Wednesday, August 3, 2022

Just twelve degrees celsius this morning

A cool August morning to start the day today. I shall do some outside work today although any cleanup will mostly start later in the month. Still more summer to come but August always signals in my mind and apparently in the mind of Mother Nature that Fall is coming. 

I want to do some work on the Protestation Returns today and see if I can complete the Pincombe Newsletter over the next couple of days and then I can start to work on the Somerset Subsidies. I am not sure what I will learn looking at these early documents but I feel that it is the next step in the process of looking at the Blake family in Somerset. This is the only occasion in my parent's history that there is a commonality of surnames in that Jone Question married Nicholas Blake and she was my  seventh great grandaunt with her brother Augustine Question being my 7x great grandfather. This is my Huguenot line it would appear although proof of that has not yet been found but it is rumoured to be so. Nicholas Blake was a brother to Lord High Admiral Robert Blake. It is funny in a way that this particular relationship occurs. My grandfather always said that the Somerset Blake family and the Andover Blake family were not related in that he said he wasn't related to Robert Blake the famous Admiral of the British Fleets during the Cromwellian days. Why he knew that is unknown to me actually. I was just eight years of age when he died and my memories of what he said are limited by that young age but certain items always rather cemented themselves into my brain as it is with a child. The brain is an interesting part of Homo sapiens and part of our inheritance from our ancient lineages from hundreds of thousands of years ago. The brain is so capable of storing up memories and it was that core ability that aided Homo Sapiens and its progenitors along the path in which we find ourselves today. 

This has been a stressful week in some ways but also a memory week which has been rather comforting. Letting go is always something that I tend to put off somewhat although surprisingly I can with time turn a corner and move on. One carries the ups and downs of life with one but so long as one keeps God in the centre one can in time see a path to follow. All paths lead to God in the end of it all for sure.  

The choice in government between democracy and autocracy is an interesting statement. Democracy goes back to the days of Athens in the Greek civilization and autocracy has been around from the beginning of time for homo sapiens. People tend towards democracy because one gets the best of ones surroundings under democracy but there is constant pressure on democracy even from within democracy because people misunderstand democracy. It doesn't mean that you, individual, have the right to do whatever you want. One must always work within the bounds of what you can not do which is rather more important. One must respect one's neighbour and that is more important than your presumed rights. Autocracy though on the other hand doesn't take into account your individual rights; you do not really have any.  That is the problem with autocracy; it snuffs out human assertiveness whether it be in science or the arts or any other endeavour. That reduces our ability to progress forward and be a better place to live - good example would be China permitting the re-entry of space debris without any controls - in a democracy that would result in a hue and cry from an entire country but China just ignores the fact that people could have been injured by flying debris because they do not care about the individual. So once we come to a plain where everyone respects everyone else's rights then democracy still remains the best way to govern and live one's life. The Truck Convoy remains as the most undemocratic happening we have seen in our lifetime in Canada; that a few people can descend on the capital city and undermine our rule of law and claim to be "freeing us" will be forever a memory of what is totally undemocratic. They should have stayed home and written letters as they caused so much trouble in Canada - all of Canada.

On to the day and breakfast my favourite meal of the day.

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