Family... and what it means and does not mean

My father aka 'da Ven' has a remarkable tenacity when it comes to family. He got it from his father, am certain. He recently sent me a mail regarding a cousin of mine, who is researching our family tree.

And da Ven has this uncanny ability to guilt trip me into reaching out, and being 'a helper' whenever I think I can add something to any equation. So I wrote a short mail days ago, very short, and offered to add anything I knew about my side of the family based on what my paternal grandfather told me many times when I was very young. I 'assume' that the ensuing silence was due to one fact... I do not have the family Bible and the documents contained therein.

There is an underlying assumption that is probably not so
nice to consider. I only met this person once in my life, shortly before my first communion. He was arrogant, and a few years older. His younger brother and I got along well. Later events seem to tell me why we were on the same wave-length, but too young to know it.

Let's just consider for a moment. Oral history also has a place in the scheme of things. History gets passed down from generation to generation, and gives people the sense of where they came from, what their family means, and a sense of direction. And is undocumented, but that is how things were before people wrote things down.

And which obviously doesn't interest that person, although there might be points of interest which would help in researching a family tree.

So just for the fun of it, here is what I learned. And there are some documents in the family bible which would help on the search, but unfortunately, I do not have it. It was always passed on to the eldest male child, but hey, I didn't propagate, my brother did, so it passed on to him without even considering what I would think about that. It was this fucked-up patriarchal thing. There was a time when I would have loved going digging into the past per the interwebs, and would have left it to my nephew, because my brother only read about two books in his life, but what the hey, am used to not having my feelings about anything like that considered.

But my grandfather really could go on a roll, telling me about his grandfather... or was it great grandfather? It was a long time ago, I was a child, and he loved telling me all about it. Da B's. He was terrific telling all that, spell-binding, and I would listen wide-eyed at his wonderful story.

My grandfather could bluster with the best of them, and have told a few things about him, but he was a gentle soul. He served two terms as a state representative, and I saw his picture in the State House many times in Concord. I was so proud of him, I dragged a friend there in the 70's, but the photos were gone... probably relegated to some cellar. Which was saddening.

History gone down the memory hole, hey. Just obliterated.

So before getting into the story: the family Bible holds all the key info. It must be worth a fortune. It had a lock on it. When my grandfather retired, he had a project, and read it all from front to back. Upon which he went into the only rant I ever saw him do, proclaiming the Old Testament 'that book of Horrors', and proclaiming that HIS grandchildren would never be exposed to such filth. And it would be locked henceforth, and we would never be exposed to it as long as he drew breath.

Well, you don't need much more to pique a child's curiosity, and sometimes he would forget to lock it. And I would be in there, trying to find out what it was all about. Except I didn't memorize the documents in the middle of it, the important things.

Over the years, I ran across snippets of information. The earliest mention of 'da B's' goes back to William the Conquerer, and one of them was among twelve tribes and seemingly got delegated to Cork in Ireland, which was fairly amazing to me, because that is where the story began. The name later came to mean a dagger, and around nineteen hundred it meant the long hat pin women in England used to affix it to their hair. Now it means nothing, that I know of...

A colleague of mine went to Cork on vacation , and I asked him to just look up the name in a telephone directory while he was there, but he told me there were none to be found. So I guess they died out.

So the story always began with John B. Who was the eldest son and to inherit the title, (probably an Earl, I would think...) and he was a randy sort of man who was English, but fell in love with one Irish woman, which was so scandalous, he was disinherited and left in disgrace with his wife, one Bridget, and emigrated to the US.

At which point he would go very solemn and tell me, 'now don't think you're better than anyone else. Those were just the times.'

I think it was his way of trying to instill in me the sense that the family WAS something important, not just factory workers. But the story got better.

Hardly in the US, John got killed after fathering a John Jr. Riding the pony express somewhere in Massachussetts, carrying a lot of money for paying salaries, and it would always end with, 'He got shot, but he got the money thr0ugh. Then he died.'

Now I don't know how much of that is true, but it sure was a lot more exciting than watching Davy Crockett on the tee-vee....

The widow didn't grieve long, and married some guy name of Ford, took her to Chicago, and wasted the B fortune on gambling and died a destitute.

And then the trail went cold and he would never speak of his own father.

The only thing I KNOW is that there certainly was a John B who married a Bridget in Cork, have seen the marriage certificate. I did try once to follow that on an ancestry site, got a tantalising confirmation, but in order to find out more, well, they wanted more money than I had in order to continue. So that part was right.

Oral history is a bitch, I guess. It gets embellished for so many reasons, sneakrets never get revealed, and sometimes it is better so. The later developments in the B family continued to be... well... defying conventions.

Am living proof.

But that is what families used to be like, and the Venerable is seemingly the last in a long line to be proud of.

I get so fucking tired of people you are supposed to be 'tied' to by blood, and you can spend forty years away without a single phone call, or feeling beholden, and calling them when you can hardly afford it, or just damned indifference, because, oh hey... normal, kids, not weird.

Sad. That is not family.

Family is my grandfather consoling me because my father had to work in a factory doing overtime on Halloween, and I was so depressed it was ridiculous. And he was rocking away in a chair softly singing 'He'll be coming round the mountain when he comes... He'll be coming round the mountain when he comes...'

If I remember correctly, he did, and took me to this school competition, and I got best costume. It was some knitting stuff and a rubber chicken head, and it turned out to feel like a pity party for the poor kid. Except I heard my grandfather's voice in my mind. 'Just remember, you keep your head up and be proud of who you are and where you come from.'

It took a long time to really appreciate that. But that IS family.

This was so funny, leave it to Colbert

And John Lithgow is just brilliant.

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Looks like the END of America

as we knew it. Gangstas? Oh yeah... quick, look right! This makes me throw up in my mouf, and continue to projectile vomiting.


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Nearly noon-time MEZ, which means

Middle European Time. No signs of rapture or rupture. I went somewhere else to vent my frustration, but will add it here just to save on the typing.

Ok, so what’s so cool about da Raptcha, huh? It’s nearly lunchtime here in MEZ time zone, and I’ve been bending my eyeballs ever since it got light at four a.m., peeking from behind the shades in front of my windows at the complex next door.

Jeez, Annti, you promised me nekkid guys, but the ground hasn’t even shook. I wanted to see those hairy-assed Arabs and Turks shootin rock hard into the sky just anticipating the 72 or 92 wirgins they’re gonna get. Then I wondered if the hairy-assed women get anything as well, or do they get re-wirginized, and would it be worth it for them, or if there is something else, and it depressed me. Could it be I am living in the wrong neighborhood?

And to all the birfday people, looks like you get an extra ‘happy happy’, because the wurrrllld isn’t ending after all.


Spelling can be optional there, if intended.

Stoopid... wanted to add this below....

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Ok, one day left, and I am curious....

World ends tomorrow, might as well celebrate. Except it won't of course. Some people had fun with it.

Have been quiet. too disgusted with news I've been looking at. Lots of bad news on the women's reproductive rights front, which Maddow covers with laser-sharp precision. And from which I have recused myself with only a couple of exceptions when I was really pissed off. Although Rachel really had me laughing this week, 'sending the ladies out of the room', and sitting down to tell GUYS that their women were basically like their cars, and after so many miles, you get an oil change, ya see, and so on. It was hilarious... although being a GUY, I didn't like it on some internal level, but she was spot on.

The Wisconsin state legislature leaves me speechless with their ruthlessness, which has nothing to do with democracy. Pure Rethug facism.

And wanting to destroy medicare and eventually social security? Well, good luck with that. If they do, there will be a second revolution, I would think. You can only push people so far in my experience. And then it gets ugly.

Otherwise... well, have been pining over a friend's silence, and wishing to be on a couch with her with lots of snacks. Because they uploaded the first three seasons of True Blood on my site. And as it takes place in her neck of the woods, I end up having so many questions, would love to turn and ask them.

And yeah it's a vampire series, yet another. I love 'em, sue me. But mostly, this one fascinates me in trying to read the cultural signs of where it takes place, and from the many things I've read, and what I've been told... seems like a very dangerous place in the world.

Oh, we have a week left?

My badness.... I remember a woman who believed it would happen, the world is ending, so she quit her job, cashed out her joint account with her bank, and took the kids to the Jehovah Witness Temple... and waited, and waited, and waited...

Oddly it didn't happen... in the Nineties, but we can all sort of hope, right? Forget 3D movies and Dolby, we'll get the full effects... or not.

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Media idiocy and urban animals and flashbacks

Have been sleeping around the clock, and when I DO get up, look for anything distracting from what I dream about, which usually isn't good.

Today's distraction was ninety minutes of watching Britain's Got Talent, the fourth week of the most amazing nonsense 'EVAH'. For the most part. They did have a twelve year old autistic child who danced, and was fairly amazing. I was thinking 'Billy Elliot'. And later there was a hedgehog which triggered a memory, and no, not Alice in Wonderland, and croquet. I had an immediate flashback.

Long ago, I had a garden, it was tiny. But more than enough for one person to tend to. A long bed for flowers that ran along the length of the side of the house, a narrow strip out back, which was filled with all sorts of things, and the fence was full of roses, absolutely beautiful roses, and a clump of lavender not far from our bedroom window which would just fill the air in the room at night, and make you dream beautiful things. The roses were all scented as well, and in the year before I left, you could hardly see the fence for the roses. I'd alternated shrubs with climbers, and they were all my 'babies'. There was a patch I'd cleared out and laid down a patio, all on my own, and if guests were visiting, we would sit out, have a late night snack, and as the neighbors said, laugh a lot. One of them said that was what they missed most when things went south. Our cheerfulness and laughter.

And I'd forgotten all about the hedgehog, till they flashed one on the programme today. My cousins were visiting, and we were out on the patio very late, when my local hedgehog came scurrying from the gate making a bee-line for my forsythia hedge, which it seemed to like.

My cousin L thought it was a very large rat, I don't think she'd ever seen a hegehog before. They have quills, and a very long snout, and a sort of hairless rat's tail. She completely freaked out, and I tried to reassure her that it wasn't a rat. But it ended a perfectly lovely evening, must have been around this time of year, because it got dark late. Hedgehogs are an endangered species here, and if you have one in your garden, it's sort of good luck. I'd pile up leaves in the autumn, on the off chance one would want to hibernate for the winter in it, just a corner of it. I never checked, but would like to think one of them would have marked it off as a 'safe house' for the winter.

Urban animals are best left undisturbed.

In every sense.

The back lot behind our house was a real mess for a while. Stacked lumber, which brought on a plague of slugs, and I could have killed the neighbor who leased it. My raids on the slugs were legendary, and it wasn't a rare day that I brought in hundreds of their corpses and flushed them down the toilet. Already stabbed to death. Hideous things.

However, they would drain the brook in the park once a year just to clean out the crap people threw away, like bicycles, baby carriages, and what-not. And it would be the time when the weasels were mating. Yeah, they loved those wood-piles, all right. And raised such a ruckus it was amazing, amusing, astounding. They do it during the day, seemingly, because they were outide my kitchen window, cavorting acrobatically. And made one hell of a lot of noise.

Cats do it at night and are vicious and loud. Weasels were sort of funny.

The last weasel I saw was coming home at night, and was under a car on a main street, probably chewing on its' brake-line, and being intrusive by walking by on my way home from work, it scuttered over to the other side of the street so fast, I wasn't sure I'd seen it.

Bats used to fly around in the evening, but they weren't of much concern. As far as I was concerned, they were useful, eating up the bugs which could give you Lyme's disease, so they were fine by me, although they didn't used to be... So in a city of 250,00o people, the fauna is ok. I guess.

Where I grew up, there were only sewer rats, and once the Ven fearlessly killed a water mocassin as we were on our way to go fishing. They really weren't native to NH. He beheaded it nicely, and very fast, and wouldn't let my brother or me touch it's head. That area outside town was sort of cursed. They had a lot of rattlesnakes, which are also not common to the region. And I had some awful run-ins with sewer rats as well---as soon as anyone excavated for a new building, they came out. 'Wicious' ugly things. Never saw one here, but am sure they are building on taking over the world once we decide to kill ourselves off for the duration....

And yeah, there was 'the incident' at the Strand theater. I believe it was also during the showing of 'The St. 'Valentine's Day Massacre'. The Strand was a very old theater. And we had a lot of 'fun' during that run. Like the ushers marching down the center aisle carrying guitar cases right before the climactic scene, with 'gangsta' hats, opening them up at the climactic scene, pulling out toilet plungers, and aiming them at the screen yelling 'äh-äh-äh-'äh-äh-äh-äh!!!' (They got an ovation from the audience... because otherwise, they were sort of bored.)

I don't remember the time frame, but sometime later, there was an evening showing, and there was a thunderstorm outside. And a piece of the ceiling fell down, mercifully not killing someone in the audience, and a bat buzzed the audience, because it's home had been destroyed and it was upset.

We managed to steer it into the lobby, and killed the poor thing with brooms. (Sorry Karma, we didn't know how useful they are...)

And the audience was screaming.

Those were the days, all right... The Strand was creepy, and I never liked working there. Especially having to get anything from the cellar. It was of brick vaults, seemingly endless, and if you had the nads to even go there, you heard scurrying sounds and squeaks and peeps.... sewer rats. And I would grab a replacement chair... can still smell the mildew, and it was squalid,

One evening, a man from the audience came out to the lobby and said, 'Please tell my wife that those are two CATS fighting out in front of the front row.' So I went to see what was up, but they were sewer rats. And I said, 'oh, those are our calico CATS, and I think you should move back a few rows, they are 'in heat'. (Oy...)

(It just popped outta me mouf...)

It was rumoured that the Strand was haunted by a woman ghost. Never saw one hint of her, but there you go...

The Strand was sort of a place which Steven King could make a million dollar novel out of. When I went to my hometown for a visit, it had burned down, and only the portal outside on the street was left, for historical reasons, I presume. I hope all the rats died horribly in it.

So... if I would choose between where I grew up and where I am now... weasels and hedgehogs and good bats seem to be a tame sort of choice when it comes to urban animals.

And I so miss my garden. My neighbors ruined it once I was gone. They did everything to sabotage it, everything, and now it's just a ruin. It was a tiny plot of land, but more than enough for me. I'd come home after a stressful day, and spend an hour or so just tending to it. Everything I learned about tending it I got from observing.

Our living room windows overlooked the garden of a pastor of an evangelical church across the street. And he had a spectacular garden, one to die for. And it was HUGE. And I would watch what he was doing, and know what to do in my tiny place. Then he retired, and a woman pastor took over.

She razed it, even tried to have the city ordinance changed to turn it into a parking lot, which was denied in the end. And she had the GALL to invite the retired pastor for some function, and I saw him coming up the street and the look on his face when he saw what decades of loving work had become.. a lawn. That was one of the cruellest things I've ever seen.

Weasels, and bats, and hedgehogs? I think it is PEOPLE one should be careful of.

I haven't been up that street in years, I wouldn't be able to take the hurt. They cut down trees, mutilated the golden cedar I planted so it will never be tall, in that they cut off the crown, decimated the sumac, which was glorious in bloom and five stories high, destroyed the apricot tree, which gave wizend looking fruit but they made the best compote I have ever made. It's just gone forever.

So the hedgehog has no home. And I get stuck looking at things that are so idiotic, it's depressing. And the urban animals usually tend to be of the human variety.

Conflicted....

Yeah, I didn't go all hysterical and nuts hearing they (finally) got Bin Laden. The boogey man of the beginning of this century.

I just thought, 'well, that was about time, and well done...' And 'seems like it was well planned and executed... in every sense'.

But with the jumble of breathless first-rush journalism... I did notice that no one seemed to have their facts straight, and it sort of stank like some other stories in the wars that turned out to have not been as factual as first reported.

But that is how media works, as per usual. I have mentioned that I was present in the Olympic Village in Munich in 1972 when there was murder, hostage taking, and believe me, I KNOW how those bottom feeders work in the press, and it's not funny at all. They are an inner clique, and they feed, oh how they feed, and spread rumours and disinformation. There are few journalists I really respect.

I only bring up my lack of enthusiasm because it regards Munich. If anyone has seen the Spielberg film of the same name, well, in only a couple of years, Mossad tracked down the terrorists who were still alive and had planned it, and killed them fairly horribly, and there was collateral damage, and the film brought up some moral questions.

So why did the US need ten years? Bush was an asshole, surely, and quickly, Bin Laden seemingly wasn't a priority. Said so himself six months after 9/11...

('Shrugs) Am just ok with the fact that the fucker is dead, but he played the US big time. It was maybe hard to see, but he played them.

I'm not going to comment on the spontaneous celebrations.... period.

As to distorted facts, well, Rachel Maddow conducted a journalism 101 course this morning that everyone in the profession should really learn by heart.

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Obama finally strikes out

at the Washington Correspondent's dinner... and had the rethugs gasping at the audacity. He sure can deliver his lines, and was heavy on the snark. The YouTube clip isn't embeddable, but you can watch it here. Good stuff, and he really slammed Trump haLinkrd. Good on him.

Finally clear words on racism

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ok, we got us a Sunday....

And I spoke to Peter for the first time in three weeks. He was having a good, rational day, which is so desireable... I got leaks in my tear ducts, I really need an eye plumber.

We covered a lot of issues, and it was so relieving to know that he KNOWS that I leave the phone off the hook on purpose, but that I love him anyway. He picked up on it.

As above, he had a good, lucid day. Where we could talk about anything, even the friggin' royal wedding, and I let off some bombs that had him laughing, and he said, 'Jeebus, you ALWAYS make me laugh. That is why i LOVE you.!'

And we got some semblance of what to do about his problems, and me not getting burdened with the crap he pulled, just don't speak to me about bloody marriage...

Let's just say it was an up and down phone call. Nothing contentious, but civil, and actually... loving.

I know that sounds so weird, but you don't spend fourty years 'with' someone, then get cut off, and all you get is crap from other people, but you end up missing the person you 'chose' somehow to be with. The one who can be uncertain and you comfort. The one who holds you in the night when you are upset and makes you feel safe.

People can say what they will, and people have looked down on the person I chose to love. You do choose, you know. But most of them don't know anything.

I will go to Gamlitz Thursday. I don't know if Peter's 'today being aware' will last till then. I don't.

I just had this glimpse of what used to be, and oh dear, how we laughed.

That is the worst thing about that disease.

You get a moment... but it doesn't mean it will be disappeared in the next as if it never were for them.

We shall see.