Members' Corner, September '24: Teach us about something that's close to your heart

For a while now, I've been really into making our family tree, and it has gotten insanely large, currently with over 2500 people on it. It has been such a great experience, as I now know great-grandparents on several sides going into the 1700s, I and even united with family I never knew existed. We recently went on a trip to meet up with 4th and 5th cousins we had no idea existed, to a small village where our family originated from, or at least as far back as we know. It also gave us an excuse to finally go somewhere I wanted to go for a long time, finally travelling to Ukraine earlier this year to meet some family there, family which we somewhat knew we had, but no one had any contact for so long most people in my family even forgot how we were related. We met up with a cousin there who also loved it, as she actually visited us when she was very young, but never really knew who our side of the family were.

All this knowledge actually came in useful as well. A while back, my grandma received a letter regarding compensation for property left back in Ukraine by my great-grandparents, so we had to have info on who everyone was and where everyone lived going back to my great-great-grandparents, all of which we already had ready.

There are a lot of services for this obviously, most of them pretty much do the same thing. And thanks to tools like being able to just copy entire parts of someone else's tree that's related to you, you too can grow your tree pretty fast.

But then, if you want to take things to a new level, there's DNA tests. Whilst expensive, they're pretty fun to find out where you're from. My own ethnicity breakdown is a lot different than I imagined, being 47% Baltic, 38% Eastern European, 14% Balkan, and even somehow 1% Finnish! Keep in mind that sometimes however certain genes just aren't inherited or not picked up as they are just so rare in your own DNA. For example, my mum had some trace ethnicities that didn't even show up for me. These tests can help a lot in both confirming hypothesis on how far away people are connected, but also discover all-new branches of your tree.

There's three types of tests:

• Autosomal are your most frequent, that usually give you your ethnicity breakdown, and find DNA matches from both your paternal and maternal side, usually going back only six generations or so.

• Y-DNA tests only test the Y-chromosome, hence only men can take these. They go down the paternal down only, all the way to the beginnings of humanity! They allow to see your haplogroup, and where your paternal ancestors came from. While you'd think this could be used to track the origins of your surname, most of these tests only go up to the point where surnames only started to become a thing. Depending on how lucky you are, your haplogroup could've been formed way before any sort of records even began, or it could be a bit more modern, going in the 1400s or 1500s. They also allow you to find paternal line matches where your common ancestor lived hundreds or thousands or years ago. Pretty cool, but not much that you can actually put on a family tree. They are also by far the most expensive.

• mt-DNA tests are sort of the opposite of Y-DNA tests, as they go down the maternal line only, and find maternal matches. They can be taken by both men and women. As the maternal line is almost always neglected, it's a great way to get more info on the side of your family that doesn't always get that much attention.

We began testing quite a few family members, so a great strategy to do is here is figure out how you can separate all the matches you get. As you just get a list of people, and you don't know who's from the side of the father and who's from the side of the mother, you want to strategically test people that will allow you to compare results and get matches for just one path or the other, creating these venn diagrams of matches.

Here's some other hot tips for finding more family:

• Parish records are usually the best place to start, with a lot of them already being scanned and available online. If you can't find them, go to the parish, and they may allow you to look through their old books.

• Use surname heatmaps to deduce where you could be from based on where you can see the most of your surname.

• Use all the new fancy AI tools to their fullest. Use it to find info on people you could be related to, use it to scan and read old documents if you don't understand the old handwriting on them, or have it explain how your ancestors could've gotten from point A to B and why.

• Grave finding websites are also fantastic for this, allowing to find someone's dates of birth or death very easily, their spouse by whom they are buried with, and also where they most likely lived.

• If you done DNA tests, check back frequently as new matches can always appear.

• Remember that surname spellings can change over time, or if translating between alphabets (for example in family's case a lot of translating between Latin and Cyrillic), certain strange results could occur.

• It's a great excuse to also go hunting for old photos or documents at your house or at your grandparents' house.

As you might know, two weeks ago I finally overcame my fears and launched my personal blog. The Justabout staff and community members played a huge role in this meaningful step. Previously, all my content was scattered across the web, and I often had to deal with others’ specs, formatting rules, and limitations. So, I decided it was time to run my own platform—where I can freely express myself on my own terms, even if it’s not always perfect for SEO or as timely featured as some might expect.

I’m still in the process of building it, with a lot left to optimize. Right now, the visual aspect is the weakest part, but I’ve chosen to prioritize the technical side. It was important for me to familiarize SEO crawlers with my site as soon as possible. Building a relationship with search engines is a long and complex process, and it's not something you can control directly. But now that my content is indexed and starting to rank correctly, I can focus on refining and optimizing it, or change design and create a logo hehe.

The whole journey of launching this blog is a story in itself—full of ups and downs—and as things settle down, I have intentions to share it in detail. But for now, my message is simple: if you're thinking about starting something, don’t delay. Just do it. Make a plan, start with research, and keep moving toward your goal.

In just two weeks, I’ve reached my first 1,000 unique visitors—and that’s 1,000 more than I would have had if I’d kept the idea in my head.

Today’s platforms like WordPress provide powerful tools to launch without any coding skills, and AI can help you research, offer tips on setting up your site, and even guide you through the overwhelming parts.

And it’s not just about launching a blog—it could be anything you’ve been putting off. To rephrase the popular saying: life is too short to waste time on fears.

I'm a health student and dealing with patients is something that affects me every day. I'm interning in the pediatric ward and those little ones have a lot to teach us. Chronic illnesses, palliative care and other conditions that keep them hospitalized for weeks and even months.

One of the patients I follow had a throat infection that was so intense that it compromised his Right Internal Carotid Artery (a very important blood vessel that carries blood from the heart to the brain). A certain part of this vessel, in the neck region, has become more fragile, forming what we call an aneurysm, which could rupture at any moment and lead to her immediate death, or it could remain intact and she could grow old healthily. We can't estimate the likelihood of these situations occurring.

It's possible to try a surgical approach, which most of the time isn't effective, so as an option you'd have to disable this artery on the right side, which is so important for oxygenating the brain... And thus rely on collateral circulation, small vessels that go up to irrigate the same region, but not as effectively as the carotid. As a result of this intervention, she could die, or survive with sequelae from cerebral ischemia (losing movement on one side of her body, for example), or a small chance of everything working out (around 10%). All of this is not very predictable because it depends on how the blood vessels are supplying her brain.

Now imagine an 8-year-old child who appears to be as well as any healthy child, but who may go to sleep for surgery and wake up with unpredictable sequelae.

This situation really affected me this week and I wondered what I would advise as a health professional and what I would decide as this child's mother. Should we count on everything going well in the procedure or not intervene and “hope” that God or nature will protect? Very difficult.

CLOSE TO MY HEART

TO PAINT 🎨 DRAW ✍️ AND CREATE

Get ready because now come somes curves ⚾️

Since my early childhood l love to write , esculpt , to draw , to paint and dozens of thing that a boy that born in Latin America with not too much resources at the begin of the 70’s

This illustration belong to a comics made by me at the beginning of 90’s

I'm not sure if I still have the touch, but when I was about 13 years old I loved drawing, I also tried to do some little comics and I was really good at some

I got to create some characters from a special group similar to Mask , GI JOE or POWER X’TREME (Fully influenced by 80’s cartoons culture l made this in 1991) named DCS a special group formed by members of diferent countries the comic is unfinished but l hope soon finished

and I also got to create an unfinished comic about the Transformers if you want I can send you more photos, but here are some of them and well

COMICS , POEMS AND SONGS

it's not that I'm very very talented, but also one of my hobbies was writing poems, writing songs and many things, I insist, if you want me to send you more photos and more information about those things just let me know because I don't want to seem too pretentious.

INFLUENCED BY MUSIC PHENOMENON

Also when Michael Jackson releases his álbum BAD l was simply impressed with his clothes and make a draw too

Apart from the Michael Jackson illustration that you can see here, I also dedicated myself to making small drawings dedicated to love, romance and trendy topics such as the character of He-Man or the Batman movie.

A COMIC WITH CARTOONS + TOYS POTENTIAL

I also created character sheets for My DCS comic and as you can see in some illustrations, I also wrote poem booklet and a songs little book of course, in Spanish, which is my mother Language

LAUNCHING A POEM BOOCKLET IN TV 📺

in 1998 approx l was invited to present my poems and songs in the Dominican national TV 📺 show CADA DÍA and here can watch the whole video but in Spanish

*That is THE vídeo at THE begin

I hope you like my little exhibition.

God bless you all 🤗

Mine would have to be the online musical created by Tin can bros called Spies are forever. Which you can watch in parts on their channel here:

Spies Are Forever (Full Length Musical)

Secret agent Curt Mega has a license to kill and the voice of an angel. But he struggles to cope with his traumatic past and prove that he still has what it ...

youtube.com

With many members of Starkid (famous for A Very Potter musical and the Hatchetfield series to name a few) also being a part of this production, it’s a comedic, silly and heartbreaking show. My favourite character being the central Curt Mega, who I got my partner to cosplay as Owen with me.

As they are based in America, I never would have dreamed of being able to see it live, but earlier this year, they announced that they were bringing the show to London for ONE DAY ONLY. I got to go with one of my closest theatre friends and my fiancé, which made the experience even more special to me.

The cast were phenomenal and did the script so much justice, especially for a concert version of the show. Now before the show started, I was gutted that they had run out of programmes but in a moment that meant the world to me, afterwards there were somehow signed programmes by the Tin can bros available and now I just need to find the right frame for it.

I still can’t believe how lucky I was to have this experience and how much this show means to me. I would encourage anyone who hasn’t had the joy of watching it, to do so immediately!