66th Carnival of Genealogy: 2nd Annual iGene Awards

The topic for the 66th Carnival of Genealogy is the 2nd Annual iGene Awards: It's time for the Academy of Genealogy and Family History, aka AGFH, to honor their best blog posts of 2008 in the following 5 categories:

Best Picture - Best old family photo that appeared on your blog in 2008. Tell us which you liked best and why.

Best Screen Play - Which family story that you shared in 2008 would make the best movie? Who would you cast as your family members?

Best Documentary - Which was the best informational article you wrote about a place, thing, or event involving your family's history in 2008?

Best Biography - Which was the best biographical article you wrote in 2008?

Best Comedy - Which was the best funny story, poem, joke, photo, or video that you shared on your blog in 2008?

Best Picture

The winner is:
The Van Every Apiary - a photograph of what may be my great grandfather, Melvin Van Every's bee colonies, and possibly my grandmother, Myrtle, standing on a hopefully empty box.

Best Screenplay

The winner is:
A combination of two posts on my great uncle Samuel Van Every
With Apologies to Uncle Sam and Uncle Sam and Uncle Sam

To make a good movie a family story must have conflict, and a little bit of mystery doesn't hurt. The details of my Uncle Samuel Van Every's life - his possibly multiple wives, his problems with alcohol, the death of his son in a tragic accident, as told in his FBI file and various other documents could do just that.

Who do I cast in the leading role? I'd probably want to go with someone who might bear a resemblance. Unfortunately, while I may have some photographs of my grandmother with her brother, none of them are labeled as such. Maybe I could choose one of my actor cousins with a Stoughton descent.

Uncle Sam was born in Texas, and was a wanderer. The word 'ranger' comes to mind instantly. So how about Viggo Mortensen, Jr? He and I are likely 10th cousins, so Uncle Sam would have been 8th cousins with Viggo's grandfather.

Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn, the Ranger in Lord of the Rings

Best Documentary

The winner is:
Another combination of two posts
St. Louis City 1908 and and Returning to St. Louis City 1908

In these two posts I look at a study the Civic League of St. Louis conducted in 1908 on a neighborhood in which all of my paternal great grandparents lived at one time.

Best Biography

The winner is:
Myrtle Ethel Van Every Deutsch - 1900-1951

A year-by-year chronology of the events in my maternal grandmother's life.

Best Comedy

The winner is:
A tie between two poems.

Our Mother was the Pussy-Cat - The less-known unfinished sequel Edward Lear wrote to his classic children's poem

and Ode to a Microspatula - a poem I wrote.

Best Special FX

This is a category I had to create for myself. Best usage of graphics, or other effects, in a post.

The winner is:
Face Recognition, and the follow-up post What Does this Mean? where I spent a lot of time playing with MyHeritage's Look-alike Meter

Last year's awards