These cute figurines are very like the ones my Grandma carried with her. This during her hair raising adventures through the late 19th, and 20th centuries. My maternal granny was born in 1895.
Her little figurines still exist somewhere in the female line of the family. This because guys would ebay anything nice before ya buried. Men have no sense of history.
Family or otherwise.
The paper dresses hug out to dry was my Mom's thing. During the last Great Depression that's all girls could have,...paper dolls. In fact they were my first toys. Some of her childhood paper dolls were passed to on to me. I was so clearly a fairy it only made sense.
My wings were a dead give away.
Speaking of history, and trying to make sense. My dear sister Sylvia,...the one who rescued me, and helped me get my new house. Anyway she had that DNA thing done. 'Had a DNA sample taken from herself, and me.
This to finally discover who the hell we were.
My family is like Obama's. Indeed when I was little I didn't know there was anything like race. This since all my cousins went from ivory to ebony, and most shades in between. I innocently thought that when a mommy had a baby it could be anything, any color.
We were 'people', that's all, and that was that.
Of course I found out very different when I went to school. The "N-Bomb" dropped on me every five minutes. I had to ask Ma what it meant.
Imagine my surprise.
"A SECOND OPINION?"
The family DNA search results finally came back this month.
"Well bleep me on the court house steps at high noon!" ...as Senator Strom Thurmond used to say. He was a particularly unpleasant racialist Southern politician of the 20th century,..with a secret black daughter.
Never mind I understand. My great, great, grandfather was not only white, but an officer in the Confederate army. Is this an interesting country or what.
Anyhow it turns out that although Brown, and with hard to place features we aren't exactly black. Well okay Black by the "One Drop" laws of the slave era United States of America.
They passed them evil things to broaden the category of people that could be included in the slave economy. You could be a slave, and owned by your first cousin. Again, is this one very strange, and interesting country.
As for 'my' family. What are we?
Well according to this most of my ancestors on Dad's side are Native American. Plains folks it seems. Apache, and Sioux with other groups, Scots-Irish as well. No surprise there we knew this from family history.
On my Ma's side, here's the surprise.
We assumed the report would say some variation of Caribbean Black, and Chinese. My maternal Grandma, and her family was mostly China folks.
My racist chinese cousins used to call us "yell'ah niggers" when we grew to be teenagers. ...we weren't yellow, but you get the picture.
The racial innocence of our childhoods was over. Decades later we 'still' don't speak.
Pity.
However the surprise. Ma's ancestors are Northern Ethiopians, and Middle Easterners. Basically the Fertile Crescent. Sub-Sahara Africa, and China doesn't seem to be seriously in the mix.
Imagine that.
This will cause a few cousins that fancy themselves Zulu Warriors some bad moments. I imagine they might want a second opinion.
Me I'm fine with it.
I like this post-racial stuff. Yeah it's baloney when ya comes down to it. What with racial assaults, and killings still common, and everybody wanting to shoot Obama, but still.
Anyway I'll post the finer points of all this DNA hooha when I gets time later in the week.
Btw I 'do' recommend this stuff.
It ain't 'that' expensive, and it's bound to generate all sorts of family mayhem. Black bigots will find out they have white ancestors. Aryan nazi, racist nutjobs will discover all sorts of interesting relatives in their wood pile.
Americans, such as we are, would finally get a dose of reality if we 'all' did a search.
Above is a recent self-portrait. You can clearly see my family's interesting ethnic mix.
There's rumor of alien abductions in the family tree.
That might explain the eye stalks that appears in this or that generation. Otherwise we're just folks.
Me hang'n with my cousins. Yeah you might say we have a unique family backround.
4 comments:
Dear Sidney,
Thanks for your genealogical revelations.
There’s a touch of Irish in you, is there? I knew there was something about you that I liked – so now it’s clear.
My interest in genealogy was sharpened when I discovered my father was a distinguished Catholic bishop with a taste for pretty 15-year-old red-headed girls (my Mother).
I have researched my family history, and I find we are racially ‘purer’ than any race on Earth – except for angels, perhaps. But we are collectively as bigoted, hypocritical, violent and repressed as any race on Earth – with the possible exception of fundamentalist Muslims of the Wa’habi sect (though I admit it’s a narrow margin).
‘We’ were never enslaved, never persecuted, never humiliated. ‘We’ were the aristocratic scum that floated on the top of the cess – and we still turned out, generation after generation, a breed of liars, sycophants, toadies, and priests.
So I am not convinced that race, genetics, and DNA are of any consequence. The ‘who we are’ lies much deeper than ‘where we come from’.
The question is not where we come from but where we are going.
Paradoxically, I was immensely cheered when I discovered, when I was a teenager, that Oscar Wilde was one of my ancestors (in the O’Flaherty line). I have always suspected that Great Grand Uncle Oscar put his head on the block deliberately. They cut his head off metaphorically, but the blood that he shed changed the world.
So maybe it needs bloodshed? Atonement? Sacrifice? O, what a sea of crap we human beings wallow in!
All it needs is for one man (or boy) to stand up and tell the truth.
Which is what you are helping to do, Sidney my dear. So please don’t go back ‘outside’ yet, and please don’t get depressed. The world is fucked up. Yes, of course it is. But we are the world’s best hope. It’s going to change.
I think your uncle Oscar makes up for any sins your family may bear.
No bishops in my line. Just some Baptist ministers.
One in particular My uncle John Baptiste, uncle J.B. we called him, just passed away last year aged 94,...we think.
Eh, we know he's dead. Least I hope so because we buried him.
We're just not sure of the age. There's a family faction that sez he was 100.
That would be cool, but I doubt he was that old. 90-95 is about right.
Anyway as a young man about town he was as serious about booze as I was about cocaine!
...that was back in the day for me btw. I'm straight as a hickory cane now.
Anyway after years of hell on earth he found da Lawd, and took the cure.
I know, I was there.
Uncle J.B. was a preacher man for 50, that's Fifty years!
I'm told he passed away a few days after giving one of his signature Hot'n Stormy services!
Bless'em.
Southern Baptists are a handful.
In some ways I had the calling as well. As I've posted I was to be a catholic priest in my early youth.
Fortunately the Church was as racist as the klan at the time, and discouraged me at every turn.
Colored priests were as hot a topic as gay marriage is now among the religious.
So the fuckers kicked me out thereby saving me from a miserable life in a faith that both didn't want me, and had a particularly insane cosmology.
I became a Queer, communist, pornographer, radio host instead, and never looked back.
So true what you say. It's not where we come from, but where we're going.
Me I'm going to draw some more naked boy Angels with big cocks, and put them on da "world wide web" for the Glory of the G-ddess, and for our dear comrades to jackoff over.
That, and more gleefully deranged pacifist editorials, and anti-authoritarian radio programs.
It's the least I can do for the Lawd, and history.
I know my great, great, (great?), Confederate grandpa smiles down upon me!
Sion said...
Praise the Lawd!
Angel boys with big cocks?
There's GLORY for you!
October 4, 2009 7:18 AM
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**Sorry I had to REPOST your comment Sion. I corrected some stuff in my rant up there.
Love the self-portrait. I want to say more, but it'll have to wait or I'll keep myself up all night.
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