G4BB 60: More Mail liaM eroM

»»»»»  More Mail liaM eroM  «««««

Dear G4BB: When you were talking about Anglo-Saxon kinship terms, you mentioned the significance of “eam,” mother’s brother, and how this word eventually came to mean all uncles. Could that be why the English word for “as an uncle” is “avuncular,” from the Latin for maternal uncle, as opposed to being from “patruus,” Latin for paternal uncle? …from Liz in Lonesometown

60.1 Dear Liz: Nice catch…while I don’t know for certain, it is suggestive, isn’t it? Something like the following might have happened: Churchmen translating Old English into Latin determined that “eam” meant “mother’s brother” and so translated that into “avunculus.” This would certainly explain why the eventual Modern English word for “uncle-ish” is derived from mother’s brother…and not from father’s brother, as you’d expect from a patrilineal system such as the Romans had. BTW, “eam” was also spelled “eme,” and according to the Oxford Dictionary, was used to archaic effect as late as the early 1800s.

Dear G4BB: I am one of 4 half-sisters…we all have the same mother, but different fathers. Two of these fathers are brothers, the others are their half-brother and their 1st cousin. Yeah…I know…don’t ask. We just call ourselves “the 4 sisters,” but we suspect we are more closely related than “normal” half-sibs…but how much and which ones? …from Anne in Elkville

60.2  Dear Anne: Your clan certainly presents an interesting situation, and an excellent chance to get in some quality practice time in diagraming and analyzing family connections. So let’s start with Chart 199. To simply our analysis, I’ve taken the liberty of giving your half-sisters and other pertinent family members appropriately mnemonic monikers. (Please don’t tell me Mom named all 4 daughters “Anne”!)

60.3  Now of course on your mothers’ side, because you have all the same mother, the 4 of you are each a half-sister to the other 3, all equal and accounted for, with a Coefficient of Relationship of 1/4.  Due to your fathers…which with “normal” half-siblings would be men who are unrelated…your relationships, taken as pairs of you, are closer, altho decreasingly so as we go. Simplest is between Anne and Beth…their fathers are full brothers, so Anne and Beth are full 1st cousins. Total CR 1/4 + 1/8 = 3/8…or halfway between 1st cousin and half-sister…so called “three quarter siblings.”  (Altho remember, that’s 3/4ths of the CR of normal full siblings…so 3/4th of 1/2 = 3/8. A CR of 3/4, or anything over 1/2, implies interbreeding, which “three quarter siblings” need not imply.)

60.4   Whatever Anne is to the other 2, Beth is the same, so we’ll continue with Anne. With fathers that are half-brothers, Anne and Cass are half-1st cousins, with a total CR of 1/4 + 1/16 = 5/16, just slightly more closely related than half-siblings (4/16 = 1/4.) Anne and Deb are 2nd cousins, since their fathers are 1st cousins. Thus they are ever so slightly more closely related than half-siblings…1/4 + 1/32 = 9/32, as compared to 8/32 = 1/4.

60.5  Likewise, Cass and Deb are also 2nd cousins, as their fathers are 1st cousins. And it is instructive to note that from Mr. D’s point of view, Messrs. A, B, and C are all his 1st cousins, regardless of whether they are full or half brothers to each other. What matters is that “Big Bro” and “Li’l Bro” are full siblings…hence their sons are all 1st cousins, regardless of which mother is whose.

60.6  But there’s an added twist, as shown in Chart 200. The way the question was stated, there is another possible arrangement…and that is that Anne and Beth’s fathers are 1st cousins with Deb’s father thru their mother Ms. AB, and not thru their father “Big Bro.” In this case, Deb’s paternal grandfather “Li’l Bro.” is a sibling of Ms. AB…and what this does is eliminate any blood relationship at all between Cass and Deb on their fathers’ side, making them half-sisters and nothing more. These results are summarized in Chart 201. So as to your answer, Anne…if the shoe fits, get another one just like it…as they say…(they who?…)

Dear G4BB: Have you seen the latest query at that loopy wiseGEEK Cousins page? If I could venture a guess, I would say the answer is 1st cousins thru mothers, 2nd cousins thru fathers. Am I close?  …from Manny in Moosylvania

60.7  Dear Manny: Bullseye! After over a year of weekly posts, some of this stuff is apparently rubbing off on some of you. As you can see in Chart 202, the questioner and their cousin are “irregular double cousins,” 1st cousins on their mothers’ side, 2nd cousins on their fathers’ side…for a CR of 5/32…or just slightly more related than single 1st cousins, which would be 4/32 or 1/8.

60.7  And on the practical side, here’s something I hadn’t really thought of until just now. When the cousins’ fathers’ family has a family reunion, they all say: “Well, their fathers are 1st cousins so they’re 2nd cousins.” To which the family historian might reply: “Sure, except that they’re also 1st cousins on their mothers’ side. I know that’s not how WE consider them, but that’s how they consider themselves…not that our family takes 2nd fiddle or anything, but it is what it is.”  

60.8  It’s almost like the cousins say to themselves: “Which family reunion is this, so what are we again?”  Which is why the generic term “cousins,” with no number, comes in real handy…and as we saw last week, generic terms can be missing from languages that have more specific kinship designations than English does, languages that might thus be erroneously considered to be “more complete.” It’s all relative, folks. Next week more questions and more answers, in approximately that order…till then, ego vobis valedicto…

Wicked Ballsy

Assignment for next week: As I was perusing Charts 199 and 200,  I noticed that unlike the other 3 fathers, Mr. D does not have a mother shown…that’s OK…for the purposes of determining the relationships between the 4 sisters, the fact that he’s a full 1st cousin to the other 3 fathers is enough. But I got to wondering, what if Ms. C was his mother? How does that change the 2 versions of the half-sisterly relationships as outlined in 199 and 200 (which I redrew  as Chart 203) and as summarized in Chart 202? Think on that and we’ll see how you did next next week…

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Copyright © 2012 Mark John Astolfi, All Rights Reserved

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G4BB 59: Dygging Ye Olde Rootes

Dygging Ye Olde Rootes

59.1  Last week I left you with a conundrum. We all know what a “word” is. It is a compact way to refer to a specific thing or express a specific concept. Phrases are short groups of words, and together words and phrases can be termed “expressions”…as opposed to “descriptions,” which fully define a thing or concept. For example, the description “the thing that controls the functions of an electronic devise at a distance” is given the word remote, and we use such phrases as TV remote, cable box remote, DVD remote, universal remote,  etc. The key point here is, as we say, “why isn’t there a word for it”? As the example of “remote” demonstrates, if we need “a word for it,” one comes into being. Further distinctions can be easily assembled as phrases, and indeed if one of these comes to have predominant importance, it too may “get its own word.”

59.2  Last week I wondered why the description “father’s 1st cousin” was expressed in English as 1st cousin once removed ascending, hardly a simplification in the usual sense, as outlined above. Did the solution to this seeming contradiction occur to you? It has to do with the fact that 1st cousin once removed is not an “everyday” expression, to the extent that many speakers of English do not even understand what it means. The expression father’s 1st cousin is sufficient, and indeed that person is not an important person in one’s family generally speaking…certainly not as important as those relatives that have specific words, like uncle, aunt, cousin, grandfather, etc.

59.3  In fact, 1C1R is a genealogical term, used when speaking of one’s ancestors…remember, most people are at most part of 5 living generations…you will see in the local paper a photo of a baby, its father, grandfather, great grandfather, and great great grandfather. But this is unusual. Based simply on average lifespans, when the baby is an adult, he is likely to have few cousins 3 times removed who are still living…that is, his great grandfather’s cousins…and as he approaches middle age, few of his grandfather’s cousins will still be alive, his cousins twice removed…at best, a person who is 40 would have a parent who is 60 and a grandparent who is 80. Thus a cousin 6 or 7 times removed is an ancestor, and surely not a living one…and that’s ascending, since descending haven’t been born yet!

59.4  Of course, over long periods of time, chronological ages and genealogical generations can get out of sync…for example, it is said that Richard Nixon and George Bush (“43”) are 9th cousins 5 times removed, and certainly they were both alive for a large portion of their respective lives. But here is the solution to the conundrum: 9th cousin 5 times removed is certainly a simplification of great great great grandfather’s 9th cousin…imagine if it were 10 times removed, instead of 5 times. What’s more, “9th cousin” itself is a far more practical expression than someone with whom I share a great great great great great great great great grandparent, but not a great great great great great great great grandparent, wouldn’t you say?  But still, hardly something that would pop up in common conversation, unless you were comparing family trees.

59.5   Now when we compare English kinship terms with those of other languages and cultures, we might notice we lack words for certain relatives that other systems do have words for. I would recommend you read this discussion: Paucity of words for relationships. It is very illuminating, if only to show that on the internet, everybody is convinced they know what they’re talking about. But it begins with this observation:

59.6  …and ends with the interesting revelation that despite being seemingly “kinship-term poor,” English does have generic words, grandfather and uncle for instance, that Hindi does not. As Sherlock Holmes would say, these are deep waters indeed, and this leads into what I said last week I was going to do, that is, begin to examine the origin of English kinship words and expressions. Well, I’m going to take a stab at it…I can’t guarantee I’ll kill it, or even wound it to any great degree…it may just jump up and run off again.

59.7  But to begin, the origin of English kinship expressions lies in the origin of English itself, and that can be boiled down rather easily, if in a very generalized way. Linguists trace what we use today, Modern English, back thru 2 distinct periods, Middle English, then Old English, as outlined in Chart 196. 

59.8  Today, Anglo-Saxonis in common parlance is synonymous with “English” or “British”…an Anglophile admires all things associated with the Brits, and in geopolitics we speak of Anglo-American relations. But “Anglo” traces back to a tribe called the Angles, who together with the Saxons, invaded the British Isles in the 5th century, after the departure of the Roman legions, in the wake of the collapse of the Roman Empire. The languages they spoke belonged to a family called Germanic or Teutonic…a group distinct from the Romance languages of French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian, which are all derived from Latin.

59.9  These new languages overlaid the native Celtic tongues and lingering Latin influence to form the basis of what is called Old English. Thru sheer proximity, what we would today call Scandinavian languages, including that of the Jutes from what is now Denmark, also contributed to the mix. And while it is strictly speaking called “English,” you would be unable to read it, altho you would notice many words that seemed familiar. Thus in Chart 197, you can readily recognize father, mother, sister, brother, son, daughter, niece and nephew.

59.10  The big difference you’ll notice is the 4 words used for paternal and maternal uncles and aunts, and therein lies a fascinating tale. I have also left out cousins, for the simple reason that the word, or perhaps as many as 8 different words based on familial distinctions, does not seem to exist in the root Anglo-Saxon language. Here’s a quote from an article by the late Professor of Old English Stephen Glosecki, of the University of Alabama at Birmingham:

59.11   Which is not to say of course that people didn’t have cousins…they just found no need, or so it appears, for a specific word for cousins. You must understand that for a long period of time the Anglo-Saxons were pre-literate…the earliest writing consists of runic symbols like those at the left. In the 7th century, Christian missionaries reintroduced the Latin alphabet…and much of what was written down was in what was evolving into the churchly form of Latin we have today. Thus, the number of surviving Old English documents is rather small, around 400, ranging from actual works of literature to wills and laws to mere lists of names and places. There is still much that is not understood about Old English, much that has only been guessed at or “reconstructed,” and even when specific words are known, their precise meaning is not certain. In Chart 197, for example, nefa is given as the probable equivalent of nephew. Yet it is found contemporaneously with the phrases brothor sunu and sweostor sunu, as well as the word suhterga, which contextually seems to refer to the son of one’s brother. What connotation might be intended by using one of these words or phrases and not the others is not clearly known, and, short of time travel, may never be.

59.12  But to complete our brief sketch of the overall development of Modern English, the Norman Invasion of 1066 AD brought the tremendous influence of the French Language…indeed, for centuries the British Isles could have been considered bilingual…or trilingual if one counts Latin. And it is from the French that our words uncle, aunt, and at long last cousin are derived.

59.13  I mentioned in 59.10 the use of different words for paternal and material siblings. This is done in many unrelated languages around the world and down thru history…indeed, it is what is found in Latin. And it is closely associated with a way of reckoning relatives that is simply alien to us. It is one thing to say, well, they do things differently in China, or Africa, or Polynesia, but that our own cultural as well as linguistical ancestors had another way of organizing kinship and social connections may seem a bit jarring. Nevertheless, early English kinship was in a state of flux, and was not always based on the “nuclear family” as we think of it today…indeed, the ultimate push in that direction came from the Normans, as a reflection of their feudal, rather than tribal, French society.

59.14  Simply put, the ancient Anglo-Saxons, as was typical of the Germanic tribes, appear to have been primarily matrilineal. Now this is not the same as matriarchal. Women weren’t in charge…they weren’t the movers and shakers, the decision-makers of the community. What matrilineal means is that kinship ties were organized around women…in fact, you were not technically a member of your father’s family, but only of your mother’s! This certainly seems strange to us today…our system is bilineal…for example, if your father is Arch Adams and your mother was Zoe Zollo, you consider yourself an Adams and a Zollo. In a unilineal system you would be one or the other, but not both…an Adams if it were patrilineal, a Zollo if matrilineal.

59.15  But as I said, Anglo-Saxon kinship norms were in a state of flux, a patrilineal system slowly replacing the mother-based system of their antiquity.  (And with the arrival of the French, this then began to move toward the bilineal system we have today.) This can be seen the the epic poem “Beowulf”…only one manuscript exists, written in Old English. It is believed to date from the 9th century, altho estimates range a century either way, such is the lack of precise knowledge. And it tells the story of a hero of an earlier age, and of a kinship system largely irrelevant by the time the old tale was written down…seen at best as a quaint anachronism, “old-fashioned,” in other words.

59.16  And that system was matrilineal…the focus of the clan, the tribe, the family group was a mother, and the “alpha male” was her brother, usually her oldest brother. She was, as Prof. Glosecki puts it, the “figurehead,” while her brother was the “enforcer.” You were a member of her family, not your father’s family, and the adult male you had the closest ties to was your eam, or maternal uncle. Indeed, as Old English evolved into Middle English, the term for uncle, on either side of the family, became simply eam, until it was supplanted by the French oncle as uncle. And as can be seen in the story, the adult Beowulf has a close relationship with and allegiance to Hygelac, his mother’s brother. His own father is distant and in terms of familial bonds, almost equivalent to a step-father…the man married to one’s mother.

59.17   This archaic pattern, while changing into something we’d recognize as more modern, is seen in much of the existent Anglo-Saxon writing…in wills for example, sons being passed over in favor of nephews. And when you look at Chart 198, you’ll notice that the words for paternal uncle and aunt seem to group them together as “father’s relatives”…indeed “faedera” literally means “another father.” And that’s because your father was not of your clan, but of his sister’s, with closer social ties and obligations to her children than to his own. In a strange sense, he was a “biological necessity”…certainly head of his own household, but when push came to shove, of your kith but not of your kin. Like I said, it seems odd to think of it, but when you look at where we came from, their ways were not ours, pure and simple. Next week, we check the old mailbag for more goodies…see ya in 7…

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Copyright © 2012 Mark John Astolfi, All Rights Reserved

ye olde shæmælæss plœgges…

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G4BB 58: Hey LQQk…Mail!

»»»»»»  Hey LQQk…Mail!  ««««««

Dear G4BB: Can you go to school for this stuff?  …from Wendy, in Woonsocket, RI

58.1  Dear Wendy: Absolutely you can, altho your choices are few and far between. In terms of 4-year genealogy programs, Heritage Genealogy College in Salt Lake City appears to be the pick of the litter…with online classes leading to Bachelor’s and Associate’s degrees, as well as a Certificate program. Courses may also be taken a la carte, and they are especially geared toward becoming a professional genealogist.

58.2  Brigham Young University offers a major and minor in “family history studies” thru its history department, the majority of the classes on campus. They also offer an independent studies program in family history that will not result in a degree, but credits can be applied towards one.

58.3  Akamai University…an internet only college, for what it calls “mid-career” adult learners… has a 2-year Associate’s degree in genealogy. Non-degree certificates are available from Boston University, the University of Washington and the University of Toronto. Continuing education classes are offered on-line by the National Genealogical Society, probably the premiere among such enterprises.

58.4  These are just the ones I’m aware of, and I’m sure there are others…interest in such formal education is certainly on the rise.  In terms of old-fashioned brick-and-mortar evening classes, your best bet would be to check with the history department of a school near you, or perhaps anthropology if they have it.

Dear G4BB:  I happened upon this at a website dispensing advice on writing wills, and thought of you. After all, you don’t won’t to inadvertently leave your vast fortune to the wrong relative, right?  …from Tammy in Tallahassee

58.5   Dear Tammy: Absolutely you don’t.  Say for example you intended to leave your considerable wealth to Joe Blow, your 1st cousin’s son. Writing “2nd cousin Joe Blow” could be a problem if your father’s 1st cousin has a son also named Joe Blow…he’s your real 2nd cousin, as opposed to the intended recipient, who is your 1st cousin once removed. Got any attorneys in the family?

58.6  Now in everyday conversation, it doesn’t make much sense to expend a lot of time or energy correcting someone who is confused about numbered cousins and cousins removed. If they seem receptive…fine, explore it further. But most will think you’re just wrong, and fight you on it.  If they subsequently get it into their heads to prove you’re wrong…by consulting some sort of authoritative source, be it legal, genealogical, religious, or even anthropological…they’ll discover soon enough that you were right after all. But making a mistake on a legal document can have dire consequences, obviously.

58.7  I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: just about the only place you’re going to find the “wrong” information with any sort of official “cachet” is in a dictionary*…where they tend to report what’s common usage, without bothering to point out when that usage happens to be incorrect. But consider the internet: there is certainly no lack of individuals “volunteering” the information that your 1st cousin’s son is your 2nd cousin…“Hope this helps!”  Yeah, right. But I’ve yet to find a website with even the remotest whiff of authenticity that repeats that common mistake…doesn’t mean they aren’t out there…but that’s the beauty of the internet: compare and contrast and you’ll likely get an accurate consensus. BTW, I love those sites where someone asks a question, then gets to choose which answer they think is the best or “most correct”…duh!

*Altho certainly not all dictionaries are so delinquent…for example, this entry from the online Oxford Dictionary is exactly right in all particulars. Woo hoo!

58.8  The explanation you sited is correct as far as it goes. The second definition is a bit confusing…it’s just a roundabout way of saying “your parent’s 1st cousin”…which certainly would have been more helpful…and I would prefer the terms “grand uncle” and “grand aunt.” But where it does make a mistake is in the overall premise that “1st cousin once removed” constitutes 2 different relationships…the truth is, it constitutes only one relationship, that of somebody’s parent having a 1st cousin.

58.9  The trouble is that relationships that cross generations are rightfully non-reciprocal…which is to say, if I am your X, then you are not my X….if you are my father, I am not your father…the 2 “ends” of the relationship have different names, indicating which is of the older generation and which is of the younger. (Bear in mind, it’s generations, not chronological ages that counts, since for example an uncle may be younger than his nephew.) This is so commonplace we hardly think of it: father/son, uncle/nephew, grandfather/grandson.

58.10  Where our system breaks down is when referring to your father’s numbered cousins…his 1st cousin is your 1st cousin once removed, and you are his, with no indication as to which is of the older and younger generation. The best we can do is something like: you are his 1C 1R descending, and he is your 1C 1R ascending. Clumsy, but it gets the job done. Why isn’t there a better way? Well, as I outlined in G4BB #11, in Hispanic cultures there is…your father’s 1st cousin is your 2nd uncle, and you are his 2nd nephew…(see Chart 34 reprised below.) Not only are the older and younger generations indicated, but your father’s 1st cousin being your 2nd uncle parallels your father’s brother being your uncle, or in this sense your “1st” uncle. And indeed, you would likely call your father’s 1st cousin “uncle,” as much as your father’s brother….since “uncle” is approximately what he is, just one “step” beyond collaterally, or as we might say, “horizontally” on the family tree.

58.11   But as I said, the relationship of 1C 1R results from someone’s father having a first cousin…if you are the one with the father, you are of the younger generation, and 1C 1R descending to the other. If on the other hand you are the 1st cousin, you are of the older generation, and 1C 1R ascending to the other. As you can see in Chart 195, the 2 “different” relationships are in fact the same….simply defined differently depending on which “end” you’re on. Still, when you think about it, the terms “father” and “son” are defined differently too, and define 2 different “groups,” altho again it’s only one relationship…and you are a son to your father, and a father to your son, without the slightest bit of confusion.

58.12  And for the umpteenth time…if you hear of your 1C 1R…do not think of that person as your 1st cousin, because they are not…they are someone else’s 1st cousin…in this case your father’s. Or going the other way, if you are somebody’s father’s 1st cousin, then that father’s son is your 1C 1R…from his point of view, you are his father’s 1st cousin.

58.13  But the burning question is, how is it that one language or culture has a convenient word or phrase like “2nd uncle,” while another is saddled with “first cousin once removed ascending.” Further…linguistically, a specific word or phrase is intended to be a “shorthand” for a description…in this case, the description itself…”father’s 1st cousin” is shorter than the shorthand. Where did English get out of whack? I’ll make a tentative stab at answering that question next week…till then, don’t forget this is “spring ahead fall back” weekend.

This is an English translation of how the Spanish system would work in our system, as it pertains to removed cousins. The Spanish system itself has other conventions not reflected here. All the relations in the boxes are from the point of view of of the box labeled “You“…the only exceptions are the red abbreviations in the upper left corner…these indicate how that person is related to your direct ancestor in that generation…yellow for Father’s generation, pink for Grandfather’s, blue for Great Grandfather’s…

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Copyright © 2012 Mark John Astolfi, All Rights Reserved

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G4BB 57: Yet Still More Mail…

»»»»  Yet Still More Mail…  ««««

Dear G4BB: Which of my cousins are my “distant cousins”?  …from Chumley, in Pawnsville

57.1  There are no hard and fast rules…it’s different for every family, and from culture to culture. My experience is that here in Western society, few people these days have much contact with their 2nd cousins, and even fewer with their 3rd cousins…to the extent that many people don’t know WHAT those are, let alone specifically WHO they are.

57.2  Much of the problem today is that people are so mobile, and unlikely to live geographically near collateral relations. Families in the past grouped together, living in the same town, if not on the same street, or even in the same house. But let’s say your father grew up very connected to his 1st cousins…perhaps your father was an only child, and 1st cousins his age stood in as surrogate siblings. Or your grandfather and his siblings were very close, and hence so were their offspring, which again would be your father and his 1st cousins. And when they started having families of their own, those offspring might interact, and that would be you and your 2nd cousins. Repeat this scenario with a grandfather who was especially close to his 1st cousins, and you get your father and his 2nd cousins, then you and your 3rd cousins. It seems that as a practical matter, simply because of the spread of ages typicality involved, that’s the limit of it.

57.3  And while it’s very interesting and rewarding to discover how you are related to various people in your ancestry…especially if you always wondered if you were related at all to those with the same last name as you, or as your parents, etc. …the actual genetic overlap gets very slight very quickly…In Chart 193, red represents the genes you share, yellow is those you don’t…

57.4  But as I said, every family’s situation is different. In my family for example, my mother was an only child…but she was also a good deal older than her cousins, since her parents were each the first born in their family. Because of the nearness in age, she was closest to one of her mother’s 1st cousins, her 1C 1R. She also had a close relationship with one of her 2nd cousins, as Godmother/Godchild. In fact, I have very strong childhood memories of my grandmother’s 1st cousins and their families, more so than even my grandmother’s siblings…but no relationship as an adult with the children or grandchildren of my grandmother’s siblings (my 1C 1R and  2nd cousins, respectively)…nor with the children or grandchildren of my grandmother’s 1st cousins (my 2C 1R and 3rd cousins respectively.)

57.5  This is a good time to repeat my constant mantra: “cousins removed” aren’t your distant cousins, simply because they aren’t your cousins at all, but the cousins of somebody else in your direct line! For example, 2nd cousin once removed… is your parent’s 2nd cousin. 1st cousin twice removed…is your grandparent’s 1st cousin. 3rd cousin 3 times removed…is your great grandparent’s 3rd cousin…etc. Of course, that’s ascending…you are theirs descending!

Dear G4BB: I heard that the census records from 1940 are being released this year…what’s the story on that? Are they out yet?  …from Vaughn, in New South Half Moon Bay Heights

57.6  Dear Vaughn: April 2nd is the “Big Day,” no foolin’! While the census numbers are released as soon as possible, the actual enumeration…that is, the people’s names, ages, addresses, etc…are “sequestered” for a period of 72 years. That’s the law…one might hope that a public spike in genealogical interest might inspire the Feds to relax that restriction and put it all out, but so far I’ve heard nothing along those lines. Trouble is, how many of those who could really use this information will still be alive in 2022, 2032, 2042, etc.?

57.7  In researching the Decennial Census, I came across 2 common misconceptions. The first is that the 72-year rule is not a law but just an arbitrary procedure instituted in 1952 by then Census Bureau Director  Roy V. Peel. This is not true…it really is the law, as stated in U.S. Code Title 42 Section 2108(b).

57.8  As you can see, the confusion no doubt stems from the fact that the law does not specifically mention 72 years, but refers instead to correspondence between the Census Director and the Federal Archivist, in which it was recommended that the period be extended from the previous 70 to 72 years. Archivist Wayne C. Grover agreed with the recommendations…which were mainly concerned with the ultimate deposition of the physical records. The only clue to why they concurred on the waiting period is seen below, from Grover’s response.

57.9  Thus, the National Archives and Records Administration is in physical possession of the census lists. Over the past several decades, they have been released in analog form as rolls of microfilm…and today of course in digital form on CD’s, reducing the volume of media considerably. But the second misconception is that the National Archives website has the data available on-line…they simply do not…altho I can’t help but wonder if it’s something they’re thinking about!

57.10  As of right now…and this could certainly change sometime in the future…there are 2 main sources for specific census information on-line. The first is the Mormon site Familysearch.org. Their data is free and available to anyone. How complete it is I cannot tell you…they are still in the process of digitizing their mountains of information, which goes far beyond just the Decennial Census…but I have found it extraordinarily useful. And after all, those behind it…and I say this with no disrespect intended…are literally on a “Mission from God.” The impetus of their genealogical research is the doctrine of Proxy Baptism…essentially saving the souls of ancestors who died before the LDS came into being.

57.11  The other on-line source is Ancestry.com. Some of their data is free…full access requires payment. But the good news is, a Library Edition is available at many public libraries…granting free access to much more than you can get “at home.” I have found this to also be an excellent resource, especially access to images of the actual census documents as filled out by the enumerators…and again, they have much more beyond just the census.

57.12   And if I might offer you a tip, as you’re researching this data, be especially careful of first or given names. Well, of last or surnames as well…because you are facing a double gantlet. The first is that the census workers wrote down what they were told: if they heard it wrong, or if what they were told was wrong, for whatever reason, it’s now all we have. The second problem is that today’s researchers must decipher what was written…and it was almost always in cursive or longhand…and that may not be easy.

57.13  A funny example of that was one of my maternal grandfather’s uncles. One source gave his name as “Laid Berube.” Now I had come across some unusual French Canadian given names, so I figured…OK…maybe this is short of Abelard or Abelaird or something along those lines. Well, further checking at other sites solved the mystery: this was actually “David Berube”…and having seen the actual scrawl of the census worker, I could see the difficulty! But much of genealogical research is like that…gleaning as much information as possible from as many sources as you can find will give you a better picture of what’s what. But it really is “detective work” in many cases, sorting out the apparent inconsistencies.

57.14  But the point about first names…once you’ve got the family name nailed down…is that they can be very fluid over time…the same person may be called by several different names. And that’s true even today…now and then you discover that someone you’ve known your whole life as Bob is actual Thomas…and Robert is his middle name.

57.15  As an example, I put together this chart of my mother’s father Henry Berube and his siblings. Now family lore over the years was that his name really wasn’t Henry…as you can see, there is a tantalizing but ultimately inconclusive clue as to the origin of Henry from the 1920 census. That was also the year his brother “Uncle Rainy” was a girl…with an extra “e” tacked onto “Rene.” How Adrian/Girard morphed into “Uncle Pete” is anybody’s guess…and please don’t act shocked when I tell you that the parents of this brood were Joseph and Adrienne… 😉 😉  In addition, “Henry” Berube was nowhere to be found in 1930, since they put him down using the French spelling, Henri.

57.16  The other side of this…coincidentally the other side of my mother’s family…is the anglicizing of immigrants’ first names. Her mother came over from Poland as a child, first name Czesława…pronounced chess-WAH-vah…that little line turning the “l” into a “w” sound, and the actual “w” pronounced as a “v.” She was Chessie or Jessie for a while, then Stella as a teenager, finally Sophie as a married woman…altho some records give her as Stella well into retirement age. Likewise her siblings: Bolesław/Boley = William or Bill, and Felixa = Phyllis. So when you see the childrens’ names in the census record and think: this isn’t the right family, maybe it really is! Good luck, and we’ll catch you next time…

________________________________________

Copyright © 2012 Mark John Astolfi, All Rights Reserved

szhamevess pfługz…or something like that…

Podcasts at http://stolfpod.podbean.com  and   http://thewholething.podbean.com

Other  Blog at http://stolf.wordpress.com  (the legendary Stolf’s Blog)

More bloggage at  http://travelingcyst.blogspot.com

and  http://www.examiner.com/retro-pop-culture-in-watertown/mark-john-astolfi

Updated Resume at http://travelingcyst.blogspot.com/p/resume.html

Audio samples at  http://stolfspots.podbean.com

G4BB 56: Still More Mail…

»  »  »  »  Still More Mail…  «  «  «  «

Dear G4BB: Week before last, you showed how a baby born next year could be older than one born this year. This sounds like something that ties in with what my accountant calls the “kiddie tax”…what say you?  …from John in Waynestown

56.1  Dear John: I say that’s probably a very nice catch…and I say “probably” because tax laws are written to be intentionally incomprehensible, so it’s not surprising that I can find no explanation of the theory behind the particular law in question. But in general, the term “kiddie tax” refers to the fact that income earned by minors is subject to some degree of government plunder….you mean even lemonade stands? If they’re successful enough, yeah.

56.2  There are various cutoff points at various ages, treating such income differently. And in federal law, the way you determine how old a child is for a tax year is the age they are on December 31 of that year. The  exception is that a child born on January 1st is considered to be that age on the preceding December 31st…in effect, his birthday is moved up one day.

56.3  As I said, I have no definite reason why it’s done that way, but in examining the Time Zone discrepancies that occur at the end of one year and the beginning of another, it certainly makes sense. Take for example 2 babies, Abe and Zack, born at the same exact moment, but on opposite sides of the country. For tax purposes, Abe is considered to be 1 year old for the year 2013, since he turns 1 on 12/31/2013. On the other hand, Zack is not considered 1 year old until the year 2014…but they are the same “age”!

56.4  Thus Zack would be, for example, “under 18” for an one year more than Abe, even thought they are the exact same “age,” having been born at the exact same moment.

56.5  So to compensate, Zack is pushed back one day…he is now treated exactly the same as someone who is exactly the same age, which seems logical, wonder of wonders. On the other hand, this ruling applies to all children born on January 1st, not just to those born in the wee hours of the morning. Thus a child born at 12:01am on January 2nd on the East Coast will be older than someone born at the same moment on the West Coast, yet will indeed stay “under 18” a year longer.

56.6  But this is going  to happen no matter where you draw the dividing line…it can’t be helped. No matter what day it is, there will always be children born the “next” day who are older than some born the “previous” day. If taxes were figured by the day, this would cause at worst a discrepancy of 1/365th. But once a year, the years, not just the days, are out of sync…and if this isn’t in fact the rationale for the law, it still works out that way, so there you go…

Dear G4BB: Heads up! Incoming from the wiseGEEK cousins page!…from Chance, in Chelmsford, Mass.

56.7  Dear Chance: Thanx, man…for those who don’t know what Chance is talking about, wiseGEEK is a website that promises “clear answers to common questions.” Well, it’s a goal to shoot for, anyway. Their article on the degrees of cousinship is particularly chuckleheaded, so much so that I critiqued and corrected it line by line back in G4BB 24.

56.8  The odd thing is, over 30 people have posted “how are we related?” questions, and altho only a couple have been subsequently answered, they keep posting. I thought it would be a nice gesture to answer each and every question here, but guess what? They don’t allow comments that include links, so I am unable to tell those folks about it. Pretty “wise,” huh? At any event, and for the record, the bulk of the questions got answered, in full detail and will a chart for each, in G4BB 20-24, and later ones as they dribbled in.

56.9  “Cousins” are those individuals, beyond siblings and half-siblings, who are of your generation…that is, related to your nearest common ancestor by the same number of steps as you are. The “degree” refers to 1st cousins, 2nd cousins, 3rd cousins, etc. I call them collectively “numbered cousins,” to distinguish them from “cousins removed”…a misnomer if ever there was one, since they are cousins to someone in your direct line of ancestry, but not to you! For example, your “1st cousin once removed” is your father’s 1st cousin, not yours.

56.10  Most of us grow up with 1st cousins on our father’s side, the children of his siblings…and 1st cousins on our mother’s side, the children of her siblings. The spouses of our parents’ siblings are usually not related to each other…but if they are, we have individual cousins who are related to us thru both sides of the family, generically called “double cousins.”

56.11  The most typical case is shown in Chart 191…double 1st cousins…where 2 brothers marry 2 sisters (or it could be 2 mixed pairs, obviously.) If the parents were 1st cousins, each to each, the children would be double 2nd cousins, and etc. If the 2 sets of parents are related in different ways, there is no simple name for it…”irregular double cousins” is pretty much the best we can do…and that’s the situation here.

56.12   You’ll notice that in Chart 192, I’ve included all your mother’s cousins…you took the time to mention them all, so I figured what the heck? But as to the meat of the matter…your mothers are 1st cousins because their fathers were brothers. The children of 1st cousins are 2nd cousins to each other. You and your “double cousin” are thus 2nd cousins on your mothers’ side, 1st cousins on your fathers’ side.

56.13  Your Coefficient of Relationship is just a bit closer than if you were “single” 1st cousins…1/8 + 1/32 = 5/32…along the “32th’s” scale, you are a 5…1st cousins are 4, half-sibs are 8, siblings are 16. Double 1st cousins are as closely related as half-siblings…but beyond that, other mixes of “double cousins” make you more closely related for sure, but not by very much. The real bump-up occurs when siblings marry identical twins…the resulting 1st cousins are half-way between full and half-siblings…so-called “3/4 siblings.” But keep in mind, when we say 1st cousins are 1/8th related, that means they are 7/8th not related! In other words, with R for related, this is a sib: RRRR0000…and this is a 1st cousin: R0000000. Till next week, take it tizzy…

________________________________________

Copyright © 2012 Mark John Astolfi, All Rights Reserved

Dear Friends: Now that I am working full-time again, blogging must be relegated to the weekends…that means just one Deep Fried Hoodsie Cups a week, and that’ll be G4BB on Sundays…this arrangement is not forever, I assure you…the internet isn’t going anywhere, I assume…

shameless plugs, but who has the time, nez pah?

Podcasts at http://stolfpod.podbean.com  and   http://thewholething.podbean.com

Other  Blog at http://stolf.wordpress.com  (the legendary Stolf’s Blog)

More bloggage at  http://travelingcyst.blogspot.com

and  http://www.examiner.com/retro-pop-culture-in-watertown/mark-john-astolfi

Updated Resume at http://travelingcyst.blogspot.com/p/resume.html

Audio samples at  http://stolfspots.podbean.com

DFHC 2/22/2012

>>   check out Stolf’s Blog …be one of the few, the proud, the duck-like…  <<

Breakfast at Ask Cool Daddy’s

Dear Cool Daddy: Of all the cartoon “spokesmen” for breakfast cereals back in the 1950s and 60s, which was most likely gay? How’s that for an off-the-wall question?    …Hazel Ann, in Albuquerque

Dear Hazel Ann: Off-the-chart off-the-wall, I’d say. Here at Ask Cool Daddy, we do try to keep an open mind…but what a politically incorrect question, you rascal, you. I mean, I think it’s politically incorrect…its so hard to keep up these days on how and what “you’re supposed to think.”  It would probably be easier for everyone to just think for themselves, but we got the system we got, nez pah?  But it sure is curious that while on the one hand its OK to be gay, on the other hand its not OK to be interested in who is or isn’t.  Ask for example “Was Nixon gay?” and you’re likely to get the indignant answer “What difference does it make?”…and of course that’s from heteros (or as my spellchecker insists on calling us, “heaters”) since almost everybody is, despite what you hear.

Baby Boomers will recall that back in the day, there was a small number of performers who carved a show business niche for themselves by camping it up for laughs. I’m thinking of Paul Lynde, Charles Nelson Reilly, Alan Sues, Harvey Korman, Rip Taylor, Louis Nye, and the like. None were openly gay, at least to the public…Liberace probability came the closest, especially in the later decades, altho in the 1950s he sued a British newspaper…and won…when they suggested that he was.  Hollywood insiders knew who, but to varying degrees since like anything else, some were more quiet about it than others. For the record, of those I mentioned, the first 3 were, Korman and Taylor are widely considered to be but never publicly fessed up, and Louis Nye wasn’t. The idea that a straight man could also be sort of effeminate…like a Jack Benny for example…seems to have gone by the boards.

At any rate, to answer your question…I’d have to say it’s Lovable Truly, the Post Alpha-Bits mailman from 1964 thru 1971. I mean even in those innocent days…when most Baby Boomers assumed that Truman Capote just talked funny, that’s all…you didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that was a mighty peculiar name for a guy. What were the ad-men thinking? Based perhaps on the complementary closing of a letter…”Very truly yours” morphed with “Love, so-and-so”? He was overhauled several times, getting wider shoulders and a broader chest, but that didn’t help. And what kind of a mailman likes dogs? Something definitely wasn’t right.

But Lovable Truly seemed popular enough with kids…all the standard stuff…dolls, coloring books, even a halloween costume. And he was seen on the Linus the Lionhearted Saturday morning cartoon show, even staring in some of his own features, voiced by Bob McFadden, also known for Milton the Monster, Cool McCool, and Franken Berry, among others. But anyhow, you asked, I answered. Honorary mention to the short-lived Mr. Wonderfull Surprize (1972) and that extremely strange Twinkles Sprinkler (1965)…

But speaking of icons…

Wicked Ballsy….

You might recall Kellogg’s early 1960s run at Big G’s Cheerios…I actually remember OKs tasting pretty good, and I wasn’t a big Cheerios fan, altho I’ve come to appreciate them in my old age. Less well remembered is Post’s try, which ideally was supposed to be shaped like little hearts, but ended up pretty much triangular…BTW, that Lion came before Linus and was a different lion…just for the record…

the goodness and oats and corn in shameless wheat and rice plugs…

Podcasts at http://stolfpod.podbean.com  and   http://thewholething.podbean.com

Deep Fried Hoods Cups Daily Blog:    https://deepfriedhoodsiecups.wordpress.com/

Other Daily Blog at http://stolf.wordpress.com  (the legendary Stolf’s Blog)

More bloggage at  http://travelingcyst.blogspot.com  and  http://www.examiner.com/retro-pop-culture-in-watertown/mark-john-astolfi

Resume at http://travelingcyst.blogspot.com/p/resume.html

Audio samples at  http://stolfspots.podbean.com

G4BB 55: Whatchamacallits…

>>   check out Stolf’s Blog …be one of the few, the proud, the duck-like…  <<

Whatchamacallits…

Dear G4BB: I saw this in a recent Dear Abby column…her answer was OK, but I figured I’d submit it to you in case “Mixed Up in Wisconsin” could use a second opinion!  …from Roger, in Racine

55.1  Dear Roger: Yeah, I saw it too…and don’t mind if I do! Altho the specific question Mixed Up asks…how to introduce the boyfriend to others…reminded me of a cartoon from the early 1970s, when the idea of 2 people “living together” was becoming more socially acceptable…but before we had settled on the politically correct but nonetheless goofy term “significant other.”  An older woman is introducing a younger couple to another older woman, and she says: “And this is Sharon’s whatchamacallit.”  😉 😉

55.2  And yes, Abby Jr.’s answer is just common sense…this is my friend, my boyfriend, my fiancé… however along they are in the relationship. People today have been cowered (by that drat Media again?) into thinking you need “full disclosure” for every nook and cranny of your existence…and it simply isn’t so…too much information!, right?

55.3  On the other hand, the real point of the question…which Abby Jr. ignores, due no doubt to space limitations…is when Mixed Up’s sister says: This is my sister and her boyfriend, my nephew. After all, in the normal course of events, your sister’s nephew is also your nephew…or worse, your son…so yeah, eyebrows are raised, looks trend towards askance.

55.4  The topic of how one should act towards one’s affines…those one is related to by marriage…is a broad one, and a thoroughgoing examination of it is more than I have time for these days…yes, it’s certainly on my bucket list!  Across time and space as I like to say, there are innumerable sets of rules and restrictions, customs and interpretations.  And altho this really isn’t relevant, I might mention something I was reading about recently…in many kinship systems, the practice of a marriage “exchange” has been and still is followed…that is, the bride’s family gets something from the groom’s family in exchange for losing their daughter. For one tribe in Papua New Guinea, it’s traditionally a pig, called the “bride’s fat.” The parents can’t eat it, because they’d be eating their own “daughter,” but others in the family can…so it goes, nez pah?

55.5  Now strictly speaking, “-in-law” is seldom tacked onto anything beyond brother, sister, mother, father, son, and daughter. Certainly, we all understand what an “uncle-in-law” or a “cousin-in-law” would be, but you seldom hear it said that way…usually it’s just “my husband’s uncle” or “my wife’s cousin.” What’s more complicated is how a spouse thinks of his spouse’s blood relatives…cultures differ, families, differ, and even couples differ…you might consider your husband’s cousins as “your cousins,” but he might not feel the same about yours.

55.6  With respect to who can marry whom, legal limitations have usually followed religious ones. An illuminating example comes from England. In 1842, a bill was introduced in Parliament to allow a man to marry his dead wife’s sister. The the idea was that it would be beneficial for the aunt to raise the man’s children. The bill was soundly defeated, but it touched off over 60 years of social debate…needless to say, religion and morality entered into it, and there were strong opinions on both sides.

55.7  If you’re a Gilbert and Sullivan fan, you might recall in Iolanthe when the Fairy Queen sings “He shall prick that annual blister, marriage with deceased wife’s sister.” Finally, the “Deceased Wife’s Sister’s Marriage Act” was passed in 1907, altho it was strictly stated that a clergyman could as we say today “opt out” from marrying a couple, if his religious beliefs prohibited it. But still, this law was very specific, and was not a blanket approval for all siblings and siblings-in-law. The “Deceased Brother’s Widow’s Marriage Act” had to wait until 1921, and it was another 10 years until you could marry your dead spouse’s niece or nephew…which brings us back around to Mixed up in Wisconsin, altho that isn’t really her case…

55.8  …because strictly speaking, Jared the “nephew” isn’t Mixed Up’s in-law…your in-laws are the blood relatives of your spouse (but not your spouse’s affines…say your spouse’s sister’s husband…otherwise, it could conceivably spread to everyone!) The reason the unmarried Mixed Up has a brother-in-law at all is because her sister is married…and from her sister’s husband’s point of view, Mixed Up is his sibling-in-law, thus he is also hers. But for example, his parents are not parents-in-law to Mixed Up, only to her sister. Granted, when and if Mixed Up marries the nephew, her father-in-law will indeed be her sister’s brother-in-law, but let’s not jump the gun.

55.9  But to be honest here…Mixed Up apparently likes the drama, otherwise she wouldn’t be worrying about the whiff of “i-word.” Anyone in the family…or close to them…knows they aren’t related, and anyone else will understand that quickly enough. Which is not to say that some…her sister perhaps?…might extend the definition of “i-word” beyond what it actually is, but that’s family for you. Remember the old saying…you can’t trim the wind, you can only trim your sails.

55.10  And regardless of whether anybody actually cares who’s what, the sister is perfectly within her rights to abbreviate “my husband’s nephew” to “my nephew” for the sake of simplicity. This is the way we do things…for example, on The Andy Griffith Show, “Aunt” Bee refers to both Andy (her 1st cousin once removed) and Andy’s son Opie (her 1st cousin twice removed) as her “nephew.” That’s fine…until you start constructing a family tree, then precision is key, obviously.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

55.11  In fact, this whole discussion reminds me of a puzzle I posed back in G4BB 3…and solved in G4BB 4…that of Tony Soprano’s “nephew” Christopher. (The chart below is not my work so is thus un-numbered, altho I did add in the identifying photos…can it really be only 5 years this June since The Sopranos series ended? Seems longer somehow…)

55.12  When the show took place, Tony’s wife Carmela’s 1st cousin on her father’s side, “Cousin Dickie,” was dead…and his son Christopher had been “adopted” as Tony’s right-hand man and heir apparent…altho if you recall, that’s not exactly how things turned out. She called Chris her “cousin”…as opposed to “1st cousin once removed”…fair enough. She also referred to Chris and her daughter Meadow as “the cousins”…and Chris and Meadow called each other “cousin”…altho of course here it’s 2nd cousin, not 1st.

55.13  But at the same time, Tony called Chris his “nephew”…a double “mistake” if you will, since the relationship was his wife’s, not his…and also it’s not nephew but 1st cousin once removed, since Chris’ father was Carmela’s 1st cousin, not her brother…altho remember, some cultures call that a “2nd nephew” which makes eminent sense, sez me. My challenge was to find a way, without interbreeding if you please, that one and the same person could be your nephew and your wife’s 1st cousin.

55.14  The answer hinges on the fact…and by now I hope this sprung instantly to your mind!!…that we all have 2 sides to our family, owing to the fact that we have 2 parents…and normally those 2 sides aren’t related. But what’s instructive to note is that the solution diagrammed in Chart 189 could come about via 2 different chain of events.

55.15  The way I did it was: your brother marries and has a son, your nephew. That nephew has a 1st cousin Zelda on his mother’s side…and you marry Zelda…badda-bing, badda-boom. But you could do the same thing “backwards” as follows: you marry Zelda, then your brother marries Zelda’s aunt (Zelda’s mother Alice’s sister) and has a son…again, your nephew and your wife’s 1st cousin. Next time, the mailbag still giveth…till then, peace out…

________________________________________

Copyright © 2012 Mark John Astolfi, All Rights Reserved

shameless plugs-in-law, but we love them like they were our own…

Podcasts at http://stolfpod.podbean.com  and   http://thewholething.podbean.com

Other Daily Blog at http://stolf.wordpress.com  (the legendary Stolf’s Blog)

More bloggage at  http://travelingcyst.blogspot.com

and  http://www.examiner.com/retro-pop-culture-in-watertown/mark-john-astolfi

Updated Resume at http://travelingcyst.blogspot.com/p/resume.html

Audio samples at  http://stolfspots.podbean.com

DFHC 2/15/2012

>>  don’t forget to check out Stolf’s Blog …and you’ll always have good luck!…  <<

A Better Life Thru Asking Cool Daddy

Dear Cool Daddy: My pharmacist said that heroin was once available over the counter…that can’t be right, can it? He’s always pulling my leg about one thing or another.  …from Huggy Bear, in Salt Lake City

Dear H.B.: But in this case, no legs are being pulled. Diacetylmorphine, a.k.a. Heroin…and we’ll capitalize the word since it was a trademark…was developed by the Bayer Pharmaceutical Company of Germany in the late 1800s as a cough suppressant and cure for morphine addiction. Altho also derived from the opium poppy, it was believed to be non-addictive…such was the level of study and testing in those far off days.

It was marketed in the US right alongside Aspirin, and available from 1896 thru about 1910, when it was finally realized to be indeed addictive…metabolizing into morphine in the liver…in fact, it could thus be described as a “fast-acting” form of morphine. This was, needless to say, a terrible blunder on Bayer’s part, and a major embarrassment …altho the firm survived, obviously. And by 1914, the Harrison Act came along, which immediately took morphine, opium, codeine, cocaine, and their many and varied derivatives and compounds, off the drug store shelves for good…no longer available from Sears Roebuck by mail-order either. Marijuana was added to the list in 1937.

But speaking of A Better Life Thru Chemistry, here are several ads from the 1950s you might find amusing…

WICKED BALLSY

And speaking of drugs, what were they smoking at the advertising agency…coming up with “living” blue ribbons? I mean, how could they even walk, let alone go bowling?

diethyltriptoshameless plugozine…take several daily, or as needed…

Podcasts at http://stolfpod.podbean.com  and   http://thewholething.podbean.com

Deep Fried Hoods Cups Daily Blog:    https://deepfriedhoodsiecups.wordpress.com/

Other Daily Blog at http://stolf.wordpress.com  (the legendary Stolf’s Blog)

More bloggage at  http://travelingcyst.blogspot.com  and  http://www.examiner.com/retro-pop-culture-in-watertown/mark-john-astolfi

Resume at http://travelingcyst.blogspot.com/p/resume.html

Audio samples at  http://stolfspots.podbean.com

G4BB 54: Mail-o-Rama-o-Jama

>>  don’t forget to check out Stolf’s Blog …and you’ll always have good luck!…  <<

»»»  Mail-o-Rama-Jama  «««

Dear G4BB: So what’s the dang deal with Romney saying he’d deport the President’s uncle? I wish the Sunday paper had a special section every week on genealogy and kinship topics.  …from Natalie, in Natal, South Africa

54.1  Dear Natalie: I hear ya! Well for now, it’s G4BB  or nothing, huh? But, yeah, “Unclegate” anyone? Altho I must tell you quite frankly, this is not a subject I have the heart to delve into very deeply. As someone once said, “Where the Sun is worshiped as a God, it is not a good idea to investigate the laws of heat”…if I ain’t being too oblique on the subject, and I don’t think I am. What’s that? The Secret Service at the door? Tell them I’m not home. 

54.2  But since you asked, the “uncle” in question is actually the POTUS’ half-uncle, being the half-brother of his late father, Barrack Obama Sr. He was born in Kenya as Omar Okech Obama, and came to live in the US in 1963. He is currently 67 years old, and calls himself Onyango Obama, after his father.  He was in the news due to a drunk driving arrest in August of last year, when it came to light that he had been ordered deported back in 1992. If you care to investigate the details of how and why he’s still here (as I said, I simply don’t), they are readily available all over the net.

54.3  Of course, it was a typically snarky “gotcha” question to pose to Mitt Romney back in December, and his answer…that our nation’s immigration laws ought to be enforced… was essentially sound. It’s not unreasonable on the surface of it to think that someone ordered deported ought to pretty much just go…allowing that the specific details of the case might be more complicated, and ultimately result in a different resolution. But in answer to the question: “If somebody is ordered deported, should they be deported, yes or no?” I’d say “yes,” if those were the only 2 answers allowed, wouldn’t you? Hence, there’s really no story here, from the point of view of Romney anyway.

54.4  For the record, the above is a chart of BHO’s family…it is not my work, except that for your benefit I have colored his father red, his half-uncle green, and his grandfather blue. It is fully explained at this website. I gratefully thank Doctor Zebra, and hope you will find it enlightening.

54.5  But I must say, if Romney is indeed the candidate, and his polygamous forebears are reported in the Media like it’s the end of the world, it will indeed be a case of the pot calling the kettle black (sorry…couldn’t resist.) Strange days ahead, it seems…

54.6  And as an interesting side note to last week’s look at Romney’s plural marriage heritage, I was gratified to open the paper last Sunday to this story, cosmic coincidences notwithstanding… 😉 😉 But next, a couple of queries left over from the holidays.

Dear G4BB: Why doesn’t my 2nd cousin Fred ever come to my Christmas party?  …from Bewildered in Bermuda

54.7  Dear Bewildered: Because you’re a dope and nobody goes to your parties. Haven’t you noticed that you’re eating hors d’oeuvres for lunch for 3 days, year in and year out?  OK, just kidding wichoo…sorry…serious answer…

54.8  It’s probably because, if you’re the type of family that goes so far as to invite 2nd cousins…in addition to presumably 1st cousins and siblings…to your Yuletide wingdings, there are simply too many parties for anyone to attend all of them.

54.9  As indicated by the green arrows in Chart 185, you have 4 distinct sets of 2nd cousins, each set consisting of descendants of the siblings of your 4 grandparents…which is to say, each consisting of the great grandchildren of your 4 sets of great grandparents.  Fred has the same…and this amounts to 7 sets of relatives, since by virtue of you’re being 2nd cousins, one of yours and one of Fred’s are the same. So even if Christmas parties were limited to 2nd cousin reunions, there would be 7 parties, 3 you’d go to, 3 Fred would go to, and one you’d both go to.

54.10  And it would build up fast…for 3rd cousins, 15 parties…4th cousins, 31 parties…5th cousins, 63 parties…altho at that level, you could have Christmas every weekend of the year, with parties to spare…so I guess we have a happy ending after all, nez pah?

Dear G4BB: I am 11 years old. On New Years Day, my uncle told me that somebody born in 2012 can be older than someone born in 2011. I think he has it backwards, but all he says to me is to keep thinking about it some more. I’m tired of thinking about it some more. Can you help me with the answer?  …from Freedom Ann in Fresno

54.11  Dear F.A.: Don’t be mad at your uncle, he’s just being his old avuncular self, I suspect. But what he’s driving at is the generally overlooked fact that the day and year of one’s birth is always recorded according to local time. So what? So things can get a little tangled up right around the time when the year changes, the night of Dec. 31st/Jan. 1st.

54.12  In Chart 186, we see that a little girl named Amy is born in Nags Head, North Carolina at one minute past midnight, the morning of January 1, 2012. At that very moment, where you live in Fresno, California, it is 3 hours earlier, right? Now let’s move ahead 1 hour…

54.13  It’s now 1 hour later, and a little girl named Zoë is born where you are, in Fresno. As you can see Amy is 1 hour older than Zoë, even tho Amy was born in the next year. So if you have a list of people born in 2011 and a list of people born in 2012, most of the people on the 2011 list will be older than everybody on the 2012 list…but a few won’t be! A few on the 2011 list will be younger than a few on the 2012 list. And if you find someone born on Dec 31st, and someone else on Jan 1st of the next year, you can’t assume the first one is older! It’s all thanks to Time Zones.

54.14  Also, Zoë will celebrate her 1st birthday one day before Amy does..12/31/2012 for Zoë, 1/1/2013 for Amy…even tho Amy was born first and is thus older, if only by an hour.

54.15  But the most interesting thing is, in another 18 years, Amy and Zoë will be college roommates at Tufts University…tell your uncle that! Next week, we’re still nowhere near the bottom of that bottomless mailbag…adios…

________________________________________

Copyright © 2012 Mark John Astolfi, All Rights Reserved

shameless plugs, declining the invitation owing to a subsequent engagement…

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DFHC 2/8/2012

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Dear Cool Daddy’s Chex in the Mail

Dear Cool Daddy: I saw this recently in the Wall Street Journal…I remember Chex taking off like gangbusters in the 1950s and 60s, but does it really date back to the 1930s?  …from Casper, in Sugartown

Dear Casper: Well, it sort of does…how’s that for a definitive declaration?  I might mention that the suggestion that “from about 1916 to 1948, manufacturers didn’t introduce many new cereals” is an urban myth…as erroneously said of cereals as it is of virtually every other mass consumable category.

They tried to pull that one regarding Wrigley’s gum a while back, claiming there was only Doublemint, Spearmint, and Juicy Fruit until Big Red in 1976. Nothing could be further from the truth, and I called them on it, providing a good 2 dozen examples, and they printed a clarification, altho I wasn’t named…probably others caught the gaff too. Certainly, there wasn’t the avalanche of new cereals that began in the 1960s, and accelerated in the 1970s and 80s…but there was always a lot of experimentation, and since there were many more manufacturers in the first half of the 20th century, I wonder which way the ultimate totals (no pun intended) might tip.

At any event, here’s the dope: Starting around 1900, Ralston Purina made a phenomenally popular hot wheat cereal, at various times called Ralston “Health Food, “Wheat Food,” and “Breakfast Food.” By the 1930s, it was Ralston Cereal, or just “Ralston” for short…and was soon joined by a quick-cooking “Instant Ralston” variety. Next came a ready-to-eat product called Shredded Ralston, essentially bite-size shredded wheat biscuits. That’s the 1935  as stated in the above WSJ clipping…I have seen 1936 and 1937 also cited, and the first advertising I can find dates from 1938. It too was a success, so now we jump ahead to the Summer of 1951.

To coincide with the introduction of Rice Chex, Shredded Ralston is renamed Wheat Chex. (The iconic Chex trio would be rounded out by Corn Chex in 1959.) As you can see above, the box uses both names to alert the consumer…the phrase “the NEW Shredded Ralston” means the name and packaging,  as the advertising copy also refers to Wheat Chex as “the cereal you’ve known as Shredded Ralston.”  So that’s the short answer: the cereal dates back to the late 1930s, the Chex name to 1951.

But we can’t stop there…the real question is how and when did (A) and (B) above morph into the current (C)? Indeed, Wheat Chex was one of my breakfast favorites as a kid, and I remember dense, crunchy striated pillows…not the wimpy criss-cross squares of today. Working from illustrations found in advertisements and trade dress, there appears to have been a gradual evolution.

Wicked Ballsy

The name “Shredded Ralston” was gone from the Wheat Chex box within a year or so…but it’s interesting to note that Rice Chex was for several years still referred to as “shredded rice,” as seen in these 2 newspaper ads from 1952…

shamlessed plug chex…

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Resume at http://travelingcyst.blogspot.com/p/resume.html

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