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Monday, April 8, 2019

Older people ease into ancestry.

Many people due to trauma of one sort or another.
Others of illness, disease.
Others of self-abuse.
A very few, but perhaps a growing number, are choosing to: life holding substantially more pain than pleasure.
Judge not.

In any case, ancestries grow.
Inevitably.
Inexorably.

A principal cause is the elderly.
Smoothly.
Older people ease into ancestry.

Postings Count, Weather Brief, and Today’s Dinner
Monday, April 8, 2019

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My 367th consecutive posting, committed to 5,000.
After 367 posts we’re at the 7.34% mark of my commitment, the commitment a different way of marking the passage of time.

Time is 12.01am.

On Monday, Boston’s temperature will reach a high of 52* with a feels-like temperature of 48* with rain.

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Question of the Day:
What is ancestry?

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Monday, April 8, 2019
Love your notes.
Contact me at domcapossela@hotmail.com

From Sally C:

Dear Dom, 

“When cooked and rested, hold the bone in one hand …”  I thought for sure you were going to instruct me to latch onto the meat with my teeth, Flintstone style.  Heee-heee-hee! 

Love the joke(s) of the day.  I’ll sent the semi-colon one to my instructors in copyediting at Emerson. 

The bread is cooling under a dish towel.  Mmmmmmmmmmmm.  I’ve made four loaves, so there’s enough for us to have some with our supper and leave some intact for you.  Its texture will be better for slicing tomorrow. 

I’ve had an interesting week, a conflict of self-perception.  Last weekend, I had to enroll in Medicare, required by the dear ole gov’mint once you hit your 65th birthday.  I consider it something of an affront to be considered an elder, or even a senior.  I sure don’t feel like one.  Not when I’m shoveling snow out of the driveway, or marching in three parades on the Fourth of July playing my fife.  So in defiance, today I received 5 cubic yards of 3/4”  bluestone gravel in our driveway, and spent a few hours spreading that.  So there!  I hope the gravel subdues the deep mud.  It will definitely help. 

Funny story:  Forty-odd years ago, shortly after I got out of college, I was living far and away Down East, about a 6-hour drive from my parents’ home in southern NH. I’d call a couple times a month and my mother and I would catch up on each other’s news for an hour or so.  One of these times, my mother commented that she had been feeling quite tired lately, and attributed it to getting old.  She was in her mid-fifties.  I said something appropriate and we rambled to another subject.   

Several minutes later, she got to telling me about how successful she had been recently in getting the household ready for winter.  First, she and my younger brother Dana had taken the van and cruised up and down the local roads, picking up all the bags of leaves people had raked and put out at the edge of the street. She had spread those leaves all over her strawberry beds as mulch for the winter. 

Then she and Dana had taken the van again, this time to UNH’s press room and picked up bundles and bundles of old newspapers.  They had stacked these in the back of the garage, and Mother reported that there was plenty there to keep the kitchen warm all winter.  (She has a small wood stove in the kitchen, and she rolls the newspapers into logs for this. The kitchen’s on the north side of the house, so this stove is most useful.)  

Then she told me that contractors had come and replaced the sill under the front of our barn, which work had pulled a lot of marine clay from down below.  After that, my poor brother had gone out one morning to go to work and found his car sunk to the chassis in the clay.  So Mother ordered two truck-loads of crushed gravel and when that was delivered, she spread it out nice and evenly.  She was most pleased with all these things.  Such accomplishment!  Indeed!   

I said to her, “Good God, woman, I should hope you are tired!”  “Oh,” she replied in a wondering voice, “I hadn’t thought about it like that.” 

Sally 

Web Meister Responds: Really nice, Sally.
and appropriate to today’s opening homily.

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Chuckle of the Day:
A Mafia Godfather, accompanied by his attorney, walks into a room to meet with his former accountant.
Godfather, "Where is the 3 million bucks you embezzled from me?"
The accountant looks like he doesn’t understand.
The attorney, "Sir, the man is a deaf mute and cannot understand you, but I can interpret for you."
"Well ask him where my damn money is!"
The attorney signs the accountant asking where the 3 million dollars is.
The accountant signs back, "I don’t know what you are talking about."
The attorney interprets to the Godfather, "He doesn’t know what you are talking about."
The Godfather pulls out a 9 millimeter pistol, shoves it into the accountant’s mouth, cocks the trigger, and says to his lawyer, "Now ask him where my damn money is!"
The attorney signs to the accountant, "He’s not kidding.”
The accountant signs back, "OK! OK! OK! It’s in a brown suitcase behind the shed in my backyard!"
The Godfather, "Well... what did he say?"
The attorney pauses briefly then says, “He says…go to hell... you don’t have the balls to shoot."

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Answer to the Question of the Day:
An ancestor is a parent or (recursively) the parent of an antecedent (i.e., a grandparent, great-grandparent, great-great-grandparent, and so forth).
Ancestor is "any person from whom one is descended.
In law the person from whom an estate has been inherited."

In common usage, neither parents nor grandparents are referred to as ‘ancestors’.

Two individuals have a genetic relationship if one is the ancestor of the other, or if they share a common ancestor.
In evolutionary theory, species which share an evolutionary ancestor are said to be of common descent.

Example of a family tree. Reading left to right Lucas Grey is the father of three children, the grandfather of five grandchildren and the great-grandfather of three siblings Joseph, John and Laura Wetter.
Josef Sábl cz, Mysid - Vectorized in vim by Mysid, based on a GIF by Josef Sábl cz.

Good Morning on this Monday, the Eighth Day of April.

Today we talked about people easing into ancestry.
About the weather, calendar, and dinner, the leftovers from a dry-aged tomahawk rib roast.

We posted a joke and a terrific letter from Sally C, and ended with a paragraph on ancestry.
 
And now? I have a dinner party for twelve to prepare for. Gotta go.

Che vuoi? Le pocketbook?

See you soon.

Your Love