Monday, March 17, 2008

On the Radio

As I was driving through Knoxville this morning, Alison, one of the morning drive personalities on WIVK, was saying that she had recently gotten interested in learning about her family and had spent time at the Ellis Island site and had found some pretty interesting stuff, like when her grandparents had immigrated and stuff. I immediately wondered if her ancestors were Irish, and I also had a million things that I wanted to tell her--like to make sure she wrote down citations for what she was using and many of the other tips that many of us have been sharing lately on the memes about 3 things we wished we'd done when we first started. I was one of those person who actually did a decent job citing stuff--it's just that my citation were all handwritten because I started with an inadequate database program (at least by today's standards). It was either shareware or freeware so it was the right price back in those days, and I wish I'd investigated other options that were available. Later, as I was driving somewhere between Knoxville and Chattanooga, Alison was nice enough to state that she knew she was Irish because her grandparents had immigrated from there. The end of my wondering about her ethnic origin (at least the Ellis Island portion) was over. I'm glad she cleared that up before I got past the station's signal. It's really nice to hear radio personalities get excited about family history. I hope that Alison will continue her search for her ancestry. I hope others will get excited too.

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