Back to the Companion Charting Book

Yesterday was work on the Companion Charting Book. I went back to the beginning and filled in the Preface and the Acknowledgements adding some pictures of my line coming down from Elizabeth (Siderfin) Rew with her daughter Elizabeth (Rew) Pincombe and John Pincombe, her son William Robert Pincombe and Grace (Gray) Pincombe, his son John Routledge Pincombe and Ellen Rosina (Buller) Pincombe and my mother, their daughter, Helen Louise (Pincombe) Blake. 

I then started back at the beginning and will now do the indexing and reading of everything there once again. I will then at the end go back and proofread it once again before I publish it. I decided one set of charts was just too small so redid them. That will part of this as I got much stricter with myself as the book moved on so some at the beginning may need to be redone. Not finding many changes which is good but will be cautious. I want to finish this and have it off my plate so that I can get back to the Blake and Pincombe books. 

Other than that exercise although still feeling somewhat the effects of the flu shot (managed to get one at the Drug Store last Sunday) as it multiplies through my system. It was the 65+ shot that is stronger apparently for us ancients! I haven't had flu in many many years as I had the flu shot at the hospital all the time that I worked there and ever since actually. I tend to wear a face mask in the winter when I am shopping since COVID as why not it is easy to do. But I was never a cold prone person anyway. Watched a little television with all the excitement still ongoing from the election in our neighbour to the south. The House of Commons seems to be in a stalemate which I find annoying as they make a lot of money at our expense and should be governing the country in an efficient manner not always sucking up to one part of the populace or another by random benefits. The Conservative party needs to find its roots and they are in efficiency; I think people in politics have lost their way. They go in thinking they always have to be in power but sometimes the most effective place is in opposition to curb the wastefulness of left leaning parties. 

On to Latin and then the book.

The 45th President Donald Trump missed out on the biggest win in his life

One item that I think is obvious in all of this is that the 45th President Donald Trump running for re-election missed out on the biggest triumph of his life because of the Insurrection on the 6th of January 2021. For a lot of people who would have voted for him because of disappointment in the 46th President Joe Biden either didn't vote or voted for Kamala Harris. But this was going to be a big win for him for sure but it could have been so much bigger. He did win with a huge majority in the Electoral College though and won the Senate and may well win the House. Times will be different and I hope he remembers that a strong Canada is good for the United States. We have your back at all times and you are our best friend in many ways even if we still do have a King who loves us but he is a long way away and we do not see him often. Our Governor General Mary Simon is perfect and a descendant of the First Peoples. Many tributes to her for her perfect appearance on Remembrance Day representing Canada (and the King). It is Canada that the King represents after all here in Canada (just another word for Crown really). 

I would like to see the borders toughened between Canada and the United States; that never happens during a Democratic term in office. I get really tired of people freezing to death in the winter or drowning in the summer here especially small children who didn't ask to be carted around the world and brought into a country illegally. If you cannot get there legally stay home and fix the system where you are. 

Efficiency is a word that I love and would be very happy to see a more efficient government here. Trim the waste, support the military and lets get this country on track to the great successes that it can have.

  

Wars end when the aggressor nation agrees to stop threatening their neighbours

As always it is in the camp of the aggressor nation to halt their aggression/their threats of continuing aggression. When that happens, when they lay down their arms then the war ends. Perhaps one should note that Hitler at the end insisted that the children man the walls of Berlin. What a hideous thing to do to the children of Germany. But that is what dictators do? when they do not win then they punish the people who did not win the battle for them. For ever, when one thinks of a monster Hitler will come to mind for sure. As a child growing up in the shadow of World War II, Hitler was that monster and he remained there forever in my mind as that sinful satanic person. But gradually over time Stalin too became that kind of a person as he did not release the peoples of Eastern Europe to return to their own governments/their own countries but held them fast in the Soviet Union and the Cold War descended upon us. I do not remember the time between my birth in 1945 until 1948 when my brothers were pretending to be airplanes flying around the room as we listened to the radio in a room that I lived in but have no real memory of being in that house as we moved not long after that. But my grandfather was there, my father and mother and my older sister and my two brothers and I forgot the baby although I do not think he was in the room. We were listening to the radio and that memory is forever in my mind. They were saving Berlin from certain imprisonment if the planes did not relieve the hunger in Berlin. The films made since then showed the harrowing flight that those planes had to make to land in western Berlin to unload their precious cargo and go back and do it all again. Thank God for those brave pilots and the men who flew with them to help manage the cargo. 

That uplifted plain of peace is always there but it slips away from us like the mirage in the desert as we try again and again to have peace in our world. Remembrance Day brings that home to us and it is the most powerful vision of our dedication to the men and women who fought against unbelievable odds to retake Fortress Europe and defeat the Nazis. Russia must be corralled and not allowed to break out and attack other countries. The Russian people may well handle this themselves but it is a hard call for sure; death sits in front of them at all times if they do not agree; if they resist. When enough young men are sacrificed then the bell will tool for Putin and his enablers just as it is tolling for Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis and perhaps even the Nazi Satanic leaders of Iran. Freedom for the Iranian people too in all of this perhaps. A place where a young woman will not be beaten to death for refusing to wear a hijab. When I was young we always wore a kerchief outside it is true. Not sure why I was still young when we stopped and the wind blew through our hair as we ran; it was a wonderful feeling to have the winds of God and Mother Nature blow through our hair for sure. 

Cleaning all accomplished. Today will be a work day and yesterday I did put up, in the blog, the URL for the Siderfin book that has the errata corrected in it. I work today on the Companion Charting Book and hopefully it too will be available by the end of November but time will tell I shall take my time with it and the New Year will see me return to the Blake and Pincombe books if not sooner. Whenever the one is done the others will start. 

Drinking my green tea and writing my blog at 6:11 a.m. and a new day is with us. A new day in God's world where one prays for peace in our time just as we have for as long as I can remember. It seemed like peace when the Berlin Wall came down but Nazism slipped in once again as the psychopathic Nazin Putin and his enablers have once again loosed the dogs of war. Hamas copied Putin invading Israel and we have two war zones. The dogs of war must be put down. 

 

Remembering our military

 Remembrance Day Service at the Cenotaph in Ottawa was as always perfect in every detail; even the rain came down as tears from God/Mother Nature for our soldiers lost to us but never forgotten. I remember our first time attending here in Ottawa when our oldest was 18 months old. The canon frightened her but gradually she got used to it. Perhaps that is the way no ideas on that. But it was wondrous to be there in our capital city on Remembrance Day and we never missed year in and year out until I was working on Remembrance Day at the Hospital but retirement saw us back at the Cenotaph year after year. 

When we toured France in 2014 perhaps as much as one third of the tour took us to the Normandy Beaches so well known in the Second World War and then through the west side of France to Ile de Ré and back across and then up to the trenches of the First World War near Verdun. The perfectly maintained graveyards are a tribute to France's appreciation for her liberation. A country where democracy was born by fire and maintained through the centuries every time a dictator threatened that freedom. France rose to defeat that and carry on their democracy. Paris is perhaps the most beautiful city I have ever seen; a walk down the Champs-Elysées a never to be missed opportunity. We were there for a special ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe  back in 2014 in June having walked from the Hotel St James. Everything was in easy reach of that Hotel as we went on our own to Notre Dame and took a ride back in a bicycle taxi. That was a beautiful experience all in itself. L'Eglise Sainte-Marie-Madeleine in Paris also reached easily from the hotel - a stunning piece of architecture which fits so beautifully into the Paris landscape. Touring le Jardin des Tuileries just across from our Hotel; there was so much to see beyond the tour itself. 

Must get back to my French on duolingo soon. I will also work on my German although I do not think I have any recent German ancestry but I still have this thought on my Buller line and time will tell. Not necessarily the Buller itself but marriages into the Buller line in the early 1700s. The French/German DNA does mystify me although it isn't huge it is still enough to have an ancestor from the 1700s in my line. It shows up in all of us a little; in some of us more and with five tested one can really look at these things. I have become most interested in the autosomal DNA now although retain my interest in yDNA and mtDNA. I do know I have 10x great grandparents who were Huguenot thus accounting for the possibility of French DNA although it would be small for sure but sometimes you have these sticky pieces of DNA that just get passed on and on.

I always say when my children ask that I have traveled enough for an entire lifetime and will do no more. I want to write now and get everything recorded in case in the future one of my parent's descendants becomes curious about their ancestors (they have eleven great grandchildren). For myself, I did not have that curiosity really but I loved to listen to my grandparents and they told me so much and I must pass that on; that is my duty in my life that I have left to live as I see it. Mind you I do want to see more of Canada I have only been as far as Winnipeg to the west, to James Bay to the North and I have spent a lot of time in the Maritimes as Edward had a number of Reunions there that he wanted to attend. I have even been to Labrador where the whales put on a show for us that one day and at the end they seemed to be saying goodbye. It was amazing actually. I will always remember that. 

We have been to every State in the Eastern part of the United States and some of the central almost all the way to New Orleans and then to Utah. I have been further west in the United States than in Canada so must remedy that one of these days and get to the west coast. I have especially spent a lot of time in the New England States and New York State as Edward visited every grave yard to find his many colonial ancestors. We have been back in the bush many times finding old graveyards still preserved and maintained by a caring people. 

Basement cleaned yesterday and today the main floor and the top floor and another week of cleaning accomplished. Routine is a wonderful thing actually as it maintains a sense of normalcy in your life as you adjust to changes. 

I did put the corrected Siderfin book up online and go to my website: 

http://www.kipp-blake-families.ca/elizabethmain.htm#SIDERFIN 

and you will find the book at the bottom of the Siderfin section. The changes are in reality small but I found them to be enormous in my mind but perfectionists are like that. 

The Companion Charting book continues to be prepared to go online and I have no idea when that will happen but hopefully soon. I want to get back to my Blake and Pincombe books so will not dally with it. 

Tea all drank and solitaire games to play and then Breakfast, start the cleaning and then Latin in my rest period. The day passes much too quickly sometimes and I am at the end of the day with not quite everything accomplished that I wanted to do but there is tomorrow. But I do not see an end to the things that I need to accomplish as there is still a great deal of Edward's material to work through. Hard to believe as so much of his library is now at the Archives but I will persevere and complete this task in a hopefully timely fashion. But I do have a tendency to meander through life and was perhaps one of the things Edward liked about me; I was never in a rush to do anything and didn't try to rush him!

Remembrance Day

 Remembrance Day around the world as the world holds it breath once again whilst Satan rages and we must put Satan down once again sad to say. Russia/North Korea and Iran remain the problem countries in the world. Putin the Nazi in Russia with his adherents and Iran (how much of the country actually supports the present government) with their sycophants Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis (and perhaps the others as well called Jihadists of different stripes). Where does China stand? I think perhaps for progress but at the expense of whom? Why do they hate democracy; because they can not get people to grovel in a democracy; they are always going to stand up and fight for what they believe in. What do they believe in? A world that can be at peace where all prosper perhaps not as affluently as the next door neighbour or the people who live in the expensive subdivisions but they can strive which is something they cannot do in a country run by dictators. Dictators are always going to support only the people who accept their dominance. Sad really that Satan is running amuck once more. I like the symbol that is used at Mecca of stoning Satan to rid him from our lives. I do not share this desire for great wealth; I prefer to live my quiet anonymous life writing my surname books and thanking God for the world that He has given to us. His instructions were clear from the beginning really in the Ten Commandments and later the modified Two commandments that Jesus brought to the world dying for us to cement that Covenant. Today reminds us that we shed that blood of our ancestors/cousins to keep that promise of the covenant and forever we must uphold the lost lives and carry the torch they passed to us from their dying hands. 

Growing up in the shadow of World War II; I was born not long after VJ day so belong to the so called  "Silent Generation." That smallish group that followed the children born during the war and before the Baby Boomers. We just did what we were told as children had during the war without any fuss or bother that was why they called us the Silent Generation. Our numbers are small but we watched that huge group come behind us in school and then in jobs and now in retirement. We grew up with nuclear war held over our heads for a generation and then it quieted but then it returned all because Russia could not stay within the borders that resulted from their own foolish attempt to subdue Afghanistan and take it for themselves. Why did they do that? I have no idea really; they were just trying to let the west know they were still there and they wanted something and what they wanted they could take. But the people of Afghanistan did what they always do; they force those who break into their country out. The Soviet Union was bankrupt and suddenly the peoples of Eastern and Central Europe were free after the Cold War. WWII did not end for them in 1945 it ended in 1990 when their countries started to form once again and they had democracy which they wanted. They pushed against their captors and rejected them; joining NATO and feeling much safer in this world. Who could blame them? Who wants to be vassal states anyway? No one actually. 

God bless our military and keep them safe. Make people realize that the military gets the first cut of the monies to keep us strong not teeth not the old when so much of the money will be taxed back anyway. The military needs funding and the best equipment that we can make or buy. Satan tries to come back time and again and we must always be ready.

I must resolve to make a list of all my cousins that I have found who died in WWI - because most of my relatives live still in England although attending the Remembrance Day Service yesterday online at Christ Church Cathedral once again I hear the names of my grandfather John Routledge Pincombe's cousins who died in WWI (John Carling and Gordon Carling). When one searches the Commonwealth database there are 37 with the surname Carling. The loss of our youth will be forever remembered and fill us with vengeance that drives us to resist again and again when our freedom is threatened. That is what NATO is about. We do not seek out war but we will resist it as we catch that flaming torch from those we lost.

Revised book has been reread and new copy produced

 Perhaps today I will upload the new copy of the revised book but it will likely be tomorrow. Anyone is welcomed to write and question or correct errors. My drawback in writing the book is that I do not live in the area; actually I live across the ocean. Going to the Atlantic Ocean whilst visiting England back in 2008 was an awesome experience. Looking out from Westward Ho Beach towards the west, I experienced this sort of overwhelming thought that out there thousands of miles away was my home country. Looking straight out is below Ireland so all that is between me and my country was water. I have no idea if any of my family members on my mother's side had spent time in that area as they lived at Bishops Nympton. All of that is lost because my mother was only eight when her father died and his memories were of a childhood in Canada with his father emigrating to Canada in 1850/51 when he was fourteen years of age. We, my husband and I, had gone to England in 2008 and we went about six days earlier than our tour so that we could spend time with my Blake cousin Ivan Kent. I had booked us into a house nearby which let rooms and one was able to use the living area of the house if needed. It was a lovely bed and breakfast place and we stayed there for several days. We had arrived at Heathrow early in the morning and took the underground to the train that took us to Dorchester, Dorset where Ivan met us. It was the first time I ever met Ivan although we had corresponded for twenty years at that point in time. 

My mother had asked Edward, my husband, to create a 50th Anniversary Memory book for their Wedding Anniversary back in 1988 (when I first wrote to Ivan to see what sort of pictures he might share with me). As it turned out, Edward did agree but insisted that I do the work of ferreting out all of that information from the Parish Registers at the Family History Library. I had done some of this work for Edward when he had a project and just needed a spare set of eyes to go through the available data. Well, as it turned out, I was probably a good choice as I had listened to my grandparents in childhood talking about their families and my mother and father as well. Memory banks are amazing tools that should never be overlooked and should always be tested and filled in as a child actually I think. It is good training for the future as you store away things that need to be remembered and at the tip of your tongue. So there I was picking through the Parish Registers to create a genealogical tree of my family as Edward did interesting things like collect each of the different types of currency for one of the pages and maps of England which was all very interesting for sure. In the meantime I did run into that problem of who was my paternal grandmother. I had all the stories in my mind but they didn't fit. Eventually I was down to three possibilities (none of which was right) at that time and simply put nothing except what was known which was her life parents who raised her. She was just sort of an enigma for whom there were lots of pictures, stories of siblings, pictures of siblings but no record of her birth but records of her siblings births, a marriage record for her parents. Stories of how wonderful her father was and how much she loved him. For all the others I had parents and grandparents in many cases but that was it. Perhaps there was an inkling of curiosity then for what I did not know but life was busy; I proofread eight to ten hours a day and mostly every day although did take off part of Sunday in the day working in the evening (following the Jewish tradition that the day ends at dusk). The book was created; reproduced making one copy for each sibling and one for my parents and we kept the original which I shall turn into a powerpoint presentation (I think I will correct the genealogy though just to have it current). My parents were pleased (perhaps my father a little less so as so little on his mother whom he had adored and over the next short period (as he finally succumbed somewhat to dementia) I did learn just a little more to set my mind thinking although it would be another twenty years before I really looked at my grandmother Blake (he talked about an ancestor that had been at Waterloo amongst other tidbits that came up in the conversations that we had over the eight hour period that I spent with him each time I visited the nursing home where he lived for the last six years of his life). Then I spent about 100 pounds and bought all the certificates that were needed to lead me to the correct birth registration for my grandmother. It was a surprise and a sort of gift that she was loved so much by her families that no one wanted to remember and that her mother was unmarried when she was born. The actual name of the father still up in the air but mostly because I am a stickler for having actual proof. The priest had recorded in the baptismal lines that her name was Ada Bessie Cotterill Rawlings. There was only one Cotterill family in that tiny little village of Kimpton with a son around the age of Elizabeth Rawlin[g]s. Was George the father is still a question in my mind? Does it matter? When I discovered he died of cancer I thought well maybe it would be good to know. But really haven't still at this point in time pursued it (I haven't seen a picture of George yet). I have matches that lead that way. Her mother Elizabeth Lywood (from a relatively well settled family) had a run away marriage and they baptized their first child born the 20 Aug 1849 in Dec 1849 with their marriage on the 22nd Sep 1849 and away from their home village. As it turns out this is my only line with an illegitimacy. The mother of Elizabeth Lywood, Martha Peck, was the daughter of Elizabeth Peck and I suspect her daughter Martha was the result of a too hasty event before a soldier left for a posting (back in 1791). George and a cousin joined in the early 1800s (a runaway I think taking the King's shilling along with a cousin to see the world perhaps but they were not the first; young men were eager to join up in that time period and earlier and he was just fifteen or so when I figure it out). He did come to Canada actually and was stationed at Halifax until 1808 when his unit returned to Portugal and the Peninsular Wars (all written up in a lovely book I bought in Wales from the Royal Welsh Fusiliers). It makes for an exciting story in a family actually. Not knowing this story as a child meant I didn't know that George Lywood who fought at Waterloo was my 3x great grandfather and finding that was amazing. I had I think around twenty such long conversations with my father after he moved into the nursing home. He loved talking about his family and suddenly he didn't care what I knew! He had  it all right for sure so perhaps he was just starting into dementia but he lived to be in his 95th year. I hope my memory is as good if I should live so long.  Everyone thought he had dementia but as I went back in time about ten years after that; everything I found proved what he said. I am so very  happy that I elected to spend my eight hours with him on one of the days that we were back visiting. He  just never talked a lot when we were children; he was busy working for sure. So you never know where genealogy will lead you and for me that path was a very very long one before I finally succumbed to name collecting although I call it surname studies as a member of the Guild of one name studies. I study BLAKE (my father's surname) and PINCOMBE (my mother's surname). SIDERFIN was just this happening that has occupied my life now for nearly three years. 

Breakfast completed. This is Sunday and Remembrance Day and it is on YouTube which is exciting. I look forward to it. I didn't know you could tap now and buy poppies so did that this year and have a lovely one with a plastic centre that you can attach firmly to your coat plus a couple of others. The tap is for $10, $5 or $2 but $10 is such a small amount so I just tapped $10 and have all these poppies just for me. I will not get to put one of them on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on Remembrance Day but at nearly 80 that is probably wise on my part but I will keep it for one of these days I am downtown. Although putting it later might not work so I will just think about it.

God Bless the members of our military and keep them safe. God Bless Canada. Definitely I will vote for the party that promises 2% GDP for the military sooner rather than later (2032 is very late) and especially if they promise to reach towards 4%. We need our military to help take care of Canada. I have taken to cleaning my teeth three times a day these last five years and paying to have them cleaned every 4.5 months to keep those costs down on my insurance and maybe everyone could do that and we could direct that money towards the military instead of funding people's teeth cleaning. I do believe in looking after people but we need to do as much as we can ourselves. The military needs to be better funded and have better pension so that it is an appealing job. I always thought my husband would have loved the military as he did so like traveling about plus he hunted when I first knew him. Living in a small town though he never thought about it until much later.

Proofreading continuing

I completed to the end of the 9th generation in the revised book yesterday. That did seem like a good use of my time and and hopefully I will get through the entire book (except the Appendices which I will not reread) perhaps by early next week. That will let me return to the Companion Charting book which I will feel more comfortable about flipping back and forth to the newer *.pdf which I will create and upload so that it can be downloaded from my website. I will not put it on the blog heading this time. Once I have uploaded it I will put the URL on the blog for that day and perhaps days to follow. Still I am not finding significant changes other than those already mentioned. For which I am grateful actually, I do know my eyes were not doing as well as normal at the time but somewhat of a relief that I caught most of them. The biggest error being a John 7 listed in the descendancy string rather than Augustine 7. Weird really that I did that but it was incredibly consistent which is like me. 

I am looking forward to completing and publishing this Companion Charting book for the revised edition of James Sanders' book. Putting the book together and publishing it in 1912 was a gift to the family really and I think we should be forever grateful to him for his collection of material given that so much was lost in the bombing of the Exeter Record Office during World War II. The wills can never really be replaced but fortunately a number of them were abstracted earlier in time at least giving a small glimpse into the contents of what were likely long wills with so much family information. 

My mind is starting to turn back to the Blake and Pincombe books in my free time away from the Siderfin project. I am looking forward to getting back into that work once again but will take it at an even slower pace than I had imagined. The next thing about surname studies is you can lay it down at any time placing it in a secure place and at some point in the future someone will likely be happy to have found all your notes and material and take up the mantle of that surname research once again. 

I am toying with whether or not I will preserve my DNA sample at My Heritage. I have all the results one could possibly imagine or want as far as DNA is concerned and I do not particularly see anyone in the wings looking to work on these lines I have spent the last twenty one years looking at so wonder at the value since I have recorded and will burn to a long lasting DVD the material thus far acquired. Is there a value to the research in having a full genome done of my DNA is really the contemplation of which I am in the midst. I may still decide in favour but I still have about six weeks to do that. 

I am listening to the thoughts of our political leaders as they head into this next year of working with our neighbours to the south. We have not yet heard from the Conservative Party in that regard and I personally think that the deputy leader has put forward some very very excellent comments in the house over this past year as I watch Question Period often enough. Being in control is really the best feature of a leader; not being a follower there are plenty of those already. Election year 2025 in Canada will be a very interesting one for sure. 

Breakfast time and then latin. I am coming to the end of the actual lessons but will stay with the project doing the reviews as more lessons come on board hopefully. But also I want to get back into French again as I want to work on my son in law's genealogy which I started back in 2008 but have not really had a lot of time to work on it although I do have an extensive tree now as I added it to my tree which was always in the 6000 people range but that quickly sent it up over 30,000 with all his French Canadian ancestors going back to the early days of New France and by good fortune with marriages takes at least one of his lines back into early Turtle Island history as it turns out. Interesting name for this continent actually it is starting to grow on me. As a transplant from the British Isles with mostly English ancestry, I admire the ancestry of these earliest peoples and the stories that they must have of life thousands of years ago just as my grandfather told me stories handed down likely to him by his parents, grandparents and even great grandparents whom he knew as a child. They emerge in my brain occasionally these days as I reach towards 80. Amazed though none the less to have Sir John Carling as my great grandmother's first cousin. My maternal grandmother (wife to her son) used to tell me stories about this great grandmother whom she never knew except through her husband's eyes. My small Canadian line - myself, my mother, my maternal grandfather, and his mother are my only Canadian born ancestors. All the rest were born in England in the near past and for the Routledge/Routledge lines which we share with the Carling family back into the Highlands of Scotland. There are Irish lines but are they Planters from Scotland or are they Irish; that still remains a question to be solved perhaps not necessarily by me but in the future - we carry that knowledge in our genes.

The proofreading continues

 Mostly proofreading yesterday through the original book. I was reading the two in tandem but realized rather quickly that going through the original book was probably a better plan at this stage and then return to the charting book with my corrected manuscript rather than working off of the published manuscript. I found nothing really in the first seventy pages except for one word I left out but noticed that already. So perhaps I can read more today once I get started at that. I did do some work on the charting book rereading from the beginning but will concentrate on the published book for the moment. 

I looked out at all the leaves and I am still of the same mind that I will just leave it to rot where it stands. If we are not going to get heavy snow cover then there will be a lot of rotting through this winter as it is our rainy time. I do not go out in the backyard anyway so doesn't matter to me. The forests leave the leaves to rot so should work well. Most of the leaves are down now off the trees. One can see the sky again. That is very  nice although the branches are getting thicker and thicker. 

Lots of exercise yesterday as I managed my weightlifting, running and yoga. Most days I do but some days I miss out on the afternoon yoga. The day runs away on me and dinner time arrives and I haven't accomplished that. 

Breakfast completed and Latin to do and then on to proofreading.

A Strong Canada Helps the United States

I think probably one of the most important things is for there to be a strong Canada with well cared for borders. It is an enormous benefit to our great neighbour to the south if we are strong. Hence my constant referral to the need to increase our military spending at least to 2% GDP and preferably to 4%. We need to upgrade NORAD absolutely and sooner rather than later. We share a water border with one of the most dangerous countries in the world with no respect for us. But to have a strong military we need to have a strong economy that isn't butchered with tariffs. President Reagan and Prime Minister Mulroney created NAFTA to benefit North America especially its defense and it was a great idea and has had enormous benefits for both of our countries. Upgrading it was also a good thing and having reviews keeps it modern. But overall a strong Canada both financially and militarily benefits our great neighbour to the south. Canada has a huge land mass to manage and that is an expensive proposition. 

The day flew by but I did manage to work on proofreading the Companion Charting book for the Siderfin Family. I am not doing all of that heavy footnoting that I did in the revision because it is already there but am putting in lots of page numbers to go to for the information. Am I happy with the product? It is coming along but I feel that I am not missing any spelling errors this time or slipups. Being a bit of a perfectionist normally, I am still shocked at how many errors I have in the revised book. Well lots of pages are fine but I am a perfectionist. That is my other project to find them and correct them and save it again as an *.pdf and put it up online. I have enjoyed working on the Siderfin book actually. I had done a lot of work earlier before I gave it to my cousin but it was mostly collection of data. I noticed some of the documents that I collected would aid me in figuring out the line coming down from John and his wife Christian (circa 1500) and labelled them in order to keep the idea fresh in my mind whenever I looked at that file. Putting it together was amazing really to see that it was possible to bring the line down to the modern day with lots of proof. That so many lines died out is probably not surprising; at least it didn't surprise me.

Probably because my Blake line was huge in the 1500s and 1600s but in the 1700s it dwindled with a Thomas Blake son of John Blake having just one son Thomas. Thomas married and had two sons, one died in infancy, and it was this one son Joseph from that huge set of lines that remained in the Andover area and moved to Upper Clatford and married Joanna King in 1757 (the priest noting on the marriage lines that Joseph was from Andover). So amazing really what you can find when you transcribe all the documents. But that is a story for the Blake family book in progress but it will be a couple of years before I complete that one along with the Pincombe book. I am thinking I will say three to four years rather than two years and give my mind lots of time to work on these and not rush myself. More exercise obviously to maintain my fitness level.

President-elect Trump is up and running. The last few days of his campaign were very impressive on his part for a 78 year old being 79 myself. He was there; he was active; he was engaged with the crowd. I would think that his legacy will be uppermost in his mind although he is always a business man for sure. But he has many grandchildren and he wants the best for them. So good luck to the 45th President and on to the 47th Presidency. Looking back over these four years has been a grinding process for every country of the world partly because Russia was unable to stay inside their borders and attacked their much smaller neighbour ruthlessly and ignorantly. History will not be kind. But also because we were recovering from the cruel devastation namely COVID-19. It damaged every economy and no one escaped in the world. The other great disaster in our world was Hamas (as the government of Gaza) attacking Israel in a cruel barbaric manner that aimed primarily at old people, women and children - even babies were killed or kidnapped and taken hostage back to Gaza where over a hundred still live in the underground. Hamas needs to go along with Hezbollah and the Houthis and even Iran. Their lifestyle is ignorant and barbaric and doesn't belong in our century or any really. Get out of Gaza and Lebanon Iran and your sycophants and peoples of the world get rid of your anti-semitism.

That being said, this new president (President-elect Trump) will not permit anything to happen to Israel of which I am very glad. Go for it. 

Today more work on the Siderfin books and reaching to that day when I can say; they are ready to publish and off my plate. 

Breakfast completed, morning exercise completed and Latin is next.

I suspect our American neighbours are glad election day has now happened

 Just as I am not sure that a woman could win as Prime Minister in Canada; a man has once again defeated a woman to become President of the United States. Although it sounds simplified I do wonder if that is the case. Wars are being fought and we think (and for a good reason likely) that a man is more likely to project strength. In his acceptance, the 45th President Donald Trump has said he will be President of all the American people as 47th President. It is good to hear that as their neighbour to the north. I am glad that he said that. I was surprised to see that this was pretty much all over by 5 a.m. this morning actually. The Republicans have also won the Popular Vote. 

That isn't to say women can not project strength; Nikki Haley is a very strong candidate in that way and if Kamala Harris had had more time her strength would have been more obvious. I think the next election will be very exciting actually in the United States. It was an ad that the GOP campaign ran that made me really think about the election in the United States; several women talking about the campaign and the ad basically ended with "Trump (45th President Trump) will keep me safe." I think the projection of power is a big part of elections especially with two wars ongoing (Ukraine invaded by Russia and Israel invaded by Hamas (the government of Gaza (with Hezbollah and the Houthis joining in and they are sycophants of Iran which is the main antagonist in all of this)).

Yesterday continuing accomplishment on the Companion Charting book for the Siderfin Family and I have now been through it once making the cosmetic changes to make it uniform throughout. Still the Name Index to complete and without the index there are 152 pages. I also got started correcting the revision I published nearly a year ago now. My this has been a busy but strange year - so much going on in this quiet person's life. Although I feel somewhat blocked in with the new fences it is good they are in and I will not have to be handling these sorts of things. That was a long event from beginning to ending and I had a few days of exhaustion that followed that event but recovered now. It is always hard dealing with people you do not know. My gardens at the fence are devastated but will remedy that in the spring when I see what bulbs/plants do come up.

Had my lovely run around the house for thirty minutes yesterday; usually I do not go outside running unless I have to do that; I had a question one day that I needed an answer to from my neighbour during the fence business and I could have just stopped running but once a runner starts running they hate to stop; an addiction I suppose. I usually run six days of the week for thirty minutes and then follow that by a fifteen minute walk which again I could do outside but I just walk around the house usually. COVID got me into that way of thinking and I have just continued it as I get older and older. I do try to get out for a bit of fresh air and usually have a cross the fence visit with the dog two doors up. He is a friendly dog and made friends with one of my granddogs when they stayed, she enjoyed chatting with him. The other one, just a pup, really was a bit frightened of him and that was a bit nosy but perhaps next time it will work out better. When he talks to me I know he is asking about her so I always tell him that she will come again one day but not today. He is a sweetheart for sure. 

So today more work on the Siderfin books and perhaps completion by the end of November; one can only hope and time will tell. My eyes are doing very well. They do get tired and I just stop and have a rest for a bit. But that is because I am old not because my eyes are less than what they were. Definitely this depth of vision is a great addition to my life. It can still surprise me sometimes especially when looking at something I have known all my life and suddenly I realize that I can see into it. Funny really. NO migraines is also a plus although I suppose I could still have one; no idea on that as I haven't yet. 

I did publish the Kip-Kipp Newsletter and put it up online and must remember to put that on Edward's blog. Trying to encourage other members of the study to become more involved to keep the Newsletter going but they may not want one particularly. It is basically several people with German Kipp ancestry and this old colonial line of Hendrick Hendricksen Kip who arrived in New Amsterdam from Amsterdam The Netherlands in the latter part of the 1630s. A lot of Kip families are descendant of this line and it is nice that so many came together to establish a base line set of results for genealogical purposes across the United States and Canada. Edward's line came to Canada as settlers in October 1800 leaving one of their children (Jonathan) with his maternal grandfather in Northeast Town, Dutchess County, New York. He would have been about eight I think and maybe he wanted to stay no ideas on that but definitely Jonathan Mead probably needed his help in his work (he was a Cooper). Most of his sons had moved to the Midwest by then. After Jonathan Mead died, Jonathan Kipp came to live with his family in the Oxford/Brant area sometime in the early 1820s where he was actually murdered in 1831. 

Breakfast completed, drinking my tea and Latin is next.

Cleaning day accomplished

 Always nice to have accomplished another cleaning day although I still have the basement today but it is greatly simplified. Sort of like how life simplifies when one becomes closer to 80. When my brother just a little older than me was struggling and in one of his last emails to me he said probably I am not going to write many more emails. I just felt that he was saying goodbye with that email. He lived seven hours away and my husband was very unwell so I did what I saw someone do when I was a child and I closed up the wagons around us because what was ahead was I thought a long period of being with my children's father and my husband as he worked his way along this struggle (it ended earlier than we thought but he knew what was ahead as well). I think I have come to think that when people want to stop communicating they do. I am probably like that. When you are old it is better to keep the circle small and you do not over extend yourself. I am very ready for that state of mind although do still send my emails out to family when great discoveries are made or something comes up that perplexes me. 

One of the last times I visited my grandfather as a child he explained to me that one of these days he would be gone to Heaven and I cried. But he said I should be happy for him because he would be with Bessie his wife and his parents and his siblings that had already passed and if he passed muster he would be with God (that was when he told me I was named after Bessie although I was given the full name of her mother Elizabeth whom my father remembered very well from his childhood). I was not quite eight years of age then. He said to be happy for him and so I wiped off the tears and we continued to converse as we always had; he told me stories about a country that I did not know but did finally visit and even walked the paths where he walked as a child. It was fun to do that and I shall be forever grateful to my cousin Ivan for making that possible. He too enjoyed the walk and I had no idea that two years later he would be gone. 

Right now my priorities are these books to get them off my plate and so I return to that tomorrow working away until I have accomplished that and try not to intrude or get distracted by anything because in reality God is there behind the veil waiting for us. So today is the basement and perhaps a little work on the books. I have not yet started to proofread the revision that I published. As I notice something I change it and that works. Then when the time comes I will read through it once again and then replace the copy online for downloading and I only submitted to a couple of repositories and I will ask to replace that copy if it is possible. I have no idea. At nearly 80 I will do my best to make sure the copies that are there are replaced with the corrected version. I shall apologize profusely but this is a limited book that just a few people really when you consider the population of the world are going to look at. I found mistakes in James Sanders book and fixed them so I feel satisfied that at least in this modern era one can correct after publishing if permitted. 

So forward and ahead to the day. Breakfast and then set the robot to work followed by Latin and the day and the week carries forward. Today is a warming trend  and there is to be rain.

Pershore Abbey in Worcestershire, The Abbey Church of the Holly Cross

 Absolutely stunning old Abbey in Worcestershire. The Britons have an amazing number of old Churches - the talent that went into building them was wonderful. 

The service was lovely and I felt very content to be able to attend a real All Saints Day Service if only online but at my age online is good. There are no commitments for me and to be in the company of Anglicans was a pleasant experience. 

Working on the Charting book and I am at page 138 - it has expanded somewhat as I found the letter size was maybe a bit small in some of them. Interesting I was actually shocked at the size of the type in the revised version that I published back in the winter last year. I now realize my eyes were really not up to doing that as I often thought the print was a bit small but in reality it is huge. That is part of the reason the book is so long. I suspect that the Blake and Pincombe books are also such larger type but I haven't looked at them since before the first surgery. Time just has flown by once I realized that I needed to do the Charting book for Siderfin. 

Lots of exercise yesterday through the day and it was a lovely quiet day. The sort of day that appealed to me when I was younger and wanting to read whatever it was I was reading. My teen years were spent doing a lot of reading. But also I was on a panel for one of the radio stations in London where I grew up. I can not remember the call sign although it might come to me. We discussed teenage thoughts and I think there was maybe six of us perhaps from different schools; I think it was a bit political I have forgotten now but we did talk about a lot of things. I did that for one year as I recalled with a friend that my grandmother had introduced me to. She is a lovely person and I last saw her at my uncle's funeral in 2003. Should have exchanged emails or something but mostly we were remembering my uncle and the time flew by and then we were on our way. Sort of one of those times in your life when you meet someone you knew in your teen years and by then I was 58 and I think her life had been busy as well but we enjoyed chatting; it was fun. Hard to believe that this loner did things like that when I think about it. 

Watched the news yesterday and still the Satanists of the world continue to threaten our desire for a peaceful existence. Strange really but then that is Satan; always causing trouble. It was interesting hearing that in Mecca the pilgrims stone Satan to rid Satan from their lives I guess. Without Satan we could truly have peace. 

Today the cleaning and it is the two floors so will be busy. I am getting more and more organized though and the time taken seems to be lessened. Basement on Tuesday.

 

All Saints Celebration

 One of my very favourite services is All Saints Day. I used to go when I still lived at home to the service even though it was during school time. It was and still is wonderful to hear the stories of the early Christians as they tried to follow Jesus' teachings to give everyone a better life. The online service today is an All Saints Day Service so will attend after breakfast. 

Yesterday was a day of thinking and working. I moved forward to page 117 in the Charting Book and slowly but surely it is coming to the end of the book but still another few days and then the need to continue the indexing and then proofreading and that should see the end of the book to completion. I will correct the original revision to eliminate my errors during my time of cataracts and then put them up on line. 

Then and only then I will move onto the Blake and Pincombe books once again. Today I need to work on the Kipp Newsletter. I just did not get to it yet. I am still thinking about what I want to say and it is more difficult because this is not my family line but it is the family line of my husband and children. The yDNA was what I generally worked on for the Kipp family and Edward did the autosomal DNA whilst I was and still am a co-administrator of the T2 mitochondrial haplogroup that is his and the Full T haplogroup.  Life has been busy for a while for me as I delved into yDNA and mtDNA. I was a slower comer to autosomal although did do all the testing. I just waited for quite a while as the matches flowed in before I really got into it. The Pincombe became the most interesting because so many of my cousins tested. Then so many Blake cousins tested that it to became quite interesting. I find my interest now lies more in the autosomal matches now then in the yDNA and mtDNA matches although these are also usual in research. I did manage to get a cousin to test our Pincombe line which has since been verified by a number of other testers. 

Daylight savings is over and I hope it is the last time that we move to daylight savings. I really prefer the brighter mornings and the dark evenings let me work away for hours and hours. But I am definitely a morning person mostly up every day at 6:00 a.m. just as I have been most of my life. It worked well for us when our children were small as Edward liked to stay up late and sleep in in the mornings. Although gradually he moved to going to bed earlier and getting up earlier which was nice and they do say it is healthier. I used to worry about his health staying up so late although didn't go on and on about it. Just kept it to myself. 

So my list for the day is breakfast first, then Church, then latin and then the newsletter and finally the Charting book. Mixed in will be my exercise routines and perhaps I will get into the backyard at least for fresh air. Although the air seems fresh enough inside as well to be honest. It is definitely hibernation time as there are fewer and fewer squirrels about. The chipmunks appear to have moved on with the new fence building although we will see if they return in the spring. Definitely the birds are gone with the feeders taken down now. Still see some birds but not so many. 

 

Saturday in God's World

Another beautiful Saturday. I loved Saturday as a child mostly because I didn't like going to school. I loved to learn and read everything I could manage. Saturdays were special. My father always got up early and made oatmeal porridge and I would go down from my attic solitude and he would fill a  bowl for me before he left for work. Sometimes we would chat a few minutes but then he was off. I just ate it like that; in the bowl without brown sugar and no adornments. Now I  make my own and it is cooked with raisins and cranberries and then blueberries are added at the end along with wheat germ, wheat bran and cocoa. Absolutely delicious and doesn't change from day to day to week to month to year. Possibly it could change but I doubt it. When I went out to work every day I did not make oatmeal. I usually had bran muffins that I cooked on Sunday to last the week. Love bran muffins and have not made any since Edward died. He liked them as well. So pretty soon time for breakfast but right now solitaire games, the daily Microsoft treat  on the computer. I also do the Weekly Challenge which gives me double the points once completed in the week. That is redone every week. It is just plain fun. 

When my children went to school I helped in the early years in the classroom once a week all year. I learned to appreciate the trials of a classroom teacher and understood much better why I was not happy in school. The lowest learner gets the prime amount of attention and in order to control the class you need rules that do not always fit for a student that is quite willing to move ahead and learn on their own. It is a challenge to have the slower students still working away on their arithmetic problems and a faster student reading because it looks like more fun to the slower students and they could become difficult in a classroom making the life of a teacher much harder. Interesting really what one learns as an adult. You do forget as you move along in school just how much you did learn in those early years. 

Yesterday was a busy day and I did a little work on the Siderfin family books. I will be glad to have them completed. Occasionally I mull around the thought - why ever did I do this, my Siderfin ancestor was my 3x great grandmother but it was the need to update James Sanders book that drove me. I am surprised no one did it until 110 years after he wrote it. He even in his Foreword emphasizes that his knowledge of genealogy is low and he hopes he will be forgiven for diving into this field of which he had low background. Myself, I should have realized how poorly my eyes were working. I had enough headaches to show that last year when I was working away at the text. So forward and onward and get this task completed so that I can get back to my parent's surnames and work on their books. 

It was nice to see the two big bags of raked up walnut leaves and stems go into the compost truck. There are more leaves and stems this year than last and the tree continues to grow at its usual miraculous rate of a walnut tree. They are basically a weed tree that grow in the woods but a squirrel must have planted a walnut in the backyard next door. It is too close to the fence and one day will take it out but not in my time. 

Now that fall is well into and the leaf cover is pretty much gone one can see the sky once again. The winter sky is beautiful. Usually bright blue and cold but you can see so much in the heavens wherein God dwells watching and waiting for us to do the right things. He gave all the instructions we just have to do it and live a better life on the uplifted plain of peace. It always seems within our grasp but Satan slithers in and takes it away (Russia and Iran you know who you are - Satan for sure). 

Onto the day and breakfast is next. Then Latin and another new week of Latin begins on Monday. I am getting to the end of the lessons. But I will continue to work away on practise sessions into next year and start to work on my French once again. I may eventually also bring my German up to scratch. It is just plain fun. 

Hallowe'en

A quiet Hallowe-en on this street with just a few children wandering from door to door. That is pretty usual the last ten years actually. I still wonder about the custom of children going door to door but it is a custom. 

More work on the Siderfin book yesterday and I am on page 108, slowly working my way towards the end of the book. I occasionally have to redo the chart because I think the lettering is just too small and that was the case once again with one yesterday. The page count is now 136 without indexes. It will shorten a little but not a lot. Most lines reach up to 1900 or slightly into 1900 which is fine as I think these days most know their grandparents and great grandparents. 

Latin moving along and my fingers are itching to get at those transcriptions of Blake and Pincombe material that I have collected up. I have had a cursory glance at most of the material but indepth is needed to see if they are valuable to the book.

November 1st and the Kipp Newsletter is due. I have not yet written it but will do so today. It will only discuss yDNA discoveries as a result of the Y-700 testing that was done on Edward's sample. It has actually led me on the path I thought it would which is good as it makes it easier for me to continue following through with that. YDNA is perhaps the most interesting as the surname stays basically the same. mtDNA has proven to be interesting with my line partly because of the questions it does not answer thus provoking one to look at it more intently. 

I raked for about 1.5 hours yesterday and the dreadful stems and leaves of the walnut tree are now bagged. They do poison the soil for a lot of plants. Plus it is only about 30 centimetres from the fence so will eventually destroy it or displace it. No idea why people let trees grow up along the fence line actually. I have a maple I have to get out of the fence on the other side and will do that soon. 

Other than that the warming spell is meant to dissipate and colder weather to arrive but no snow yet in the forecast that I have seen but I have not been paying a great deal of attention to the weather lately. Once I am inside for the winter I seldom notice since it doesn't affect me very much since I have a company to clear the snow. 

Breakfast soon and then Latin. Exercises to follow and more work on the Siderfin Book later today. I worked too hard yesterday and got a slight headache so will take it easier today. 

Page 90

I am up to Page 90 with the Companion Book doing cross reference and generally cleaning up the text (it does come out of my Notes in Legacy so sometimes a bit wordy). Yesterday was a lazy day after all that fresh outdoor walking which I do really enjoy. I reread part of "My Story" which has now taken on a life of its own as it now includes all of these blogs that I have written from the beginning of COVID to the present happily without COVID as part of our daily routine although it is cropping up again here and there. I must get my next COVID shot which is due in November to December. I generally go for six months apart and the new shot is apparently available now. I have been lucky not to have COVID for sure. My Flu Shot is booked and will likely do that one first and then a couple of weeks later will do the COVID shot. 

Never went out the door yesterday actually; one of those days. The part of My Story that I read was from birth to five years. There are a couple of thousand of pages now in My Story although it is mostly about my close family - husband and children and myself. I meandered through life but all those met along the way for the most part are not in my story; primarily they were friends of Edward in adulthood on my part and as a child I avoided people for the most part since I already had wall to wall people at home! Just some of my thoughts and Part 1 takes me right through to our marriage day which is quite short actually at 100 pages with pictures. I tried to get Edward to write His Story for the children and finally we did sit together (which was the only way he said it was getting written) and did that. I did blog that just after Edward died telling his story as I knew it up to our marriage. The rest of My Story does include Edward so is in a way Our Story with a lot of pictures. Now it is back to My Story and all that is in there is what is written in my blog as it turns out. 

Today work on the Companion Book will continue. I may start scanning Edward's thesis and doing OCR page by page. That way I can insert the charts and graphs as *.TIFF images for longevity. All the work that he did on the Tours he gave back to the groups that took the tours. I have electronic data for all of that. Then of course he did the Story of Our Marriage in Picture Albums which I am slowly putting into Powerpoint Presentations. Never a dull moment in time ever throughout our marriage actually. There was always something that Edward wanted to do. The calm and restful period has actually been good for me as I have slowly moved from wifehood to widowhood. 

There is a scam by the way where you receive what looks like an e-transfer and quite accurate in its rendition but I am not receiving an e-transfer (I would know if I was) and so I deleted it. One must watch these days for the scum of the earth as they appear in your mailbox. Too bad they do not get out there and do proper work instead of trying to scam people. I seldom answer the phone unless I recognize the number or am expecting a call. Email works as I do read everything including the Spam - my Sewer and Water Bill was in the Spam yesterday. One must check. 

Solitaire games are next and then Breakfast and followed by Latin as always. Thank you God for another beautiful day in your world. Would that we take better care of it and protect it from those who threaten us with nuclear weapons. All my life that threat has hung over the Western Hemisphere. It is so childish and ignorant. 

Snow Tires on

 I am ready for the snow with my snow tires on yesterday. The walk home from the car facility was great although a bit different in that my way is controlled by a lot of construction. However, I managed it very well and had a good brisk 2 kilometre walk and then back again later to pick up the car. Again my vision is so much clearer now that the cataracts are gone. But you do not really notice that it is somewhat less clear because it is a gradual thing. Mind you I hardly ever drive on my own; it is rare and becoming rarer. I could drive all the time but I prefer to have a second person with me. As I approach 80 and my driving test whatever that will mean, I do wonder whether a decision will be made in my favour. We will see and I will accept whatever the decision as it does not affect me that much really in the long run. I seldom drive. 

Cleaning all accomplished except for one room which I will complete today. Other than that the week is open for work which is great. Yesterday the high school children collected canned food for those in need at this time of the year. They bring a note to the mailbox and have a fixed date and time which works very well for me. 

Since COVID I have not participated in Hallowe'en and that will continue this year. I do not know any of the children and really I wonder at the value of this custom as we didn't do it when I was a young child. I can remember it later as I used to walk with my youngest siblings whilst they went to the door but it wasn't something that I liked doing and we used to go to a party at school as I recall when I was young all dressed up in our costumes. I went with my older siblings. I did consider just putting out a bowl of wrapped candies but decided that probably wouldn't work well either so will just stay dark. 

Working on the charting book today once I get things done that didn't get finished yesterday. I am up to Page 75 now so over half way. Then back to indexing and perhaps one can see the light at the end of the tunnel for this book. Time will tell. 

I need to rake up the leaves and stems from the walnut tree next door as they poison the yard over time. It will likely be two bags I think and will try to get that done once the sun comes out and drys that up as we had a heavy rain last night. I am looking forward to grass all over the middle of the yard instead of the large garden area. It will be so much easier to manage grass than a garden. We can still garden along the one side although the new fence is quite dense so probably not in that area. We will see what comes up as when the fence went in my yard took the beating with most of the plants gone from that area. However there were bulbs there. It does seem like I am corralled in to the yard now although I do not mind but it is the lack of sun in the morning that I would have liked to have had but I am not staying and I am sure other people will prefer the privacy that it affords. 

Working on the solitaire games and then breakfast time and the day continues into exercise periods and work periods. I love this routine; it suits me at this time of my life. Do I miss all the people that Edward brought into my life? No, I am not really a people person as he was although it was interesting meeting all of those people that he enjoyed being with for sure. I did recognize quite a few names when I was at the Conference although did not attend the social times. The closer I get to 80 the more I cling to my time as I  have many things I want to get done.

The Before and After of Cataract Surgery is truly amazing

I had no idea that my sight was that affected by my cataracts to be honest. Had I realized I never would have published the book before surgery. I just thought I needed to get it done and really had no idea that my eye sight was not as good as I thought it was. But when the first eye was operated on (my weak eye actually) all of sudden to my shock my living room ceiling was pure white with the operated eye once it cleared. But if I covered that eye my other eye saw just yellow and it was not sharp at all like the other eye which was my weaker eye. The weaker eye still is weaker but it never ceases to amaze me just how much it improved by the cataract surgery. I would not say the stronger eye is that different except I can read signs without my glasses because my strabismus appears to be gone. 

But back to the book. As I work my way through the companion charting book I am finding all sorts of little things in the already published book. I will republish it at the same time as this Companion Book is published. They belong together and if the one book wasn't already 412 pages I would put them together but it is really  nicer to have the two books side by side and I have put in the reference page number to go back to the earlier book as you work through the charts. 

Still waiting for comments on the original book because I am making a few assertions that create a slightly different descent than James Sanders had. Indeed James simply skipped over the descent and just started a new line although at first glance it looks like he is fitting them together but in actual fact he does not. Plus I disagreed with the middle section coming down from Robert 3 (William 2, John 1) to his sons William 4 and Robert 4. Indeed none of Robert 4's children appear on the chart and the one that does appear as a son of Robert 4 belongs to William 4. But no disagreements at all; I did expect a few comments questioning what I wrote but I did have documents to back it up every time so perhaps that is why. 

Working away on the book yesterday and will continue through the week. Not sure when I will finish it because I will republish the earlier one as well so it could be on into November before they see the light of day in publication. It is giving me lots of thinking time when I am not working on Siderfin for the Blake and Pincombe families. Plus I do have latin material that I need to work through for both of these books and it is not yet in the earlier parts of the book mostly because I do not at this time know what they say and whether they pertain to what is written in the book or are just miscellaneous material that could be interesting. Once I get into the generations I do have lots of wills to put in to verify my movement forward through the generations. 

Beautiful views of the moon this month and we are now into the ever dwindling slipper moon as it slowly works it way to the new moon and then back again. Should get the big telescope out but probably not happening. Although the tree cover is disappearing and the early mornings have been really beautiful. 

The day begins. Breakfast awaits. Cleaning day two and then back to the working week. 

A very interesting weekend

The Church Service was at Nelson Street Church in Rochdale near Manchester in Lancashire. On one of our tours we did go through the suburbs of Manchester as we headed for Wales, or it was off in the distance. A number of the Knight families moved to Lancashire during the latter part of the 1800s for work likely. My own did not remaining in the south of England. My father did remember some of his uncles moving away in particular his grandmother Blake's brother who moved first to that area I think he said and then to Canada and he lived out west with his family. I have been in touch with a descendant. I must write to her again. The Service was very musical and modern I would say but that is the magic of these online services; the variety is huge and welcomed. I fitted that in when the Conference finished for the day. Another bonus of online Church. You never miss a service. 

The Conference was really good. When I saw it was on Irish research I thought I really must try to remember to go (should be easy it is online) but somehow I forgot last year in the busyness so I printed out the Conference Schedule (rare for me to print anything) and put it on my desk to keep it front and centre in my mind. The last talk did generate a question on my part from a purely scientific point of view I was curious if there was any data on the frequency of Palatine (i.e. German/French) ethnicity in the Irish population. I hadn't quite anticipated his answer but it said to me that this group has maintained a sort of distinctiveness through the three hundred years since they arrived. It sort of fitted it to my thoughts on my great grandmother from whom I inherited my mtDNA which is mentioned on the Blood of the Isles database so thought to be ancient to the British Isles and located primarily in Argyllshire/Ayrshire. But I have this percentage of French/German that I simply can not really account for such a large amount if my Huguenots arrived in the 1400s (which they did into Devon) I would not see 20% for them; even my Charley family in Devon in the latter part of the 1700s did not really yield me an ancestress that would carry that much French/German to pass on to me. I inherited rather well from my great grandmother just because of the way that DNA splits. My siblings inherited Irish but I inherited French/German. So do I have a Palatinate ancestor? one wonders and will keep it on my plate to keep looking at. I have a sort of family line for Ellen Taylor and her husband has her born in Birmingham on the census. My grandmother said she was 37 when she died and that fits in with the birth of an Ellen Taylor to the Thomas Taylor and Ellen (Roberts) Taylor family in Birmingham. It has sat on the back burner for a very long time but matches have been coming in that are interesting and that led to my looking once again at that elusive Irish ancestry that my siblings have (mine is around 2% so not significant really). I bought eight certificates for Ellen Taylor born in Birmingham in that time period giving her an age between 32 and 43. Unless she was not registered in which case no ideas on that. Anyway an interesting pursuit ahead for me to follow up on in my spare time. 

Lovely walk to the drug store and back; the fresh air is wonderful on a crisp October day; it was minus 4 degrees celsius. No snow yet but time will tell. The markers are in my laneway now to clear the snow when it does come.

Breakfast done and must do my Latin. Cleaning day, the basement is first. 

BIFHSGO Conference 2024 - Day Two

 The Breakout Rooms are quite interesting mostly listening to what the experts are saying. I have some work that needs to be done in Ireland and these individuals are excellent and will contact them to do the work. I just had that thought yesterday. Hopefully they are in the business of doing such things. 

I was going to ask a question in Galway breakout group but it was busy and I am not really in much of a rush - it involves the Blake yDNA group at FT DNA - a curiosity. Will investigate that. The yDNA study for Blake at FT DNA is quite interesting and I have a couple of investigative thoughts for them. There are two results for Big Y for my line and both are known to be ancient to the British Isles. Going before the early 1300s is unlikely in this name grouping as I think my line acquired that surname in this time period possibly in a marriage as there are likely candidates - a John Blake in the Manor Records. There is continued correspondence within the wills of the Andover Blake family with the Blake family first in Oxford and later in Wiltshire. Must get into those Manor Books. My latin has improved considerably this last year as I made it my concentration during the time of lessening sight and then cataract surgery and recovery. Making it a priority was a really good idea. I think it made the recovery time much smoother as I still had something to work at and my daughter helped me until I could easily spend time on the computer again. She is also learning latin with me. She has so many languages now that she is either fluent in or could become fluent in readily so Latin didn't seem like a big addition. It only takes a few minutes a day really to stay with the course but to become good one needs to do more than that perhaps up to one hour a day as a minimum for this 79 year old and sometimes I put in more time. 

I then headed into Antrim Breakout Room and the two people there were excellent and knowledgeable. I do not actually have a question. I have not really looked at the Irish research possibilities; I just have family lore in that regard. Now I am in the Dublin Breakout Room and again the people are excellent. Dublin interests me because the close match (he has only tested a few markers though but the first few are quite distinctive for my line) to my brothers' yDNA is there; at least when  he tested at FT DNA. So continuing with the Breakout Room in Dublin but once again no questions on my part.

This has been an excellent Conference. I do find these Conferences to be really good and the online feature is perfect. Stirring myself out and about is something I mostly do in my hunter/gatherer process of acquiring food although I could order it as well but I am enjoying the walk up to the Grocery Store and Drug Store as needed. 

Back to the Siderfin Books tomorrow. I am actually pleased to find the errors in the published book (not pleased that I made them of course) and will correct those errors and put an errata page into the front of the corrected copy for those who do not want to download it again. The computer is such a lovely addition to our lives in that I got into computers in the mid 1960s and have been more or less attached to one ever since as we bought a home computer in the early 80s so just a six year break for me from computers. 

Spending this time on Irish genealogy has been a really good idea. I have family lore that my maternal great grandmother (mother of my maternal grandmother) was of Irish descent. She was born in Birmingham though likely as her husband identified Birmingham as her birthplace. I have been looking at the ethnicity as the percentage of Irish is surprisingly high in my siblings (not so much in my case) but also French/German which is where my higher level occurs. I had never thought of the Palatines in Ireland but this talk now on (which is excellent actually) is talking about My Ancestors were Irish - or were they? It is something that has often been in my mind whenever I chanced to think about it actually. Her favourite song was "Donny Boy" and well remembered by my maternal grandmother as her mother died when she was only 11 years of age. Her hair was black as a raven my grandmother said and her eyes blue and she had the white skin of the Irish apparently. So was she Irish? are only the Irish black haired, blue eyed and white skinned? I wonder now about the Palatine which would account for my large enough percentage of French/German although by far English predominates with these others 20% or less). The surname was Lawley (Lawler is found in Ireland but Joseph Lawley was likely in Shropshire for more than his own generation) in the 1700s but I can not tell very much about Joseph's wife (Joseph was the father of Ellen Lawley who married Thomas Roberts whose daughter Ellen married Thomas Taylor the likely parents of my great grandmother Ellen Taylor). I am now learning that the Huguenots also came to Ireland and I definitely have Huguenot ancestry. So very very interesting this talk. I need to look at this Irish percentage though carefully as my Charley family was also said to be Charley and coming down on the maternal side as well with Mary Charly marrying John Pincombe in 1767. the combination of these two lines could account for Irish perhaps since they both occur in my mother's lines. Still looking for Joseph Lawley's marriage. Back to the talk. Quite fascinating actually. I must extract the ethnicity information as it is a changing item through the years as more and more blocks of individuals who have lived in areas for a long time are available for comparison. 

The last talk was actually quite fascinating. I did ask a question finally whether the speaker had looked at the % German ethnicity and % Irish ethnicity within the Palatine community still living in Ireland. He had not and that more or less answered my question; this is possibly an isolated population within another country that has maintained their cultural and ethnic heritage for long enough to have given me a great grandmother who passed my mtDNA to me likely from a planter family (original location Ayrshire/Argyllshire) coming to Ireland in the time of Cromwell and then much later marrying into a Palatine family in the late 1700s with a grandaughter that was mother to my grandmother. I may yet solve the ancestry of my maternal great grandmother's line and that of her grandfather Joseph Lawley in Shropshire England. I have inherited quite a bit from this particular ancestor (my grandmother's mother) by comparing the flow within five siblings of the DNA from our ancestors. I have a large portion of German/French ancestry that I really cannot account for (still it is in the 20% range) which means it isn't that far back. But a population that retains its German ethnicity within Ireland could have produced an ancestor for me that appears Irish (but I have only a small percentage of Irish, but my siblings have more) but actually carries German ancestry from the Palatines. Interesting thought actually and I would not have come to that without the discussions this weekend. Now I just need to find time to look at that. I am busy writing books it would appear.

BIFHSGO Conference 2024

 Watching the BIFHSGO Conference. Most interesting. I did misinterpret the titles a little. The "Using DNA in the North of Ireland" I anticipated a discussion on projects and indeed more than half of the time was on their projects. I should realize that it really is necessary to review DNA and the particular value of each type of DNA to a project in most presentations. The speaker Martin McDowell did an excellent job. I have family lore on an Irish ancestor and two of my siblings show up with a large portion of Irish origin sufficient that one would think a great grandparent/2xgreat grandparent. That is basically the family lore that my great grandmother was Irish. However she was born in Birmingham, Midlands, England and it does look like her mother was born there as well and her mother. But it is this mother (the grandmother of the great grandmother) who has a possible Irish surname Lawley. That is what makes maternal  DNA so interesting. Since I have five siblings tested I have collected up all of their matches at all of the databases but have not really looked at these matches in terms of ethnicity. Perhaps time will come to me to do that one of these days. The next speaker has the title "how to use Hints, ...." I almost never follow hints and I was thinking family lore with this one but has also proven to be very interesting and is ongoing now. I am finding the process she is using to be quite interesting. 

The first lecture was also very interesting and entirely what I thought he would cover. My mysterious mtDNA line which has both Irish and Scot ancestry and is ancient to the British Isles according to the Blood of the Isles database. I manage the FT DNA project for the H11 haplogroup where this mtDNA is found. Generally the members are in Eastern Europe for the most part or descend from Eastern European ancestors so has proven to be quite fascinating. My line (two of my siblings are tested including me) arrived in Scotland very early. Perhaps significantly the commoner line that is almost identical but has one extra mutation not shared by my matches or my sibling and it is at least thirty times more frequent in the British Isles than ours. Possibly our line reverted back to the original value. Most members of the study with the extra mutation are in southern England whereas those without the mutation are in Scotland or Ireland. The North in Ireland project is interesting in this regard as they are looking at autosomal DNA. I have not done that with the mtDNA project that I manage although occasionally I do take a peak at the results by looking at some of the results using the tools to do so. 

Next session is the Conference Connect where questions can be posed to the speakers. I actually do not have any questions but will likely head into that portal as well to have a listen. I will prepare a query to see if it would be of any value to the project to pass in what I have on my mtDNA line eventually. Family lore is always interesting I think but no real facts yet so will probably continue to investigate but think about the North in Ireland project. 

First Genealogy Conference, outside of the involvement that I had with some medical projects, for the last few years that I have attended. It has proven to be most interesting. It is always informative to hear how other people work through information. Last year I did register but forgot to attend as I was working on my Siderfin revision book. Tomorrow looks equally interesting.

There is nothing like reliving your work as you produce charts

I made a consistent error right through the descendants of Thomas 9, Robert 8, Augustine 7, Robert 6, John 5, Robert 4, Robert 3, William 2, John 1 to the end. I am always consistent unfortunately. There is a John 7 in this line of succession with the children of Thomas 9 that should be Augustine 7 right through. I will I think republish the book with that correction. I was probably a little bit eye strained by then and simply did not notice it. Apologies to one and all. I did set my timeline and tried to keep to it and that was a mistake so will not repeat that with this book. There is plenty of time and my other books will just wait. I will do that right away and then alter the *.pdf that is up on the blog eventually. Given that the Thomas line is very large I should never have missed that but I am 79 now and mistakes get made. The nice thing about electronic is that you can correct them (using search and replace (although I did check each one before replacing - replaced 100)) especially if you notice them.  I actually have it right on page 118 where Thomas first occurs but I did Thomas differently as I was using someone else's work (the error is all mine though) also right on page 188 where Thomas is mentioned as an adult; the first reference page 118 he is as a child of Robert and Grace (Kent) Siderfin and then on page 188 he is an adult married first to Sibble and later Dorothy. 

I did have this sort of nagging notion that I should delay the publication until I did the Charting book as it is a good check back and forth throughout the book. But I didn't do it. I had thought I would have comments on the changes that I made to James Sanders' flow of people in his Pedigree Chart but so far  no comments. Several of my siblings have strong matches with the Farmer family descendant of Thomas as well as very strong matches with the descendants of Charlotte Rew Griffith but my ancestor Elizabeth Rew Pincombe was her twin so not surprising. One would expect fifth cousin but their matches were more in the area of third cousin. The Farmer matches are fifth cousin (strong actually a couple of them more like fourth). A number of Siderfin descendants have tested on all of the different companies. 

So continuing with my checking the charting book although at a conference today.

 

Continuing work on the Charting book for the Siderfin Family

It is slow work though, working through the charting book and I am on page 41 so just a little under one third of the way through. I am putting in references back to the revised book and sometimes to James Sanders original book.  It does not look like I will be finished by the end of October though. But my eyes continue to be the slowing down aspect of the work as they were last year before cataract surgery. They are getting old and must have rest periods. 

I was thinking about all the likely hundreds of different people who have actually been driven by me over the years (aside from my husband and children) but I have been in a lot of volunteer organizations through the years mostly volunteered by Edward but some of them I volunteered to be in because it interested me - like helping out in the classroom of both of my children's classes and helping out with book fairs and things like that in the school which I consider to be really valuable. Children can buy books at cheap prices although since COVID one does wonder at that sort of thing but we are moving along and less susceptible to diseases once again. Time will tell on that.

So today is another work day and we will see how much I accomplish. I am also working on OCRing my husband's thesis which is a good not eye straining project, at least not the scanning of the pages. 

Breakfast time and then Latin. 

More accomplishment yesterday

 Slowly moving ahead and I got started working on Edward's thesis to put it up on line. Although the work was done from 1966 to 1970 when he completed his PhD, he continued to be cited years and years later around the world. It was exciting for him and helped to make the change much more amenable to him as the years passed. My daughter suggested I OCR the text which is actually a good idea and then I can scan the images as *TIFFs without being concerned about the size. I will convert it to an *.pdf for easy upload. I actually typed this thesis so we have a clean still relatively new looking original copy.

I also worked on the Charting book and this is the more difficult part when I took the available data and added a John to the family of John and Mary (Chapman) Siderfin born circa 1684 and the information in the second wife's will (Maria (Winter) Siderfin) provided me with a granddaughter for this John Siderfin - Joanna accounting for that interesting birth and removing it from the Robert Siderfin/Joanna (Kittner) Siderfin family as I do not believe they had any children. It certainly gave it credence and having a Robert Siderfin as a witness to the marriage contract and marriage for John certainly made the case for this being the William line and not the Robert line as shown on James Sanders' Pedigree Chart. It is not really a big deal but it prevented the actual flow from Robert 4 (Robert 3, William 2, John 1) second son of Robert from having descendants that were actually his and live still into this century carrying the Siderfin surname. 

A little attention to my Powerpoint projects as well. This does help to break up my day and to give me more space to make sure I get all my exercise in as well in a timely and spread out fashion. 

I was contemplating the comment made by an Australian Senator to King Charles in Australia. He said "not my King" and I am left to wonder why people get so hung up on this. Charles is a figurehead; he has very good intentions with regard to the world and represents one of the earliest adopters to organic farming on a commercial scale, one of the earliest voices concerned about the environment and has an enormous love for the people of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. He does not interfere in any country including his own which is a democratic monarchy. So why the comment? Is it a bit outdated to make these comments; he is after all only a figure head. Where else would we get a figurehead who has no interest in their own advancement - he is already at the pinnacle of his position in life and probably desires nothing more. He is non-opinionated as the King despite his having opinions as a lesser royal. Personally I thought he was entitled to them and make good points throughout his life. I found it interesting that he did not interfere in his son's choice of wives and has been a wonderful father in law to both. He loves his grandchildren but his time appears to belong to the people of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth although he does get involved in worldly happenings on occasion when his health permits. Although I would not carry signs and become opinionated verbally if a decision was made to turn us into a republic but I would wonder at the value in that and the cost of change over and the chances that we would actually benefit from an elected head of state personally. But then I am of 100% British heritage and do realize that I see all of this from that standpoint. 

Breakfast done, Latin completed and next the Charting book before weightlifting. 

Any accomplishment yesterday?

Yesterday was a slow day; I developed a headache part way through the afternoon which simply slowed me down for the remainder of the day. I mostly kept away from the computer and watched the TV although not a lot of that either. It is gone today which is nice and prior to the cataract surgery it would have lingered interestingly enough through the next day somewhat. I am being careful again today not to strain my eyes overly but for the most part my eyes seem somewhat back to normal. Migraines plagued me ever since I was a teenager and to have escaped them is quite amazing actually. I had my own "old wives' tales" methodologies for dealing with them as I had tried medications but did not really find them to be a solution in the long run. Adjustment of life style was actually the solution; total adjustment of life style. I simply rested for two or three days; did not try to do anything that was straining on my eyes and that was the solution that worked best in the long run. Avoiding the triggers for the migraines was really the answer and gradually I did manage to separate the triggers out and avoided those particular situations which set my nerves on edge. In a way it was returning to the days of my youth when I was very much a hermit. 

So today, I shall do all my exercises which I do really enjoy. I believe I am an exercise fanatic actually. Edward did think so but he did not mind and would join me in some of the exercises. I think he would have liked to have run and did try way back when we were first married. But he simply was not able to run. Strange really but he said that even during his high school days he could not take part in that type of physical activity. I had that in mind when our children were young and was always prepared to run after them never letting them out of my sight since I knew he could not run. Children move quickly and do do things on occasion that one needs to be prepared for; that is for certain. 

Not too much time today on the computer so will move on to my next task. Breakfast completed and it is 9:00 a.m. already. I am late today. 

Cleaning day accomplished

First time since the cataract surgeries I have managed to do both floors in the one day with time to spare actually I was finished at 4:00 in the afternoon. Today the basement will be cleaned and then back to work. I will investigate getting into that paint can towards the end of the week to work on the blue paint in between working on the book. 

I completed the second year of Ancient Apocalypse with Graham Hancock and it was certainly interesting. Brought back all of my older daughter's discussion in her early teens on the peoples of South America, Central America and Mexico. She found all of that history and known artifacts to be fascinating. I sort of thought she might become an archaeologist but she chose words with her PhD in Library and Information Science. She is definitely a linguist; loves languages and speaks several fluently and has a knowledge of others that could be rekindled quickly. We brought back a reproduction of the Mayan Calendar when we visited Tulum in Mexico nearly a decade ago now. Fascinating ruins and we took many pictures for our daughter as it was not possible for her to come. I had never thought to go to Mexico but I am glad that we did as Edward loved the floral displays in the resort and spent quite a bit of time looking at all the plants. The Gulf of Mexico is a beautiful colour and the beach sparkling white. It was really quite beautiful.

Graham Hancock's discoveries and introductions into the world of forensic archaeology have been quite fascinating with their relation to the God of the Universe in my mind. That we are a third or fourth peopling of the earth is equally fascinating and understanding given the times we live in with the recklessness of the Satanistic peoples of the world - namely Putin and his enablers with their invasion of the sovereign country Ukraine and Iran and their sycophants Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis attempting to commit genocide against the Jewish people and steal their land from them (the ancient lands of their ancestors).  

Today will be a return to the Charting Book and I am on page 19 of what will be a more or less final run through although will read it one more time after this. It is only 136 pages minus indexes thus far and just a pleasant couple of hours read. I am better satisfied with the result and can not think why I skipped a generation in my charting. Possibly I was tired still and just wanted to be finished but the short cut is usually the wrong idea for sure as the full story brings out a better solution. 

Solitaire games played and the spider was especially interesting today. Breakfast, then set up the Robot to clean the rugs and then Latin whilst the Robot does the work vacuuming today. It is 10 degrees celsius and a cold front moving in again after a few days in the 20s (and I was never outside at all, really I have returned to my hermit days in the year which tends to extend right into next April). In and out a bit but not much; it is my working time on the various projects that I have plus working on my husband's papers and things whilst I try to get them all published. It is a much slower process then I thought it would be. I was realizing the last few days that I never really appreciated that Edward was creating a lifetime in pictures from our marriage onwards with the albums. We looked at them often enough especially right after he created the then new one but through the years I had never really thought about them very deeply possibly because life was too busy and now I have time to think about all of these things. Well sort of; life is still really busy.

 

FitBit has given up

My FitBit no longer syncs with my phone; I can pair it with the phone but it doesn't stay paired. Perhaps bluetooth is  no longer working on the Fitbit; it lost eight minutes yesterday in time. So I need to think about a new Fitbit as I do like the idea of wearing one. It does still do the number of steps and some other automatic items that are not dependent on syncing with the app. That gives me lots of time to think about the type of Fitbit I would like to buy. I am not in a rush. It was interesting being able to look at the effect on my system when I ran or walked or did weightlifting or yoga/calisthenics but not absolutely necessary; just interesting. The sleep pattern was interesting too; I learned a great deal about sleep actually. So I probably can see what I want in a Fitbit and will look around to see what is new now. This was a Charge 5 and I think I have had it for three years nearly. The one before that was more basic and it is still working actually. The more complicated the system; the shorter its time span perhaps. There is simply more that can go wrong.

Did some work on the Siderfin Charting book and I am more or less into the final run through in terms of making changes; reorganizing although none of that will happen in the first 58 pages as I have been through that already once. I am at Page 19 and it is cleaning day. I may go back to doing the two floors in one day once again now that I am organized for that. I just had a lot of little items to do on each floor so doing just one floor a day worked well. But now I do not want to spend half of the week with cleaning days. 

The Church Service out in the fields primarily was very welcomed. The fields of Cornwall are quite lovely having been there twice. We walked around the golf resort that we stayed at the last time; we skipped going into the city to just have a breather before the last couple of days in England. It was fun; we both enjoyed the lovely walk. It was our last trip to Europe and also our 50th Wedding Anniversary back in 2016. We celebrated that on the flight home as it was the same day. We had already been to where the group was going that day and although it was fun we hadn't really walked around for hours just enjoying the fresh air and the singing of the birds in England. Everything was totally planned for us by the touring companies except for the extras close to the hotels that we added in in the various cities where ever we ended up for the evening. The children sang a beautiful song that reminded me of my childhood when we did such things in school where a list of items was created and then the song collected the list by the end. The older children of course did it very well but the younger ones were still learning that idea of rote learning. We memorized everything when we were children; that was the way we learned. Having it at your fingertips is nice as an adult but memorizing is very important when you are a child even yet. 

Graham Hancock has added a second year to Ancient Apocalypse on Netflix and I watched four of the chapters yesterday. The subtitle is The Americas and we spent most of our time in South America and then over to the Easter Islands. The discoveries have been amazing in the last ten years. 

The loss of peoples because of the introduction of communicable diseases by the Spanish was horrific for this culture in the Western Hemisphere. It was always likely to happen; preventing it is something we can do now. That is perhaps the gain in our society since I was a child; but it doesn't always happen unfortunately because there are evil satanic people who are greedy. At the moment the ones suffering are the Israelis and the Ukrainians amongst others but their trials are the most visible. The depth of the evil displayed by Hamas is huge; preparing the Palestinian people for this huge sacrifice cruel and indifferent on the part of Hamas. I am not familiar with Palestinians but I assume they actually did want and do want to have a country; their choice of Hamas was made freely by them but ridding themselves of Hamas will be difficult - they are extremely sick satanic people who would use and did use the children and women of that country to try to influence the world in an empathetic way which has not worked because we can see that Hamas is evil. Hamas is the problem and of course their leader/supporter/contributor is Iran. There is really no end in sight as Hamas will use the Palestinians right down to the last person. Then Hamas will try to escape at the end and join up with Hezbollah and do the same to the Lebanese people again thinking that people will hate Israel if they do that. The minds of Hamas are so corrupt that they can not see that they are driven by Satan and this evil they commit is wrong. It is sad really. It reminds me of the story of the Aztecs who were evil and the other peoples in that part of the Americas asked the conquistadors to help them defeat the Aztecs. That was smart of them although the diseases brought by the Spanish conquistadors possibly wiped out 90% of the people in this hemisphere they got to survive and live on today.

Today the cleaning, first the solitaire games and then breakfast. It is ten degrees celsius and although it says it is clear; the city lights are too bright to really see much in the heavens. God Bless the world and we need to follow His teachings in order to reach that plain of peace and brotherly love.