Let's See ... What Else?

Usually last thing at night we watch two or maybe three video lectures from The Teaching Company. We get them on dvd and pop them into my laptop here and watch with pillows and quilts and cats. One night I said to Neo, who was in the habit of getting all over the keyboard and causing things to happen that we did not want to happen, "We're going to have some lessons on Medieval History, Neo! How about you come sit right here by me and see what you can learn?"

Damned if he didn't give me a comprehending look and sit right where I told him to. And he's come to lessons every night since, so who's to say he isn't getting something out of it? :o) He liked the Medieval class quite a lot, and he LOVED the Impressionists. He's been less enthused with the Vikings, but he still mostly pays attention. (Note: he doesn't give a fig for checking email or zooming around the internet and he's not a real fan of 24. Clearly, he's a scholar.)

Here's Neo learning about the Vikings:


And here was my little window garden (heirloom tomatoes only right now) a week ago:

First babies out of the ground, Black Krim:

and Brandywine:

Today we actually have one Green Zebra, but the Golden Monarchs and Black Cherries have yet to make their appearance. In fairness to them it's been mostly rainy and chilly since I set them out -- but if they don't show up soon they're getting replanted.

Still a bit of crafts updating to post, but not today. :o)

Been Working on This One for Awhile

And I'm still not done, but I think I may be *mostly* done, and I'm tired of keeping the page where I've been storing the results of the search open. (Of keeping open the page where I'm storing the search results.)

You all know I'm a genealogy geek and a British History geek and I know this does not interest many of you and that's okay. I don't get it, but it's okay. All the same, here's a little slice of family history for my kids.

This is Viantha Blair Taylor.

She was very proud of her flower garden. She was my father's mother's mother, which makes her your great great grandmother, and I met her on the visit when this picture was taken. I was three. There's a picture of me from that visit, also, but it's not available right this minute. Maybe later.

Anyway, apparently the Blairs are from Scotland and it seems they have a pretty incredible lineage. While working on them I kept noticing that the same death date appeared over and over, 9 September 1513. The Battle of Flodden. Rather a quick battle, all over in a few hours. I decided to comb through my records and see just how many of our Scots died in that short time.

(http://www.englandsnortheast.co.uk/Flodden.html)
The Battle of Flodden Field was a decisive victory for the English. For the Scots it had been a disaster, with many of the most important members of Scottish society killed or slain in the conflict. The Scottish dead included twelve earls, fifteen lords, many clan chiefs, an archbishop and above all King James himself. It is said that every great family in Scotland mourned the loss of someone at the Battle of Flodden. The dead were remembered in the famous Scottish pipe tune The Flowers of the Forest;

We'll here nae mair lilting at our ewe milking,
Women and bairns are heartless and wae,
Sighing and moaning on a ilka green loaning,
The flowers of the forest are a wede away.
*****************************************************
These are our grandfathers who died that afternoon, following their King into battle.

John (Semphill) Samples (49)
Robert Colville (20)
Henry Sinclair (44)
Alexander Hamilton (38)
David Kennedy 1st Earl of Cassils (41)
Adam Hepburn 2nd Earl of Bothwell (21)
Matthew Stewart 2nd Earl of Lennox (41) (we're descended from him three times, through daughters Catherine and Margaret and son John)
William Johnston (53)
Gilbert Hay (53)
Sir John Hay, 2nd Lord Hay of Yester (43)
Sir John Somerville of Cambusnethan (50)
William Rollo (59) and his son:
Robert Rollo (34)
William Graham (64) 1st Earl of Montrose; led part of the Scottish vanguard; father-in-law of Robert Rollo
George Seton, 3rd Lord Seton (32)
William Borthwick, 4th Lord of Borthwick (54)
William Ruthven (35)

oh, and King James IV of Scotland (40)
(direct line twice, by daughters of two different mistresses: Margaret Drummond and Marion Boyd))

And if you go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Flodden_Field
and look under Commanders over on the right, on the English side, you'll see two *Thomas Howards* (they're father and son) and a Thomas Dacre. They're all your grandfathers, too, but upline of my father's father. The older Thomas Howard was the grandfather of two of Henry VIII's wives, the two who were beheaded, actually: Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard. The other Thomas, obviously, was their uncle, and you saw "him" if you watched The Tudors. Edmund Howard was Catherine's father, so he's sort of an uncle or a cousin several dozen times removed.

I thought that was worth passing along ...

Oh, and we scored our milk! :o) (see previous post)

Oh, My Nerves!

I actually go to bed every night promising myself I'll post a blog update in the morning. It's been over three months! Well, let's see how long it will be before anyone notices this. :o)

Where to begin, oh where to begin?

Christmas was GREAT! December was GREAT, one of the best in memory. In fact, I think Facebook had a lot to do with that. What with everyone talking about how good their kitchens smelled and what they were up to, it was as close as possible to celebrating with everyone I know. The visit to Jenna and her family the week before the official holiday was wonderful, just wonderful! Of course, I wish we could have the whole family for the holidays, but I don't see that happening. Still, I wouldn't mind. :o) Adding to the enjoyment this year, I finally brought my little stereo from the back room where it's been collecting dust to the living room and brought down all the holiday cds from upstairs where they (and the other cds and some of the old records -- vinyl, you know) had been doing exactly nothing, because there is nothing up there to play them on. I don't know what I was thinking when I put all the recorded music up there, except that it seemed like they ought to hang around with the dvds. Well, and there isn't room for them down here, really. Most of the cds are still upstairs and most of the records are still in the back room, and the stereo is stuffed underneath the piano bench, discs in a small crate alongside. ANYWAY, we had a lot more music in the house during this past Christmas season than we've had before, and I actually baked a few cookies even though that was not a good idea. It smelled like one at the time.

I've spent the past couple of weeks mostly sitting with my left knee ace-bandaged and iced and elevated. I think I have a torn meniscus, having consulted with Google and Dr Rick (via email), and I know when it happened -- well, no, not when. I've forgotten how many weeks ago it was but I know what I was doing: I had taken a carton of chicken broth down from the shelf at Safeway and then was doing a little Y-turn around my shopping cart and my left knee sort of snapped. For a second or two I thought it was going to go out from under me, but it didn't, it just felt ... compromised. I leaned on the cart and finished the shopping and went home. Since then it's been varying degrees of *hurt.* Finally a couple of days ago I took Dr Rick's advice and called a knee specialist he knows ("Left knee or right knee?" the receptionist asked when I said I wanted to make an appointment), and I'm going in to see him next Tuesday morning. Of course, as soon as I made the call it started feeling better, but I think it's just being tricksy. You hear about people's trick knees all the time. :o)

And speaking of Dr Rick, who is wonderful, the best doctor EVER, the one who actually listens to me and who calls me on his own time to say my labs look great and I'm a rockstar -- he's closing his practice the end of this month. I actually cried. Bankruptcy for the practice and for him personally. He hasn't drawn salary in a year. Seventeen hundred patients, many of them, this being the neighborhood that it is, with AIDS, many of those advanced and unable to work. I strongly suspect that he was doing for many of his patients what he had said he would do for me if I were unable to get insurance after leaving Comcast: "Don't worry, we'll work something out." So one of the partners is moving to another location, another partnership, and I'll just follow him over there, although -- it isn't that I dislike him, I just don't LIKE him. He's a doctor, not a friend. Rick may or may not begin practice again once he's done dealing with all this. I'm sad.

But -- what with one thing and another, we do have my diabetes under control, as they say, on oral meds. No insulin. So that's good. And Scott, our friend the acupuncturist who will make house calls, has apparently fixed the back pain I've had almost constantly for YEARS. Took him three weeks.

David is at his Italian class, last one for this series. This is homemade-by-a-genuine-Italian Tiramisu day, and I am pea-green. The Safeway order just arrived -- we're doing the delivery thing again because of my walking problems. (Safe-way, my eye -- I also tore something in my shoulder while snagging a carton of whipping cream from a high rack back before New Year's and that STILL bothers me). I like the ease of Safeway Delivery but I'm not wild about the results. Today they decided that since they didn't have any green leaf lettuce, I would like red, and since they didn't have little packs of tomatoes I would be happy to have a little pack of mini-peppers. I ordered vanilla organic yogurt because the plain is too tangy to be fun on oatmeal, but they sent plain. However, they also included two quarts of strawberries that I did not order, which is fine with me (and karmically, I think I deserve them ;o) ) but won't be so good with the customer who *did.*

When David gets home, there will be a trip to Rainbow, the hippie-dippie grocery, for the stuff Safeway didn't include, and *hopefully* some raw milk products. Jenna persuaded me to try raw milk and I did some reading and searching and found that California is one of a tiny tiny handful of states where you can actually buy raw milk products. You know, in a store. Some stores.

My dairy of choice delivers to Rainbow on Thursday and I should have made just that one small trip that day, but ... I didn't. Last night I learned that Whole Foods (which also has been carrying raw milk) is having insurance problems with it and pulled all of it this morning at 8 am. There are three Whole Foods in SF, which means all the people who have been going there for their milk are going to find out about humble little Rainbow and converge on it, so I'm worried.

It's always something. I think Gilda Radner said that.

Not a Lot to Say

But if you're cruising through here, check out the little purple bar over to the right below where it says On the Needles. Yeah, Christmas Ornaments.

YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, I'll Play, Jenna

Five North American Cities in Which I'd Seriously Consider Living:

1. Denver, Colorado (like, kinda soon)
2. Boulder, Colorado
3. Seattle, Washington
4. Philadelphia (suburbs, including South Jersey)
5. Phoenix, but only in the event of Severe Global Cooling

Five Songs to Which I Know all the Words:

(So now I'm trying to think of impressive lyric-dense songs. "American Pie"? Maybe. "Subterranean Homesick Blues"? "Goin' Down." by the Monkees? I'd like to *think* I do ... I do NOT know all the words to "We Didn't Start the Fire," though. Ah, just five songs I like to sing:)
1. "Rocky Mountain High" by John Denver
2. "Dream a Little Dream of Me" by Mama Cass
3. "Right Field" by Peter, Paul and Mary
4. "Breaking Up is Hard to Do" by Neil Sedaka
5. "Mountain of Love" by Johnny Rivers

Five Foods I'd Wish to Have in Unlimited Quantities on a Desert Island:

(this is a fantasy, right? no glycemic index issues?)
1. Fresh soft hot breads with butter :o)
2. Homemade cookies (includes brownies)
3. Cheesecake
4. Dark chocolate
5. Cheese Enchiladas

Five Chores I Should Be Doing Right Now Instead of Blogging:

1. Working on Christmas stuff
2. Vacuuming the back room
3. Walking on the treadmill (yeah, that's a chore)
4. Furminating the cats
5. Scrubbing the couch (see previous answer)

Five Childhood Friends I'd Love to See Again:

You know, my childhood was a long time ago and I really can't think of anyone I miss, except Sam and I am in touch with her even though I haven't seen her in a few years.

1. Sam/Sioux Hill
2.
3.
4.
5.

Now, five friends to tag (but please play even if you aren't tagged, and then let me know!):

1. Amanda
2. Abby
3. Sarah
4. Hannah
5. Micah

Still At It -- Coming Up Briefly for Air

The One World Tree on Ancestry.com is FULL of glaring errors (the supposed link from us to Jean-Jacques Rousseau only works if you accept a mother born more than 100 years after her daughter, for instance). The Member Trees are better but a lot of them are also just plain (and badly) wrong.
When we get back far enough there are lines David and I (and probably half of America) have in common, and we spent most of last evening on one of those, trying to see how all those submitted trees that tied our guy (Count) Polotsk Rogvolod to Konstantinos VII (and was *his* father Leo The Pius or Romanus II?) could be right. We wanted them to be right -- but they weren't.
It's like people submit these names without checking dates AT ALL. We're sitting here with half a dozen screens open to various historical resources looking for matches or some sort of logic and too often it just isn't there. I was so bummed and it was so late at night that I pulled out all the bad info I had entered on this line (before I started checking the veracity of those previously-submitted trees) and then just started backing out through my tree, intending to come all the way back to myself and then shut down for the night. But as I was working my way out, I noticed Gundred, Countess of Surrey, born 1063, and I hadn't yet tried to push her line out, so I thought I'd just give it one little shot.
Bingo -- William the Conqueror. I told David I got a nice consolation prize after all the Byzantine frustrations. :o)

That one is on my mother's side. You're also descended from Alfred the Great (in a couple of places, as I recall), Charlemagne at least four times so far as I mentioned on FB, Henry I and Henry II of England, a mess of Scottish kings, a whole pack of knights and countesses and so forth. Geoffrey Chaucer is a Great Uncle (his sister Katherine is your multi-great grandmother) and, much more recently, Henry David Thoreau is in there, too. Today I'm going to see if the link to Alfred, Lord Tennyson is valid.
As I understand it, only nobility and royalty have records that go back this far so anyone who gets into the MIddle Ages has charts that look like this, dotted with coats-of-arms, and most people are going to connect back here one way or another but it's still cool to see the names and read the little stories -- and to be able to google your own ancestors. We're learning a lot of history by looking up all these people. You who are my kids undoubtedly have a similarly exciting list on your father's side, of course.
As does anyone else who gets into genealogy. Fun!
Now let's see if I can get the right names with the right ancestors ...

Malcolm III King of Scotland

Henry II of England

Aethelstan, King of the English
this one is probably *not* ours but I really love the idea of an ancestor in stained glass so I'm still working on it.

Alfred the Great

I'll get back to you on this one. Egad, I've lost him!

Your 32nd Great Grandmother, Gang

"According to legend, she obtained a reduction in the excessive taxes levied by her husband on the people of Coventry by consenting to ride naked through the town on a white horse. Only one person disobeyed her orders to remain indoors behind closed shutters; this man, a tailor known afterward as Peeping Tom, peered through a window and immediately became blind. The oldest form of the legend is in the 13th-century Flores Historiarum (Flowers of the Historians). A festival in her honor was instituted as part of Coventry Fair in 1678."

Lady Godiva!
I found this one all by myself. I'm so proud!
I seriously need to get dinner put together and work on the ornaments. :o)