Welcome back to the African Roots Podcast, and the 1st podcast for 2016. You can always reach me HERE.
Happy New Year everyone! I hope that you all had a wonderful New Years day celebration with family and friends and will have a great day today, enjoying the New Year’s dinner whether seafood, black-eyed peas, gumbo, or other wonderful dishes!
Lots of things to look forward to this year and I can share some of my thoughts and goals with you.
EVENTS:
Roots Tech – For another year I look forward to attending this mega-event in Salt Lake City. This year promises to be even more exciting and there are several black speakers on the program: Janis Minor Forté, Bernice Bennett, Shelley Murphy, Sherri Camp and your truly, Angela Walton-Raji. Of course there are a myriad of Black History Month celebrations that will take place around the country and here in MD there are two events sponsored by genealogy groups that I plan to attend. In the spring, the California AAGS will be having a national event. And of course summertime, brings other events from NGS to MAAGI. This institute will be especially exciting because a new track on DNA has been developed. And later in the summer all eyes will turn to IBGS, the International Black Genealogy Summit, and in the fall the annual AAHGS conference will move to Atlanta Georgia. So this promises to be a busy year.
READING:
I have made a personal goal to become a more focused reader this year. I have been a life long reader, but have generally read books of all kinds on all topics. But I do want to focus more certain kinds of books. I also hope to become more active in the online “Booktube” community, and also to bring book reviews to the podcast regularly. In addition I hope to add more “memoir” as a genre to my TBR (to be read) list. For me, memoir is the kind of story where one’s life journey, or life story is shared. As genealogists we are story tellers, so that is going on my own list of things to read.
WRITING:
My goal is also to write more this year. This will involve working on my blogs more frequently, and continuing to work on the two manuscripts that I have in process. One is the NANOWRIMO project that I completed with over 50,000 words. This now has to be polished and turned into a well developed story. Secondly is the book (a memoir of sorts) of my effort to document my Choctaw Freedmen ancestors. I have a well developed calendar that needs to be followed and adhered to, in order to reach the completion of that manuscript. After that, I will then be ready to present to a publisher. That project is a different kind of writing, and hopefully I will stay on track to see publication, or have a publication date at hand by year’s end.
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Beyond these goals I hope to also bring some unique guests from time to time on the podcast and to also interact with more of you this year as well. I look forward to watching other things unfold, such as following Bernice Bennett’s show.
She will kick of the year next week with Erwin Polk’s research documenting his Buffalo Soldier ancestor. I am familiar with his work and look forward to hearing his interview. Bernice’s show airs every Thursday evening at 9pm on Blog Talk Radio.
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So, those are my goals that shall keep me busy this year. I also begin this year, with thanks for having you as listeners, and for taking time to tune in. I wish you all a year of good health, good friends and great research. Thank you for being there, because without an audience, there would be no show.
So in the meantime, enjoy your day, and as we get on with this New Year, remember to keep researching, keep documenting, and to keep sharing what you find.