Barbara Toby Stack's ZichronNote Columns
ZichronNote: Journal of the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society September 2023 Editor’s Column For this issue I reached across time and reanimated the remnants of my facility with InDesign, survived my first bout with covid, which bit off about a month’s editing capacity, and began the annual pruning of my vining roses when I needed outdoor branchings. I mirrored the footers, learned how to make images flow with the text, wrangled tables, and ventured into Illustrator to jazz up an image. I also got my mtDNA tested and matched a longtime SFBAJGS member (not Janice). Our new/old Treasurer Dana Kurtz recently asked me for my thoughts on strengthening our Society. I responded that just as a family with a genealogy and family history can become more confident and potentially a stronger network for having a back story, so might an organization benefit from an accessible history with recognizable actors and accomplishments. I hope ZichronNote can continue to serve such a purpose. What does a child, a future genealogist look like? They might be a curious asker and listener, a photographer, a collector, a reporter, a writer, an organizer of events, people, information. Nurture them. What does a future SFBAJGS Board member look like? Look in the mirror. When people ask me about travel, I say that I prefer time travel. We genealogists routinely reach across time to document and interpret the past and to wrap our albums and genealogies and stories in such a fashion as to send them forward into the future with good prospects. I recently bought some acid-free and lignin-free paper, and dove backward into the ZichronNote archive for facts and inspiration. The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine has been a great help in making available old versions of the SFBAJGS website. I might also mention here an invaluable finding aid for the current state of our Society’s website, and usable on almost any search engine and website is: search term(s) site:SFBAJGS.org Now it’s time to quote a Jewish philosopher: “Be Here Now.” I am enormously grateful to have found a place on the SFBAJGS team. It is a beautiful thing to have such colleagues as these. Barbara Toby Stack |
ZichronNote: Journal of the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society May 2023 Editor’s Column For this issue I lost and found my ambition to be an editor, lost and found my facility with InDesign, and lost and found my love of genealogy. It’s as if I’d been called upon to renew my vows. I drifted into genealogy from being the ten-year-old who pointed her camera at any relation who would allow it; by listening to my mother narrate her scrapbooks and guiding me though maintaining my own collections; by asking what my first personal computer could do with the 20-foot tree which came down to me via my mother’s cousin; by learning that I didn’t have to guess, that there were answers to be had, many in nearby Oakland. By asking why. And as I began to explore the worlds of genealogy, I realized that trees offered a new way of looking at my matrixed world, that I could slither up the lines of ancestry and down the byways of laterals and gain unsuspected reflections and points of view. In a world dominated by misinformation, impatience, short-term thinking and anomie, genealogy offers a path, colleagues, guidance, and the possibility of meaning. We document our discoveries and processes. We strive to pass along enduring insights, memories, trees, and collections. Let me here suggest that an article published in ZN is a great gift to the family as well as a ticket into the future. ZichronNote is held by genealogy libraries worldwide. Genealogy is a field which invites and permits so many of us to be not only seekers, but also finders and revealers. Generosity and gallantry abound. There are so many ways to participate in the team sport which is genealogy. Take some responsibility for passing along the important stuff to the curious ones in the next generations. And you get to decide what’s important! Protect the roots, even their outlines. Be a librarian. Be a shepherd of our histories. Be an inspiration to youth. Play some role. There are many to choose from. Just do something! Wishing you all continued success in genealogy, a deep and worthy education Barbara Toby Stack |