares. (I don’t know what it was for male teachers. They were rare in my elementary years.) These days the range of teacher gifts is wider and I have fond memories of Target gift cards which I have written about before. I think it’s safe to say that giving one’s teacher Influenza, norovirus, or COVID is not the ideal holiday...
1 comment
Read more

F ³: We Are Not Entitled

  A college student went missing. His family and friends were distraught. The community was encouraged to be on the lookout and spread the word.  Days passed.  They must have been agonizing days for those who cared about the missing student. Thoughts that foul play had been involved cannot have been far from their thoughts.  Then, at last, the student was found. Alive. The news was shared with the public.  So. Much. Relief. A family had been reunited with their child. Even though we know that life is complicated, I think it is okay to accept this as a happy ending and leave it at that.  But the world of social media says no. For every expression of joy at the news came questions and even judgement. It became clear to me that some folks felt entitled to an explanation. They wanted the backstory. It’s as though they felt that, by enlisting the help of the public on social media, the authorities now owed them all the details. Television dramas often weave curr...
2 comments
Read more

Separate and Unequal

  Remember “Separate but equal”? Remember how that really meant that Black schools languished in  broken-down buildings without adequate heat or toilet facilities, with cast-off, ragged learning materials, underfunded and largely ignored? The Supreme Court struck that down in 1954. The evidence was clear that separate was not equal. Plessy v Ferguson had led to - - no, endorsed - - deeply unequal schooling and opportunities. We tend to think of Brown v Board as being purely about racial integration. It was not.  It was about the logical consequences of segregation. And they were not, not, not equal. The ruling in 1954 didn’t transform public education for non-whites into a land of milk and honey by any means. But it articulated some essential truths in a way that made including everyone a legal precedent which could be relied upon and built upon. It was better than what came before it but it rested upon unsteady ground. It did not necessarily change the hearts or minds ...
1 comment
Read more