Our blog has been awarded the "Happy 101 Award" -- which we accept with thanks -- by Miriam, who writes the fascinating blog AnceStories. We are at a bit of a loss, for happiness does not come cheaply chez The French Genealogy Blog and the rules of this award require a list of things that make the recipient happy.
Nevertheless, as Miriam gave the award to our post on prison records at the Archives départementales of La Mayenne, we thought we would try to say what makes us happy about prisons in France. Not a lot actually, but we discover we are very happy to find out more about them, for research does bring us a possible glimmer of a smile. Thus, we are happy to find these fine articles about French prisons. We pass them on to our readers on the sad chance that they may need these resources to discover more about the residence of an incarcerated ancestor:
- Wikipedia on Devil's Island, a prison that holds the same place in France's popular imagination that Alcatraz once held in the American.
- A Questia journal article: "Neither Myth nor Monolith: the Bagne in Fin-de-Siècle France" by Stephen A. Toth, a study of just how hard hard labour was or not.
- Wikipedia article on the bagne of Toulon, one of the toughest of hard labour prisons.
- A discussion of the archives on the prisons of Cayenne and New Caledonia, giving a very good listing. In French.
- A History of the Guillotine, with unutterably creepy photographs, by a fellow who will build you a guillotine to your specifications.
The list is supposed to go on to ten, but in pursuing this subject we have now made ourselves so thoroughly unhappy, we stop here.
The next requirement is to list ten blogs to which to pass the award. Well, after our previous list of those we think the best, there are not that many on French genealogy that we can recommend, (hence our efforts). However, we would like to offer the award to over 200 bloggers at once, via:
We scan them daily, and if ever there were bloggers deserving awards, some of these people do. We give their "about us" blurb here:
Global Voices is a community of more than 200 bloggers around the world who work together to bring you translations and reports from blogs and citizen media everywhere, with emphasis on voices that are not ordinarily heard in international mainstream media.
Global Voices seeks to aggregate, curate, and amplify the global conversation online - shining light on places and people other media often ignore. We work to develop tools, institutions and relationships that will help all voices, everywhere, to be heard.
Millions of people are blogging, podcasting, and uploading photos, videos, and information across the globe, but unless you know where to look, it can be difficult to find respected and credible voices. Our international team of volunteer authors and and part-time editors are active participants in the blogospheres they write about on Global Voices.
Global Voices is incorporated in the Netherlands as Stichting Global Voices, a nonprofit foundation. We do not have an office, but work as a virtual community across multiple time zones, meeting in person only when the opportunity arises (usually during our Summits). We rely on grants, sponsorships, editorial commissions, and , and donations to cover our costs.
Our Projects
Global Voices is translated into more than 15 languages by volunteer translators, who have formed the Lingua project. Additionally, Global Voices has an Advocacy website and network to help people speak out online in places where their voices are censored. We also have an outreach project called Rising Voices to help marginalized communities use citizen media to be heard, with an emphasis on the developing world.
Our History
Global Voices was founded in 2005 by former CNN Beijing and Tokyo Bureau Chief, Rebecca MacKinnon and technologist and Africa expert, Ethan Zuckerman while they were both fellows at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. The idea for the project grew out of international bloggers’ meeting held at Harvard in December 2004 and it began as a simple blog. (Here's awritten report and podcast of that meeting).
Global Voices quickly expanded thanks to patronage of the Berkman Center, support from Reuters, the MacArthur Foundation, and the energy and creativity of our contributors.
Our Primary Goals
At a time when international English-language media ignores many things that are important to large numbers of the world’s citizens, Global Voices aims to redress some of the inequities in media attention by leveraging the power of citizens’ media.
We wish to:
- Call attention to the most interesting conversations and perspectives emerging from citizens’ media around the world by linking to text, photos, podcasts, video and other forms of grassroots citizens’ media.
- Facilitate the emergence of new citizens’ voices through training, online tutorials, and publicizing the ways in which open-source and free tools can be used safely by people around the world to express themselves.
- Advocate for freedom of expression around the world and protect the rights of citizen journalists to report on events and opinions without fear of censorship or persecution.
Excellent.
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©2010 Anne Morddel
French Genealogy
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