His eldest brother, John, was 20 years older than he was. The sixth child in the family was Howard. He was my grandfather's son by another woman from an affair.

Aha!

My dad's birth has some...well, his parents never married each other. They were married to other people and I've never had the gumption to sit down and get dates. He's the only child of that particular union, but they don't distinguish between halves and whole siblings, and some of them consider themselves related through him, so it's terribly confusing to know who's going to show up at whose event.

In my head, he's the middle child because he's the middle of two families, so I brought a lot of irrelevant baggage to your explanation already.

Doomed, I tell you. Doomed.

I looked it up, I had left out Emma and Vivian. Sis was Lillian.

I wish I had thetime to start up with the geneology stuff again.

This birth talk is reminding me of the episode of Psych I saw today. Which, by the way, is the Christmas episode, to tie my (work) day into the fizzy Christmas drink discussion, and the birth order stuff.

I finally got my recycling done! Yay! There were nine million BEES! So incredibly much less yay. Apparently, I brought one of the bees home with me in my hair! According to my cats: YAY!!! Finally, the bee got into my kitchen light and died, and I went: yay.

Is no one watching Dancing with the Stars? Will you guys vote for Alec and Josie anyway?

The isolationist movement in the US during the 1930s also included a large group of pro-Nazi supporters, known as the German American Bund. They had their biggest demonstration of support in February 1939, when 20,000 people gathered for what was basically a mini-Nuremburg rally in Madison Square Garden. That's another little tidbit that was whitewashed from American history after Pearl Harbor.

My maternal grandmother was also one of 12! One of her sisters died when she was pre-teen, and there were surprisingly few children born from the eleven who survived to adulthood--my mom had as many cousins as I did from my mom's five siblings.

My grandfather was in a similar situation - his older siblings were his mother's first husband's children and his younger siblings were her second's. His birth certificate says he's the first husband's kid, but that could have been just because H1 was still alive, not biological fact - we haven't been able to establish if she was pregnant when she left. My grandmother decided that those younger siblings are not really our kin, or there extended paternal family, anyway, because she didn't really like them.

He was only one of, like, 8 I think.

Australia: Vegemite-flavoured beer

Good lord. Who out there thinks that

a) we need the encouragement, and
b) that constitutes encouragement?

I do not think my dad ever met all of his first cousins. I know that he has non-first cousins with my name that we have never met. I lived in the same town as one of them for a year, but still didn't call her up. Seems odd to be all: "we share realtives, wanna meet up?"

ION, I need todo some work, but I'd rather just go to sleep. It is not deadline work, just dig out from piles and hopefully catch something from slipping through cracks work. It can wait til the morning, right?

I had no idea that the US view of the War was "wrong", but it's true that war before Pearl Harbor gets short shrift in American culture. I don't know how concerning that is, given how little it involves the US. In fairness we have no understanding of the Asian side of the war, compared to our inkling concerning Europe in the late 1930s.

I have a half-uncle I've never met. Paternal grandfather didn't marry his mother because he immigrated and she was not interested in that. My paternal grandmother had a first husband she divorced because he gave up on the immigration thing, and she wasn't interested in going back to Sweden.

I didn't find most of this out until...well, it was 11 and 16. And the 11? Was just before my grandfather died while I was visiting.

In other fun facts, there is some question as to whether my parents are technically married. There was some confusion about county authority, date of issue and that sort of thing. However, the IRS hasn't come after them in 39 years, so we're probably legit, now.

On the WW2 thang, I got the sanitized version until 11th grade US History, with Mr. Smith. That set us straight. Isolationism ahoy! And I'm amused, or rather heartened as bad as that sounds, that The War is openly portraying the US as inept as it was at the get-go. Honestly, I recall Mr. Smith mentioning McArthur's freezing up at the Phillipines, but he still gets lauded for the post-war Japan thing. But he really fucked up.

Funny thing is, it is reminding me of the Cherry..Adams? books I read growing up. All nurse-mysteries, set in WW2, for the most part. Sanitized, sure, cause they were written for pre-teens of the time. But I still remember bits of one set at the Midway battle.

What brings me to my knees it the mention of the US internment camps. I still can't accept that. So fucking wrong. And yet.... Guantanamo, and I'm not at the gates.

I wish I had thetime to start up with the geneology stuff again.

I wish I had the patience. My family's execrable. They're all mad at me for not writing it down, but I'm mad at them for not telling me info to write down. So I threw my hands up in the air and walked away. It was cool up until the pain, though. Even found Ellis Island records and everything.

Just looking at the family tree stuff now, and my paternal grandmother had six other kids than my father, and my paternal grandfather had four others.

And then home called, and I doublechecked, and Miss Di had kids with 5 men and never married, and Ba Pa had kids with 4 women, one of whom he married.

We're Jamaican.

That's how we roll.

My father is related to two of his brothers twice, but we try not to think about it too hard.