Is there change in the air?

 Moving to a new stage of my old age as I pass some management on to those better able to do that. the youth of our country is innovative and resourceful and now to really move ahead they need to look at the jobs that are to come and train for them so that they are ready when the jobs appear. AI will come soon enough especially to a country like Canada because we have what AI needs - vast amounts of available electricity, ability to create the infrastructure to contain such intelligence and the will to do it. AI will make life run smoother in some ways but there will be blips in the path because AI will need a lot of training so it is very important that one become very efficient at what they do in order to best teach AI the methodology that must be used in order to get the superior results. 

There is talk that our population is starting to peak and that the numbers of people will begin to decrease in this world. There are a lot of us here for sure. The Russians keep sending their young men to the fields of war which Russia created and the body bags keep going back to Russia. So Russia may experience a very sudden decline in population of their own making. Will women want to have babies that are being sent to war; I doubt it. They didn't in 1917 and the whole country did something about it. Peace waits on that. 

On the news this morning there was a video of Khan Younis in Gaza. How sad to see the tent city there where the children have to live. The children did nothing wrong; they didn't invade another country but it is always the children who pay for the deeds of the elders. I feel sad for the children of Gaza; I have from the beginning and desired that they could come here to Canada where they would be safe but it needed the people of Islam to come forward and take them in but it did not happen and so we had to watch day after day as children were killed and maimed in a war they did not invent. Children need to be with people that are of their own kind; it is only fair. Although adoptions across such creeds and races do work; I have seen some that work very well but in this case the children would have been coming from a war stricken country and they just needed that comfort of their own people until they could return to the arms of their families. 

 Yesterday was a somewhat tumultuous one but it lead to a new way to do things and I look forward to that as it will take a bit to come to fruition but I will be happier with the changes I know that. I maybe did five matches yesterday but did  manage to do my 12,000 steps after all without actually doing any special exercise aside from cleaning the top floor which is completed and another week of cleaning under the belt so to speak. There are some things that are beyond me and I know it and so I do not attempt them. My life ahead of me is considerably shorter than what I have passed through thus far. In order to be as effective a human being as I am able (and that is God's wish for all of us) I need to make changes that smooth out the path ahead. I have these aims that I want to achieve in these years and I do need help on occasion and this was one of those occasions. Thank you to my family for their guidance. 

 Today I will work on the matches and should complete them as there are only nine left; hard to believe. I will also check the other databases for the new matches that have come in and see if they are useful in my quest. It will be easy to set them in if that is the case. 

Today will be a running day (30 minutes before lunch) and then a weightlifting day this afternoon (mid way) and we will see if I do anything else other than walking. This morning's exercises went quite smoothly and the cardio load was 40, 1 hour was spent and 3204 steps with 375 calories. So about usual and I know I repeated several of the counts of 100 steps as I forgot to stick out my thumb to remind I had already done the first hundred of the two hundred on occasion. The statistics are interesting that you obtain on the Fit Bit with 5% at peak, 24% is vigorous, 47% is moderate and 20% is light. The average heart rate was 101 beats per minute. A good way to start the day it does appear. I read a bit ago that one's exercise periods should be 45 to 60 minutes long. So I moved to that with this early  morning exercise and I think it works well but one should of course check with a doctor if you are just beginning exercise especially if you are my age. But I have been running since I was a very young child when I finally stood up and walked free of furniture when I was eighteen months and it was when my first glasses were put on my face. I quess instead of a lot of fuzz I could actually see - no ideas on that. But at twelve when I went to high school the gym teacher really encouraged running and so I took it up and have run most of my life ever since. I was a better long distance runner than a short distance at that age and I would say it remains as I have good endurance that keeps me running for the full thirty minutes. I could run longer but I think 30 minutes of running followed by 15 minutes of walking is good exercise although one notes that even greater variety is touted as beneficial like run 10 walk 10 or whatever combination but I prefer the continual running followed by a slowdown walk. Perhaps as I age I will change in that regard. Somehow I can not imagine myself running at 90 but I guess one never knows what life will present. 

I see though that the Fit Bit is back to its desire to keep lifting my cardio target - it needs to remember that I am 80 and only maintaining. A fault I think in some ways of the programming but it sees how I manage on cleaning days and thinks that I can continue that sort of high pace which is not likely. I am always somewhat tired on Thursday and have to push myself just a little to do the exercises that I do. So will I make the low and high targets today. I probably will make it to the low target of 188 cardio load but it is not likely that I will make it to the 251 cardio load that is the top of the range. But getting to 188 we will see. I have 40, running will be around 80 to 90 and then weightlifting around 40 to 50. Plus the walking is around 10 to 15 so I just make it to the 188 and a tiny bit above but not likely to 251 even with the walking every hour on the hour. But it takes time to train a Fit Bit one thinks and probably it doesn't recognize the fact that I am 80 and that means something; if I was 50 or less I could see that the level of activity as suggested is more doable. 

Yesterday working on the few matches that I did do was revealing as a couple of them were known to me and clarified the particular great grandparent simply because we share a 2x great grandparent. Always an interesting experience this autosomal DNA. 

Tea drank and must do my solitaire puzzles. Then breakfast and back to work on the matches.  

 

 

 

 

 

Final cleaning day

 Half of a week cleaning and half of a week working but it seems to flow well. Awake in the night first time for a while actually. Sorting through the idea of moving and when it will be feasible. Highly desirable but the timing still not quite right. I would have one less day of work if I sold and moved into a one floor house and it is tempting to do that sooner rather than later. No ideas on that though as the logical time to move is in four years so we will see how that flows. 

Today is the top floor and then the cleaning is done for another week. Olympics moving along and soon it will be playoffs in a number of items. It is nice to see so many of our young people involved in the Olympics although I have barely watched it this year. Life has been busy amazingly for an 80 year old. 

I also want to finish off the last  fifteen matches and then that task is completed although the work just begins where the great grandparents are concerned. But I still need to look at the databases for the various companies and see if there is any new useful information. That will take the rest of the week probably along with working on the 4300 line Excel file. All backed up and I will create a new file to actually work with the data leaving the original on the file where I created it which includes all of the chromosomes one by one  beside the large chart including the chart that was used to determine the crossover points looking at the Living DNA data but not necessarily relying on it for the final decision - I used 23 and Me, FT DNA, Gedmatch (primarily Ancestry data), and My Heritage along with the Living DNA data. 

Falling asleep once again so will complete my blog in a couple of hours. 

 And so I return and exercises all completed and this hour on arising works very well it appears with a cardio load of 40, 55 minutes in length, 3000 steps and 292 calories. I have had my snack and will soon make my breakfast. 

Cleaning the top floor so I shall soon pick everything up and eat my breakfast and then begin after a short rest. It takes about 45 minutes to vacuum everything and then perhaps the same for dusting and then I need to scrub the bathroom and I will be finished and it is usually about three hours as I tend to underestimate the amount of time that I will spend. 

I will try to complete the remaining matches as it is not that many and than set up my file system for the work to come on this created excel file which is less than 5000 lines. There are a number of sorting routines that I will do and then examine the results with regard to the known people and the matches to all those known people. It should be interesting and the gain will be a breakdown of the great grandparents into their two lines (as everyone has two lines). 

I do not think in Canada that we are anti-American but definitely we are pro-Canadian and struggling to bring our economy into a state where there is no dependency except the usual that one attains by trade. We certainly enjoy being part of the North American Trade Agreement for all these years - I do not really think anyone would disagree with that fact (although in retrospect having our native industries decimated by competition/buying out and closing was a bad decision) but circumstance has made it necessary (we must do our best to make ourselves economically independent). That is the aim so one is seeing pro-Canadian and to a great extent we are all looking towards making Canada tariff proof. 

There are a few people in Canada who have ventured into another country looking for aid to form a country and I probably wouldn't use strong words but definitely mis-advised. Canada bought and paid for Rupert's Land and that is how the huge mass of land came to be part of Canada. We even ceded a number of areas to the United States since they lay on their side of the border but we did pay for that land and it was ceded freely with all the treaty obligations (and it is worth a lot of money now for sure). 

Alberta itself would be worth a huge amount of money and Canada would need to be recompensed.The rights of the First Nations come first that is the deal in the purchase of Rupert's Land. I believe the First Nations in Northern Quebec preferred to be part of Nunavut in such a situation when a referendum was discussed there and I doubt that has changed. That is a huge amount of Quebec. You live with what you came in with and Alberta did not exist until Canada created Alberta. Anyway that is my understanding.  

Why anyone would want to leave this prosperous country is quite beyond me to be honest (the opportunities for youth and they are coming and there will be far more in this near future for all of her people). The cost would be enormous unless you leave only with what you brought to Confederation (this concerns only Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba and British Columbia as they all existed but in many cases their land area was much smaller (that applies to Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba not sure about British Columbia would need to look that up) prior to Confederation (some joining later than 1867). In this case Alberta and Saskatchewan did not exist at all until they were created in 1905 with the Treaty Rights enshrined in their forming. But then I see the ownership of land as immemorial back into time unless you purchase it with all the rights of ownership (and for the most part that is not possible in huge areas of Canada as it belongs to the First Nations who kindly share it with us and are unlikely to sell it outright). 

The International Courts did decide in favour of the First Nations and I agree with them. I also think that there is a limit to this sort of logic but it is deep into the past as our knowledge of countries did develop later than say 8000 years ago although some countries did exist and have the paperwork to prove it whether it was etched on stone or written on some sort of material. Interesting this logic really but allowing any other logic leads to what we see in Eastern Europe right now and thank you to NATO for standing up to it. During the Ice Age no one was in Russia likely and Ukraina was the name of the Ice Refuge in that part of the country so a much older name for sure. 

However we have entered into this time of war ushered in by Putin and his supporters in Russia who have led the ugly illegal cruel despicable attack on Ukraine and it continues to this day (it amazes me that the people of Russia continue to allow Putin to constantly force their children into a war that is killing so many of them). Where are the Russians who said no to the Tsar (history records he was murdered for that very crime) and refused to continue a war that was killing their people? One wonders; there is no benefit to the Russians in this at all and one prays that there never will be. 

 Work to be done and breakfast is next after the Solitaire Puzzles.  

 

And another Tuesday also a working day

Yesterday the basement cleaning went very well and was accomplished in good time. I even had a 25 minute run before lunch. This is just running around my indoor track so to speak (I have created it with so much furniture gone now). I can see why people did not always have so much furniture in years gone by - the space is wonderful. I did grow up in a house that was post-bankrupt when money was tight but my father had time to read to us which was lovely (that was after my grandfather died I think). I used to read to my grandfather and he loved that. I can not really remember if he read to me perhaps he did but the memory is lost to time. But  he loved it when I read to him. But mostly he liked to talk and tell me all about Upper Clatford (and other places in England that he had been in but mostly he talked about Upper Clatford and not Eastleigh where my father was born). Sometimes he talked about Eastleigh but not a lot. 

I have completed the R's now in the matches and into the S's and there are perhaps 34 matches left to do. I am just guessing because I did not count them and there is just one page of matches to go so about right. It may take the two days though that are ahead of me for cleaning. Today is the main floor and I will not run today. It is more work to do the main floor because I do the vacuuming, the scrubbing and the dusting. It takes about three hours or slightly more in total. But it is finished when it is finished. 

My fingers are itching to get at the file now to sort it to suit myself and see how many great grandparents I can successfully pull out of it. I know that Gray and Knight are fairly clear and if it isn't Gray or Knight then it is Pincombe or Blake but it has to be definitive to make that call. The Buller is sticking out not too badly as well and again the same justification if it isn't Buller then it is Taylor. Rawlings I have quite a few matches and if it isn't Rawlings then it is my Grandmother's father said to be George Cotterill but I remain on the sidelines on that one. I will simply have separated out that individual where it is possible and await a good match to really determine that. It may not be in my lifetime. 

The Olympics is going very well with lots of winners. I like that actually when many countries win a medal. It is a powerful message for the athlete to take home to the people in their country (any medal is a powerful message).  Sixth four percent of the medals have been awarded so still quite a bit to go. Twenty six countries have won at least one medal. A lot of cheering when the athletes come home even if they did not win they competed and that is the most important part I think. I used to sit and watch for the entire time period but life is busy and I do want to get the books written and so I just check in every once in a while when I am doing my ten to fifteen minute walk every hour. The FitBit buzzes me to tell me if I have not yet done my 250 steps for the hour and up I get and do the 250 for that hour and the 250 for the next hour except I notice generally that I have been sitting a long time and so up I get and often I do do the 250 at the beginning of the hour! Exercise is wonderful especially for the young but the old benefit too. As I look around me I think anyone under 55 is still young  really. Then I see 56 to 75/79 as middle age and old is definitely hitting 80. Somehow you feel the difference. Perhaps it is the necessity of redoing the driver's license although it was just the eye test after all that brings the age of 80 home to you. 

 The Buller family is huge I am discovering and a lot of that hugeness is actually in a cousin family not my Buller line. One might say that the Welch family is huge (Henry Christopher Buller married Ann Welch and she had a twin sister who like her sister Ann had a very large family (between them twenty four children)). The number of grandchildren was huge and it continued through the generations as I have so many cousins who match me on this Buller line of mine and for them it is a different surname but we all share the Welch (but William Welch and Sarah Cheatle (our most recent common ancestor were my 3x great grandparents and so are not in that level where I am separating out the eight members (namely the great grandparents of whom there are eight). The Taylor line (Edwin Denner Buller married Ellen Taylor) is considerably smaller which is a surprise although it appears to have this huge Irish branch so still working on that but it is likely the Irish portion that is found in all of my siblings including myself. The only confusing part in that is my portion tends to be from the Irish Republic (Eire) and their portion from Northern Ireland. All in how you inherit the DNA and I am the most different from all of them - if there is a place to differ than I do although I also have the usual amount shared although it is on the lower side rather than being strongly related to each other. 

Time moves onward and my tea cup is empty and I need to do my Solitaire Puzzles. Had a great time playing Sudoku last evening with I think four of five games. Sometimes I do that. I love the thought process; it completely occupies the brain as you look from square to square and length to length to find that one item that will unlock all of those numbers and there you with a complete nine square Sudoku neatly arranged and finished. No flashing of light but I still miss doing my sixteen games of Spider every week. I did it from its inception as a new challenge until I stopped. I hope to return to it one day when my eyes have adjusted to sparkling. One never knows. Breakfast and then cleaning follows. Generally I begin around nine o'clock.  

I had a request for Rathbun/Rathburn information the other day from one of Edward's likely cousins in the United States but we did not go to the graveyards in Pennsylvania (that was planned but did not happen as COVID did) and I could not answer her question. It is sad to write that Edward has passed away; that sadness remains as I did really want him to be 90 like he wanted to be. It is not a morbid sadness he would not want that but rather a genuine sense that he had missed out on turning 90.  I wrote and thanked her for her kindness in her note back when I let her know that Edward had passed and I did not have an answer. 

 

Monday and it is cleaning day and it is the basement

 Soon I will start the Robot cleaning the rug. I always check to make sure it sat on the charger properly all week so that it will run its normal 1.3 hours on the rugs. I would never vacuum the rugs for 1.3 hours but the robot does it and the path is random and I do not think it misses even a tiny bit of dust by the time it docks itself. It takes about the same amount of time every week. Then I clean out the trap and it has about the same amount of dust - more in the winter than in the summer. Then wash the floors that do not have rugs, wash the stairs down to the basement and dust all the furniture and the task is done for another week.It used to take me four or five hours to clean the basement as Edward had so much stuff and it is pretty much all donated now as I have little or no use for tools. The books and furniture he accumulated down there is also all donated years ago; he did that himself but still there was a lot there. The house is getting emptier and emptier but it needs to as I will eventually move to a much smaller house and one floor hopefully. 

Yesterday was a very interesting sermon and I was perhaps even more keenly interested following the tragedy in British Columbia (prayers continuing). One does come closer to one's religion when tragedy strikes. 

Here it is Monday and the sun is rising in the east as I look out my workroom window. Very faint in colour which is always a good sign as a brilliant red sunrise is a warning to those on the seas as I learned as a child. I do have a lot of these old stories that are from the British Isles since everyone of my ancestors in the last five hundred years appears to be from the British Isles. 

My ancient yDNA line carried by my brothers and my ancient mtDNA line carried by our female line tell me that both of these were ancient to the Isles (although both will go extinct in my own personal family line there are many many cousin DNA holders out there all matching us and the lines will go on and on). But in between these two types of DNA  there is a great deal of autosomal DNA shared with cousins passed down to all of us from our mutual most recent common ancestors and with five companies testing I have this overview that I keep in mind coming from all of them that somewhere back in the past I have European (primarily German and French (I do know I have Huguenot who came to the Isles in the late 1400s)), some Scandinavian (likely Viking in my Gray-Routledge line) and some Eastern European probably because my mtDNA wintered at Ukraina during the Last Ice Age or later maybe there are a lot of centuries prior to my known family line of the last five hundred years plus in some lines and I do have a few lost lines although not too lost as they are likely from those small villages and no records before the Parish Registers for some of them.  

I still marvel at how quickly I changed from having no interest in genealogy to a rampant interest (mostly following the introduction of DNA information but also my cousin did need the profile for my Pincombe family and, as it turned out, I was the best person to provide that document now published and available for usage by researchers). 

My husband was both shocked, overwhelmed but grateful to my cousin for pushing me to do this Profile. From that point forward we did even more traveling (as my husband was retired) down into the New England States, New York and even into Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin following the trails of his Kipp family mostly who had gone west in the late 1700s from Northeast Town, New York and also north into Ontario in the early 1800s (his line) and some of his line then went from Ontario back into Michigan further west and he corresponded with many of those cousins. But now I was a more enthusiastic follower of genealogy which he truly loved working at. 

Many trips to NEHGS in Boston and the knowledge just flowed. I myself found a number of books on the Blake family of the United States there. This was where I first encountered Horatio Somerby Gates and his fraudulent work and a memory blazed forward as I sat looking at some of the material. I finally understood what my grandfather and father were talking about where Nicholas Blake was concerned. 

Fascinating really how life comes together from the deep past to the present. My grandfather was talking about Americans looking for information on Nicholas Blake and descendants in Andover, Hampshire, England and that the story about Nicholas was incorrect that they were following. Fascinating really. 

Anyway tea all drank and must do my solitaire puzzles.  

Sunday is always anticipated and this one will be full of prayers

 Prayers continuing for the murdered children and adults in British Columbia but also for the recovery of those still in hospital suffering from gunshot wounds. Time has stood still just a little here whilst we think about the loss of eight beautiful people and the wounded some continuing to fight for their very life in the hospitals. God be with them and I would pray that God will keep the murdered little ones wrapped in His loving arms. Their lives ripped away from them so cruelly. 

Church today online as always and last weeks hymns were quite beautiful actually. I always wonder what hymns will be sung perhaps because I was in the choir as a child and loved singing. I did sing "The Lord is my Shepherd" one time but I do not remember why or exactly when other than it was not winter. I was absolutely petrified but when I got up to sing I was fine and I sang it to God I remember that. I never did it again but it was a gift my grandmother said that I had for God. My youngest daughter was around eight I think when she sang a solo at Edward's United Church; much younger than I was. She was nervous and asked me to sit right up at the front so that she could look at me and not be nervous. Actually she did very well and I think she hardly glanced at me. That was a while ago now but it was something my husband and my daughters did together. Sometimes they would say I should join the choir but I said I am not really United Church I am an Anglican and I just do not really want to do that and they understood even at their young age. I  just enjoyed watching all of them sing - Edward and his daughters. They are so much like him and they greatly adored him as he adored them. 

It was something special for him to have the girls be so like him although he would occasionally say I think they look like you too but the reality is that they look like Edward's family not mine (when one tested her atDNA for him as a surprise one Christmas he was thrilled as he didn't have anyone close to him that tested). My oldest daughter looks so very much like Edward's mother now although it wasn't noticeable when she was younger so much but then I did not know Edward's family until we were married. We came from different places in Ontario (I know virtually nothing about Edward's families other than the research that I helped him to do as I never lived in that area) and so I would not have noticed anything in particular but certainly now when my daughter is coming to the age that my mother in law was when I first met her I can see the strong similarity. A picture of Edward's great grandmother as a child that I saw years and years after we were married (I think perhaps I first saw it after Edward's mother died and he brought a lot of her keepsakes back when we went to the funeral). This picture is of Hannah Catherine Parlee (descendant of French Huguenots who went to Staten Island in the early 1700s) at the age of fourteen it says on a paper copy Edward made from the tintype and she is the exact image of my eldest daughter at the age of fourteen. Amazing really but the logic is there because the X chromosome that was passed to Edward from his mother goes to his daughter unchanged and this was his mother's grandmother. She received an X chromosome from her mother Margaret Evelyn Allen that came from her mother Hannah Catherine Parlee. Edward inherited more than 50% of his X chromosome from his mother as Allen so interesting how the genes flow. 

 Later after Church I shall work on the matches and I have just a few Ls left (eight actually) and then on to the Ms and there are nineteen of them. I am progressing and about half way now through this set of 250 matches which has reduced to 239 as I have rejected eleven of them. A few interesting insights from this work yesterday that have permitted me to do a little more separating out of Blake and Knight. The Pincombe and Gray in this chromosome are a bit more stubborn to separate but I think once I start with my sorting that these will slide into place as I look at all the chromosomes since I am not flitting back and forth between the chromosomes. 

A beautiful sunny day and it is minus 17 degrees celsius and we got our first Gold at the Olympics and we are in fourteenth place worldwide (the placement is by the number of gold medals).  Norway is dominating the Winter Olympics and in first place. Italy is in second place and very often the home country does do very well when the Olympics are in their own country. The United States is in third place and they generally do very very well in the Olympics whether it be summer or winter Olympics. There are still lots more to win for sure. I am always rooting for Canada and we are doing great; we have a huge team and so much enthusiasm. 

Tea all drank and time to do my solitaire puzzles.