Last call for those who have not renewed their dues for 2010, but want to retain member status on the site. I will be updating in the next few days. Check your dues status on Your Profile on the site.
ZVA FINANCES
At our meeting in Regina on April 18, we discussed our finances. We are accumulating a bit of a surplus because we have been unable to complete some projects. We discussed a dues holiday, lifetime membership after a period of contributing, and other options. We decided to continue on our current course for the time being. Here are some of the reasons:
- Although our major projects have not been concluded, they still remain as objectives. These include dedicated Zichydorf monuments in Regina and St. Paul and assistance with restoration of the church in Plandiste (Zichydorf).
- Our cash surplus of about $4,500 is not really that large and could disappear in a hurry if any or all of these projects materialize, leaving us tight on operating funds.
- It was suggested that, rather than ceasing to gather funds, we should look for more ways to put those funds to good use. One suggestion was to hire translators for some of our German language resources to make them more accessible. We will investigate the cost of this idea in the coming weeks.
2010 BANAT TOUR
Be sure to follow our adventures in Europe on the blog at zichydorf10.blogspot.com. Most of us leave on May 15 and return on June 5.
SCHILDGEBIRGE
Several people indicated an interest in receiving Frank Dornstauder’s presentation at our April 18 meeting in Regina. It proved impractical to tape it, but we will make it available on the web site in the future. Frank wants to work on it some more to put it into a more presentable format. We will let you know when it is available.
SETSCHANFELD WEB SITE
ZVA member Amy (Schneider) Nichols has started a site at www.setschanfeld.com. She is off to a great start. Check it out.
ZICHYDORF WEB SITE
Expect a slight reorganization to our site in the near future. The section Zichydorf in Banat already includes information on Rudolfsgnad. A link to the Setschanfeld site also seems most appropriate in this section. We will probably rename this section Banat or Europe and add separate listings for items that are not directly related to Zichydorf. More to come on this one.
THE FORGOTTEN GENOCIDE
Ann Morrison has produced a documentary video called The Forgotten Genocide based primarily on interviews with survivors in the St. Louis, Missouri, area. She has since had eight people find friends and family they haven’t seen since being in the area of which they were born. She is trying to put a registry together where people can fill out some information which will be stored in a bank to be matched up with others. Information will be searchable by village, camp, last name, age and many other connections, possibly church or school attended.
In order to keep the interest at it’s peak and teach the subject in as much detail as possible she is continuing with a series of documentaries, each one focusing on a different aspect. The three areas she is working on at present are Donauschwaben, Carpathian and any adult children raised as Serbian. If anyone would like to grant her an interview or has any information that would be helpful in telling the story, please contact her at ann@annsfilms.com.
BOOK PUBLISHING
Here is something you may want to investigate. Heritage Makers at www.heritagemakers.com gives you the opportunity to create your own printed books online. There is no software to download or purchase. You upload your photographs, select a template/create your own, drag and drop your photos, personalize the text/tell the story, embellish as you like and when you are satisfied with the final product, you have your book printed, published and returned to you as a hard cover, bound book. There are templates for many, many themes and events from baby births to weddings to vacations to reunions including templates for family trees, military service and commemoration. There are also templates to create recipe books, day planners, cards, playing cards, posters, home décor and much more.This service seems to be best suited for books of photos and not that well suited to a lot of text, but, the choice is yours.
MEETING IN MINNEAPOLIS AND VANCOUVER
I am still looking for people interested in attending or hosting a meeting in Minneapolis (July 19 evening or July 20) or Vancouver (July 5 to 15). It is fun and interesting to meet and share stories with fellow researchers of the same location. Maybe you will even make a family connection. Drop me a line if you are interested. Also, can anyone in the St. Paul area suggest a location for a historical monument to honour the Zichydorf/Georgshausen/Setschanfeld pioneer communities? Can anyone suggest resources to assist with such a project? Anyone wish to take it on?
FACE RECOGNITION
My son recently turned me on to a dangerously addictive practice. Picasa, the free photo handling program by Google, does face recognition. When we first opened it up, it found well in excess of 6,000 faces in my pictures! If there are five people in a picture, it normally finds all five. It is not perfect however. It sometimes misses faces, particularly if the head is turned or in an odd position. However, it often recognizes partially hidden faces, faces far in the background, faces on statues and in paintings or pictures on the wall, and even things that are not faces at all. For instance, it thought a wall plug was a face, with its two slots for electrical prongs and the round hole at the bottom for the grounding prong. Nevertheless, its success rate is pretty good. You can choose to ignore those you don’t care about and manually select those that the program missed.
Having identified the faces, it groups together ones that it thinks are the same person. Again, it is not perfect, but it is reasonably accurate. This is where there is a great tool for genealogists. It is remarkable how frequently it thinks people with a family resemblance are the same person. Of course, you do not have to accept the program’s judgement if it is wrong, but this might offer clues to help you identify unknown people in your pictures.
With the pictures grouped, you can now assign names to each of the individuals in each picture. Once a name is in your list, it is a simple matter of clicking yes or no on subsequent faces for that person. You are left with a listing of every person in every picture, another handy genealogist’s tool. You can find all pictures of John Doe by just looking him up in your listing.
Try it out. It is a lot of fun. But, be sure not to start unless you can devote a lot of time within a few days. Once you start, it is pretty hard to stop!
FEEFHS 2010 CONVENTION
The Federation of East European Family History Societies will hold its annual conference July 29-31 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Subjects include Austrian Empire research, Hungarian Empire research, Latin, Gothic, and Cyrillic handwriting, and many more. Check it out at feefhs.org.
INTERESTING WEB SITES
Site for the village of Ofsenitza – http://www.hyperbyte.net/Ofsenitza/index.htm
from Annette Fulford: Foreign language and English newspapers of Canadian immigrant documenting their experiences http://www.connectingcanadians.org/en/content/home
Zichydorf Village Association News
edited by: Glenn Schwartz
2274 Baldwin Bay, Regina, SK, S4V 1H2
Internet: http://zichydorfonline.org
&
http://www.feefhs.org/members/zichydorf/frg-zva.html
email: gschwartz@accesscomm.ca