Richard Jernigan -> RE: In your locality – what’s it really like? (Apr. 7 2020 3:32:08)
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: kitarist BTW Tim Urban from WaitButWhy had a great post a few years ago about family connections and different perspectives back and forth through time, both in the usual tree representation and where one is merely one of the countless fore-relatives of some unknowable person several centuries into the future: https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/01/your-family-past-present-and-future.html Perhaps you've seen it. Thanks for the link. I hadn't seen it. The phenomenon of "pedigree collapse" is not widely discussed, except perhaps by stock breeders. When I was much younger one of my ancient cousins informed me, rather breathlessly, that one of the Queen's 14-times-great-grandmothers was a Jernigan. I refrained from explaining to her that it was almost a statistical certainty. By the time you go back 16 generations there are 32,768 female branches in your family tree. Around six hundred years ago there were nowhere near that many marriageable women in the entire European aristocracy. In fact English pedigrees, as far as foreigners go, slant heavily toward France, the Holy Roman Empire and what is now northern Spain--mostly women. Say there were 500 marriageable aristocratic women in the 16th generation of the Queen's ancestry. Then on average the same person would inhabit 64 different branches of her family tree. Not only is it not at all remarkable that the Queen has a Jernigan ancestor, it would be quite remarkable if she did not. Sixteen generations back from the Queen the English aristocracy still addressed one another as "cousin"--because they were. As far as family stories go, last Easter at dinner the 20 or so guests were mainly my brother's family and mine. Afterward one of my grand-nieces approached me, switched her iPhone to "record," and asked me to recite some family history. I began, "I have vivid memories--and there is no one left to contradict me." At age 82 you are sometimes--perhaps not often, but still sometimes--reminded that those vivid memories have gradually evolved considerably over the decades. Nabokov wrote a novel whose form was a handwritten memoir by an older man. Occasionally in the manuscript there is a slashing comment in an imperious female hand, such as "No! Natasha was not at Marienbad that year. She remained in Saint Petersburg the whole summer." We remain well. I am unaware of any COVID-19 cases in the immediate neighborhood, but I am also unaware of anyone who has actually been tested. Our only friend who has shown symptoms has not been seriously ill, and has been steadily improving while staying at home. He runs the IT installation of a hospital, and expects test results in the next few days. One negative development is that it has become essentially impossible to snag a time slot for delivery or curbside pickup from the two major grocery chains. I have an N-95 mask which I bought at the end of February and a box of latex gloves, so I may suit up and head to the grocery store if supplies begin to run a little low in a couple of weeks. But if push comes to shove I have 25 pounds of pinto beans and an equal amount of rice. In 1961 two friends and I subsisted on beans and rice, and the few birds we shot during six weeks in the high jungle of southern Yucatan and northern Guatemala. We kept careful track of what was eaten by our guide, translator, and soon our friend: water and corn tortillas. We only camped in the forest a few nights, since there were villages scattered throughout that country. Each morning Jorge would make the rounds of women fixing breakfast, and return with a two-inch stack of tortillas he had bought for very little money. He tasted beans once out of curiosity, but never again accepted our offer. By the time we were ten miles from the road, children in the villages had never seen beans before. No one had ever even heard of a pressure cooker. On Facebook I have been deluged by advertisements proposing to sell me face masks. Some are fairly obviously scams. Despite its elegant visual design, one betrays itself by tin-eared English, both in the body of the ad and in the enthusiastic "comments." Since more than half a dozen ads have appeared for the first time in an hour of Facebooking today, I have my doubts about all of them. On the other hand, five pounds of spaghetti I ordered 2 1/2 weeks ago from a previously unknown source turned up yesterday. RNJ
|
|
|
|