Friday, May 22, 2009

My Puckerbrush Blog Awards of Excellence

Terry Thornton is one of my favorite genea-bloggers (Hill Country of Monroe County, Mississippi) because he is a wonderful writer and he appreciates the value of the genea-blogger community and encourages it. He has created The Janice Brown Puckerbrush Blog Award for Excellence to honor those bloggers that have influenced their writing the most and list them as a tribute to Janice. Please read his entire post about Janice, the name of the award, and his selections.


I was honored by Terry to be selected to receive one of his awards. Thank you, Terry. It's great to be appreciated and judged to be influential.

I have started posts several times to try to define my "Top Ten Favorite Genea-Blogs" and after the lists grew past 20, I gave up. This requirement - the top ten bloggers that influenced me the most" seems to be one I can probably handle. I am going to limit my list to genealogy and family history related blogs because that's what this blog is about.

Let's see what I can come up with. These are listed in no particular order - as Terry says "when you are number ten in as thick a patch as the puckerbrush, it is like telling a pretty girl which of the freckles on her is the prettiest." Hmmm, must be a Mississippi expression!

* The writer of The Ancestry Insider blog. Mr. AI provides a wonderful example of objective analysis about companies (Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org) that he is very familiar with.

* Kathryn M. Doyle's California Genealogical Society and Library blog. This is the best genealogical society blog because of the breadth of the content - photos, meeting summaries, stories, member reports, etc. I wish I could emulate it better on my local society blog.

* Jasia's Creative Gene blog. Jasia started the Carnival of Genealogy three years ago and the topics have provided numerous opportunities to write about family history of my ancestors and myself.

* Pat Richley's DearMYRTLE's Genealogy Blog. Pat has been writing about genealogy for a long time (but she's not very old!) and constantly finds new themes to write about, and does it well. Her breadth of genealogy knowledge is impressive and she shares it freely with her readers.

* Dick Eastman's Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter blog. Dick Eastman is the most successful genea-blogger in terms of news and commentary, and he's done it over a long period of time. The influence here was the realization that I could not compete with Dick on news and should concentrate on testing and analysis.

* Denise Olson's Family Matters blog. Denise is the genea-blogger that I read when I want to know about technology applications to genealogy. I would rather defer to her than write badly about something technological.

* Chris Dunham's The Genealogue blog. The funniest genea-blogger (still! always! I just wish he would post more creative funny stuff but I understand how hard it is!) to date - nobody else is even close. The influence here was for me to abandon trying to write original humor (I was so bad at it and got so frustrated) and concentrate on what I do well.

* Ken Aitken's Genealogy Education blog. Ken's blog was my absolute favorite in my first year of blogging, and he acted like a mentor to me and other striving genea-bloggers, which I really appreciated and enjoyed. Ken died in April 2007, but he definitely influenced me greatly. Please visit his blog and read some of his work.

* footnoteMaven's Shades of the Departed blog. This wonderful photograph-oriented blog has several great genea-ezines (new word!) and hosts the Smile for the Camera carnival. The detail discussion and analysis of photographs is a great model for me, and every blogger, to follow.

* Mark Tucker's ThinkGenealogy blog. Mark is an original thinker in applying technology to genealogy research and genealogy software, and his work has helped, and will continue to help, the genealogy industry.

There they are - my ten NOT in numerical order! I have many more "favorite" genealogy blogs on my reading list of 470 feeds on www.Bloglines.com. I appreciate the efforts of all writers to document their family stories and photographs, to pass useful genealogy and family history information and techniques to readers and researchers, and to comment on genealogy news and events.

Genealogy bloggers have influenced the genealogy industry in good ways - many companies have become much more communicative and responsive to blogger and reader comments. Blog readers have benefited from the genealogy information, research techniques and good examples imparted by genealogy bloggers.

Terry's challenge for ALL genea-bloggers was to:

"A CHALLENGE . . .

"Henceforth these awards will be called the Janice Brown Puckerbrush Blog Award for Excellence. All blog authors are hereby challenged to name the ten blogs which have influenced their writing the most and list them as a tribute to Janice --- the Janice Brown Puckerbrush Blog Awards for Excellence."

Notice that the challenge is to ALL blog authors, not just those that have been named an award winner by another blogger. So - go for it!

One last thought - I really do hope that Janice Brown has taken only a break from her Cow Hampshire blog writing. Janice, if you are reading this, please let us know that you are enjoying your "blog writing hiatus."

4 comments:

Kathryn Doyle said...

Randy,

I'm gobsmacked to be puckerbrushed by you! Thank you very much for the honor. Your Chula Vista Genealogy Cafe was an inspirational model of how a blog could benefit a society. Thank you for your example and support. You epitomize the best of the genea-blogger community.

Chris said...

Randy, I'd like to post creative funny stuff more frequently, but I ran out of ideas in late 2006.

The Ancestry Insider said...

Randy,

Thanks for the vote. You definitely make my top ten!

-- The Ancestry Insider
http://ancestryinsider.blogspot.comP.S. Hey, I like the alphabetized listing! I heartily recommend all bloggers adopt it, of course ignoring the "the." ;-)

Jasia said...

The fact that I'm only now getting around to saying THANK YOU gives you an idea of how far behind I've become. I really appreciate the acknowledgment! You are not only a true scholar and gentleman but a kind and generous soul as well. Thank you.