I say we engage in revisionist history and revise Tom's day up a grade or two. It takes guts to get as far as you did, Tom. People live and die without airing that much about destructive pasts. That's what helps making them a past and not a present.

In Jamaica pretty much no one has indigenous blood. The colonisers were an extinction level event, in the end. Just not enough space for them to flee, or enough for there to be low-value land that could be written off.

At least as far as we were taught, the Spaniards tried to enslave them, and the Taino did not survive the experiment.

Once you toss out the claims to all sorts of noble English blood having leaked in via raping the staff, the other "cool" heritage is Maroon, but there's nothing genetic there. Just the idea that your forbears managed to escape slavery and plague both the Spanish and the British enough to earn an exhausted detente and self-imposed exile which gave some measure of protection from cultural assimilation, the effects of which can still be seen today.

There was a police car outside the Best Buy I passed on the way home. Go deh, Black Friday, go deh.

Tom, I am in awe of you. Despite being raised by two people who were hurtful, selfish, and mean - YOU are none of those things. You are a joy and a love.

msbelle is smart as well as nice.

Oh, Scola. We did an absolutely phony "Keeping it Together" show for my grandma.She's much sicker than I knew, even though I did know she turned 82 today.

What everyone has said, Tom. You are great, you've risen so far above all the hardships of your childhood. And you totes get to take credit for confronting your mom. But on the other hand, it does sound like a crappy Thanksgiving. I think that means you get to make it up throughout the year with random meals of AWESOMENESS and feelings of gratitude.

Good for you saying as much as you did, Scola! That's not easy.

Okay! Back from caroling in the park! Would have been more enjoyable if it was not raining!

I hear it never rains in Albuquerque, and you can Christmas carol in your tank top.

mr. flea leaves for China tomorrow at 7am and I have to think of something to do with the children all weekend, when I've spent 10 hours with them in the car this week already and the weather is going to be crappy. Ugh.

I'm sorry Tom. That sounds like a frustrating and awful day. You, however, are still awesome.

Tom, I'm late on this but I'm sorry it was stressful but I think you did a good job on how you handled it. Little steps.

My mother's grandfather was 100% Comanche, her father was half. I don't know much about my great grandfather expected he owned large amounts of land in Oklahoma and then sold it to buy movie theaters. Right before the Depression. And then he died (oil was found later in the land). My grandfather had an older half sister who married at 14 years old to have some place to go, and a younger sister who was sent off to a Convent school. My grandfather was sent to an "Indian school" where he was mistreated because his mother claimed she couldn't afford them. His sister died in the school either from illness or an illegal abortion (depending on when the story was told).

You can see the Comanche in my Mom and brother but not me. However, we're enough Comanche that we are on the official tribal rolls (my brother got a scholarship to help pay for part of his school).

My mother's maternal grandmother traveled by: covered wagon, boat, automobile, train, and plane at various points in her life.