Ayn Rand vs Objectivism: A Critique — An Election 2012 Primer, #Rational, #Politics, #Opinion

If you have been following my Ayn Rand / Objectivism series, this the third part and yes I know that these posts are each very long posts. Thank you for your fortitude and open rational mind’s attention. I wrote this article and the other two consecutively so you can just go back one or two blog posts to read the prior articles.

In the first article I criticized Paul Ryan for being a false Atheist, Objectivist and Catholic in his acceptance speech and elsewhere in his political life. I also stated Rand’s stated tenets of Objectivism.

The second article (the one prior to this one) just covered Ayn Rand’s life in a genealogical sense and I included many links which I encourage you to follow those links and examine the genealogical documents to check my validity of my writings on Rand and the context of her life.

In this article I want offer up for your rational and reasoning mind, my critiques of Ayn Rand and/or her espoused philosophy (Objectivism).

Context

By the time Ayn Rand arrived under her real name of Alice Rosenbaum (also Alisa Rosenbaum), on SS De Grasse in the ship’s cabins (not 3rd class or steerage as most emigrants did) on February 19, 1926 she was absolutely “cooked”. From that point on, she was not going to be swayed from her life’s philosophy. The only things she was going to change, would be her name, to “Ayn Rand”.

She was born into a well heeled Jewish family (father owned or was the pharmacist). Rand made it clear that her family was not so “jewish”, definitely not observant jews. I do not know that I believe that (but I’ll save that for later). Rand also said her mother was inattentive to her and her two sisters. Rand also said she taught herself to read in 1911 (about age 6). How about that she actually remembered the year that she declared she was a reader and that nobody else helped her to learn to read? Rand was born the year after her parents were married in 1904 (St. Petersburg, Czarist Russia). So she was the eldest child — no other child to teach her, if her parents did not instruct her in reading. This would be counter to what just about all other Jewish families do, at least so their children can read the Torah (Moses’ Law portion of the Bible’s Old Testament). So again I am skeptical about that self-taught reading business. In high school she reads Victor Hugo (Les Miserables) and discovers Aristotle. She also declares since she is a rationalist, she is also an atheist. Also, there was that Bolshevik Revolution thing in 1917 (right before high school that forces her/her family to move to Ukraine, then Yevpatoria, Crimea). The Communists strip her father of his pharmacy business and they struggle just to eat in the now Communist Russian state (no Czar in control anymore). After graduating from her Crimean high school her family moves back to St. Petersburg (now called Petrograd) and enrolls in Petrograd State University in 1921 where she learns Nietzsche. in 1924 she graduates from Leningrad State University (St. Petersburg is now called Lenningrad) — the same university she had enrolled in, just a new communist name. She almost did not graduate as the communists threw her out, but supposedly foreign instructors fought to have her reinstated so she could finish her studies. We really need someone to go to the Russian Archives and get a copy of her transcripts to remove all of these disputes. Anyway, also in 1924 she enrolls in State Technicum for Screen Arts where she learns screenwriting. She has a love of motion pictures, particularly American/Western motion pictures. In 1925 she gets published her first writing a pamphlet on “Pola Negri” [Polish actress]. Somewhere along the way, after high school and before 1926 she has an affair with a Jewish man, cheats on him with a Communist, breaks it off with the Communist, endangering herself and her family by ending that relationship so badly. This saga is chronicled in her mostly autobiographical We The Living book. Somehow her “destitute”, hardly-able-to-eat family and her scrape together the money for a passport (from Riga) and a ticket for cabin passage on an ocean liner and $50 (USD) and she has a typewriter among her possessions. So Alice Rosenbaum arrives in New York City (Ellis Island) February 19th, 1926 (with the $50 cash required to enter the US). She goes to her uncle Harry Portnoy in Chicago, IL (presumably on the train using some of that $50). So she is now the fully cooked Alice Rosenbaum whose rigidity kept her from changing anything, except her name, which somehow, somewhere, at somepoint becomes Ayn Rand??

Are you with me so far? This age-6-self-taught reader, who knew at age 9 she wanted be a writer, gives up Judaism to be an atheist in high school. She is treated poorly by Communists (her father’s loss of business, kicked out of school, possibly witnessed/knew of pogroms). She hated the Communists, that represented the state taking everything from her/her family. No Collectivism or Self Sacrifice for the State for her. She hated the will sapping, sinking-to-the-lowest-common-denominator that a Totalitarian Economy represented. She entered a relationship with a Jewish man on whom she cheated (with a Communist, no less — conflicted). She studied screenwriting and then left Communist Russia to go to America with an eye to go to Hollywood and be a writer.

Genealogical Critique

First off, I do not believe she demonstrated self reliance. How could she have afforded to come to America especially in a ship’s cabin and with $50? Her last residence was Leningrad (from her father). Also note that she came over and immediately lived with her uncle in Chicago — not very independent or self-reliant. She lived off her uncle’s largess for 6 months before moving onto Hollywood, CA. I am sure she worked to earn some of her keep and to earn money to move to California to pursue her dream of writing for motion pictures.

Second, why would an atheist identify herself as a Hebrew on the ship’s manifest? She could have put Russian. With a name like Rosenbaum, she could have put German too, but Hebrew?? In Communist (read atheist) Russia, she identified herself as a Hebrew. Was that safe to maintain a religion in Communist Russia — especially when she said she was atheist in high school? Even under the Czars, Jews (i.e. Hebrews) were often uprooted and moved to certain remote countryside towns in the “Pale of Settlement“. Seldom were Hebrews allowed to remain in the cities (unless wealthy or in vital professions — which a pharmacist might be considered on both accounts). She has an affair with a Jewish man after becoming an atheist and before emigrating. What Jewish man would want a woman who was not a Jew to have his children? A child is Jewish only if the mother was a Jew (by birth or conversion). Would an atheist do? Probably not. Not so atheist, I guess. In fact, she continues to identify herself as a Hebrew up to and including her Petition for Naturalization filed in December 1930. For the record, the Kensico cemetery where she (and her husband) were buried has a Jewish section, albeit it is not clear whether they are in the Jewish section or not.

Her Naturalization does not show a name change to Ayn Rand. She signs March 13, 1931 as Alice O’Connor. Her signature is distinctive too. The way Ayn Rand handwrote her captial ‘A’ was the same on on Alice O’Connor (her married name) as it was on Ayn Rand (see wikipedia for Ayn Rand signature). She must have have filed a name change somewhere, some place, at some point, because on her Social Security data (more on this later), her name is Ayn Rand!

Thirdly, if we accept the firsthand accounts of others about Ayn Rand. She had a temper! Witnesses say she slapped Nathaniel Branden (including Nathaniel himself — who is still alive and wrote a book on his relationship with Ayn Rand) multiple times. Then she forced Nathaniel and Barbara Branden out of the Objectivist organization that Ayn Rand founded/owned. So we see violence and force on just this one man — against her own Objectivist Principles of Non-Violence and Non-Force. Of course, we could chalk that up to Rand selfishly making herself happy (does that override all other Objectivist principles?). What was the cause of such violence/force? Branden was selfishly making himself happy with his wife and another woman BESIDES Ayn Rand (whom he had a multi-year affair with, then spurned Rand’s advances when he got serious about Patrecia Scott). All these people were Objectivists until Rand “excommunicated” them from her organization. For the record, Nathaniel Branden who was 25 years younger than Rand lied to her about the age difference being a problem and the fact he was in another affair and that he hid from Rand due to her reputed anger.

Finally, notice from the image that Ayn Rand filed for Social Security in CA before 1951. She did not just fill out the forms. She also took monthly Social Security checks (starting about age 69) and also accepted Medicare health insurance when her health started to fail. So even though she said ‘self-reliance’, no ‘welfare state’ — when push came to shove she took the government social programs’ monies. Did you know her health failed because she was a heavy smoker (who developed lung cancer)? So she made all of America pay for her nasty smoking habit — so much for no collectives of any kind. She took Social Security and MEDICARE which she needed because she chose to smoke (probably because it made her selfishly happy). In Rand’s eyes SELFISHNESS is a virtue. In fact she wrote a paper with just that title (actually twice — the second time to repudiate Nathaniel Branden, her excommunicated lover, to her Objectivist subscribers).

From a genealogical perspective, I maintain even Ayn Rand could not be an OBJECTIVIST and that nobody could, because in my opinion it is not possible due to contradictions with reality as we KNOW it. Rand said the “Attila” (aka Man of Force) was not an OBJECTIVIST. Likewise, not the “Witch-Doctor” (later called the mystic) either because he was guided by his emotions and his blind beliefs and/or wishes. It looks like by her life events, she was both Witch-Doctor and Man-of-Force. Oh, she was also a PRODUCER/CREATIVE too. She did sell 25 Million books, at least 7 Million (as of 2010) of which were Atlas Shrugged. By any rational measure Ayn Rand was a successful writer — ergo we can give her the label PRODUCER/CREATIVE.

Philosophical Critique

I am not a professional philosopher, so I will leave philosophical arguments to others. I will say any foundation based on:

Man as Heroic is unfortunately flawed. I wanted to believe it. Certainly, I have seen numerous “heroic” examples from men, women, children, and even animals. But to say man is heroic 100% all of the time is just not believable. There are just too many counter examples to enumerate.

Non-Violence / No-Force – is also a flawed assumption. There has never been a year without violence in the history of mankind. Even if we limit the definition to be just global or civil wars, or genocides then we would see 90+% of all years are violent. Obviously the more violent acts you add in, the closer the limit approaches a violent act happens almost every minute (or is it every second). Force occurs more frequently than violence especially if you view force to be a superset of violence.

Rational, Only Rational – Is there such a person. Even Mr. Spock had his AMOK time where his reason failed him. I have never seen a human be rational at all times, every day. I also have never found a man who was not ruled by emotions. Has there ever been a man/woman who was never happy/sad/fearful/angry/… ? If so then he was probably violent (as in a psychopath).

The Witch-Doctor falls in in the rational area, as he is ruled by emotions or has wishes or blind beliefs. Ergo, he fails to be rational. The Attila man is found here as a failure of rationality too since he/she would use violence/force to get his way. I agree there are Witch-Doctors and Attilas. I would have to say that some Attilas are Producers. How about Julius Caesar for example?

Producers / Creative – OK. Here is one where we find the basis is not flawed. Not all men are Productive/Creative. Even if a man is Productive/Creative he is not that every waking moment. Still I do nto find Rand require Producer/Creatives to be so at all times. Just that they be so. But how much make you a Producer? Is there a threshhold below which man is not to be considered not a Producer?

No Intellectuals before the Industrial Age? Ayn Rand said in a Jan 1st, 1961 interview with James McConnell (University of Michigan) where she said emphatically that there were no intellectuals before the industrial age. That is patently false. This shows Ayn Rand to be ignorant of the classics. There were the seven sages (Thales, Solon, Chilon, etc.) who were intellectuals and capitalists and sometimes soldier and politicians too. I simply offer people to read books on Socrates, Aristotle, Plato or Pythagoras minimally. But I am thinking of the book, Diogenes Laertius, “Lives of Eminent Philosophers” from the Loeb Classical Library Vol I. translated by R.D. Hicks. These men made their living from their intellectual property.

Selfishness is a Virtue, Altruism is bad, No Collectives – I think any sensible person would agree these are wrong. For good examples of collective enterprises I offer: Social Security, Medicare (the two weakest), Airports, Harbors, Road, Trains, Schools, Hospitals, Dams, Museums, Zoological Parks, National Parks, Insurances (Health, Life, Disaster, Business), Military (this can be good/bad) & Defenses, Savings & Loans/Credit Unions (again good/bad), Helping Your Neighbor in a Disaster, Food Coops. Are not any of these good? I think they all are in some fraction. These are my counter arguments to collectives.

By the way I think only being motivated for your own happiness without regard to others is fundamentally in opposition to violence and/or Man-As-Heroic.

Being Self-Reliant is a good thing and I accept this. But I think people needed to band together from the earliest hunter-gatherer clans, to early agriculture/non nomadic and group defense are the proof there have always been collectives and that this is an evolutionary survival technique that created a possibility for man to survive and master the world.

Laissez-Faire Economics – Businesses are people who just want to be happy without regards to others (i.e. humankind). I think the current worldwide “Great Recession” proves that to be a flawed economic model. Also it leads to business that pollute the environment or think that creating asbestos products is ok even if businesses knew it would kill many people. No need for ethics? Come on. These things lead to violence. These things are obviously wrong. Why are there people who cannot see this?

By the way, if you read books on game theory (the mathematics, not real games) you will see that defection is almost intrinsic. Where is the nobility or heroicness in “Everyone For Themselves”? I know violence is there.

These to me say OBJECTIVISM is flawed. Let me also cite here Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem which says any system (even philosophical ones) will have truths that are outside of the system. Also conversely, there will be falsities inside any system. OBJECTIVISM is not the only ISM with this problem all ISMs have this as a problem — including ATHEISM, any religion (i.e. Catholicism), etc. Did Ayn Rand not know about Bertrand Russell or Godel??

How large were the gaps in here knowledge. Good thing she was a successful writer. I’ll skip further analysis here. Go to these links below:

Where Alice Rosenbaum Went Wrong

Guardians of Ayn Rand

Literary Critique

As I said, Ayn Rand sold 25 million+ books so she was an unqualified success! Rand did make it to Hollywood. On her 1st day she meets Cecil B de Mille and works as an extra actor on King of Kings where she meets her husband, Frank O’Connor [she tripped him on set to get him to notice her -- I am sure that made her selfishly happy]. Dream come true.

Her two works for which she is well known are fictional works. FICTION. Atlas Shrugged , Rand’s magnum opus, was a Dystopian Sci Fi novel. It was 1168 pages and included a 60 page monologue. Roundly criticized and yet also popular. But did anyone ever read it completely — every word? I think more people read the complete War & Peace than read Atlas Shrugged. Many synopses exist on the Internet — help yourself. I do not think it was as well written as L. Ron Hubbard (another sci-fi novelist cum philosopher-organization-builder). If you want a Slavic sci-fi writer with more heft how about Stanislaw Lem. Of course, the great Russian-born sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov is even accorded an even better standing as a writer.

If all you want is a good totalitarian critic, go for Slawomir Mrozek or the Nobel Prize winner Czeslaw Milosz. Both were authors of such heft and deep thought and yet provided entertaining criticism of totalitarianism. Very literate writers.

However, I am not planning on running for Vice-President with an idea to implement the Foundation Trilogy economic ideas. These books motivated at least one Nobel Prize winning economist (Paul Krugman). So why should we elect people who want to implement Atlas Shrugged ideas? FICTION.

Do not forget that all NON-PRODUCERS are just supposed to die. This seems a lame literary idea for implementing in real life politics/economics.

Paul Ryan & Faux Objectivists

So why does Paul Ryan so prominently promote himself as an Ayn Rand devotee? And why, oh why would we want to elect someone, much less a whole caucus of Tea Party people who espouse Ayn Rand’s OBJECTIVISIM and Economics? They belie themselves by working on social issues which are EXACTLY what Ayn Rand would not have done (She was correct in this concept of not taking rights from a minority by a ruling majority). They did not concern themselves with economics at all. They even stone-walled raising the debt ceiling until it ruined the once perfect credit rate of the USA making everybody pay more for everything — including the debt they were against. Yet this one act guaranteed that debt would grow exponentially.

Let’s see whether they do it again this year and let sequestration throw the US Economy into a depression.

Either way, these are NOT OBJECTIVISTS. They are merely anarchists determined to minimize the US government to a size where they can strangle it in the bathtub. Did you do that Google assignment from article one? Are they really trying to bring about the chaos from Atlas Shrugged? Do most of the Tea Party actually think they are PRODUCERS? Clue to Tea Party caucus, you actually have to work (no sign of that in D.C.) to be a PRODUCER.

Only one Tea Party caucus member turned down the Congressional Health Insurance — he may have actually been an Objectivist. The rest of the TEA Party Caucus complained they had to wait one month for the health insurance to start (NOT Objectivists). Didn’t any of those idiots ever work for a company who provides health insurance? They ALL make you wait 30 days before your health insurance starts — more proof these people were NOT Producers.

A couple flaws from that FICTION. The other 99% will not just die. They may become violent or forceful. Also, who among the 1% of producers are going to pick up the garbage or fix the sewer pipes? Some more useful collective endeavors. I guess they will die from disease these faux PRODUCERS. Who will defend these non-violent, now-disease-weakened producers? Who will heal them or nurse them back to health from their illness? Maybe, just maybe almost everyone is of use and a PRODUCER in some way — even the bloggers. Everyone who works is a PRODUCER. Let’s manufacture/motivate some more PRODUCERS. Isn’t that what real PRODUCERS do?

We still need to work on the US Economy. Let’s use New Keynesian economic ideas and bury the Laissez-Faire economics in a garbage dump. Hey, isn’t that Paul Krugman guy a New Keynesian economist? We may not want to elect Dr. Krugman either, but perhaps we should utilize his economic suggestions of June 2012. After all he is a member of the G30.

Oh, Paul Ryan, just so you know Friedrich Hayek had strong reservations against Laissez-Faire economics. So either make your staff read Ayn Rand or read Friedrich Hayek but not both as they are in direct conflict. Hayek believed:

Hayek was prepared to tolerate “some provision for those threatened by the extremes of indigence or starvation, be it only in the interest of those who require protection against acts of desperation on the part of the needy.”

“[Hayek] advocated mandatory universal health care and unemployment insurance, enforced, if not directly provided, by the state.”

Aren’t you Tea Party types against those policies? Perhaps you should actually read books and not just say you read them.

Ayn Rand – A Genealogical Examination

05 Feb 1905 Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum born (St. Petersburg, Russian Empire). She was the eldest of the three daughters of Zinovy Zakharovich Rosenbaum and Anna Borisovna (nee Kaplan) Rosenbaum. Zinov’yevna = daughter of Zinovy. This is a Jewish Patronymic form. While she was born into Czarist Russian Empire and by this time Jews were forced to have permanent last names (i.e. Rosenbaum), you can still see Jewish patronymic tradition evidenced in her name. Likewise her father Zinovy has for a middle name a Patronymic indicating his father was probably named: Zakhar (the ‘ovich’ indicating son of) and her mother’s father would have been named Boris. So the names illustrate the Jewish patrilineal culture.

1921-1925 (or possibly even into January of 1926). Alisa Rosenbaum (aka Ayn Rand) was in an affair with a Jewish man upon whom she cheats on, by having an affair with a Communist soldier/bureaucrat. The belligerence and angry behavior in ending the affair with the Communist by Alisa endangers her and her family’s lives. This era is the topic of her first book published in America, We The Living (published 1936). Ayn Rand is herself was quoted saying …

“We the Living is as near to an autobiography as I will ever write.” –Ayn Rand

27 Jan 1926 Alisa Rosenbaum is in Riga getting her Russian passport for travel to US. She departs Leningrad (aka St Petersburg / Petrograd) on that date going to Le Havre, France (onto USA).

19-Feb-1926 Alice Rosenbaum  arrives in New York City, NY on board the SS De Grasse her Atlantic passage was in a Cabin (not Steerage or 3rd class). The ship manifest says she arrives from her father Sinovy Rosenbaum [who lived at Dmitrowski 16, apt 5 in Leningrad] with $50 in cash and later on she said to have had a beat-up typewriter with her on the trip. Upon arriving, she goes to her uncle Harry Portnoy in Chicago, IL.

She lives with her aunt/uncle in Chicago from February through August and arrives in Hollywood, CA on September 3rd 1926.

1927 Alice meets Frank O’Connor a budding actor on Cecil B deMille set of King of Kings (both were   extras). Alice tripped Frank on the set to get him to notice her. In June, de Mille hires Rand as a junior screen writer.

15 Apr 1929  Los Angeles California. Charles Francis O’Connor marries Alice Rosenbaum. Rand is working in wardrobe at RKO.

1 Apr 1930 Alice O’Connor (wife of Charles F. O’Connor) was married in 1929. According to the 1930 US Census, she is an actor in motion pictures. Alice (aka Ayn) lives at 823 North Gower Ave, Los Angeles, CA.

13 Mar 1931 Alice O’Connor is granted US Citizenship. She had applied for citizenship on 1st-Dec-1930. She had used the Cable Act (1922) to avoid filing a Declaration of Intent. Marriage date is confirmed and a specific location is given.

1932 Rand’s Red Pawn is sold to Universal Pictures.

1934 Her first play (Woman on Trial) opens in Hollywood in October. In November, the O’Connors move back to New York City.

16 Sep 1935 Night of January 16th (formerly, Woman on Trial) opens on Broadway. Frank O’Connor (her actor/artist husband) plays a part in the play. The play was considered a success.

18 Apr 1936 We The Living is published. See quote above for how this book is autobiographical of her life under Communist Russia. The book was a bust.  The publisher destroyed the plates for a reprint — so even after Ayn Rand becomes a popular author this work could not be reproduced. It was  Ayn Rand’s first novel. Like most first novels, it was rejected by a slew of publishers. Macmillan Company did pick it up and publish the work. They only printed  3,000 copies. When reviews were bad  and sales were weak, Macmillan destroyed the type. After Rand achieved success as an author with her later novels, a revised edition of We the Living  was republished.

Early 1939 Rand receives her last communication from her family in Communist Russia.

April 1940 The O’Connors are recorded in the US Census living at 95 East 89th Street. Frank is an actor and Ayn is a writer (novelist & playwright). Ayn works on Wendell Willkie Presidential campaign.

8 May 1943 Ayn gets Fountainhead published. This fictional work is a success. Architects like her for her fictional depiction as a kind of idealized male who was an architect. In November, the O’Connors move back to California so that Ayn can work on the Fountainhead screenplay. This is their second California era.

1944-1957 Ayn Rand works on writing her magnum opus Atlas Shrugged. Atlas Shrugged is an 1168 page dystopian sci-fi drama that takes her Objectivist kernel from Fountainhead and explores it full force Atlas Shrugged including a 60 page speech by John Galt.

Alan Greenspan, who is a part of the “Collective” consults with Rand on the economics concepts in Atlas Shrugged.

1945  Frank Lloyd Wrights hosts Ayn at his Taliesin East studio (WI) as Fountainhead hits #6 on NYT Bestseller List.

1948 Nathaniel Blumenthal (later Branden) meets Barbara Weidman who are Fountainhead fans. They would later marry. Barbara introduces Nathaniel to her ex-boyfriend Wilford Schwartz and her cousin Leonard Peikoff. Later these become a part of the Collective.

Spring/Summer 1950 Blumenthal/Weidman visit Rand and O’Connor after numerous letter by Blumenthal to Rand and an exchange of phone numbers. The two couples become close friends.

Summer 1951 Blumenthal/Weidman move to New York City to finish their studies at New York University. By October, the O’Connors move back to New York City ending their second era in California. The Collective (an ironic name) of Rand followers formed at this time. These along with Alan Greenspan (future Fed Chairman) form the “Collective”. Frank O’Connor plays host to these young intellectuals who are led by his wife Ayn.

January 1953 Blumenthal/Weidman get married and Rand/O’Connor are the matron of honor and best man at the wedding. They are now the BRANDENS.

By January 1955 Nathaniel Branden and Ayn Rand (the original cougar who is 25 years older than Branden) begin a sexual relationship on top of their friendship and intellectual pursuits.

10 October 1957 After 14 years of writing, Atlas Shrugged is published and the dedication reads, “To Frank O’Connor and Nathaniel Branden”. At first Atlas Shurgged is panned by critics. On October 13th the NYT review is published. Alan Greenspan critiques the reviewer  in the November 3rd NYT letters page.

Background / Asides about 1950′s

An enthralling piece by Bill Bradford on Alan Greenspan and Ayn Rand with insights on the Collective is found here:

http://www.adabyron.net/taemag_com_greenspan.htm

The material supplied by the Brandens with an excellent timeline whose essential points were echoed above by Bradford (who interviewed the Collective over many hours). This whole Passion Drama with who is sleeping with whom and betraying whom is a big mess requiring a scorecard, that can be found here:

http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/bio/brandens.html

A FAQ on Ayn Rand thoughts on the many topics make the many tales above appear in context and are found at the Objectivist Reference Center here:

http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/bio/biofaq.html

A stunning Mike Wallace interview from 1959 is on the Internet in a few places (in two parts). His interview can be found here:

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/04/mike-wallace-interviews-ayn-rand-1959/

In the above interview, she predicts the US will fall and become a dictatorship. Thankfully, 53 years later this bleak prophecy has never come true.

1st Jan 1961 There is also a 30+ minute interview at the University of Michigan, with James McConnell where she lays outs her philosophy. It is a focal point for many of the critical points I make and can be  found here:

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Ay

After the 1950′s end Rand is partners with the Collective including the Brandens; They publish the Objectivist newsletter and NBI Lectures on audio tapes. Ironically,  in the midst of these sordid affairs detailed at the many links above, Rand’s essay collection The Virtue of Selfishness is published. It includes articles written by Nathaniel Branden.  But the complexities of these liaisons soon begin to unravel. The unraveling continues throughout the 1960′s until November of 1970 when Ayn Rand republishes The Virtue of Selfishness  with her repudiation of the Brandens, but leaving in Nathaniel Branden’s essays. She yells at Nathaniel Branden, slaps him multiple times in one meeting, curses him with impotency , makes allegations of financial impropriety, finally closing NBI and firing the Brandens . She continues just publishing the newsletter by herself with other junior members.

1970′s Throughout the 1970′s Rand’s writings and her involvement in Objectivism decline.

1974 At the age of 69, after years of heavy smoking Ayn Rand requires surgery for lung cancer. She had started her Social Security benefits and Medicare insurance to cover her real costs of her smoking.

1976 Rand stops her writing for good.

9 Nov 1979 Frank O’Connor (you remember Ayn Rand’s husband) dies. He is buried in Kensico cemetery, Vahalla NY. Frank’s marriage to Ayn Rand had amazenly lasted 50 years amidst all the turmoil. Frank is listed in Social Security Death Database — which just to make plain to non-genealogists means he collected Social Security checks too.

6 Mar 1982 Ayn Rand dies and is buried with her husband Frank O’Connor in Kensico cemetery. You can view their tombstone at Find-A-Grave: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=35266557 .

Next … Ayn Rand vs Objectivism & The Critique

P.S. I have the following genealogical documents that I found in the course of my research:

1. Alice Rosenbaum (aka Ayn Rand, Alice O’Connor, Ayn Rand O’Connor) 1926 Ship Manifest also see above.
2. 1930 US Census (Los Angeles, CA @ 823 North Gower Street (matches 1930 US Census, confirms marriage date)
3. 13 March 1931 Petition For Naturalization & Certificate of Arrival.  The Certificate of Arrival is interesting as it does NOT reference the Ship Manifest and the Petition says the 1922 Cable Act eliminated her requirement for filing a Declaration of Intent. It includes her signature as Alice O’Connor.
4. 1940 US Census
5. Ancestry.com SSN Death Master details for Ayn Rand’s social security.

If anyone wants one of these I can email the image or the URL.

Ayn Rand – A Producer’s Intellectual Criticism of Objectivism — #Meme

  The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand

–Paul Ryan @ 2005 “Atlas Society “

Perhaps last weekend you heard that Paul Ryan was named the presumptive GOP Vice-Presidential candidate? But do you know that his espoused reason for being in politics is because he read, one of Ayn Rand’s fictional novels, Atlas Shrugged (a dystopian sci-fi novel)? It kind of makes you sad, that Paul Ryan’s parents did not have more books, because if they had, then perhaps Ryan would have read, Asimov (also Russian born) or Bradbury or Clarke (collectively, the ABC’s of science fiction) and been moved by one of them instead. Perhaps if Ryan had read one those talented writers, he might be in favor (or not) of robots, free speech or intellectual property or renewable resources or evolution (think 2001 Space Odyssey). If only he had read Asimov’s Foundation trilogy, perhaps Ryan would have become a Paul Krugman. Krugman cited Asimov’s series for his inspiration at becoming an economist.

Instead, Ryan thinks the top 1% should isolate itself from the other 99% (who are not “productive”/”creative”) and his budget seems to favor that 1% greatly. That is what Atlas Shrugged is about. The “creative” separate themselves and the non-creative types should just die-off. If you read Atlas Shrugged you will see parallels to today. It is the Tea Party creating chaos to “minimize the federal government until they can strangle it.” Go Google “Strangle the government”, this is not my phraseology , but the mantra of Paul Ryan and the Tea Party thugs. So what we have here is a lower-brow variant of L. Ron Hubbard (another sci-fi writer, whose followers started a “philosophical” organization) devotees.

Ryan upon being named as Mitt Romney’s running mate said, “I’d like to thank nature … (slight pause) and God …”. This is a rather odd statement to be uttered by a person professing belief in Objectivism and also Catholicism. You see my dear readers, the phrase “I’d like to thank nature” is the pointed code-phrase of atheists (not that there is anything wrong with being an atheist). They say their coded phrase meant either to cue their listeners into the fact that they are an atheist or for the more militant atheist to mock people of religious faith who say (and have said for thousands of years), “Thank God for …”. It is a parallel construct to the religious thanks and the atheist version is of a very recent invention (i.e. less than a decade, I have found no reference to the phrase on the Internet to before 2008). It probbaly dates from the arise of the New Atheists (Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett) in 2007.

Now as I have said being an atheist is not necessarily a bad thing. What made Ryan’s quote bad / hypocritical / unethical is that he said “nature and  God”. If you were a devout Catholic (other Christain denominations too, but Ryan espouses to be a Catholic) you would only thank God. You would not thank nature which is just a part of God’s creation. Likewise, if you were an atheist or an Objectivist you would absolutely NOT thank God. So, where does that leave the American voter? What are we to believe? The only logical / reasoned conclusion is that Ryan does NOT believe in any of: Atheism, Objectivism, or Catholicism.

So I call on all Atheists, Objectivists and Catholics to repudiate Ryan for his deceptive practice and of trying to portray himself as any/all of those ‘isms’. Now I know  that you are thinking this is the first time that Atheists, Objectivists, and Catholics can all agree on something — so lets agree Ryan is deceitful and vote for the other political ticket. If you are Pro-Deceit than the Romney-Ryan ticket would seem to be what you have been waiting for.

Because this Presidential election cycle seems to be about Ryan/Tea Party and their espousal of Objectivism, then let’s examine Ayn Rand’s life and see what it says about this absurdist sci-fi drama being foisted upon us by Mitt Romney. This is a blog with an oft genealogy theme, so let’s apply genealogy to Ayn Rand. We will use a timeline and add in  seminal documents and 1st-hand accounts of witnesses to examine her life and her followers’ lives (aka the Collective) for context and we finish with a reasoned critique of Objectivism.

The Ryan Budget is the greatest political fraud. That is how Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman’s reasoned analysis of Ryan’s proposed raising taxes on the middle class to lower taxes on the upper class without any deficit reduction for at least 20 years sees the Ryan Budget ??? So we the Asimov motivation in opposition to the Rand motivation — you be the judge on the basis of which is your favorite author/producer. But this jester’s premise is that the author Ayn Rand may influence how the USA is governed and you should be conversant on what the two parties are proposing before November.

I hope you are ruled by reason and will read these articles on Rand, Objectivism and Election 2012.

Lets start with some definitional ground work …

Ayn Rand Objectivist Concepts

• Man as Heroic
• Reason, only absolute reason
• The Productive and The Creative in relation to others
• Motivation for Man is the pursuit of his own happiness (no altruism)
• Witch Doctor vs Attila vs Producer
• Espoused – Atheism, Non-Violence/No-Force, Disgusted By Homosexuality (but favored protecting their rights), Anti Collective Efforts of any kind (Individualism)

Some of this sounds good and some sounds odd and all points need some explaining and a bit of context, so lets delve into these concepts in the next few articles.

Next … A Genealogical View of Ayn Rand

1940 US Census Indexing Is Complete — #Genealogy, #Census, #1940

OK, Ancestry.com completed their indexing of the 1940 US Census and fast on their heels, FamilySearch.org also completed theirs — Stanczyk is not aware of the status of other 1940 Census providers’ status.

Prior To The Index

Prior to the indexes, I used Dr Stephen Morse’s One-Step website to figure out which Enumerated District (ED) I need to search sequentially, image-by-image. With most ED’s being between 35-50 images, this was not overly taxing and it yielded excellent results — after a week I had most of the people I most wanted to find.

State indexes rolled out, a few at a time. I found other high value targets in my index searches. Now that indexing is complete, I had thought to find the last few stragglers. I found some indexes as their was supposed to be in places that I had not suspected and hence the ED search did not yield them to me. A few had names that were slightly off in their transcription but none-the-less were easily findable. Some I had to get creative on imaging misspelling or mis-transcribing and I found a handful more.

I hope others did as I did in blazing my trail. When I found a badly indexed name, I used Ancestry.com’s View/Add Alternative Info. So when I finally found my Aunt Kitty (Catherine Eliasz, now married and a Perinoff), who was born as Casimiera Elijasz, but always used Catherine Eliasz in my lifetime. I entered the mis-transcribed name correctly so that other genealogists after me would be able to find my aunt Kitty more easily (and as a bonus they would also find me too).

Where’s Aunt Alice?

So, where is my Aunt Alice? I had correctly anticipated that both my aunt Alice (the eldest) and Catherine (2nd eldest) would be married and I knew the husband’s name. As you see I found my aunt Kitty. But my best efforts at locating my Aunt Alice have failed. I tried using only her first name or only the last name. I tried by other data points I knew (Detroit, MI, USA — I kept broadening the search, even though I “knew” she was in Detroit). I tried locating a woman living in Detroit born in 1910 +/- 1 year (then 2 and 5 years) who was born in Poland (and Russia, just in case they still referenced Russian-Poland partition in that way). No luck !!! I tried searching for her fist husband — not found either ??  So I tried locating her second husband — no luck, he was still single living at home with his parents. No Alice and no first husband — could they have been missed?

The Missing

So here is my list of most sought after ancestors: Aunt Alice (nee Eliasz), could be listed as some corrupted version of EPPERLY (although I tried a combination of this I could think of). My mother’s sister Helen McLean. My dad’s cousins: Emil Leszczynski, Stephen/Matthew/Stanley Sobieszczanski. I thought I would find Emil. I was prepared to find him living away at college (law school) — no luck. As for the Sobieszczanski boys I was surprised, that outside of their brother Henry, I could find none. Perhaps the three are in the US military — after all I had another uncle that served in the US Navy 1935-1938.

How about you? Do you have any AWOL ancestors from the 1940 Census too? Drop me a line (comment or email).

What Is Your Social IQ ?

Blogger
Facebook
Flickr
Flipboard
FourSquare
Google+
iReddit
Klout
LinkedIn
Meetup
Pinterest
Skype
Stumble Upon
Tumblr
Twitter
Wordpress

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Match the App icon (on the left) to the App Name on  right.
2. Which 3 Apps are for writing blogs (micro-blogging does not count)?
3. How many Apps from the list have you ever used?

—

Answers:

1. 1 pt for each correct Apps matched with its name (answer page 7/28/2012)

2. Blogger, Tumblr, and WordPress [2 pts for each one you got]

3.  1-4  = 1 pt;   5-8 = 2 pts;    9-12 = 3 pts;   12+ = 4 pts

—

Perfect Score: 26:  You must be a social genius

17-25:  Highly Evolved

10-16: Socially Adept

5-9: Need to do some Googling

1-4: Internet Marooned

0: Luddite

Genealogy and Social Media — #Genealogy, #Facebook

There are 901 Million active Facebook users as of March 2012, according to HowManyAreThere.org  (http://www.howmanyarethere.org/how-many-facebook-users-are-there-2012/). Facebook is estimated to break one Billion users before 2012 ends (Mashable source:  http://mashable.com/2012/01/12/facebook-1-billion-users/). According to Gregory Lyons, a senior analyst at iCrossing, Facebook will reach the milestone in August [2012].

Do I have your attention genealogists? One seventh of the world’s population is on Facebook – perhaps your 2^nd and 3^rd cousins are there waiting for you to engage them in some family history. Skype has nearly 107 Million “Real Users” and recently hit 41.5 Million concurrent users !

So being social can help you reach more people who may have a piece to your family history. I have searched Facebook with modest success for the ‘ELIASZ’ or ‘ELIJASZ’ family name. Not everyone will friend you anymore.  I have had success in SKYPE finding an ‘ELIJASZ’ family member in my grandfather’s ancestral village of Pacanow in Poland. I once had a very lucky success with a social network in Poland, named nasza-klasa.pl (now more easily found at http://nk.pl/ ). Now this jester is minimally conversant in Polish and my “cousin” in Poland was zero conversant in English. But, I was able to use Google’s Translator (English to Polish and vice versa) with success although it did generate some laughter at times. The final result was a letter from Poland with a copy of my grandparents’ marriage record from the actual church book in Biechow, Poland! Nasza-Klasa also yielded two 2^nd cousins who were born in Poland (one since moved to the US) and we keep in touch via Facebook.

How else can you use social media to aid your genealogy? Write a genealogy blog (like this blog for example). I went to a recent Polish/Slavic genealogy seminar this year and spoke to a fellow blogger, Donna Pointkouski, who writes the genealogy blog, “What’s Past Is Prologue”. Donna called genealogy blogs, “2^nd Cousin Bait” . She said by writing about your genealogy searches, successes and family members, your blog can lure these more distant family tree members to you. It works because search engines like Google or Bing find your blog posts and index key words (tags/categories) and proper nouns in their databases and out they pop when 2^nd/3^rd cousins are trying to Google their family trees. Stanczyk has personally located two 2^nd cousins and one 3rd cousin via the blog. One 2^nd cousin even gave me a picture of a previously unknown grand-aunt from before 1910  — jackpot! I was then able to locate that grand-aunt in microfilm from the LDS Family History Library for her children’s birth records in Poland.

A couple more blog tips –  Sprinkle your blog posts with the lingua franca of your ethnic lineage to lure readers from your ancestral home. Finally on your blog software (WordPress,  Blogger,  Tumblr, etc.) – get the widget(s) to share your blog posts on your other social media accounts: Facebook,  Twitter,  LinkedIn,  Google+, etc.  Make sure you get the widest exposure possible to lure your family from all over. Ask family and friends to add your blog/tweets to their Flipboard and possibly ‘star’ the better posts for you to up your Klout.

Lastly, you may want to put your family tree online. Some of my greatest finds have come from collaborating with other genealogists on Ancestry.com. It is the largest collection of genealogists and paid genealogy subscribers — serious genealogists. These people found me and my family who as it turned out were a part of their family tree too. I cannot count the number of family members I have met from Ancestry.com. Let me tell you that my greatest finds were from a woman whose family I and my father thought were only friends from the “old country” whose families renewed their friendship here in the US. From this woman (Kim), who I helped out by reading her grandparents’ marriage record from a Polish church in Detroit. What do the two of us discover, but her great-grandmother was an ELIJASZ from Pacanow. As it turned out, her great-grandmother was my great-grandfather’s sister and that the two of us shared a great-great-grandfather — we were 3rd cousins! So we were blood relatives not just family friends as our parents had thought. I found out my father was her father’s best man — neither of us knew that beforehand. Her grandmother (Rose Wlecialowski) was a best friend of my grandmother. I thought I had never met this third cousin … wrong!  She had photos of me in her family pictures. We were so young neither had memories of the other. She had pictures of me as a 3 year old child that I did not have, with my young father on her grandmother’s farm. She had a picture of my young grandmother from the 1930′s with her grandmother!  This was a B-O-N-A-N-Z-A!

I found her great-grandparents’ marriage record from Pacanow and had it copied from the church book. I translated it from Russian for her (and for my records too). It confirmed that we were indeed 3rd cousins and shared great-great-grandparents (Martin Elijasz & Anna Zasucha). I also eventually found the birth record from the first child that my paternal grandparents had together over in Poland and little Wladyslaw Jozef Elijasz had Rose Wlecialowski for his god-mother. Her grandmother was a god-mother to one of my “uncles”. Poor little Wladyslaw died in infancy and never made the trip to America with my grandparents and my aunt Alice. My father and the rest of my aunts and uncles were born here in the US.

So you see, your family is out there. You just don’t know it yet. Use the social networks, USA and overseas versions. Write a blog to lure your cousins. By all means join Ancestry.com too and upload your family tree to Ancestry.com. These will grow your family tree more completely than you could if you eschewed not to use the Internet. Make your family tree mobile — load it to your iPhone and start collaborating in the Cloud. You will thank me later!

–Stanczyk

BigData means Backup … Security … Disaster Recovery … #RootsTech, #Backup

OK you have a laptop and / or a smartphone and / or a tablet and you also have data, perhaps a LOT of data. It creeps up on this hoarding of data / space. You need to be proactive to keep from losing your data. Primarily we speak of genealogy (or family / history) research and of course family photos and scans of documents, but perhaps you are a knowledge worker and use your computer equipment to produce works in your professional career too. I’ll speak of genealogical research / data and you can extend it to any other valuable data / files you may have.

Today’s blog came about from a cousin (alright second cousin, once removed), Robin. She was frustrated by losing files. So her family and friends had a nice debate over what she needs to do. Of course it is a very complex issue and needs to be customized to each person.

Let me state that designing a backup strategy that is free or low cost is almost impossible — unless you only have a small number of files (# and/or sizes) and can get by with the free: DropBox, GoogleDrive, Apple iCloud, etc.

You could conceivably cobble together a solution with enough “Cloud Services” and one account each for Robin and her husband on each service in order to build up a free usable amount of storage for backup on the Internet. OK, lets say that gets you “enough” space to do your backups. First off, you better hope the number/size of files do NOT increase — but industry studies says otherwise, that data more than doubles each and every year. You will therefore run out of “free” space. Also, you will now have to invent a bookkeeping system to keep track of which files are backed up on which service in which account. Is it getting complicated yet?

How much data do you have to backup? This is the first question you need to answer. If you have an Internet service that limits data transfers or subjects you to overcharge fees then you really need to think about using the cloud. Keep in mind that you need to backup and at some point  to recover a lost file(s) — now that recovery will double those overage fees. Most people can quickly generate 30-60GB of “data” from their music, videos, books, apps, and their pictures and when you throw in their work products (which actually are the smallest part of the critical space) 30-6oGB goes quickly. My wife’s tablet is almost full and we do not use much music or video.

How do you lose files? Inadvertent deletes/drops? Hardware failures? Accidental overwrites with something else? How about malware/viruses etc. ? All of the above probably. Then you need a backup solution to cover all of those eventualities. How about if you live in Florida (Hurricanes), New Orleans (Hurricanes/Floods), Oklahoma/Nebraska/Kansas (Twisters), California (Earthquakes/Mudslides), etc. or in an area where terrorism can cause catastrophic failures (NYC, DC, Seattle’s Space Needle)?

But Stanczyk, what about my sensitive or private data (financials, non-disclosure documents, personal identity, etc.)? Where do you back that up to? Is the cloud safe? Do they lose data in the cloud? Can the cloud data be stolen/hacked? What happens when the cloud crashes and is unavailable? More worries.

By now I hope you get an idea that backup is:

1. Complex
2. Involves Some Costs
3. Requires Planning
4. Custom to Each Individual / Company
5. Recovery Needs to be Accounted for
6. You Need Access to Backups
7. Disaster Recovery (offsite)
8. Need Security

You could be tempted to just rationalize that December 2012 is coming up and either the Mayan Calendar and /or the World will end and why tax your brain to do backups anyway.

Solutions

Ideally, we want the following features in a solution:

1. 3 or 4 copies (counting the original copy)
2. 1 remote copy for disaster recovery (fire, hurricane, flood, theft/loss etc.)
3. Easy / Fast  recovery from the first backup (ergo 1st backup copy must be local)
4. Backups allow you to recover from accidental delete (assuming delete happens after the first backup)
5. If we backup data with privacy concerns then we WILL use encrypt / decrypt software before or as we make a copy
6. The Cloud can be used as the remote copy

Complexity. Just keep it simple, remember the acronym  KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). Trying to do backups without spending money will add complexity. So complexity / time / money are your trade-offs. In my career, we used to say, “Good | Fast | Cheap;  Pick 2″. If you want a fast and cheap backup solution it will not be any good. If you want good and fast then it will not be cheap.

Lets say you have as your work product, family trees (gedcoms), scans of documents / pictures and notes / timelines (spreadsheets) / plans – lists. This is over and above your Apps, Pics, Music, Video, etc. How much space do these files all add up to? Is it 7ooMB, 1,400MB, 2,100MB then you can probably get away with burning CDs (or DVDs). CDs hold about 702MB. Make two (or better yet three copies). You need at least three copies (original plus 2 more).

Put one CD in your bank safety deposit box (if it fits). Send a second CD to one of your family members (preferably another genealogist who lives at least 90 miles away from you). The remote CDs provide for a disaster recovery in case of something catastrophic happens at your residence. You can always retrieve the CD from the bank or your family member who may be outside the area affected by the disaster. Obviously, the further away your other copies are, the longer it will be before you can gain access to them to begin recovery — but the securer the disaster copy will be. This is fairly cheap. The flaw is … you keep getting more data / files or the files keep growing. Your family tree changes repeatedly (additions and subtractions). Sometimes you can rewrite the CD (if there is still space) and sometimes you cannot rewrite because the CD does not allow for rewriting or the space is insufficient to handle the larger file. Also if you have 30 GB that needs to be backed up or more then CDs are not viable because you need too many CDs. It is also hard to keep track of multiple versions in case you need to recover from a version that is not the last backup version. I do not recommend CDs but it is fairly simple and fairly cheap.

You can also  substitute DVDs, USB drives (also called thumb drives) for CDs which provide greater space.

Monday - Backing-Up via backup software, external drives, and the Internet/Cloud.

In Prose … The Good Wife — #Love, #LiteratureLost, #WomanOfValor

Stanczyk first put pen to parchment and opined during the reigns of Alexander (1492-1506), Sigismund the Old (1467-1548) and Sigismund Augustus (1520-1572), all kings of the Jagiellonian Dynasty). But of all the kings of Poland, I wish I could have been the jester for Jan III Sobieski (1629-1696) is the monarch I most lament not serving. King Jan III was one of those larger than life individuals about whom history wraps itself around and conforms tightly to.

I’ll leave his deeds of valor to historians and to generals to study. But today, I wish to pay homage to good King Jan III and by extension to my beloved good wife, Tereza.

By extension to my wife? How so? Well you see my gentle readers, Jan Sobieski (no III – the man, not the king) was lesser known for his good wife and the literate love letters they wrote to each other. Usually, the jester informs the king by his position to speak to truth to power. But this jester wishes he could have learned at this king’s knees as King Jan III posted love letters to his wife, the beloved Queen consort, Marysieńka.

Here’s my letter to my good wife …

All the rivers run into the sea

Yet the sea is not full

Unto the place from whence the rivers come

Thither they shall return again

                                    –Ecclesiastes 1:7

 

I quote Ecclesiastes here my love because I love you in this way. The verse speaks a metaphor of infiniteness and my love for you is truly infinite. The verse speaks of water which as all men know is really about women’s emotions. Yet no matter how much love I have for you I cannot fill up the sea. Only God loves more and only He was able to fill the sea. But at least I will love you again and again ad infinitum.

Undoubtedly my good Jewish wife would rather I quote Proverbs 31:10-31 (also know as the Woman of Valor). She is truly deserving of that epithet. Perhaps she’d want me to quote:

A good wife, who can find?

She is far more precious than jewels.

                                                –Proverbs 31:10

I would however go deeper into the woman of valor for my quote …

Many women have done excellently,

But you surpass them all.

                                                –Proverbs 31:29

 

I feel that God’s own angels would further lavish upon her …

Give her the fruits of her hands,

And let her works praise her inside the gates

                                                –Proverbs 31:31

Love is infinite my wife. No matter how much I love you, I will have more to give you. No matter how much I love you, I will have more to give our children. So my love is like Ecclesiastes 1:7 and yet so much more.

iGoogle is Going Bye-Bye — #RootsTech

Stanczyk is sad. Google is planning on phasing out a service that allows millions of people to personalize its home page with applications such as weather updates and stock quotes. The customization service, known as iGoogle, will be turned off in November 2013. So we have about 16 months to find a similar replacement for these capabilities …

Unless you mainly use iGoogle-mobile which will be retired sooner. The mobile version will be retired at the end of this month, on July 31, 2012. More details/suggestions are here on Google’s site.

If you have been on your iGoogle page you should have seen the following on your page:

Now the reason this jester is sad is that I used this web tool as a search engine and a kind of genealogy aggregator of news/announcements from sources that are very helpful to my personal research or to keeping me informed in general on genealogical matters. It also was a landing page (portal)  for some web widgets that performed useful tricks (date calculators, language translation, etc.).

Long time readers will recall that I recommended they use this tool. So if you use iGoogle let me know. Also please let me know what you intend to do for a work-around. Google won’t you please reconsider keeping the iGoogle tool and if you need a few ideas for making it a hit web app — email me. I have a few ideas.

–Stanczyk

Much More Ado About Mitt … Its All True — #Bain, #Romney, #Presidential, #Politics

Today’s research is from SEC / EDGAR website …

Today a whole lot of comments about whether Mitt Romney was involved or not with Bain after February 1999 or not. I do not want to cover that ground but I recommend the following articles that cover the issues:

Boston Globe – “Mitt Romney stayed at Bain 3 years longer than he stated“

Yahoo News – “Report: Romney at Bain Three Years Longer Than He Claimed“

There were many other sources as well.

My motivation was the Romney campaign denying these reports and calling the President and his team misleading. This is another lie/inaccurate statement by the Romney Campaign team and Romney to deny the President and his campaign team and the Boston Globe report.

This jester went to the SEC website and looked at the EDGAR webpages listing the Bain SEC filings from 1999 through 2002. I have compiled a spreadsheet with links for any journalists or media types to follow or for you my blog followers/readers to follow.

The facts are as the Boston Globe and President Obama stated. The Bain companies’ SEC filings indicate that Mitt Romney had substantial involvement with Bain well beyond February 1999.

Romney had involvements with Bain as the various fillings state as:

• Has Mitt Romney signature as a preparer/submitter of the filing
• Title: CEO,   Principal Occupation: Managing Director Bain Capital Inc.
• Share voting and dispositive powers
• Mr W. Mitt Romney is the sole shareholder, sole director, Chief Executive Officer and President of Bain Capital and thus is the controlling person of Bain Capital.

The above are lines directly from copied from the SEC filing text (see spreadsheet below). In many of the filings Mitt Romney’s name was listed many times in many capacities. But clearly he was involved for longer than he has stated. Maybe as much as three years into 2002. Definitely, my spreadsheet showed some level of involvement through at least May of 2001. I could not find any involvement as of  February 8th, 2002 and going forward (as indicated by SEC filings).

My Methodlogy was to only look at Bain Capital, Brookside or BCIP filings, but there were many more where Bain was involved with other companies that I did not examine. There were a total of 131 filings and I only examined 20 filings and document sixteen filings below in the spreadsheet table.

Mr Romney you need to apologize to the President and indeed to all of America. You definitely had involvement as documented by the legal filings with the SEC. Beyond apologies, I think Mitt Romney owes all Americans complete transparency to get beyond this controversy. Mitt Romney I call on you to be open and transparent on this controversy and any SEC investigation. The first step is to release all TAX RETURNS from 1999 through 2008 inclusive. This covers the period of concern in the Boston Globe investigative article, which said you did not finalize your severance until 2002 and then made it a ten year severance pact, retroactively starting from February 1999. Hence we need 1999 through 2008 TAX YEARS to examine your involvement and to clear up whether these “mistatements” on your or your campaign’s part were meant to deceive MA voters and/or the USA voters in this Presidential campaign (as well as 2008′s campaign too).

Now before I stop writing and paste my research, let me state that I am still a registered Republican. I even sent money to Mitt Romney for his 2008 campaign and still receive his mailings up to the present.

But I vote for Democrats since TEA Party, Grover Norquist pledgers seems to be dedicated to ruining this country by doing NOTHING in DC and by sowing the seeds of anarchy with their ignorant, made up facts and puerile focus on women’s health rights, gay marriages, suppressing voter rights, etc.  These are not intellectual Republicans. They are not small government/low tax Republicans — because they work on limiting civil rights instead of lowering taxes and creating jobs and solving the economic woes of our nation. You cannot be a small government/low tax government if you keep trying to get the Federal government involved in social issues of every American. Real Republicans do not want to enforce social mores by Big Brother-Big Government, they are merely fiscal conservatives and prize securing the blessings of America by utilizing the military in only just ways and to ensure our defense and protection of our liberties from all enemies foreign and domestic.

Here is the spreadsheet data(evidence) that will stop the Republican/Romney lies … [If you do not believe me, then click on every link and look at each document as I did.]

Filing Date	Link to SEC Filing	ROMNEY Involved	SEC File to Read	NOTES
4/13/1999	www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1033683/0000950131-99-002266.txt	Yes	0000950131-99-002266.txt	has his signature
9/27/1999	www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/830134/0000927016-99-003307.txt	Yes	0000927016-99-003307.txt
2/14/2000	www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1027584/0000950131-00-001153.txt	Yes	0000950131-00-001153.txt	has his signature
2/14/2000	www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1033683/0000950131-00-001151.txt	Yes	0000950131-00-001151.txt
7/6/2000	www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1033683/000092701600002402/0000927016-00-002402.txt	Yes	0000927016-00-002402.txt
7/14/2000	www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1065042/000092701600002483/0000927016-00-002483-index.htm	Yes	0000927016-00-002483.txt
7/26/2000	www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/6885/000092701600002587/0000927016-00-002587.txt	Yes	0000927016-00-002587.txt	Mr W. Mitt Romney is the sole shareholder, sole director, Chief Executive Officer and President of Bain Capital and thus is the controlling person of Bain Capital.
11/6/2000	www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1033683/000092701600003722/0000927016-00-003722-index.htm	Yes	0000927016-00-003722.txt	share voting and dispositive power
2/13/2001	www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/874689/000092701601000754/0000927016-01-000754.txt	Yes	0000927016-01-000754.txt	has his signature
2/13/2001	www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1065042/000092701601000764/0000927016-01-000764.txt	Yes	0000927016-01-000764.txt
2/14/2001	www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1065042/000089843001000644/0000898430-01-000644.txt	Yes	0000898430-01-000644.txt	has his signature
2/20/2001	www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1054290/000092701601001009/0000927016-01-001009.txt	Yes	0000927016-01-001009.txt	Title: CEO,   Principal Occupation: Managing Director Bain Capital Inc.
2/22/2001	www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1065042/000089843001000745/0000898430-01-000745.txt	Yes	0000898430-01-000745.txt	has his signature
5/14/2001	www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1033683/000092701601501004/0000927016-01-501004.txt	Yes	0000927016-01-501004.txt	share voting and dispositive power
5/14/2001	www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1033683/000092701601500679/0000927016-01-500679.txt	Yes	0000927016-01-500679.txt	share voting and dispositive power
2/8/2002	www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/874689/000104596902000154/0001045969-02-000154.txt	No	0001045969-02-000154.txt	After this no indication of Romney involvement in SEC filings
The above are for Bain Capital, BCIP, and Brookside. There were a total of 131 filings 1999-2002 that involved Bain entities. The remainder were listed under differing company names and were not examined

Celsius 233* — A Bradbury Tale — #Humor, #Science, #Religion, #FreeSpeech

Dear Readers this neo-post-compassionate-conservative-apocalyptic-dystopian history is from the days of the year 2019. Contrary to the comical Internet Mayan conspiracy kooks, the world did not end in 2012 despite Mitt Romney being elected President of the USA and then re-elected leader of the entire English Speaking Free World in 2016 — an election that everyone now knows he purchased with his considerable undocumented wealth. We should have listened to  Vanity Fair back in 2012 — but there were just too few readers back then. Oh the misery we have endured since …

It has been a hard seven years under President Romney.  Because, of the influence of the Tea Party Evangelicals and Romney’s considerable undocumented wealth he became President.

Back on 4th July 2012, the World Science community discovered the Higgs Boson quantum particle  – the God Particle. This so enraged Romney, that the first thing that President Romney did was have Vain Capitalist LLC buy all the newspapers (especially the Murdoch Press & Hacking Software company) and leverage the hell out of them — supposedly to enhance his own considerable undocumented wealth. But that was just the ostensible reason.

They ended up bankrupting all of the press and media outlets — not hard to do in those days of the Great Recession and barely anybody reading at all and almost none at all in the South. So the newspapers and other media  went out of business and now there were only the bloggers and the Internet to keep data and information alive.

Then in 2017 when President Romney was re-elected in a very suspect election. He immediately moved to control the Internet and to ban blogging software. This precipitated World War III , which he financed with his considerable undocumented wealth while the European leaders were still so busy talking about their imaginary currency (I believe it was called, the Euro) the USA conquered the UK and then most of the European continent (except for Greece, Spain and Italy — which were non-profitable countries), Canada, New Zealand and Australia. That is why he is President of the English Speaking Free World. He is now trying to eradicate blogs and by so doing eliminate the “dangerous” bloggers too. Oddly that is how the USA finally got its first metric standard (Celsius) which it used to confuse the issue of Global Warming.

It has been historic this anti science and publication administration. First they denied the age of the Earth and its fossils, then they denied Evolution, then they denied Global Warming — even when half the US was baking like HELL back in 2012??? The last straw was the Higgs Boson, ironically the God Particle caused these religionists to pursue the pogrom against science and information.

There has been a long history of this anti knowledge movement. First the Catholics tried to censor scientists like Copernicus (who took his knowledge to the grave) and then Gallileo. By the time  Darwin had appeared, Prostestants had joined in too. So by 2012, America had a breed of religionists called “Evangelicals” who were people who Evangelized against science and reading and such things calling them the Devil’s playground. They used to rewrite biblical stories to say that the Bible’s prophets were all about the profit and were against charity. I know this sounds incredible and even unbelievable to you future historians, but I swear it is all true. If you can find any Internet documents or archived newspapers (a physical piece of pages of paper with printed texts that contained information — completely devoid of any digital means) you may be able to read it for yourself — if anyone still does that in the future.

So for the sake of the future. I am asking my blog readers to memorize my blog posts. Just pick your favorites and commit them to memory. Maybe you can write them down on paper if your family has a history of dementia. At any rate, pass them down in your family. Read them at holidays.

All remaining bloggers that have not yet been silenced are calling for their readers to do this for their blogs too. We must be able to preserve knowledge through these information Dark Ages that we are entering.

God (or Nature as the scientists are wont to say) save our immortal souls!!!

–*a terrible homage to Ray Bradbury‘s Farenheit 451

Higgs Boson, #CERN, #Science, and #Comic Sans

 Today, CERN, announced that with a certainty of 5 sigmas they had detected a particle, akin to the Higgs Boson (via the energy, 126.5GeV, it emits as it decays). This VERY closely matched the predicted Standard Model of a Higgs Boson.

My only disappointment was that I was expecting the 1812 Overture as they made their announcement but all I got was the Comic Sans font  of the fabulous scientist, Fabiola Gianotti (member of CERN’s ATLAS team).

What was trending this early AM?   #Higgs, #CERN, #ATLAS, #LHC, #Fabiola Gianotti, and #Comic Sans .  Huh? What was a casual computer font like, Comic Sans,  doing trending?

You see Fabiola Gianotti is the Italian particle physicist in charge of the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland. In her presentation, she rather humorously chose to use Comic Sans, for her presentation’s font. Well apparently that insignificant detail of this momentous occasion was enough to set the entire blogerrati all a-twitter.

Five Sigmas?

What the heck is five sigmas and why did they write that as 99.9999 (six nines), just shy of 100? Sigma (σ) is known as the standard deviation. The variance from the norm either positive or negative variance from the expected value. So what the scientists were looking for was a confidence level in the data so significant, that there could not be any other conclusion. They usually accept 5 sigmas (99.9999) as their hurdle for acceptance. The only people who routinely deny five sigmas are TEA Party politicians and their followers.

Motorola in the 1970’s was searching for a level of excellence and stability and repeatability in their processes called Six Sigma. To give you an idea of Six Sigma and its impact on business, especially in the IT world from which Stanczyk did some of his best works. We would often discuss achieving six sigmas of “UP TIME” for our massive databases (Data Marts, Data Warehouses). In one year’s time there are 525,600 minutes. So to achieve six sigmas, we would need to make our databases available the entire year, except for less than 40 minutes of unavailability. The uptime would have to be more than 525,560 minutes out of 525,600. Quality/Certainty at this level comes at a very high price – so in the business world we would usually accept something less than Six Sigma.

In statistics 2 sigmas of deviation on either side of the bell curve (you remember the bell curve don’t you),  would mean you have 95% of the area under the curve, 3 sigmas would account for about 99.7%, so 5 sigmas accounts for 99.9999% of the area under the curve, leaving almost no room for error. That is a LOT of confidence.

The error function for five sigmas gives you:

0.999999426697 (so five sigmas is more accurately written as 99.9999426697 – when you multiply by 100 to get a percentage). The possibility of error is 1 minus the 5 sigmas or: 0.000000001973 . All zeroes until  the 9^th decimal place. So that is pretty close to no chance for error.

 

Higgs Boson

 

Oh, today’s hullabaloo was really all about a quantum particle called the Higgs Boson (prosaically called by media types, the “God Particle”, which of course the godless, atheists (the majority) of scientists refuse to use   J  ) .  The Higgs Boson was named after Peter Higgs. Who was one of six people who came up with the theoretical model predicting the Higgs Boson. Higgs was annoyed that the particle became nicknamed the “God Particle” by the media. Higgs thought it might offend religious types. But in actuality it really just offends those who do not believe in any religion or who want to credit everything in the universe to “randomness”.

 

This boson is the one whose appearance quickly after the Big Bang is what gave mass to all other particles in the universe. Today, science has said they are 99.9999426697% (five sigmas) certain that the decay and energy release their experimental data that they have recorded show that the LHC created a Higgs Boson predicted by Dr Peter Higgs’ theoretical model.

 

Happy 4^th of JULY!   Cue the 1812 Overture and the Fireworks (our big bang in the USA).

History Stolen – More than 4,000 Documents Stolen; Conviction In Thefts !

Perhaps long time blog readers will remember Stanczyk’s earlier post about historical documents that may have been stolen. Well it seems a conviction has been had in the theft of more than 4,000 rare historical documents.

On June 27th, 2012, Barry Landau  was convicted for his role in stealing more than 4,000 rare historical documents. Landau, 63, admitted in a plea agreement to having stolen from museums in Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York and Connecticut and having sold some of those documents for profit.

His accomplice, Jason Savedoff, who along with Landau was arrested in July 2011 after workers at the Maryland Historical Society spotted them trying to steal documents. Savedoff has already pled guilty and is awaiting sentencing for his role.

Landau has acknowledged stealing documents from at least five institutions in addition to the Maryland Historical Society. They are the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Connecticut Historical Society, the University of Vermont, the New York Historical Society and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential library in Hyde Park, N.Y.

Many of the angry historians who had been tricked by Landau came to see his sentencing. Locally from Philadelphia the sentiment was …

“What they did is really terrible. It our national patrimony that they took,” Lee Arnold of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (HSP) said. “A thief and a liar,” Ashley Harper also of the HSP said. The HSP had to conduct an inventory of documents after several visits by Landau and Savedoff (See: http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2011/07/25/historical-society-of-pennsylvania-conducting-inventory-after-visits-by-accused-document-thieves/). Kim Sajet said Landau and Savedoff visited the HSP’s historical collections a total of 17 times !

Other Sources

Bloomberg BW (excellent reporting):

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-06-28/ny-man-gets-7-years-prison-for-rare-document-theft

CBS:

http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2012/06/27/man-to-be-sentenced-for-rare-document-thefts/

CNN:

http://articles.cnn.com/2012-06-27/justice/justice_presidential-historian-sentenced_1_barry-h-landau-jason-savedoff-documents?_s=PM:JUSTICE

RootsTech – Saturday/Sunday Software – #Genealogy, #Meme

Stanczyk has been noticing some new software lately. This week Google had their Google I/O Conference and they released some new software there of note. For those with Apple’s iOS devices, we finally have the Google Chrome browser available to use on our iPhone/iPad. This jester quick downloaded the app as I had been waiting for it.

At RootsTech 2012, Google announced that they were going to create a microcode widget (still not here yet). But about that time, I noticed they had a new widget (see yellow highlight at the left) next to their Bookmark-This-Page star widget  in the Chrome browser, when you go to the Ancestry.com and visit your family tree. This widget was/is not available in Apple’s Safari browser. This little widget will do a look-up at FamilySearch.org on the person in your tree you are presently at. Sometimes I use this to see if there is any new database available that has something on my ancestor.

Sadly, the Chrome browser app on iPhone did not have the widget. The browser did work fast. Depending on how your brain works, you may prefer Chrome over Safari (or vice-versa). I found both functionally about the same. Here are Chrome and Safari  side-by-side (iPhone screen shots) …

 

Also new on the iOS device scene is a new app, named Heredis. It is an attractive app, but I was not willing to hand enter all my family tree again (and I have been mocked that my 1070+ person tree is SMALL). I could not find a way to import my GEDCOM from any device. I tried hooking the iPhone up to a laptop and I also tried having them on the same WiFi network — no luck. The HELP functionality was absolutely no help. My recommendation is you do not bother unless you are just starting out and do not mind entering your data by hand on your iOS device.

Heredis (in red circle)

As you can see from the screen shot I am trying to go mobile with my genealogy. There is MyHeritage, Ancestry, Mocavo, Indexing, and Heredis. There is also a RootsTech app — which EVERY technical conference should embrace for their attendees.

The Indexing App is so that you too can pitch in and help FamilySearch.org index images so we all get more databases to browse/search online.

How many do you use?

2012 – Year of the Census — #Genealogy, #Census, #State, #Territory

NY State Censuses: Colonial | State

2012 has certainly been a very good genealogical year for this jester. Recently, Ancestry.com completed the 1940 index for NY and I was thrilled to find my grand-uncle Frank Leszczynski ! Grand-Uncle Frank (aka Franciszek was 75 in 1940, and was the god-father at my aunt Catherine’s birth in 1914 and was from my great-grandfather Tomasz’s first wife, Julianna). He is a Naturalized citizen on/before 1940, after having filed in 1931 (Declaration of Intent). Why he is living with a family of Pawelczak as a lodger is a question. After all, he has two half-siblings living nearby, including my grand-uncle Michael whom he was living with when he filed the Declaration of Intent in 1931. So why live at 819 Oliver Street in North Tonawanda (Niagara County, NY) with the Pawelczaks — which he & the Pawelczaks did since 1935 according to the census data?

I still need to find Frank’s death certificate and death notice (if possible) and his Naturalization papers (Erie County or more likely Niagara County).

Ancestry on 5th-June-2012 also released indexes and images of the NY State Census for 1892, 1915, 1925 (previously they had done 1905, partially?).

NY Censuses & 1940 US Census both making my research in NY state a little more complete.

State Censuses

Family Tree Magazine had a nice “Cut & Save” chart on State Censuses (not the US Federal Census). Here is my Cut/Saved images of the States and their Colonial or Territorial or State Censuses that are available … somewhere.

Alabama .. Minnesota

Mississippi .. Wyoming

Almost Wordless Wednesday — #Polish, #Genealogy, 1880 Baptismal Certificate

1880 Krzeszow/Tarnow Birth Extract (Latin/Galicia)

This baptismal certificate was extracted and delivered to a parish in Russian-Poland some time after May 1880. No doubt so Jan Vitus Martino[w] could marry some woman in her parish. It was the oddity of finding such a document amongst the church records written in Cyrillic/Russian for a Russian-Poland partition that I was shocked at the unexpected find.

I also used to collect European postage stamps (mostly Poland, Hungary and the Germanic states) of this era so to see the stamps used as a kind of fee/tax always interests me.

48 kr (kroner?) Austro-Hungarian Empire stamps

Jan Vitus  son of Adalbert Martino[w] son of Mikolaj & Agata Malek  and Victoria daughter of  Michael Michalek & Anna Siwiec born 15th June 1856. Godparents Michael Ligus & Maryanna widow of  Gaspar Flasinicki.

Elijasz born (ur.) in Kiev, Raised in Pacanow ??? #Polish, #Ukrainian, #Genealogy

16-May-2012

Dear Diary,

I have been meaning to write for so long … Wish you were here! Diary, my blog today is about an interesting story that I am trying to chronicle. I do not know the beginning, or the end, nor much in the middle either — but that will not stop me from starting my story.

Diary, as you may recall, I wrote previously about the “Polish Declaration of Admiration and Friendship for the United States”, a set of 111 volumes produced by the newly re-created Republic of Poland in 1926. They wished to honor the USA on its 150th Birthday (in recognition of their friendship and support by Casimir Pulaski & Taduesz Kosciuszko in our Revolutionary War). So, 1926 was 1776+ 150 (sesquicentenial). In an amazing national effort, the government officials and schools all across Poland signed their autographs in a huge multi-volume, “Happy Birthday” wish to the USA.  111 Volumes of people signing this emblem of goodwill.

This jester knows of two places on the Internet where you can peruse the images of these books (volumes). One is the USA in the Library of Congress, in their European Reading Room.

In Poland, there is the Genealogical Society of Poland (aka genealodzy.pl) that has the images and a searchable database of the names that have been transcribed (a work in progress).

Aaah, I see that they still have not added my contributions.  But if you go to Volume (Tom) 13, Page (Strony) 419 and also page 420. You will see the signatures of the children and their school teachers.

So I noticed that page 419 was a young man named Czeslaw Elijasz. Ok I knew that was NOT my own father, but I wondered at who this child was that in 1926 signed his signature just a bit before my father Czeslaw Eliasz would be born. Fortunately, I thought to turn the page, because on page 420 were two Elijaszow:  Zygmunt Elijasz and Irena Elajszowna [sic]. Now Irena’s signature caught my eye because it appears she is dyslexic and transposed the ‘a’ and ‘j’ in her last name. This marked her as a close relative to my grandfather, who also would occasionally also transpose letters (ex. the ‘s’ and ‘z’) when signing his name. So we see there were three near relatives from a Pacanow school (see stamp image from page 420,  below).

Well I once (23-April-2011) wrote that I was seeking anyone related to one of those three children. Well yesterday, a granddaughter of Czeslaw Elijasz wrote to me (alright, emailed me — these modern times) !  Let me quote the lovely Paulina …

Dear Sir,

While looking for the information about my family I have found the page

http://mikeeliasz.wordpress.com/2011/04/23/1926-polish-declarations-of-admiration-and-friendship-for-the-united-states/

and your question: Does anyone from Pacanow know of Zygmunt or Czeslaw or Irena Eljasz|Elijasz|Eliasz who would have been a school child in 1926?

Well, my grandfather (the father of my mother) name was Czesław Eliasz (born in 1915 in Kiev) but lived and grow up in Pacanów. Than he married and moved to Nowy Korczyn and run there his own bakery.
Is he the person you are maybe looking for?

Best regards,
Paulina Sieczak

Volume 13, Page 419, Czeslaw Elijasz

Oh, how surreal, a letter-within-another-letter — very literary indeed. So dear diary, this is  where I will end today’s entry. I shared my genealogy with Paulina in hopes that she can make  a match between her family and mine. I’ll write you again soon dear diary.

Dear diary, please note that Czeslaw is on 8th line from top (on far right, above Kazimiera Glowniak)

Pacanowie, okregu Stopnickiego (on page 420)

WDYTYA is canceled by NBC for its 4th season !!! #Genealogy, #Ancestry, #NBC

Stanczyk is sad that WDYTYA (“Who Do You Think You Are?“) has been canceled by NBC — There will NOT be a 4th season.

This was reported by Investors Business Daily at 9:00am today by Patrick Seitz (why do this when I am en route to an archive?). The impact upon Ancestry.com  was immediate. Today its stock (ACOM) is down 13.15%  at the time of this article.

From a business standpoint, I think this is an over reaction. First off this, is a year of the 1940 census and that has been as HUGE up to all census related sites (see this jester’s Genealogy Website Rankings page). Also Ancestry has launched its DNA initiative (AncestryDNA). Now this has the costs baked in already and whatever revenue stream this produces will accrue to the bottom line. Stanczyk has already fielded questions about this product, so there does exist some buzz for the product and it was announced/promoted at this year’s RootsTech Conference. Add in the PBS’s own series “Finding Your Roots” and there does seem to be an “rising tide lifts all boats” effect in progress.

So I have to ask, “Is NBC short sighted in this action or at least are they acting out of synch with other media/events that are happening?”.

I think NBC should move it to Saturday night. So we could have a Saturday / Sunday bonanza between NBC and PBS. Both series could do a “push-pull” to lift each other. If NBC is firm then, perhaps a Cable network will pick up this series??? Please!  Here is what I think might be good fits:

Bravo – Who doesn’t like The Actor Studio? Similar  audience since the celebrity genealogy is a kind of deep dive into a celeb’s background.

OWN – Oprah seems like the kind of family oriented billionaire who has the wherewithal, clout, and morals to keep this content going  … strong.

A&E TV – This network has Bio and History channels. There must be a slot available there

BYU TV – This would be my last choice given its limited availability. But BYU and LDS audience would be interested in this PROVO, UT send-up and the rest of us could follow along.

As this season draws to a close, I wanted to say, “Thanks” to WDYTYA and Finding Your Roots for an excellent season.

 

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts on this matter.  Email me!