Orlando FL: Collect, save, organize memories, Sept. 28

"How to collect, save and organize your precious memories," with Tom Hirsch, is the next program of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Orlando on Tuesday, September 28.

The program begins at 1pm; the meeting is free and open to the public, in the Goldman Social Hall, Congregation of Reform Judaism, Orland.

JCSCO member Tom Hirsch will sponsor an "on-line" demo:

-- To demonstrate some websites, bookmarking, and organizing the websites in your web browser; organizing, and saving files, and backing up those files.

-- Provide information on doing serious research.

-- Demonstrate digitally photographing items to include in family history, and photostitching to combine photos into a single photo or record.

-- Available Freeware

For more information, click here.

Family Tree Magazine: New issue

The March 2010 issue of Family Tree Magazine provides another great issue for researchers, providing many practical resources and articles.

It went on sale January 5 and, if you have a subscription, you're already enjoying it.

Diane Haddad covered the new issue in her Genealogy Insider post.

--Assess your genealogical fitness level with a “Shaping Up” survey. Find links to classes, websites, books and organizations to help everyone, from beginners to experts, brush up on skills or learn new ones.

--Learn about your ancestors with a social history of their times, such as childbirth practices in our grandmothers' and great-grandmothers' days, in"We Deliver for You." There's information on birth, hospital and midwives' records.

--"Flirting With Disaster” will help you understand about disasters our ancestors lived through ... or didn't. Find sources to victims' names.

--"Go Go Gadgets" tells researchers what to look for in seven technology tools - a practical article comparing popular models for each tool.

--There's a Toolkit Tutorial on Twitter and its new vocabulary for social networking.

--How to keep your family connected via a family website with the MyHeritage Web Guide, detailing how to use a tree on MyHeritage.com to do research and connect with family.

Other articles include Puerto Rican root tracing, color photography and sources to help African-American researchers.

Sacramento: Converting old slides to CD, Aug. 17

"Converting 35mm slides to electronic format" will be presented by Ron Young at the next meeting of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Sacramento on Monday, August 17.

The event starts at 7pm, at the Albert Einstein Residence Center, 1935 Wright St., Sacramento.

Young, a member of the Nevada County Genealogical Society, specializes in computer application to genealogy projects and has written many columns for local genealogy newsletters.

He will present four different methods to convert old slides and display them without the use of a projector. He will cover how color shift in old slides can be corrected. On one CD, 400-600 slides can be stored. It can be played on your TV or computer, and you can easily make copies for other family members.

For more information about the JGS of Sacramento, click on its website, or send an email.

HP offers free online classes

Are you interested in short-term free online classes in a variety of subjects, including software tutorials, business information and more?

HP's Learning Center offers many classes; see them all here. I have taken several of them, including PhotoShop courses, and found them informative, convenient and the right price (free!).

Go to the list of classes and click on any title of interest. Find a section on "What you'll learn" (listing major points covered), a preview of the first lesson. The "Lessons" section also gives class-by-class details. The "Instructor" section provides his/her expertise. Each class has an interactive message board, related courses and students' class reviews. Some classes offer quizzes and assignments which serve to underscore important points.

I found the Photoshop course very helpful, even though I had bought several books. It was good to be able to ask questions about some difficult points and receive quick feedback.

Digital Photography:

Adobe Photoshop CS4; Beginner's guide to saving, printing, sharing photographs; Beyond basics: fundamental photography techniques; Quick Lessons (on various topics); Common photo problems and how to solve them; Photo restoration basics; Scanning Basics; Touch up digital photos.

Home Office:

Adobe Dreamweaver CS3; Develop your business: marketing color scheme; Create and print marketing materials; Get started with LightScribe; Go wireless; Laptop PCs: basic troubleshooting, repair; Laptop PCs: troubleshooting wireless problems; Mastering email: keep your inbox clutterfree; Microsoft Excel 2007; Microsoft Word 2007; Networking 101; Online social networking; Practical WiFi security; Print wirelessly; Setting up a wireless home network; Simple backup strategies; Streamline digital media.

Microsoft Office and Adobe:

Many courses in Acrobat, Dreamweaver, InDesign, Photoshop, Microsoft (Excel, Powerpoint, Word, etc.

Business Basics:

Building your first website (with podcast), Marketing writing tips and more.

For information on how classes are organized, see the FAQ.

Sign up for new classes as they are announced. That's how I learned about creating PDFs and photo restoration.

While many classes are geared to beginners, there are also clearly noted intermediate and advanced classes.

Learn something new or brush up on a rusty skill. Use this opportunity to discover whether you'd like to take a subject to the next level at a local community college or university adult education division.

We seem to be wired into thinking about learning as soon as we hit August.

Everyone's going back to school!

India: Hebrew calligraphy

Tracing the Tribe recently received a note from Thoufeek Zakriya, 20, a hospitality management student who lives in Cochin, India, which is famous for its ancient Jewish community.

Thoufeek creates beautiful Hebrew calligraphy illustrated in his blog My Calligraphy.

What is even more interesting is that he is an Indian Muslim, whose calligraphy skills include Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, Syrian, Samaritan and English.

Take a look at Thoufeek's blog and see some of his work in the slide show link, as well as the postings. In the slide show is an image of the foundation stone of the synagogue in Kochangadi. Built in 1344, it is the oldest synagogue in Cochin.

Through Thoufeek's blog, I was reminded of photographer Jono David who photographs Jewish sites around the world. His amazing catalog of images is at the Jewish Photo Library.

Jono's project is called HaChayim HaYehudim Jewish Photo Library. Its important mission:

To contribute to the preservation of Jewish communities of the world by documenting them photographically. Each photograph gives vision to community life today while safeguarding memories for tomorrow.

Tracing the Tribe will do a separate post on Jono David's work.

Home again: A Civil War photograph

More than a century ago, the lack of technology didn't stop this Civil War photo from finding the family of a soldier who died at Gettysburg.

Forensic photography, newspaper history and the Civil War make for a good story. Filmmaker Errol Morris posted this in the Zoom section of the New York Times today. "Whose Father Was He?" is the first of a five-part series appearing on consecutive days.

Morris is a filmmaker whose "The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara" won the Academy Award for 2004's best documentary feature. He also directed "Gates of Heaven," "The Thin Blue Line," "Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control,""A Brief History of Time" and "Standard Operating Procedure."

A dead soldier was found at Gettysburg with no identification except an early photograph (called an ambrotype) showing three small children. Tavern keeper Benjamin Schriver in Graeffenburg, 13 miles west of Gettysburg, somehow acquired it. Philadelphia physician Dr. J. Francis Bourns, on his way to treat the wounded, stopped in when his wagon broke down. He convinced the tavern-keeper to give him the photograph to try to locate the soldier's family.

Back home, the doctor had several photographers copy it and ordered hundreds of copies printed in carte de visite format (similar to an index card) . Back then, newspapers could not print photographs and there was no way of easily and widely transmitting this photo.

Three months after the photo was found, the important Philadelphia Inquirer printed the story on October 19, 1863, under the headline, "Whose Father Was He?"

After the battle of Gettysburg, a Union soldier was found in a secluded spot on the field, where, wounded, he had laid himself down to die. In his hands, tightly clasped, was an ambrotype containing the portraits of three small children, and upon this picture his eyes, set in death, rested. The last object upon which the dying father looked was the image of his children, and as he silently gazed upon them his soul passed away. How touching! how solemn! What pen can describe the emotions of this patriot-father as he gazed upon these children, so soon to be made orphans! Wounded and alone, the din of battle still sounding in his ears, he lies down to die. His last thoughts and prayers are for his family. He has finished his work on earth; his last battle has been fought; he has freely given his life to his country; and now, while his life’s blood is ebbing, he clasps in his hands the image of his children, and, commending them to the God of the fatherless, rests his last lingering look upon them.

When, after the battle, the dead were being buried, this soldier was thus found. The ambrotype was taken from his embrace, and since been sent to this city for recognition. Nothing else was found upon his person by which he might be identified. His grave has been marked, however, so that if by any means this ambrotype will lead to his recognition he can be disinterred. This picture is now in the possession of Dr. Bourns, No. 1104 Spring Garden [Street], of this city, who can be called upon or addressed in reference to it. The children, two boys and a girl, are, apparently, nine, seven and five years of age, the boys being respectively the oldest and youngest of the three. The youngest boy is sitting in a high chair, and on each side of him are his brother and sister. The eldest boy’s jacket is made from the same material as his sister’s dress. These are the most prominent features of the group. It is earnestly desired that all the papers in the country will draw attention to the discovery of this picture and its attendant circumstances, so that, if possible, the family of the dead hero may come into possession of it. Of what inestimable value it will be to these children, proving, as it does, that the last thoughts of their dying father was for them, and them only.

The best the newspaper could do was the word picture in bold above.

The article includes close-ups of the cloth in the two garments showing they are the same.

Writes Morris:

In the traditional detective story, someone asks around: Do you know the identity (or the name) of the people in this photograph? Here, the identification is not made on the basis of recognizing the people from a photograph. But by first “translating” the photograph into words and sentences. The ages of the children were estimated — as it turns out not far from the truth — but the telling details were their respective positions in the photograph, the fact that there were three of them, and the shirt and dress worn by the brother and sister flanking the brother in the middle were similar.

At that time, writes Morris, family photos were not common. It involved a trip to a studio or waited for a traveling photographer to come by.

Today, we are able to seamlessly integrate words and pictures — captions and photographs — but the Humiston story allows us to see how this was done beforethere were means to easily put the two together in a newspaper or broadsheet.

In Portville, NY, a woman saw the American Presbyterian story about the photo. She wrote to Bourns and requested a copy.

When she opened the letter from Philadelphia in late November of 1863, Philinda Humiston knew her husband, Amos Humiston, the father of her three children — Franklin, Alice and Frederick — was dead.

Mark H. Dunkelman wrote “Gettysburg’s Unknown Soldier,” to try to recover the man's identity.

Read the complete story at the link above. I'm looking forward to reading the next installment.

Tel Aviv: 1,800 rare photographs found

In Tel Aviv, Liselotte Grschebina worked as a photographer for more than 20 years. In 1957, she stopped and hid the photographs. In 2000, years after she died, the images were discovered. The Israel Museum is now holding an exhibit on her work. The story was in Haaretz.

Eight years ago, some 1,800 rare photographs taken by Liselotte Grschebina were gathering dust in several crates that for decades had sat in a storage space above the ceiling of her apartment on 18 Bialik Street in Tel Aviv. The negatives had been thrown into the trash and only the pictures remained - most of them which she had printed in her small kitchen, which was not usually used for cooking, as her only son, Benny Grschebina, testifies.

The German-born photographer died in 1994 at the age of 86, unknown to researchers of Land of Israel photography. She had already abandoned her profession in 1957, said her son this week. He doesn't know what made her stop taking pictures, but says that from then on she devoted her time to working in the clinic of her husband Jacob, a well-known gynecologist in the city.

"After my parents died, everything was transferred to me in cartons," says Grschebina. He didn't know what to do with them until a photography student, Itai Bar Yosef, heard about the find by chance and contacted the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. "The people in the museum's photography department chose the pictures they wanted. The family pictures remained with me."

The purchase of the collection was funded by Dov and Rachel Gottsman and donated to the museum in 2000. In 2003, some images were in the "Pioneers of Photography in Israel," and a few years ago, some were in an exhibit in Berlin.

On October 10, "Woman with a Camera," an exhibit solely devoted to Grschebina's work will open on October 10, at Ticho House in Jerusalem, under Israel Museum auspices. Included are 95 photos from 1930s-1940s.

Not much is known about Grschebina, who arrived in Palestine in 1934. Some photos appeared in newspapers of that period and in a 1938 calendar. Her son is quoted:

"Mother was not a tough woman, but she was a Yekke [a German Jew]," says her son. "Yekkes don't open blogs and don't write revealing diaries, and certainly don't pour out their hearts in their letters. The Yekkes lived among themselves and didn't open up even to their children. Therefore, my knowledge of her and her biography, and of the period in which she worked as a photographer, is quite limited."

The story carries an interview with her son, Benny, who says she wouldn't have imagined her work exhibited in a museum and didn't promote or preserve her work. In Germany, she studied photography at the highest standards.

Although the story says not much is known about Grschebina, there is quite a lot of genealogically-relevant information:

Born in May 1908 in Karlsruhe, Germany Liselotte Billigheimer as the daughter of wine merchant Todros-Otto Billigheimer. He was drafted into the Germany Army in WWI and killed, leaving his widow Rosa to raise two daughters, Liselotte and Hilde.

At 17, Liselotte began to study applied graphics and figurative painting in Karlsruhe. When she finished her studies she moved to Stuttgart and studied advertising photography at the academy, which was part of the drawing and design track in the graphics department. In 1929, she began to teach advertising photography in the academy, but was dismissed two years later.

In Karlsruhe, Liselotte met her Russian-Jewish husband, Jacob Grschebina, born in Tblisi. His parents moved to Danzig where he studied medicine. In Karlsruhe he was pathologist and the couple married in 1932.

In March 1934, they arrived in Palestine and settled in Tel Aviv, which was then full of German Jewish refugees. Among them were many with art world connections, including photographers. Only some of them made a living. There were so many photographers that the city of Tel Aviv limited the number of photographer's permits. Archival research, noted in the story, revealed dozens of letters from photographers asking for the revocation of rival photographers' permits.

This story is also interesting from a sociological view, as it explains why young women studied this craft in Germany: a profession and practical art that was relatively easy to learn and to work in. According to a researcher, the very first series of Swiss tourist photos, preceding photographed postcards, was created by a woman. More than 100 of Berlin's 600 photography studios in the early 1930s were run by women. The story goes on to detail her attempt to open a photography school; the permit was denied.

The story talks about her career in Israel, her associations and work, cameras and projectors, her friends and colleagues. It presents how refugees lived, worked and ate.

Read this fascinating complete story at the link above.