Tika On Vacation...........

Tika and I will be on vacation for a couple of months. If you miss the regular postings of  Tika's Teachings, please leave a comment and tell us so.

Tika & The FamilySearch Wiki

Tika says "it's darn cold outside! Even with the coat that she puts on me (which I hate), it's cold outside. I told Mom to do a post today about doing something indoors to keep warm." Good advice, Tika. 

How about take some of your extra or relaxing time over the holidays to do some personal enrichment or learning. How much do you know about the FamilySearch Wiki?

You reach the Wiki by clicking to www.FamilySearch.org. Then look for "Search" on one of the tabs across the top. The drop-down menu under "Search" lists the Wiki at the end of the list. 

The Wiki "is not about finding the names of your ancestors.  It is not, in fact, about finding people at all.  The Wiki is about finding records that may have been generated about your ancestors and the places in which the records might be found."     This is a quote from the website,  www.FamilySearch.org. .  The FamilySearch Wiki is a "place-records-tutorial & how-to" place for learning. 

Need to decipher German handwriting? Need to know about cemeteries in Iowa? Need to know about Castle Garden? Need to know about finding records in China? There is a Wiki entry for that!  Go find out for yourself. 

"But," Tika adds, "there is no category for canine research. Bummer."  

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Tika & Dogger Body Lanugage & History

I was reviewing a new book and Tika, snuggled beside me in our chair, looked up and said, "I could have explained that to you.......... you didn't need a book!"  Nonetheless, I did enjoy Justin Silver's new book The Language of Dogs.

This book explained that "Lips turned up" was the sign of a fearful animal and often mistaken for aggression.  "Raised ears" means your dog is listening, eavesdropping on you.  "Shedding" indicates fear or stress. "Squinting eyes,"  generally means your dog in in pain or not feeling well. "Avoiding eye contact,"  may consider you a threat or lack of confidence. The book explains dozens of other behaviors.

And what does this have to do with genealogy? Our ancestors ate dogs, that's what. Dogs were portable meat-on-the-hoof to many cultures around the world including in the United States. And many cultures today still enjoy eating dog meat.

United States of America

The term "dog" has been used as a synonym for sausage since 1884 and accusations that sausage makers used dog meat date to at least 1845. The belief that sausages contained dog meat was occasionally justified.

In 1846, a group of 87 American pioneers were stranded by snow while traveling in the Sierra Nevada. Some of the starving people from this group, known posthumously as the Donner Party, ate a pet dog for sustenance.

In the late 19th century, a cure for tuberculosis (then colloquially termed "consumption") using an exclusive diet of dog meat was tried. Reports of families eating dog meat out of choice, rather than necessity, were rare and newsworthy. Stories of families in Ohio and Newark, New Jersey who did so made it into editions of The New York Times in 1876 and 1885.

In the early 20th century, dog meat was consumed during times of food shortage.

Native Americans

The traditional culture surrounding the consumption of dog meat varied from tribe to tribe among the original inhabitants of North America, with some tribes relishing it as a delicacy, and others (such as the Comanche) treating it as an abhorrent practice. Native peoples of the Great Plains, such as the Sioux and Cheyenne, consumed it, but there was a concurrent religious taboo against the meat of wild canines.

During their 1803–1806 expedition, Meriwether Lewis and the other members of the Corps of Discovery consumed dog meat, either from their own animals or supplied by Native American tribes, including the Paiutes and Wah-clel-lah Indians, a branch of the Watlatas, the Clatsop, the Teton Sioux (Lakota), theNez Perce Indians, and the Hidatsas. Lewis and the members of the expedition ate dog meat, except William Clark, who reportedly could not bring himself to eat dogs.

The Kickapoo people include puppy meat in many of their traditional festivals. This practice has been well documented in the Works Progress Administration"Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma".

One last thought:  Ever wonder why they are called Hot Dogs????

Tika & "The Yellow Brick Road"

This is quite obviously not a "yellow BRICK road," but it is a "yellow Tamarack needle road." Known as Larch in the Eastern U.S., these trees are known as Tamarack in the west. They are beautiful yellow needles standing tall amid the Ponderosa Pines.

The most unusual thing about these trees is that (quite unlike pines) they drop their needles in the fall. The needles turn from green to yellow and then drop......... and carpet the roads under them in gold. 

So what does this have to do with genealogy you are thinking? Well, don't we all want a "yellow brick road" straight to the answers about our ancestors? Most of us will never be so lucky. James Tanner, in his Genealogy's Star blog back on 1 July 2014, posed some basic rules of genealogy. Following the advice stated in his rules will surely keep us on that "yellow brick road."

Rule One:  When the baby was born, the mother was there. The father does not have to be present when the baby is born.

Rule Two:  Absence of an obituary or death records does not mean that the person is still alive.

Rule Three:  Every person who ever lived has a unique birth order and a unique set of biological parents.

Rule Four:  There are always more records (to search).

Rule Five:  You cannot get blood out of a turnip. With this he means just because you think you are related to royalty and list them on your charts does not  make it so.

Rule Six:  Records move.

If you would enjoy reading James Tanner's full comments on the above Six Rules, click to his blog at http://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/  and why not while you're there sign up to receive future blog postings of his?

Tika ignored the beauty of Pend Oreille County, Washington, on our last week's drive. She was much more intrigued with the smells of the stopping places. Dogs!

Tika & DNA

When I started trying to explain the relationship of DNA research to genealogy research, Tika was skeptical. "Really?" Was her first reaction. And then, "so what?" "

"What do you expect to learn??" she wanted to know. Good question, Tika.

The subject, the relationship of DNA and genealogy, is a vast and quickly-expanding field of information. I have collected a nice fat folder of articles and information on understanding DNA and its applications and implications to the hobby of genealogy.

Mostly, I wanted just to understand. Tika says, "Good luck with that!" Here are the conclusions I've come to.

I do not have to understand the whole subject. I do not need to, nor want to, know how my car works. I just want it to take me places. Ditto with DNA.

There are more books and articles on this subject than I will ever have time to read and thoroughly digest. I will pick one or two sources and that will give me a basic understanding.

I did the $99 Ancestry test. This test looks for matches between my atDNA and others who have their trees on Ancestry and who have taken the same test. Is this the end-all-tell-all test? Hardly. But it is a start.... or was for me.

Now I can upload my DNA test results to FamilyTree DNA (and right now for free). Should I? Why not? This will expose my DNA to a much wider ocean of possible matches..... possible cousins... possible ancestors. So why not?

Lisa Louise Cooke offers four laminated guides: Getting Started (with DNA), Autosomal DNA,  Y Chromosome DNA and Mitochondrial DNA. I bought and studied all four of these guides and now I feel like I have at least a teaspoon of understanding of the subject. (Click to Genealogy Gems Publications, www.GenealogyGems.com, for ordering information.)

Tika woke up enough to show some interest when I showed her that yes, there are DNA tests for dogs! She really did not care; "I come from Idaho and that's good enough," she sniffed.