Every discipline has
it. Skaters have school figures;
musicians have scales and etudes; football players drill and watch films, take ballet class & yoga,
visual artists do endless color studies & sketches, and so on, and so on.
And
what does the grunt work get you? A
trained body, a trained eye, or ear, and always a trained and disciplined mind,
which controls all the rest. Grunt work
gives you mastery of the medium, so that you can forget the "how you do
it" and just do.
CS Lewis said that
as long as you are counting 1,2,3 you are not dancing.
So should
genealogy be able to avoid grunt work?
It can't. Genealogical research
is a discipline, more of the mind than the body, (though being able to sit long
and continue to concentrate certainly counts on the body side.)
Genealogical scales & etudes also includes organizing the information (and often includes
figuring how to organize the info for "this particular
situation"). Information is so much fun to collect, and
revel in, and amaze your friends and family, and do the "look Ma!" thing, but that is only half. The second part is doing what
needs be done to integrate each wonderful morsel into the web of a long-ago
life, and that often (dare I say usually) includes grunt work.
Currently I am
working on a large lineage project. Some
of my notes go back to 1998; that's a long time in dog years, or research
years, and a long time to work on one project.
Yes, it is my family, and so that time-line can be tolerated, but not
forever. It's now time to tie up all the
ends. For this particular project that
includes getting every piece of information in chronological order to
facilitate (great word, huh..) discerning all the cross connections, as in
"How old was Billy (baby of
the family) when oldest sister Helen married and moved to Oregon?"
With some of the
information in my files that process has to move back one step (or two or
three) because before I get to analyze the data found, I get to play detective
to discover the date and source of … say "great aunt Sally's" obit. I have a copy of the obit, which was torn out
of the middle of a newspaper page, Xeroxed and sent around. There is no date on the page, printed or
written. There is no header to offer the
name of the paper. Am I glad to have the
obit? Absolutely. Do I want (do I need)
more than her name, survived by, and what cemetery gets her? Absolutely -- both to satisfy my curiosity,
and to meet current research standards.
This happens, and rarely solicits a "Look, Ma!" More likely a grump, and definitely Grunt
Work.
Do you remember your
university orientation meeting in the huge hall with a row of profs on
stage? Do you remember the comment that
"for every hour in class, you should expect to spend 4 hours on
homework"? Ditto for
"Genealogy Done Right." Read
"researching" rather than "in class," and "analyzing
and citing" rather than "homework," though it is homework, in
the truest definition.
Ah yes, a pain in
the keister but the reward is a Flight of the Bumblebee, a flipped
omelet that doesn't land on the stove-top, elegant and engaging prose, or a
strong, sturdy, and totally reliable family tree.
My grandfather was a
noted southern Illinois basketball coach who told his players, "We can do
it if we are willing to work and work hard." And let the genealogists say,
"Amen."
Till next time,
Liz
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
2018
begins with an "ABC-darium," a walk through the alphabet expanding
into short comments on matters genealogical. Published on Tuesday and
some Fridays, a letter may be visited more than once before moving
on.
©
2018, SE Ross