Where is the Power of the People?

The movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington frustrates me every time I watch it. It frustrates me because Mr. Smith loses, as do his supporters. His filibuster fails and the kids trying to get the truth out via his little newspaper and the people that try to march in support are assaulted and stopped cold. Public opinion is completely against him. The power of "the people" FAILS. Truth fails. The system fails. It is only because one, corrupt, powerful man, Senator Joseph Paine, at the VERY end, suddenly has a change of heart and tries to kill himself and then shouts a confession to the whole corruption scheme that Smith is supposedly vindicated - though we never see that supposed vindication.

The people lose. The entrenched men who control the media and the message, the rich men who control the money, they defeat Smith at every turn, and the power of the truth, in the hands of people, does NOT win against them. 

Donald Trump has committed high crimes and misdemeanors, and continues to do so. He has betrayed the people of the USA over and over, both legally and ethically. Citizens are taken off the streets of Portland by unidentified federal agents, his agents use chemical agents against peaceful protesters (something Sadam Hussein did to Iraqis), public lands are being given to oil companies, he is becoming richer and richer in violation of the Foreign Emoluments Clause in the USA Constitution, he ignores court rulings, and families with LEGAL immigrants live in fear of speaking out, since green cards and even citizenship has been arbitrarily canceled. Children are in cages, some die, and families are separated. He undertakes actions to benefit Russia, like ordering troops out of Germany. He coddles Nazis. He has killed people and permanently disabled people through his inaction regarding the current pandemic. And no matter how many well-researched media reports reveal his corruption, no matter how often he is investigated, no matter how many times a court rules against him, he walks away, unscathed and even more empowered. Nothing has stopped him. 

Our system has failed. We are supposed to have checks and balances that prevent a President from being a dictator, from rewarding himself and his friends financially, and from our country sliding into fascism. Those checks and balances have FAILED. 

And we have almost six more months of this, at least... and maybe more, if the election is canceled - you saw Trump's tweet today, right?

Our country is in a perilous situation. It absolutely will continue to get worse. And there's no Senator Joseph Paine that is going to have a sudden, high-profile, well-publicized change of heart and save us all.

What now?

My neighbors deserve to live

I live two doors down, and across the street, from residential homes for adults with intellectual disabilities. There is one staff person on-site at all times. Each resident has their own room, has to pick out their clothes and dress for the day, has to do their own laundry (though some need assistance) and has keep their own room tidy. Some also have a night when they are responsible for cooking the meal for the residents, with assistance, and some have jobs: dishwashing in a restaurant or picking up debris at a hotel with large grounds. And still others have a school or program at a nonprofit they attend most days of the week.

Two of the residents are deaf. One is legally blind. Most are over 50. At least one resident had cancer. I'm pretty sure each of them has some kind of medical condition, like diabetes or high blood pressure. Most battle with being overweight.

The residents tend to live most of their adult lives in these homes. Outside of work or a program, if they have such, they watch TV, walk around the neighborhood, take mass transit to go to Wal-mart or McDonald's (favorite destinations of both), or sit on my front wall and watch traffic or watch me do yard work. Before COVID-19, two residents loved to put my garbage bins out on garbage day, or bring them in, or push my yard waste bin from one end of the yard to another as I mowed.

One resident loves all things Disney, especially Mickey Mouse. She's always wearing a hat or t-shirt with something related to Disney on it. She also loves to get her nails done.

One resident has never left the house in the seven years I've lived in my home. She also is the person who always answers the front door and she has flashing Christmas lights in her bedroom, and has them on very late into the evening.

One resident wears pink. She will also stand out in the front yard chirping when she's frustrated about something, like not being accompanied to the store for a soda (she's the one resident who isn't allowed to walk anywhere by herself).

One resident rides his bike everywhere, and since he's not allowed to smoke on the grounds on the residence, sits on my wall under some bamboo to smoke.

One resident loves cars, trucks and motorcycles, and though he has no idea what mechanical terms mean, will ask you, "Is that a v-6 or a v-8? Fuel injection? I bet it gets great gas mileage." When I ask him what's up, he says, "Nuttin'", and I get to respond, "Nut-n-honey?"

One resident has been my shadow for years, walking my dog with me every afternoon. For a couple of years, in Spring and Summer and Fall, we would ride our bikes together exactly 10 blocks most evenings. He loves cops shows. He loves going to church. He loves collecting bottles and returning them for money. He loves the cat that he's not supposed to have (it stays outdoors). He loves being judgemental about people that do not pick up their dog's poop.

All of these residents, and more, are my neighbors. They are my friends. I like them. But even if I didn't like them, even if I didn't know them, even if they didn't enrich my life in various ways, I would never challenge the idea that they do not have lives worth living.

Yet, I hear people say that thousands upon thousands of deaths from COVID-19 are inevitable and that these people I have just profiled for you, and thousands like them, and all who are medically vulnerable to the disease, are expendable. These people should die so you can go to Chili's. They should die so that your kids can play soccer. They should die so you can go to a bar. They should die so you can have steak made by someone else. They should die so you don't have to wear a mask.

Donal Trump told reporters during a press conference that while the death toll is “bad,” and “the numbers are going to increase with time,” we’re "going to be opening our country up for business, because our country was meant to be open."

In other words: people must die so that my hotels can stay open.

Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick told Tucker Carlson of Fox News, "No one reached out to me and said, ‘As a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren?’" But if they had? "If that is the exchange, I’m all in," Patrick said. He continued: "That doesn’t make me noble or brave or anything like that. I just think there are lots of grandparents out there in this country, like me, I have six grandchildren, that what we all care about and what we love more than anything are those children. And I want to live smart and see through this, but I don’t want the whole country to be sacrificed…I’ve talked to hundreds of people, Tucker, and just in the last week, making calls all the time, and everyone says pretty much the same thing. That we can’t lose our whole country, we’re having an economic collapse. I’m also a small businessman, I understand it. And I talk with business people all the time, Tucker. My heart is lifted tonight by what I heard the president say because we can do more than one thing at a time, we can do two things. So my message is let’s get back to work, let’s get back to living. Let’s be smart about it and those of us who are 70-plus, we’ll take care of ourselves. But don’t sacrifice the country, don’t do that, don’t ruin this great America."

I am happy to sacrifice for my community - ALL of the community. I am happy to wear a mask, to socially-distance, to give up all sorts of conveniences, if that's going to keep my neighbors alive.

But I am not happy - nor willing - to sacrifice neighbors because I am inconvenienced. 

Coronavirus may never go away, even with a vaccine

Even after a vaccine is discovered and deployed, the coronavirus will likely remain for decades to come, circulating among the world’s population. Experts call such diseases endemic — stubbornly resisting efforts to stamp them out. Think measles, HIV, chickenpox. There are already four endemic coronaviruses that circulate continuously, causing the common cold. But COVID-19 kills and permanently disables. The USA desperately needs a road map for the trillions of dollars needed, and a fixed navigational point to replace our nation's current, chaotic state-by-state patchwork strategy.

It's what a May 27, 2020 Washington Post article is saying. In fact, it's what a February 25, 2020 article in The Atlantic said as well (James Hamblin's articles are worth reading, regularly).

On our way back from Baja, California, Mexico, I knew things were going to be different for months, not for just weeks. People saying "this is only for two weeks" - I couldn't understand those comments at all. All you had to do was spend 15 minutes a day reading the news and that was obvious.

Within a week of being home, at the end of March, I wondered why there wasn't a nationwide lockdown declared through July 5th, with a massive mobilization for widespread, frequent testing - it seemed obvious to me that that was what was needed in order for schools to be open in the Fall.

And everything I've read since well before COVID-19 has said that while face masks don't do much to protect you, but they protect others FROM you and whatever you might be carrying - and the February article referenced earlier said that most people don't get sick.

In April, I asked repeatedly on Twitter where the social media messages targeting 20 somethings and 30 somethings were, why no one was targeting that age group specifically. I never got an answer.

I just don't get it. We all had this information. Why are we pretending we didn't? Why is everyone acting shocked now that our world may be different?

Not that I like it. I hate it. But I'm furious at the state of denial the world seems to be in. And I'm furious that it's very likely I'll pay the price for it. 😡🤬

I finally saw Hamilton

I've finally seen Hamilton. Like many thousands of others, I downloaded Disney Plus to my phone (to my cheap little android phone that continues to over-perform) and used Chromecast to watch it on my TV. I made an event of it, watching it with no other distractions - I love to single focus on a movie or TV event (which is why I still love going to the movies - or, I did before COVID-19...).

It's nice to finally be a part of the "in" club that has seen it.

This was absolutely the right call by Disney, to make this freely available. They deserve nothing but praise for this gift to the nation, a gift we really needed right now.

I was probably never going to get to see Hamilton live with professional performers, and no offense to high schools or community theaters, but if I couldn't see it first with a professional cast, I just didn't want to see it at all. 

It is a brilliant piece, no question. The amount of thought and years of work put into this astounds me. I am entranced with the idea of someone - Lin-Manuel Miranda - being so inspired by a thought, and idea, a biography, that they spend YEARS to create such a work. To have a muse like that... I'm jealous. I crave to be so inspired.

I'm also surprised that this play has struck such a chord with so many. While I didn't fall in love with it the way so many, many of my friends have (and that's FINE - to each his own), I have been touched by how much people have loved it, especially young people. I've been there, with other pieces, and I know what that thrill is like - it got me through college and made my brief stints in New York City back in the late 1980s and in 1990 utterly magical.

I read a lot of gushing from people on social media who fell in love with Hamilton off-Broadway, but that gushing felt very different than the explosion of love for it in 2016 coincided with the anger people felt about the rise of Donald Trump and all that he stood for. The way it was valued off-broadway and broadway was, from this observer, very different. But I kept trying to keep my distance from seeing or reading in-depth about it - I wanted to have my own experience and feelings when I watched it.

And my own feelings about Hamilton:

• I love the celebration of a person who is, truly, self-made, someone who, by every definition now, is "at-risk" and "disadvantaged", raised by a single parent, who truly had to make his own way in the world - and did so, in a hugely important way.
• I was astounded at the complexity of the female characters AND the complexity of their music. In fact, that's when I teared up - that's the moment when I became emotionally involved. 
• The cast was mind-blowingly talented. Just astounding in every way. And casting all the principal American characters with Black Americans, Latinos and Asians brought an ownership to the story and themes that's long overdue. 
• It was fascinating to see a musical celebrating Hamilton, Jefferson and Washington at a time when so many in the USA are questioning or lionization of those three - and so many others - and tearing down statues not only of Confederate traitors but the so-called "founding fathers." Miranda wrote about these figures just a decade ago, before this became a national, fevered conversation. Were he writing now, perhaps he would have written about Jefferson and Washington in particular VERY differently. But no piece can be absolutely comprehensive, no piece can represent every point of view and explore every theme, and I have no criticism of him whatsoever regarding these characterizations. In fact, I was glad at the very stark reminder about Washington staunchly refusing to seek another term and what that act meant for the future of our nation - it's a message that is more timely now than at any time Hamilton was performed live on Broadway. 
• Yes, there is a lot of important history that gets left out. I can't believe people want to focus on that. Some of the same people who praise the cross-cultural casting - which, technically, is historically inaccurate - complain about the historical inaccuracies. And they complain at what got left out. Folks, I deeply admire John Adams. I have often wondered what would have happened had he gotten the second term he absolutely deserved. The story of John and Abigail Adams is one that I think should be detailed in every American history class. John Adams believed while he was president that Hamilton explored the idea of a coup in order to remove him. They were NOT friends. Am I upset that none of this gets mentioned in Hamilton? Nope. Am I upset that, historically, the playwright is on Team Hamilton when I am clearly on Team Adams? No! That would be ridiculous. Stop being ridiculous. It's a work of ART. Like all art, it reflects the views of the artist. If you can't get past that, you are going to be miserable not only in theatres, but in art museums.  
• Gonna say it: it didn't have as much rap as I was expecting and for that I am grateful. And I was SO glad the show was subtitled because I wouldn't have understood a lot of it otherwise. Hi, I'm old.    

So, there are my thoughts on Hamilton. I celebrate it for what it is, I'm not going to criticize it for what it isn't, and while I'm not enthralled by it the way so many are, I sure am enthralled by it's brilliance, which cannot be denied, and how it's inspired so many, especially young people. More of this, please.

Also see Fathers & theaters.

DNA tests are fun... but they aren't YOU

"When the Human Genome Project was completed in 2003 it was confirmed that the 'three billion base pairs of genetic letters in humans [are] 99.9 per cent identical in every person.' There are, of course, genetic differences that occur more frequently in certain populations – lactose intolerance, for example, is more common in people from East Asia. And valuable research has explored the health significance of genetic variation. But there is simply no reason to think that your genes tell you something significant about your emotional connection to a particular cultural heritage. There isn’t a lederhosen gene. More important, we shouldn’t forget that the concept of 'race' is a biological fiction. The crude racial categories that we use today – black, white, Asian, etc. – were first formulated in 1735 by the Swedish scientist and master classifier Carl Linnaeus. While his racial categories have remained remarkably resilient to scientific debunking, there is almost universal agreement within the science community that they are largely biologically meaningless... Your genes are only part of the infinitely complex puzzle that makes 'you uniquely you.' If you feel a special connection to lederhosen, rock the lederhosen. No genes required."

-- from Timothy Caulfield in The Globe and Mail on May 2, 2018.

another blog about Gone with the Wind

Do I love the movie Gone With the Wind? Yes.
Do I think it's racist and can really be upsetting? ABSOLUTELY!

I love old movies. I watch at least a snippet of a movie on TCM on almost every day. I have watched old movies since I discovered them on what was then something oh-so-new - cable TV - back in 1975 or so. As a child, then a teen, then an adult, I watched the same movies over and over. I wrote an essay on Clark Gable when I was in the 10th grade.

I love old movies. I love the stories they tell, the pictures they present, the time capsules they present, the places they take me, and the history they present - and misrepresent.

I also admit that there are some classic movies I don't love. In fact, there are a few I hate. I can't watch anything where animals are portrayed as being harmed - or are actually harmed. I have a lot of problems with certain portrayals of violence that are just too real to me. And while I can get through most classic movies despite their racism and sexism, I loathe The Philadelphia Story, with its message to women: men fool around, put up with it, shut up, let them come home when their "finished." For whatever reason, it's my limit. And I've had friends get mad at me for not liking The Philadelphia Story - they see it as a personal indictment. Look, if you like it, that's your thing. But please respect that it makes my blood boil.

I blogged a while back about watching Birth of a Nation. Yup, the whole, long thing. And in that blog, I noted:

Birth of a Nation has NO OTHER PURPOSE than inspiring hate and feelings of superiority by white Americans, and to say that the USA should give states the right to subjugate black Americans. It wasn't made primarily to tell a love story, or a survival story, or a horror story, or any kind of story: it was made solely to say horrific things about one race of people, and to claim it was best for the people of that race to be enslaved by another race of people, who the movie says are superior intellectually, emotionally, culturally and spiritually. It promotes a passionate, irrational hatred of black Americans - and it makes the Ku Klux Klan the heroes. That's its message, first and foremost.

I'm glad I watched it, but I won't be watching it again. And I know that it pioneered also sorts of film techniques. So did Triumph of the Will. In praising the technique, the horror of the product has to be acknowledged EVERY time for movies like those.

Gone With the Wind was written by a racist. Yes, I know Margaret Mitchell sent money regularly to Morehouse College and her donations enabled perhaps 70 to 80 black men to become physicians. That's nice. But she did it in secret: it did not become public knowledge until many decades after her death. And I don't at all take it as a sign that she wasn't a racist - I know plenty of people back in Kentucky who donate to the college funds of black students, or voted for President Obama, and also have racist beliefs. The book Gone With the Wind itself should be enough to say Margaret Mitchell was a racist - even if you don't think the portrayals of black characters are racist (I do), you have to admit that the characters are little more than scenery, and in a book about life before, during and after the Civil War, that's absolutely RACIST, to think those stories can be entirely ignored. But let me go farther in proving the point: according to several sources, when Margaret Mitchell discovered that she was in a history class at Smith College in the 1910s with a black student, the story is that Mitchell demanded to change classes, or have the student change classes. The teacher refused, and Mitchell said she would go to the dean, or even the institution's president, if necessary, to get it changed. The black student was moved. Mitchell's mother later argued that professor Dorothy Ware flunked her even though the dean approved the transfer. According to the book Southern Women at the Seven Sister Colleges: Feminist Values and Social Activism, 1875-1915 by Joan Marie Johnson (University of Georgia Press, 2010):

Margaret called Ware a hypocrite, asking if Ware "had ever undressed and nursed a Negro woman or sat on a drunk Negro man's head to keep him from being shot by the police." Mitchell's mother blamed the incident on the fact that Ware's family had been to the South to teach blacks and had not been well received by white southerners. Margaret grounder her refusal to take a class with an African American - an act that suggested social equality - in her familiarity with blacks, an ease she believed was only possible whiten a white supremacist society. 

Gone With the Wind was part of Mitchell's determination to repaint the South as lovingly paternalistic to enslaved people, and you just can't call that anything but racist.

So, how can I love the movie Gone With the Wind? Because while I see the racism and the desperate effort in the movie to reinforce a romantic view of a world where people were enslaved, I also see a movie about a woman who goes from a flighty, vindictive girl with no depth to a fierce woman determined not just to survive war, but to thrive in its aftermath. I'm astounded by the idea of how she uses the only thing she has - her charm and wits - to get what she wants for herself and her family. I also identify with putting all of your energy into something that, you ultimately realize, is a really bad idea. And, yeah, I love the actors and the film techniques. And Butterfly McQueen (read her story, if you haven't ever).

In short, I am able to "stand" the racism in Gone with the Wind the same way so many, many men I know are able to "stand" the horrific sexism of The Godfather and The Godfather II.

If you don't want to hear me talk about how strong, resilient and strategic Scarlett is as a heroine, fine - 'cause I sure as hell don't want to hear you talk about how sexy and virile you find violent rapist Stanley Kowalski is in Streetcar Names Desire, mmmkay?

Do I think HBO Max is right to stop showing Gone With the Wind? I don't know. It's a private company and its senior staff made a business decision not to be associated with that movie anymore. I admit that I would love to see what other movies they have chosen not to show. But it's their decision, they make money, they don't want to show this movie anymore, okay. 

I would be upset if TCM stopped showing it. I would, in fact, be outraged. That's what TCM is for - to show old movies, many of them full of painful stereotypes but all of them worth viewing, at least once. TCM shows a number of movies I find deeply disturbing, including Gabriel Over the White House, a 1933 pro-fascist political fantasy. And most Woody Allen movies, which imagine New York City spaces with no black Americans at all and whose women characters are, for the most part, nothing but cringe-worthy. And, of course, Birth of a Nation and The Philadelphia Story. But I want them to keep showing those. I even want them to keep showing Streetcar Named Desire, despite that I cannot watch it anymore. I really enjoy their introductions that put such films in context and make it clear, "Yeah, there are big problems with some portrayals/themes in this movie..." Keep doing that. Even if I don't aways agree with what's said - keep doing that.

And as I noted in that earlier blog I referenced: I was on the light rail coming home from Portland in 2013, and was eavesdropping on a group of African women, I think from Tanzania, and a group of Indian women (from India) talking about movies they love, including Gone With the Wind. They went on and on about why. They loved it like I do. No mention of its racism was ever made - I kept listening for it, but it never happened. Sometimes I wonder if people in other countries, even Africans, understand the horrors of slavery in the Americas... but I kind of loved that they loved the film without experiencing any racist subtext. The way women are expected to enjoy so many films without getting upset about the sexism.

Anyway, see you at the movies. 

tips for using ancestry.com

New to Ancestry.com? Or don't have much info on your tree there and want more, but you're confused and overwhelmed on how to proceed?

Below are things I wish I had known when I first started using it. Knowing this would have made my search go much more smoothly, without haven't to go back and correct things that completely and utterly messed up my trees a few times. I would have gotten information more quickly about my ancestors and I would have been less confused by some of the things from the DNA tests.

And here's something I knew well before I began, and it's why no revelations have been earth-shattering to me: I believe that your family is that which raised ya and claims ya. I believe that the people you claim as your family is YOUR choice. The love you feel for the people you call family in your life is REAL, and no DNA test will ever change that. Whomever you love and call your parents, your grandparents, your siblings, your aunts and uncles, your cousins - that love is real. and DNA doesn't change it. DNA is not your full identity.

Interviews:

Interview your parents, every aunt and uncle - your parent's siblings - and your grandparents, and your great-aunts and great uncles - your grandparent's siblings. And your great-grandparents if they are still around.

• Ask each person for their full name. Don't rely on one person giving you that name - many of your family members don't know the actual, full name of even their closest relatives, even though they think they do. 
• Ask each person for their birth date.
• Ask each person for the birth date and place and, if known, the death date and place, of every ancestor and the siblings of those ancestors. 

Take the information you have, as much as you could gather, and THEN start your tree or trees on the platform. Some people do one tree for their maternal line and one for the paternal line. I wish I had. Having one big tree gets really confusing.

Do not just input direct ancestors; put in siblings of ancestors - aunts and uncles, great-aunts and uncles, etc. That's going to be important later, trust me.

I also put in cousins' names - again, it helps tremendously later with getting accurate information about ancestors. You will often discover, as months pass, that distant cousins you've never met have traced your family back several generations. But you also have to be careful - many have inaccurate info in their trees.

Census Data.

Once you have put in all the information about relatives that you have gathered from family, start confirming the information with Census data. The most recent Census data available is from the 1950s (the 1960s will be released in 2032). Find each family member that was alive in 1949 in the 1950s Census and link that information to family members.

Then look through 1940s and do the same. Then the 1930s. Read the information carefully and make CERTAIN it really is your relative that is listed in Census data you find (you do this by looking at who they are married to, according to the Census, their parents, their children, etc.).

Remember that Census data from this period was recorded orally; unfamiliar accents and pronunciations caused misspellings. Also, people did not always cooperate with Census takers. Residents were not always at home at the time a Census taker came and were therefore not counted, or neighbors sometimes gave erroneous information to the Census taker about an absent family. Black families in particular got left out of the Census. 

The 1870 Census is the first after the Civil War and was the first to list all African Americans by name. It is often the first official record of a surname for former slaves. The date and place of birth listed for former slaves and their families in this Census may be a gateway for searching (by state, county, and enumeration district) the slave or free schedules in 1850 and 1860, which do NOT name slaves but lists their numbers.

Hints:

Do not accept every green leaf - every hint - without carefully reading it over. No matter how unique you think a name is, don't assume, "Hey, that's part of my tree!" For instance, you are going to find out that there are families from the same county in 1860 that have almost all the same names, yet, they are NOT the same family!

Don't count on any name, birth date (even just the year) or marriage date being accurate just because a family member gave you the information. You want every date verified with a census report, a marriage certificate, a draft card, a birth certificate or other official document. That's not always possible, of course, but it will help you when you need to defend this info (and you will need to defend it if you let other family read it over).

Search:

Once you have filled out your tree back just three generations - through your great-grandparents, and you have accepted a few hints for them (after CAREFULLY reviewing them), do searches on each of those family members. For instance, go to one of your grandparent's page and click on "Search on Ancestry" (under the "Sources" column). You will need to adjust some search fields to get accurate results. Look through those results carefully. If you find census reports, draft cards and other people's family trees that you think might be a match to your ancestor, click on them, read them CAREFULLY, and if the names, places and dates line up, absolutely link it to your ancestor.

When you are done with your grandparents, then try your great-grandparents. After that, you are going to get a wave of new hints. Be oh-so-careful before you accept any of them as you fill in your tree more, especially ancestor names before 1850 - you might want to hold off on those for a full year, to make sure your other information is solid. 

When you have checked every hint for your ancestors through your great grandparents, you are ready to start carefully filling in the info for their parents, and so on. But go SLOWLY and carefully - don't just start clicking "possible father" and "possible mother" for everyone!

Correct info:

As you progress over weeks and months, you are going to look under, say, a great-great grandparent's page and see their list of kids and realize there are a LOT of duplicate records - three girls all named Daisy Brown are obviously all the same person. Merge records that are obvious duplicates - how to do that is in the upper right-hand corner of a record's screen, under "tools."

Fill out the stories:

Add a narrative to the LifeStory feature. Ancestry automatically generates one, but you can edit it, adding in information that family has given you, like where someone worked, where they served in the military, why they named a child whatever they did, or what job is listed on the census.

DNA Test:

Don't do the DNA test until you have filled out your family tree back at least through your grandparents - more is better. I think getting information for ancestors born back to 1900 is a great goal before you do the DNA test. The DNA test isn't going to tell you much unless you can see common ancestors with DNA matches, so you need your tree to go back at least three generations, in my opinion.

When you get your DNA test, go to the Ancestry web site and click on "DNA matches." Then click on "common ancestors." The resulting list are all the people that also took the DNA test and are both genetically linked to you and who have traced their family tree back far enough to show common ancestors.

I suggest at this point you create some color-coded groups and put your DNA matches with common ancestors in those groups. Ideally, the groups would be these (you can use family names rather than these titles):

• Maternal Grandmother's Father
• Maternal Grandmother's Mother
• Maternal Grandfather's Father
• Maternal Grandfather's Mother
• Paternal Grandfather's Father
• Paternal Grandfather's Mother
• Paternal Grandmother's Father
• Paternal Grandmother's Mother

Then put every DNA match that has a common ancestor into the right group. And don't be surprised if some folks go in more than one group! This will take many hours, at least, but it is SO worth it - it's going to make your searches so, so much easier and it's going to make confirming hints so much easier. It took me more than a month to get every DNA match with a common ancestor into the right group.

You will need to generate this common ancestry list every other month and update your groups, because it changes as more people take the DNA test and more people fill out their family trees. I do it a few times a year.

Then, when you have all your DNA matches that have a common ancestry in groups, go back to the DNA matches pages so you can see everyone that's a DNA match. Scroll down to the first person that shows up in the list that you don't have a common ancestor with - and, therefore, you don't have them in a group yet. Click on that person. Then click on "shared DNA matches." You will see all the people that share DNA with both you and the person you have clicked on. Because you have put so many people in groups, and the groups are color-coded, you should be able to tell very quickly how the person is kin to you - Maternal Grandmother's Father's family, for instance - even though you haven't yet identified a common ancestor. This is absolutely my FAVORITE part of the Ancestry.com experience. Once I do this, if the person has an unlinked public tree, I look at it and, often, I can figure out how we are related (they've usually got the common ancestor misspelled).

But it's also going to be the case that you are going to click on someone and none of your shared matches are color-coded. And if that person is a close match - 80 cM or more - you are going to be particularly confused and intrigued, because they aren't a distant relative. In those cases, first, click on their unlinked family tree, if they have such available, and look to see if one of your relatives is there but under a differently-spelled name. If there is nothing that looks familiar, put them in a category of their own - I call it "intrigue." If that group starts to get larger and larger over time and a common ancestor does not emerge then, indeed, you have some family intrigue - and I'll deal with that in the next section. 

Intrigue and Differences in Family Lore:

Your family doesn't always have the right information about your family recorded. When you discover that the family has gotten a name wrong, or a marriage date wrong, or the number of children wrong, don't be shocked that you get pushback from family members about the correction - no one likes to be wrong, even about something as simple as the spelling of a name.

You may find out something a bit more serious, that your family might not want to know about. You might find that someone listed as the sister of an ancestor was, in fact, the mother of that ancestor, and the people that you have listed as that ancestor's parents are, in fact, that person's grandparents. I found that in looking at Census records for a great, great grandparent.

You may find bigamy - an ancestor wasn't actually widowed but, in fact, her husband ran off, left her, and started a new family elsewhere.  

Remember that, just like now, there were disagreements in families and sometimes a son or daughter moved away and never spoke to their parents or siblings again. 

I have a grandparent that, biologically, is not my grandparent - I knew this before I started tracing my history. And, yet, SURPRISE, the DNA test revealed we have a common ancestor on both that grandparent's maternal and paternal line! I am, in fact, biologically related to that grandparent!

I also have two other groups that I use to categorize my DNA matches. One of them is for DNA matches that I know relate to an ancestral line I don't choose to claim as my heritage - I'm related biologically, but they aren't my family. Even though, on paper, we don't have a common ancestor, because I haven't claimed that person as my ancestor, I do know who that ancestor is and, therefore, it's been easy to put all those DNA matches into a category that I can ignore.

The other group is my "intrigue" group. We are all related by DNA but I can't figure out how yet. Nothing really close - no half-siblings, no first cousins. So it's some sort of intrigue three or four generations back.

I haven't had an earth-shattering shock from the DNA test - some surprises from a few generations back, but nothing huge. But lots of people take the DNA test and find half brothers and sisters, or that they aren't biologically related to a parent, or they find out they do not share DNA with a first cousin or second cousin that also took the test - and that means someone they know and love was either adopted in the family tree or someone, maybe you, weren't told the truth about your parentage. If you make such a discovery of yourself or another family member, you have a lot of reflecting to do about whether or not to ask your parents or grandparents what's up, whether to reach out to those new, close biological relatives, etc. Know that it could be horribly painful, something they never wanted to talk about. Tread carefully. Read about other people that have done this so you know what you are in for.

Contacting other DNA matches. 

I don't do this with total strangers unless I know which family line we're matched through (maternal grandfather's mom, paternal grandmother's dad, etc.), either because they have claimed a common ancestor or we share enough DNA matches that I can tell. In that case, I write only if they don't share their family tree and I'd like for them to consider sharing it with me, or to encourage them to look at my tree to see if they see anything in common.

I have written some people because we have a common ancestor and are closely related - I consider that anything above 80 cM to be a close match. Just to say hi.

Otherwise, I don't contact anyone.

Final thoughts: 

First cousins share a grandparent (two generations). Second cousins share a great-grandparent (three generations). Third cousins share a great-great-grandparent (four generations). Keep that in mind when you see a DNA match but aren't sure how. 

Each person has 

• 4 grandparents.
• 8 great grandparents.
• 16 2nd great grandparents.
• 32 3rd great grandparents.
• 64 4th great grandparents.
• 128 5th great grandparents.
• 256 6th great grandparents.

Keep your expectations realistic about how much you can really find out!

Other blogs about my ancestry search:

Ancestry drama

Uncle Minnie

Rethinking "indigenous" & DNA results