Visiting a pick-your-own farm is a great experience. It’s fun and healthy for the whole family, and you get the freshest possible products. Pick-your-own also is a way to enjoy the outdoors and appreciate the working landscape. Find a farm to visit by going to vermontpickyourown.org.

The new website will help you find out what is in season and where to pick. Hosted by the Vermont Vegetable and Berry Growers Association, vermontpickyourown.org lets you search by crop and location to find what you’re looking for. The listings describe what farms have to offer and when these crops are available along with hours of operation. The descriptions are written by the farmers, and they keep them up to date.

Strawberry pick-your-own is in full swing now across the region. As the growing season progresses, a wide array of crops will become available for customers to harvest. Blueberries, raspberries and flowers come later in the summer. Apples and pumpkins arrive in early fall, and Christmas trees can be cut starting in November. Some farms offer unusual pick-your-own crops like elderberries and herbs.

Visiting farms to buy their products is a great way to invest your food dollars in the local and regional farm community. In turn, these farms spend their money locally and regionally, too.

This website was designed by farmers, University of Vermont Extension personnel and Tamarack Media Cooperative, with funding from the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets.

So check out vermontpickyourown.org today!

The Kurdish Digital Archive, launched in May, is part of the Digital Archive of the Middle East (DAME) project hosted by the UK’s University of Exeter.

The DAME project is a collaboration between the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter and the Institute for International and Area Studies at China’s Tsinghua University. 

The goal of the archive is to digitize and make accessible key Kurdish materials from the University of Exeter’s archival collections, as well as to collaborate with other Kurdish archives and institutions in fostering joint research, the sharing of archival resources, and the preservation and dissemination of Kurdish cultural heritage.

“In this project, key archival materials at the University of Exeter, including materials from the Omar Sheikhmous Archive and the Chris Kutschera Archive, were digitized and made accessible via the DAME website with metadata in English, Kurdish, and Arabic,” Farangis Ghaderi, research fellow and principal investigator of the Kurdish component of the DAME project, told Kurdistan Chronicle. 

“The project also creates a platform for connecting and collaborating with Kurdish archival centers and initiatives in Kurdistan, such as the Zheen Center for Documentation and Research and the Kurdish Heritage Institute, with whom the University of Exeter has signed memoranda of understanding.”

“Through this project we hope to share archival resources and foster joint research with other Kurdish archive initiatives and promote the preservation and dissemination of Kurdish cultural heritage,” she said. 

The archive includes the Chris Kutschera Archive, a collection of photographs compiled by the French photographer Edith Maubec and her writer husband Paul that includes thousands of images taken in the Kurdish regions of Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkiye between 1970 and the early 2000s. 

“These include intimate photographs of individuals such as Jalal Talabani, various members of the Barzani family, Sami Abdul Raman, Franso Hariri, and the poet Hajar Sharafkandi, as well as scenes from Kurdish villages, camps and cultural life, images of political meetings and delegations, and so on,” she said.

“In addition to this, the University has taken over the management of the Kurdistan Photo Library, a continually expanding digital photographic archive established by Edith Maubec and dedicated to Kurdistan and the Kurdish people.”

The following announcement was written by the Bucks County Genealogical Society:

Event Details

Sun, Jun 23, 2024 at 11:30 AM

Bristol Wharf, 100-148 Basin St, Bristol, PA, 19007

More info here

The Bucks County Genealogical Society will be participating in the Celtic Festival hosted by the Celtic Heritage Foundation! We hope you'll join us for a day of Celtic music, dance, food, crafts, vendors and special exhibits.

Visit our table at the Bristol Wharf for free genealogy guidance - whether in Bucks County or Ireland or anywhere in the world!

An English-language genealogy group founded by a Singaporean will be celebrating its first anniversary in July with about 15,000 members worldwide.

To the members of the Chinese Ancestry Research (CAR), founder Nathan Co is a tomb reader and ancestor whisperer. 

The self-taught genealogist, who is in his 50s, shares the same Chinese surname as the 17th-century war admiral Shi Lang and traces his ancestry to Fujian province in China. He started CAR as a blog and repository for findings on his own ancestry, but it has evolved as he receives more requests for help.

His Facebook group has members from more than 100 countries, with most coming from North America, Britain, Australia and New Zealand. There are also Singaporeans, who form about 10 per cent of the members, as well as people from Malaysia and the Philippines.

Some of his earliest members are from Liverpool, England.

The fintech and banking professional told The Straits Times: “Someone from Liverpool found me and the word spread among Chinese descendants as I was helping them locate some of their lost fathers and grandfathers who were deported by the British after World War II.”

That someone is Ms Kellie-Ann Flower, a boatyard owner from a community of more than 30 half-Chinese Liverpool families. The 53-year-old found CAR when she randomly typed “Chinese genealogy”.

You can read more in an article by Chin Soo Fang published in the straitstimes.com web site at: https://bit.ly/4eqfho6.

The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman. 

If you record your genealogy research efforts on paper, you might want to skip this article. However, if you use a computer program as an aid to your genealogy research, read on.

Is the genealogy program you chose a database of results, or is it a tool to help your research while that research is still a work-in-progress? Perhaps a bigger question is, "Will my genealogy program help me evaluate evidence? Or is it simply a place to record the results after I have done all the research?"

I suspect that many genealogists do not use their favorite genealogy programs to full potential. In fact, some genealogy programs make it difficult to accomplish what a computer does best: organize, filter, and retrieve information whenever it is needed. 

Many genealogy programs appear to be nothing more than a place to record your research CONCLUSIONS. Keep that word in mind for a few minutes: "conclusions." I would suggest that your genealogy program should do much, much more. Sadly, most of today's genealogy programs do not.

With many of today's genealogy programs, you must first look at all the available evidence, weigh the possibilities of inaccuracies, and then decide which facts you wish to believe. Only then, after you have done all the hard work, are you able to enter the information into many genealogy programs. However, that doesn't fulfill my needs, and I bet it does a poor job of meeting your needs as well. Sadly, many genealogists accept such limitations as normal and never stop to think about what their real needs are.

What I need is a research TOOL. I need a database that helps DURING the process of gathering and evaluating genealogy information. During this process, I often don't yet know what is accurate versus what is not. In fact, if I find contradictory information, I need a user-friendly database to collect all the possibilities, help me compare and evaluate all that evidence, and thereby help me determine what is most likely to be the truth. Computers should be great at such tasks. Sadly, most of today's genealogy programs are lacking in such capabilities. That includes the online programs (The Next Generation of Genealogical Sitebuilding, MyHeritage, FamilySearch, Ancestry.com, and others) as well as today’s Windows, Macintosh, Linux, iPad, and Android genealogy programs. 

For example, I have a great-great-grandfather who remains a mystery to me. The problem is that I have found TOO MANY records of his birth date and birth place, and the various "facts" all contradict each other. Which one is correct?

For instance, I have found two different dates of birth recorded for him and four different locations of birth in three different U.S. states. One book with no source citations claims he was born in Salisbury, Massachusetts, while my deceased aunt's handwritten notes claim he was born in Nashua, New Hampshire. The man's son applied for a marriage license in 1892 and reported his father's place of birth was Portland, Maine, while an unsourced entry in FamilySearch claims that he was born more than 100 miles further north in Corinth, Maine. 

Great-great-granddad himself confused the records still further when he talked to census enumerators. The first year he appeared in the census records, he claimed he was born in New Hampshire. In later census records, he claimed to have been born in Maine.

NOTE: Perhaps Great-great-granddad didn't talk with the enumerators himself; the enumerators may have talked with a neighbor or with family members instead. Perhaps the enumerator only talked with the bartender at the local tavern, a bartender who claimed he knew my great-great-grandfather well. Who knows? Such is the “fun” of census records.

Which claim is correct? 

In fact, I am not sure if any of them are correct; so, which one do I place in my genealogy database? Do I have to wait until I am able to determine which record is correct – if any – before I enter the information? If so, what good is that if I have to do all the evaluation first, working from memory or from hand-written notes? Shouldn't a computer program assist me in this evaluation process? Shouldn’t any good genealogy program help me keep ALL my notes and ALL my assessments as to possible accuracy? 

The remainder of this article is reserved for Plus Edition subscribers only. If you have a Plus Edition subscription, you may read the full article at: https://eogn.com/(*)-Plus-Edition-News-Articles/13370434. (A Plus Edition password is required to access that article.)

If you are not yet a Plus Edition subscriber, you can learn more about such subscriptions and even upgrade to a Plus Edition subscription immediately at https://eogn.com/page-18077. 

Want to relocate? How about leave the rat race behind?

A stunning Maine island with a population of just 90 is appealing to new residents to live there. Isle au Haut is encouraging people to settle permanently on the remote, 13 square mile island which is only accessible by boat.

But for anyone looking to escape the rat race, the idyllic community could be the perfect spot. And with adorable clapboard homes offered at below market rates there are bargains to be snapped up.

'Many people daydream about moving to a remote island village like ours: for those readers who can answer 'yes' to the above question, that daydream could very well become a reality,' the community states on its website.

A stunning Maine island with a population of just 90 is appealing to new residents to come and live there

'To sustain a vibrant year-round community, we readily welcome new year-round residents.'

Families with children who could attend the local school, as well as commercial fishermen are particularly sought after. 'Though it's not everyone's cup of tea, it's ours. And who knows, it may very well be yours,' the Isle au Haut Community Development Corporation states.

The median price for a typical home on Isle au Haut's most affordable street is around $300,000, according to Realtor. By comparison, an average home elsewhere in Maine sold for a median of $391,000 in April. However, island life is not without its challenges which include having to take a ferry to the nearest medical center or hardware store.

While a US census put the population at 92 in 2020, locals say there are just between 30 to 40 full time residents. In the summer months this swells to 300 as tourists flock to take advantage of the rugged natural beauty and biking trails.

Comment by Dick Eastman: This is more appealing to me than you know. I plan to move to Maine (or I should say “Move BACK to Maine as I was born and raised there” within a few weeks, although not to Isle au Haut.Still...

Perth, Ontario – Perth Museum is excited to announce the launch of its highly anticipated public portal, which provides a glimpse into to its collections database. This new initiative allows the public to explore some of the museum's most treasured historical artifacts from the comfort of their own home.

The portal offers users the opportunity to delve into a rich array of artifact records, meticulously curated by the museum's dedicated team. The initial offerings include exhibition themes such as the Mammoth Cheese, the Last Fatal Duel of Upper Canada, the Henry K. Wampole collection, the Mathesons, and the history Matheson House itself.

"We are thrilled to launch this public portal, a significant milestone in our department’s commitment to transparency and community engagement," said Kathryn Jamieson, Town of Perth’s Manager of Tourism and Culture. "By opening up our collections, we hope to spark a greater appreciation for the cultural heritage preserved within the walls of the Museum."

The portal, accessible at PERTH.ca/MuseumCollection, is designed to evolve and expand over time. Museum staff are committed to regularly updating the database with new additions, ensuring that users can continually discover and engage with fresh content.

"We recognize the immense value of making our collections accessible to the public," Jamieson added. " We are dedicated to ongoing efforts to enhance and enrich the user experience, aiming to ensure that everyone can explore the museum’s holdings."

As Museum Month concludes, the launch of the public portal marks a significant step forward for Perth Museum. The Museum continues to fulfill its mission to interpret and preserve inclusive and accessible stories through objects, photographs, and archival materials representing thousands of years of history in the Perth area from multiple viewpoints.

Discover the rich history of Perth and experience the new public portal firsthand by visiting PERTH.ca/MuseumCollection. Explore, learn, and connect with the stories that shaped our community.

The following is an announcement written by MyHeritage:

It’s been only three months since launch, and OldNews.com is already on its way to becoming the top website for historical newspapers from around the world. OldNews.com was warmly received by the genealogy community, and the feedback we’ve gotten has been wonderful. Several genealogists even shared the priceless discoveries they made using historical newspapers from OldNews.com. We are deeply invested in adding a broad array of newspaper content from many countries, and are likewise committed to enhancing the user experience through new features and tools. Today, we are pleased to share two additions to the search capabilities on OldNews.com that will undoubtedly improve the way you find and explore historical newspapers. 

Enhanced publication name filter

You can read more at: https://bit.ly/3Rt7r3o.

The following is a press release written by the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration:

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) seeks member nominations for the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Advisory Committee (Committee). The Committee serves as a deliberative body to study the FOIA landscape across the executive branch and advise the Archivist of the United States on potential improvements to FOIA administration.

Nominations for Committee members must be received by 5 p.m. EDT on Monday, July 15, 2024. Email nominations to the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) at foia-advisory-committee@nara.gov.

Background

The National Archives established the FOIA Advisory Committee in accordance with the United States Second Open Government National Action Plan, released on December 5, 2013. The Committee operates under the directive in FOIA, 5 U.S.C. 552(h)(2)(C), that the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) within NARA “identify procedures and methods for improving compliance” with FOIA. The Committee is governed by the provisions of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, as amended, 5 U.S.C. 10. 

NARA initially chartered the Committee on May 20, 2014. Archivist of the United States Dr. Colleen Shogan renewed the Committee's charter for a sixth term on April 26, 2024. Member appointment terms run for two years, concurrent with the Committee charter.

The 2024–2026 FOIA Advisory Committee will consist of no more than 20 individuals, including government and non-government representatives. Members are selected in accordance with the charter. Considerations when making appointments will include geographic diversity; diversity in company size or represented organization; and diversity in representations of business and industry, academic institutions, non-profit and non-governmental organizations, and other stakeholders in accordance with the charter.

Government members will include, at a minimum: 

• three FOIA professionals from Cabinet-level Departments; 
• three FOIA professionals from non-Cabinet agencies; 
• the Director of the Department of Justice’s Office of Information Policy or their designee; and 
• the Director of OGIS or their designee.

Non-governmental members will include, at a minimum:

• two individuals representing the interests of non-governmental organizations that advocate on FOIA matters; 
• one individual representing the interests of FOIA requesters who qualify for the “all other” FOIA requester fee category; 
• one individual representing the interests of requesters who qualify for the “news media” FOIA requester fee category; 
• one individual representing the interests of requesters who qualify for the “commercial” FOIA requester fee category; 
• one individual representing the interests of historians and history-related organizations; and
• one individual representing the interests of academia.

All Committee members are expected to attend a minimum of 11 public meetings during the two-year Committee term. Meetings will be held in-person or virtually. All Committee members are expected to volunteer for one or more working subcommittees that will meet at various times during the two-year term. 

The first meeting of the 2024–2026 Committee term is scheduled for Monday, September 9, 2024, at 10 a.m. ET in the William G. McGowan Theater at the National Archives Building in Washington, DC. The second meeting, which will be virtual, is scheduled for Friday, September 13, 2024, also beginning at 10 a.m. ET. Meeting notices will be published in the Federal Register.

Additional information on how to apply can be found at: www.federalregister.gov/public-inspection/2024-12398/requests-for-nominations-freedom-of-information-act-advisory-committee 

The following is a press release written by the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration:

Dr. Colleen Shogan, Archivist of the United States, approved 32 awards totaling $4,070,583 for historical records projects in 20 states. The National Archives grants program is carried out through the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC). A complete list of new grants is available online. 

The Archivist also approved two new funding opportunities designed to meet pressing fieldwide needs: Discovery and Access to Congressional Records Collections and Capacity Building for Historically Black Colleges and Universities Archives. 

Grants went to 17 projects to publish the papers of key figures such as George Washington and Frederick Douglass. 

Four projects will enhance public engagement with historical records:

• Vanport Mosaic to use audio and video histories and other materials to create an augmented reality walking tour of the lost city of Vanport, Oregon, destroyed in a 1948 flood.
• A partnership of the North Carolina American Indian Heritage Commission and the state archives to publish online at least 144 oral histories and train American Indian youth as oral historians.
• Upstander Project, Inc., in Boston to expand access to historical records relating to Indigenous peoples from the 16th through the 19th centuries held at the American Antiquarian Society and to create new history curricula.
• South Asian American Digital Archive for a nationwide participatory archiving initiative in which community members will collect, preserve, digitize, transcribe, and share 1,500 archival items online to shed light on the diverse experiences of South Asian Americans. 

An additional 11 archival projects will enhance access to collections documenting Alabama’s coal and iron labor history, the records of Automobile Quarterly documenting classic American automobiles, aviation manufacturing records at the San Diego Air and Space Museum, reparative description of 80 collections related to enslavement in Georgia, the records of African American masons in Louisiana, the photography work of Emile Bocian who documented New York’s Chinatown in the 1970s and 1980s, records related to the landmark 1974 Bronson v. Cincinnati Board of Education desegregation case, New York City’s Commission on Human Rights (1945–76), employee records from the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Relief Department, the records (1870–2015) of the Great Plains Black History Museum, and over 1,200 whaling logbooks and journals (1669–1977) at the New Bedford Whaling Museum.

A first-time NHPRC award was given to Pennsylvania State University to support the Colored Conventions  project to collect, catalog, and transcribe scattered records collections of the 79 Colored Conventions held in the Civil War era, the nation's largest movement for Black civil rights during the 19th century.