The ethnic heritage conversation has been interesting. I thought I had a common American mix with my Irish, German, Native American, and French ancestors. Then I married DH and my kids now have English and Russian in their mix. Our siblings married people that add ancestors that came through Haiti, Puerto Rico, Bahamas, and Sweden to the mix. Family gatherings include a lot of bloodlines.

Our children's gatherings include children from all over the globe so I expect the mix to get mixier in future generations. I overhear the kids discussing their varied parentage. They encourage them in school to share their stories of family traditions based on their heritage. They know so much more about other cultures than I did at that age.

Where I was raised in upstate NY it was still the Italians lived in this section and the Irish lived there and the Polish over here. We were close enough to Canada that people referred to Canucks. Didn't matter what language they spoke. I only saw people with Hispanic or Oriental heritage on television until I was an adult.

To get even further into the divisions within groups, I'm 1/4 German-Jewish, and 3/4 Eastern European Jewish. (Though my grandmother would have claimed it was half and half -- she never quite accepted that her husband, who grew up in Vienna, had parents from Poland.) Those divisions don't mean quite as much now as they used to, but there are still vestiges -- German Jews seen as more upper-class and proper. Most of the stereotypical "Jewish" stuff in popular culture is Eastern European. Most of the German Jews in the US came over here earlier and tended to be more successful -- the big department stores, the banking families, etc. -- while the Eastern Europeans were the ones who came later and lived on the lower east side.

No, you're right, Raq, Hispanics were the third group, yup.

my mother (who, like all three previous generations, grew up in Hawaii) when asked about her ethnic heritage will reply that she's from Hawaii. When pressed for detail, she will elaborate that she's Japanese. I, who grew up in Ohio, when asked (if not giving a snarky answer to an ill-phrased question) will respond that I am Japanese.

Huh. One of the coolest supervisors I've ever had, also Japanese American (and also a gifted musician like you), was born in Ohio and moved to Hawaii at age 5. If you tell me you've ever had a completely random weird childhood pet (he and his sibs had a pet donkey that his father brought home for them one day, never really explaining where he'd found it or why), I'm going to assume the two of you are Bizarro World antimatter negative twins.

So glad that Fay and SA have managed to get to London and meet up despite the fog.

Huh. That is total Bizarro World. I didn't have a random weird childhood pet, but because I am his antimatter negative twin, this makes sense. And in fact, it explains why, growing up, I never had a pet (except the goldfish I won at the county fair) making Seabiscuit my first dog, even though my sister had a duck, a mouse, a gerbil, a goat, a parakeet, a pony, and a horse.

Reposting here because in my pre-breakfast state I tried to ask this in Beep Me (sorry about that): Fay, SA, how long are you in London for? Any chance of an F2F?

I have very common ancestry, French and Irish (and apparently native), but it's comes with a Newfie sheen, which has it's own strange culture.

My dad was telling me tonight that when they were little, the fisherman used to throw the scallops that got caught in their nets onto the beach, and my grandad used to sned tehm soen to gather them up, and the fishemen would say, "Crazy Frenchmen, they'll eat anything." No my dad is on a rather Proustian quest to find the recipe for Coquilles Saint Jacques, like his mother used to make.

Quebec and its discontents is still a mystery to me. From where I'm standing, it looks like nothing so much as another case of crass, petty, nigh-racist nationalism. "Pur laine" bloodlines and all that--it's nazisoid.

I think it's a lot about being a cultural minority on a continent where the dominant culture is totally alluring and overwhelming. I don't really agree with a lot of the language laws, but I do understand the concerns they're rooted in. There was a lot of talk in the last election about how the immigrant population in Quebec has embraced the Bloc and the PQ. That the Comments of Parizeau do not represent the new Quebecois, especially the first generation of children of immigrants that have been raised under the language laws and coming of age now I'm not sure that there's any more racism in Quebec culture than there is in the rest of the continent.

My issue about Quebec nationalism is not that they don't have legitimate claims to a distinct society or to some kind of nation within a state status, but one could certainly say that about any one of the first nations (okay, they do have nation in a state status), or the Metis, or any northerners, or Newfoundlanders, or Cape Bretoners or Albertans. I like having those crazy french people in my country, and I'd miss them if they went.

And speaking of the Franco-Americans a while back, my dad has a cousin Lucien who grew up in St. Pierre and has lived on Cape Cod for many years. He's got the craziest accent...cape cod meets isolated island French. He also claims to be the inspiration for Columbo, but that's just the craziness talking.

....so of course culturally I grew up strongly Hispanic.

My sis...er, fellow new mexican! Yeah, it's confusing, except when it isn't.