Up early and the last day of November

Up early, likely too much on my plate at the moment. It is difficult being 77 in some ways especially if there are any loose ends to solve and complete. The one room in a retirement community is appealing for sure on days like this where I have to finish the cleaning and then try and work a little on organizing Edward's files into families - they do cross over into each other but I need to separate them to give them to cousins hopefully as I do not want to keep any originals as it would be a shame to have them lost (it is a huge challenge for me though as I do not know that many members of his extended family although the last year we traveled all over Ontario meeting cousins for the first time - Edward knew I would try to manage everything but I must admit I am getting old and it is not easy). Speaking about retirement homes one could move about with such a setup so that I could access records that I want to look at for my one name studies in Blake and Pincombe by living three months near repositories that would help me - I could travel all about England perhaps one or two three month intervals at a time separated by a return to a retirement home here in between such work efforts to consolidate my work and create my journal issues based on what I find. It could be quite exciting actually. My interest in genealogy is pretty low though except when I need to build a tree to look at DNA results - it is true that they are intertwined but I am not really interested in creating all of that in my lines (I do do trees for the ancient lines of my one name studies though and I am into doing the 1500s right now for Pincombe - there is a lot of data that I am accumulating with that end in mind but I do not think of that so much as genealogy as historical research); my sister has done a great job on the family tree and I can look at that to see if I find any names for sure. The DNA though does catch my interest and always has since the days of Watson and Crick and the modeling of DNA. As we moved along in researching DNA through the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s and then discovered that we could PCR samples and come up with an ability to separate that small amount of DNA that is uniquely one person so that we could then run comparisons that was great news for someone like me who had an interest in my parent's surnames but not much interest in genealogy from the viewpoint of actually creating a huge family tree. My tree remains small and only grew because I did our son in law's family tree (mostly for his paternal grandmother (lovely woman; it was wonderful knowing her actually) as we chatted several times about it and I agreed to do further research on her lines) which reached back into early colonial French Canada - amazing how quickly one can put together a tree using the priest's records in Quebec - sometimes a few hiccups but mostly a straight line back and the priest recorded the parish that individuals came from in France on the earliest record so a real boon to research. 

Anyway I am sure that all will be resolved one of these days. In the meantime I will wait for an email as I have sent the Ottawa Police case number to RCMP. I so hoped that when Ed asked me to contact RCMP and they sent me on to the Ottawa Police to pick up his long guns and ammunition that they would all go but only three went that day which left one. Having lived with Edward's long guns all our married life it was actually nice to have the ones with ammunition gone. I always worried when we were away that someone might break in and find all of it. Guns are very dangerous in the wrong hands for sure and it is hard to hide long guns effectively. Edward used to hunt with his brother and others in his small town where he grew up and he still hunted after we were married but probably had not hunted in over 45 years when he surrendered his guns to the Ottawa Police along with ammunition. It was so nice to have that all gone. The last gun was an antique that belonged to his great grandfather actually - a muzzle loader. Henry Link was the owner and I do not know how far back before him or whether he was the original owner (it really should be in a museum). It was a beautiful gun though with a lovely cherry wooden handle and barrel and all the accoutrements that went with it although the powder horn was quite empty. Still a dangerous weapon like the other long guns though; at that time I was going to be away for two weeks a little later in the summer and just really wanted that gun to be surrendered.  There has to be an easier way to get this all coordinated so that once notified of the death of a licence holder (I had all the paperwork ready to submit when I first called RCMP and was sent on to the Ottawa Police with the comment that everything would be taken care of when the gun was surrendered) and the guns are surrendered the licence should just be cancelled if the individual is deceased and one is done with  that. It is definitely hard enough to be a widow without having to relive the loss of my husband with each new email for him into his inbox and having to figure out what I have to do with it especially if it refers to a website for which I do not have a login (and Ed's list is 300 to 400 distinct logins long). I suspect this email address was created in the time when Ed was still doing his emails and he didn't notice that he needed to set it up so probably has its original password to be changed or I did not understand it when it came to his inbox - why ever would I want to set up an Individual Web Service with the RCMP! Never heard of it before actually. Looked it up and the sign in for IWS lets you do the following: renew your firearms licence; check your application status; register firearms; verify a buyer's licence for a non-restricted firearms transfer; apply for an authorization to transport firearms, and/or update your information. So I am right this is likely a reminder to renew his firearms licence. I did call (the wait was one hour for an agent so a busy line) and the first information was incorrect or I  misunderstood it I was rather aggrieved at the time for sure. I tried to give the paperwork to the police office who picked up the muzzle loader but he said it wasn't needed. 

I am realizing that likely it was COVID restrictions - we were just starting to get our first COVID shot when my husband passed away. That was why he said not to send in to paperwork but to give it to the police.  I do not have a long gun licence so I needed to surrender the muzzle loader to the local police as soon as possible which I did although getting that done was not easy. I sent them an email with the document and they wrote back to say I  had to call but it took me ages to get through and I had so many other things to do that it was July before I finally got the muzzle loader surrendered and the police man who came did not want the paper work either - said he didn't need it. I completely missed that in retrospect but will admit that I had lost nearly 15 pounds in less than three months, was exhausted and really not at my best to put it mildly! So I have an answer; have mailed in the paperwork as directed (you can also fax it in but I do not have a fax machine anymore and going to one involves going on the highway and I do not do that alone!). I do hope that is the last item that needs to be done. I made all these lists of things to do but it was very hard sometimes to get things done during COVID.

Last day of cleaning and then a few research days so hope to get back to phasing my great grandparents DNA this week. There is a fair amount of preparation though that I must do to get back to that as there are the new matches to work into the database. 

Snow is expected apparently. It is zero degrees and cloudy; sunrise will be in just under one hour as the night lengthens. I do like the longer nights as I can work easier on fine print when it is not so bright. Amazing really that I can still do the fine print but I am using my strong glasses to do that. One of these days I expect my cataracts will obstruct my sight but not yet apparently. In the meantime I shall work away on my DNA and then finally get back to my transcriptions.

On to the day, Breakfast awaits!

Donation of Edward's genealogical material to the OGS/BIFHSGO Library

 Probably I am thinking as I read through an article (soon to be published) written to express thanks and outline the various tools that were donated from Edward's genealogical collection one should probably thank Gordon Riddle for persuading Edward to go with him to his first Ontario Ancestors Ottawa Branch then Ontario Genealogical Society Ottawa Branch meeting way back in the early 1980s or it might have been 1980 actually - I have forgotten exactly when they first went. When they returned, Edward already had a vast amount of material on their mutual home areas which he had set out for them to look at - both were born in Burford Township, Brant County, Ontario and both on a farm. 

Although Edward would probably still have purchased everything that he did, he was well on his way bookwise after fourteen years of marriage and genealogical endeavours on his own and consulting with Ed Phelps at Western University (a well known librarian there) on the various finds that were purchased in our travels around farm auctions in Edward's home area some of which he did give to Ed Phelps for the early colonial history section of the library. 

We actually moved here with over 100 boxes of books (I had two boxes) way back in 1975 and partly my fault because he always asked for books for his birthday, anniversary, Christmas and any other time.  However, we were both quite involved in the Royal Astronomical Society that met at the University in those earlier days and genealogy was something he did on his own (although he did persuade me to go through reels of microfilms and pull out names in those early days before children). We came with our one year old so Edward took on Amateur Ham Radio when we first arrived which he really enjoyed and was something fun to do and be with people (Edward was a people person).

Edward quickly found that he really enjoyed Ottawa Branch and so his free time was taken up with choir practice, Sunday Service and treasurer at Orleans United Church and the genealogy society along with French classes one night a week and still part of Amateur Ham Radio. The girls did find that he was always going out but we put in our time putting on plays that our oldest was studying at school or reading books aloud one at a time or doing some exciting math puzzles. When he was here though he was 100% with the girls and they adored him; he was their center for sure and greatly missed still by them. Funny how all of that comes back when you read through an article about your husband; he is being remembered for just one part of his life although it did become a great part when he retired. He put in a full day and more on his genealogical endeavours and it paid off for him - he discovered a forgotten ancestry on his mother's side with all sorts of exciting people and he gave a talk at a genealogical meeting to share that with everyone. He loved to help people with their genealogies. It is moving towards two years since he passed away but he is missed greatly.

The mind prepares us

I think our mind prepares us and we have to let it do that sometimes - as always we must have the most control over ourselves but sometimes the mind has a way of helping us to do that. I always play my solitaire games as soon as I am ready to take on the day. Before that I do my exercises and wake myself up. As a child I pretty much leapt out of bed and took on the day but now at 77 I notice my mind is just a little sluggish when I wake up although I am still keen to get on with the day. Exercises first and then the last exercise on my feet - touching my toes ten times but actually I can still put my hands flat on the floor about half way through the ten - a good sign. Probably I am starting to need coffee but I dislike coffee and always have. If my mind is sluggish then I will have a lovely two ounces of coca cola although green tea has the same effect but at 6:00 a.m. I am not necessarily going to go down and make a cup of tea although I may move to that but at the moment I drink a little coca cola. The onrush of stimulate in the drink is felt almost immediately on an empty stomach and I settle into  playing my solitaire games first thing. I think I should read my Bible Reading first but the games stimulate my mind and I get far more out of the Bible Reading as my alertness has probably improved 100% or more after the games. 

Today we have John the Baptist at the Jordan River in Bethany where he is baptizing people and being queried as to who he is and he said those infamous words that probably stick in some of our minds from our Sunday School days - "I am only someone shouting in the desert, 'Get the road ready for the Lord!' " And the next day, John saw Jesus coming toward him and the rest is history - a beautiful history that has traveled through time with us for over two thousand years. A gift of God - just as every child is a gift of God (mind you I fully support a woman's right to choose but would say think about it carefully; do what is best in the long run for you and your unborn child); His greatest gift to us was His son Jesus. I do love this Bible Reading from John 1:19-34. 

Yesterday I cleaned and for dinner enjoyed my leftover salmon from Sunday which I made into a salmon fish cake - a very favourite meal  from childhood - along with fresh guacamole and some leaves of Boston lettuce grown in Ontario and a slice of wholewheat and seven other grains bread made in a local bakery. A really delightful meal after a day of cleaning. Not much work done other than that as life was just too busy - I had several phone calls in a row that all dealt with mostly the same thing but all done now which is great news. 

Edward had an email from RCMP which I am assuming concerns the renewal of his gun license (why else would they send him an email!). I notified RCMP by phone that he had passed away in late April 2021 and I still had one of his long guns and needed to know the process to surrender this last one. Edward had surrendered three of his long guns to the Ottawa Police a couple of months before he passed away but had kept his grandfather's muzzle loader and accoutrements. They really belonged in a museum but COVID restrictions were in full swing and I did not get an answer to my query from the museum. I called RCMP and was told that this was a provincial matter and that calling Ottawa Police to come and get this final long gun would end his license and I didn't have to do anything. Well that didn't happen it would appear as the long gun was picked up in July 2021 but now just a few months before his license would renew there is an email in an account for which I do not have the login or password (Edward left me with at least three or four hundred logins and passwords for his various accounts). So I emailed RCMP but was told to call. I would really prefer to do this all by email so that I have a paper trail to refer to just in case. There are likely a few million long gun licenses and I can understand the problems with co-ordinating everything although it should be easier with computers as one simply enters in that this person is now deceased and the guns are being turned into the local police as requested. I had all the paperwork completed including a death certificate to submit to RCMP but was told that I needed to deal with the local police. At 77, these things are just too much work and there needs to be an easier way. So hopefully, my emails to RCMP yesterday along with the case number at the Ottawa Police Services will solve this quickly without my having to call and be told that they can not release the contents of the email to me without jumping through a lot of hoops to get that done - at 77 one is too old to jump through hoops (and probably driving somewhere on the highway). So we will wait and see how that goes. Too bad the gun did not go to the museum as it belonged to the father of Edward's grandfather so is fairly ancient and was in perfect condition (the cherry wood handle was magnificent) - a real piece of workmanship plus the extra pieces for preparing the shot and a bag to hold the powder all in perfect condition. Time will tell.

On to the day and cleaning the first floor plus I would like to work on the last two sets of cluster data that My Heritage prepared. Strange that my sets are so much larger than my siblings - coincidence is an amazing thing as I inherited quite differently from my siblings which means that with the five sets of data I have except for a tiny piece on one chromosome a perfect picture of all our grandparent's DNA. In particular the Pincombe set of data and the Blake set of data are especially interesting with many cousins matching on good lengths as well as the Rawling data which is most complete. You really do need second cousins or greater to do a good job of phasing. I do not have any first cousins anyway but they are too close to distinguish when you are sharing actual grandparents and not just siblings of those ancestors. 

It would be nice if Russia would leave the nuclear power plant at Zaporizhzhia as they are creating a real hazard for all the peoples of the Old World - the nuclear haze from a disaster there would hang over all those countries from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific coast; from the Arctic Ocean to the Indian Ocean and we would also have the effects here in the Western Hemisphere. It would be a mortal sin for them to do any more damage there. Glory to Ukraine and God grant them peace on their terms as they have suffered in these nine months from such sins against them perpetrated by Putin and his enablers in the name of Russia. Do not let them do this to you O Russia, rise up against Putin and his enablers and cast them out. Have a better life; put those nuclear weapons under international control so that they can never be used except to protect the planet from external threat.

Yellow glow in the sky

Sunrise isn't until 7:18 but there is a light yellow glow in the sky perhaps accentuated by the clouds. Just 1 degree celsius although a very small possibly of rain it is only 5% even midday so less likely. Today is cleaning day and the vacuum is already up on the top floor which is nice. Can not think why all these years I have dragged it to the top floor - habit is a huge part of one's life for sure. 

Church on You-Tube included quite a few hymns that are favourites of mine. I love the organ music. I can see that it will be a long time (unless one of my family goes with me) before I am actually in the Church building once again. I just do have this firm opinion about older people driving. First of all they shouldn't go on the highway unaccompanied in my humble opinion unless they are super drivers and can keep up with their good driving of their younger days. If I have company then I can do that but alone I prefer to just stick to the streets with which I am very familiar and the speed limit is considerably lower. I attended Defensive Driving courses when I first got my license years ago and learned one lesson that has always stayed with me. Plan your trip from A to B and do everything possible to make sure that this is an uneventful trip that takes you carefully from point A to point B. It was good advice for a twenty one year old that had never had a driver's license until then. 

Yesterday I got through more than half of the fourth set of data. I eliminate perhaps as much as 50% of the data points because by eye I can not see a value in including them in my data. There were a couple of interesting ones so an effort worth doing for sure. I hope to finish this next set today although cleaning has the first priority. Then just one set left to do. Then get the new matches worked into my database and I can return to phasing my great grandparent's DNA. A very exciting topic for me at the moment is doing this particular phasing. 

Prayers for Ukraine as always. One would think that in eighty plus years countries could learn that war is destructive to the world itself not even counting in all the people who have died or whose lives have changed forever. It is, in this modern era, most ignorant to have to once again see a World War on our horizon.  Only the Russian people can stop this really; Rise up O Russia and rid yourselves of these monsters - Putin and his enablers. They send your sons to their deaths without proper equipment, food or clothing. Their own sons are sitting at home enjoying life. They do not care about the people of Russia; they only care about having more money themselves.

Red sunrise all across the sky

A red sunrise is certainly beautiful but always reminds me of the old adage - Sailors take warning. One of those old sayings that has passed down through the ages I suspect and was a warning of possible bad weather perhaps. Some of these things are deep in my brain likely because my people came from an island nation that depended upon the oceans. 

Another Sunday and Church on You-Tube. We are now into Advent and reminders of Advent past. The church of my youth was less inclined towards a showy service perhaps because a war had just been fought and so many were dead; the numbers were huge and it was a sadness that hung over that generational time. The numbers in Europe and the British Isles were enormous and later in the 60s we learned of the true numbers for Russia. Russia made a heroic stand against the Nazis and will always be remembered for that but Putin and his enablers are spoiling that historical remembrance for Russia. It is a sin against their people when political leaders looking for their own gain think not of their people who have to live with the world for many years after those leaders and their enablers are long gone. 

 A good day of accomplishment yesterday and I completed my set of matches from the clustering option at My Heritage. Just two sets left to do and I have a nice pattern now to follow that wasn't there with the first two. The clustering option is interesting but like other options I deal with it at hand's length soaking up what it has to tell me but relying on my familial knowledge to really judge the results. I have a lot of good matches now with known relatives which is helpful in my pursuit of the phasing of my great grandparents. What will I gain from phasing my great grandparents? I will see into that generation that lived in the earlier part of the 1800s and overlook the heritage that might have come from my paternal grandmother's side of the family where her father is a mystery but her mother well known and also the heritage that comes from my maternal grandmother's mother who has had many stories passed down about her but she died so young at 37 years that a lot of it is stories learned in childhood by my grandmother and her siblings and then remembered years later. I have two sets of stories for her - one from my mother and my grandmother and the other from my great aunt who actually did not know her (she was one when her mother died) but did live with her older brother and sisters and knew the facts from them second hand which in reality did not agree with the first stories that I learned from my mother and my maternal grandmother (but do agree with the records). But I suspect that at some point my grandmother "dressed up" the stories for her daughter and they just continued. Surprisingly she did not look for sympathy from her daughter that after the death of her father she was sent to a Cottage Home to live with her siblings. In retrospect that does rather surprise me to be honest. As she was a very honest woman in her attitude towards life but was not one to look for sympathy. 

On to the day and breakfast whilst I await my Church on You-Tube.

Interesting that the theme continues with the Bible Reading today

Isaiah 2:4-5

 The Lord will teach us his Law
from Jerusalem,
   and we will obey him.
He will settle arguments
   between nations.
They will pound their swords
and their spears
   into rakes and shovels;
they will never make war
   or attack one another.
People of Israel, let's live
   by the light of the Lord.

Once again we have the vision of light in the last line where we are asked to "live by the light of the Lord." Prayers that this can happen and that Ukraine will be free.

Yesterday I worked away on the cluster matches but found it so fascinating I barely got past the first cluster which has 14 members. This is an interesting group because I have never put them into the database except for one new match that came in a couple of months ago. The matches are quite large - between 35 and 45 cM for a single length of chromosome. I am the only one of four siblings to match them in most cases although a couple of the members have a second match on a different chromosome which is large enough to be significant. I have assigned the entire cluster to the Buller family (my maternal grandmother's father's line). There is a distinct connection to Denmark in a number of the matches where they are able to trace back but I think this is only accidental and that at some point a Buller descendant of my Henry Christopher Buller and his wife Anne Welch or her twin sister Sarah Welch and her husband Edwin Withers is the ancestor of these individuals may have married an individual of Danish descent although I could yet be surprised. The match is right at the beginning of the 15th chromosome so I have always pretty much ignored these matches because this is an area that is common to many Northern European/British Isles descendants. However I decided to look at the cluster and I ended up adding nine of them to my current matches folder. The next cluster (and I did not work on the other two sets of data in this way but my clusters seem to be larger than the others and perhaps I have looked at my matches more) is from my Blake line likely and has eleven members. One of the members is new and has three lengths with two of them one averaging 23 cM and the other 17 cM with matches for four out of five siblings and appears to be Blake my paternal grandfather's father's line. These 11 individuals are found in the UK, in Australia/New Zealand and in the USA. I will continue working on this set today but did not get as far as I thought I might yesterday - I became absorbed in the first set. I do differ from my siblings on a number of chromosomes where I am the only one with a particular match and it does show up in a few of the clusters where I am pretty much the only match to a group of people. Interesting that I have only 20 clusters and my four siblings have between 28 and 33 clusters each but smaller in size than mine. It gives me pause for thought realizing that I very strongly resemble my Rawlings more so than they do and should watch for that. A thought in my mind at this moment in time!

I also watched the Emergency Measures Act Commission as the Prime Minister was being queried today. He did an excellent job even when one lawyer tried to misconstrue the evidence but a later lawyer corrected that which I was glad to see. Overall the lawyers have been very collegial with a few grandstanding. This is a government commission so I rather felt that grandstanding was inappropriate but then I also thought the occupation inappropriate so perhaps the two go hand in hand. Using the Emergency Measures Act was a well thought out process and it was created for just such a situation. The occupation was in the midst of a populated area and the individuals involved made it very difficult for the police and public especially government workers who had to pass by them to go to work. I await the final result of the commission as they will set the tone on the usage of this act now that it has been utilized. There will be a good set of rules established as a precedent and that is highly necessary given the apparent lack of education in how to conduct a protest on the part of some people. Personally I believe in the right to protest but have never attended a protest - I prefer letter writing to protests. 

On to the day, breakfast awaits. Then peanut butter sandwich for lunch (one of my favourites) and leftover macaroni and cheese for dinner. This is a very prepared day with little input on my part except to eat it. I have totally reverted to my childhood eating style these days (although do cook very nice fish meals when I have fish about once or twice a week). Edward liked his food and lots of variety. The first 30 years of our marriage I did all the cooking and we did have quite a wide variety but it was heavy on meat, vegetables and potatoes although spaghetti was also a favourite and a beef noodle tomato casserole that he had liked in his university days just as a quick dinner. Fish was on the menu at least once a week as well. When I went back to work outside the home (worked on contract at home for about eleven years after our second child was born although I did a lot of voluntary work when I was able; my health was questionable for a while) in 1994 Edward took over the meals as he was home first with the girls and I was about an hour later arriving home and generally made a salad if that was still needed. Our menu definitely changed as he discovered a love of cooking that hadn't been there the first 30 years of our marriage! Edward and the girls cooked up all sorts of interesting and exciting meals.

"Live in the light" Romans 13:13

 This line from Romans 13 is one of the Bible Readings for today. We are told to "live in the light." My copy of the Illustrated Dictionary and Concordance of the Bible (Editor: Geoffrey Wigoder, 1986) I do not open often enough but today I wanted to have some background on Romans 13. In general this section is considered to be part of Paul's letter to the Romans as it is said that one ancient manuscript ends at 14:23 and another at 15:33 so 13 is safely within what is thought to be Paul's writings. Paul was bold in taking Christianity to the Gentiles and his letters were positive emphasizing love and saying "We are now in Christ, and he is in us; this is how we are saved, through faith." What we do should be done in love and living in the light, to me, emphasizes that as everything that we do in the light can be seen. It was my pilgrimage to Rome in 2001 that will always be a very central part of my life. I was always catholic in my thinking but from that point onward my drift towards Roman Catholicism continued and I remain in that area a lot of Anglicans find themselves in -  committed to the Anglican Church but desiring a return to "one" Church. 

Yesterday was successful working away on the My Heritage cluster matches and I completed a second set of data and now working on my own matches. I do not acquire a lot of new matches (there are 37 new ones in total since I entered the earlier ones into the database) considering the length of the lists but I am having a good look at what is there and examining the shared matches. My Blake family is very large though and I do see members of it being related to my other lines in England in the present day. Interesting really. Perhaps today I can complete my matches and move on the fourth and fifth sets of data. It would be nice to complete this task this week. Then back to assigning the matches to my database and all that goes with that. Then move forward once again phasing chromosomes although these new matches may necessitate looking at the ones I have already worked on as there may be ones of interest assisting with the unknown at the great grandparent level. 

I shall also watch the Commission overlooking the use of the Emergency Act as the Prime Minister will be attending today. I continue to find this picking apart of memos between staff in the PMO to be rather useless as they are a group of humans working under very stressful conditions (and made even more stressful by the presence of an occupation on Parliament Hill) and so mention of particular items should not really have much play in the decisions that were made in Cabinet. They hardly go around working in their office only speaking when they are going to get the statement exactly right - there will be discussions that really do not need to reach the light of day. They are, after all, employees asked to do particular tasks that may involve thinking or talking about usage of particular laws in particular cases. I find the lawyers for the Freedom Convoy to be grandstanding and to what purpose. The people who came to Ottawa to protest ended up being an occupation that had absolutely no regard for the people who live in the area where they set up camp. The most ridiculous part of it all was bringing children to such a happening - children should not be at protests. They have not yet formed opinions that are of their own thinking and basically are being forced to be in a place where there could be danger. 

Another early winter day with cloudy skies - it has been rainy so is probably slippery. I did my groceries yesterday to avoid the rain of today. Today I shall stay inside and work away on my interesting subjects which do tend to center around DNA. 

I have completed reading The Black Death by Robert S Gottfried. It really is an excellent summation of watershed moments due to the Black Death in our past history and how we moved forward past those watershed moments. Interesting especially as I do see COVID as a watershed moment. We are still moving forward from that couple of years of isolation and not everyone in a very pleasant way. Russia continues to behave like the two year old screaming "I want" "I want" and bombing the infrastructure of a free country to try to force people to let them have what they want (which is Ukraine; ultimately that is what they want). Belarus president sits on the sidelines telling the Ukrainians to let the Russians have what they want because their country will be a wasteland otherwise. One wonders how he looks in the mirror plus will the Russian knife slice up his country next; does he think sucking up like a dog will guarantee his place? One wonders what is in store for Belarus next. 

Some people have come out of COVID angry and others keen to make the world work well and certainly that is the European Union who have continued to help Ukraine (as well the United States of America, the British Isles and a lot of the Commonwealth including Canada and other countries). 

Rise up O Russia and cast off those who send your sons to a useless and illegal war without even the equipment to fight, the warm clothing and the good food to eat. Put your nuclear weapons under international control so no leader can ever put your lives in danger as Putin and his enablers are doing right now. 

On to breakfast and the day. My meals are all planned, my usual breakfast, the rest of my chicken stew for lunch and macaroni and cheese (with chopped up peppers and frozen peas to give it colour and content) for dinner. Not really a foodie but I like to organize my meals in my mind at the beginning of the day.

Cloudy and overcast today

 Cloudy and overcast today at 7:00 a.m. and about minus 4 degrees celsius. Snow is still on the ground but melting yesterday after the sun came out. Backyard is still covered with snow but not much depth. 

Good accomplishment yesterday including another chapter of The Black Death which discussed the emergence of the modern medical system. Interesting tidbits in the chapter as the system developed in Europe. This book tends to concentrate on Europe rather than the British Isles and as I read it I realized how centric my reading has become the last couple of decades. I mostly read about the British Isles but of course all of my ancestors come basically from England although do have some Scot but that is back in the 1400s and possibly some Irish which would be back in the 1700s and earlier and likely some were Scot planters sent during the time of Cromwell. Europe is a huge place with so many countries. Perhaps one of the greatest feats of the twentieth century was bringing together all the countries of Europe into the European Union. It has proven to be strong and stable and a must in this century as we have a war mongering Russia loose on the continent looking to rebuild the Soviet Union or something similar. 

Worked on My Heritage cluster matches as well but did not finish the second person with still three sets of data to go. I want to complete that work and then enter all the new matches into my database before continuing with the phasing of my great grandparents. 

I also accomplished all of my exercise routines and today will go for a walk about in the fresh air which I did not do yesterday as it turned out. 

I decided to watch the Commission reviewing the Use of the Emergency Act. I continue in favour of its use. Ottawa was totally occupied in the downtown core and it needed to end. The people occupying were rude and made absolutely ridiculous comments and statements about our government leaders. It was unacceptable that they broke our bylaws forcing the closure of the Rideau Mall which many people depend on in the downtown core. They all needed to be arrested and as far as I am concerned got off very easy really. They were allowed to go home although many have since been charged but only the ringleaders are probably going to face prison time or at least house arrest. The Attorney General David Lametti did an excellent job and was a first hand observer of the tactics used by the occupiers as he lived in the area and walked to work. The Freedom Convoy forced us to use the Emergency Act because they would not leave and they were insulting and rude to people living in the area - freedom goes both ways. I found the lawyers defending the Freedom Convoy displaying ignorance of our laws in order to make a show on the Television which is inappropriate - we do not need American style politics in this country. Every time I heard someone say during the occupation that their 1st and 2nd amendment rights were being violated I wondered about their allegiance since we do not have such items - they belong to the American Constitution. All in all I would say 100% approval  for the government 0% for the Freedom Convoy. Trying to give them legitimacy in any way is an affront to our democracy. They were plain and simple  - occupiers and on the first day committed enough bylaw infractions to have themselves thrown in jail. Plus they brought children to this occupation which is just totally wrong. 

Netflix has an amazing number of documentaries; I have barely scratched the surface. I like to research a documentary before I watch it to see what is being said about it online but so far I have enjoyed everyone that I have watched. 

I had a lovely chicken stew for my dinner. Since I have high normal to very slightly high cholesterol (familial tendency) I generally do not eat much red meat but chicken is not a real favourite but the chicken stew I have developed over the past couple of months is quite delicious. 

On to the day, breakfast awaits.

Another research day

Pincombe Newsletter completed and ready to publish on the 1st of December.  It is 59 pages but that includes my transcriptions of Landkey and North Molton parish registers. Now that they are online on Find My Past and Ancestry one wonders whether there is value in publishing my copy. Will consider that.

Today I will spend a little time reading "The Black Death" and perhaps finish a couple more chapters. It is most intriguing. The recovery of the world following this plague is most fascinating and reminiscent of our own watershed moment in time with COVID from which we continue to recover. The gain during this time of recovery centuries ago was the growth and establishment of an independent medical profession as the existing system had, for the most part, failed the people of the different communities. Some communities benefitted and it was these communities that became a centre piece on which to base a new type of medical system and we, as a result, have reaped the benefit from that change. Having to wait in line even for two hours as I did for my tetanus shot in the summer was not really all that long. It was a Sunday after all and I could theoretically have waited until Monday but decided that I should get a tetanus shot earlier rather than later because I am old and so waiting in line was just a means to an end which achieved my tetanus shot. One must be patient when the need is not critical. 

As well I want to start looking at the Blake Newsletter and I hope to go to the Family History Centre to look at the subsidies for Somerset and see what I can garner from that information in terms of the Blake families in the 1400s/1500s/1600s in Somerset. I will need to prepare lists as that is the best way to go to the Family History Library and utilize their computers. Then there is always my DNA phasing of my great grandparents which continues but before getting back to it I will work on the cluster matches from My Heritage - almost through the second set.

Car has snow tires now and I am ready for winter although I do not go very far in general. I am enjoying this hermit life and will likely stay like this the rest of my days. I am really not a person to wander far although do like a good walk. Yesterday I had two good walks of about 2 kilometres each. It was a lovely fresh day outside. I must try and do that every day as the fresh air is good for one's lungs. I was plagued with a bit of "asthma" for the last five or six years but it has completely disappeared this last year so probably nerves rather than asthma. The strain of being a caregiver is huge especially when you are also old. Needing to be available all hours of the night and day (although my daughter was home when the Prime Minister called all Canadians home during COVID as I could never have managed without her) is a strain but done in love of course. I think what keeps me though is my five periods of exercise a day mostly totaling about 150 minutes a day including stretching, weight lifting, running, calisthenics and stationary biking plus walking (not in the total) which I generally do a lot of as I usually do 15,000 to 18,000 steps per day. 

On to the day and breakfast - my favourite meal. Although I had salmon night before last and then leftovers - salmon fish cake -  and that comes pretty close to being a real favourite as well.

Who were the Neanderthals?

 The Ancient Apocalypse series which Netflix produced was quite fascinating. I love a good travelogue and used to attend them often as a child. Generally they were given by missionaries to Africa or China or another Asian country when I was a child. Usually they were at my Church but not always sometimes they were at my Uncle's and Grandmother's Church (they went to the United Church) and I went with them to their travelogues. They brought reams and reams of pictures even in those days and told stories of so many treasures that were located in these countries and often they would recount stories told to them that had been passed down for generations. The treasures (my terminology) were not so much of great value but rather spoke of an earlier time and culture. 

Way back then Neanderthals were spoken of as not being very erudite and rough in their living style but gradually our knowledge of Neanderthals has become much greater especially now that their genome has been studied. Who were the Neanderthals? They lived and walked the face of the earth for over 400,000 years disappearing at the time of the Last Glacial Maximum. Our Hunter Gatherer ancestors retreated to so called Ice Refuges at Ukraina in Eastern Europe and other sites in southern Europe.

In the series Ancient Apocalypse Graham Hancock mostly addresses the ancient monuments which we visit in this series and discusses fables that are part of the culture of the peoples who lived around the particular sites. Some of them date back before the Last Glacial Maximum. But he only briefly mentions the peoples of the fables who brought education in farming and building to the hunter gatherer Homo sapiens. Why did the Neanderthals disappear? This series has raised that thought once again in my mind. They are thought to have arisen in the Neanderthal Valley but is that accurate? Is that just where remains have been found that belong to Neanderthals. They literally walked the face of the earth 400,000 years plus. Homo Sapiens is limited to considerably less than half that time. What sort of people were they? What were their accomplishments? 

I love old stories of civilization that have been passed down by word of mouth. I do not belong to the idea that these became altered over time. My grandfather and grandmother could recite many things from memory and that recitation never changed. They were taught by rote (as we were when I was first at school) and getting it right was important. Beating the bounds is a good example of a habit repeated yearly as villagers went to the borders of their village and taught their children where the markers were to show their village or farm or whatever. Some items were taught and taught until they became second nature. Why not the stories of the past? If they are important than they would have been repeated again and again until a person had it just right and could pass it on to the next generation exactly as learned. Our generation has lost that verbatim and it shows when you see people make up stories and claim they are truth and yet if one just thinks back a year you know they are a lie. But not everyone has trained their brain to remember. 

Who were the Neanderthals? What could they do? What gifts did they leave behind for us to build on and develop into new ideas? We need more Graham Hancocks to stimulate our brains and learn the past before it is lost to time.

Back to phasing my great grandparents DNA along with other tasks

 A whole research day today mostly as I continue with the Pincombe Newsletter due 1st of December, work on phasing my great grandparents DNA, and continue extracting My Heritage matches from the Cluster data. I will  need to incorporate all these new matches into the system actually before I move on as there are 27 of them and more each day as I work on the My Heritage data. Need to check in on Ancestry as well with their interesting SideView which I have been able to utilize as I have enough large matches to determine which line is paternal and which line is maternal. Actually for my own kit I have 4298 matches on my maternal side and 5304 matches on my paternal side with 5703 unassigned although I have assigned a number of these now. I have three other siblings on Ancestry and their numbers are equally good and I have not yet changed any of the ones that I have looked at. So an interesting addition certainly and Ancestry does continue to charm with their new additions. Just one more item would be nice, the largest chromosome shared would be a neat addition, just that one number would aid me greatly looking at some of these matches that I can place given the shared matches tab but if they do match the matching area is likely just what I think it is but clarification is always nice. I do find Ancestry very interesting because it is easy to flip about to the search function looking at trees as one regards the matches. It is a huge database as well. 

Also hope to get in some reading time on Gottfried's book The Black Death as I am slightly over half way through now. It is most intriguing considering our recovery time from COVID's isolation effects is ongoing. That our ancestors of six hundred years ago went through a similar isolation time (although a much greater death rate) and how they recovered is simply quite fascinating. 

Waiting for God - British sitcom which ran from 1990 to 1994

Perhaps one of the all time favourites for both Edward and I was a British sitcom which we watched sometime after Edward retired and I do not recall if it was on Netflix or just regular TV channel. That is lost to time but we watched it every week for ages as I recall. We were starting to talk about downsizing so I suspect it was after our youngest daughter married perhaps but again the actual time is lost to me. The show appealed to Edward because it just made retiring to a senior community so appealing. I was intrigued by the title because I often think in terms of our entire lifetime leading us eventually to God and how fascinating that is to contemplate meeting face to face with our Creator. I know for myself, when that happens, I will be very shy with my head bowed down waiting and probably trying to confess all of my sins all at once. The sin of not attending Church in person; the sin of not giving enough and following Jesus' commands there are so many more that I have failed to accomplish thus far in my life although I do try. Mother Teresa showed us the way on earth few can attain her level of devotion. 

Part of my devotion has been the transcription of ancient Church documents which I can share with all the world via my blog. Less so at the moment but the determination is to eventually return to my daily transcription of at least one record (usually wills). I love transcribing wills particularly when it is one of my own lines reading the words of love for Jesus and God in them and knowing that these are my people is the greatest reward of all time. Their gift to me coming down through the ages is my own life and their love of God and Jesus.  

I changed my working week a bit in that I cleaned on Saturday and Sunday and today will be the last cleaning day and the top floor. I wasn't able to clean the basement on Wednesday last because of the internet person coming and so I rearranged the workweek in a better way for me likely as I am going to switch back and forth each week - top to bottom then bottom to top so that I do not have to lug the vacuum up two flights of stairs each week. Should have thought of that earlier but I have always done it the other way. Age does give wisdom one might think. 

Today I hope to do a little on the Pincombe Newsletter but also I will work through another two archival boxes itemizing the contents for future disbursement. I do not intend to keep any original records if that is possible. All of my family original records are with my younger sister as she is keen on genealogy more so than I am - my interest lies in DNA. 

Our snow cover has arrived and will perhaps stay now - it is minus 8 degrees celsius at 6:45 in the morning. But nothing is guaranteed and a flash of warm weather will bring back the grass! But for the moment we are living in our lovely snowy world which is a true pleasure to look out on and enjoy. But surprisingly the crows are still here - generally they abandon us for warmer spots by now. Time will tell but the blue jays are definitely back to enjoy this spell of winter and they will stay until spring beckons them north once again. 

Ancient Apocalypse

Started watching Ancient Apocalypse which is on Netflix and narrated by Graham Hancock. He is not an archaeologist; nor is he a pure scientist (physics, chemistry or biology) which I understood when I started to watch the series. His background is a sociology degree.  His travels to ancient ruins is breathtaking having gone to the Mayan ruins at Tulum in Mexico, Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England, Skara Brae on the Orkneys and right here in Newfoundland L'Anse aux Meadows and many of the ruins in Rome, Italy along with views of Vatican City and other historic spots. As a child I loved to look at the skies and dream all those dreams of space travel and was enthralled with the first space ride of Yuri Gagarin. But I like it when one gets to visit all of these architectural treasures via Netflix (or any other system that carries such interesting documentaries) and listening to the narrator is also part of the enjoyment whether you agree with him or not I find it interesting to listen to his collections of information although he admits that archaeologists are not in agreement with him. He does bring up interesting details like carbon dating that has not been done on some of these ancient marvels. So I will watch all eight of the episodes and enjoy the scenery and think about his comments. 

Mostly though I am deeply immersed in my own extraneous thinking about the time period in English history that mostly captivates me 1300 to 1600 when my Pincombe and Buller (and many other lines that I trace back to but these are my parent's surnames) ancients were alive and living in a fairly well known and fixed area in the British Isles - namely my Pincombe family in the South Molton Hundred (mostly North Molton, Filleigh and East Buckland 1485 on) and my Blake family at Knights Enham, Penton Mewsey and Andover in the Andover Hundred (1200 on). It completely distracts me looking at these early records and time is lost to me in the course of a day when I am working on my research. 

Today I must work on the Pincombe Newsletter. I have mostly put it together; I just need to organize it and blend all the thoughts to make it easier to read. I am writing about Protestation Returns. When I was a newbie and shortly after that time (I became a newbie to genealogical research in 2003) in 2008 we went to Salt Lake City where I was anxious to look at a whole lot of material and in actual fact did not leave the British Isles floor until Edward came and got me each day to go and eat. I was mesmerized by all the material that was at my fingertips and I had over 200 individual items that I wanted to look at some of which could be done in minutes and others particularly published books by Stoates would take me hours. But I was a newbie and once I had looked in the general area of North Molton and the roads coming in and out to various nearby villages I did not pursue the other Pincombes in Devon nor did I find all the name derivations that had arisen because my mind was still thinking in terms of the spellings which I had learned as a child particularly for Pincombe. Hence I was very excited to find these documents now online and so the desire to once again go through all of the Devon records arose and I followed the desire. This next newsletter will bear the results of that research. 

Life can be strange really in terms of how I spend my time now. Little did I realize way back in 1962 when I wrote to Neil Bartlett who reported the first preparation of a xenon-containing compound in Proceedings of the Chemical Society and he replied with a copy of his paper and some advice for a person who wanted to study chemistry that I would not actually end up doing research in Chemistry but at the time I wanted to do my degree in Chemistry (went to UWO in 1963) and then go into medicine and then go to Africa as a medical missionary. Well as it turned out I did not go into medicine nor did I go to Africa but that is a long time ago. However, the desire to do research has always been in my blood and my cousin's need for a profile and the availability of testing one's DNA to look at one's ancient history came together as I was headed towards retirement and I was drawn into genealogy having watched Edward research his family for all of our married life. I just never could get into it before then. I needed something tangible that I could see to make me believe that I could find my ancestral line and DNA certainly was a path that could and does actually lead me back in time. 

And of course my annoyance at particular happenings around the world also occupy my blog these days. Part of it is because I manage the H11 mt DNA group at FT DNA and probably 80% of my members are from Eastern Europe. Since my readers especially include members from Ukraine and Russia I felt it was important that I stop publishing my newsletter as a protest to Russia for invading Ukraine and killing their blood cousins and to inform just what Russia was doing in Ukraine and the huge lies that they were telling the Russian people. So I have done and continue doing that although I rather think the Russian people are now aware and many have fled and those who stay may or may not support this war and it generally looks like a lot do not - for one thing they do not want their sons killed uselessly in this war as they have no equipment and I suspect the food is pretty poor as well. 

On to the day and it is Sunday so I shall go to Church as well - a wonderful online Service because I am old and it works better for me to do that.

Working on My Heritage Clusters

I did prepare a file from the My Heritage Clusters but I only worked through one of the five sets of data. I decided to look at that whilst I am in the midst of phasing my great grandparents. More as a housekeeping issue rather than expecting anything to suddenly pop out of the woodwork and lead me forward in my quest. It just tidies up a project that I started and did not complete because of the summer gardening event. 

Continuing to read the Black Death by Robert S Gottfried and it illuminates the path that our ancestors followed as they recovered from the Black Death. The effect on commerce at that time was enormous - entire areas that had been under cultivation (food being the prime crop) was lost due to the heavy loss of life. Relating it to COVID and its after effects is probably appropriate because we literally, in the world, shut down - one exception which does show that we have moved past such possibilities in our lives - food kept moving so people were fed. The greatest danger, we can now see, for food deprivation in our time is war. Russia's illegal war against Ukraine caused food deprivation to become and remain a huge issue. They have tried almost everything against the Ukrainian civilian population to defeat Ukraine including the war itself and then when they could not win torture, murder, rape and now destruction of infrastructure. Russia has slipped back into some sort of a medieval age where one simply attacks in a murderous way when one wants something. Putin and his enablers have brought the world closer to nuclear devastation than anything since nuclear war became part of our lives. They have threatened the world with their greed and ignorance. The Russian people need to rise up against these butchers and throw them out. To protect themselves from such greedy dictators, the Russian people should put their nuclear arsenal under international control so that it can never be used as such a threat again. They too would suffer under the usage of such weapons along with the rest of the world.

On to the day and breakfast.

How has COVID changed the world?

Reading this book by Robert S Gottfried - The Black Death - has definitely opened my eyes to how profound such happenings can be in the world. The effect of the Black Death was enormous but of course it was a more enormous event than COVID or was it? The world was different then sort of like the world of my childhood except even slower for news and events to make it to the breakfast table each day. We live in a world where happenings are current almost the moment they occur anywhere in the world. More than half way through this book now. It is heavy reading but most interesting. Comparing the effect of the Black Death on the world at that time and contrasting it with the effect of COVID which is still ongoing will be a challenge for historians of the future.

Russia desperately wants NATO to engage and will try any sort of language to bring that on taking all that language from Hitler's playbook - trying to blame NATO for the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Russia is trying to overthrow the democratic order where it exists; they picked on Ukraine to try to start a Third World War. Russians wake up; your country is being stolen from you by Putin and his enablers. The promises of the 1917 Revolution have been wiped out by Putin and his enablers. He wastes the human blood of the young men of Russia on a useless war which he created to try to engage NATO and bring China in on the side of Russia. But we do not engage; we help Ukraine and they are winning against a country with four times their population. We will continue to help Ukraine (the incident in Poland shows that they obviously need more up to date equipment) and eventually Russia will be pushed out of Ukraine and the people who do not want to live in Ukraine can go back to Russia if they will not live peacefully in Ukraine. I find it hard to believe that the Russian people as a whole allow Putin and his enablers to steal their country from them and force them into servitude and death on the battlefield. It is just a dictatorship where the only ones who benefit are Putin and his enablers. Young Russian men are dying but it isn't the children of Putin or his enablers. 

Today I want to get into the Pincombe Newsletter and perhaps a little time on phasing my great grandparent's DNA. It is an interesting experiment.

The Black Death by Robert S Gottfried

 One nice thing about my internet being down was I started to read a book I have been wanting to read for a while. It is a discussion on the Black Death as a Natural and Human Disaster in Medieval Europe. It was published way back in 1983 but it is a heavily researched topic by him and his ideas are very unique. The effects of the Black Death as the Bubonic Plague came to be known in Europe were enormous at the time and lingered on for a while afterwards. Perhaps 1/6th of the way through the book it is heavy reading as one wants to look at all his references as you read through the book. 

COVID kept bringing my mind back to this book as I have owned it for a while but never sat myself down and started to really read it. Now that we have been through our own worldwide pandemic I can appreciate this book even more. We have not yet begun to feel all the effects that COVID will have on our lives. When one considers the isolation that came with COVID and the suddenness of the Russian invasion of Ukraine which still continues nine months later, COVID has played a part in all of that I rather think although Russia was into invading countries before COVID as certainly Georgia comes to mind. 

NATO has once again proven themselves to be dedicated to peace in our time with the stray bombing in Poland which killed two people. The most obvious result has been that Ukraine must be supplied with more up to date weapons so that these old weapons that are less trustworthy will not be used. They need more air defense tools so that they can eliminate the Russians from their land one way or another. The best way is for Russia to simply retreat back out of Ukraine and save all those young lives - their mothers and wives are looking for them and 1916 and 1917 come to mind when the Russian people finally had enough of their leaders and rose against them en masse. One hopes for a brighter future for the people of Russia than what they are getting from Putin and his enablers.

Glory to Ukraine. They have a right to be free. 

Continuing with my reading of The Black Death and must find his other book that would interest me - Epidemic Disease in Fifteenth Century England: The Medical Response and the Demographic Consequences. This one published in 1978.

Back to sleep. I am up early!

Snow beautiful snow

 The morning has been gorgeous - first snow fall of the season. Everything is still coated with white as it is warm still 3 degrees celsius so this is packing snow; the children will be having so much fun making snowmen. 

Suddenly yesterday afternoon my internet stopped working - that is always a fascinating moment when one realizes that the underpinning of one's life has disappeared! Tried the help line but rebooting the system 20 times did not do it. A technician was going to come this morning and he did and it is all fixed. Required a freshening of a length of coil which had failed and it was good to go. Mind you my phone was still connected to the internet and the home monitoring somehow manages to stay connected which is great. I do like Rogers. Probably other services offer a similar package - I have no idea as I never looked. We have had Rogers for over twenty years now and it just keeps getting better. Edward liked all the bells and whistles and I just haven't changed it at all. I only actually watch the news and weather but when family is here they like other things that are there for them. I also pay for Netflix without ads as I do like to binge watch on occasion and yes I did watch the latest season of The Crown. I haven't mentioned it because it is really fictional mostly but it is interesting having lived through the entire life of Queen Elizabeth II to watch the Crown and I have watched it a number of times. It does pick up a lot of the historical happenings in those seventy years and the flashbacks are also good as I can remember when King George VI was still alive. My grandfather used to talk about King George V, King Edward VII, Queen Victoria and yes the short chaotic reign of King Edward VIII. Every bit of my grandfather's being was monarchist and he actually was in London when King George V was crowned visiting one of his sisters (along with his wife and my father who mostly remembered having fish and chips at the Tower of London (he was pretty young almost seven years old) but also recalled all the pomp and ceremony that goes with a coronation). When my oldest daughter and I were in London in 2001 we also ate fish and chips from the vendor at the Tower of London. 

The good news though is I am back online on my computer. I can watch TV whenever I want. I also managed to get in my weight lifting before the technician came and my running after he left. But the cleaning of the basement - usually Wednesday - did not happen so will do that tomorrow. Still to do biking and calisthenics and walking although I was outside clearing off the car since I did not put it in the garage in case the technician needed to work in the garage. 

I am thinking about the Pincombe Newsletter and will probably start it tomorrow. It will be talking about the Protestation Returns in Devon. I also want to look up the Somerset Protestation Returns as there were Pincombes in Somerset in that time frame but not very many. It was primarily a Devon name well into the 1800s although a few did go to London in the 1700s. 

Winter has arrived and all that goes with the season. Too early to ski yet but that will come in its own time. I shall stick to the warmer days or my arthritis becomes unhappy. When the system went down Alexa also went down but happily the clock still seems to operate which is handy. 

On to phasing great grandparents. Yesterday I got a little done but the day ended up being a bit of a disaster computer wise for sure. One does become somewhat dependent on one's computer for sure.

Love the sunrise

Another beautiful sunrise to greet a new day.  Winter slowly descending as it is minus 5 degrees celsius at 7:00 in the morning. This is a beautiful time in the morning. Today I continue cleaning but yesterday that surprise picture was a nice find. Some fun chatting yesterday evening was also a wonderful happening. 

Will continue in my spare time between cleaning to work on the phasing of my great grandparents and I am now on Chromosome 17 which has a lot of Pincombe matches (at this level they become Pincombe or Gray matches) and the challenge is to separate them out. Sunday I did find that one of the matches has a clear path back to my Routledge 3x great grandparents and so the entire batch must be descendant of this large family. I have corresponded with a few of my cousins in this line but mostly descendants of my great grandmother Grace (Gray) Pincombe's sister's descendants. This particular length of Pincombe is doubled though and I want to discover if the second portion of the length which is shared by four of us is Pincombe or Gray. The first part of the length is shared by three of us and appears to be Routledge and my Robert Gray married Mary Ann Routledge. The second part I will need to work on trees likely. 

The orb of the sun has now risen about the house level and it will be a lovely day but likely cold. I will only work on the Archival Boxes one day a week. I spent almost four hours yesterday just indexing two boxes. If I can complete that task in three weeks of cleaning I will be content with that. The next step is to submit a list to the Archives to see if they would like this material. Edward placed a copy of his published genealogy with Library and Archives Canada in 1978 and perhaps they would like the original images to go with that publication for Kipp researchers to use or if not them perhaps the Archives of British Columbia since a large part of the collection refers to the early Kipp settlers in Chilliwack British Columbia. I just need to keep my nose to the grindstone and get this done. I have discovered it is much easier to while away my hours of thinking on DNA as I age. Working with someone else's data is really very difficult even if we were together for fifty five years; we did not think alike but rather found these common meeting areas where we shared interests and brought our own style of thinking to those common interests. My interests have always centered around my religious life, my interest in science and latterly (since 2003) on my parent's surnames - Blake and Pincombe and that linked with my interest in science as DNA proved to be the methodology that drew me into genealogy. 

Breakfast is next and on to the day. I do so love my breakfast and I must add variety in the fruits but I do enjoy raisins, currants and blueberries. Sometimes I put a chopped up apple in whilst it is cooking and that is also very good. But the chocolate has especially been appreciated and not being a coffee drinker it is my caffeine to start the day although being a hyperactive person I do not actually need caffeine to start my day. 

Chromosome 20 and 19 phasing of great grandparents

I did find Chromosome 20 and 19 interesting and some of the phasing of the great grandparents was possible. I moved on to Chromosome 18  and again phasing my paternal line proved to be quite straightforward. There was very little Pincombe on that chromosome although a lot of matches. They are all Pincombe though for the most part (the larger ones simply because we are third cousins and so do not share two sets of great grandparents).  The Buller I have one large match with a known descendant and interestingly we share twin 2x greatgrandparents making the resemblence one step closer due to that.  I am ambivalent about one section though because one of the members may be descendant of the Pincombe side which would mean no Gray on that chromosome. 

Chromosome 17 has a very large number of Pincombes but none of them are known to me. I do need to do trees there to see if I can work that through - they range from 23 and Me, My Heritage, Ancestry (Gedmatch) and FT DNA so a lot of data to work with and one of the trees does appear to go back to Pincombe-Routledge (3x great grandparents in common) which would link all of them back to this line likely. Will work away at that today.

Today though is principally the beginning of the cleaning week - top floor once again. I grew up with the adage that cleanliness is next to Godliness and so the inspiration is there to clean every week as well as I am able. God in our lives is a gift and time after time having God in our lives makes life so much more meaningful.

Along with cleaning I am doing an inventory of the Archival Boxes which Edward created (I want to check with LAC both here in Ottawa and with the Archival Library for the Province of British Columbia to see if either  of them want all of this material - the Kipp family were early settlers (1800) in Oxford/Burford Counties in Ontario and in British Columbia (Chilliwack). He did publish a history of this family (copy at LAC) and the original images of this family are still in these archival boxes. I found a lovely picture of him as a young child in this first Archival Box I have been working on which I have scanned as it seemed to be missed from the large group of pictures that I scanned for him in 2019 and 2020 (he had not scanned his own pictures at that point). He would be about 2 and one half years old in this picture and I think he is living at the home where he grew up after his father passed away (about three months earlier) but it could also be one of the building around the farm.

Making an inventory of the archival boxes has proven to be an enormous task as this first box took me two hours and I am about to break for lunch. I have all the vacuuming done but still need to dust and scrub, and vacuum down the stairs. I believe I will work on these archival boxes every Monday as it is hard work since I am not that familiar with the pictures in his ancestral line but fortunately he has put pictures into the Legacy family file which has been excellent. I need to check to make sure that all of them have been scanned but for the most part I suspect that will be the case as he spent a lot of time scanning his work.

The Lament - Remembrance Day Sunday

 The Sermon today concentrated on lament and it was a perfect discussion of the loss that Canada as a nation has experienced on too many occasions. The young blood of our nation spilled to free people from tyranny in far off places. It is still happening today in the Ukraine. We want peace not so desperately that we will let ourselves be trampled upon but we do want peace. A place where knowledge can flourish; children can grown up in an atmosphere where fear is diminished. All of this is possible if greed could only disappear from the face of the earth. 

The online Church Service is perhaps the one that I would most have liked to attend in person and yet I do not. I am not sure that I will ever return; I barely go anywhere but yet I feel as if I have been everywhere. Edward and I did do a great deal of traveling. He reveled in traveling around Eastern/Central Canada and the Eastern States of the United States of America. We barely arrived home and we were off again to find yet another tombstone or reminder of his ancestors. He loved all of that research and it became his great quest as he aged. From the time I first knew him he had an interest in his Kipp family and with some prodding from his mother and maternal uncle this extended into his mother's family Link and Allen. His interest in his paternal grandmother Schultz's family arose suddenly although he had been keeping records of that family but it was a planned trip to Salt Lake City and a discovery of a marriage between a Schultz and a Nieman that prompted his going to a Schultz Family Reunion the summer before going to Salt Lake City and then he was into Schultz as he made great discoveries at the Reunion that let him pursue a line of research that finally worked and that was aided by a person knowledgeable in German Ancestry at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. 

The Naval Memorial in Plymouth overwhelmed at first sight when we were there in 2008. So many names but the British Isles paid dearly in lives during both the First and the Second World Wars. The Memorial is on The Hoe which looks over Plymouth Sound. We were staying at a Hotel nearby and we were able to visit this Memorial a couple of times. Just this one memorial commemorates 7,251 sailors of the First World War and 15,933 sailors of the Second World War. There are three of these large Naval Memorials (amongst many others across the British Isles) this one at Plymouth, one at Chatham and the third at Portsmouth. I also was at the Naval Memorial at Portsmouth later in this tour and also saw the Memorial at Chatham. These huge obelisks can be seen from the water as well at all three of the sites and we did have a boat tour at Plymouth. We in Canada had so many lost but so many more were lost in the British Isles and all over Europe. Never again; we must keep supplying Ukraine with munitions so that they can finish this war against Russia and hopefully it will be the last. One prays that for sure. 

Some work on DNA a little later. It is a day that I do tend to devote to contemplation about God in our world.

Bible Reading - Luke 18:1-8

I am just quoting the last line which I try to avoid doing but I did find it to especially be poignant in this time - But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?

What is the Church? To me the Church is the administrative arm of the duty that Jesus left us all with when he ascended into the Heavens. We must care for people; all peoples. We must love our neighbour as ourselves. Our duties were clearly set out by Jesus. If we do not follow these teachings what kind of a world will we have? Russia has shown us the kind of world that they think we should have but they are clearly wrong. How do we fix all of this? First of all, Russia must pay for the rebuilding of Ukraine - they destroyed it; they should pay to have it rebuilt and there is plenty of their money outside of Russia that can be used for that purpose. I do not think any of us in the so-called democracies want to see an end to Russia. Certainly we have hoped that Russia would become a much kinder place to her peoples and that they would succeed. Europe especially welcomed their export of raw materials. The leaders of Russia have not chosen wisely; they are greedy and they use any means to express that greed in particular the invasion lately of Ukraine where they have committed horrible atrocities. 

Yesterday was a good research day. I had a great time working my way through Chromosome 20 and was quite satisfied with the phasing that I was able to do on my paternal great grandparents. The maternal great grandparents I could look at again as I do have some good ethnicity work that would aid me with my maternal grandfather and maternal grandmother separating them into their four lines. But for the moment I have moved on to Chromosome 19  which was a treasure to do although again I only did work on my paternal grandfather's line with rephasing. The matches that I have for the other three are good but finding the limits proved a task too far and will look at that again today. I decided to move on to Chromosome 18 and redid the initial phasing with the new matches. On both Chromosome 19 and 18 I have one very small section that is ambiguous between two siblings although completely perfect when comparing the rest with the 23 and Me comparison chart that I created. The ambiguity is interesting and as of yet I do not have any matches that particularly occur in these two distinct small areas. That may come one of these days. Today I will look at phasing the great grandparents on Chromosome 18 and have a re-look at Chromosome 19. 

I also need to check for new matches as I have been somewhat delinquent in doing that work the past few weeks. The Pincombe newsletter is next and I am starting to think about that. All in all another good research week and I need to work on Edward's archival boxes to see what is in them. I want to separate out all the Schultz material to give to his cousins when they do a visit to this area. There will be a substantial amount as I have a German Bible from that branch of the family. They emigrated from Mecklenberg - Wilhelmine Fredericka Johanna Nieman in 1849 and Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Schultz in 1866. They were married 25 Dec 1866 in Perth County, Ontario. They lived in villages close by each other one in Schoenbeck, Brohm and the other in Staven so the families did know each other. My children do not have a strong interest in genealogy and so to preserve all of this information I must pass it on to a line that will preserve it for future generations to use if they have an interest. This family has had an annual Schultz Reunion for over fifty years. 

The sky is cloudy and it is somewhat warm still as we experience rain from the latest hurricane in the south. Our temperature will gradually decrease and the rain will eventually turn to a little snow by Monday perhaps. We will not get the heavy snow expected in southwestern Ontario. The hurricane is still strong enough to keep that storm away from us locally. The rain will be marvelous for the grass as it is quite green now but the ground is still somewhat dry. Winter will come suddenly though and we will soon have our usual white cover.

Remembrance Day - November 11

 World War I saw the death of quite a few of my grandfather's cousins but World War II saw the end of the male line of Edward Blake in England - twelve children (seven sons and five daughters) although two died as infants/young children and one as a slightly older child. Two daughters died in childbirth. My father always spoke of his father's family as numbering seven which I found interesting when I discovered all the children of Edward and Maria Jane (Knight) Blake at a much later time long after my father had died in 1998 at the age of 94 years. He also mentioned that his mother had three siblings - two brothers and a sister (just one was missed, the baby that he was named after actually Ernest Edward Taylor). Was it old age on his part, I think he had dementia in retrospect which started up when he was around 88 years of age about the same time as his stroke. Nevertheless, my brothers (four of them) were the end of the Blake yDNA line from Edward Blake in the world. There are still a number of Blake yDNA descendants of John Blake and Ann Farmer as they had ten children - five sons and five daughters. This line of descendants now numbers in the many hundreds most of whom still live in England. 

Today I shall be present online at the Memorial Service in Ottawa. Remembering all the fallen in Canada and the numbers were huge in World War I for such a small country at the time - fewer fallen in World War II but none the less all missed by their families through the ages that followed. 

Today another research day working on Chromosome 20 which has some good matches letting me readily phase it but now I want to move to great grandparent level so will see what I can do with that. 

Perhaps it is the times, but God seems close to the earth these days. Watching and waiting perhaps wondering if Homo sapiens has the ability to continue moving forward in time. There is much to do; the world to heal from environmental damage. Russia needs to withdraw from Ukraine and stop their butchery there. What will happen to Russia - an ancient country in the Old World. Can her people finally put an end to the evil leaders that have predominated since Lenin and give these people a life that they can all live and be proud Russians once again. 

The Bible Reading today is poignant "See that justice is done, let mercy be your first concern, and humbly obey your God." Democracies are founded on such principles and may truth prevail. 

The red sunrise awaits us as always with the warning for sailors at sea as I recall from my grandfather - Red sun in the morning sailors take warning. Interesting all these old sayings passing down from generation to generation.

Continuing into the intriguing field of great grandparent phasing

Finished all the cleaning, bought the groceries and now the next few days belong to research. I did manage to phase the great grandparent portion of chromosome 21 on my father's side. Elizabeth (Rawlings) Taylor was the predominant match (my paternal grandmother's mother) and several small matches to the Cotterill?? family. I do not actually have any matches there so can not say whether this is correct or not but the other matches end precisely at the same spot for the Rawlings (three of my five siblings). The Blake also broke down into absolutely Blake (MRCA Thomas Blake and Sarah Coleman married 1792 and grandfather to my great grandfather Edward Blake) and likely Knight where I do have matches but not yet investigated so may try to do that once I am finished the phasing. 

The Pincombe and Buller are up in the air at the moment. I had designated these two sets of data based on a match between my third cousin (Buller) and another individual who matched both of us but not triangulated. Hence I am still in thinking mode on these results. I do not have any Pincombe matches on Chromosome 21. 

Both Chromosome 22 and 21 present with small difficulties which I have tried to alleviate with writing to newer matches to see if I am able to resolve. Neither has a positive Pincombe match known to me. 

So I shall move on to Chromosome 20 and see how that goes today. 

I have been corresponding with an Australian cousin where we share a small amount of X chromosome (both my sisters and I match her but it is very small (9 cM) so I am not overly trusting of that although it would point to a Rawlings match because Chromosome 23 is phased and the three of us do not match other than Rawlings in this particular location. A triangulated match with a possible Lywood descendant is uppermost in my mind at the moment as that is my Rawlings line. I have written to that match to see if that can be figured out. 

I like My Heritage but the triangulation does not always work just the way that I think it should. Plus everyone tests differently and my uploaded kit and my actual test kit with them do not always agree with matches that really should be in common but I can understand that as the same points are not always chosen by the different testing companies leading to aberrations in the results. 

Breakfast already completed; I was very hungry and decided to eat first!

Prayers for Ukraine as always. 

Cleaning and DNA

 Possibly cleaning is in my DNA - I have cleaned since I was a young age. I used to help my grandmother when I went to stay with her and she was a very strict cleaner. I do not think I come up to the bar that she maintained but do try. 

Working on DNA has been my privilege and I will forever be thankful that my siblings were willing to be tested so that I could have so much fun working on our family history. We have learned so much from all of that testing that my next to me oldest brother and I did through the years. He has passed away now (December 2020) and I will always miss him. We had much in common surprisingly as we did not so much as children. I almost caught up to him in school and that is never a good place to be if you are the younger sibling and a girl. But adulthood and new interests forged a new bond between us those last fifteen years since he first talked about testing DNA. We, Edward and I, had thought about it and did finally test when James Levoy Sorenson first offered this testing. Then we moved on to National Genographic Project testing and Doug asked me about testing DNA. I offered to test him and he was most excited and thus began our mutual interest and a lot of correspondence through the years. Each new test opened up new ideas on our family lines and whenever or where ever I tested myself I would test him as well. We usually met at least once a year and a few years oftener to chat over dinner and breakfast the next morning about our mutual DNA. It will be forever in my memory banks. 

So yesterday did see me back at Chromosome 21 and looking at a set of matches for whom I have no true guide in placing them. Tracing back on one tree leads me in my mind towards my mother's father's side. Today I think I will write to see if I can learn anything more. My initial and continuing reaction looking at the results and the shared matches is that these matches belong to my mother's mother's side but nothing is entirely conclusive. These two short Chromosomes 22 and 21 have always had a few glitches in them because I do not have enough significant matches for all four lines leading back to my grandparents. I do have for a couple of lines in each one but that leaves me with the others. I shall continue with my tree making today. 

Another beautiful sunrise just after I awoke. I do so love the sunrise as long as I can remember. The sudden appearance of our golden globe above the tree line has always warmed my spirit and told me that all is well in the heavens around us. Now we just have to fix the earth which has become strained by our lifestyle. I do believe that God is in the Heavens looking down on us and wondering about this creation that he wrought eons ago long before Homo species existed. The big bang theory continues to dominate my thoughts even in old age. I do so love studying science in all its forms.

The choice - The House of Windsor

I do not think King Charles should blame himself for "making" Diana's sons walk behind her coffin in the funeral procession. It is a tradition that the men of the House of Windsor (and Princess Royal Anne has now changed that tradition forever) to follow the coffin of a fallen member of the House of Windsor. True honour was done to Diana that day by all the members of the House of Windsor as well as her brother. Had they not done so, the sons aged 12 and 15, would probably have been bullied by members of the public who adored their mother. The Royal House is a fishbowl for the nation to enjoy. In a way they created that fishbowl allowing the public into their private lives to a certain extent but it was likely to happen anyway given the growth of media during the 20th century. So the choice - follow the coffin in time honoured House of Windsor tradition or not do so and risk bullying which would surely have followed. Personally I wept watching those boys follow their mother's coffin but Diana could have worn her seat belt and survived that crash. If blame gets handed around then one should look at that as well. It is a mother's responsibility when their children are underage to protect herself for them. It is so hard for children to lose a parent in those years - my maternal grandmother is ever in my mind in that regard. She lost her mother at 11 and her father at 14. They were very sorrowing moments in her life and she carried that scar her entire life. Everybody does I suspect that has that sort of an event in their childhood. 

Watched the blood moon eclipse last night from start to full and then fell asleep pretty much. The  beautiful orange moon was clear in a more or less cloudless sky and the stars were magnificent at totality. My front window looked right out at that moon a bit covered by tree branches but visible none the less. I always feel blessed to see such sights. God is in the Heavens and are there surprises out there for us. I often think so but there is always danger as well. Warring on earth does not prepare us for what might come from the Heavens. We weaken ourselves needlessly and all because of Russian greed. Putin and his enablers continue with their ruthless attempts to kill all Ukrainians.

The work week begins and it is Monday cleaning day

A crisp morning although already 10 degrees celsius - a lovely November day looks to be our gain for the day. Last night the hydro failed at 17:24 but was restored again at 19:30 about. No idea what happened just nice to have it back again. I have these plans for such things so quickly put that into place and was quite content with my array of flashlights - just one at a time but with differing ability for vision. Very small ones for just sitting there and contemplating when the power will return whilst looking at my smart phone which was still working and stronger ones like a lamp which let me wash the dishes. I had just completed cooking my dinner barely five minutes earlier. It was sort of fun; one can sit and contemplate in the darkness of the night whilst there is no hydro. 

Church on You-Tube with many of my favourite hymns and an interesting sermon. I do enjoy Church on You-Tube. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever go back to regular in-house attendance for Church.  I do love going to Church but for the moment You-Tube fulfills my desire to be there. 

Today is cleaning day and it is the top floor. I have done all the closets that I am going to do so will be a couple of hours only to complete. I want to continue working on phasing my great grandparents and tackled Chromosome 21 a bit yesterday. Although not really done with Chromosome 22, I have written to two matches just to see if I get a response as it might help me to break down the Buller-Taylor lengths into Buller and Taylor. I did have a letter from a Taylor descendant but he has not tested his DNA so do not know if I am 100% correct in the Taylor line that appears to be the one for my maternal grandmother's mother. Likely I know the most in my family about this individual as my grandmother was persuaded on occasion to talk about her mother. She always felt rather sad about her mother as she died of pneumonia at 37 years of age. To her that was such a monumental crisis in her life with which I agreed wholeheartedly but said that the kindest thing to do for her mother was to remember her and tell me about her so that I could share that with my siblings one day. So on occasion we did talk about her mother whom I would say she rather adored. 

Thank you to President Xi for saying that nuclear war should never happen. I do feel that he can most influence Russia to stop their barbaric slaughter in Ukraine of the Ukrainian people and also stop sending the ethnic youth of Russia to this slaughter as well where they are being killed by the hundreds every day because they are unequipped. 

Breakfast is waiting and I am rather hungry today. On to the work week.

Crossroads and a prelude to what

Are we at a crossroads? My mother used to describe the time before the Second World War as a crossroads. Like good sensible people; we in the democracies tried to avoid war simply because it is just massive destruction caused by dictators who are greedy. They are protected behind their solid line of "faithful" supporters who would die for them. This time we are helping Ukraine with munitions and verbal support. The Russians under Putin and his enablers can scream and shout that they are the abused just like Hitler did but in the long run their lust for power is the cause of every war that has ever happened in history - they are greedy. Simply greed and nothing more; they lust for power and possessions (as always the Russians are looting as they retreat). To get that power they will do anything - Bucha comes to mind. To break the morale of the democracies they create horrible images to frighten us into submission. So are we at a crossroads as Russia continues their destructive war in Ukraine - a war of attrition where their own people are used as fodder to try to kill Ukrainian soldiers (how foolish of them; Rise up O Russia and rid yourselves of Putin and his enablers). We keep seeing raw greed rise its head in our world and we keep having to go to war to stop it. Sometimes in little ways (we are the arsenal of Ukraine) and one would hope that the Ukrainians can halt this war of greed in Ukraine. Time will tell for sure but we are ready. COVID got us ready for this battle of the ages. Death has been all around us and we are not afraid. The European Union has remained strong; the people remember the Soviet Union rampaging across Europe in 1945 as they enslaved millions behind the Iron Curtain. A generation younger than I am remembers the Soviet Union as it maltreated the peoples of Eastern Europe behind their Iron Curtain.

I think China is the linch pin. What will they do? Are they so greedy that they are willing to sacrifice the gains of the last time period since the Second World War? Do they want a better life for their people? Communism is a way of life that some people accept and some do not (I can see the benefits of the communal life but do not like the oppression that grows within that communal life). Eventually the system always becomes tiered and not all peoples benefit equally. These countries that hate democracies hate us mostly because we permit free spirit to reign although tendered by laws that protect all of the peoples. We too can use an Emergency Act to force out people who take over control in an area and abuse the people in that area calling it a legal protest which it wasn't the moment that they entered the Rideau Centre unmasked right at the time of their arrival - they broke our bylaws.

Yesterday I spent time building trees (not my favourite thing actually); I am not a genealogist first but rather interested in DNA first and I do trees when I am trying to see into the data from a family viewpoint. I found some online trees but all stopped and were stumped by the parentage by one individual. I finally solved the riddle and it was a woman much older than usual having children in a second marriage. The first marriage had been much further back then one would have imagined and when I found her on the 1911 census she was 59 years of age with a six year old (the individual who had stumped the other tree makers). She was widowed twice by 1911 and that wasn't entirely obvious by the material provided as she simply added up all the years of marriage and all the children (sixteen in total with eleven dead) and the other five living with her at the time of the census correctly recorded with their surnames. However, this family was all in Gloucestershire back into that time frame and finally in Lancashire which I would have expected for a Buller-Taylor line. So I will continue looking at this interesting combo - a grandmother, father and daughter all tested at 23 and Me. Then there are two other matches that I have not yet looked at. Curiosity does drive one to look deeper into some of the matches; how are they matching? Phasing is certainly an interesting pastime and going back to great grandparents rather illuminating. I have large clusters of people who relate on some of these great grandparent lines like the Knight-Butt-Arnold group from the Winterbourne area of Dorsetshire where siblings married siblings of each of these families creating huge groups of individuals with collapsing pedigrees (and they are all over Canada from Newfoundland to British Columbia and then down into the United States from the mid 1850s on). The same happens in the Routledge-Routledge line 3x great grandparents (second cousins once removed) as I have matches with many individuals who trace back to this Bewcastle Cumberland family.

 Daylight savings has ended and I am up just a little earlier due to that so gives me an early start on the day. Soon breakfast and today is Sunday, Church on You-Tube.