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.
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