Spring=New Growth For gardeners, spring is time for sowing new seeds, and enjoying previous plantings' fresh growth and blooms. It's also time to get ahead of the spring weeds! Genealogists and family historians face similar tasks and joys. Christmas DNA kit results are appearing as new matches, and the online databases are swelling with new record sets and improved search methods, such as full text search, and updated catalogs. It is a good time to take stock of your research goals, and plan ahead for any research trips. Now is the perfect time to contact the groups, cities, towns, repositories, and genealogy friends in order to make best use of your time and money.  It's spring here in the South King County Genealogical Society too. We have an election of officers coming up soon, and MUST have more candidates! As of this writing, instead of holding an election, the Board must instead plan for our demise or union with another group. A non-profit can't run without offic...

  Recently, in her Monday blog, Diahan  Southard reflected on leadership   by relating how she followed her sister to get to an unknown location.   Thanks to GPS, I hadn’t followed someone through traffic in years. That is, until I found myself trailing my sister through Seattle the old-fashioned way.   Not far into our drive, we got stuck behind a slow truck in the right lane. But my sister couldn’t pass without risking losing me, so I had to make the first move, change lanes, and then let her slide in ahead.   The rest of the way to our destination I thought about the seeming incongruity of this situation. I didn’t know where I was going, so I was following someone else. But then to get there most efficiently, I had to be willing to go first. I had to step out and actually make a space for my leader to lead. [1]   This is a profound way to view leadership, especially for someone who is...