Yeah, if you want to steam, just steam in a pot! People are funny.

ION, I'm watching African American Lives from PBS, and it totally makes me want to do geneology! I want to know about my family's Honky American lives!

Hee. I've been researching my family. Found a few interesting things -- my several-greats grandfather is listed on an 1866 census on the town they lived in in Poland as "szpekulant," which translates as, basically, "con-artist." (Nobody's quite sure why this is what would be put down on an official form. One of my Polish friends found a reference that the word used to just mean "invester," but it seems to have taken on the modern meaning earlier than that census.)

Also, found a set of siblings listed on a 1909 ship manifest as Rifke, Alte Itzig Leib, Menashe, Mechel, and Gitel, and then on the 1910 census as Beckie, Isador, Moses, Max, and Gussie. Really curious about how that name change played out so quickly. Also curious about how Gitel/Gussie took to it -- she was just four years old.

Oh, on the savings thing -- I've got no debt, but also relatively little savings. Well, I've got some savings, but some of it I don't really count, because that's earmarked for summer rent and food, since I generally don't earn much money in the summers.

Really, debt worries me more than lack of savings does. I know that, in a pinch, I can get money -- though I'd hate to do it, if I really needed it, my parents would lend me some, or I could get a loan, or something. And while a loan would charge interest, potential interest in the future is less worrisome than actual interest now.

Found a few interesting things -- my several-greats grandfather is listed on an 1866 census on the town they lived in in Poland as "szpekulant," which translates as, basically, "con-artist."

That's kind of awesome. I wonder if he actually was a con artist, trying to get the government to think he was an invester -- a little mini-con on The Man.

Also, my great-grandfather's first cousin was the first man in Trenton sentenced under Prohibition. (The conviction was later overturned, on the grounds that the prosecution hadn't proven that he planned to sell the alcohol. He was just the owner of a "tavern" receiving a huge shipment of it. Also, looking up pretty much every lawyer, judge, and police officer involved on either side of that case gets me references to corruption charges and mafia involvement. And, in a few cases, connections to the Lindbergh baby case.)

See, now I want to know all that stuff! All I know about anyone older than my grandparents is some half-information about inventing instant coffee. I was fascinated by the sad story from Tom Joyner's family about some relatives probably wrongly convicted and exectuted for killing someone.

For finding stuff within the US, the best resourse is ancestry.com. It's got all the census records (searchable and the original forms scanned) from 1930 back (though the 1890 ones were damaged in a fire years ago, before they were archived, so they've only got a few states for those), WWI and WWII draft cards, ship manifests from pretty much every ship coming into NY and a pretty good number for other ports, and a whole ton of other stuff. The transcriptions are sometimes pretty bad, so if there's a records like a census that you know ought to be there and isn't, it's sometimes helpful to search by something like first name and birth date, and then look at the last names that come up to see if something might be what you're looking for. (I've found a Hochman transcribed as Barkmu.)

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar doesn't want to blow you up: [link]

I don't know if I care enough to pay for ancestry.com, but huh.

Old records on my mom's side of the family were destroyed by the Russians in their occupation of Finland during WW-II. The commie bastards....