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TATRA AREA RESEARCH GROUP
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© TARG All rights reserved.
Newsletter for March 2002
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St'astne Vel'konocne Sviatky Tebe a Tvojej rodine! [Slovak]
Szczesliwych Swiat Wielkanocnych dla Ciebie i Twojej rodziny! [Polish]
Happy Easter to you and your family! [English]
We hope this Easter edition of the TARG Newsletter finds you well and
enjoying this beautiful time of year with your family. And my thanks to
those of you who were kind enough to send your personal Easter greetings to me.
March has been a busy one for the new TARG webpage. All of the 17
high-resolution maps covering all of TARG are now up for you to see. In
addition, 764 future village pages are up. To read more about the latest on
our website, please read the TARG WEBSITE UPDATE section below.
I receive lots of wonderful things in the mail every month, and this
month was no different. Thank you for all of the material you wish to share.
Many of those things will ultimately end up on our website or in the pages
of this newsletter.
One thing which came this week that really touched me was a 57 minute
video from TARG member Ron Kelley. Ron, as you remember, spent a year on a
Fulbright scholarship living in Podhale taking pictures and some 160 hours
of video. Ron has ancestry from the little village of Rogoznik, but he
followed Goral daily life over all of Podahle, Orawa and Spisz in his year
there on foot, on a bike and in varous vehicles. So much of the film
includes regional footage.
This film, he tells me, is a "first cut", but it was wonderful. I even
cried twice watching it. The story he follows about discovering his own
roots, the land his ancestors knew, and the life of toil and yet happiness
of these Highland people is beautifully depicted. It is so similar to my own
and so many other stories of the families I've heard from within TARG --
this is definitely a "must see" for everyone.
Ron is trying to interest a PBS affiliate or other group to help him get
the sound and other final editing done. So far he has had no offers. If you
would like to visit his beautiful website and view some of the photos he
took and read more about his journey of discovery, I highly recommend it.
The URL is: http://www.geocities.com/the99the/index.htm
-- Paul K. Bingham
TARG Founder

WEBSITES__________
1) Helene Cincebeaux is finishing bookings for her trips to Slovakia and
Poland this summer. If you want to go, you can still get in! Just follow the
links on her website at: www.helenezx.homestead.com
2) The new TARG website is up and running! Come visit at:
www.ancestral.net/Home.html.
3) Ron Kelley's marvelous Podhale website:
www.geocities.com/the99the/index.htm Thanks, Ron!

LETTERS_______________
***Dear Ron: It's marvelous to see you had a motivation (one that has
touched so many Americans to return to their roots) and that it led you to
make this important film. I must tell you that I watched it tonight and was
moved to tears at times. It is truly a beautiful film. It so parallels what others
have experienced in many ways...although I must say many have not been as
fortunate as you to find your grandparents graves three days before they
were reused! Again, thank you so much for creating this and sending me a
copy. God bless you. - Paul
__Hi Paul, Thanks for your very nice note. Your feedback is appreciated. I
don't know if there is a "future" for the film. I contacted a Polish
American organization who had a similar response to yours, but I don't know
if they'll be able to help me much. They said they'd try. We'll see. As I
say, the film is my "first cut," meaning it's a draft really. In other
words, it's not really finished. I don't have the money necessary to re-edit
it in a digital format, which would be a lot sharper image, more stable
colors, etc. That next stage, I realize, might never occur. I made the
effort, in any case. And even in this current version, at least the video is
viewable as a digestible entity. I asked a small PBS affiliate to look at
it, hoping to use their equipment to get the film to the next level. They
rejected it. Well, it's been a labor of love. We all do what we can do,
right? (And I appreciate your genealogical efforts). - Ron

TARG WEBSITE UPDATE_______
The 17 higher-resolution maps covering all of TARG's region are up on
the website now. There is also a grid index map where a simply click will
take you to the map you need. Maps are labeled "A" through "Q" and clicking
on its letter on the grid index map gets you that map. The grid index page
is at: www.ancestral.net/Maps/MapGridPage.html
Most of the maps are 1 MB in size, so be patient if you have a slow
connection. (I tried the biggest one on a slow dial-up connection and it
took about six and a half minutes. On our DSL connection at work it only
took about 15 seconds.)
Soon all 17 maps will have click-on villages. For now only the Spisz
area is finished and that is on the left part of map "H" (at:
www.ancestral.net/Maps/H-SK%20Map.html). As you move your mouse arrow over a village on the map watch the bottom of your browser screen. When you are
over a village that has a webpage linked to it, the name will come up and
your cursor arrow will turn into a hand with pointing index finger. A click
of the mouse will then take you to that village's webpage.
There is still a village photos page(at: www.ancestral.net/Photos.html),
but at the moment, 764 individual village pages are also up on the website.
For now most of these simply have an "Under Construction" message on them.
But soon they will have information and photos and be interactively linked
to their corresponding map and the Village List page.
One village page is more complete for you to see: the Bialka Tatrzanska
page. It has a church photo, a little bit about the town, who the village
priest is, how to contact him and also a lengthy list of known surnames from
the village. More will be added to this and the other pages as we go along
to help you find what you are searching for. The URL for this particular
page is: www.ancestral.net/Village%20Info/Bialka%20Tatrzanska%20PL.html
Our TARG list of villages has stood at about 805. They come from many
sources, not just off current maps. In varifying these villages, 764 (that
have webpages) checked out. Some others were duplicates (two names for the
same village) and others have been added, too. There are also 92 more that
need to be varified. Of these, I'm guessing a majority will turn out to be
duplicates or erroneous. I expect the final count will be around 800.
Soon all of the villages on the list will be linked to their individual
webpages. The coordinates will also be linked to their proper map. For now
just Bialka Tatrzanska and Brzegi are so linked. To see the Village List go
to: www.ancestral.net/Villages.html
I invite you to visit your TARG website and explore all of it at:
www.ancestral.net/Home.html. Please get back to me with your comments and
suggestions (and any problems you find, too). I would also be interested if
you would like to "Adopt a Page". The thought of organizing 800 village
webpages and do justice to all of them is daunting. I also know many of you
have wonderful things to contribute to your own ancestral village page than
I do and will do a much better job. Contact me with your requests.
-- Paul K. Bingham

CAMERA REPORT________
Thanks to the generousity of many TARG members, we have now purchased a
wonderful 4.3 MegaPixel digital camera and 128 MB memory card to send to my
cousin Lucjan in Spisz. He will use it to capture future photos for TARG.
And TARG member Richard Brozenec, who is going to Nowa Biala in April, will
deliver these for us. Thanks, Richard and to all of you in TARG!
- Paul

CONTACTING TARG_____________________
To contact TARG the e-mail address is: TARG_NET@hotmail.com. Our mailing
address is: TARG, P.O. Box 3533, Escondido, CA 92033. Our new website is at:
www.ancestral.net/Home.html. Thanks for participating!
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