text:
Don't be complacent. Many Australians don't know their home loan rate and how much they pay.
See how much you could save by refinancing. Fill in this form and we'll take care of the rest.
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We connect you to your chosen lender directly, and support you the entire way.
Find out if you could get a better home loan deal by taking the first step and submitting your enquiry.
Your Lending Specialist will call you to find out more about your current situation and answer any questions you may have. Our service is 100% free to you.
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source: Australian Bureau of Statistics


text:
as taught by Sally Flanagan-Gutjahr
Inspired by the 26 postures of Bikram Yoga
• 14 weeks • 24th March - 30th June 2018 •
- Practice a minimum of 4 Bikram Yoga classes per week, two of which must be 90-minute classes.
- Sally's unique dialogue.
- Techniques to teach a dynamic, inspiring, energetic, enthusiastic, challenging, insightful, intelligent, intuitive and life-changing yoga class.
- Posture form and technique
- Posture timing and class timing
- Meditation, self-investigation and self-knowledge
- Anatomy for the 26 postures
- Yoga Philosophy basics
- First Aid & CPR course
- The business of Yoga
Due to the demanding nature of Bikram Yoga, this training is only open to practitioners who have been practising 90-minute Bikram Yoga classes for at least 6 months. The applicant is required to have both physical and emotional stamina and endurance as well as the willingness to participate fully and to embrace the process completely. This Training engages, stimulates and calls upon your entire being resulting in personal transformation and growth.
"90-minutes of suffering for the good life"
VENUE: Yoga Experience, Thrupps Illovo Shopping Centre, Illovo
PRICE: R38 000. Deposit of R10 000 required by Friday, 16 March 2018.
Full payment due on commencement of the training.
For more course information and registration, email email@example.com

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Small-white Orchid
Latin name: Pseudorchis albida
Family: Orchidaceae
Small-white Orchid is a very inconspicuous native wildflower which blooms for as little as two weeks in June alongside fragrant orchid. The flowers have a sweet scent and carry nectar in their spurs. They are pollinated by twilight-flying snout and plume moths. During the day, pollen can also be transferred by dance flies. This species is thought to be under recorded in the uplands so it is one really worth looking out for.
This species has three main habitats; heathlands, upland hay meadows and acidic mat-grass grasslands where the management maintains open, short and nutrient-poor conditions. It can also occur on recently burnt moorland but doesn't persist when heather regrows. Apparently the species often grows in transitions from heath to grass-dominated communities.
Nationally, Small-white orchids are frequent in central, western and northern Scotland between 0 and 550m altitude. Their distribution is very scattered elsewhere in northern Britain and it is now very rare in England and is extinct in many places. In the Yorkshire Dales National Park there are historic records in Upper Wharfedale, the Ingleborough National Nature Reserve in Ribblesdale, Kingsdale, Dentdale, Arkengarthdale and the Howgills in the Rawthey Valley.
The Botanical Society of the British Isles carried out Threatened Plants Project survey work on this species in 2011-12 with some assistance from Yorkshire Dales National Park staff and other local naturalists.
At risk?
Its status on the Vascular Plant Red Data List for Great Britain (2005) is Vulnerable. It is a UKBAP priority species, in the BSBI's National Threatened Plants Project and is a Local BAP species in Nature in the Dales: 2020 Vision. The main causal factors for population decline in this species are the cessation of traditional agricultural practices, habitat fragmentation and disturbance associated with housing and road construction, and agricultural improvement, including reclamation, fertilization and overgrazing. Conservation of remnant populations primarily depends on the maintenance of a short turf by extensive grazing, controlled burning and shrub cutting to promote flowering of adult plants and seedling recruitment because the tubers to not persist for more than one year.


text:
As I am deciding whether to keep this blog, I have become addicted to the ABC Family Show "The Fosters." I have my issues with the show, which I may or may not write about, but nevertheless it is highly entertaining. But one thing recently struck me; the terrific Maia Mitchell, who plays the central character Callie Jacobs, so much resembled Linda Cardellini from her "Freaks and Geeks" days. I'm not comparing the two shows, "Freaks and Geeks" was, despite only having one season, one of the most perfect shows ever to air on television, and "The Fosters," despite its addictive quality, has a very strong tendency to repeatedly dive into needless melodrama. But Mitchell's Callie not only looks like Lindsay Weir, she has many of the same mannerisms. Put her in an army jacket (please, someone, make it happen!) and it would be like Lindsay reborn.
Category Archives: Television
The "Looking" Wars, And How It May Impact The Show's Future
Valerie Cherish has walked off into the sunset with an Emmy in one hand and Mark's hand in her other. There is no word yet on when or whether Season 3 of "The Comeback" will happen. (Please HBO! Make it happen!) As we wait, it is time to turn our attention to two of HBO's other half-hour prestige comedic dramas, which are returning this week. On Sunday, "Girls" and "Looking" will begin their fourth and second seasons, respectively. Both shows are very similar to "The Comeback" in that they are critical hits, have a strong gay fan base, and receive an outsized amount of media attention compared the relatively modest audiences they pull in. "The Comeback" may have the measliest ratings among the three, but it also has a fanatically devoted cult following. "Girls" is the highest rated of the three shows. In Lena Dunham it has a standout figure who causes controversy for pretty much everything she says or does. Therefore, she will always attract attention.
And then there is "Looking." "Looking" is the story of the trials and travails of three gay friends in San Francisco. "Looking" is, like "Queer as Folk" before it, not so much a controversial show among the television-watching community at large, but rather within its target demographic. I have written about The "Looking" Wars at great length before, but the general gist is that the show exposes the fault lines within the gay community (1) as to how its members wish to see themselves represented to the larger society; and (2) as to how the community sees itself in a society where homosexuality becomes ever more normative.
I doubt this season of "Looking" will bring about the hue and cry that met its debut season. My guess is that the show's defenders will say something briefly in support of the show and continue watching while the show's critics will say something briefly reaffirming their distaste for the show and then continue ignoring it. (This is a contrast to "Girls," which is hugely controversial every season.)* Without the controversy (or buzz) that keeps it in the public's attention, the metrics for success are going to have to change somewhat to earn "Looking" a third season.
Ratings for HBO are not the same as ratings for other networks. Television and cable networks have historically lived and died by the overnight ratings. A show aired once a week, and that was the one time people could watch it. Recording devices changed that a little bit, much to the networks' and advertisers' chagrin. The DVD box set changed it even more. The Internet however, is making that model, and indeed television as we know it, obsolete. Nowhere is this more apparent than on HBO. As a subscriber-based network, advertisement revenue means little, and the advent of HBOGo frees subscribers from a weekly schedule. This year HBOGo will begin life as a subscriber-based online service, and customers will no longer need to order HBO for television as a prerequisite.
With the rise of Netflix as a purveyor of quality programming, and Amazon Prime following suit, HBO need not be concerned with ratings so much as prestige. What brings in the money is critical acclaim as viewers will presumably go where the critics (and fellow viewers) lead. It is this world that "Girls" was meant for. Had this world been around in 2005, then perhaps "The Comeback" would have gotten a second season much earlier. And it is this world that "Looking" must find a way to negotiate in this upcoming season if it wishes to have a third. Whether that is by offering a show of tremendous quality ready-made for awards season or creating enough controversy to attract more viewers beyond its current audience, I do not know. I would like to see the show continue; I just hope HBO does too.
* It somewhat astounding to me that the two most polarizing shows on HBO are "Girls" and "Looking." Contrast that to the network's most popular program "Game of Thrones," which routinely features graphic violence, torture, murder, sexual content, and fairly heavy exploitation of the female body. To my recollection however, "Games of Thrones" is rarely controversial, save among fans of A World of Ice and Fire, the series from which the show was adapted. In fact, there is only one moment from the show that stands out in my mind as truly controversial. Last season Jaime Lannister may or may not have raped his sister Cercei in front of the corpse of their dead son. What made that scene controversial however, was not the scene itself, but the tone deafness of the show's creators. In the series, that moment is one of consensual sex, and the director insisted that he intended for it to be seen as consensual. Watching the show however, one can only come away with thinking that it was a rape scene.
Minnie Driver, Who Do You Think You Are?
It is not fair to compare the British and American versions of Who Do You Think You Are. The British version is on the BBC, which is funded by the state, and thus does not need to rely on commercials and sponsorships. Moreover, an hour program in Britain is really an hour, not the 40-some odd minutes of American broadcast television. (PBS and HBO being notable exceptions, of course.) The BBC version also lacks the blatant Ancestry plugs in the British version; the one from today (35 minutes in) was clearly added in later after the episode had been reedited for American television.
The flaws of the American WDYTYA, which I have commented on so many times in the past, are all the more apparent when the show imports an episode from the British series and tries to fit it into the American paradigm. This is actually the second time this happened, the first being the Kim Cattrall episode. Unlike that one however, I never actually saw the Minnie Driver episode in its entirety. Tonight was the first time I saw it. Nevertheless, the attempts to format it for a trip across the Atlantic were very awkward and apparent. Despite the fact that the episode was both intense and engaging, the narrative flow was also jarring. I was also left wondering if the questions I had after the episode had been answered for British viewers. In truth, the British episodes have a very different feel to them, and the Minnie Driver episode is an oddity, because it had that British feel, but because of the time limits, it felt somewhat patchwork (aided by with dubbed in mood music and celebrity narration for quick transition).
Minnie Driver was born in London but now lives in Los Angeles with her son Henry. Her dad Charles Ronald "Ronnie" Driver died when Henry was just over a year old. For Henry's sake, Minnie wanted to learn about Ronnie's family. Ronnie never spoke about his parents or his past.
Ronnie and Minnie's mother Gaynor met around 1962. They never married and broke up when Minnie was six. Ronnie was married to someone else the entire time he was with Gaynor, and he had another family. Ronnie's mother was alive when Minnie was a child, but they never met; Minnie never even saw a photo of her grandmother.
And dear readers, especially if you have seen this episode in the British version, perhaps you know the answer to this, but did Minnie know her father's other family? Or have any kind of relationship to them? Because I wondered if Minnie had half-siblings, and did those siblings ever meet Ronnie's mother or know anything about her?
Minnie began her journey in London at her mother's residence. Minnie had a copy of her father's birth certificate and a copy of a book that listed her father's Royal Air Force service. Gaynor knew about the RAF service, but she never asked about it. It bothered her that Ronnie was married, but she never pressed that either. She said she thought Ronnie was hiding something, but she did not want to dig up whatever that was.
Ronnie was born in Swansea, Wales in 1921 to English and Scottish parents–Charles Edmund Driver and Mary Jessie Kelley, who, like Minnie's parents, were not married. In the RAF service book that Minnie had, there was a picture of Ronnie. He was awarded the second Distinguished Flying Medal given out during World War II, but he told Gaynor that he threw the medal into the Thames, claiming he did not deserve it.
Before digging into Ronnie's familiar history, Minnie went to learn about his RAF service. Ronnie was 18 when he first saw battle, the Battle of Helligoland Bight of 1939, which was the first named air battle of World War II. The British were confident of their air superiority with their Vickers Wellington bombers, but the Luftwaffe routed the RAF. Of the 22 Wellingtons that were in battle, 12 were destroyed and another three were damaged.
Minnie was given an account of the battle in a book called Epics of the RAF. Her father's heroics were detailed. He beat out a fire with his bare hand and saved the lives of most of his fellow airmen. He did however, lose his best friend in battle. Minnie said that when her sister named her daughter Lily, Ronnie cried and cried. They never asked why, and assumed it was because of the birth of his granddaughter. In actuality, this friend's surname was Lilly (Lily?).
Minnie was then introduced to Derek Alloway, an RAF veteran who knew Ronnie. He talked to Minnie about what happened at the battle and showed her an official report, which detailed how Ronnie helped save the crew, who survived largely because of his actions, and nearly at the cost of his life. Alloway however, never saw Ronnie after the battle.
Minnie went to the RAF museum where she was given the transcript of an interview done with her father. He talked about his background as well as the events of the battle. The interview was to be used as a propaganda piece to encourage other young men to get involved and also to forget that the battle was a very heavy defeat. Minnie was given a copy of Ronnie's home town paper from shortly afterwards where there was a clip about Ronnie's mother welcoming her son home and a picture of her with Ronnie.
Ronnie received his medal in 1940, but the next entry in his file was his discharge shortly thereafter. He was discharged to the RAF Hospital in Matlock, a psychiatric hospital. Minnie went to Matlock to learn more about his diagnosis, which was anxiety. He was given sleep medication and time to himself. Today, undoubtedly he would have been diagnosed with Posttraumatic stress disorder, especially as later that year (December 1940) he was again admitted to a psychiatric hospital, this time the RAF Liverpool in Ealing.
Yet, Ronnie stayed with the RAF. In 1943 he was commissioned as a pilot officer, and in 1944, he was promoted to flying officer. There was even a portrait from the Portrait Gallery of his wedding day to his wife Ann. Notably, despite wearing his uniform, he did not have his Distinguished Flying Medal, and Minnie said she understood why he threw the medal in the river.
Ronnie's father Charles died when he was young, and Minnie wanted to know more about him, so she traveled to Stockton to learn more. It turned out that Ronnie's parents did marry, but in 1936 when Ronnie was 15. Minnie had to wait for the marriage certificate though, which she could not order online. Instead she looked for Charles in the 1891 Census. He was one of five children born to John and Sarah Driver. (John was from Ipswich and Sarah from Ireland).
Minnie wanted to know if she had any relatives from that side of the family and the researcher, who clearly knew the answer, led her through the descendants of Charles's younger sister Maud, whose granddaughter (and Minnie's second cousin) Jean Eileen Cranson Wiper was still alive and 84-years-old. Minnie got her address and phone number and called her. Jean, who goes by Eileen, had wondered in the past if Minnie was a relative. She did known Ronnie's parents Charles and Mary (who went by Jessie). She described Charles as a lovely gentleman and Jessie as an outgoing, fun person. Eileen did not know why they married so later, and she could not remember seeing any pictures, which Minnie desperately wanted.
(At this point I was wondering a question which would never be answered, at least on the American version. Why did Ronnie cut off all ties with his family? Why did his daughter never know her grandmother? Those were questions that no one ever addressed, and they are the first ones I would have asked.)
After meeting Eileen, Minnie got the marriage certificate, which listed Jessie as a widow and Charles as a widower. Minnie wanted to know when Charles's first wife died (I do not think anything was mentioned about when Jessie's first husband died, which I guess meant there was no story.) Prior to his marriage to Jessie, Charles was married to Ada Wood Stancliffe. Charles and Ada had a son Leslie, whom Minnie never knew existed.
Minnie wondered if Ronnie knew about Leslie, and acknowledged that yes, he probably did. Leslie was an actor, which made Minnie very happy to hear that there was someone else who had the calling. Minnie went to a theater where one of the WDYTYA experts told her Leslie was the lead in a 1945 production at the (now destroyed) Hippodrome in Stockton. He gave her the program, where she saw that Leslie went by Les Stancliffe, and that was not all; Leslie's daughter Jean Stancliffe was also in the production.
The WDYTYA people had contacted Jean, and she said she would be happy to speak to Minnie, who called her. I am interested to know what the full conversation was like, and if they talked about what Leslie's relationship was like to his father and stepmother (and Ronnie), given that he took his mother's maiden name for a stage name. But it also seemed like his daughter had a relationship with Jessie. (This episode left me with so many questions.) Jean had no memories of Charles, but she did have a photograph of Charles and Jessie. Jean was unable to meet up with Minnie, but did send her a copy of the photo, which allowed Minnie to see her grandfather for the first time. She teared up as she showed the photo to Henry who thought they looked very handsome. Minnie was left wondering why her father kept everything so secret, and she wished she could talk to him again.
I have said before that episodes focusing on one person are very powerful, especially when the ancestor investigated is a close one. The Christina Applegate episode is, I believe, the high point of the American series. Minnie Drive, like Rita Wilson, investigated the secret life of her father, which (like Wilson's) made for a very compelling story. (It is no shock to me that the Rita Wilson episode was played immediately afterwards by TLC.)
And with that, this season of WDYTYA has come to an end. It definitely had its moments, and I look forward to seeing whose stories we are able to see in January. I hope you have enjoyed the season reading my blog. I had fun writing it.
Kelsey Grammer, Who Do You Think You Are?
I listen to a lot of podcasts every day, and a couple of times a month I get some genealogy-related ones. Among those is Lisa Louise Cooke's Genealogy Gems, which I have mentioned previously. On her most recent episode she featured a (second) interview with Lisa Kudrow, star of Friends, The Comeback, and (for our purposes) an Executive Producer of Who Do You Think You Are.
I would not normally make a second plug for anything so soon after I made the first one, but I was fascinated by the interview. Kudrow was actually pretty honest about the flaws of the show despite the fact the interview was completely softball and fawning. In particular, she lamented how similar this season's celebrity stories have been, and how the ethnic mix for the celebrities has been, especially since the show moved to TLC, nearly completely homogenous (not her words, but that was the gist). I bring this up, because I made the same complaint last week, so I felt rather gratified to hear the show's EP make my exact complaint in a program uploaded to the Internet half a day after I posted my critique.
Another criticism of Kudrow's was about how rushed this season has been (she effusively praised the hardworking researchers who found stories and crafted coherent and enticing narratives in such a limited time). She said next season, which starts this coming January, will go a long way to rectifying what she sees as problems with this season.
I bring this up for two reasons. First I want to give credit where credit is due (and point out that I am not alone in my complaints). Second, Kudrow's criticism is especially apt for this week's episode, which was, frankly, boring. There is nothing wrong exactly with the episode; the Oregon Trail is a new historical event for the show, but how many pioneer ancestors can we possibly see? And the ending monologue every week–bravery, blah blah, pride, blah blah, courage. It all merges into the same story after a while even if the particulars are different.
Kelsey Grammer was the son of Frank Allen Grammer Jr. and Sally (Cranmer) Grammer. Kelsey was born in St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands and when he was two, his parents divorced and his mother moved in with her parents Gordon and Evangeline (Dimmick) Cranmer. Grammer's life was tinged with tragedy. His father died at age 38, his grandfather died at 63, two twin half-brothers died in a scuba diving accident, and most horrifying of all, his sister Karen was abducted, raped, and murdered two weeks before her 19th birthday.
In between tragedies, Grammer became very close to his grandmother Evangeline (whom he called Gam). It is her life he wanted to know about. She never spoke about her mother–never even said her name–and only mentioned her father once, who walked out on the family when she was little. Evangeline found him when she was older, and he wanted nothing to do with her. Evangeline was raised by her aunts, especially her Aunt Lela. Grammer wanted to know why.
First Grammer met with family historian Jennifer Utley who, via Ancestry (plug 5 minutes in), found Evangeline in the 1910 Census. She lived in Alameda, California with her mother Genevieve Dimmick and with Genevieve's family, including parents, Charles B. and Amelia R. Geddes and sisters Evangeline, Minerva, and Lela (who in 1910 is listed as Delia). Genevieve had been married for 5 years, but there is no mention of a husband. On my own perusal of records, what I found particularly interesting is that Evangeline the elder was divorced, which was not mentioned in the episode, but was actually an important piece of information in hindsight with regard to Genevieve's story. (Also not noted, Charles, Amelia, and Evangeline the Elder were all naturalized, having been born in Nova Scotia.)
The next stop was the 1920 Census, where Grammer found that his grandmother was living with her Genevieve's sister Eland Swindell and her family. Genevieve, Minerva, and Lela lived in the same residence but were a different household. The historian offered an explanation for that, but I forget now. Something about a split level home. In any case, Genevieve is now divorced.
Grammer went to a repository of digitized articles from California and in 1913, he found that Genevieve brought charges that her husband Ellis Dimmick neglected and deserted her. Apparently they married in Oakland in 1905 and he left her later that year (the implication being that Genevieve was pregnant when they married). But why wait 8 years before filing for divorce? Grammer went to the Bay Area to find someone to explain divorce in that era.
And he got a social historian who found the final decree of divorce. Genevieve Marriott Dimmick filed for divorce against Ellis Loughborough Dimmick, who did not participate in the proceedings. Why did it take so long? Grammer and the historian talked about social stigma. Maybe it was Genevieve who felt the social stigma or maybe her parents pressured her. (There was already one daughter who was divorced, although again, never mentioned.) But I wondered–and this was never brought up–if perhaps there was a specific amount of time that had to pass before a woman could get a divorce on the grounds of desertion.
Grammer got more information about Genevieve, specifically her death certificate. She remarried William Foltz and died at age 52 (in 1924). The cause was cirrhosis of the liver, meaning that she was probably an alcoholic. There was some discussion about Prohibition and Genevieve being a victim of her time. Grammer posited that she was a party girl and Ellis probably knocked got her pregnant, which is why they got married. And that seemed to answer why Evangeline never spoke about her mother.
With that, Grammer closed the book of Genevieve and turned to Ellis. He went to Oakland to learn about his great-grandfather. At this point I notice that typical WDYTYA arc of tragedy and triumph. We are well into the tragedy part. Inevitably there will be some family redemption, but I wondered how. It turned out we would not find it with Ellis.
Ellis Loughborough Dimmick was, how do I put this gently? From the evidence shown, he appeared to be a rat bastard of a human being. In 1908 at age 29, three years after his marriage, he joined the Marine. He waived his marriage so that he kept all his salary rather than send any to his wife and child. His record notes many absences over leave and one glaring AWOL. Then Grammer read the comments that (commercial break for drama) he was discharged as undesirable because of habitual use of intoxicants. He was also labeled as having a bad character. He spent a lot of time in the brig living on bread and water, and his salary was repeatedly docked. In 1917, he worked as a night porter at the exclusive Shattuck Hotel in Berkley. On his World War I Selective Service Card, he listed his daughter Evangeline Lucille Dimmick (address unknown) as his dependent. Grammer thought it was a showing of decency, but I wonder if it was a way of avoiding the possibility of getting drafted.
It is a cliché of WDYTYA that the celebrity always finds some virtue of him or herself in the ancestor being traced. It is always, always, always a virtue–never a vice. The irony is that whereas most celebrities struggle to make these far-fetched connections with ancestors, Kelsey Grammer already has some, granted dubious ones. Over the years, Grammer has had some very well-publicized battles with his personal demons, specifically alcohol and cocaine addiction. Substance abuse has a biological/genetic component, and Grammer discovered that two great-grandparents were also substance abusers. Maybe that is a little heavy for the show, maybe it is just too personal for Grammer to talk about, I don't know, and I am not going to assume or judge. But I will say that when I heard about the fates of his great-grandparents, I wondered what went through his mind and if he made any kind of connection. Grammer may have made a slight allusion to his past, but it went by very quickly.
Grammer got one last piece of evidence about Ellis, his death certificate. He died at age 60 of arteriosclerosis. His parents Joseph and Mary (Krichbaum) Dimmick were from the Midwest.
Back to the Census, this time 1880, Grammer found the Dimmicks living in Oakland. Prodded by the historian, Grammer found that the younger children were born in California, but the eldest two were born in Oregon. So that led Grammer to go to Portland rather than the places of birth of his 2nd great-grandparents. Because this show is extremely heavy-handed and obvious.
En route to Portland, Grammer thinks of the Oregon Trail. I do too, except that my recollections of the Oregon Trail are tinged by that old video game that I played endlessly as a child on the Apple II (as a banker because that gave you the most money to spend). Also, I killed a lot of pixellated bison even though they weighed 900 pounds and I could only carry 100 pounds back to my wagon. It was a horrible waste. I am responsible for the near extinction of computer-generated bison along the Oregon Trail, and I feel horrible about it. Maybe that is why I am a vegan today.
Grammer met Oregon Historian David Del Mar who told him about Joseph Dimmick, the son of Joseph Dimmick (born in New York) and his wife Comfort (Dean) Dimmick. The names in this episode are fabulous: Evangeline, Genevieve, Minerva, Lela, Eland, Ellis, Comfort, Lucinda, Ebeneezer, and my personal favorite, Athalinda. Love it.
Joseph the Younger (Grammer's 2nd great-grandfather) is one of 14 children. Or more. There are multiple sources and the one that is least accurate was on WDYTYA which undercounted. (I counted from the 1950 Census, and I could tell 12 was too few.) It appears there may be a few more Dimmicks than were counted on the show. Not that is matters. The Dimmicks moved from Rushville, Illinois to Oregon along the Oregon Trail. Land was cheap, and the scenery was beautiful. Of course, pre-Transcontinental Railroad, getting to Oregon was exceedingly difficult, and the Dimmicks lost their eldest son Thomas to cholera along the way. (A nephew of Joseph the Elder kept an account of the trek that history professor Peter Boag showed to Grammar. According to that account, more people died than just Thomas. It is very sad.) But the rest of the family made it. Joseph and Comfort both got land, and Joseph died on it. There was a small biographical portrait of him, and he was listed as a pioneer, which is apparently a badge of honor in Oregon. Thus, we have the triumph part of the requisite tragedy and triumph arc I mentioned above. The episode ended with Kelsey Grammer waxing poetically about bravery and courage and pride, and I lost focus thinking about this write-up.
Next up:
Lauren Graham and the season finale.
Edit: The Lauren Graham episode is not airing this season if at all. Instead next week will feature Minnie Driver. Driver was actually featured on the BBC series, which means that this episode is probably a reedited version of that.
Valerie Bertinelli, Who Do You Think You Are?
The problem with a genealogy based television show is that if you watch week in and week out, eventually you get a sense of déjà vu. On its own, the Valerie Bertinelli edition of Who Do You Think You Are is quite good. But having seen every episode since Season 1 (and some episodes from series outside the US), I felt like I had seen it all before even if some of the details were different. A trip to Italy? Susan Sarandon, Brooke Shields, and Marissa Tomei. Meeting a long-lost relatives. Tomei and Rita Wilson. Nobility in the family stretching back through the centuries? Shields again and Cindy Crawford. (It was no accident that the repeat episode following tonight's was Brooke Shields.) English and/or colonial American ancestry? That must be at least 75% of the guests.
Perhaps it is an unhappy accident within our celebrity culture that the people we elevate, or at least those with a traceable story, tend to have similar backgrounds. Personally, I would be interested to see a story that went to places we haven't really been to: Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa (preferably with a traceable story that doesn't rely on questionable DNA evidence), anywhere in Asia, Oceania, or a Northern European country that is neither a British Isle nor Germany. I am not faulting the show–it is not the fault of the researchers if the story is just not there–but I cannot deny having a wish list.
Like I said, tonight's episode was good, aided by the fact that we have returned to a format in which more than one story is pursued. It was a nice bit of variety and it releases the claustrophobia that can potentially build up following just one ancestor. On the other hand, there were a lot of names thrown at us tonight and the spellings were not entirely reviewer friendly. Please be kind if I misspell a name, and feel confident in the knowledge I am losing potential Google search hits as a result of my errors.
Valerie Bertinelli, star of One Day at a Time, Cafe Americain, and Hot in Cleveland, and the former Mrs. Eddie Van Halen, is the daughter of Andrew and Nancy (Carvin) Bertinelli. She was very close to her father's family, but her mother's side was a mystery as her mother left home at a very early age and immersed herself in the Bertinelli family. Nancy's parents were Lester Carvin and Elizabeth Adams Chambers Carvin, leading Valerie to believe that her mother's family was originally English. As such, Valerie's son Wolfie wanted to know if there was a family crest (spoiler: of course there was).
Before that inevitable reveal though we learned a bit about Andrew Bertinelli's family. Valerie was very close to Andrew's mother, her grandmother Angelina (Croso). Beyond her, Valerie knew almost nothing. Here, you will have to forgive me, dear reader. I had a very rough commute home, and then my computer froze so until the first commercial break I had to write my notes rather than type them, so I cannot remember how the following events occurred. (1.) Valerie received a picture of Angelina's mother, Maria standing behind an gelato stand that she ran. There were other women in the picture and a little girl who might have been Angelina. (2.) Maria remarried a man whose last name was Mancia, and lived on a farm in Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania.
Using Ancestry (plug 5 minutes in), Valerie found Maria and her husband Gregrorio Mancia (spelled Mancha) in the 1920 Census. They lived in Jefferson in Lackawanna with Maria's two children Angelina and Giorgio, both were listed as "Manchas" on the Census but were actually Crosos. Valerie traveled to the Lackawanna Historical Society in Scranton, and bonus points if the theme song from The Office was stuck in your head.
At the Historical Society, Valerie learned that a widowed Maria deeded her farm to her daughter and son-in-law Angelina and Nazzareno Bertinelli, doing so only a week after her husband died in 1931. How did he die? By using the Ancestry-owned Newspapers.com (plug 9 minutes in), we get the whole horrible story: Gregorio shot himself in the head after attempting to kill Maria. She was in bed, and lay still as if dead, pretended that he killed her. Then he killed himself. That was traumatic just to listen to.
Valerie was given one last document, an obituary for her great-grandmother (called Mary) dated July 6, 1961. Her survivors included her two children and a brother Joseph Possio. The discovery of this maiden name, led Valerie back to Ancestry (15 minutes) to find an immigration record from 1915 for Maria Possio, age 36, and her two children "Maddalena" (Angelina) and Giorgio Croso. The show never really answered why Maria reverted to her maiden name on the passenger list (although perhaps it has something to do with the fact that she was joining her brother already in the US), as she was a widow when she set sail, but Valerie did learn that Maria came from Lanzo in the Province of Turin (Torino), Valerie's next stop.
Valerie went to the Lanzo Library where she discovered that Maria Possio married Francesco Croso in 1910 when she was 31. There had already been a daughter (Maddalena/Angelina) born from "their natural union" which is a very ecclesiastical/political/polite way of saying that the daughter was born out-of-wedlock. The historian assured Valerie that the marriage was a way to legitimize Angelina, and that the reason they had not married was because church weddings were very expensive and dowry expectations were unrealistically high. Giorgio was born about a year later and three or four years later, Maria left town.
Francesco Croso died of a heart attack about a year into the marriage, and that was when Maria ran the gelato cart in Valerie's picture. Apparently, Maria's story was uncommon. The historian helping Valerie said she asked around Lanzo about the Possios and found someone who knew them but would not say anything more, which (of course) meant that the person she found was a relative. Valerie then gave a little speech about how brave her great-grandmother was, and I would have loved to listen, but I swear I have heard this same speech every single episode this season, and I was desperately trying to figure out how to spell some of these Italian names.
As predicted, the mystery guest was a relative: Pietro Possio who said he was Valerie's third cousin as his grandfather was Maria's first cousin. Actually, the relationship is third cousins once removed, but who's counting. Pietro and Valerie are both overjoyed, and he gave her a postcard sent by Maria to her Lanzo family on the eve of her departure, although something confused me. The postcard appeared to be from Palermo, which is in Sicily, and Maria's ship left from Genoa in northern Italy, not terribly far from Lanzo. Did my eyes deceive me? Pietro also had a letter that his father Francesco wrote to Angelina (although why he had a letter that was presumable mailed and received a continent away is a mystery that remained unaddressed) asking her to ask her children to write him–even in English–and to one day visit. Valerie said that her visit to Lanzo was the fulfillment of that dream.
After the happy reunion, Valerie went to London to research her mother's side of the family. Her first stop was the Society for Antiquaries. Valerie talked about how she never thought much about her English ancestry because of her Italian last name, and I am reminded of the Jewish genealogist Arthur Kurzweil, who wrote in his book From Generation to Generation (one of the first important books on Jewish genealogy):
After seven years of research on one of the many branches in my family, I realized that I had made a mistake: I had neglected all of the other branches. In large part, it was the fact that my last name is Kurzweil which subconsciously made me think that I was more a Kurzweil than a Gottlieb, which is my mother's maiden name. For that matter, I was equally an Ennis, which is father's mother's maiden name. I am also just as much a Klein, a Loventhal, a Rath, a Grünberger, and countless other names as well.
It is a lesson that every genealogist needs to learn, and bravo to Valerie for acknowledging it
At the Society for Antiquaries, Valerie received a massive family tree of her mother's side (which was very New Jersey heavy). Her grandmother Elizabeth did not have much of a pedigree, but her grandfather Lester had a family tree that traced back many generation. His parents were Joseph and Ida (Gooden) Carvin. Ida's parents were Joseph and Mary Emma (Bishop) Gooden. Mary's parents were Benjamin and Mary (Claypoole) Bishop. And then the genealogist told Valerie that the Claypooles were "gateway ancestors," ancestors who link seemingly ordinary lineages to nobility or royalty or both (and thus potentially go back dozens of generations). WDYTYA previously showed one such gateway ancestor in the Cindy Crawford episode, when she learned about Thomas Trowbridge.
The Claypooles in particular are an especially important family because Mary Claypoole Bishop's 3rd great-grandfather (and Valerie's 8th) was James Claypoole (b. 1634 in England) who was involved in the birth of the Quakers. The Quakers, with their beliefs in full equality of souls, men and women, highborn and low (which is why for a long time they adopted the informal "thou" rather than the formal "you.") As a result of such heresy, they were imprisoned. James Claypoole was so significant that Valerie discovered a James Claypoole Letter Book, a compilation of letters he wrote, including one from 1683 to his friend William Penn. Being a native of Pennsylvania, I knew very well who William Penn was, and I was glad to see that Valerie did also. James Claypoole wrote to Penn that he wished also to go to Pennsylvania, which was settled as a haven for Quakers (who were not welcome in, among other places, Puritan Massachusetts). Valerie also got to see a copy of a document written in England, an early constitution written by William Penn to govern the Pennsylvania colony, making it one of the oldest constitutions in the world. Naturally, one of the signed witnesses was James Claypoole.
At the end of the book of his letters, James Claypoole's life was summarized. He was elected to the Provisional Council in Philadelphia, but died shortly thereafter on August 6, 1687. His wife Helena survived him by only a year, but he left to her, among other things, his coat of arms, which made Valerie very happy to hear, because her son wanted it so badly, and because a coat of arms is apparently a big deal.
Valerie's next stop was London's College of Arms where she spoke to the Herald of Arms. There she saw the Claypoole coat of arms, which was a chevron with three circles around it. The Herald gave her a little more history of the Claypoole family. James's great-grandfather (also James) was a yeoman but made money and became a gentleman, which is how he got his coat of arms. Although the Claypoole line did not extend much further back, the elder James's son Adam married Dorothy Wingfield, whose bloodline was very long indeed. In fact, it is so long and confusing, I will just tell you the punchline–Dorothy Wingfield, and thus young James Claypoole and his descendants, including Valerie, are descended from Edward I "Longshanks" of England, one of the major Plantagenet kings. I looked up the genealogy (lots of Elizabeths and deBohuns), and it is rough to describe.
The problem that I had here was not the big reveal, but what was left out. If Valerie is a descendant of Edward I, then she is also a descendant of a host of Plantagenet and Norman monarchs including such famous names as William the Conqueror and Henry II, and infamous ones such as John (think Robin Hood). And while it is nice to focus on the king who subjugated Wales and grudgingly allowed the beginnings of Parliament, isn't the Battle of Hastings more interesting? And then if we can trace back to William the Conqueror, we can almost definitely trace back to Charlemagne, and Valerie and Cousin Cindy Crawford can get together for a family reunion.
Valerie returned home for a family reunion to share her information, which is the first time in a while we've seen that. That is the nice part of this genealogy passion, when the people around us are as amazed as we are by the things we find.
Next week: Kelsey Grammar
Rachel and Kayleen McAdams, Who Do You Guys Think You Are, Eh?
It's time to talk about that most frustrating part of family tree research; the family. Genealogy is a less a hobby than an obsession, and as with any obsession, it often mystifies the people around us who just don't understand. Sometimes we get a little bit of interest, while other times it seems that we are talking some poor, unwilling soul's ear off. We may not understand why our relatives don't care about their own personal history, but they don't, and they just want us to shut up.
I have two brothers, and neither of them has ever expressed an interest in even so much as looking at the family tree I have spent years building. When I offered to show them, they said no. Which is why tonight's episode was something of a pleasant surprise for me–two siblings actively explore together. Who Do You Think You Are almost always features family members, but usually at the beginning of the end of the journey. This is the first time the show has actually featured two family members taking the entire journey together. (Perhaps my brothers would be more interested if my research involved international travel.) And one of said siblings is not even famous.
Speaking of this lack of fame, did this season of WDYTYA have its usual promo tagline of "Some of America's most beloved celebrities"? Because while we can joke about whether Valerie Bertinelli fits that bill, it is fair to say that Kayleen McAdams most certainly does not–regardless of how talented a makeup artist she is.
Kayleen is the makeup artist and Rachel McAdams is the star who was fantastic in Mean Girls. The McAdamses are from the exotic land of Canada, although I believe that both of them live and work in the United States.
Before we get into the details of the show, I want to talk a little about Canada, the Jan Brady of North America. WDYTYA is a British show, which had many offshoots around the world. There was a Canadian version, but it did not last beyond a season, which is a shame. Canadians who want to see their own celebrities' stories must therefore either embrace either the British version (which originally aired the Kim Cattrall episode) or the American version (Rachel McAdams). Just as Canadians sports have been incorporated into US leagues (hockey, baseball, soccer), so too are their celebrities incorporated into US television. This particular episode is a fascinating look at Canadian history. The episode also offered a glimpse into a fascinating alternative universe, Canada as a mirror image of the US, what would have happened had the 13 colonies not broken away from the mother country but instead remained loyal. Maybe we in the US would have even had a period of sustained sensible governance and beneficial laws and policy. Or perhaps as a southern neighbor I will block out what makes Canada great and instead think of Canada as a frostbitten wasteland where everyone pronounces "out" incorrectly, and Toronto is a short jaunt from Vancouver, eh? (I am reminded of the Onion headline, "Perky 'Canada' Has Own Government, Laws.")
Rachel and Kayleen, are the daughters of Lance and Sandra (Gale) McAdams. Their father was from a large, close family, so we can safely ignore them. Their mother's side is a mystery because their mother's parents–Howard Gowen Gale and Eileen Maude (Bell) Gale–died when she was in her early 30's.
Our intrepid heroines began in the US on the phone with their mother who sent them the Gale/Bell family tree. Howard, who was a mechanic in the Battle of Britain, was born in Plymouth, England. Mother McAdams also sent a photo of Howard's parents, William and Beatrice Maud (Sedgmore) Gale. William was a mechanic in the Royal Navy. Mother McAdams suggested that her daughters start their search in Plymouth, and I died a little inside. No research? Not even on Ancestry? (The plug would come 8 minutes in the episode, after they were already in Britain.) Come on, WDYTYA! Let's at least pretend that this is an organic search.
At the Plymouth Central Library, genealogist Paul Blake showed the Sisters McAdams the marriage certificate of William and Beatrice Maud. William was the son of William Henry Creber Gale (b. 2 Jan 1850) who in turn was the son of William Gale and Elizabeth Creber. On his son's birth certificate, William Gale the eldest was listed a servant, and on the 1851 Census, he was listed as a footman, which one of the sisters says was "very Downton Abbey." Sure, why not? (My views of British servants is more informed by Gosford Park than Downton Abbey, so I kind of recoiled.)
William Gale was the footman. Having no conception of the hierarchy of servants, I will take the show's word for it when they say it was a big deal. He was second only to the governess, and the face of the household. His wife and child however, did not live with him, and his job was 24/7 and very demanding. It seems like the job's only redeeming grace was that it lifted his social standing, which was not insignificant, but what a trade-off.
William Gale's family lived far away, and he barely saw them. He met Elizabeth Creber because they had both been servants at the same house, but once she had a child she had to leave because while a married servant was acceptable, children of that union were not. Probably because caring for a child would get in the way of around-the-clock-care for the family of the house. William died in 1860 from delirium tremens (alcohol withdrawal). There was some talking head/empathy for the fact that maybe this would not have happened had he had his wife and child near him, but honestly this is hypothetical psychobabble, which I really do not like about WDYTYA.
The Sisters McAdams headed back to Canada in order to learn about how their family got to Canada, which I interpreted to mean why the Gales immigrated, but no, they were talking about the other side of the family. Considering that the show focused on one tiny branch, the Grey family, my guess is the others were either not as interesting, impossible to trace, or merely redundant.
The Bell family tree goes back quite far. So far and so quickly, I did not catch all the names thrown at the audience, although that does not really matter. Somewhere along the maternal lineage we ended up with Rachel's and Kayleen's great-great-great-great-grandparents Alexander and Charlotte (Grey) McDonald. They were born just around the time the American Revolution broke out. The show did not care much about Alexander, but Charlotte was significant because in 1824 she petitioned the British crown as the daughter of James Grey of the Johnstown Loyalists for a land grant. When the American Revolution broke out, James was a Loyalist who fled to Canada where he would eventually join the Loyalist Army. WDYTYA's narrator gave us a little history lesson about the Canadian side (or what would become the Canadian side) of the Revolution in the battle of the Loyalists vs. the Patriots. Kayleen and Rachel discuss a Canadian identity (and hint at a Canadian inferiority complex) and wondered what their Loyalist ancestors would think about them working and living in the US. I imagine not much, but both countries have changes tremendously in 230-some years, so who knows. Largest undefended border in the world and all that.
At the City of Ottowa Archives, the Sisters were shown the document where James Grey first appeared in the historical record. He was quartered at a refugee camp in 1779 at Fort Saint-Jean in Quebec with his wife and two sons. They had fled from the Lake Champlain area around the New York/Vermont side of the border. The historian assisting Rachel and Kayleen posited that James Grey was probably a farmer and a new settler because that area was full of new settlers. After the British were defeated at Saratoga, the Loyalists left their land forever to settle in the harsher conditions of the refugee camp at Saint-Jean. James Grey served in the Peters Corps in the Crown forces.
The Sisters McAdams went the land that was the site of one of the refugee camps, and looked like they were about to cry. There were a lot of children housed in the camps and disease ran rampant. One of James Grey's sons died at the camp, probably from disease, which killed more than the actual fighting. And after all that hardship, the American forces beat the British so the Loyalists could never go home.
To find out what happened to the Grey family, the Sisters headed to the Archives of Ontario in Toronto. What struck me is how beautiful the architecture of Toronto is. At the Archives, they found records of James Grey. He was awarded two 200 acre lots of land along the Saint Lawrence River near the new United States.
Afterwards, the Sisters McAdams and their historian friend talked about this being a source of pride for many Canadians because these were the founders of Canada. Which begs the question, is there a Canadian equivalent of the Daughters of the American Revolution? It is a shame that there was no connection to the War of 1812, basically a wash for the United States and Great Britain, but a real win for Canada, which forever afterwards became not part of the US.
The Sisters were very excited to find out they had such deep roots in Canada. One might say like the deep roots of an old maple tree. Or something like that. One of the sisters said she wanted to be more like her ancestors. Here's how you do it: attack the US. Impose your universal health care, curling, and Anne Murray. One of the McAdams sisters also said that ending the journey was like finished a book and she felt sad to leave the characters behind but excited to share the details with their mother. I totally understand the finishing the book sadness; I felt incredible melancholy when I finished Don Quixote and War and Peace given how much time and effort it took to read them, but I am not sure why this is the end of the McAdams journey. Genealogy goes on forever. This is not the end; it is the beginning. To any newbies out there, don't listen to the McAdamses.
Next week is… I have no idea. Wikipedia says Kelsey Grammar. I missed the promo commercial, but it looked to be either Valerie Bertinelli or Lauren Graham.
Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Who Do You Think You Are
Last week, I discussed at length my disbelief about how the celebrity-of-the-day's often extremely emotional response to the hardships of distant relatives the celebrity had never known about until a day or two before. I am glad to see that today's celebrity, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, has also expressed a similar sentiment. Ferguson, like Cynthia Nixon, had an alleged murderer ancestor, and like Nixon, his reaction was visceral. Nevertheless, Ferguson said that had it not been such a recent ancestor, the father of his beloved grandmother, he may not have experienced such strong feelings.
The series began at Ferguson's home with a domestic scene of Ferguson and his husband Justin, who both advocates for marriage equality, and almost as much so for bow ties. Ferguson gave a little background about his parents Anne Doyle and Bob Ferguson, and about his happy and stable childhood. He said he was fortunate to know his maternal grandparents and was especially close to his paternal grandmother Jessie Uppercu Ferguson, whom he was named after. It was because of his closeness to Jessie that he wanted to explore her side of the family. Ferguson flew off to his native Albuquerque, New Mexico to discuss the search with his father.
After looking through photos (Ferguson is correct, he was a cute kid), he finds a very classy photo of a young Jessie and another photo of her father Jesse Wheat Uppercu (whom from hereon in will be JW). JW, who was from Maryland, bears a very strong resemblance to Bob Ferguson. In the photo, he is a very dapper gentleman. The back of a photo had a message to his wife Elizabeth (née Quigg).
Starting not on Ancestry, but on Google, they searched for JW, who appeared as Jesse "Uppercue". And here I am going to register my first quibble. Clearly starting on Google was not their idea–a search had already been done for Jesse Uppercue on that computer. To which I say, if you want the suspension of disbelief, at least have the decency to create a good verisimilitude.
On Google, the Fergusons find that JW, who was 22, a law student, and an "unexceptional individual," was arrested and tried for the murder of his aunt Amelia Wheat, with whom he lived.* The newspaper article related that JW's alibi was a crazy story about a robber. From my limited perspective it seemed rather shady, but I guess he was more convincing on the stand and from his (many) character witnesses because, as we learn at the Maryland State Archives in Annapolis, he was acquitted.
The story, which Ferguson referred to as "the situation," was that on July 26th, 1872, Amelia Wheat executed two wills, both written by the same attorney. The first of those wills, made some charitable donations, but the bulk of the estate was left to nephew JW. That estate totaled $22,000, or about $400,000 in today's money. JW was unhappy with the allotment, so, as the attorney was still there, a second will was drawn up to supersede the first. The entirety of the estate was then left to JW. A month later, Amelia was killed.
The first trial, from the September 1872 term, resulted in a hung jury. The prosecution, believing they could win, retried the case in the January 1873 term, and this time JW was acquitted. The record did not show whether he actually inherited.
Ferguson next found JW in the 1880 Census, the first census taken after the trials (Ancestry plug 19 minutes in). To Ferguson's shock, JW was married to an L.I. (Laura) Uppercu–who was not Ferguson's great-grandmother. Not only was he married, he had three children, the eldest of whom must have been born shortly after the trial. JW and his family also lived in Evanston, Illinois, Ferguson's next stop.
In Evanston, Ferguson received a timeline of JW's life through 1897. After Evanston, JW went to Fargo, then in the Dakota Territory, where, he was put on trial for embezzling $1800 (today's value $50,000-$60,000) from First National Bank. JW said he dropped the money and lost it, and apparently was again acquitted. In 1886, he moved to St. Louis, where he divorced Laura because she complained too much about how horrible St. Louis was (make your own jokes here). Later that year, he was again charged with embezzlement by the firm where he worked. This time it was for $200, and he paid it back, so the charges were dropped.
In 1893, he was in Hoboken, New Jersey, and married his second wife Sadie Canta. In 1897, he was a lawyer in Philadelphia. Ferguson said he though JW was a bit of a con man; I think that is being polite. He is every bit the stereotypical, vile, bloodsucker who profanes my profession (a reputation unfortunately often deserved).
After 1897, the timeline ended. From a newspaper article Ferguson found out JW went to Alaska for the Klondike Gold Rush, the other Gold Rush in American history. (I think Sarah Jessica Parker's ancestor and Helen Hunt's went to California for the earlier one.) And thus, Ferguson went out to Wrangell, Alaska in the southeast part of the state.
Before Ferguson left, the historian in Evanston promised to do more research on the rest of JW's life and send it to him in Alaska, and again, this is where the suspension of disbelief is really tested. Months and months of research is done on the celebrity's ancestry before the show films. The deliberate misdirection that (1) they haven't already done the research; and (2) that they can do all that research in about 3 days is just aggravating.
Ferguson thinks Alaska is beautiful, which having been there, I heartily concur. He also cops to being "more of an indoor kid" which I also agree with. Ferguson says he is allergic to clean air, and that line just made me laugh. I think I may have said the same thing.
From the record, it turned out that JW put the Klondike expedition together. He was the fundraiser and financial manager, and you could just see the color drain from Ferguson's face when he heard that, although he said it was inspiring that his 48-year-old great-grandfather would put together an expedition like that. As it happened, the secretary of the expedition sent reports back to his hometown paper, which were compiled in a book. JW's expedition was very large for the time, apparently almost uniquely so–60 men, 40 horses, and 90 tons of gold digging machinery. The expedition began at Fort Wrangell and was to end in Dawson, which appeared to be in Canada, although the geography went by very quickly, and it was hard to follow especially while taking notes.
The expedition turned out to be a disaster, so much so that any members who desired to leave could do so and keep their interest in the expedition so long as they left their food and supplies. 24 men took that option, one of whom being JW. His decision to leave was reported rather scathingly by the secretary, who basically called JW out as a terrible leader. (The expedition was a complete bust for everyone involved.) Ferguson tried to rationalize his own disappointment away, and the historian with him said that he should feel proud of his murdering, embezzling, family abandoning, expedition fleeing ancestor for getting as far as he did. You convinced? Me neither. I hate, hate, hate when WDYTYA does something like that. Learning how to live with the disappointments we find is all part of the genealogical experience. Stop trying to sugarcoat it.
Back at the hotel, Ferguson got his package from the historian in Evanston. In 1900, JW lived in Brooklyn with Sadie and their daughter Muriel. He divorced Sadie seven years later. Beginning in 1900, JW became a speaker for the Republican party for New York City municipal politics. He also appeared to be a supporter of Teddy Roosevelt, which I guess made him a progressive, although that is never delved into. In 1914 (aged 64) he married Elizabeth Quigg (a 24-year-old widow) and adopted her two children Grace and Dorothy. He divorced Elizabeth in 1925. In 1930, he was living in Rockland County with Grace, Dorothy, and his two new daughters Jessie (Ferguson's grandmother) and Elizabeth.
This episode ends on a sadder note than most. Ferguson tried to move past JW's shady past and was grateful that he raised such a good person in his daughter Jessie. Ferguson wished he could have shared his discoveries with her. This is one of the most tragic parts of genealogy–when our loved ones are no longer around, and we can neither ask them questions nor share with them our discoveries.
Next week: Rachel McAdams and her sister Kayleen.
* This past week, I heard an interview with Dan Bucatinsky, the writer/actor/best buddy of Lisa Kudrow/Executive Produce of Who Do You Think You Are. It's a fascinating interview from Lisa Louise Cooke who created and runs the Genealogy Gems podcast. What struck me most from the interview was that Bucatinsky said that if he could do anything with the show, he would not limit it to 42 minutes but take as much time as it needs. I wish that too because there are so many unanswered questions. For example, why would JW live with his aunt, and did that help to create the person he would become? I also think that more time would reveal to an even larger extent the person that JW truly was, including what happened to the children of his first two marriages, something that was completely dropped in the show.


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User talk:Weezing22arbok
It's vs its
It's is the contraction of "it is" or "it has". Its is the possessive meaning "belonging to it". Just for future reference. TTEchidna 23:31, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
Welcome to Bulbapedia, Weezing22arbok!
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Thank you, and have a good time editing here!--Theryguy512 21:32, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
Please don't put unecessary comments on pages, such as your Mewtwo ketchup edit. --Theryguy512 21:32, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
Editing MY page
Hey! I can't edit my own page!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HEY!!!!!!!!!!! I'M GETTING MAD HERE!!!!!!!!!! Weezing22arbok 07:55, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
- Messages from the Editor#March 24. --Martonimos((Argh|Blargh)) 07:59, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
Link Templates
I suggest you have a look at the List of Link Templates. Your edit to the Legendary trio page linked to disambiguation pages. So rather than use [[Articuno]], use {{p|Articuno}} as Articuno on it's own is a disambig. page. Gywall(Talk) 12:17, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
Userspace limits
See the notice at the top of the page. One edit per day. Since you made four, your userpage has been protected for three days - one day for each edit over the limit. Remember the Userspace policy once it's unprotected, or you may lose the ability to edit it completely. By the way, the Preview button is your friend. Werdnae (talk) 07:47, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
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Will 2017 Be the Year We See the First RECF-Bank Partnership?Allen Shayanfekr Follow |
One of the buzzwords in 2016 for marketplace lending was bank partnerships. In fact, throughout the year, we saw several MPL platforms partner with traditional banks in a number of ways. Here are a few notable ones:
- OnDeck and JP Morgan Chase – OnDeck provides small business loans. This partnership allows the company to underwrite loans they might not have access to by accessing the millions of small business customers already banking with JP Morgan Chase.
- Kabbage and Santander – In the UK, Kabbage is the small business lender and Santander is the traditional bank. Their arrangement is similar to the OnDeck-JP Morgan Chase agreement. Santander originates the loan while Kabbage underwrites it.
- Avant and Regions Bank – Regions Bank is a bit smaller than JP Morgan Chase (JPM), which means their relationship with Avant can save them millions in creating the technology to service loans that are affordable. Avant provides the technology to underwrite unsecured loans for Regions Bank.
- Lending Club and Union Bank – In a different kind of arrangement, Lending Club (LC) acquires to the borrowers and Union Bank provides the lending capital.
- Prosper and Radius Bank – In this partnership, Radius Bank finds the borrower and Prosper underwrites and funds the loan.
Will 2017 Accelerate Bank-MPL Partnerships?
Lend Academy claims 2017 will be huge year for bank-marketplace lending platform partnerships. If they made this claim last month after a year of such partnerships being announced, that tells me they're expecting next year to produce even more such partnerships. It's not a far-fetched notion. There are plenty of benefits to these partnerships, both for the banks and for the MPL platforms.
It's easy to understand why small businesses are the target of such partnerships. In recent years, small businesses have been underserved by the banks. Marketplace lenders saw the opportunity and rose to meet the demand for small business funding. This led to banks maneuvering to get a piece of that pie, but because MPL platforms could fund loans more cheaply than banks, the only way banks could profit from the demand was to offer capital and access to new customers. Direct competition was out of the question.
What can we learn from this as it pertains to the real estate crowdfunding (RECF) market? Here's where I think it's headed.
Why Banks Can Benefit from Partnership with RECF Platforms
There are well over 100 RECF platforms in the US alone. While many of them started to provide individual investors a means of connecting with borrowers and project sponsors, institutional investors have moved in and become some of the largest project funders. This presents a golden opportunity for banks.
A look at the types of RECF deals available reveals that multi-family, commercial, and industrial are at the top of the list, according to PwC. These are the types of deals that banks traditionally funded, but banks have stopped funding many of these types of loans for the same reasons they quit funding small business loans. Again, marketplace lenders came to the rescue.
If Lend Academy is correct and 2017 will see a surge in bank-marketplace lending platform partnerships, it's quite possible that at least one of these—perhaps a few—will be with real estate crowdfunding platforms. The only question is, what structure will those partnerships take?
The benefits are clear: RECF platforms can gain access to new customers and more capital while the banks can reduce costs and investment in offering new products.
Potential Partnership Structures
When it comes to structuring a partnership between a bank and an RECF platform, there are any number of ways to make it to happen. The following three structures promise the most benefits to both parties:
- Bank-as-Originator – In this scenario, the bank acquires the customer and originates the real estate loan while the RECF platform underwrites it. Retail stores, industrial expansions, or apartment complexes are three potential uses for this type of partnership.
- Banker-as-Capital – If the RECF platform acquires the customer and simply needs capital funding from the bank, this is another scenario that could benefit both parties.
- White Labeling – In this case, the bank white labels the RECF's technology to originate and underwrite the real estate loan. A variation of this is to co-brand both the technology and the service to expand the brands of both the bank and the RECF platform.
While the aforementioned markets present the best opportunities for bank-RECF partnerships, any of these structures could just as well be used to fund consumer real estate loans. Any way you look at it, it's just a matter of time before we see it happen.
DISCLOSURE: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors, and do not necessarily represent the views of equities.com. Readers should not consider statements made by the author as formal recommendations and should consult their financial advisor before making any investment decisions. To read our full disclosure, please go to: http://www.equities.com/disclaimer.
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text: I usually stick to wearing bib-style shortsleggings. But these knickers are great so I don't have to get half undressed on a cold day when I've got to stop for a nature break. They are thinner so they won't keep me warm in colder temps, but I love them for those in-between temps. The chamois is super comfortable, and since they are Castelli, they just look nice. Castelli can sometimes run small, but I found the size Small to fit me nicely (I'm 5'2 and about 120).


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Perfusion assessment by monitoring the transport of a tracer bolus depends critically on conversion of signal intensity into tracer concentration. Two main assumptions are generally applied for this conversion; (1) contrast agent relaxivity is identical in blood and tissue, (2) change in signal intensity depends only on the primary relaxation effect. The purpose of the study was to assess the validity and influence of these assumptions.
Blood and cerebral tissue relaxivities r1, r2, and r2* for gadodiamide were measured in four pigs at 1.5 T. Gadolinium concentration was determined by inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy. Influence of the relaxivities, secondary relaxation effects and choice of singular value decomposition (SVD) regularization threshold was studied by simulations.
In vivo relaxivities relative to blood concentration [in s-1 mM-1 for blood, gray matter (GM), white matter (WM)] were for r1 (2.614 ± 1.061, 0.010 ± 0.001, 0.004 ± 0.002), r2 (5.088 ± 0.952, 0.091 ± 0.008, 0.059 ± 0.014), and r2* (13.292 ± 3.928, 1.696 ± 0.157, 0.910 ± 0.139). Although substantial, by a nonparametric test for paired samples, the differences were not statistically significant. The GM to WM blood volume ratio was estimated to 2.6 ± 0.9 by r1, 1.6 ± 0.3 by r2, and 1.9 ± 0.2 by r2*. Secondary relaxation was found to reduce the tissue blood flow, as did the SVD regularization threshold.
Contrast agent relaxivity is not identical in blood and tissue leading to substantial errors. Further errors are introduced by secondary relaxation effects and the SVD regularization.
Tracer based MRI perfusion measurements is a clinically useful tool to assess regional distributions of tissue blood flow and volume. The method may be based on any of the three relaxation mechanisms T1, T1 and T2*, the latter denoted DSC-MRI being the most common. The primary aim of this work was to study the feasibility of obtaining quantitative estimates using these methods.
1) Feasibility of DSC-MRI for kidneys using an iron oxide based contrast agent and the influence of secondary relaxation effects on the results, part of a clinical phase II trial: The method proved feasible and the underestimation induced by secondary relaxation can be corrected for by using a double echo sequence.
2) Influence of blood flow rate on risk factors for developing cerebral ischemia during cardio pulmonary bypass, measurements in pig with gadolinium based DSC-MRI: The results indicated an ischemic threshold level at a blood flow rate of approximately 6 ml/kg/min.
3) The ability of gadolinium based DSC-MRI to detect changes in global blood flow, experimental measurements in pig and numerical simulations: The results support that DSC-MRI can discriminate between global flow levels in the same subject given that all other parameters are kept constant. The results also indicate that calculated perfusion values are highly sensitive to the arterial deconvolution procedure.
4) Influence of differences in blood/tissue relaxivity and secondary relaxation for a gadolinium based contrast agent, measurements in pig and numerical simulations: The blood/tissue relaxivity ratio is not unity and the situation is complicated by secondary relaxation effects. Deconvolution regularization appears to partly counteract the overestimation induced by difference in blood/tissue relaxivity for DSC-MRI.
In summary, the fundamental assumption of equal blood and tissue relaxivity is experimentally shown to be invalid and the influence of this discrepancy is substantial. Several factors contribute to measurement errors, a combination of these factors can incidentally lead to additive errors or error cancellation based on a variety of experimental and analysis conditions. Given that the differences in blood/tissue relaxivity cannot readily be accounted for in a clinical setting, absolute perfusion quantification by tracer based MRI remains challenging if not impossible.


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Gold-Plated Fort Knox Bar Replica
Surrounded in secrecy, Fort Knox is America's most famous federal gold depository. With state-of-the-art security systems, most people can only dream about seeing – let alone owning – gold from inside its walls. That's why they'll be amazed when you give this Fort Knox "gold bar" replica paperweight! Unlike the real bars, this handsome tribute has a clad base, and is 24k gold plated. Each 3 3/4" long, 1 1/2" wide bar is over 5 ounces and displays the seal of the United States on the front, and the words fort knox replica on the back. Hefty and eye-catching… Perfect for that hard-to-shop-for person on your list.
- Product Type: Single Products


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This tool is provided to help you explore the wild & wonderful package registries scattered across Ethereum's blockchains. But, be careful. Just because a package is available, does NOT guarantee the package is safe to use.
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Purchase this article with an account.
Ryusuke Hayashi; Latency-variable time integration mechanisms underlie generalized flash-lag effect. Journal of Vision 2017;17(10):730. doi: https://doi.org/10.1167/17.10.730.
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© ARVO (1962-2015); The Authors (2016-present)
Generalized flash-lag effect (FLE) is a visual phenomenon in which an abrupt onset of flash is typically perceived to lag behind a continuously changing visual feature by several tens of milliseconds. To test whether three previously proposed hypotheses (temporal extrapolation, latency difference and time integration) hold true for other situations than the FLE of motion, I measured the time window for binding the content of three different visual attributes (bar orientation, head orientation of 3D face images, and face identity of morphing face images) to a visual flash or pulse sound (auditory flash) using a reverse correlation technique. In experiments, participants (n=10) were instructed to look at a sequential presentation of randomly-chosen images and report the content at the time when a visual or auditory flash appeared (2AFC task by pressing buttons). Each participant repeated 400 trials for each condition. In case of visual flash, the peak latencies of the estimated time windows were +43ms, -13ms and -84ms for bar orientation, face orientation and face identity, respectively (+ means time after flash and vice versa). Therefore, flash-lead, instead of flash-lag was observed in face identity judge. On the other hand, in case of auditory flash, the peak latencies were +47ms, +74ms and +75ms, showing small difference depending on visual attribute. The half-band width of these time windows was significantly wider for auditory flash than for visual flash. Together with the results from experiments measuring FLE of smoothly changing visual features whose change direction flips in midstream, it is suggested that temporal integration process whose time range changes depending on visual attribute and flash modality underlies the perception of FLE, i.e. a hybrid of latency difference and time integration hypotheses. Our results also indicate different temporal mechanisms between within-modal binding and cross-modal binding.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2017
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text: March 21, 2017March 29, 2017 maccartspacesm No drop in session this Thursday 23rd March 2017 12 noon till 5pm Hello folks Just a quick note to let you know that we will not be open for drop in this Thursday 23rd March 12 till 5pm as we have no duty volunteer to cover. Back as usual next Thursday. Share this:TwitterFacebookPinterestLike this:Like Loading... Related


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Large-area visually augmented navigation for autonomous underwater vehicles
Eustice, Ryan M.
Concept link
MetadataShow full item record
Citable URIhttps://hdl.handle.net/1912/1414
This thesis describes a vision-based, large-area, simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) algorithm that respects the low-overlap imagery constraints typical of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) while exploiting the inertial sensor information that is routinely available on such platforms. We adopt a systems-level approach exploiting the complementary aspects of inertial sensing and visual perception from a calibrated pose-instrumented platform. This systems-level strategy yields a robust solution to underwater imaging that overcomes many of the unique challenges of a marine environment (e.g., unstructured terrain, low-overlap imagery, moving light source). Our large-area SLAM algorithm recursively incorporates relative-pose constraints using a view-based representation that exploits exact sparsity in the Gaussian canonical form. This sparsity allows for efficient O(n) update complexity in the number of images composing the view-based map by utilizing recent multilevel relaxation techniques. We show that our algorithmic formulation is inherently sparse unlike other feature-based canonical SLAM algorithms, which impose sparseness via pruning approximations. In particular, we investigate the sparsification methodology employed by sparse extended information filters (SEIFs) and offer new insight as to why, and how, its approximation can lead to inconsistencies in the estimated state errors. Lastly, we present a novel algorithm for efficiently extracting consistent marginal covariances useful for data association from the information matrix. In summary, this thesis advances the current state-of-the-art in underwater visual navigation by demonstrating end-to-end automatic processing of the largest visually navigated dataset to date using data collected from a survey of the RMS Titanic (path length over 3 km and 3100 m2 of mapped area). This accomplishment embodies the summed contributions of this thesis to several current SLAM research issues including scalability, 6 degree of freedom motion, unstructured environments, and visual perception.
Submitted to the Joint Program in Applied Ocean Science & Engineering in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution June 2005
Suggested CitationThesis: Eustice, Ryan M., "Large-area visually augmented navigation for autonomous underwater vehicles", 2005-06, DOI:10.1575/1912/1414, https://hdl.handle.net/1912/1414
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Contributions to automated realtime underwater navigation Stanway, Michael J. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 2012-02)This dissertation presents three separate–but related–contributions to the art of underwater navigation. These methods may be used in postprocessing with a human in the loop, but the overarching goal is to enhance vehicle ...
Autonomous underwater vehicle navigation and mapping in dynamic, unstructured environments Kunz, Clayton G. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 2012-02)This thesis presents a system for automatically building 3-D optical and bathymetric maps of underwater terrain using autonomous robots. The maps that are built improve the state of the art in resolution by an order of ...
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Last Sunday our family had a small picnick in West Park. This park is not the closest one for us, but it takes only 15min by bike. So, it is still very close and I with Justina like to be there :)
This park is really huge and super nice! I love it! Here you can find two pondes (or should I call them lakes?), a lots of geese, ducks, swans.. I have heard, there are even turtles! (unfortunately, I haven`t seen). That`s what a biologist is interested in, lol :D
For Justina it is most exciting to try new playgrounds. This one was our favorite last year.
And this huge slide-playground Justina had tried for her first time. She was so proud of herself!!
She was the smallest among children there :) Šaunuolė!!
On the way home, I had discovered a part of the park wich was installed "To Present Asia Culture 1983". Small Asia close to the center of Munich, isn`t it amazing? It presents India, Thailand, China and Japan. Unfortunately, pics which I took in Japan and China are not so good, so I decided to show you only India and Thailand.
Biscornu Batterflies
Prieš 10 mėnesių


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Beasts & Barbarians: Hero Construction Set - Okumarts Games
Super quick review of the super new!
I'm very grateful to receive a review copy of this paper minis product - and it's always a pleasure to share Dave Okum's work. There are literally hundreds of possibilities with this set -using the PDF layers to flick between, torso, leg, head and arms options. I always like OkumArt's style - it's clean, dynamic with a lot of character. If you're in a rush there's a sheet of pre-made characters, which is always welcome. Great stuff. :)
$5 downloadable PDF
DriveThru/RPGNow etc.
DriveThru/RPGNow etc.


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Every day is a high-stakes game for Atlantic fishermen. One captain is risking his boat and crew to reach the rich crab grounds. Is risky strategy involves punching through miles of ice.
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Reading the List of Fictional Characters in the front of Oh, Say Can you See is like going to a high school reunion and reading the sign-in sheet, because you notice names that you had forgotten and all of a sudden you remember your past interaction with these people and wonder how they're doing.
And then you remember, Jed Pearson wasn't doing so well. When we last saw him, he was a prisoner of war, accused of killing someone under a flag of truce, and on his way to England to answer for this crime. He was also pretty bunged up from tangling with an explosive device as he was trying to defend Washington from the British attack.
Jed, a young man of twenty-five, is head of the family and circle of friends who live at or gravitate to The Wllows, the Pearson plantation. As Jed endures imprisonment and torure aboard ship, he finds a sliver of hope during a hurricane.
At home at the Willows, Jeds family worries about the impending invasion of Baltimore by a British force flush with the success of burning the capitol. Marcus O'Malley is called to accompany Francis Scott Key on a mission to seek the release of Dr. William Beanes, held prisoner by the British. In her inimitable style, Lewis gives us a ring-side seat to a pivotal point in American History, the shelling of Fort McHenry.
If you're like me and have sung "The Star Spangled Banner" hundreds of times, it's great to know more than the two-line explantion of how the poem--quickly set to music--came to be written. In Lewis's hands, what we find out that is that it's written by this friend, because she helps us get to know Francis Scott Key. His name is on the signup sheet at the reunion, too.
Though this book is number four in the series, it can be read as a stand alone book. L. C. Lewis handles all the story lines deftly, and again, she leaves us knowing there are more thorny problems to be solved for these young Americans. We'll be sure to read book five in the series.
So, with that, read on down and see what others have to say about L.C. Lewis's newest book. You can enter to win a necklace by posting a comment about what "The Star Spangled Banner" means to you.
It's blog tour time for
Set against the War of 1812 and the penning of "The Star Spangled Banner," Oh, Say Can You See?, the latest novel in the FREE MEN AND DREAMERS series by L.C. Lewis, brings this often overlooked period to life.
THREE people will win a copy of Oh, Say Can You See? One GRAND PRIZE WINNER will win this beautiful patriotic necklace!
Blog tour runs from December 13th--December 22nd.
It's easy to enter.
1. Visit the fabulous reviews and leave a comment letting us know why "The Star Spangled Banner" means so much to you. Remember to include your email address.
2. If you tweet about the blog tour, or post about it on your blog or facebook, leave the link in the comments section and you'll receive an additional entry.
Good Luck! Entries close at midnight (MST) on December 31.
December 13
">Braden Bell
December 14
Marsha Ward
December 15
Rachelle Christensen
December 16
Anna Del C. Dye
December 17
Stephanie Abney
December 18
Lynn Parsons
December 20
Susan Dayley
Marilyn Bunderson
December 21
Liz Adair
Valerie Ipson
December 22
Kathi Oram Peterson
Though the capital smolders, the battered Constitution and the presidency have survived. But the British left the struggling government no home. Gone are the symbols of America--the Capitol Building and the President's House, and nearly every relic of the infant nation. Britain's next target is the port city of Baltimore, but has the raid on Washington stiffened the Americans' backs? As the Willows women mourn their absent men - gone to war, or wounded, or captured - they await the birth of a blessed child. Miles away, attorney Francis Scott Key embarks on a diplomatic mission that will leave an everlasting mark on America. Proving that the pen can indeed by more powerful than the sword, Key records the fears and hopes of his embattled people. His epic poem soon set to music and titled "The Star-Spangled Banner," rallies a shattered nation to rise from its knees to claim the dream of "one nation under God" during the closing hours of the War of 1812.


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You can now purchase the book from this link:
And you have an opportunity to read the first chapter before you commit yourself...Will it be the most controversial book of 2011?? You will be the judge...
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Monday, December 20, 2010
The Book Cover
It's Out Now!
At last the Blood-Line Incursion hard copy has been published see the latest Press Release:
It made my day :-)
It made my day :-)
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Waiting, waiting, waiting for the printer!
So far I have had 37 facebook requests where to get the book in Sweden... My response has been, the book is running late from the printer....Hopefully it should be available towards the end of this week. The quickest way to get your hands on the Blood-Line Incursion is to order online: www.zeus-publications.com or http://www.amazon.com/
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Kochie & Mel @ Sunrise DARE?
Lets see which country will be the first one to bring it up.....OZ or USA? Or are we running out of time? The Christmas break is just around the corner...
Oprah Winfrey would she dare?
To discuss the topic I submitted to her show yesterday...? It's not normally discussed in public...Most people are ashamed to bring it up....Lets wait and see if Oprah Winfrey dare, once she is back from Australia...
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Blood-Line Incursion Translation
If you want to read the English version of the article which was in Norra Skane (Sweden) about my latest book. I suggest that you google Bloodline Incursion Peter Oredsson and that will bring up "Flytt till Australien blev bok" click translation...Unfortunately it's not the best English in the world.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
News Norra Skane (Sweden)
Yesterday (9 December) you could read about the background of the Blood-Line Incursion and it's author in the newspaper Norra Skane in Sweden. Here is the link:
I will post a translation shortly, briefly it was a very positive article and hopefully it will create interest in Sweden for the book, which will be available on the amazon website in 3 weeks.
I will post a translation shortly, briefly it was a very positive article and hopefully it will create interest in Sweden for the book, which will be available on the amazon website in 3 weeks.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Real people feedback # 3
It was disturbing good! A real emotional rollercoaster which you could not put down… it's an easy read. Congratulations! I believe it will be a best seller.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Real people feedback # 2
I couldn't put it down...I stayed up all night. I have never read anything like it!!! The writing style is reminding me about a very popular swedish author.
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Friday, October 12, 2012
Bathroom Monologue: Cleansing
31 comments:
"That's funny, I don't care who you are!"ReplyDelete
Was really worried half-way through that the uncle had hurt her, but luckily just told her a little fib. We all need monsters to get by in life! ;)ReplyDeleteReplies
Exactly! It's no different than the tooth fairy. Not that it happened.Delete
And here was I believing that the parents were, if not the monsters themselves, creating an absolutely real one.ReplyDeleteReplies
That's not an unreasonable conclusion, in the kindly uncle's experience.Delete
Or as the late, great British comedian, Benny Hill was wont to say: "Ooh, you are naughty! But I like you!"ReplyDelete
- AnonymousOctober 12, 2012 at 7:09 AM
We've all got something lurking in the closet.ReplyDelete
I think it was Dick Emery who said those lines of Natalie's.
This may well be my favorite piece of yours, if only because it speaks to the older brother that I was to my two trusting younger sisters...ReplyDeleteReplies
Did you use your Horror-authority to scare them into line, or more to torment them?Delete
I know a few spoiled brats who could use a kindly uncle. You know, if you're (oops, I mean he) isn't doing anything...ReplyDeleteReplies
I'll check the kindly uncle's schedule.Delete
:D This reminds me of certain moments in my life. So much fun to read!!! Wish I had a kindly uncle when I grew up :)ReplyDeleteReplies
More kindly uncles should be encouraged to assist their sisters' families.Delete
I'm pretty sure my father told me a monster would come get me if I kept sucking thumb do this seems right in line with regular childhood milestones. Plus aren't all the Grimm fairy tales based on monsters and trolls and other such nasties killing or maiming children who don't do their chores anyway?ReplyDeleteReplies
I guarantee there are no monsters that devour thumb-suckers. It may lead to some mild fetishes, however.Delete
I don't think I was ever told any stories as a child because my parents just used to explain the principle of 'cause and effect' - even as a kid, if I could see the logic in doing something, then I'd do it (with the exception of the time my dad told me that the insistent church bells in Austria during a storm was because the vicar hung himself and was swinging back and forward in the wind). But when you've got a kid who just won't do what they're told...well, then, I'd have to side with the uncle.ReplyDeleteReplies
In my experience very few children grasp cause and effect early on, and then, usually only when it's to the benefit of what they want. I know I was rotten, if not solipsistic about it. I may well have deserved to be the uncle I've become - not that I'm this uncle.Delete
Monsters raise monsters.ReplyDelete
Great story, John, no matter how much of it was fiction.
This is bomb! And reminds me of a younger... and present me. Minus the uncle.ReplyDeleteReplies
How would the young you have handled the uncle's information?Delete
This is completely fiction. And it will also be completely fiction when the time comes (and I suspect it will) for my youngest brother to tell a similar story to our nieces, for similar reasons and doubtless with similar consequences.ReplyDeleteReplies
I'll vouch for your brother. Give him my e-mail address.Delete
I love you, John.ReplyDelete
As a father of four very different and individual children I understand the need to find the appropriate discipline for each individual child. Too many parents just put it in the "too hard" basket.
I think you would make an excellent parent. If I ever bring my family to America, you can be their honorary uncle for a few days.Replies
Haha, I love you too, Judge. You seem like a fine father. I'll be happy to meet the kids if we ever get to cross paths, and promise to be on my most helpful behavior.Delete
Parents (And probably uncles too) have used tales of the bogeyman, and the like to keep kids in line for ages...ReplyDelete
The truth always comes out eventually, and hopefully by then the good lessons have been learnt.
As an uncle several times over, I heartily approve of the kindly uncle's actions.ReplyDelete
Bravo John!ReplyDelete
My mom used to tell me the bogeyman would come and take me away if I missbehave. Quite weird as I never really missbehaved. Plus she gave up on that story when she realised I'm not scared of fiction monsters. But I did tell other children of the bogeyman and what he does once he gets hold of little boys and girls. That had some effect. Not the desired one I think!
I feel bad for parents such as the ones you describe. And I wonder how are they so oblivious of the monstrocity they have created and keep on feeding. Good God, anyone should have an uncle like this!
The parents would've been wise to play along with the story of the axe murderer, and to thank the uncle instead of berating him. This was a fun read.ReplyDelete
That's a good story, and I've know a monster or two in my time ^_^ReplyDelete
Real pint sized 'monsters' and hmmm a suspiciously 'loving, gentle and genius' uncle at large, make for a greatly funny little story! :)ReplyDelete
Surely the kindly Uncle is only doing what religion has been doing for years. They should probably give him a special outfit and a grand building so more people can gather and hear them. The cult of the kindly uncle! Anyway, cute story.ReplyDelete