Step lively, there!
Oh, sometimes lively is not what I am feeling, but I do perk right up when I'm working on genealogy. It might be mine, it might be my husband's, it might be that of our son-in-law, who has added the lively step of Germany and the Netherlands to our genealogical mix, which has been rather boringly British with just a dash of Swiss.
I say, the more the merrier!
One Step I took a few years ago was to sign up with the National Geographic Society's Genographic Project, in which they took my DNA back much farther than anyone else has done -- about 700,000 years! They determined that I am 2.1% Neanderthal and 1.1% Denisovan, the latter being another offshoot strain found in the Denisova Caves in Siberia. A waggish friend said that this revelation means I am "3.2% extinct." Sometimes I feel like it.
Genealogy will broaden our perspective, as long as we do it correctly, and don't try to either do it lazy by just collecting names whether they belong to us or not, or by using genealogy to press an agenda. That's been done in the past, from Spanish subjects in the 1400s to 1600s trying to hide disapproved ethnicities from the authorities and the Inquisition, or by some citizens of St. Augustine, Florida, during the 400th anniversary celebration in 1964 to "clean up" their backgrounds. Other citizens, marginalized by the first lot, knew what these folks were up to, and knew how bogus these scrubbed genealogies were because they were descended from the same people, and could snicker behind politely-held fans.
I've signed up late, because I just found out that Amy Johnson Crow, originator of this series of blogging prompts, is still at it after, what, 10 years? Nice!
So Step into my parlor (said the spider to the fly), and let me see if I can entertain you with posts concerning whoever I can dredge up that I have not already blogged to Infinity and Beyond.
1 comment:
I'm also writing in both challenges... back to normal soon when April is over.
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