The rules of God in Leviticus

  In order to live and work with God, the Israelites had to follow all the rules precisely and exactly. But most importantly they must never forget that it was God that brought them out of  bondage in Egypt to the Promised Land. Every day every hour their obedience to God was under constant scrutiny and it must be perfect or they would be punished. Leviticus is a very difficult book of the Bible. Jude, the brother of Jesus Christ, although he called himself a bond slave of his brother, said that Jesus came to earth to be the Saviour of all mankind. We just had to follow the two commandments always - love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and love our neighbour as ourself. Then the world would find peace; but is that my interpretation that the world would find peace. I am searching for that as I re-read the Bible. 

Usually Monday is a cleaning day but we were off to deliver late birthday presents and go swimming. It was a lovely gentle day for me. Being 80 plus has given me a different perspective on life. I am gentler as a person although my hermit tendencies are even stronger. It is rare for me to ever answer the door unless I am expecting someone. I discovered it had become rare when I did actually answer it the other day rather than never. But I suspect it will go back to never again. 

We also did something we do not generally do as we picked up our dinner at the grocery store. A lovely dinner of roast chicken, potatoes and salads was enjoyed by us a bit late but enjoyable none the less.  Usually we prepare everything pretty much from scratch but yesterday was an exception. 

Today I clean and it is the top floor and I have done a little of the preparation to get that done. I will clean the bathroom first and that is very soon after I finish my blog likely although I may play a couple of solitaire games first. There are always five of them and I do the hardest one first of all and then I have a fixed order that I follow always ending with Spider unless it is the hardest one. I love doing Spider solitaire game the best of all. 

I went out first thing and watered the tomato plants and it is to be another very hot day and the flowers are now on all of the plants. We will see if they produce fruit as the land is not strong after 50 years of growing. Vegetable crops are especially hard on the land leaching out all the vitamins and minerals in the land. But this land has been allowed to be fallow for two years and perhaps it will have regained some of its strength plus we do fertilize the plants twice after planting and at planting so we will see how well the plants do. 

I wrote my sister a letter and will send that off later today. I think she is quite attentive still and my father lived to be 94 years and perhaps she will also live a very long life although being bedridden was undesirable to both my father and I am sure my sister. She will try likely to walk again after two surgeries on broken hip joints (both joints). It is eight years now since we were face to face but I do not see myself traveling so far away in my 80s unless I am with my children. 

The time moves onward and I must make accomplishments as the day will move on quickly and be much hotter.  

Leviticus- Worship, atonement and consecration

 Reading the first six chapters of Leviticus and it brings back memories of what is allowed and what is not allowed except I was raised Christian so only heard that expressed as what the people of Israel had to do to be able to be close to God and to live in His presence. For God was with the people of Israel as a cloud by day and fire by night. Always with them; God wanted the world to know that He was the only God.  God brought the Israeli people out of slavery and bondage in Egypt and back to the Promised Land where the bones of their forefather Jacob had been taken four hundred years or more earlier after he died in Egypt. This total surrender by the people of Israel to God's commands was their way forward into time so long ago now but they did it and brought to us now in the present the Old Testament so that we too can learn the history of Homo sapiens with respect to our God. 

Perhaps it is being Christian that I interpret all of this in the fashion that I do. Still in the back of my brain are my grandfather's stories about the early peoples in England being one of the Lost Tribes of Israel. The Western Hunter Gatherer DNA that my brothers carry is ancient to the British Isles and indeed other old family names in the Andover to Basingstoke area of Hampshire also carry Western Hunter Gatherer DNA which is fascinating and one can think that the depth of their habitation in this area is known by family lore as being ancient to this land. What is ancient to the British Isles. The British Isles was covered by ice likely to a depth of 1 kilometer during the Last Ice Age so nothing likely lived on the British Isles prior to that date but one is left to wonder did those Hunter Gatherers retreat to the south during the Ice Age and then return home as it receded thousands of years later. There is much to learn in the archaeological digs of the British Isles. Why do we carry (my siblings and I) both Neanderthal (2%) and Denisovan (3%)  DNA material from these two earlier groups of Homo? What is it telling us? Many carry these two in varying amounts. But primarily all of my autosomal lines are ancient to the British Isles - one line back in the late 1400s came to Dunster, Somerset from France (Huguenot). 

Tomorrow I continue reading Leviticus which I always consider to be one of the most difficult chapters in the Bible perhaps because we are learning about communion with God and how it is achieved. No ideas on that really as it belongs to the past; a very long time ago and Jesus came to bring an easier shorter list of commandments - love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and love our neighbour as ourself. That way wars can end and the world can find that peaceful plain where all prosper and evil is gone. He is the God of the Jews, of the Christians and of the Muslims and they are the only religions that I know and primarily I am familiar with the Christian religion principally. 

Yesterday was a moving day as we shifted work desks about to make our task of working much easier and even streamlined. I need to downsize and it has taken me five years to accept that I need to downsize and this summer will see me send material that belongs to the Kipp family and it will be in the Archives where anyone can look at it or use it. I also sent links to Edward's work online and anyone can download that. It is his gift to the Kipp family of which he was a member. I suppose in my mind I kept thinking maybe one of his own would contact me and say we want all that material. But no one did and so I must make the move forward to place it where it can be seen. I am also thinking of now getting rid of my Fiche Reader back to the OGS where it belongs and the fiche will go to the Anglican Church Archives which I set up a number of years ago as at the time of purchase from various repositories in England I agreed to place the material in an appropriate place which the Anglican Church Archives at my church is certainly appropriate. They already have a number of holdings. I will check to make sure they still want them. Each move forward brings me closer to my one room theory of how I eventually need to live. 

My grandfather would have loved all this knowledge. He loved to read and the same for my grandmother. Both encouraged me to read and to write and to learn as much as I could. 

Solitaire puzzles next.  

Prayers continuing for the people of Venezuela

 Prayers for those injured and trapped following the earthquakes in Venezuela. May God be with them.

Read the remainder of the Chapter of Exodus. The Israelites have annoyed God but Moses has been able to convince God not to punish them severely for making a golden calf and worshiping it as a God claiming that it brought them out of Egypt. God commanded that they create a place of worship for God and that they consecrate Aaron and the sons of Aaron as a perpetual priesthood. All this is done and they did not move from where they were camped all of this time. Then God entered the completed Tabernacle as a cloud and when He was in the Tabernacle no one could enter nor could they move forward on their way to the Promised Land. When God was not in the Tabernacle then He would be again ahead of them as they moved forward towards the Promised Land. The rules that the people of Israel must follow are very strict. The next Chapter is Leviticus and I will read part of that chapter tomorrow. The word of God preserved by the peoples of Israel and passed down through the ages to us in the present. 

Working on the Probate list for wills probated at Winchester that I collected as images from the Family History Library a few years ago (it is a secondary record as it was prepared in the present by individuals). I have all of these wills for the most part and many of them are transcribed.  All Andover and area wills have been transcribed. I returned to the early pages I glanced at the other day and the Blake mentions were all for Boldre, Hampshire. This is in the New Forest/Christchurch area of Hampshire. The first entry at Enham in the Andover area was for Robert in 1522 and for Richard also in 1522 but Richard is recorded several items further down from Robert. There is an entry for Matilda Blake at Enham in 1525 and for Johanna Blake at Enham in 1527 (her will has Jone Blake as her name within the body of the will). There is a Johanna Blake at Winton (Winchester) in 1534 (again quite a bit to the south of Andover in Hampshire). Robertus at Enham in 1542. At Quarley Henricus Blake and Agnes Blake in 1546 (this is closer to the Wiltshire border and to the south west of Andover). Checking the location for all records on these pages Enham only refers to Blake thus far in this probate list. Walterus Blake and Robertus Blake at Christchurch in 1547. In 1558 at Christchurch Richardus Blake. A Johannis Blake in 1558 at Alden (sp). Johanna Blake in 1563 at Alton. In 1565 Richardus Blake at Christchurch. In 1568 Willimus Blake at Brading (Brading is on the Isle of Wight about 10 kilometres to the east of Newport (west part of the Island). In 1569 Willimus Blake at Limington. In 1570 Johannes Blake at Limington. Gilbertus Blake in 1575 at Quarlie (9 kilometres west of Andover). Augustine Blake in 1578 at West Titherlie (near the Wiltshire border but to the south of Andover (opposite Salisbury). In 1593 at Ellingham (New Forest, Hampshire area)  Michael Blake. In 1593 Thomas Blake at Boldre. In 1593 Johnannes Blake Senior at Penton Mewsie (about 3 kilometres northwest of Andover) . In 1601 Robertus Blake at Enham. Dorothie Blake widow at Bishops Waltham (about 15 kilometres southeast of Winchester) in 1602. The place Enham only occurs with Blake is this particular transcription. 

Searching the National Archives of the UK Wills there are seventeen wills with Enham as the place. The Kingsmill family were at Enham between the 1670s and 1730s, the Coxe family was at Enham in 1577 and will download this will to have a look at it. James Blake was the last Blake, as far as I can tell thus far, to be on the property at Enham  with his will probated 1734. One will was for a Nicholas Dickocks a tailor at Knight Enham. William Woodman is a husbandman at Knights Enham with his will probated in 1656. The remainder are later in time after the probate of James Blake's will in 1734 living at Knight Enham. The will of Nicholas Blake of Enham was probated in 1547 and he is the known son of Jone (Johanna Blake) who left her will as a widow in 1527. 

A little work on the genealogical chart in Legacy completed yesterday. Soon I shall start to make time for Pincombe in the work week. I am at the same place really with regard to writing. However I have more of a Pincombe tree completed from the 1700s on. 

Sunday today and off to Church at 10:30 online. 

Tea all drank and solitaire puzzles to do.  

Prayers continuing for Venezuela

Prayers for those still trapped in the wreckage of their homes and other dwellings in Venezuela. God be with them and with the searchers as they try to save them. 

I remember as a child and this memory came back to me as I read the next chapters of Exodus. After the Communion Service in my Anglican Church any left over bread or wine which had been prepared for the people had to be either eaten and/or drank. For this is holy as it is consecrated to the Memory of Jesus who died for our sins. These chapters I read today talk about consecration and the establishment of the priesthood of Aaron and his sons within Judaism. God has shown the people of Israel (the children of Jacob) His omnipotence as well as the world that was watching at the time of the Exodus from Egypt and now He establishes the rules of worship and adoration to Him. These rules were precise down to the last measurement. I continue the readings tomorrow of Exodus. 

A lovely day yesterday and I worked away on the Probate list for Hampshire dating back to the late 1400s. I noted that Robert Blake's will was probated before Richard's will in this chart. That verifies my thought that he had died before his son died. All of these little verifications are needed for me to proceed with the Genealogical Table coming down from Robert Blake of Knights Enham near Andover. There were other Blake wills earlier in this list and I will see if I have transcribed them as it is a long time since I did all of these transcriptions. That will be my task for today along with continuing to create the Genealogical Tree in Legacy. 

Went out and pulled more weeds although some of these I do have an allergy to as I feel the effect of their pollen likely. I wore a mask today outside as I pulled weeds. The lawns are now cut for another couple of weeks. We have been leaving them a bit longer than  we were as the birds, squirrels, bunnies are enjoying all of the pollen and bugs out there. The gardens are so unlike the look they had when Edward was tending them. More grass needs to be put in and will do that next year likely. The tomato plants are growing quickly now with lots of flowers on them. 

A lovely walk on the beach yesterday after the heavy rain. It was most pleasant as I walked quickly around the path and according to the AI on my FitBit this was my fastest circuit thus far at just over 10 minutes to the kilometer. The AI on the FitBit is interesting but I make my own decisions however I will listen to the accumulation of data as it saves me looking all of that up if I become curious. There are days that I am not curious and so the information sent to my on my FitBit gets ignored but other days I do respond to questions or queries. 

Interacting with digital thoughts is interesting in itself. However one must guard against thinking this is one's thoughts as they are foreign to the individual receiving them and simply contain the information that exists on my FitBit and could include extraneous thoughts perhaps which one must be careful to separate out. One mention of say doing jumping jacks results in a continuous referral to jumping jacks which I actually tend to only do in the winter as my summer is very active. I do not do jumping jacks if I am running in a day. But the summary of facts is very interesting and it would take me time to go back and forth collecting that data and noting any changes. Functionally it does serve as a good look at one's overall daily health reports with regard to the amount of exercise. As well one could record one's diet and have that opinion but I avoid that as it seems like one is permitting another whether it be digital or human to manage one's life. One must manage one's own life until you are ready to assign it to your heirs because you lack the ability to manage in a prudent way. 

Re-reading the Bible continues to be a thoughtful part of my day as God has been part of my day all of my life and it is good to re-read the interactions that were recorded and passed down through the ages of the interaction between God and Homo sapiens. Although He chose the Israelites to be His people He wanted the entire world to know that He was the one God, the only God in this world. But He did want to establish a Holy Priesthood and the Twelve Tribes of Israel (Jacob's twelve sons) to bring the Holy Word to all the peoples of the earth. But God sets the rules and over time He had the prophets tell of the coming of the Saviour which is Jesus Christ to create the Christians of the world. And these two great religions are the best known to me. I was though very lucky when I was working to have discussions with members of the Muslim faith and did learn more about the beliefs of Islam and I do believe that this third great religion of the world shares the same God as the Jewish peoples and the Christian peoples. We must move forward all of us to find that peaceful plain where the children of the world can feel safe in as much as that is possible given our lack of knowledge of what is out there in the universe. But fearing that is  not a good use of our time better to be ready for whatever we need to do in the future to protect the children of the future. Thank you God for another beautiful day in your world. 

Tea all drank and now the solitaire puzzles to do.  

 

 

 

Earthquakes in Venezuela

 Prayers for the souls of the people who lost their lives in the earthquakes in Venezuela. Prayers for those injured and those still trapped in the wreckage. God be with them. 

I continued reading Exodus and completed to the end of Chapter 20. Chapter 20 contains the Ten Commandments. God gave to the Israelites many many laws that they must follow all the days of their lives and to teach them to their children and so that has been done by the peoples that He rescued from slavery under the Egyptians. It is an interesting thought that the Israelites had begun their lives in Egypt as free people who came because of Joseph, son of Jacob, who had been sold into slavery by his older brothers and then managed to become a great man in Egypt and save that country from starvation. Indeed Egypt prospered greatly because of Joseph and his plan to save grains for the period of seven years when no crops would grow that followed seven years of plenty as he managed the storage of the grains to sell to the world. But a wonderful relationship turned sour over four hundred years later and God decided that it was time for the Israelites to return to the Promised Land where Jacob was buried and the bones of Joseph were carried with the Israelites to be buried with his people. God was showing the peoples of the world that only He was God, the Creator God who had given them this world to live in. The trials through which the Israelites lived on the way to the Promised Land are recorded in the chapters that will follow. It was not an easy march. 

It has been a wonderful walk through time reading the Bible. I am glad I decided to re-read from the beginning chapter by chapter. I do have a Concordance  of the Bible which I can use if I begin to wonder the thoughts of others as I read. But the sense in my brain is that I just want to read the words once again from beginning to end. These words have traveled through time and history first by word of mouth and then written down by scribes and recopied through many years by scribes and then printed as the Gutenberg Bible in the 1600s. That was the way of life as I learned from my grandfather in particular who passed on to me the stories of his family that had been passed to him. He told me of a family that was ancient to the lands where he lived near Andover until he moved to his older brother's house in the late 1890s to begin work as a blacksmith for the Railway. His brother also worked for the Railway as a Guard. I have no idea what that was actually; a blacksmith I understand. He married a few years later and my father their only child was born at Eastleigh. But the stories he told me and repeated time and again were always the same; no changes. That was how the stories passed from generation to generation for many many centuries. It was his story saying that the peoples of England were descendant of one of the Lost Tribes of Israel that very much stuck with me through the years. Those stories are ahead of me as I read through the Bible and it is a while since I have read the entire Bible cover to cover. 

Yesterday I gardened pulling weeds left and right. Edward would not recognize his gardens now sadly but I was never a gardener for sure and my daughter is limited in how much she can help me with that because of allergies. She spends most of her summer in doors working on her projects. That was true even when she was a child. Her time outside was always limited. 

 Received a demand for money by email to protect me from a very evil person presumably who said that he/she/whomever would claim that I visited porn sites. It was interesting that the email right before it was from The Ottawa Hospital which reminded me that I had donated last year and hoped that I would do that again which I will. The amount of money was so similar but the satanic letter that I received from the evil person just the opposite of the letter that I received from the Ottawa Hospital which told of their desire to make hospital care even better here in the Ottawa region. It is a pity that evil people like that live in our world. I marked it as spam and deleted it. Evil swirls around us at all times. Hopefully marking it that way as spam takes it somewhere that AI or a person searches and finds that evil person and puts them away somewhere that they do a decent day's work!  I would never waste money that way; how ignorant some people are really. These sites abuse children which is really disgusting and I think people are children right up to their early thirties! The gift of policing is to entirely eliminate these sites which take up space in our world and get rid of the evil people who create them.  Data centres would certainly make it easier to track them down and destroy them!

Good idea of the Prime Minister to call for donations to repair and upgrade 24 Sussex Drive. I think it would make a great Museum of Canadian political history myself but leave that up to the people. The Museums in Ottawa are first rate and we visited them many many times through the years. Prime Minister Carney is a very interesting politician. He has lived a full life working in a number of places and brings so much knowledge to the table. I do not believe in career politicians. I am not convinced they serve Canada best as they are Ivory Tower Politicians who have never worked outside of the political life. Particularly those who choose to attack rather than support and work with people who need help. The House of Commons is now on summer recess and the opportunity it there for politicians to seek out methods of working particularly with people who need jobs helping them to rework their lives to get jobs. This actually works by the way helping people that way as I was involved with a program at my Anglican Church in the 80s (after I was no longer a volunteer secretary at my husband's United Church) as I used to attend both Churches on Sunday. A lot of people lost jobs during the recession in the 1980s and helping them work on their CVs and potential interviews was very helpful to them. A number of us did do that. 

Today is technically a working day and we will see how much I accomplish. I spend a lot of hours on the computer for sure as I am at this point of producing a genealogical chart of the Blake family of Andover. It seems clear cut actually and will contain comments where I have thoughts on the direction but I would  like to discover Blake at Andover between 1300 and the mid 1400s. We will see what I find. 

Tea all drank, solitaire puzzles are next.  

 

 

 

 

 

Exodus and the first nine plagues

 God the Creator saw the generations of the descendants of  Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob living in the land of the Egyptians. The generations of Jacob were no longer guests in the land of Egypt but rather they were now slaves to till the land, build buildings and any other work demanded by the Pharaoh of Egypt. The Pharaoh commanded the Egyptian midwives to kill any of the male children of the descendants of Jacob at birth and God once again looked upon the generations of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob. They had been safe in Egypt but that safety net disappeared and now God needed to move them back to the Promised Land and to bury Joseph with his ancestors. It needed to be powerful to ensure that all of the descendants of Jacob left Egypt and returned to the Promised Land as God had a purpose in that. 

The first purpose was to let the people of all Earth know that He was God, the only God. Once again mankind had drifted away from the true God and once again the message had to be so overwhelming that all would heed it. I think that is what I take from the ten plagues visited on Egypt. Chapter 12 is the Tenth Plague and will be the beginning of my reading tomorrow. The first nine plagues did not force Pharaoh to let the Israeli people go but the tenth is to be that happening that results in everyone descendant of Jacob to return to the Promised Land. We do know in these first eleven chapters of Exodus that this was foretold by Joseph before he died in Chapter 50 of Genesis. At this time and in this place God the Creator once again proves His omnipotence to the peoples of the world. Word of mouth remains a powerful tool amongst Homo sapiens. There is only one God the Creator and we Homo sapiens must follow His wishes. But first He needs to move the descendants of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob as he promised Jacob back in Genesis Chapter 50 Verses 24- 25: 24: 'Then Joseph said to his brothers', "I am about to die, but God will surely come to you, and bring you up out of this land to the land that he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob." 25: 'So Joseph made the Israelites swear, saying', "When God comes to you, you shall carry up my bones from here." 

It took a long time before we, Homo sapiens, learned to understand what God the Creator intended for us: Jesus, His only Son, brought us those words from God - to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and to love our neighbour as ourself (two thousand plus years ago). At first after the return to the Promised Land there were so many rules (The Ten Commandments and many other rules to follow) but Homo sapiens was incapable of following so many rules and the prophecy promised a Saviour and Jesus came into our midst and brought us those two rules/commandments to follow and if we follow them then we can find that uplifted plain of peace. God no longer destroys earth in order to rid earth of the sins of Homo sapiens. He wants us to survive and we need to follow the simple commandments given to do that. Christianity, Islam and Judaism, the three great religions known to me, follow this known God the Creator but the whole world was created by God. Reading the Gospel of Jude will awaken in us once again the omnipotence of God the Creator and that is still to come in the reading just before Revelations. 

These two Chapters (Genesis and Exodus) are powerful and span a very long period of time. At 80 plus years my lifespan is but a mere wink of the eye in that entire length of time.  Prayers that we can find that uplifted plain of peace. I do believe that the Second World War brought us to Armageddon but we fought hard and we survived but once again that quasi peace that was created with the United Nations is no longer the shield that it was (antisemitism has crept back in (the attack on Israel in 2023) along with and in conjunction with lack of respect for one's neighbours; Russia's cruel war against Ukraine (which began in 2022). We must eliminate such happenings from our world to have peace. 

Yesterday I did work on the Blake matches and made some interesting discoveries. The Blake matches that appear ancient are quite fascinating. Family trees on Ancestry that have early American families tend towards the Somerset Blake family as their thoughts on the emigrant family that came to America, however there are some that also choose the Wiltshire Blake family and again long trees with the early American families. I still have most of them to review and will continue that today. Why do I do that? The beginning of the Andover Blake family tree lies with Robert who left his will as an elderly person in 1521 according to my research. It is stated that the peoples of England did not have surnames until the arrival of the Normans. The surname Blake/Blak does not appear in the Domesday Books with that spelling.  The decision I am making is at what point do I begin the Genealogical Family Tree for the Blake Family of Andover. Presumably I will choose Robert who left his will in 1521 but now I am looking at the various histories that give some thoughts to the children of Robert living at Enham near Andover (generally thought to be Knights Enham). The Y-DNA of my Blake line is Western Hunter Gatherer which points to a very early arrival in the British Isles. There are a number of Western Hunter Gatherer families in this beautiful part of Hampshire extending over towards London. The item that still mystifies me somewhat is why chose Blake as that surname was by the 1300s coming into England from the Continent. I sense that the choice arose and was accepted because the benefit in particular of being related to the Normans or those they chose to put into positions of power was particularly advantageous. Makes sense to me but time and history will show whether I am right or wrong. 

Breakfast time, tea all drank and must do my solitaire puzzles.  

Genesis and the death of Joseph

 I completed the reading of the first book of the Bible - Genesis. Joseph has now died and has asked that his bones be taken back to the land that God swore to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. God renamed Jacob with the name Israel. Joseph tells his brothers that God will come to you to take you back to the land of our ancestors. 

Until the Gutenberg Bible was printed using moveable metal type in the mid 1450s in Mainz, Germany,  the word of God was hand-copied by scribes. My grandfather could recite chapters of the Bible learned in his childhood at school in Upper Clatford. The school room still exists as part of that Church and when we visited it was awesome to have been in a place that my grandfather had talked about from his childhood. The font was especially interesting as my grandfather was baptized (as well as his eleven siblings) and recorded in the parish registers which I have on Fiche purchased from the Winchester Archives. 

It is fascinating to have stood in the footsteps of my great grandparents in All Saints Church back in 2008 and I am forever grateful to my now deceased cousin Ivan Kent for making that possible (they were our mutual great grandparents). We had corresponded for over twenty years when I first met him at the train station in  Dorchester, Dorset. Edward and I had flown to Heathrow from Canada and then caught the train to Dorchester at Victoria Station all on that same day of arrival. Edward could barely walk as his back bothered him after this first flight and I wondered if we should just go back home to be honest. But I hauled the two suitcases on the Underground and we just moved slowly. We had plenty of time to get to the Train Station. I slept for hours on the plane but Edward did not. I first planned to go in 2001 after my eldest daughter and I returned from our trip to Rome, Italy and London, England. Each year during the winter we would talk about going to England and Edward would think about it and say yes he wanted to do that but then change his mind when it came to actually booking the flight. 

Finally in early 2008 when I had just retired I said I really would like to go to meet my cousin and Ivan is fine with that and will meet me at the train in Dorchester. I think it maybe overwhelmed Edward that I was actually going and he decided to make the trip with me. He wanted to see Europe and the places where his ancestors lived he just didn't want to fly over the Atlantic Ocean. So we booked the flights and prepared for the trip which included a tour of England, Scotland and Wales after spending a few days in Weymouth, Dorset where I found a lovely place to stay close to Ivan and his wife Pat. It was my first knowledge of Voltaren and that worked like a charm to solve Edward's back problem after a few days. He loved it in England, Scotland and Wales both our tours with Ivan and Pat and our bus trip around the Island. Boarding the plane to go home the tenseness returned to him and the stewardess noted his anxiety and asked if she could help him and then offered a glass of gingerale. Extremely tense all the way home and as we passed over Newfoundland at the north and Labrador he relaxed; he was home. Sore back returned on the trip and the doctor said it was nerves; no back problem showed up but no xrays were taken. 

Six months later I was absolutely amazed when he said to me, on a coffee break as we were both working away on items dealing with our family histories most days, "when are we taking our next tour of Europe." I had said absolutely nothing about our travels these six months other than responding to his request that I make a Powerpoint file of all the pictures from our trip which I did quite early on. We then developed the plan for the next trip which would see us for five days (going to Kew most of that time although lots of walking in London itself) in London and then a couple of weeks in Europe touring France, Belgium Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and back into France. No problems flying at all actually and as we sat in the airport in France awaiting our flight back to Montreal he talked about our next trip. Amazing really and as I slowly lost interest in all traveling Edward just could not get enough of all that traveling. I enjoyed seeing everything but we were seeing mostly Europe and the areas where his families had lived before emigrating to the American colonies from the early 1600s on. 

Genesis was always a book of the Bible that has so many visuals in my mind from Sunday School days. Re-reading it again and again stirred the imagination and brought God clearly into focus at the beginning of time for me. Now at 80 plus years of age I remember still that young child in my mind thinking about God and all that He has done for this world that I live in. Enjoying the trees and the flowers, the birds and the animals all around me now as an aged adult.  

Thank you God for all your gifts to mankind.  

A different happening

 Yesterday my doorbell rang while I was cleaning and when I looked out the upstairs window I thought it was my next door neighbour but could not really see him well and could have checked before I opened the door. However, it turned out the person (male) at the door was going door to door he said to meet people as he had just moved to the street opposite mine from Victoria BC. I did say that people would be rather surprised to have him come to the door and he went on his merry way. 

Still reading the Bible and Joseph is now in Egypt and Lord over the distribution of meal that he has stored up because he predicted a famine which did happen after seven years of plenty. Genesis continues to be the story of the family that lived in what is now Israel and continues to this day with descendants of Abraham living in the land from those times and the return of some of the Jewish people from Europe where they had scattered over the years. They returned because of the Holocaust. When I reach Ezekiel 36:24 we do have the verse: For I will take you out of the nations, I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. But there are more verses Isaiah 11:12, Jeremiah 30:3, and Amos 9:15 that talk about assembling the scattered back to Israel and Judah. Then Isaiah 11:11 the prophecy that points to the modern State of Israel. These ancient writings have been handed down from many many years ago long before six million Jews were put to death in just a few short years during World War II. A person is responsible because he moved a nation to commit an atrocity we cannot forget because whenever we forget the possibility is there that history could repeat itself. Israel needs to feel safe in its borders. I think my one prayer that I would always say would be that no child in this world should go to bed fearing death because of hate. Because the child with that fear has the potential of becoming the adult that creates terror. 

These chapters I have just read are telling me the story of avoidance as two brothers distanced themselves so as not to be in conflict (Jacob and Esau). Is avoidance the way to peace? 

I continue to find reading the Bible to be calming me as the usual somewhat cool/somewhat warm days of June settle in on Canada. We are having lots of rain and the grass is lush but July is usually dry and hot; we will see. 

Prayers for the souls of the three police killed just in this month. A sadness all across Canada is felt with the flags at half mast remembering them.  

Today is cleaning day two and I will start in a bit and the usual summer routine - first clean the bathroom and then vacuum and then dust and then scrub floors. Another busy day and likely no work done. 

Tea all drank and breakfast soon and solitaire puzzles. 

As I remember from childhood

The stories of Genesis are a family story. It is amazing to see how the thought that the eldest daughter must marry first carried down through the ages. In a family of seven children I always knew I was number four. It was an interesting place to be actually. All the emphasis was on the two eldest (a daughter and a son) although the third child, the brother next to me in age had a special spot in the family because he was named for a young man who died in the Second World War. I was the listener in the family I think (actually named for my grandmother Blake's mother (Elizabeth Rawlins)) and perhaps in every family there is a listener; since I have kept to myself on a personal level that is unknown to me but simply a suspicion. I was really freer to pursue my life I think than my older siblings as they had the position of eldest daughter and eldest son to fulfill so had much expected of them. The next was named for one who died in the Second World War as a young man, Douglas Haig McAlpine, just 24 years of age in 1942. Douglas Haig McAlpine was one of  the Rovers (Scouting)  known to my parents also heavily involved in Scouting/Guiding during the 1920s, 1930s and into the 1940s in London, Ontario. 

The Bible is a powerful book read by many the world over and much of the Old Testament is the basis of the three major religions of the world - Christianity, Islam and Judaism. What do I accomplish in re-reading once again the entire Bible from cover to cover? I am not sure what I am looking for but the desire to re-read is powerful in my mind and I will read to the end of Revelations. I already feel calmer in my mind as if it is something that I need to do at this age of nearly 81 years. I am mostly withdrawn from the world around me except for my blog which is on a public forum. 

Today is cleaning day and it is the top floor. Shortly I will clean the bathroom first and then vacuum and dust. The usual order as that is the way that I live in an orderly fashion. The tree is now gone from next door and the tomato plants are growing much quicker as they are getting more sun in the morning now. They would have grown anyway but perhaps not quite as fast or as large as they are now. There is too much shade in the yard now for that type of plant to do well. The walnut tree dominates and blocks out all the sun through the afternoon but contributes nothing as it is a tree weed rather than a favoured greenhouse tree. It poisons the ground around it trying to grow more walnut trees!

Yesterday was a quiet day and actually very warm but we spent most of it indoors working on our projects. The special Indigenous Prayer Service at Church also included a tribute to Father's Day and the last day for the Choirs to sing as a block until the Fall return. The hymns will now be many of my favourites as one must count on the members of the congregation to sing and less common hymns are not generally chosen in this Common Time of the Church Year that is the Trinity or the Pentecost as it has been named these last years. It is the time of Jesus taking on his Ministry and ends with Christ the King Sunday just prior to Advent One. It is the way I live my life now following the Church Calendar just as I did as a child. 

I am working on the First Chromosome for the Blake file and it is slow work. Parts of it are known to me and it includes a number of common areas that are probably looking at areas in the British Isles so I might need to regard that thought as I work my way through. The preponderance of matches early in the length are shared with individuals having early Colonial ancestry in the New England States. The Blake grandparent includes both Blake and Knight. The Blake from Andover, Hampshire, England area and the Knight from the area to the west and south of Blandford Forum, Dorset, England. Both groups are known to be colonials with Blake being primarily in New England and Knight primarily in Newfoundland. Separating Blake and Knight is the object and it will take a while to sort through the First chromosome. All the other chromosomes are ready to look at the small number that I could not separate into Blake or Knight.  Phasing the great-grandparents is simply bringing my known lines squarely back into the 1800s beginning with 1837 (the eldest of the eight great-grandparent was born (William Robert Pincombe) and the youngest great-grandparent was born in 1859 (Ellen Taylor). Seven of the great-grandparents appear on the census of the British Isles (six of them died and are buried in the British Isles). One great-grandparent was born in Canada (parents from Holme on the Wolds, East Riding of Yorkshire and Bewcastle, Cumberland) as my first Canadian born ancestor (Grace Gray, 1839) and one migrated as a child with his family William Robert Pincombe in 1850 (coming to what became Canada from England was thought to be just migrating to another area that was part of the British Empire rather than emigration). Both of these individuals are buried in Canada. 

Time for breakfast, tea all drank and solitaire puzzles to do.  

I have completed to the end of Genesis Chapter 21

 Time has passed so quickly and if one recorded all the births and the deaths one could know that but I am not sure that is what I am to learn whilst I re-read the Bible. I think it is the birth of Abram and then his son Isaac that is monumental in the Chapters of Genesis I have just read. Abram now Abraham is one of the great patriarchs of the Church to this day and is a patriarch in all three of the Great Religions of the World - Christianity, Islam and Judaism. As I read through these many chapters this morning it is the Tower of Babel that stands out for me as well. That always intrigued me as a child because at that point I had never heard anyone speak any language other than English. This was before television and in London, Ontario I was far away from the French language in Quebec or the First Nations and Inuit languages but that would change quickly as time passed. In eighty years our lives have changed so very very much. 

We were just recovering from the Second World War when I was a young child. My first real memory of my family is my older brothers pretending to be airplanes flying into Berlin to save the city from starvation as the Soviet Union had cut off access by land. Berlin was a divided city following the Yalta and Potsdam Conferences with governance by France, United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union and already the bleak time ahead of us as the Iron Curtain tumbled down, which was created by the Soviet Union, was being discussed. We were listening to the radio and my grandfather, father, mother and siblings were all in the room. It was a tense time so is perhaps why it is my earliest memory. 

Does this lead my mind forward because that is what I am looking for I think. I seemed to be needing some special thinking these days and I have no idea why. But the reading is calming me because it tells of that deep past that is the ancestry of every Homo sapiens walking the face of the earth today. These written words date back a long way in time and Sodom and Gomorrah stand out for all time as the Creator's words with regard to how we live our life. We must show love for our neighbour which really means respect. 

It leads me to NATO in my thoughts as this organization has grown from its earliest roots  that fateful date 4 April 1949. It was and continues as a mutual defense alliance to defend our way of life from the Soviet expansion after Stalin had promised to withdraw the Soviet Union troops from the occupied areas of Eastern Europe. The founding members had three goals - deter Soviet expansion, foster collective security and promote European stability. And that is where my thoughts remain with this ongoing illegal war between Ukraine and Russia which Russia started. NATO has never been involved in aggression and that is not its mandate. The desire to protect children was the thought in my mind through these past couple of years but one realizes there is no protection for the children of the world where the laws of the Creator are not followed namely love one's neighbour as oneself. 

The Bible doesn't explain any of that to me in these early chapters but is really a collection of thoughts and details of happenings that were important to the peoples of the time at that time which is why they were written down. The Creator God no longer walked with man at the time of writing as far as we know and the need to remember all of this was important to the people who recorded it. Sort of like my grandfather passing on stories to me that I now recall because they were repeated to me time and time again. Why didn't he write it all down? One wonders that now but I think about my grandfather and I was a young child capable of memorizing great amounts as he had learned because we had such a close relationship and he enjoyed teaching me so many things. Would his writing have persisted was possibly the thought in his mind so he fell back on the usual mode of passage of information in the time that he lived although lots of books had been written but I was only a young child just eight years of age when he died. He chose well really as my mind was capable of pulling back all those stories from the hidden spots in my brain and I did share them in my recorded stories in files because that is the way and  they are backed up. Will they exist? I am not sure that matters because I have shared them in my blog which appear to be read by thousands although it has been suggested to me they are just bots reading. However the comments which I receive but do not publish suggest that real people do read this blog. 

I will continue with my reading until I reach the end of Revelations. I am a fast reader and sometimes as I read I wonder should I record that? But the actuality is the Bible is the most read book in the world so why would I record other than what God sent Jesus to tell us - to love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength,  and love our neighbour as ourself. It is a while since I read the Bible although I read the Bible Reading of the day and until yesterday pretty much every day for many years. I can remember when I was ill after my first child was born that I was re-reading the Bible, my new Bible that I bought not long after I came out of the hospital. That is a vague memory as I had been very very ill but it also could be I used my Bible I won at a Bible Challenge for being the first to find so many verses when I was eight years old and first went to Bethel Chapel as they had a Bible study for children after school which I finally persuaded my parents to let me attend after they discussed it with our priest. The priest said let her go and follow her interests. 

Cloudy today and it is Sunday and I will try to attend my Church online and if not there are other services online or I can just read through the Service as I have it at hand.  

Tea all drank and must do my solitaire puzzles. 

I am able to be at my Church today and it is a special service - National Indigenous Day of  Prayer which is dedicated to the First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples.

Re-reading the Bible

 When I am doing my morning run in the basement these days I watch YouTube and the last few days I have been watching readings of Books of the Bible. In my mind, I feel I have not been reading enough but I could not decide what to read as I do read all day long more or less but my mind was searching for what I wanted to read especially. I have read the Bible before and parts of it are known very well to me but this is a different sort of feeling. I feel the need to re-read the Bible in light of the changes in our world both environmental, political and social. These changes have occurred particularly in the last two decades. Thinking about it I believe this desire to read the Bible once again goes back to the Crimea being taken from Ukraine by Russia back in 2014. I have felt somewhat compelled to write about both Russia's war on Ukraine and the attack on Israel by Hamas over the past few years. They are happenings that have created the world we are now living in - it is like a world out of control seeking to find that steady spot that was there in the early 1990s but we need to make it a better world; a safer world and a world ready to face the future - I feel as if we are sinking into the past. 

I believe the answer lies in the Bible which is the oldest collection of history of our world known to us. So yesterday I started reading Genesis with the experience of 80 plus years of living. Raised Anglican and I have worshiped Anglican most of my days (except for a brief period when I was a Volunteer Secretary and later other volunteer items like Adult Bible Studies at Edward's United Church). I did become distanced from my Anglican church during the conversations on the Residential Schools as I could see no value in the process that was being followed. When my Anglican Church accepted their responsibility with the problems in the Residential Schools which were under their care I found myself feeling once again a closeness to my Anglican Church. During the early part of our marriage we went to Edward's United Church and I went solo to early Communion at my childhood Anglican Church and joined my father who was a weekly attendant at the early service. Edward and I were both happy with my decision although we had always agreed that we would raise our children in the United Church and for a number of years we did attend the United Church as a family when we moved to where we are currently living. Edward was very involved singing in the Choir for about fifteen years and Treasurer for ten years. A chance mention in the bulletin of our local United Church took us to a lecture series during the regular service at Dominion Chalmers downtown and it was a time that Edward was feeling the loss of his only sibling (his older brother) and the rapidly declining health of his mother. His conversations after Church on Sunday with this learned Early Testament scholar who was also a United Church Minister helped him on his path. However this minister retired and a large change in the ministry resulted in Edward deciding to go to my Anglican Church since I had spent nearly twenty years at his Church. 

As I reflect on my Bible reading, I find myself thinking that the answers to so many questions that persist and puzzle many of us in the world today are in the Bible. Hence I began as I did as a child many many years ago reading Genesis (my latest Bible is the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition, 1971). Although initially I was raised with the Revised King James Version I moved to this new Bible in the 1970s. In a way my religious life was unchanged from childhood as I had attended the Anglican church with my parents and siblings and the United Church with my grandmother, uncle and aunt as a child when I was at their home. 

I think the other incident that brought me to this was a storm the other day where lightning struck a tree next door and took it down. It stood right next to the wooden fence and yet it never touched it. The lightning cut it into two well down into the trunk (the tree was two stories high) but both sides fell the other way and yet it leaned towards the fence; its branches constantly touching it. It was weird but the storm was heavy and full of hail the size of peas. I looked at that tree and thought about that tree and finally it was cut off and moved away. 

So part of my day will be reading the Bible instead of the Bible Verses that come to me through the email. I feel the need to do a Bible Study for me pursuing answers to what is happening in the world. They will be my own thoughts and I may or may not share them over the months it will take me to once again read from Genesis to Revelations. 

Yesterday I reached the story of Noah in my reading and contemplated the role of Homo sapiens in our world as mentioned in these early Chapters of Genesis. 

Today I will continue with my reading. These first chapters encapsulate eons of time and give us a picture of the Creator God of many if not all of the religions of the World (my knowledge of other than the Christian and Judaism is weak). My Anglicanism was learned mostly at home to be honest from my grandfather and father although the priest at my Church at that time was Father Abraham and his booming voice from the pulpit still comes back to me on occasion. I did go to Sunday School all of my childhood until I began to sing in the Church Choir when I was eleven but it was the sermons of our priest that provided my learning as a child. To me the early chapters of the Bible tells us the stories that were passed down by word of mouth over eons of time. The Anglican Church has a deep past in the British Isles although the Christian Church of England dates from before 314 AD and was preceded by the Celtic Church in England and back into the shadows of time immemorial. 

The weather here is pretty normal for this time of year, still pleasant most of the time and rainy - June is like that and will continue like that to the end of the month and then July tends towards hot and dry. The more moisture the better and except for the hail, the crops are probably doing well.  The tree still mystifies me as I glance at it lying waiting to be picked up in the front yard of the house next door. I wonder if they will pick it up unorganized as it is - we will see as this is a new company doing the recycling and usually one has to bag the small things and tie up the big lengths of branches. 

I also realize that in my blogs I refer to First Nations but I am not entirely correct as my thinking includes both the Inuit and the Metis but in reality First Nations does only refer to the First Nations themselves who have been in the Western Hemisphere from time immemorial with the Inuit arriving about 5000 years ago I believe and the Metis are descendant of the first colonials and many of the First Nations. Just to clarify that and I will try to be more specific in the future.  At nearly 81 though I will probably not entirely succeed but will try.

 

 

Rain again but the ground can still absorb a lot more

Another rainy day with thunder storms expected and the sky looks very cloudy. Just  17 degrees celsius this morning. Friday as well and this will be a good working day. I tend to find that Thursday is not a day of big accomplishment although we made a few decisions on the house layout that we will follow through with the next couple of weeks. It will make working easier. 

 Contacted the Chilliwack Archives and they will take the box of BC Kipp material so will get started on preparing that material for shipment to them. Although Edward and I worked together quite a bit on genealogy I do not know anything about the Kipp family, do not actually know any members of the Kipp family other than Edward's nieces and wanted to ensure that this material was not lost as the year's pass. I will ask the Archives if instead of discarding any duplicates that they have in their collection they could ask the members of the family that have donated to their archives in Chilliwack (who still live there) if they would like any of the items that are duplicated in their holdings. 

One other item to prepare this summer is the Allen material which Edward took to Gravenhurst back in 2019 when he went to meet with some of his cousins. It was a long trip and the first time that I had even been driving in this area north of North Bay. We did take a bus trip that ended in Moose Factory and included a train ride back in 2011 which we greatly enjoyed but other than that our time in Northern Ontario was principally in the Wawa area and further west and north from there canoeing in the backwoods in our early twenties primarily. 

Just noting as I brought my tea up that this was the tenth time that I climbed up and down the stairs today already. I also did my usual yoga and calisthenics for an hour first thing with a cardio load of 35. Already 3000 steps on the FitBit so 1/4 of the way to my goal of 12,000 although generally I run higher than that around 15,000 steps per day.  I am trying to review what I have done on a regular basis to keep my memory in the present very active. I suspect that might be why older people remember things better from long ago than the present items simply because their active memory in the present just isn't utilized as much as when you were younger. 

I was always taught to be respectful of our politicians as they give up  their private life (and I certainly relish mine and protect it as much as I can) to work for Canada. I am getting tired of the constant criticism which is actually becoming quite unjustified in the current political climate. This picking apart of every word expressed is becoming quite boring and useless. 

We must be patient; it takes time to create and we must be ready to grab all the possibilities to make Canada the country that the founders wanted and planned for in the 1860s-1910s. Their ideas were huge and they paid off and now it is our turn to make the same sacrifices to bring to fruition the promise of Canada. We do not have to be lesser than what we can be; but it will take time and sacrifice. We have lived through two World Wars that decimated our young people but yet we managed to continue to grow and prosper and we still can especially as our youth is straining at the yoke to be that powerhouse of the future. 

So today continuing with my work project as I did not actually touch that yesterday. We went shopping and the day disappeared rapidly but there is now 6 metres of linen towelling to turn into eight tea towels and will get that going. All that needs to be done is the hemming and the sewing machine is waiting. I made tea towels from this very same linen toweling 50 plus years ago and the last of the dozen are pretty thin and really only good for rags one might say. It will be nice to have new tea towels. They will shrink when they are washed and will take a few washings to make them really useable. But it will be fun to do. 

I wondered if we would find tea toweling and there was actually quite a bit of choice. Not cheap by any means as it is now $19.00 a metre and I vaguely recall 29 cents a yard way back in those days. I made a dozen then and there are two left. 

Drinking tea and solitaire puzzles to do.  

 

 

Equal treatment in Canada

 The Editorial "Alberta just wants equal treatment in Canada" was an interesting read. With the highest salaries in Canada it will be hard for Alberta to be equal in terms of overall wealth (they are wealthier and do not pay the high Provincial Income Taxes that are paid in other provinces or the extra Health Tax which we pay in Ontario). In terms of representation in Parliament, Ontario continues to be the most under represented in Parliament. I still think the original idea of the founders to think in terms of region (the Senate is based on this principle) has merit. Each region has specific interests and when the Western Premiers gathered to meet I thought that is really a good idea. They are a large region land wise and potential untapped value in these areas is huge so looking towards the future as a co-operating group is a really good idea. Alberta and Saskatchewan are basically landlocked areas depending on passage to the east through Manitoba but also through the Northwest Territories or to the west through British Columbia but also the Yukon with its access to the Arctic Ocean. So the co-operation between the western provinces/territories is really very important (which the Founders clearly noted and planned for in the original drawing up of borders in the Prairie provinces). In the east we have my province Ontario with its huge population, Toronto forms the centre in terms of business (used to be Montreal but talks of separation caused that city to lose hugely at the time as the race to be in Toronto began and is still ongoing). Toronto is ideally placed within Canada with its access to the Great Lakes that can take it west to Thunder Bay (and we await the Trans Canada being widened!) or east to the Atlantic via the St Lawrence Seaway which we built ourselves in the 1950s as the Americans were not interested in building that with us; for a small country we have pulled our weight on this continent quite remarkably until the mid 1960s which was a mistake that we are rectifying. You can tell we are moving back into that direction because of the heavy use of the Bridge between the United States and Canada at Sarnia since the bridge at Detroit/Windsor has been inadequate for quite a while. Hence Canadian taxes paid to build the new bridge at Detroit/Windsor in its entirety (using 50% Canadian and 50% American materials) so that there was better access between the two highways for the truckers and they shouldn't have to make that huge detour all the way to Sarnia to go back and forth. Sharing the tolls with Michigan once the bridge is repaid to Canadian taxes is a good sharing between two friendly nations - the benefits huge for the population of Michigan. The needs of the many always outweigh the needs of the few because trickle down economics is a failed idea. It takes one back to the Dark Ages in the history of Homo sapiens in the Eastern Hemisphere. 

But I digress from Alberta. Certainly as a Canadian and an Ontarian I appreciate Alberta very much. The founders knew very well what they were acquiring with the acquisition of Rupert's Land and did due diligence in seeing that the original inhabitants (First Nations) were properly recompensed then and into the future. Billions of dollars have been poured into Alberta (particularly during the Great Depression as well as the explorations to use the oil in the oilsands) from Canadian taxes and Canada deserves to be recompensed in a reasonable way for that huge expense (the value of Alberta must be 30 trillion and likely more to purchase).  Since this is about Alberta I will not dwell on the other regions of Canada which include Central Canada (Quebec and Ontario) and the Maritime Canada (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island which were joined by Newfoundland in 1949 when they joined Confederation and we linked Labrador with the new province). Each region has its own specific needs and one must always bear in mind that Quebec using the French language has been a challenge within Confederation however the use of the French language and culture has expanded far beyond the borders of Quebec and other provinces are now officially bilingual. It has enlarged our intelligence speaking two languages for sure. 

So yes we appreciate Alberta within Confederation; we are not jealous that you have the highest salaries in Canada. After all in Ontario we have lived in the shadow of Toronto all of my life where if it involved Toronto it got done and if it didn't then you waited and tried to work Toronto into the estimate! I lived in London until I was thirty and when we moved to Ottawa 51 years ago one could see how much that city has suffered from inadequate funding because it wasn't Toronto. The 416 was basically a two lane terror trip home for many many years having already driven the 401 for most of the way from London to Ottawa until finally a Premier from the north changed that and we have a four lane highway 416)! However that Toronto centralization is changing a little perhaps as I see the mine in the north that has been wanting to happen is going to happen at long last after more than two decades and the road apparently is finally going to be built according to Premier Ford. Thank you. 

So yes we want to see Alberta prosperous and will continue to pour money into future projects from the taxes of all the people of Canada. Just wanted to write that down in case anyone doubted how much Alberta is appreciated within Confederation. But personally if the First Nations are not satisfied with events in Canada then I think that is wrong; they have been at our side from the earliest days helping to make Canada great and we should respect their knowledge of the land. Am I descendant of the First Nations, no I am not simply an appreciative Canadian noting the great contributions that have been made by the First Nations and continue to be made. Helping them to re-establish their villages/towns with the same excellent conditions which we enjoy in our cities/towns/villages is very important. We were meant to walk together in this country just as Tecumseh walked (read that as worked together) with Brock to save Canada more than 200 years ago. 

As for Senate representation that is purely decorative but helpful on a regional basis which was the whole purpose of the Senate - to keep everybody happy within Confederation. With proposed unbalanced number of senators in the Western Region we might miss seeing something needed/revised in one of the four provinces or two territories. The presence of six senators in each of these four provinces is essential in order to know what is happening in these provinces. The Senate is large enough unless one is adding for the Territories. The voting in the Senate is not really consequential because eventually when the regions are satisfied with bills then the vote of the House of Commons will prevail. At the moment I do see Yukon and the Northwest Territories very under represented considering the role these two territories will play in the expansion of trade by Canada and the desire to work the valuable deposits within these areas over the next decades.  

Not what I planned to write at all. Today is a work day and will run my Copilot program to look at the Blake matches. Should be interesting. One item to note is that the files which Copilot produced for me had stripped out the formatting that I had in the Excel document.  Now that isn't a big deal as I can just put it back in by column but it is interesting to note that. Plus the file that was produced was out of order but I had a column which lets me restore the original order. Little items that are not consequential but would require me to have extra lines in the program in order to have the perfect file that I now have. The tradeoff though is excellent as producing the files myself would have required my writing a python program which takes time and has to be trialed taking up even more time. Eventually AI will have protocols perhaps that can be readily called upon but will probably always need the human eye to regard the file and ensure that what one has thought will be produced is produced. 

Like the advance into the computer age (I was into computers back in the mid 60s and watched as the world caught up) saving money wise/time wise is unlikely. What was promised as a time saver was certainly not that as the size of companies swelled in order to make use of all the advantages of computers. I think the same will be true of AI in the long run and sudden changes will be upsetting to the systematic flow of work in industries that try to convert overnight. 

 Solitaire puzzles are next. 

Another busy cleaning day

 The second day of cleaning completely accomplished and just the basement remains and will soon start the Robot vacuuming the rug. It is a nice way to finish the three day cleaning spree! The time commitment is just two hours at the most - one hour is done by the Robot although I have to prepare the area for the Robot to run effectively which takes maybe ten minutes. 

I finished looking at the four files created by Copilot and they are in good shape. The next step I will probably take on Thursday - my first working day of the week. Copilot will look at each of the files that are referred to by the Blake file it created just by matching the name on the file and the name in the file that it created. Within those files are lists of relatives in common/Matches and I will make a list of what to look for and then Copilot will make a complete list of those names along with a list of the matches that have those names in common. I should get a list of people who match within Blake and a list of people who match within Knight as well as a list of people who are matching Blake/Knight because I did not separate them. I will not have any decision made by the Copilot on this last group because it will be confusing and hence I will do that split although I could supply enough information for Copilot to do it there is a possibility of junk emerging so will avoid that. The human input is still more valuable in this case that the input from Copilot. 

The comparisons between "common areas" will also be made by me because that is indirectly what I am looking for in these sorts - matches deep into the past that take me back to Blake lines in Andover although few people do have that in their tree but some do. The 1700s was particularly small in my Blake line with Thomas Blake (born in the 1680s marrying in the early 1700s and having just one son Thomas and this son Thomas marrying in the late 1720s and having two sons but only one survived infancy and that was Joseph baptized in Andover in 1730 and marrying in Upper Clatford in the late 1750s. He married Joanna King of Upper Clatford and they had three sons. The second eldest died as a child (around the same time as Joseph) leaving the eldest son William who lived in Andover in the latter part of the 1700s and does not appear to have any children and the youngest son Thomas (born posthumously about five months after his father died) who married Sarah Coleman in the early 1790s in Upper Clatford. This very weak line in the 1700s is replaced by a very large line in the 1800s and up to the present. This Blake family of Andover/Upper Clatford is related to the Blake family at Abbotts Ann and I would like to determine the cousinship. I do know they are related through the King family because Joanna King's sister Mary King was married to John Blake, malster, Abbots Ann and all of this is mentioned in John's will in 1796. My thought is that John Blake of Abbotts Ann is descendant of John Blake of Andover who married Elizabeth (unknown) in the late 1670s and was the father of the ancestor of John Blake of Abbotts Ann and Thomas Blake mentioned above (born in the 1680s at Andover). This would make Thomas Blake who is mentioned in John Blake's will of 1796 likely 1st cousins ?x removed. I have yet to find anyone who descends from John Blake and Elizabeth (unknown) with a reliable tree other than my own line. A lot of people have these individuals in their trees but the link is questionable that they are using although by atDNA they are matching me (generally at least three of four siblings or more)! The fun is in the chase as always and as it turns out I do not have a lot of investment in the result other than curiosity. 

It is perhaps being Canadian that I do not particularly get excited about any of my ancestral lines. They are interesting even fascinating given my small footprint on this continent with my father born in England and coming to Canada with his parents as a child in 1913. Then my mother's father's mother was my first Canadian born in Upper Canada in 1839. Grace Gray (my great grandmother) was a first cousin to Sir John Carling heavily involved in politics in Ontario (was Upper Canada) initially and then into federal politics and was Minister of Agriculture hence the naming of the now torn down Agricultural Building and Carling Avenue. This area will now be part of the new Ottawa Hospital - Civic Campus (where I actually worked at the existing campus for six years). So first generation Canadian on my father's side and fourth generation Canadian on my mother's side and I was born before "Canadian citizenship" was created on the 1st of January 1947 so grandfathered to Canadian Citizen all on my own which I always found quite exciting actually. 

Why ever do I spend so much time on this? George DeKay is mostly responsible but there was a tug on my senses after my mother passed away which was a year earlier than George asking me to do a Pincombe Profile for the book he was publishing. My mother knew that I was so into DNA as a child in the late 1950s - found it so exciting and studied Chemistry with that on my backplate at all times. She reminded me of that in the late 1990s as she was going to the Family History Library and looking up items and wanted me to use this new thought that was breaking into genealogy with yDNA studies. I explained that we would need to test my uncle for that and that thinking was in the works but he passed away in 2003 (however a cousin of his did test for me) but I digress. 

The two elements came together with George DeKay asking for the Pincombe Profile and my mother's letters and discussions with me in that regard pushed me into doing the Pincombe Profile, joining the Guild of one-name Studies and reviewing what had been done with yDNA by Sorenson in the 1990s and early 2000s. As it turned out a known Pincombe cousin in Australia had tested his yDNA and I contacted him and an in-between person wrote back (perhaps that cousin had passed away no ideas on that as the writer didn't say that).  It was sort of weird so I just used his results comparing them to my uncle's cousin and they were a match and I just moved forward with the Guild study of Pincombe and Siderfin at that time. 

Who would of ever guessed that I would be so deeply into genetic genealogy at this time in my life! I had always said that when I retired I was going to knit baby outfits and sew clothes for packages going to the First Nations Reserves in my old age as my grandmother had done in her old age. I haven't sewed or knitted very much since I got into my course work at the National Institute for Genealogical Studies and graduated with my PLCGS in 2007 in English and Canadian studies. Funny in retrospect as I continue down this path really with my mother at my side leading me onward. Then my grandfather's memories came into play as I took on the Blake study in 2011 after giving the Siderfin study to a cousin in England as he wanted to pursue it and he was much closer to the repositories than I was in 2010! So Grandpa's stories of his Blake line tumbled out of my brain and I was into Blake and Pincombe pretty much 100% from 2011 on. I continue there actually. 

At 81 nearly I had thought myself to be winding down and I have quite a bit done with that but the intent is to publish all of this on Pincombe and Blake in the next two years and then move forward into Buller and Rawlings my other grandparents to publish their information - the Rawlings because my cousin John Rawlins sent me all his research perhaps thinking I have come to the thought in retrospect that he thought I would write a book. Amazing really as I go down memory lane  - I am beginning to think that is a habit of over 80 year olds.

Must do the solitaire puzzles, tea all drank.  

 

 

Now that I am approaching 81

My only true experiences with old age consist of my grandfather, my grandmother and the visiting that I did as a teenager at a local nursing home. When my parents were in their 80s/90s I was far away and only seeing them a couple of times a year so did not really have a glimpse of their aging outside of a large family picture as many people were there whenever I was. 

My grandfather was basically a very healthy person although he did on occasion smoke a pipe. But throughout his 70s he continued to work on a very light schedule helping my father in his business. He maintained the supplies keeping them well ordered and ready for use on a daily basis. He read a lot as he borrowed books from the library or purchased them. He walked a lot as he never did learn to drive; it didn't interest him. His stroke was sudden and he passed away about three months later. During that three month period I can remember he slept a lot in a chair during the day. He could still walk about but less capable. His mind still pretty good actually as I can remember him repeating stories he had told me before and they were the same basically. His diet tended towards beef and potatoes and I would have said a high cholesterol diet on his part. This was the early 50s. 

My grandmother was similar a very healthy person except for having a slight tendency towards epilepsy which was controlled by drugs which she did not like to take. So a seizure would mean taking them for a bit and then stopping. That did not particularly seem to affect her overall health as I recall. She walked a great deal; she gardened a rather large plot which included tomato plants for her son's store. Her flowers were absolutely beautiful. She was less of a talker with regard to family but occasional stories did slip out. Most of her spare time when she wasn't helping her son with his store was spent knitting and crocheting baby outfits for bales to the North for the Salvation Army. She continued to be very nimble with her fingers pretty much up to the stroke that she had. Again she had a high cholesterol diet that I can remember very well probably because I was not a meat eater as a young person and still only eat what I need to be healthy sticking to chicken and fish which was not the case for either of my grandparents. This was the mid 60s.

The effect of cholesterol on them was perhaps partially controlled by their very active walking life styles. 

The nursing homes tended to be younger people in their late 60s and early 70s. People did not live a long time in many cases when I was a teenager. A few years after retirement for many of them. So interesting reflecting on that. I did learn that it is better to eat chicken and fish certainly by noting the effects of red meat on one's health. I also learned that constant exercise is very necessary all of your life. This was the early 60s.

An interesting thought for the day as we made a delicious meatloaf last night consisting of half ground pork and half ground beef. It made a large meatloaf which I will eat sparsely; just a narrow slice but it does taste quite good because it is also full of vegetables (2 cups of diced onion, pepper and carrot cooked in butter and cooled and then added to the meat mixture with 2 eggs, 1 cup of rolled oats, spices, herbs, garlic and hand mixed to produce a lovely loaf in a glass loaf pan. Then cooked at 350 degrees for 1.5 hours along with baked potatoes and baked squash. Overall a very healthy dinner especially if you are light on the meat but a good restorative meal if you are recovering from a bit or dental surgery and a good meat to start with in recovery stages as chicken and fish (other than poached salmon) are not necessarily easy to chew. 

Today I am cleaning the top floor and will begin around 10 washing the bathroom first and then vacuuming and dusting and should be finished around 1 hopefully. Yesterday seemed like an enormous task but I did a few extra items so I will keep it easy for this session. 

A beautiful sunny day and it is back up to 16 degrees celsius after a low of 10 degrees celsius. I must fertilize the tomato plants today as they are growing very well but fertilizing them is a good plan. 

Never a dull moment and solitaire games are next.  

Peace

 Peace is a beautiful word and what God wants for us. Jesus brought us the two commandments by which we should live - Love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength and love our neighbour as ourself. Living these two commandments could bring us to that uplifted plain of peace where all live a good life. Greed and envy must disappear from our world.  When they do the world will be a better place in which to live. 

Tough times continue in Canada and will for a while yet as our diversification of trade around the world takes hold. There are increases in jobs being created and we just have to wait. The Baby Boomers have had an entire lifetime worked around them and now they need to tighten up and help the economy to survive by spending locally instead of flying all over the place and enjoying themselves all the time. Life was easier for the Baby Boomers than it is for subsequent generations in so many ways. Attending university was so much easier and less costly and the dreaded compulsory Departamental Examinations became nonexistent in the later 60s (after I wrote them actually because I was two years ahead of my age group!). Life was handed to the Baby Boomers on a platter and they need to do the same for the generations that are following them. This diversification of trade is sixty years coming and should have been the practice of all Canadian governments prior to this one but it wasn't and we are paying the price.  We will continue to pay that price until we are on solider financial ground. 

Sad for Michigan because they were meant to split the tolls with Canada from the new bridge following the repayment to Canadian taxes as the people of Canada actually paid to build the new bridge. It would be a good bonus for Michigan and its people all that toll  money coming in to support all sorts of special projects or even just usual items like sports for children, better facilities in schools and all that sort of thing. Strange to continue to use such an old bridge especially for all these trucks when there is a bridge that is brand new (built equally with both Canadian and American steel and other products) with better access to the main highways. This new bridge has been talked about for years because the old one is just that - very heavily used and getting very old. Likely people will still use the old bridge but the truckers deserve to have a new bridge which is easier to access from the main highways and so modern. Truckers are the great heroes of people as they drive long hours; many miles to transport goods from coast to coast and back again. Ever increasing amounts of goods travel by truck all over North America. 

Worked the Pincombe file yesterday and it took only about 30 minutes to add in the Gray. Thinking of Michigan I have a lot of cousins who still live in Michigan that are descendant of the Pincombe Family. I still think that hand adding the known greatgrandparent is perhaps the better way so as not to create any confusion in the instructions to Copilot. Plus it lets me look at them in a global way as I entered them one after another without really regarding them beyond putting them into the table. The real challenge is coming where the work that I have done on the individual files will be used to help to look at matches that are totally unknown to me but share pertinent matches. That is very time consuming to do one by one but Copilot will be able to, without bias, pull out the information and produce lists that will be very productive. 

Today is cleaning day and it will be the main floor. I borrowed my sewing machine back from my daughter to make some new tea towels. The ones I have date back at least fifty years. Amazing they have lasted so long but I did make about twenty of them I think and there are three left that still have some cloth to dry dishes coming out of the dishwasher. Dishwashers have certainly made tea towels less of a necessity. 

Continuing to work on the phasing of great grandparents and creating the genealogical charts for the Blake book high on the agenda for my work time. 

Cloudy today and cooler just 15 degrees celsius - a normal June for sure. Tea brewing and solitaire puzzles to do. 

   

 

 

 

 

Copilot

 Working with Copilot yesterday was most interesting and I separated my large table into the four grandparent components although I did not do a complete separation as I wanted to see the results. They were pretty much as expected. A good separation with regard to the four names. A reasonable number in each grouping as anticipated. I could sort to get the entire table back into its numerical run and thus reproduce on a grandparent level the original chart. I could have asked Copilot to do that at the end if I so desired. I did not have it place the Knight family into this chart and will need to do that. It always picked up every incidence of Blake as I worked on Blake first (in the Greatgrandparent category). I could have written a python programme as well and will work with that methodology also. Did it save me a lot of time? Probably but the manual items that needed to be done have to be fed in one line at a time although you could do it as a long list of statements at the beginning possibly. Will have to look at that. I do need to do more work with Copilot in this regard. 

A good exercise day with my usual yoga and calisthenics in the morning followed by a run before lunch and then weightlifting in the  afternoon and a lovely walk on the beach after dinner. A most pleasant day although we had a fierce thunder storm later in the evening. 

Sunday and Church is beginning (I ended up switching to the Church online in England as I was not picking up my own Church here). God is with us always waiting and watching for us to do the one item other than loving God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind. That other part that Jesus brought to us from God is loving our neighbour as ourself which really is about respect for sure. 

Solitaire puzzles later as the day escapes me today.  

I often do agree with Conrad Black

" Last week ..... we [Conrad Black writing about his conversation shared with his readers that he had with Stephen Jarislowsky]  had a most amicable conversation on the somewhat distressing subject of the current political condition of this country. We agreed that I would write it up. We think our greatest national problems are that governments as a whole employ 4.6-million Canadians, 25 per cent of the entire workforce, an unsustainable burden, and that the first one-third of these people to reach retirement age and full pension eligibility should simply not be replaced. The compensation of the remaining government employees could then be somewhat increased: as in the private sector, fewer, better-paid jobs, with everyone eligible for full pension benefits.

Our second point is that both corporate and income taxes have to be reduced to below United States levels to compete successfully for investment dollars. To be eligible for government assistance, universities must devote themselves to producing a great majority of graduates who will be capable of earning an income in the field of their specialty, and skilled trades should be elevated to the socio-intellectual status of university disciplines: we need plumbers and electricians more than gender studies and decolonization experts. The demarcation of federal and provincial jurisdiction should be clarified, duplication avoided, and Canada should finally become a domestic common market. With reasonable care for the environment, we must exploit and export to the world our natural resources, and outgrow neurotic fixations on fictional climate horror stories. Stephen and I agreed that whoever advances these points will quickly lead this country to the position of admired success in the world that it rightly aspires to and can certainly attain. "

Thank you once again Conrad Black for an exceedingly interesting editorial in the National Post. I could not agree with him  more particularly on the role of trades in our society; their importance is the gift that will bring us to the prosperity that is the promise of Canada. 

Yesterday another busy day and the car is all vacuumed and dusted and the windows shinning. Then we took it through the car wash to complete the task. My husband did all these things in the past and every day one is reminded of how much a part of our lives was lost to us but we remember him every day so he is never forgotten. That was his greatest wish I think because his own father appeared to be forgotten; lost to him when Edward was just two years of age but he lived a full life doing all the things that he wanted to do except for following through on his childhood desire to be a Scientist working in the field of Chemistry. But Edward served his country very well working at CISTI in the National Research Council for thirty years. 

Today is a work day and I do hope to finally get to my file that I want to apply AI to in order to look at some interesting details that I have in the accompanying word files that match up with these particular results in the large excel file. The questions are somewhat jelled in my mind and I am ready to begin this very interesting task. 

A beautiful sunny day full of promise with just a slight breeze in the trees. God is with us always waiting and watching for His world to live the right kind of life. Love they neighbour as thyself. It was all that He asked us to do. The Creator waits for us to do the right thing. 

Solitaire puzzles next.  

 

 

Another sunny day

A beautiful sunny day today and I shall vacuum the car later and the trap for the dryer just to really get summer going. Our car is now seven years old and has less than 33,000 kilometres on it (about  20,500 miles) and my husband put the first 10,000 on in just one year, 8,000 the next year and 5,000 kilometres the year following before he became too ill to drive. Then I went to Florida with my children one time and that was another 6000 kilometres. It took another three years to reach 33,000 kilometres so less than 1000 kilometres per year. Amazing really as it looks almost new but a quick glance tells one that this is a nearly seven year old car. 

I was contemplating how one regards Canada in the world scene. We are different from every other country I think. The original inhabitants being the First Nations and they were mobile except perhaps for the Inuit who lived mostly in the north east of Canada I think (they were probably the first new Colonials for thousands of years as even at this time we can not place a time for arrival of the First Nations here). I must admit the archaeological digs become more and more fascinating as they are uncovered. The mobility for the First Nations was a north to south to north to south movement over the year (I believe a number of the First Nations lived constantly in the south of the North American portion of the continent) for the warmer climes during the long winter and returning to the great hunting, fishing and growing areas in the spring, summer and into fall. That has changed with there being a permanent border now across North America (two actually - Canada/United States and United States/Mexico). However Jay's Treaty 1794 guarantees the right of movement to First Nations between Canada and the United States. Canada does not see its history in quite the same way as other countries in the Western Hemisphere. It is a colonial happening with the intent that the colonialists and the First Nations were using the land in a Canadian way. The Treaties following Confederation in 1867 are similar to the system of land holding in the United Kingdom in that payment was made for the use of lands particularly acquired via the transfer of Rupert's Land to the Dominion of Canada as seen in the Treaties (I am not knowledgeable on these treaties to understand completely how they work). These lands continue to be part of Canada although purchasing in the normal way (again like the system of land holding in the United Kingdom) gave one the right to own it under the law, sell it under the law or pass it on to one's rightful heirs but the land always remains Canadian and can not be taken out of Canada as is claimed by separatist groups. If Canada itself and also the First Nations are willing to sell land (and both must be in agreement) then that is a process but the cost will be in the trillions for any provincial land purchase and probably even into the hundreds of trillions as this land is very profitable. The idea of the Founders of Confederation was to maintain the lands that we call Canada and originally was Turtle Island as named by the First Nations in order to benefit all Canadians. Alberta in particular has the highest salaries overall in Canada so they have done well as immigrants to come to a country mostly empty-handed where they end up having the highest salaries but still the sharing of the wealth in every province is the underpinning of Confederation. Looking at it purely in the humanitarian way one would expect that everyone would benefit from the profits of the lands of Canada. Education is the key in all of this and the more education the better (both trade/technical and academic - I place academic in third these days because our need for trades and technology is much greater than pure academia) everyone is able to utilize the best that this country has to offer. 

This idea that conquering a nation leads to a permanent change in the ownership is false really around the world as most countries with their original hunter gatherer populations are still existing some remaining basically in the same areas when one looks at the Y-DNA that has now been tested around the world (lots of movement in Europe and elsewhere but the persistence of older y-DNA continues). y-DNA predicts that Homo sapiens arose in Africa and moved out sequentially to the Middle East and the possibility that it also moved to the Western Hemisphere is being tossed about once again (perhaps this group was swamped by a much larger group arriving from Asia via the Pacific which is becoming better understood). 

We can only roughly predict what the world looked like during the most advanced Ice Ages which bared islands on both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. If Asians could cross the Pacific which is much wider than the Atlantic thousands and thousands of years ago so could the Atlantic have been crossed. After all there has been known fishing in the Grand Banks area off Newfoundland/Nova Scotia (Canada) from Viking days onward (before 1000 CE). I do find it interesting that Neanderthal and Denisovan are absent in the Americas with the First Nations implying that their presence in the Western Hemisphere may be much further back than has been mentioned. My own lines have principally been in the British Isles in all lines except for Huguenot coming in the late 1400s from France to Somerset but yet we carry both Neanderthal and Denisovan in our autosomal DNA suggesting a European connection so perhaps the dividing line between the Western Hemisphere and the Eastern Hemisphere original Hunter Gather populations is much greater than has been suggested although recent archaeological digs are now hinting at more than 100,000 years ago for the first settlements in the Western Hemisphere which takes us way back before the Last Ice Age and only gradually are we learning more and more about earth and how it existed in those earlier times. Yet another reason to listen carefully to our First Nations who carry those early stories in their story telling and they are very very important for everyone's survival. Listening to my grandfather's stories passed to him by his parents and probably other relatives (he appears to be related to half the people in Upper Clatford in the 1800s!) opened my eyes to so many things. At the time I just listened but then internet became available and I discovered this wasn't just a very elderly person talking it was someone passing on to me the stories of the deep past that were shared by many in the British Isles. 

Looking at my own Blake line stretching back into the Western Hunter Gatherer period in the British Isles and they still persist in the British Isles! That is a personal look at yDNA but I can find other Hunter Gatherer results in the various databases showing that Blake is not the only line that traces back so far into the past in that area of Hampshire which is quite fertile and beautiful to behold. Europe itself has not changed a great deal from a y-DNA viewpoint with many results stretching back through the eons of time showing locations of early Hunter Gatherer presence even today. There is also movement but historically people who move because of friction in their native country often return eventually to that native country when peace returns. Already my autosomal contribution to grandchildren down to 25% or less or slightly more and each generation will cut that finer and finer but they carry the autosomal contribution of two Hunter Gather populations from the Western and the Eastern hemisphere and certainly a huge migrant population autosomal presence in the United States from their grandfather Edward commencing in the early 1600s from The Netherlands/Germany and later France, Sweden and the British Isles. 

A fun time looking at Y-DNA but must get back to working on the things I plan to do today. The British Isles is perhaps like Canada in that movement from the continent to the British Isles particularly England was constant through this Common Era so perhaps Canada will retain its very interesting assortment of individuals particularly from the British Isles/France and later Europe and the rest of the world on into the centuries. But history suggests that many recent colonials return to their original countries over time if they have left because of wars/hard times. But it is this mixing of the autosomal DNA that protects Homo sapiens from abrupt decline which is what happened to the earlier Homo species. Nature will always choose the best route most times or it will abort spontaneously a bad combination but if the best route is the best of two weaknesses then that is a disaster for populations which become too close in cousin-ship to maintain a healthy population. Interesting this was well known to many populations in the past as one notes how they chose their partner to create a family. 

Must do the solitaire puzzles.