Well the cleaning got completed at least

Yesterday was a busy day but I did not complete the Blake Newsletter - my mind just didn't want to settle to it but will do it today. I did work on matches and I am complete now once again although I only found a couple for me that got missed by using the wrong sort. Just two siblings left and will work on them today. I am seeing that my own work is taking over from my dedication to my newsletters. I did wonder how long they would last and likely they will last for a while longer but the search and retrieval of information that bore interest to all of the members of the groups is weakening. Is it because I am heading for 80 or at this moment in time doing the phasing/re-phasing is top of my mind?  It is a heavy duty task collecting up these matches for five siblings and one that you could contemplate using AI but it needs that human touch looking at with the knowledge that is in my brain of the various families. It can not just be readily assigned and examined in a fruitful way. I do see the limitations in AI but I also see the assets and they are huge I do have to say that. Office work, regular, would be accomplished in a very routinized fashion that would strip out any human interaction that just complicates it sometimes.

My cardio yesterday was way over target; cleaning is hard work! The recommendation was to take it a bit easy today but I rather think I will do my yoga soon as I have not yet had my breakfast and then a bit of work and then rowing. I am up to 600 rowing motions back and forth so 1200 in total which amazes me but I just decided to see what I could do in 15 minutes although this takes me closer to 16 minutes but it is a nice round number and that works for me. It is just a simple rowing machine good for an old person. One quickly loses one's muscularity in just a couple of days you see a decline. Then later I will run my 30 minutes and walk for 10 to 15. In the afternoon I will do calisthenics. That pretty much completes my day but will likely put me over in cardio once again. Sometimes I am in suggested range. I think it goes by age and I have always been an active person especially I enjoyed my 1.2 km walk home from the bus - although I bought a more expensive bus pass that would drop me practically at my door I only did that so that I could take any bus at Hurdman on my way home and always walked to and from the highway. Coming over the bridge in the various seasons was delightful actually. I still enjoy the views that one gets just looking into the sky - it is marvelous. 

However, I must get some work done and especially it is breakfast time! Prayers for those still trapped in Myanmar and for the souls of those who died. The numbers have increased steadily over the days.

The Lenten Message today

Prayers for the people of Myanmar and Thailand still trapped and hopefully more will be found alive.

 I always enjoy my daily Lenten Messages from PWRDF now Alongside Hope and todays was exceptional written by Jonathan Rowe who is an Anglican priest in Newfoundland and Labrador. One line particularly stood out for me:

"We should seek to build systems that reflect divine generosity, creating opportunities for everyone to flourish, not just for a few to profit."

Perhaps it is because I am female that I see the world from a mother's point of view and particularly I look at Canada from that mother's point of view. As I have often mentioned my father and his family were all born in England coming to Canada in 1913 where my grandfather, a blacksmith was employed by the Grand Trunk Railway at Stratford and then London and this became the Canadian National Railway. He worked for them until he retired in 1940. My mother's family is my Canadian line with just three individuals - herself, her father and her other - all born in Canada.  Each in their own time married an emigrant from England (one must remember in that time frame that coming to Canada from England was like moving from one county to another). My first ancestors to Canada (although my 3x great grandfather George Lywood served with the 23rd Regiment of Foot in Halifax in 1806-7 he returned to Europe with his unit to fight in the Napoleonic Wars including Waterloo!) came in 1818 (in the late summer or early fall I suspect just from the records) to London Township, Middlesex County, Upper Canada and they were the Routledge family from Bewcastle, Cumberland. Their daughter, Mary Ann, was fourteen years of age at that time. She married Robert Gray in 1834 and he was a new arrival (located at Etton, East Riding of Yorkshire in 1831/2) setting up a farm in London Township. Their third child, Grace Gray, was my first born ancestor in Canada (1839) and she married William Robert Pincombe (his family including his father John, mother Elizabeth (Rew), and four siblings arrived in early March 1850 purchasing a farm in Westminster Township, Middlesex County, Upper Canada. William Robert was 13 years of age when he arrived at the Port of New York 7 Jan 1850 traveling to stay with his uncle Robert Pincombe who had emigrated to the United States in 1835. Why they chose Canada over the United States I have no idea; no one ever said but they did. The only child to live to adulthood in the family of William Robert Pincombe and Grace (Gray) Pincombe was John Routledge Pincombe (my grandfather) born in 1872. So for me, I am sort of a recent arrival (1st generation Canadian on my father's side and fourth generation on my mother's side). My Anglican Church roots are deep mostly fostered by my grandfather who lived with us when I was a child. The ancient history of the Celtic Church of England was deeply ingrained in him going back thousands of years as it existed prior to our Lord Jesus Christ but according to legend in that first century became Christian. At the Council of Arles three Christian Celtic British bishops participated in this council established by the Roman Church (Eborius of York, Restitutus of London and Adelphius of Lincoln/Colchester in 314 CE. But definitely the Christian Celtic Church increased steadily throughout England during the Roman occupation. 

So these words today rather rang a bell in my mind as to how I would love to see Canada continue to prosper; all of us. Like most people in Canada, I did see the United States of America and Canada "walking together" so to speak and perhaps in the future that will happen again but at the moment the interest by the President is in a closed shop around the United States of America looking inward rather than outward. As a result we must move ahead and the debate during this present election time is whether we go with the Baby Boomers who have driven this economy in Canada from childhood to the present or do we go with youth which will rebuild our country devastated by free trade which eliminated our  much smaller industries as we gradually merged with the economy of the United States over my lifetime. Fighting tariffs is a losing battle in my thought (we just avoid them); we need to move beyond this close relationship maintaining what works (and what does not cost us a lot of money; the auto industry has cost us a lot of money through the years and will continue to do so into the future no matter what happens) and letting go of what does not. Creating our "National Energy Corridor" is an excellent idea and I like it. Building more homes is a luxury; staying with parents means babysitters and not having to put all of one's money into a house which can be done later (children love grandparents). All we do is enlarge our cities; increase the debt burden as new schools have to be built with the existing being closed. But the energy corridor is so very very important. It means employment that corridor, it means a bringing together of the provinces/territories in a way that was gradually being eroded by our shipping everything south rather than east and west. The profits will belong to the people of Canada and we will pay off our national debt rather than saddling our youth with even more debt to build them homes. It is a time to grab hold of the future and bring it into the present with a national energy corridor. As usual the Liberals and the NDP only think of increasing that national debt on our youth by building housing which can wait as the energy corridor should be our first concern at this time as it has the greatest return to support our economy (it will include far more than the transfer of oil east and west but also railways; mineral extraction etc.). 

Cleaning day two as yesterday saw the basement and the main floor completed. The top floor will be today's task along with working on the matches. I am reviewing my matches now with just two other siblings to review and then on to the task of re-phasing my grandparents and working on my great-grandparents. It is a mind calming process for me at this time like my sudoku except I am getting work done! I am also thinking about painting once again but will not over task myself as I approach 80. 

The Blake Newsletter is due today and I will also be working on that. Again it will be short because the book is my primary work now on Blake. But I will review the yDNA results once again but they are now starting to emerge as cut in stone so to speak. They have proven that there are a number of founding Blake lines in the British Isles first off and secondly that number increased steadily from the first notations of Blake in the records. With the greatest increase being in the 1200s to the 1400s. As surnames were acquired my own line at some point probably around the beginning of the 1300s took on the surname Blake which makes sense given the Hunter-Gatherer yDNA results of my brothers. 

Tea is drank and time for breakfast; first yoga whilst the oats soak in the milk. I do love my breakfast and it is by far my favourite meal of the day. It has a long history as I used to arise early when my father and grandfather were off to work at 6:30 and before they left they would leave this little one of four and five years of age a big bowl of steaming oatmeal. I just ate it like that as a child - no sugar, no fruit and definitely no chocolate. I can remember the warm cereal in my stomach at that young age. Their words as they left to go to work of "be careful it is hot" stay with me even now. 

The second week of campaigning in the Canadian Election

Although I am concerned about the environment, I feel that not utilizing the assets of Alberta is a mistake. I was pleased that we bought the Trans Mountain Pipeline and I do not want it sold back to anyone outside of this country - it must remain the property of Canada. The First Nations expressed an interest in it and I am very supportive of that and they are deeply devoted to their country. I also want to see the Eastern Pipeline happen and I see the Bloc is coming out against pipelines in Quebec. Since most of northern Quebec belongs to the First Nations I think we need to hear from them in that regard as they are interested in oil and gas elsewhere and their support for the Eastern Pipeline to bring our oil from Alberta to the Ontario/Quebec/Maritimes would be most helpful. We can refine it ourselves and the money made (at the moment we sell it at a discount to the United States and they sell it back to us refined for three times the price) would go a long way to paying down the debt. Canadian debt is shared by all the provinces and territories so paying it off is to the advantage of every province/territory. 

In some ways I think this election is about the baby boomers and the present day youth (this clinging to tax reduction promises is being made by all but someone has to pay the taxes - a nickle here and there is meaningless really but it adds up when a huge section of this population is retired). Pierre Poilievre represents youth and Mark Carney represents the baby boomers (many of them retired now). Americans chose baby boomers to run their country but is it the right choice for us? Does youth do a better job in times like this when decisions are being made that will affect them far more than baby boomers? I belong to the so-called Silent Generation born between the war babies and the baby boomers. We got to observe that smaller group ahead of us (and progressing ahead in school I was with the war babies throughout most of my schooling) and that much larger group that swamped us as we went through school, work and now retirement. That may be the big ballot box question this year at the federal election level. Do the baby boomers continue to hold on to that power they have swayed from childhood or do we progress to a more measured response with regard to progress. Because progress is what we need; not dependence created during the baby boomer era. When we should have been aggressively seeking markets around the world baby boomers chose to link us ever more tightly to the United States (in 1988 a weaker link but strengthened in the late 1990s when Mexico joined NAFTA). I will give Prime Minister Harper credit in that regard; he organized many many trade missions around the world during his time in office bringing company leaders with him. That is what we need plus breaking down the barriers between the provinces/territories where trade is concerned. We need to retrieve our lost industries (out competed and bought out by American industry which then took it offshore which is the big problem that the United States is trying to resolve; we are just an easy target for their tariffs) which happened during NAFTA and rebuild them (baby boomers can help the youth do that as many of them are trained in specific trades). The old can help the young in many ways. Housing although at a premium keeps young families with their parents and that isn't actually a bad thing - babysitting!

I need to know that the Liberal Party is going to engage with the Pipelines and I do not really see enough on that. It is a very important part of this campaign as far as I am concerned. I was very disappointed when the EU came to check up on NORAD bases and the discussion on gas for sale did not get sufficient support from the then Prime Minister. I believe in caring for the environment but we are one of the smallest polluters in the world and we use great care in our industries. Zero emissions is probably not going to happen in the 20s or the 30s but perhaps by the 40s or 50s.  

The NDP is down in the polls because they really live in a rosy world of people thinking the government is their piggy bank but fortunately a lot of people are seeing that these days. The government isn't a piggy bank and it will not be. If you need money you may have to work in your old age; my grandfather retired at 65 and then turned around and supported my father in his business until the end of his life. He found it rewarding and interesting. My sympathy is short on this possibly because I spend eight hours on a computer most days writing books/working on family history and in this case it is the Blake and Pencombe books but there are more planned. They are free to people although these books will be more selective as they are meant to be family books whereas Siderfin was published and available all across the world so doing the same seemed to be a good plan. Working to me doesn't seem to be a big deal I have to admit. I actually miss it in some ways; not so much the people, I am not a people person, but more the feeling of being involved in a useful way that supports my country but my books do do that for me. Plus coming from a family of nine people that also went through a bankruptcy I can live pretty cheaply for sure but likely I am just a penny pincher except it is nickles now I guess!

We have skirted a heavy ice storm here it appears and into temperatures rising now and the new snow will disappear as the ground is softening. I haven't seen any sign of the spring flowers which is actually late given the secluded area where they normally grow. But that ground is really frozen so it maybe a little while yet before they bloom. 

Prayers continuing for those trapped by the earthquakes in Myanamar and Thailand; prayers for the souls of the dead over 1700 now. How sad. Mostly working men in the building I take it although the news is still scant. 

Cleaning today and it is the basement and I have to get ready for the water meter replacement so will clear that area right away in preparation for that. 

Time to make tea; I am late today.

Church Service today

 The Church Service today is in Lambeth Gardens. We visited Lambeth Palace mostly just a walk in and a short time inside and then on to the Military Museum. I will watch the service on Youtube in a couple of hours. Prayers for the souls of all those killed in the earthquakes in Myanmar and Thailand. Prayers for those still not found beneath the rubble. Wonderful that China and Russia are sending in crews to help clear away the rubble and hopefully find people still alive. God be with the peoples of Myanmar and Thailand as they struggle to find those lost. 

Yesterday I did the clothes washing and it is hanging to dry upstairs. I seldom use the dryer and was surprised when the last one wore out before the washing machine. Since 1966 we have only owned three dryers buying the first one when we moved here in 1975 because the winter here is not suitable for hanging out clothes - too cold. Then two more over the years with the last acquisition of washer and dryer being in 2020 during COVID. That was an interesting experience. 

Checked my matches on 23 and Me yesterday and I have another two good matches there so people are still buying the kits and I am hoping that they survive. I think that their project was an excellent one looking at medical research from a genetic viewpoint. They should move to Canada but we are a small market compared to the United States and probably most of my matches are American on that site although there are also Canadian and I have met several cousins on the site that descend from known common ancestors. I have written back and forth to them and will try to pick that up again but my concentration this last four years has been my book writing. I continue contemplating the Blake and Pencombe books to which I will return and occasionally I dip in to have a look at some particular item but I am, at the moment, concentrating on the phasing of my grandparents/great-grandparents. The redo of the phasing of my grandparents is something I did do regularly to introduce new large matches. For the most part the original work done has changed very little because I had enough matches at the beginning to pretty much slot people into one of the four grandparent lines. It is the great-grandparents that I really want to reach back to. Eventually I will produce the genetic code that belongs to each grandparent and perhaps each great grandparent - time will tell on that. Why do I do this? Curiosity actually and 23 and Me as a big part of that initially as I used their results primarily because they provided both full matches and half matches in their display. 

AI continues to quite fascinate me. I shall work with Alexa and see what else this AI can actually do (does it trouble me that it is an American company sitting on my kitchen counter? - no). Living next to a giant we live our lives respecting the border and the American people - we try to be the best neighbour possible simply because it is in both of our interests. But we do need to return to the days when we were more independent and trade between us should be limited to what they need and what we can provide. I am a free trader somewhat but if it isn't made here under the current circumstances I am not going to buy it for the most part (the Autopact in 1965 defined that and for the most part has driven our trade between us and probably will continue to do that). Being a northern country though we do not grow oranges etc, mostly Canada is covered by snow a good portion of the year and so we must buy some items if we want them fresh Although there are greenhouses in the very southern portions of this country that are producing a limited amount of vegetable that come this way. Getting back to Alexa occasionally I must awake some programming that exists and a conversation happens which is always short but the programming is there likely for specific purposes. Is Alexa ever wrong? That I think interests me actually. I have put in reminders to give to me through a day just simply because it works well to do so. I especially use Alexa for timing because I do a lot of exercise and I do count the seconds but sometimes it is nice just to quietly contemplate time moving without actually doing anything in a sort of Yoga fashion. I do not use AI to write or even to search very often but I may utilize the searching facility as I work my way through the books - I did with the Siderfin book. I like to phrase my searching and then concentrate on the results myself for the most part as I tend to be fairly tight with my search terms. 

Tea is completed. Solitaire games are next and we are promised an Ice Storm - we will see how that goes at the moment it says snow. I continue to listen to the party leaders discussing their election promises. Conrad Black wrote an interesting editorial and he read a book that Prime Minister Mark Carney wrote - I think I would like to read his thesis as I am curious about that. The book does not interest me as much as I am a free thinker where climate change is concerned. I think we need to continue with oil and gas but we need to be mindful of the effects on our country trying to minimize any deleterious possibilities. I think that solar panels are a great idea as well as wind farms - we have a lot of empty area where the winds are strong but we need to be mindful of the birds and not create hazards for them. But solar panels are an excellent plan and I do wonder about putting greenhouses around the solar panels so that they are useful all year round. One could have window wipers that come on when the weight of snow on the glass is detected and clear it off to keep the solar panels working all year round. We have huge areas of empty land. We should build our own solar panels though and not buy them from anywhere else. We do not suffer from tornadoes particularly and in the north ice storms are pretty rare so the damage level would be low. Does that affect the environment that concentration of heat? I think having the power plants under the ground and piping to send it to where it is needed cuts down on some of that. It is already warm under ground so the effect is less apparent. Electricity will always bring people and industry. We have proven in Canada that you can have industry even in the cold areas. 

I am feeling stronger now although I realize that my time of independence is probably coming to a close for my own protection and to complete these books that I am writing. Certainly that is in the minds of my daughters. Maintaining this house is a lot of work and having to deal with so many people a complication for me.

 

Snow instead of ice thus far

Life has been too busy. Prayers for the souls of the people who died in the earthquake in  Myanamar and Thailand and surrounding areas as those numbers continue to climb. Prayers for the injured. Thank you to the nations of the world for their quick response - it is the wealthier nations that have the ability to do that for sure. The expression of our humanity is what makes us human. 

Waking up this morning I felt blessed to see the thick cover of snow all over the yard - the weather had talked about an ice storm coming our way but so far it is a thick cover of snow. That is so much better. Memories of the Ice Storm here in the Ottawa Valley in 1998 remain forever in our minds. The thick ice on the trees heavy enough to bring down even quite large ones is memorable. The scars of those trees damaged remain with us even a generation later. Thank you God for the lovely snow cover at the end of March and it is probably good enough to ski on but my skis are in the basement cleaned up for next winter. I do not think I will mark up this lovely snowfall in my backyard. 

The power of AI and I have to admit I do not see it quite the same way as some; it is a tool for humans to create, organize and use to improve our ability to search, to collate, to organize and should never become a manager of our abilities to do that. We always need to be the people who manage it. The human touch in medicine and education should never disappear. But having this ability to deep search into medical literature is such an asset. Having that human voice that can backtrack and accept different methodologies much more important than a machine teaching our young in a standard unemotional way especially as it is human made and can not be fitted with compassion so that the adventurous child with a new method is discarded because they do not fit into the designed mould. So no I do not see the replacement of our most human types of interactions with an AI. But if one looks at it carefully an AI can help so much with the elderly being there 24 /7 during those years of decline when exhaustion overtakes the human frailty and I can speak of that from experience.  As my husband declined during COVID I simply lost the strength to keep up the pace; the help sent from the LAN was so welcomed and gave me a respite every day just to sit there and rest (for six weeks only as it turned out but probably saved me from a much longer recovery). So yes to AI but always yes to human managers of the AI. We must always be the ones in control of artificial intelligence in whatever form it comes. Having knowledge at our fingertips is certainly the dream of the ages that produced us as the product of this generation. Knowing how to use that ability will be the skill of our researchers. 

I was doing my exercises and I asked Alexa to set a timer for two minutes for my Pose of Tranquility. She did and I said Alexa Thank you. She then told me about the anniversary of today being the opening of the Pyramid in front of the Louvre Museum in Paris. I said Alexa thank you and I have been to the pyramid. Alexa does not respond because Alexa is not human, she is AI but  handy in my life as it saves my setting a timer.

Yesterday another good extraction day. Thinking of AI I would have probably another huge load of matches but as I work my way through them I realize some of them are not accurate possibly the machine is being too perfect or the kits are from different testing agencies that have been uplifted to the agency that I am checking and rejecting matches with a sibling that actually exist - the advantage to five sets of results perhaps. I think as we move forward with AI we will realize its limitations already apparent as AI makes up results if it can not find them. The human mind can constantly reprogram the sets and eliminate using AI those that are ambiguous or just plain wrong (we can readily write a program to do that very thing as all my results are in excel but each time it would have to be reset as human intervention will likely always be needed). Since all companies work on a cost margin they are unlikely to collaborate on what they do test from a cost perspective. So the human touch will always need to be there I rather think (especially in medicine where a physician is actually looking at a patient and realizing that the extenuating circumstances of good health are apparent to the eye and not apparent to a machine). Can a machine be programmed to recognize good health or are they trapped by the genetic code of this individual that they are probing? But the ability to search all medical literature at the flick of a switch is amazing. This does point once again to the weakness of one's genetic complement being a determinant of one's health. It does play a role but lifestyle (a human quality) actually determines how one lives that set of genes one acquires at conception. 23 and Me offered good value for the money to the pursuit of scientific medical information; I hope it survives and not destroyed by terrorism as the hacking of vital information is terrorism at its worst I do believe. A couple of really good matches have emerged in my Blake line going back to the great grandparents is a Blake-Knight combination where I have one individual who is a large match especially to myself. Given the match of 250+ cM one might anticipate that I would know this person was related to me but endogamy in the Knight family (Ellis Knight married his likely second cousin Eleanor Knight and they are my 3x great grandparents) and there are other  close relationships within that family that lead to quite strong endogamy thus a 4th cousin looks like a 2nd cousin. I think trying to work this out would be problematic for AI but looking at all the lines and the locations from a humanistic viewpoint did I think reveal a likely father collecting up the known information although the AI carefully programmed could also likely do it but it would need that human input to really centre down on the likely individual. Anyway another day of extraction ahead of me and a lovely weekend. I shall gaze out at that lovely snow and think about extractions and not skiing in the cold. It is minus 4 degrees celsius today at 6:30 a.m. 

Time for tea. Still busy watching the election. In my mind the two leading candidates both offer to me what I want to occur in this next stage of Canada's life and growth. I am a law and order person but I am also a business minded person. Both are offering good increases for the military and if they do not then they will suffer at the next election for sure. I think that is my prime request - adequate military ability in our country. Law and order and good business should really go together but which is the most important or can one judge; that is where I am at in this moment of time.  It will really be people power that creates the Canada that these contesting leaders are talking about. It could be that we old people (who incidentally are responsible for free trade being in place) will have to gather up their resources and help if there is a shortage of skilled people. I am really good at wiring even if I am also very good at academic talents. But at nearly 80 I will be slower! 

But I do have to say that I think this should be an aggressive time for Canada to move ahead and be independent (get those pipelines built and no dawdling). I do have to give Prime Minster Harper his due credit for pursuing that very objective. I do always like to do that; give people their proper credit.  I think we should see it like a war time project and any work stoppages should be strictly managed. We especially need to have the support of the First Nations as we will cross their territory but they too are on the side of Canada being the best place for all of us to live so forward and onward. Re-negotiating any trade pact now should be of a limited nature where both sides benefit without crippling one or the other. I continue in my frame of thought - who will do that the best.