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Shades Celebrates Four Years Of Tons of Fun Four years ago today with this post, No Place For A Lady, Shades started down the road to blogging history. The history part is that I'm still enjoying my Shades life four years later.

It's been a bittersweet year for Shades.

First, the sweet part. Shades Of The Departed was again voted one of Family Tree Magazine’s 40 Best Genealogy Blogs, and Shades was honored to win best of category for heirlooms and old photos. Thank you, to all those who voted and to Family Tree Magazine. Shades is honored to be in such esteemed company. And thank you to those who write for Shades, the regular columnists and those who contribute feature articles. They are Shades. Shades is all about the fascination with old photographs and our connection to them. We love what we do.

The bitter part of the year is the interruption in the flow of our beautiful online magazine due to a few personal difficulties. To all who regularly check on Mr. M and me on faceBook, you know this has been a very slow road to recovery. Shades is in the works again, back and better than ever with the advent of an iPad and Android app for each issue.

I'd also like to thank the Shades readers who have have twittered, emailed, and commented Shades happenings. We do it for you, but we can't do it without you. Thank you!

Let me introduce you to the heart of Shades. I want to take this opportunity to publicly thank the finest writers and best friends Shades and I could ask for in working toward building an online community dedicated to old photographs and the part they play in our family history.
The excellent writers of Shades write for their own blogs as well. If you enjoy their work, please take a moment to say so and support what they do.

Returning Columns:

Appealing Subjects – Where Law & Photography Meet - Craig Manson
Healing Brush – Preserving Our Ancestors One Pixel At A Time - Janine Smith
In2 Genealogy - Discovering Family History Today - Caroline Pointer
Penelope Dreadful – A Dreadful Tale - Penelope Dreadful AKA Denise Levenick
The Last Picture Show – Behind The Photograph - Editor
The Year Was – What Happened The Year Of – Sheri Fenley
Saving Faces – From The Eye of An Archivist – Rebecca Fenning

New Columns:

Ancestor ArtiFacts – Questioning Preservation – Denise Levenick
Putting Down Roots – Writing Your Family History - TBA
iAncestor – Technology - Denise Olson
A Brush With History – Scrapbooking Old Photos (Tips & Tricks) - fM
Dressed To The Nines – Godey’s Ladies - Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective

Special Appearances:

And of course:

The Last Picture Show - The Beautiful Imprints That Grace The Verso of Old Photographs - Editor

The next issue of Shades The Magazine will be School Days (May/June 2012). In the meantime, why not revisit the Women's History Edition of Shades as we celebrate and look forward to the coming year. MARCH 2010 Go to m.issuu.com
on your mobile browser March Shades On The iPad

The Shades Archive will be upgraded as each
issue is made available for the iPad.