Read an absorbing article in the Guardian (or was it The Daily Beast?) about a family who discovered, via commercial DNA tests, that one of their sons, conceived through IVF, had a different father, arising from some screwup at the clinic. Over the years, they managed to track down the biological father and the two families became friends.
I’ve wondered, here, in the past, if my middle brother, Vic, had the same father as Rod and me. Funny thing: the inter-family differences mentioned in the article were much like those in our family: the biological son and his father were both book readers, the other son was sports-heavy.
With us, Vic, his sons and his granddaughter showed a dexterity that pulled them into sports, while Rod and Dad and I were book people. My nephew Tim (Vic’s youngest and sole surviving son) has never mentioned if he read that rumin, but I know he reads most of them. I’m thinking it’s something we might talk about some day. He’s a realist and I think wouldn’t be horrendously upset (especially since he never knew my parents).
Another thing: I was amazed that brother Vic and his eldest son both died of dementia. Before that, almost all such cases I knew of within the extended family had been of women in my mother’s maternal line. So could an “outside” paternal genetic link to dementia have been involved?
I’m interested mainly for the knowledge. Don’t much care about the inheritance angle itself. The individualities of life are usually more defining.
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Suggestion for a show featuring a tiny insect that attacks an unsuspecting garden imp:
“Little Louse on the Fairy.”
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In 2018, Richard Hodges, an archaeologist and past president of the American University of Rome, visited the site of Ribe in Denmark, an 8th century trading settlement. He described it as “a layer cake of superimposed workshops, one on top of another” in Science News. “Some burned down. Some of them were just demolished. Every one of them was producing huge amounts of material culture.”
Troy and other ancient centers have shown a similar layered buildup: One generation dumps their waste and construction debris atop the previous. This is how civilizations evolved, as immediate centers of existence without a long view of history: “History” was what they could personally recall of the last 2-3 generations.
The attempt today, through archaeology, to preserve and entomb the past is, in many ways, noble, but it’s not human in the broadest sense. Turkey’s attempted upscale development of its seacoast, involving the devastation of a two-millennium past, reflects pretty much the outlook humanity has always had: “This is our home, we can do what we will, and the devil take its past.”
The major difference today is our explosive capacity for destruction, and the insistence to make a profit from every square inch of the world.. We now have the ability not only to rise atop, but to obliterate. And at no time in the past did we have the possibility, much less the desire, to respect and resurrect.
Is this difference good, bad or beside the point? However we may view it, like so much of modern life, it may well prove terminal.
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Things I hated as a kid that most kids love:
mayo
ketchup
pineapple
celery
breakfast cereals (hot and cold)
Disney animated features (Cinderella? Feh!)
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Political and social commentary, both right and left, too often assumes that any major change or unusual event threatens to become, if not permanent, at least terrifyingly long-term. This response has become particularly apeshit in the howls over social media as either the upholder or destructor of free speech and informed outlook.
Yes, the social media have brought us raucous scads of conflicting info, and brought it to us too rapidly to allow for serious contemplation. But actually, history is cyclical. Most, if not all, explosive trends morph quickly in ways we wouldn’t anticipate.
This has always been true, but largely hidden. Now, every change, large or minute, is splattered across the connected world, hour after hour, becoming difficult if not impossible to avoid. That, in itself, is the change-of-the-moment, and it too will undoubtedly alter in ways we can’t predict.
So if everyone would just calm down… I’d like to slurp through the day without someone screaming that the latest social or political marshmallow will transform society unto the nth generation.
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Bringing honesty to phone hold messages:
• “Thank you for your call: All our representatives are busy wasting our other customers’ time, and have no ability to help you with your problem in any way.”
• “We’d like to assure you that your call is vitally important, but in truth it means absolutely nothing to us; if you would like to leave a message, there is virtually no chance anyone will ever get back to you.”
• “At the sound of the beep, you can either hang up or stay on the line to hear the most inane music ever recorded.”
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And as Flanders and Swann said of one of their most marvelous songs of the 1960s-’70s:
“This may all seem irrelevant, but it is not irrelevant – it’s a hippopotamus!”
lickhaven 