Sepia Saturday Week 17

Roll up, roll up for Week 17 of Sepia Saturday. Based on the widespread, major, sophisticated consultation procedure that we carried out last week it would seem that most people prefer to enter their link after they have posted and thereby enter a specific link to the Sepia Saturday post rather than the general blog.  Some people however still want to provide an indication that they intent to post, in which case they might like to leave a comment announcing their intention to post and then a link to the specific post. Alternatively they can add a link to their blog whenever they want or alternatively ...  they can do whatever they like. Sepia Saturday is that kind of anarchic thing.

My clip from last week's postings had to be this picture from Leah's wonderful post "Leather-Booted Great-Grandpa" which you can find - if you've not already seen it - on her equally wonderful blog "The Weather In The Streets".  Week 17 of Sepia Saturday will be on Saturday 27th March 2010 so sign up / comment / do nothing now if you intent to participate. And a word of advanced warning - following an equally thorough consultation process, I have decided to skip a Sepia Saturday over Easter and therefore Sepia Saturday 18 will be on Saturday 10th April.

Sepia Saturday Week 16

It is a bit like when you first get married - multiplied by a factor of thirty-odd! I well remember the mixture of joy and slight bewilderment as I was suddenly faced with a whole new family tree with its complex stories and strange inter-relationships. It takes time before you realise that Auntie R was the sister of Auntie M whose daughter used to be married to David B and not David J who is from a different part of the family altogether. Well, with Sepia Saturday you have a whole forest of family trees to delight in and I, for one, am loving the process of discovering each and every branch. Take Barry, for example, who is introducing us to his family via a splendid sepia family portrait taken in 1890. Each week he takes one of the members of this family group and tells their story - and what wonderful stories they are. Other people have a more haphazard approach to Sepia Saturday, jumping from branch to branch and tree to tree like a genealogical spider monkey. The beauty of Sepia Saturday is that whatever approach you take is fine : the enjoyment is just as much in the variety of approaches as in the subject matter itself.

Sepia Saturday 16 will be on Saturday 20th March 2010. Over the last few weeks it has become apparent that many participants are signing up to the list after they have posted and this enables them to include a link direct to the post rather than the the generic blog. I must confess - as a leisured reader of Sepia Saturday posts over a number of days - I find this approach very useful. Perhaps people can leave comments as to which they prefer before we issue guidance. But even if we issue guidance, that's all it will be : there are enough rules in life without Sepia Saturday adding to the stock.

Sepia Saturday Week 15

One of the things I like most of all about our joint Sepia Saturday enterprise is the way in which a common starting point - an old photograph - can lead to so many directions of travel. For some it is the story behind the photograph, for others it is a tone-poem of memories. And for others it is a magnificent ride through great chunks of family, economic and social history - like a blog-post equivalent of "How The West Was Won". My chosen photograph this week comes from last weeks' Sepia Saturday contribution by that  ever-resourceful and always entertaining blogger, David M Lynch (The Silver Fox). In "Sepia Saturday - Heroes and Villains", I loved the description of the way Joe Korsak Sr married not just Aunt Josie, but the entire family. In a way that is what we do with our Sepia Saturday posts, we share our families and their rich and varied stories. Week 15 of Sepia Saturday will be Saturday 13th March, so feel free to sign up and share your family - share your history.

Sepia Saturday Week 14

Is it just me, or do other people agree that our Sepia Saturday posts are getting better and better? I find myself looking forward just as much to reading all the other contributions as I do to putting my own together. This is just as well as I will not be able to post myself this week - we will be out of the country until Sunday - but I will still be able to read all your contributions. Contributions like the one from first-time Sepia Saturday contributor, Vicki Lane, who told the story of her grandparents with two fine photographs and some very well chosen words. The ability to tell a life story with images and words seems to me to be what Sepia Saturday is all about. Week 14 of Sepia Saturday will be Saturday 6th March. Please sign up to the list so people can find your blog and your contribution.

Sepia Saturday Week 13

Once again, thank you to all those who took part in Sepia Saturday 12. Sharing our family histories is becoming quite compulsive and we know from  all the comments and e-mails we have received that everyone seems to be enjoying all the weekly posts. Sepia Saturday 13 will be on Saturday 27th February so please sign up if you are taking part. Our sepia picture to accompany this call is taken from the Sepia Saturday post of British writer and blogger Martin Hodges and his Sepia Saturday post last week "Twins".

Sepia Saturday Week 12

Welcome to Week 12 of Sepia Saturday. Thank you to everyone who made last week such a success : we had a record number of participants and one of the best collections of images and memories we have had since we started. Sepia Saturday 12 will be Saturday 20th February and once again we are asking you to sign up if you would like to participate. Could we also remind you to include a link back to the Sepia Saturday Blog so that your readers can easily check out other Sepia Saturday entries. As an illustration for the weekly call for posts we are going to feature one of the images from the previous week. We will try and work our way around all the participating blogs over time. This weeks' illustration is from Mouse's fabulous Sepia Saturday post "My Wild Irish Rose".

SEPIA SATURDAY 12 : 20th February 2010

Sepia Saturday Week 11

Welcome to this call for posts for Sepia Saturday Week 11 (Saturday 13th February 2010) - the first Sepia Saturday to be hosted on our new dedicated Blog. Most of you will be familiar with using these dinky-linky things, but if not, they are quite easy to use : if you are joining in the fun this week, simply enter your name and the URL of your blog in the box below and press enter. Please try to include a link back to the Sepia Saturday Blog in your post so that your readers can then discover the other posts, and please try to visit the blogs of as many of the other participants as you can. If you have not joined in before the rules for Sepia Saturday are fairly straight forward - the idea is to share our old photographs (they don't have to be sepia). They can be used as a springboard to whatever you want - family history, local history, poetry, prose or whatever - or they can simply be shared with the briefest of descriptions. In order to allow maximum flexibility, there is no weekly theme on Sepia Saturday : the overall aim always remains the same - to share our collective history. A slightly more verbose statement of aims can be found in The Sepia Saturday Manifesto.

Let's hope that Sepia Saturday goes from strength to strength in its new home. It would be really useful if regular players could give the launch of this new blog publicity on their existing blogs so that we get as many participants as possible.