Showing posts with label genealogy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label genealogy. Show all posts

Friday, May 24, 2013

Finally some good news about the upcoming 2013-14 U.S. TV season: 'Who Do You Think You Are?' is coming back! The Lisa Kudrow and Dan Bucatinsky-produced celebrity docu/genalogy series that ran on NBC for 3 years gets picked-up by TLC; premiering July 23rd; @TLC, @lisakudrow, @danbucatinsky, #genealogy, # familytree, #roots




Finally some good news about the upcoming 2013-14 U.S. TV season: 'Who Do You Think You Are?' is coming back! The Lisa Kudrow and Dan Bucatinsky-produced celebrity docu/genalogy series that ran on NBC for 3 years gets picked-up by TLC; premiering July 23rd; @TLC, @lisakudrow, @danbucatinsky, #genealogy, # familytree, #roots 

TheWrap
TLC Brings NBC's 'Who Do You Think You Are?' Back From the Grave (Exclusive)
Lisa Kudrow and Dan Bucatinsky's celebrity documentary series gets a second life on the cable channel
By Jethro Nededog
Published: May 21, 2013 @ 1:28 pm

The show's episodes on Rashida Jones and Jason Sudeikis were very compelling and among the more-interesting and memorable things I saw on TV all last year.  

That both of them wound-up discovering some rather unsettling news about their own family's history -originally from Latvia and Lithuania, respectively- showed me that the shows were NOT written just so that there'd be a happy ending by the end of the sixty minutes, which was a nice change of pace when it comes to TV shows built around a celebrity. 

That difference in attitude is why I'm very encouraged that TLC has revived this series -and why I will be watching every week.

As it happens, I was one of the very first persons to see TheWrap's EXCLUSIVE this past week, seeing it about a minute after it got posted online, and that explains why I was the first reader to comment there.

There were many more people who were fans of the show who followed me in the hours afterwards, about two dozen last time  checked, far more comments than almost any article about an individual TV show ever generates on the website, which I think speaks very well for the show's future, assuming they market it properly. 

Additional reader comments are at Yahoo's dispatch here:
http://tv.yahoo.com/news/tlc-brings-nbcs-think-back-grave-exclusive-202837056.html

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https://www.facebook.com/IsOrIsntEntertainment

http://www.nbc.com/who-do-you-think-you-are/

http://www.nbc.com/who-do-you-think-you-are/episode-guide/season-3/460306/rashida-jones/episode-310/499266/

http://www.nbc.com/who-do-you-think-you-are/episode-guide/season-3/460306/jason-sudeikis/episode-311/501393/

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/who-do-you-think-you-are-snl-jason-sudeikis-nbc-322690

Monday, October 24, 2011

Ten Americans come to Sweden for the first time, eager to find their family roots. "Allt för Sverige" premieres Sunday on SVT


SVT teaser video: Allt för Sverige. October 13, 2011
http://youtu.be/-VpxMlWzCcs



SVT promo video: Allt för Sverige - De söker sitt svenska ursprung.
Video is available for viewing on website until January 18, 2011.



SVT promo video: Allt för Sverige - The Landing in Torekov.
Video is available for viewing on website until January 18, 2011.

Ten Americans come to Sweden for the first time, eager to find their family roots. "Allt för Sverige" premieres Sunday on SVT.
And best of all for those of you who don't speak Svenska, the eight-part series hosted by Anders Lundin of SVT's daily Gomorron Sverige news/info/chat show is mostly in English, with Swedish sub-titles, unlike this video below of him talking about the upcoming shows, where he plays the role of not just the amiable host, but also part-time teacher, part-time psychologist, as he takes his charges thru some competition and tries his best to instill in them a sense of the best parts of what it is to be Swedish.

Anders Lundin of Gomorron Sverige on the new SVT show he hosts, Allt för Sverige. Video is available for viewing on website until October 23, 2011.

But then it's a reality show, so, good intentions notwithstanding, it's not like the show's cast was going to be talking about high-level economic policy, so you'll be able to follow along with no problems.

As someone who knows from first-hand experience, there are few 'bugs' harder to shake than the genealogy 'bug,' since when you least expect it, it will play havoc with your life and daily schedule for weeks or months if you let it, causing you to stay up all night looking at hard-to-decipher handwriting on censuses from the 19th Century, instead of catching up on your much-needed sleep.
To use a cliche I never have used here before -been there, done that.

The new Allt för Sverige program website is chock full of info & videos: http://svt.se/2.162106/

When I first moved to Washington, D.C. in the summer of 1988, blessed with a not-so-great air conditioner at my place on Capitol Hill, just five blocks east of the U.S. Capitol, I spent hundreds and hundreds of hours at The National Archives on the National Mall, and, even closer to me, at the Local History and Genealogy Reading Room in the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress, the one just east of the Capitol and south of the Supreme Court.

Yes, back before the Internet made staying in a large room all day on a beautiful winter Saturday to try to find one small needle in a haystack in a 100-year old book you'd never seen before, seem even crazier than it sounds to read here now.
Sometimes, those hours seemed like years...

And speaking fo Swedish heritage, now for something completely different... from Shay's (SHAYMCN1) amazing treasure trove of ABBA and rock videos:

Agnetha Fältskog - Tack Sverige (Thank You Sweden, 1968)
Too precious for words!

But, of course, unlike in the song above, some Swedes did leave... and some of them became famous all over the world as Swedish-Americans...

Ann-Margret - BYE BYE BIRDIE title song (1963)

Later that same year, twenty-two year old Ann-Margret got very animated ...

Ann-Margret as Ann-Margrock singing on ABC-TV's The Flintstones - "I Ain't Gonna Be Your Fool No More" (STEREO, HD)

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A little info on the first city the cast sees, Torekov, in Skåne County, right next door to, yes, Halland County.

NY Times travel articles on Sweden:






Wednesday, November 11, 2009

My oldest military ancestor: Continental Army spy for Gen. Washington

The oldest military veteran that I've been
able to find in my family thru my up-and-down
genealogy pursuits over the past 25 years,
where I've spent what's seemed like entire
months at both The National Archives
and the Local History and Genealogy
Reading Room of the Library of Congress
is a paternal ancestor who was a spy for
Gen. George Washington in the Continental
Army.

(See http://www.archives.gov/,
http://www.archives.gov/genealogy/,
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/,
http://www.loc.gov/rr/genealogy/,

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html ,
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award99/icuhtml/
)


Over twenty years previously, in 1755,
he'd been an enlisted man under a young
Washington when they marched en masse
from Alexandria to Fort Duquesne (Pittsburgh)
with British Gen. Edward Braddock on his
ill-fated expedition to capture that strategic
French fort.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Braddock
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braddock_expedition

(One of the Washington, D.C. Metrorail
stations in Old Town Alexandria is actually
called Braddock Road.
http://transit.schuminweb.com/transit/wmata/blue-line.php?station=C12
It's the Metro station that's only a few
hundred feet from the HQ of PBS.
Here in South Florida. as we all know,
they'd name the station after a living politician!)



After the Revolutionary War ended
and my ancestor manged to avoid
being captured and having a British
Army noose wrapped around his neck,
for his efforts, he received some land
way out in the Ohio Territories
,
about an hour from current-day
Pittsburgh, .

Which is why my paternal ancestors
and family have lived continuously
in Jefferson County, Ohio, right off
the Ohio River, since before it
became a state.


And me, I was born at the Lackland
Air Force Base hospital in San Antonio,
where
my mother worked right next door,
directly under the Base Commander at
Kelly AFB, where my father was in the
Flight Surgeon's Office.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/kelly.htm
http://www.mysanantonio.com/military

They each saw President and
Mrs. Kennedy
the day before he was
killed, when Air Force
One flew into
Kelly and went thru the official
receiving
line.

Our family has a photograph
of them
at the base that day that I've never
seen
published anywhere else in the myriad

books and film footage of their time in
Texas.
One day...

Happy Veteran's Day!

U.S. Flag over the Pentagon
United we stand...