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Well, I've come up with an estimate based on limited information. And here it is:
I recon that I'm about
88 % English
5 % Scottish (including Scots-Irish in N. Ireland)
3 % German (from Alsace region of present-day France)
2 % Irish
2 % Cherokee
Here are the five making it in:
ABBA, Jimmy Cliff, Genesis, the Hollies and the Stooges
Nominees on the latest ballot who were passed over include Kiss, Donna Summer, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Laura Nyro, Darlene Love, LL Cool J and the Chantels.
Ballots were sent to an international pool of 500 voters, including music-industry executives and previous inductees.
Reverend Elzaphan wore a red handkerchief tied to his wrist so that anyone meeting him would know that he was blind. It's said that children used to watch for him, the man with the red handkerchief, and run to help him.
Rev Elzaphan had such faith that he always said that the Lord would give him back his eyesight before he died. This alledgedly did happen and during the last three years of his life he could read the finest print.
Then I read something on Wikipedia that surprised me:
"In earlier times, and still today in some cultures, it was relatively common for cousins to get married. Since people tended not to move far from their place of birth, the closest eligible spouse was often a cousin. As a result, it has been estimated that up to 80% of all marriages in history have been between second cousins or closer."
80 % ?????
Also,
"In 1846 the Governor of Massachusetts appointed a commission to study "idiots" in the state which implicated cousin marriage as being responsible for idiocy. Within the next two decades numerous reports appeared coming to similar conclusions, including for example by the Kentucky Deaf and Dumb Asylum, which concluded that cousin marriage resulted in deafness, blindness, and idiocy."
===
"Despite being contradicted by other studies like those of George Darwin and Alan Huth in England and Robert Newman in New York, the report's conclusions were widely accepted.
These developments led to thirteen states and territories passing cousin marriage prohibitions by the 1880s. ... by the period up until the mid-1920s the number of bans had more than doubled."
===
"The United States has the only bans on cousin marriage in the Western world."
===
"A bill to repeal the ban on first-cousin marriage in Minnesota was introduced by Phyllis Kahn in 2003, but it died in committee. By training Kahn is a biophysicist and holds a PhD from Yale. Republican Minority Leader Marty Seifert criticized the bill in response, saying it would "turn us into a cold Arkansas."
From the Guardian:
'Sycophant' Tony Blair used deceit to justify Iraq war, says former DPP
Sir Ken Macdonald, director of public prosecutions between 2003 and 2008, says Blair misled and cajoled the British people into a war they didn't want
(snip)
Macdonald wrote: "The degree of deceit involved in our decision to go to war on Iraq becomes steadily clearer. This was a foreign policy disgrace of epic proportions, and playing footsie on Sunday morning television does nothing to repair the damage.
"It is now very difficult to avoid the conclusion that Tony Blair engaged in an alarming subterfuge with his partner, George Bush, and went on to mislead and cajole the British people into a deadly war they had made perfectly clear they didn't want, and on a basis that it's increasingly hard to believe even he found truly credible."
Macdonald said that Blair's fundamental flaw was his "sycophancy towards power" and that he could not resist the "glamour" he attracted in Washington.
"In this sense he was weak and, as we can see, he remains so," Macdonald went on.
"Since those sorry days we have frequently heard him repeating the self-regarding mantra that 'hand on heart, I only did what I thought was right'. But this is a narcissist's defence, and self-belief is no answer to misjudgment: it is certainly no answer to death."
(snip the rest)
Another recording artist for my own personal hall of fame (aka DRAHoF)... this time it's Prince, or should I say the artist formerly known as and now I think again known as Prince.
Right around the beginning of UMass days was when Purple Rain was out, and then I also really liked Around the World in a Day... He's a very prolific and talented performer. Great song writer. So he's in.
- First time babysitting my baby nephew Michael, along with F, while Brian and Debbie spent the weekend in North Conway, NH. It went well until Sunday morning when he became "the CRYING BABY FROM HELL !!!"
- Christmas was spent at my parents' house in Natick.
- Fiancee' F and I are living in Kingston, NH at this time.
- F goes to an interview at the Boston Globe for a co-op job. Her temp job at Simplex ends.
- We go Christmas shopping at Downtown Crossing in Boston... we look at a function hall for a wedding reception in Beverly...
- F gets a full-time reporter's job at the Derry News, where she's been a correspondent part-time.
- We buy a 1990 Jeep Wrangler, white with a black hard-top. "We can't afford it, but we bought it anyway"...
Like most years, Linda has helped doing makeup for the school play. This year, they put on a panto, which we went to see last night. It was really very good, very entertaining.
Lucinda Brumfield may have been of Cherokee heritage. There is a story that she was sold off a wagon by the Indians to the Brumfields when she was a girl, so she was adopted into that family. There's no proof, tho.
I found this picture of her on-line:
She was my mother's mother's mother's mother's mother's mother (directly up thru the maternal line), and she lived from about 1812 to 1892 in Virginia and Kentucky.
She married William McCormack, who is particularly interesting to me as he is of Scottish heritage. A website I found indicates that his great grandfather (also called William McCormack) was born in the late 1600's in Scotland.
The earlier William McCormack apparently emigrated from Scotland to Virginia in the early 1700's. Here are some notes from Beverly Neises, from a website:
"The single most important stimulating Scottish emigration to Virginia was the tobacco trade. In 1707, England removed all restrictilons on trade between Scotland and the American colonies. Glasgow quickly emerged as the chief center for the tobacco trade, and ships bound for Virginia and Maryland sailed regularly from its harbor. A proliferation of Scottish merhants, factors, and their servants arrived in Virginia ports to control operations between the two continents. It was against this backdrop that William MacCormich, MacCormack, Sr. emigrated to the Colony of Virginia.
This period also found political refugees pouring into Virginia from Scotland. Clan MacLean rose in support of the Jacobite uprising, in 1715, and caputred prisoners of war were banished to America. While it is possible William McCormick, Sr. arrived in Virginia under these circumstances, it is far more likely the tobacco trade brought him to America's shores. According to land records, William MacCormiack, Sr. was a Planter (tobacco planter) on his plantation in Louisa County, Virginia. Whether he had his beginnings as a merchant or laborer, it might be assumed he was acquainted with every aspect of the tobacco industry.
William MacCormick, McCormack, Sr. was born about 1690-1700, probably in Scotland. Some believe William was born in Ireland and came to America in the great migration from Ulster Province, in the years 1718-1719. The problem with this theory is that an overwhelming majority of the emigratns from Ireland landed in the port of Philadelphia. It was the Scots who populated Virginia, and they were well represented in early New Kent, Hanover, and Loiusa counties. There were ports of entry along the York and James rivers, which would explain why William disembarked in New Kent County. Ship passenger lists for Virginia have not survived between the years 1708 to 1725, but it was during this period that William arrived on America's shore."
| Disorder | Your Score |
|---|---|
| Major Depression: | Moderate |
| Dysthymia: | High-Moderate |
| Bipolar Disorder: | Very Slight |
| Cyclothymia: | Very Slight |
| Seasonal Affective Disorder: | High-Moderate |
| Postpartum Depression: | N/A |
| Take the Depression Test | |
Attorney General Martha Coakley easily captured the Democratic nomination for the US Senate last night and took a giant step toward smashing the state's political glass ceiling, as she parlayed her straightforward style and strong appeal among women into an overwhelming victory against a trio of male opponents.
Rolling up large margins in nearly every community in the state, Coakley, 56, became the first woman nominated by a major party for the US Senate in Massachusetts. She will face state Senator Scott P. Brown, who won the Republican Party's nomination yesterday, in a Jan. 19 special election to fill the seat held for 47 years by the late Edward M. Kennedy.
Coakley beat her closest rival, US Representative Michael E. Capuano, 47 percent to 28 percent. City Year cofounder Alan Khazei had 13 percent of the vote, and Boston Celtics co-owner Stephen G. Pagliuca won 12 percent.
========
Even with the high stakes, many voters said yesterday that they felt uninformed, that they did not know the Democratic candidates well enough to form a strong opinion.
"I voted out of ignorance, I have to tell you,'' said Sally Lutz, a 67-year-old painter from Cambridge. "I voted how my husband and friends said they were voting. I just haven't followed it.''
"I was forgetting whether the election was today or tomorrow,'' said her husband, Chris.
Few voters cited any issues that drove them to the polls. Sidewalks outside polling places - where scrums of campaign workers usually gather on election days with signs, pamphlets, and placards - remained empty. Most poll workers sat bored for much of the day, their noses stuck in books, newspapers, and magazines.
"I'm very disappointed,'' said Maria Tomasia, an election official in New Bedford, which had anemic early turnout. "I thought it would be large turnout, considering it's Kennedy's seat. I thought in his honor, his memory, they'd go out in larger numbers, but they're not.''
Two of my great (X 7) grandparents (on my mother's side again) were John Goddard and Mary "Molly" McTier. This originally interested me because of the McTier name, which is likely of Scottish origin, or maybe Scots-Irish. Altho I live in Scotland, as you know, I'm American and I don't have much Scots ancestry that I know of... mostly from English stock.
So, this Mary McTier, it turns out, was allegedly born in 1734 in France. FRANCE ?!!?? Her parents' surnames were McTier and Dewar, which solidifies the notion that she was Scottish... but why was she born in France? Well, there was a close relationship between France and Scotland, the Auld Alliance and all that, so I guess it's not too far-fetched.
One source says Goddard and McTier were married in England, while another says Virginia... Anyway, the source that says they got married in Virginia is a bit more interesting because it gives a bit of a background story of how they ended up in America...
John Goddard was born in England in 1730ish, somewhere on the coast, and at the age of 12 was shanghaied (aka kidnapped) onto a ship, along with his brother, and ended up in Virginia as an indentured servant... The story goes that the two boys were taken aboard the ship by the Captain to be shown around when they suddenly realised the ship had left port. They cried and asked to be put back on shore but the Captain whipped them. Nice.
The ship landed in Virginia where the boys were split up, never to see each other again. They became indentured servants for a couple of years before becoming free. The family tradition amongst the Goddard family generations later is that they were anti-slavery round about the civil war days in Kentucky partly because of their own family's experience of forced labour.
So allegedly, John Goddard, in this version of the story, married Mary McTier in Virginia and eventually settled in Kentucky... The other interesting thing is that the story says Mary McTier was the daughter of a French Protestant martyr... presumably driven from France due to religious persecution. Hmmm.
Linda's Christmas Letter...
Christmas 2009
This has been a year of highs and lows. We had the Wedding of our lovely daughter, Jenny, in April, but also the tragic death of my dear mother-in-law, Marcia, in October.
I started off the year with a low – I had moved my horse, Meggie, to a new place in January and, on Burns Day (Jan 25th), I was leading her out to the field when she saw pigs and got a fright. I slipped and fell in front of her. She tried to avoid me but clipped me and I ended up being taken to hospital with badly bruised ribs. I am still not fully recovered from this!
The main high of the year was, of course, Jenny and Andy’s Wedding on April 4th. This took a great deal of careful and fun planning – which was good for us after the tragic loss of my Mum last year. We missed terribly her and Dad not being there in person but we believe that they were with us in spirit.
Jenny had two Hen Weekends, one with all the girls and us “oldies” (in Edinburgh), and one with the bridesmaids (at Crieff Hydro) and Sarah’s Mum, Linda, who is also a best friend of mine. The boys had a Stag Night where, as well as go-karting, they dressed the groom and best man as babies!
The big day was so very special and many guests said it was among the best they’d ever attended. Jenny was a stunningly beautiful bride and walked down the aisle alone because she had always planned that Papa would walk along side her and she believes that he was there doing just that – he would be so proud of her. Her veil took off at one point and landed on the roof and we believe – as others also commented – that it was Granny and Papa, as well as her Godmother, her Great Aunt Irene, showing us they were there.
We were delighted that Darrin’s parents, Doug and Marcia, as well as his brother and sister-in-law, Brian and Debbie, and nephews, Michael and Peter, also came over. It made Jenny and Andy’s day that they were all there. Mike was an usher and wore a kilt – he is Darrin’s double! Jenny had her best friends, Sarah and Lisa, as beautiful bridesmaids and Andy’s brother, James, was Best Man, with his other brother, Robert, an usher. Another of her good friends, Nicole, came over from Dublin (with her family) to be an usher. So many people had travelled great distances to come along and celebrate such a special day.
The two newlyweds went off to Egypt (a dream place for Jenny for many years and a big surprise for her) and had a wonderful time. In the summer they also went off to Canada, visiting friends and family, and they especially enjoyed spending time with our Aunt, Uncle and cousins in Hamilton, Ontario.
In the summer we went off to Devon for a holiday, taking Tess the dog – this was a first as she doesn’t travel well! We had a good time, but I’m not sure we would take her that far again!
Another happy event which happened was that we found a home for my Dad’s Opel Manta which was 30 years old and his pride and joy. It had come straight from the Motor Show and was the first car of its kind in the South of Scotland. He had kept it in pristine condition but it had been sitting in their garage for almost 7 years and had deteriorated. It still looked very beautiful but needed a lot of work. I advertised on The Opel Manta Owners Club and there was a lot of interest. However, I found a very special owner who is going to restore it exactly as it was and who won’t part with it – he had restored his Dad’s and Grandfather’s old cars, so he understood my sentimental attachment. He came up to collect it in June and has kept in touch to let us know how it is doing. He has named it John in honour of my Dad. He also wrote an article on it for the magazine, Manta Magic. We are also going to have an exact model made of it, and my friend Debbie took a huge amount of photos so the model maker has it from every angle!
Our worst low was in October when we received a phone call to say that Darrin’s Mum, Marcia, had died very suddenly. This was a great shock and we are all devastated by it. We are just so grateful that she was over in April for the Wedding and got to be the proud Grandmother. We also spent a nice time after the Wedding with all of Darrin’s family, and he and I spent a happy few days alone with Marcia and Doug in the Lake District. Darrin, Jenny, Andy and I went over to the U.S. for her memorial service. Her sister, Kathy, and her niece, Tambi, both came over from Washington State and it helped us a lot being with them as well as our immediate family. Marcia and Doug were to celebrate their Golden Wedding Anniversary in December and Darrin and I were going over to celebrate with them. We are still going over but it will be different. Thankfully the two of them were just back from a cruise as part of their celebration. We still can’t believe she has gone. She was a very special lady.
Jenny and Andy moved house in October. My Mum had left them quite a lot of money which she wanted them to use to help them buy a house. They have moved into a beautiful 3 bedroomed bungalow, with a gorgeous open plan kitchen, dining room and conservatory (my favourite part!). It is 5 years old and has good sized rooms and a big garden. I’m sure they will be very happy there. We also decided that, for the time being, we would rent out Mum’s house rather than sell. We have a nice young newly qualified teacher staying there.
Animal-wise, we have also had some dramas. Angel, one of the baby bunnies, died suddenly in February; Clara, one of our older bunnies, had teeth problems which resulted in an abscess which went behind her eye – we had her at a specialist hospital in Newcastle, but they could do no more for her; Gizmo, our other elderly bunny, also had teeth problems (it is very common) and an abscess, resulting in operations and is doing well; Tansy, our elderly puss, had a mouth virus and a mammary tumour removed and is going well; Meggie had laminitis so has to wear a grazing muzzle when she is at grass and continues to watch her weight – I have been riding gradually again after my fall in January which also helps as well as her being in a stable all day and only out at night – and is doing well. Coffee, our elderly gerbil, sadly died in the summer and we added three sweet new ones to our family – Paris, Prince and Blanket (The Jackson Three!).
So, one way and another, it has been an eventful year. We still miss my Mum very much but we are coping. It doesn’t get easier but we know that she and Dad are happy together and that is what matters. We are also finding Marcia’s sudden loss very difficult, especially Darrin. We are sure they will all have met up by now and be taking care of each other.
We hope this finds you and your family well. Have a very Merry Christmas and a happy and healthy 2010.
Take care,
Love Linda x
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