SNGF -- Celebrate and Participate In National Memory Day

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: 

It's Saturday Night again - 

Time for some more Genealogy Fun!!

Our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings, is to: 

1)  March 21 is National Memory Day.  How can we celebrate, and participate, in the day?  I asked AI tool ChatGPT how, and it suggested "Capture a Memory Before Its Gone;" "Rescue and Identify Old Photos;" "Record an Oral History;" "Organize One Small Thing;" "Share a Story with Family;" and/or "Visit or Virtually Honor Ancestors."

2)  For SNGF this week, do one or more of those tasks or some other related tasks of your choosing.

[Thank you to Genea-blogger Janice Sellers for telling Randy about the National Memory Day and suggesting this topic.]

Here's mine:

Surprisingly, this is a tough challenge. I did capture a memory this week in the 52 Ancestors challenge, writing about my childhood home. Check out “130Paulson Lane: A Family Home that the Freeway Took.”

I did not rescue old photos, I had them tucked away, but pulled them out recently and began to scan them at the FamilySearch Center. These are of my grandmother’s family. Some are identified on the back, but I identified them in the file name.

I began this week to organize something, but it might not be considered a small thing. I am organizing my blog posts in Airtable so I can find blog post subjects faster. I have written 280 posts on Mam-ma’s Southern Family and 1445 posts on My Trails into the Past. Whenever I want to write a post following a theme from 52 Ancestors or Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, I have to search the blogs online for any possible duplication of the theme. Being able to sort or filter the posts in Airtable will be very helpful. I am testing it out now with just 44 posts. I record my posts now in Excel, but each year is a different tab, and it is not easy to search through it all. Plus, I did not write the subject.

I created a csv file of the current 2026 posts and uploaded to Airtable. I am adding a few new columns to make this database more useful such as full names of people mentioned, key words, and the category of the posts. I will be able to create different views depending on what I want, such as all the posts that mention my Nana or my Mam-ma, or all the posts that mention my childhood home. Once I get this Airtable set up, I will continue with present day posts as I write them and fill in a few old ones each day until they are all done. This is a great way to review all the posts I have written about specific people. Perhaps I can combine them in some way to write their biography to share with family.

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