The following is a press release written by Vivid-Pix:

Family Matters, a National Genealogical Society and Vivid-Pix Community Outreach Program

National Genealogical Society logo

Vivid-Pix logo

RICHMOND, VA, UNITED STATES , May 31, 2023 -- Today the National Genealogical Society (NGS) and Vivid-Pix announced the launch of an equipment and software lending service for their Family Matters Community Engagement Program. The Family Matters program combines NGS’s vast membership with ready-to-use solutions from Vivid-Pix and NGS to assist families and loved ones with their family history pursuits.

Public interest in family history is at an all-time high. Yet, an imbalance exists between that interest and the public’s understanding of genealogy and family history research and tools. Family Matters is designed to increase family history education and programming by inviting new audiences through the doors of family history societies, libraries, archives, and museums.

The Family Matters Community Outreach Toolkit combines the Vivid-Pix Memory Station™ (scanning hardware, and software that improves images and captures stories), with turnkey marketing and education materials. “The Toolkit provides organizations with the tools needed to connect with the public and attract new audiences to the wonderful world of family history,” said Rick Voight, CEO of Vivid-Pix. 

“The opportunities for genealogy and family history organizations to expand public programming are unlimited,” said Matt Menashes, CAE, executive director of NGS. “With this equipment, software, and educational programming, genealogy organizations can open the world of family history to new audiences including youth groups, community centers, senior living facilities, and local business organizations.”

“Recording and sharing our life stories become more important as we mature. In addition to providing education to assist all individuals in sharing their stories, we are particularly pleased that genealogy organizations can help teach caregivers how to use family history and photo reminiscence to support loved ones with memory loss,” said Voight. “Organizations can provide programs that teach family and professional caregivers how to use photo reminiscence to improve connectedness and quality of life for loved ones experiencing cognitive loss.”

NGS member organizations can borrow equipment via an online request form. NGS will ship the Vivid-Pix Memory Station™ directly to those organizations. They only need to pay for return shipping. Vivid-Pix will supply software and training materials via download. NGS organization members can participate in this program immediately and begin to plan for when and how to take advantage of this new partnership.

Information and video about the program are available online. 

About Vivid-Pix
By inventing and harnessing technologies, Vivid-Pix helps individuals, families, friends, and organizations with their most treasured memories. Vivid-Pix solutions help family historians and caregivers use Photo Reminiscence Therapy to assist persons experiencing cognitive decline and dementia. Vivid-Pix patented software has been sold in over 120 countries, improving old, faded photos and documents.

About NGS
Founded in 1903, the National Genealogical Society (NGS) inspires, connects, and leads the family history community by fostering collaboration and best practices in advocacy, education, preservation, and research. We enable people, cultures, and organizations to discover the past and create a lasting legacy. The Falls Church, Virginia, based nonprofit is the premier national society for everyone, from the beginner to the most advanced family historian.

MyHeritage has announced the launch of Reimagine, a groundbreaking new mobile app for family photos. Reimagine harnesses the power of MyHeritage’s world-class AI technologies for improving historical photos, and boasts a powerful photo scanner that enables high-speed scanning of entire album pages. Reimagine is available on both iOS and Android.

The first step to digitally preserving family photos stored in photo albums and shoe boxes is to scan them. To meet this need, Reimagine is a one-stop-shop where you can scan, improve, and share your photos, and indulge that sweet sense of nostalgia. Reimagine comes with a state-of-the-art, multi-page scanner feature developed by MyHeritage’s AI team. This enables quick and easy scanning of entire album pages or multiple standalone photos in a single tap. The scanner then uses cutting-edge, cloud-based AI technology to automatically detect the individual photos and crop them, saving hours of work traditionally required with other scanners. Scanned photos are saved in an album within the app and backed up to an account on MyHeritage.

In just a few taps, an old, damaged black and white photo can be scanned and beautifully restored, enhanced, colorized, and even animated. The improved photos, or their original scanned versions, can easily be shared with family and friends on social media, or through your family site on MyHeritage.

Why Reimagine?

Many users who first encountered MyHeritage thanks to features like Deep Nostalgia™ and MyHeritage In Color™ expressed interest in a photo-centric app with a more affordable, photos-only subscription.

Reimagine meets this need, enabling you to preserve, improve, and share family photos, all from a standalone photo app. Its sleek design and functionality make the app easy to use, and with its best-in-class scanner, storage capacity, and AI photo enhancement tools, Reimagine is the ideal home for cherished family photos old and new. For details about Reimagine’s affordable subscription plans, see the section on cost below.

Reimagine currently supports 11 languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Danish, Portuguese (Brazil), Swedish, Norwegian, Italian, and Finnish. Additional languages will be added in the future.

Download Reimagine from the App Store or Google Play.

Integration with MyHeritage

If you already have a MyHeritage account, log in to Reimagine using the same email and password that you use on MyHeritage. Users who manage multiple family sites can direct their photos to the family site of their choice, or create a new, dedicated family site for Reimagine, if they prefer to keep the photos separate from their MyHeritage family site.

You can read a lot more about Reimagine in the MyHeritage Blog at: https://blog.myheritage.com/2023/05/introducing-reimagine-an-innovative-photo-app-by-myheritage/. 

Over the past 13 years, Tim Taylor and Christine Dennison have scoured the ocean floor using autonomous underwater robots to discover and document the wrecks of seven US submarines lost in World War II. But their most recent discovery, of which they are releasing video footage and photos in anticipation of Memorial Day, has a particularly personal resonance.

The USS Mannert L. Abele, which the explorers found 4,500 feet under the Pacific Ocean and 81 miles from the nearest landmass, was the first American ship sunk by an unusual type of rocket-powered Japanese kamikaze plane. Part of Taylor’s interest in undertaking the search stemmed from knowing that his father had cheated death when an explosive-laden Japanese kamikaze plane bounced off the bulwark of his own ship near the coast of Okinawa.

“He was on the deck and had come out to get supplies,” Taylor recounted to me. “As he opened the hatch, the kamikaze was heading right at him. His buddy on the 40-millimeter gun struck it.” Not everyone was so lucky. Taylor pointed out that “We lost over 12,000 men at Okinawa.”

Taylor and Dennison are ensuring that more families of those lost know where their loved ones’ deep-water graves reside. They are racing against time as underwater development threatens many of these wrecks. On Memorial Day, some people remember history, but Taylor and Dennison do them one better by fighting to preserve it.

Budget constraints hinder the Navy from devoting resources to undertaking these kinds of searches, according to Taylor, and his team is showing how private groups can fill the gap. While it’s understandable that the Pentagon doesn’t devote more funding to recovering historic remains given its needs for the present and future, it’s also unfortunate that such important work doesn’t have stronger public support.

For Taylor and Dennison, it’s important to preserve the history of these wrecks and respect the sanctity of those entombed within them. And as the ranks of those alive during World War II have shrunk, it’s vital to give those who remain closure while it’s still possible.

You can read more in an article by Sébastien Roblin published in the CNN web site at: https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/27/opinions/memorial-day-weekend-technology-honor-wwii-dead-kamikazes-roblin/index.html. 

NOTE: This article is not about any of the "normal" topics of this newsletter: genealogy, history, current affairs, DNA, and related topics. However, it is about a new technology that may improve the lives of millions of people. Therefore, I suggest this should be publicized everywhere to make people aware of this new product.

If you have hearing impairments or someone you know has hearing impairments, ranging from a slight hearing loss to total deafness, you will be interested in a new product from Xander.tech.

The company's soon-to-be-released product is a set of smart glasses that display real-time captions of what other people are saying. You no longer will be left out of conversations: technology can save the day! All conversations held in front of the wearer will appear as text in the eyeglasses worn by that wearer.

The glasses are lightweight, comfortable, and feel natural. The caption display is inobtrusive, allowing the wearer to follow conversations while looking directly at the speaker and surroundings. XanderGlasses allow people who are hard of hearing (or completely deaf) to clearly understand who is speaking to them, whether at home, work, or in a noisy public venue. This helps people feel more confident and relaxed during conversations.

XanderGlasses are not yet available. However, the company has shown prototypes and has created a waiting list for people who wish to purchase the glasses as soon as they become available. You can learn more and even sign up for the waiting list at: https://www.xander.tech/xanderglasses.

Google recently introduced what I believe is a revolutionary feature: Magic Eraser. However, it is powerful enough to cause some questionable "damage" to older family photographs.

Sometimes things get in the way of the perfect photo — like an accidental photobomb or power lines you didn’t notice. They can distract from the photo, pulling attention from what you were really trying to capture. 

Removing distractions from photos isn’t an impossible task, but it typically requires sophisticated editing tools, know-how and time.

However, Google has released software that automates the task, called Magic Eraser. It helps you remove those distractions in just a few taps right in Google Photos. And you’re not limited to newly captured photos — you can clean up all your photos, even those taken years ago and laster saved as digital images. 

Magic Eraser can detect distractions in your photos, like people in the background, power lines and power poles, and suggest what you might want to remove. Then, you can choose whether to erase them all at once or tap to remove them one by one.

HOWEVER, Rebecca Onion has published an article that suggests you should use this new-found power with great caution. She uses photographs taken in the 1980s (long before digital photos came on the scene) to illustrate her concerns.

Rebecca writes, "People’s relationship to photographs, and to strangers, is not the same as it was when I was young. Because we have smartphones, and thousands of jpegs taken at each individual event to pick from, why wouldn’t we pick the frames with no randos in them for our albums, before even considering Magic Eraser?"

I am not sure I agree with Rebecca Onion’s views but her comments will make me pause and consider her comments before deleting the images of people who “photobombed” my older photos. 

You can read her article at: https://slate.com/human-interest/2023/05/magic-eraser-google-photos-family-album.html

The following is a press release from the U.S. Census Bureau:

Today, the U.S. Census Bureau released the 2020 Census Demographic Profile and Demographic and Housing Characteristics File (DHC). These products provide the next round of data available from the 2020 Census, adding more detail to the population counts and basic demographic and housing statistics previously released for the purposes of congressional apportionmentand legislative redistricting.

“These statistics belong to the American people. Thank you for your participation in the census and encouraging your friends, neighbors and community to respond. We’re giving these data back to you now to understand and benefit your community,” Census Bureau Director Robert L. Santos said. “2020 Census data will serve as an important baseline for years to come for our annual surveys and population estimates, and in the community planning and funding decisions taking place around the nation.”

The newly released 2020 Census data products go beyond the data already available on the total population, the voting-age (age 18 and older) population, race, Hispanic origin and housing occupancy. This release contains more detailed age groups, the first data available on sex from the 2020 Census, information on families and households, and more detail on housing. They also show the intersection of many of these topics by race and Hispanic origin.

The Demographic Profile provides an overview of the topics covered in the 2020 Census in one, easy-to-reference table for geographies down to the tract level. The DHC provides more detailed tables, many down to the block level. The Demographic Profile and many of the DHC tables are also available for ZIP Code Tabulation Areas — generalized representations of U.S. Postal Service ZIP Code service routes.

Data Highlights by Topic

Age and Sex

The 2020 Census shows the following about the nation’s age and sex composition:

• • Between 2010 and 2020, median age in the U.S. grew older due to an increase in the older population.
• • In 2020, there were 55.8 million people age 65 and over in the United States (16.8% of the total population), up 38.6% from 40.3 million in 2010. This growth primarily reflected the aging baby boom cohort.
  • Centenarians grew 50% since 2010, the fastest recent census-to-census percent change for that age group.
  • For people age 70 and over, the male population experienced a larger growth rate between 2010 and 2020 (42.2%) than females (29.5%).
• • In 1970, after all the Baby Boomers (1946-1964) had been born, half of the population was younger than 28.1 years old. By 2020, the median age was 38.8, an increase of more than 10 years over the past five decades.
• • In 2020, the population age 45 and over accounted for 42% of the total population, up from 27% in 1940, the census before the Baby Boom began.
  • The share of the population age 65 and over more than doubled between 1940 and 2020, from less than 7% to nearly 17%.
• • In 2020, there were over 73.1 million children under age 18 (22.1% of the total U.S. population), down 1.4% from 74.2 million in 2010. The biggest decline was among the under-5 age group, whose share of the population dropped by 8.9% or 1.8 million. This finding is consistent with the decline in the total number of births and the birth rate for the United States since 2015.
  • Among the states in 2020:
• • Fourteen states had a median age over 40, twice as many as in 2010.
  • Twenty-five states had higher shares of population age 65 and older than Florida had in 2010 (17.3%), when it had the highest share of any state. In 2020, Maine had the highest share at 21.8%, followed by Florida (21.2%) and Vermont (20.6%).
• • Utah and Maine were the youngest and oldest states (as they were in 2010). Nearly half of Utah’s population was under age 31 while more than half of Maine’s population was over age 45.
  • In 2020, females continued to comprise a slightly larger share (50.9%) of the total U.S. population — 168.8 million compared with almost 162.7 million males (49.1%). Females have outnumbered males since the 1950 Census. Before that, males outnumbered females from the nation’s earliest colonial times.
  • Alaska had the highest sex ratio of any state in 2020, with 108.4 males per 100 females, followed by North Dakota with 104.5 males per 100 females.
• • The five states with the lowest sex ratios in 2020 were Delaware (with 92.9 males per 100 females), Maryland (92.9), Mississippi (93.4), Alabama (93.4), and South Carolina (93.5).
  • In 2020, no state in the South or Northeast had a sex ratio above 100; all these states had more females than males.
• • In 2020, the total dependency ratio in the United States was 63.6 children under age 18 and adults age 65 and older for every 100 working-age people ages 18 to 64. The total dependency ratio provides a rough approximation of economic dependency in a population by dividing the dependent-age populations (children and adults age 65 and older, who are not generally expected to work) by the working-age population (ages 18 to 64).
  • Ten of the 12 states with the highest total dependency ratios in 2020 were in the West and Midwest. South Dakota and Idaho had the nation’s highest total dependency ratios of any state (73.0 and 72.4, respectively).

The public can explore these age and sex statistics in two data visualizations:

A series of downloadable ranking tables related to each visualization is also available.

More information about age and sex is also available in the America Counts stories: An Aging U.S. Population With Fewer Children in 2020 and 2020 Census: 1 in 6 People in the United States Were 65 and Over, and two briefs: Age and Sex Composition: 2020 and The Older Population: 2020.

The full press release is much longer. You can read ther entire thing at: https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2023/2020-census-demographic-profile-and-dhc.html. 

The following announcement was written by the folks at Fold3:

We have some exciting news to share. Ancestry^® and the National Genealogical Society^® have recently finalized a contract with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to resume digitization of the War of 1812 Pension Files. Like so many other things, this ongoing project came to a screeching halt during the closure of NARA due to COVID‑19.

This massive undertaking to digitize some 7.2 million pages in this collection began in 2010. So far, we’ve completed 83% of these records. We’re just finishing up the final files for surnames beginning with ‘R’ and will move on to files with surnames beginning with the letters ‘Sj to U’ next. These digitized records are available to view for free on Fold3^®.

You can read more at: https://blog.fold3.com/war-of-1812-pension-files-digitization-moves-forward

Here is a list of all of this week's articles, all of them available here at https://eogn.com:     

From the MyHeritage Blog:

We’re excited to announce that MyHeritage DNA is now on sale for the lowest price of the year so far!

For a limited time, MyHeritage DNA kits are available for a remarkable $39!

Get your MyHeritage DNA kit today

Our DNA kits allow you to dive deeper into your family history, connect with relatives you never knew existed, and discover your ethnic origins from around the globe. All it takes is a simple cheek swab to unlock a world of genealogical exploration and connection.

A MyHeritage DNA test is not just a purchase; it’s an investment. It’s a chance to gain a better understanding of who you are and where you come from. The stories you’ll uncover could reconnect lost branches of your family tree, allowing you to grow roots in places you never imagined.

What does the test provide? It offers an extensive ethnicity estimate, revealing your ethnic origins from across 2,114 geographic regions — more than any other DNA company. You also gain access to our DNA Matching service. This feature allows you to connect with relatives based on shared DNA.

Remember, this offer won’t last forever! The Hot DNA Sale is a limited-time event, giving you a special chance to learn about your heritage at a remarkably affordable price. 

Whether you’ve been thinking about exploring your genealogy for a while, or if the idea has just sparked your interest, there’s no better time than now.

Don’t miss this sizzling deal. Take advantage of our Hot DNA Sale and begin your journey of discovery.

Wisconsin is celebrating its 175th anniversary Monday, a day that will feature modest celebrations and an official acknowledgement of the state’s “countless contributions to the fabric of the nation and the world” in agriculture, industry, art and culture.

A proclamation signed by Gov. Tony Evers honors the state’s admission to the Union May 29, 1848, while celebrating the Indigenous tribes that have occupied the land “since time immemorial.”

“Through times of adversity and prosperity, Wisconsinites are helpers by nature, often going above and beyond to serve their communities, look out for their neighbors, and exemplify the state’s shared values of kindness, empathy, respect, and compassion, earning them the ‘Midwest Nice’ reputation that is cherished by visitors and residents alike,” Evers said in the proclamation.

Little else is planned to celebrate the anniversary. Perhaps that’s what you get when you’re celebrating a demisemiseptcentennial — a fancy term for a 175th anniversary — and not a more commonly recognized birthday like a centennial or a sesquicentennial.

The Wisconsin Historical Society has launched a new website celebrating a list of Wisconsin “visionaries, changemakers and storytellers.” And the first territorial capital of Wisconsin in Belmont, where legislators gathered for 47 days in 1836.

You can read more in an article by Alexander Shur published in the madison.com web site at: https://tinyurl.com/5n7un65n.