Returning to thoughts of my brother John

The passing of the Holy Father Pope Francis was a lot of my quiet thinking this past week but gradually towards the end of the week my thoughts returned to my brother John who passed on the 9th of April last. I remembered that his widow had called me to return my call and that she had not understood what I had told her about the availability of urn burial places in the two grandparent graves at Woodland Cemetery. On Friday I just suddenly decided to call later in the afternoon but after ten rings or so the phone hung up. I do scarcely know her and do not like to intrude upon her grieving time for my brother. I know myself I seldom answered the telephone and still do not anyway as it doesn't actually suit me to answer the telephone; I prefer email and spontaneous speaking other than with my siblings is something I refrain from doing. Especially at my nearly 80 years of age, I just prefer the quiet company that I normally enjoy in my life. 

Working away on the matches brings my thoughts of John and my other siblings back to me as we match here and there on different people. Because I am so very different from all of them which is great as it means that 100% of my grandparent's genetic complement that was passed to the five of us (actually there are seven of us in reality) totally reveals the entire twenty three chromosomes. On occasion we actually inherited the entire chromosome from one grandparent/parent and the number of crossovers is actually quite small on some of the chromosomes. That is why I think I can do the great grandparents as well (matches with third and fourth cousins reveal this to me quite clearly). 

As young children (before I went off to school) we were constant companions, John and I, and we got along very well. I am a placid person so not easily annoyed or upset with people. It is rare for me to be upset with a person. I am opinionated but overall I do not hold that against anyone if they hold an opposing opinion. I actually rather enjoy the debate over why we disagree. Although I do not get into that these days for sure. I am too busy with my books and the wills. I have decided to work on the Hampshire Blake Record Office wills that I just downloaded.  I have them neatly into 21 different areas in Hampshire and I have already transcribed a number of them that I have purchased through the years. There are in total 278 wills to do in this collection. If I did do one a day then accomplished in just under ten months. The Prerogative Court of Canterbury Blake wills for Hampshire are complete already and I could have this into an *.pdf document for publishing under the Creative Commons License that I have been using. That would get me started along with working on the Blake and Pincombe books. 

I have already digressed from John but that is me. My mind rapidly moves through the thoughts of the day. When John was in his teens before I married I used to encourage him to go into engineering. He had a very mechanical mind and sometimes he would think about it I know he did but he was easily distracted and a job was there at hand with my father which was also good actually. But I knew my mother really wanted him to do engineering as that had been her father's dream but my grandfather was unable to pursue that. His mother had wanted him to do engineering as well. But his estate, after his mother passed, was administered by his father and he refused to let him do that saying he had to work the farm as he wanted to travel a bit with his young wife and daughter. Life can be harsh. Since the farm was John's property (inherited from his mother) he really had no choice but to maintain it as engineering would have taken up a great deal of time perhaps in that time frame no ideas on that. He and my grandmother married when he was in his early 40s (she was just 27 years of age). But even then he enjoyed working on projects that were of an engineering nature making things easier on the farm. My mother said he was very inventive. My uncle always said he was brilliant and such a hard worker - he greatly admired his father.

Today is Sunday and this past week went by very quickly.  There is Church online at both my church here and St John's Locks Heath. Locks Heath is in Hampshire just below M27 perhaps half way between Southampton and Portsmouth but not on the coast of The Solent which separates the Isle of Wight from Hampshire. It is near Titchfield Abbey. Definitely quite a bit south of Upper Clatford and Andover. Since we traveled the M27 after we returned from our trip to the Isle of Wight we passed north of this area. This is beautiful country reminiscent of south western Ontario. It is likely why many of the early colonials settled in south western Ontario as it likely reminded them of England with its lush green fields (not so much the snow though as this area gets lake effect snow storms that are short living sometimes but quite heavy). Soon I shall go to Locks Heath figuratively and be at the service there. 

I am now at 100 matches to review which means I have completed over two thirds of them. It has been slow going but there have been a few lovely rewards into my known matches file that I use when I am creating the new phasing of grandparents. I will also recreate the cross over points just to verify that (I use several sets of data to do this from different testing companies as they all test different points along the chromosomes making the results quite interesting actually). It takes time but it keeps the calculations clean, neat and tidy. Time is definitely available to me in the day as I reserve all of my time for this work unless one of daughters needs me to do something (and perhaps it will be one of my grandsons one of these days). But at the moment my time is my own and I use it to work on these projects that my grandfather and mother would love to have done (my father too although his interest in family history was more of a pass it on rather than any active hands on work). He was only nine when he left England and it was more of a painful thought when he thought back as he left behind so many loving first cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents that thinking on it was more of a painful experience for him. Although when my oldest daughter was small he told me that he loved being an only child and I took that to heart as the years passed and my daughter too looked like she would be an only child. But when our second made her appearance we wrapped our love around her and welcomed her into the family. We used to have Kipp huddles as we called them wrapping our arms around each other perhaps not a lot but sometimes. My oldest was more like a small mother to her little sister whom she adored and still does. 

Tea completed and must do the solitaire to wake up the brain although it does seem quite awake already. 

I do have thoughts on the comments made by the Bloc leader regarding Canada and it being an artificial country with which I disagree - being one country is the best defense for both the First Nations and ourselves. But I have a lot of thoughts on what he said and why he said it that need to congeal before I do really comment. 

Prayers for those killed and injured during the car ramming in Vancouver. Now at eleven people dead and dozens injured. May God have mercy on their souls and prayers for the recovery of those injured. Such a tragedy in our country. Thank you to the first responders.

 

Rest in peace Holy Father

Today the entombment of the Holy Father Pope Francis at Santa Maria Maggiore near to the statue of Mary, mother of Jesus. The Bible Reading today from John 20: 19-31 tells us the story of Thomas - Doubting Thomas as he was called. Francis was one of those who believed without seeing and worked his entire adult life to improve the lives of his flock which gradually grew to include the entire world. He loved everyone. Rest in peace Holy Father. 

Yesterday good accomplishment on the matches. I found one truly idyllic one - a descendant of one of  my 2x great grandfather's siblings. A gift amongst just the normal matches that I have. These matches are gold in my phasing program as they are known to me and they generally match several of us at the same locations with good lengths (these lines have endogamy so they tend to be large matches even when they are fourth cousins). Perhaps in the 300 plus matches I will have maybe one to two dozen that I can pinpoint exactly in the lines that we share. There are now 50 in my unused folder but I have them labeled so that I can pull them up if ever I want to use them. For whatever reason they are incomplete simply because of the 1200 plus matches that I already have organized into my files.  

An interesting discussion on voting trends in ethnic groups yesterday on CBC. A mention that the Muslim community is moving towards the NDP. I found it interesting that their reason for doing so was lack of support for their genocide claim in Gaza from the Conservative and Liberal parties. The Liberals did provide a means for people to bring the children of Gaza here to protect them as we did in Canada during the Second World when children from the United Kingdom came here to live (I did not see any action to do that at all and it would  have needed to be the Muslim community doing that so the children would be comfortable so far from home; all that was needed was their DNA so that they could be readily returned to their families). The loss of those children who died will be mourned for a very long time. They were the fruit of the earth lost much too early. Hamas it does appear has raised the population of Gaza to support them no matter what Hamas does. Independence in thinking is important and that is what will solve the problem in Gaza that has been there for nearly four generations. The people of Gaza have land, interestingly the Rohingyas would love land and they would quickly farm it, industrialize it and make it work for their population they do not appear to be sitting there waiting to take revenge on their supposed losses (the UN was responsible for the redistribution of land in the Middle East in 1948). Instead the people in Gaza have nursed their supposed grievances against Israel through these generations attacking the small children of Israel in their school yards (since I was a child and I am nearly 80) and murdering them which culminated in the barbaric attack by Hamas on the Israeli peoples last 7 Oct 2023. The people of Gaza need to stop, look around and do something to produce a country instead of hating Israelis. The only genocide that exists is Hamas using the Palestinians for their own purpose and the Palestinians actually letting them (that is why there are nearly 50,000 Palestinians (and Hamas) dead from this war created by the Palestinian people who put Hamas in power in the first place). The people of Gaza have gained nothing and lost everything. They need to wake up, help eliminate Hamas literally and figuratively, free the hostages (keeping children hostage is so disgusting) and build a country that can be just as wealthy as Israel which they sit beside - same land. Amazingly, Israel would actually help them to create a great land for them to live upon.

Today, more matches to work on and more cleaning up outside. I will devote at least two one half hour sessions outside. Gardening has never been my thing ever but I do like order and neatness. 

For the first time in a few weeks I didn't walk up and buy a piece of fresh salmon but rather I opened a can of salmon and had a lovely salmon salad sandwich for my dinner along with peas and a tomato and cottage cheese. It was lovely and tonight will be a repeat as I can not eat an entire can of salmon myself. It is about the same price in terms of the amount of salmon whether it is fresh or canned. But it does me two meals so is quite reasonable costwise. Then chicken on Sunday and I will roast the four chicken thighs and have mashed turnip and mashed potatoes with it. The stew has been lovely but I just feel like something different. Then cold chicken for a couple of days (I can only eat one chicken thigh a day) and probably a salad using the left over turnip and potatoes and some of my frozen vegetables (Canadian produce). One does miss the lovely American fresh vegetables but life flows like that sometimes. 

I think perhaps today I will decide which wills to begin with. I would like to get that project completed as well. My husband and I used to chat about our projects. Mine were more in the beginning stages as I was relatively new to this idea of genealogy being more interested in the DNA side. His were wrapping up but I didn't realize that at the time - he talked like it was a project into the future but in reality he was wrapping things up to hand them over the people that could make use of them. He did not do that with his genealogy although he knew I did not have the training in American research to work on his family lines. But gradually I have found some homes for his work and the bulk of his library went to the Ontario Genealogical Society Ottawa Branch. The difference is huge. My set of books is in two small bookcases (and the rest in my head for the most part). I decided when I started into genealogy that it would be mostly on the computer which I back up very regularly. So the thousands of books we once had are no longer here. He had already started to downsize his library back in the early 2000s when he started his volunteer work with the Friends of Library and Archives Canada. That was something he kept up his entire time with the group I think about fourteen years actually. I started to go with him to make sure he did not do too much lifting back in 2012. I took on projects like the old school books which I put into the database - there were some real gems in the donations to the Friends. The cook books were something else that I just never could get into although did do some.  I did work on the history books to a certain extent but the four years that I was there passed quickly - it took a long time to do the text books actually there were so many (absolute gems all of them). It is fascinating to see what was taught to children in the 1800s.

The morning is advancing and my tea is complete. Must do my solitaire games next - my brain stimulation. Love Solitaire and it is a great gift of Microsoft to the world for sure in my eyes.

 

 

Working and cleaning up the yard

 An excellent day of work yesterday completing all of the K's and starting L's today. A total of 42 matches have been put into my holding file in particular because they do not increase my knowledge on particular chromosomes. 

I also did some work on the yard and the huge maple tree at the back (my husband and eldest daughter planted that tree when she was eight years of age so it is now 43 years old). A huge branch came off that I managed to break down a little with the axe so that it can go out to the street. A lot of branches down but that is usual after the long winter. There are still a lot up there!

Eggs, toast, boiled frozen peas and a part of a tomato for dinner last night. It was my usual egg night and I do love them hard boiled. Boiled two extra to have as egg salad for a couple of days. Although I would never have admitted it as a child peanut butter every day can perhaps get a bit boring (although I suspect it is a cheap lunch). I do love peanut butter though but a change is also good probably. I especially like it with a banana. My food hasn't gone up particularly lately. In general I spend about $150 every three weeks and then every week other than that I spend about $25 to $30. I eat well but I do not buy extras like alcohol or baked goods or packaged items. It is mostly fresh (stored) vegetables, fresh fruit and meat is a big portion but $35 in chicken thighs last three weeks as I freeze two portions and a piece of salmon does me two dinners and then there is eggs and my meat is complete for the week. I do not eat red meat normally. But I am not a foodie for sure; I like food simple and recognizable. I seldom buy processed food except crackers since I gave up my American cookies. I buy frozen vegetables (Canadian) and my only real American item is my cranberry juice which I am looking to replace with a Canadian substitute but I tend to buy it ahead and I am just using up the last ones these days. So it would look like I spend $200 every three weeks and in a year that would be $3500. Since my taxes are much higher than that I do not see it as a really big price. I am a thin person though and perhaps I eat less than other people. I have eaten in restaurants enough to last me a lifetime mostly but I do go out with my family on occasion. Edward loved to eat in restaurants although he got so he really liked cooking which was nice as I get tired of restaurants quickly. I am probably not really very good for the economy as I am not a shopper but will make an effort to always buy Canadian until we are re-established with our businesses that got bought up during NAFTA and inter-provincial trade is more the rule than cross border trading. Although I suspect we will still have some cross border trading. That is really up to our good friends and neighbours to the south. I think most Canadians are really missing American food and other items especially in the winter. 

I do know though that if the American brand cars are not made in Canada that are sold here we probably will buy otherwise since we have many car manufacturers from other countries producing cars here in Canada employing Canadians and using Canadian material (we bought a Toyota during the last trade debacle over car manufacture in Canada by American companies (withdrawal is not an option if you want to sell cars here)). The American companies could split and incorporate here and become Canadian companies and alter their way of doing business but it would be the pits for them and likely costly (but either way they stand to lose money - tariffs can be painful to business). The loss of a market of 41 million people would likely hurt the bottom line of American companies (for a small country we buy a lot of cars as it is a rite of passage for young people here to get their driver's license and buy a car at 16 and the laneways show that as they tend to stay home longer here) plus we are a rapidly growing country so could actually see 100 million by 2050 as mentioned. Since we plan to put a lot of industry into growing the economy once the election is completed that also grows the population. 

Just three more days of campaigning here and the polls are interesting. I would like to see a majority government just slightly more than is needed (perhaps in the low to mid 170s would be nice). I would like the opposition to be strong not lower than the low to mid 120s so as to hold the government to their promises (and that will be very important this time around although the program promised by both of the main parties is very similar just a slightly different approach) and there will always be the Bloc generally in the 20s or 30s and the NDP and Green. I do not see a value in the NDP federally to be honest as they are just far left liberals and in a minority government NDP helping them to survive does not serve the country overall well in my humble opinion. Better to have an election and hash it out on the campaign trail. I do understand the need for the Bloc in order for Quebec (french-speaking) to have a voice devoted to their needs (but when one travels in Canada you discover that French is spoken a lot in Northern/Eastern Ontario, in northern and even southern New Brunswick so not having this a more national party decreases their impact somewhat). Quebec's needs are guaranteed in the BNA act but still a voice in Parliament is a good idea as it lets their difficulties come to the surface on a federal level which is always good. The Green Party is  a self supporting party that does keep us aware and up to date on Climate Change which is important. Still not sure in my mind which will be better - Experience or Youth - both are needed and in good amounts. One has to think of jobs and who fills them in this case I think but I voted as I voted but as always stand behind the will of the people once the election is complete. 

That is a democracy for sure and one can understand Ukraine's desire to be free of the satanic despotic nazi leader Putin in Russia. That war needs to end as it is killing children in particular - children do not create wars but they suffer the most. Hamas too needs to get out of Gaza (the children pay the price there as well; the adults chose their path the children did not). Free the hostages Hamas; you Hamas are disgusting and  satanic and it is hard to actually see you as human because of your barbaric attack on Israel 7 Oct 2023 murdering children/infants, old people and others, taking hundreds hostage and still in captivity and then murdering two little boys when they were hostages. How disgusting Hamas is. If Turkey wants us to see Hamas otherwise they need to get Hamas out of Gaza and free the hostages.

Early today, up at 5 a.m. but more time to work on the matches. They are calming my mind slowly but surely. It has been somewhat erratic the last six  to eight weeks. Looking after the dogs had a calming effect for sure as well. The calming effect of writing is actually really good for an old person I think. Plus it keeps my arthritic fingers busy typing during the winter months especially. I keep the heat around 19 to 20 degrees celsius which is on the cooler side but I like that as I exercise at least four times a day with running, weight lifting/walking, rowing, biking, calisthenics, yoga and just plain walking and a cooler house suits that type of life style. I can always bundle up at the computer. Plus my FitBit tells me every hour to get up and walk 250 steps minimum. 

Tomorrow is large garbage day and so will break up all those tree branches into bags to put out to the pickup. Another project for the day along with my matches. I still need to extract matches from FT DNA, Living DNA and GedMatch. Five years has passed so very quickly since I last worked on my matches - amazing really. 

Teatime completed and solitaire next.

 

Sliding back into work

I can feel my mind sliding back into my work finally after really six years. I did a lot of work the past six years but my mind was often on other needs. But I now feel that I am back squarely working on these items that were so close to my grandfather's and mother's heart. Interestingly they end up being both sides of my family - Blake for my grandfather and Pincombe for my mother. 

Perhaps one day I will work on the Buller and the Rawling/Cotterill? families but that is in the future. I do have a lot of material already on Buller and Rawling. I actually have a couple of interesting Cotterill DNA results that I only briefly looked at and will see if they do take me back to Kimpton where my grandmother was born. The other element in this is the Cotterill family already being in this Rawling line. My 5x great grandfather William Rawlins married Mary Ford 30 Sep 1741 at Wylye, Wiltshire and their daughter Mary married Stephen Cotterel 28 Jan 1764 at Enford, Wiltshire. Stephen Cotterel was the son of William Cotterel and brother to a William Cotterel. This William Cotterell married Elizabeth Kempton 3 May 1760 at Wilsford near Pewsey, Wiltshire and they had three children - William, Charles and Elizabeth. Charles married Mary Bartlett 31 Dec 1786 at Woodborough, Wiltshire and they had two sons Charles and William. Charles married Hannah Alderman 23 Oct 1824 at Kimpton and they had two children William and Mary. William married Jane Sherwood 21 Feb 1852 at Kimpton and they had a son George a couple of years younger than my great grandmother. So I need to be careful as I look at Cotterill matches that they are not descendant of my 4x great grand aunt! and her husband Stephen Cotterel. It is a small world.

I am contemplating adding in one will per day and will check that out in the near future. I would also like to complete that task and then I can publish the wills in *.pdf format for each county for a more permanent life for them. A lot of the wills that I transcribed have been published on my blog already. 

I want this to be a little less restrictive on my workload as the Siderfin book dominated my time and I just really didn't think about or look at much else other than my newsletters which I publish the first of every month in the different disciplines that I study with the FT DNA results.  

Canada on the move as we reinvent our industries lost to free trade. Just a few days and we will be on that path. It is an exciting time in Canada; it will be a tightening up time as it will cost money to do all of this and there is only one real source of money and that is us. We all have to heave to so to speak and do the job that needs to be done to bring us back to where we were in the 1950s but so much better off because our population is twice as large and we are united as a people like never before. Experience and youth will carry us forward and they must work together no matter the result of the election. I grew up in a military city (London, Ontario's largest employer was the military when I was a child) and you could feel the pride and responsibility we had as people of Canada in my home town. The vigour was there and it will return and build this great country as it was meant to be built - free, independent and strong. We do not need the government to pay for our teeth, to pay for medicines - we can do it ourselves and the baby boomers who have benefited enormously from Canada will now help to make us one of the most powerful in the G7. Back to work Canada - we can all work, all of us to make this country flow with power. Whether it be with our purchasing power in our old age or helping our young people to take on extra responsibility; we can do this. Go Canada.  

Summer tires on and my six or seven times driving about completed that yearly cycle from summer to winter to summer tires once again. 

Today is a work day but, weather permitting, I will do a little raking outside. Gardening is never my thing; my husband loved it and I helped him as sickness over took him (it was a long 10 years but we shared it together). Mostly he liked to just be out gardening in the spring and would even shovel the snow away to get started earlier. On that we differed for sure; I was encouraging him to think about a smaller place with a smaller garden but he loved it here and when I took a picture to him in the hospital of the spring flowers blooming through the snow not long before he passed he enjoyed seeing his flowers once again. We had so much in common but also differences which perhaps makes a good 54.5 year marriage. 

Go Canada; reach the pinnacle - First Nations and colonials together we will make Canada one of the most productive countries in the world. The Americans will always be our best friends/our neighbours. We share a 9000 km border with them and our friendship is important to us. We will not be distracted as we move ahead in our ambitious drive to bring Canadian to its natural fruition as a powerful strong nation in the economic world but first we must build up the inside of our country to create housing, pipelines and any other item that we need in order to exist as a people in this cold northern climate. We know the way and we have the will. External trade will be our luxury and like most luxury it will not come immediately but we can work at it.

Cleaning accomplished

Nice, the cleaning was all accomplished in the two days so I am back into a normal week where I have four working days and then Sunday. Yesterday was primarily spent cleaning the main floor and the basement. The Robot worked perfectly and I will always double check now to make sure it is sitting properly on the home base. I could easily just vacuum the rugs but the robot does do a good job and it keeps me in the 21st century!

Prayers for the repose of His Holiness Pope Francis as he lies in State awaiting his funeral. There aren't too many people that the whole world stops and notes their passing; he has been a giant in this world where his constant care and devotion were felt in every corner of the world. 

Today I shall work on the matches and I have nearly completed J so getting on towards half way through this set of matches. I still need to look at Living DNA and FT DNA. I will also check out Ancestry to make sure they are still up to date but likely more have collected. I also want to separate those matches out into the four grandparents. I will have to consider how to do that and likely I will stay with the main file and when I want to use it I will do the separation each time so as not to increase the workload on that file. 

I also need to start thinking about setting aside a couple of half hour sessions outside raking. I will maintain what is there but I do not think I will replace any of the plants lost during the fence building. I will just keep the earth somewhat broken up and weeded. I want to fill the central garden with grass seed and will do that in the  next week or so. I will weed it first to give the grass a chance. 

The election is the most important item in our news these days. All of the parties that are going to produce a budget have now done so. I do not think any party should think of lowering taxes however they likely will. We will need the taxes along with financial support within Canada to do all the work that needs doing with the energy grid proposed by both of the main parties. In the long run it will be a profitable enterprise for us as we burn the oil to run our cars etc. Why pay someone else to refine our oil when we can do it ourselves and used to do that. The election will be an exciting day but I firmly believe that either party (Conservative or Liberal) are going to follow basically the same methodology to increase our external trade around the world and break down the trade barriers between the provinces to increase buying Canadian. We are/were the largest purchaser of American goods and we will still purchase large amounts it will just be more selective and if we have it here likely we buy that instead.  We live in a country covered with snow six months or more of the year - fresh food has to come from somewhere although our green house business is increasing but still the bulk of our fresh food in the winter is going to come from the south (it is the cheapest source under normal circumstances). 

But recreating our lost industry is a high priority and that will effect the American bottom line as they bought up our industries and now we will recreate them here once again and buy their produce. Who gained from all of this really (American companies going offshore to produce their products has hurt the United States and it will be hard to convince people to work at low paying repetitive work in factories)? In the long run it could well be us because our industry base will diversify once again to support an ever growing population. Canada is a huge country and this will encourage industry to grow larger to produce for the ever growing population. We have a great deal of land that can be utilized and our population is now over 41 million with thoughts of it being 100 million by 2050. It could happen as the north becomes more and more utilized industrially. We could be a bread basket for the world as well as a provider of water, oil, critical metals, lumber, steel and so much else. We have access to the three great waterways of the world as well. When high speed rail exists from coast to coast to coast then the travel time will be minimized making this ever more practical for trade around the world. 

Go Canada.