22 generations I took advantage of a 14 day free trial to ancestry.com. I was inspired to do so by our upcoming trip to Denmark this fall which will be my first trip ever to the motherland. In my first two days of concentrated effort, I traced ancestry back to 1348. That's 22 generations of family history! I believe some of this is new information but that's certainly not due to any luck or aptitude on my part; it's just that the genealogy software has gotten better and the data bases grow all the time. Other serious researchers upload their data onto the world wide web, and I take advantage of their efforts.I show the first 6 of these 22 generations on the index page. To me, there has always been something unsatisfying about genealogy. Some branches of the family tree dead end very quickly. For example, my grandmother's mother in Fjaltring, Denmark was an unwed mother. Nothing is currently known about her parents, and she was only born in 1862. Well, her ancestry obviously goes back through time; it's just not recorded. I suspect almost every family traces back to nobility. Mine, too. The earliest ancestor I have is Olaf Vaebner; I now understand "vaebner" means squire; the lowest layer of nobility. It's not that there weren't plenty of scoundrels and failures in my family tree - they just don't get remembered. But my real reservation about genealogy is that it is mostly a series of names and dates. So I now have 22 lives of direct ancestors that are completely unknown to me. So what? Were they happy? What were their lives like? You might think this dearth of meaningful biography is just the result of human forgetfulness. The problem is we all think everyone knows what we know. We know all about our parents and quite a bit about our grandparents, so we assume everyone knows this and it's not worth recording. We might even know a story or two about our great grandparents, but that's about it. Beyond great grandparents, our personal knowledge of family history is blank. But another variable is at work here; namely, the rise of individualism. Our ancestors simply didn't conceive that individual life - it's struggles and successes - were worth recording. We have no idea who designed and managed the construction of gothic cathedrals, some of the greatest feats of individual and collective human effort. In those days, individual effort was not regarded as important. One more thing. It has always boggled my mind that my great grandparents were alive during the American Civil War.They were old enough in 1860 to have fought in that war (except they lived in Denmark). To me, the Civil War seems like ancient times. Even in the 1920s most people didn't have automobiles. That's essentially my parents' generation! So when we contemplate generations going back to 1348 - the year of the Black Death in Europe - it exceeds our ability to comprehend the pace of human cultural change. st olaf reunion As I said last week, I did not attend my 50th year reunion. It seemed like a nice event. I did attend one zoom meeting and have several friends who went. The one observation I would make is that the medium of reunions is conversation. Now, don't get me wrong. Conversation is important and lovely. But it is not a good medium for the exchange of ideas. It is perfect for so-called "small talk." Well, the world loves small talk and thrives on it. For example, 50 years ago it was all "what's your major?" I don't disparage conversation, but I would observe that it is a challenging medium to bridge 50 years of divergent history. What are the facts of our lives? Is it all just a series of academic degrees, jobs and grandchildren? How does one express 50 years of life? Is it the simple addition of our quotidian struggles, or is it some emergent/summative judgment of "who we are?"