Genealogy (or What the Hell is Lettish??)

Matt’s family came from Russia. Or the Ukraine. Or maybe Poland. Possibly Kiev. They were Jewish. But maybe they weren’t. And they aren’t now. And no one knows when except for “the late 1800s,” except for what his grandfather said, and his grandfather lied like you and I breath (pretty regularly).

Recently, we watched a movie called “Everything is Illuminated.” If you only watch 5 movies this year, make this movie one of them. It is a story about a young American Jew who goes to Ukraine to find the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis. He is guided by a Ukranian man about his age (“who’s English isn’t so primo”), that man’s grandfather, and the grandfather’s ‘officious seeing-eye bitch’ Sammy Davis Jr., Jr. It is not a holocaust movie. It is a drama, but it is also very funny in places as well as sad and poignant. It is very good, and of course the story in the end turns out to not be what the main character (played by Frodo Baggins) expected to find, but….everything becomes illuminated.

So, of course this got Matt talking about his family. I asked him if he wanted me to look into it, and he said sure.

I’m very lucky, my parents have traced a lot of my own family back into the 1500s and on my mom’s side even as far back as the 1300s. In Germany, no less!

I’ve truly never had much interest in genealogy per se and while I know it is all very interesting, a good hunt is really what I enjoy. I’m a researcher. It is what I do. I’m very good at it. I joined up temporarily with Ancestry.com and 3 hours, 4 censuses, 5 passenger lists later and I had some answers for Matt about his origins.

But I had a lot more questions. Not the least of which is why the native language on two of the censuses was listed as ‘Lettish.’ Remember, this was all hand-written and at first I thought it said ‘Yittish’ as in a incorrectly spelled Yiddish, with two Ts instead of Ds. But, no, it was definitely ‘Lettish.’ So I go looking for Lettish.

It is the language spoken by the Letts. Stupid! Of COURSE it is! Who the hell were the Letts?

Lithuanians. Isn’t that interesting? Lettish was spoken around the area of the Baltic including Poland, Sweden, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and Latvia, among others. So. There is Clue #1: Lettish. Thank you, Wikipedia.

I also found a passenger list (among several possible contenders) that had a hometown for GGGrandfather Leopold as ‘Suwalken, Russland.’ It was a German ship, and Suwalken translates to Suwalki, which is currently part of Poland (remember, a lot of these borders were fought over and changed often). It is smack dab on the Lithuanian border. Clue #2: Suwalki.

I go looking for Suwalki on a map. Interestingly, not 20 miles south of Suwalki is a town called Augustow. Matt’s GGrandfather’s name was August, and possibly the GGGGrandfather, too. Clue #3: Augustow.

Coincidence? Very possibly. It could mean nothing. All of these clues could be red herrings and mean absolutely nothing. But it is what I have to go on right now, so I’m using this as my current working theory.

Next was the fun part. A friend of mine just happened to call last night. She’s Polish. She and her husband and two boys applied to leave Poland after the wall came down in the late 80s or early 90s and they’ve been here ever since, more than 20 years. I mentioned all this to her and when I got to Suwalki she said that was the area where her mother was from. She spent all her summers there as a kid, it is the ‘lake district’ for Poland, big on tourism. Very beautiful, she said. She still has family there and offered to help out with translations and tracking information down, if we need help. I told her the last name variation, too, and she said it translates to ‘frost.’ She said that variation is absolutely not Lithuanian, it is Polish. So, that’s something, too.

We’re frosty!

There are a lot of loose ends, though. There is another August showing up with his family in a different town (Hoboken) from the one that Matt’s family was in (Piscataway). I thought it was an unconnected coincidence…until I found a connection in the GGGrandfather’s funeral book signatures, complete with ‘Hoboken’ beside it. Really bizarre. Could it be Leopold’s younger brother? The age difference is only 10 years, it couldn’t be another son. Maybe a cousin?

There is also a floral arrangement listed as being given by “The official family of Piscataway.” What the hell does that mean?? There have always been rumors of Russian Mafia in the family, could that be the ‘official family?’

We have no information on parents or siblings of GGGrandfather Leopold. Unless we can find something, that may be the end of the line. This is why I’m pursuing Suwalki.

So, I’ve decided I’m going to keep my Ancestry.com membership for at least a couple months. It isn’t cheap, I know a lot of people don’t join because of that but it is an incredibly good resource. If anyone wants me to look anything up, please email me and let me know detailed names and dates. I’d be happy to use my membership to help out.

Books I Love

I was on my way to Gettysburg to pick up my mum to walk around town, and I was thinking about my list of favorite novels. You know, the ones I would want with me if I were on a deserted island? That list. And I was trying to think about what attracted me to them, what was the common factor….

And I think, in part at least, I may have found the answer. Or answers, because there seems to be more than one common denominator. First, the list (in no particular order) with a synopsis (as seen by me) of the main stories:

Dune by Frank Herbert – I think this is one of maybe 3 books by which all other SciFi books are judged. Herbert created his Dune universe with such detail that other writers struggle to even come close and just cannot, can never compare.

Basically, Paul-Maud’ib Attreides must find his way within a new culture to become what he was born to be: their savior. It sounds so simple.

Dune is a series as well, but I just don’t like the rest of the books…

Ender’s Game (series of ?) by Orson Scott Card – First, I want to say that while I love the writing of Card, I do not hold by most of his very vocal opinions or politics. OK, now that that’s out of the way…One of my coworkers introduced me to Ender’s Game, and a few years later I introduced a new coworker to Ender’s Game. She told me that not only couldn’t she put it down, she said “I’m glad I met you if only for the fact that you introduced me to this book.” Yeah, it is that kind of book.

Card writes both children and conversation VERY well. Scary well. And just because it is a book ABOUT children does not mean it is a book FOR children, which a lot of public libraries fail to comprehend.

Ender’s Game is set in the future. Even though the law states only two children per family the government has allowed the Wiggin family to have Ender, the third child, because the two elder kids had such potential for Battle School. Ender was born to be the commander of our forces against the Buggers, an alien race bent on having our planet. We’ve fought them off twice, and the Battle School is the preparation for the third wave.

But you never really see the Buggers. The story focuses on 5yo Ender’s years in Battle School. This book is about him finding his way alone: through the school’s army groups, learning how to lead, manage people, beat the system, OWN the system and make it his, all the while not knowing that he is the one they’ve set their hopes on to save us all. The secondary story is how his older brother (the psychopath) and sister (compassion itself) are manipulating politics on earth.

This book is used to teach management psychology at Quantico. Seriously. Another book in the series, Ender’s Shadow, looks at the same events as Ender’s Game from the POV of another of the main characters at Battle School, and amazingly is just as good as the original.

The first chapter

First chapter of Ender’s Shadow

Jani Killian (series of 5) by Kristine Smith – Another SciFi series, the main character here is female, a woman who 18 years ago almost died in the Idomeni civil war. Jani was illegally pieced back together from human and idomeni DNA and has been alone and on the run from the military/authority ever since. Now she finds herself in the middle of human/alien politics and religion. Again. Oh, and she’s actively started to hybridize.

The characters here are incredibly well fleshed-out and believable. Very human, even the aliens. I love love the idomeni ambassador, who will occasionally escape his well-guarded embassy in Chicago and take joyrides through the countryside or go to the local playground to learn how to see-saw from some kids. Eventually they find him and drag him back.

I also adore one of the love interests/main characters who is a sociopath (cannot feel human emotions) and uses it soooo well. Jani accepts this and (this is the most interesting thing here) does not try to change him. Theirs is a most interesting relationship because of this, how many novels have you ever read where a male has a flaw and the woman does not try to ‘fix’ him or bring him around?

One of the things I enjoy about this series is that Jani forces a lot of the antagonistic characters to do what she wants them to do, and it is fun to watch them swallow the bitter medicine.

Alvin Maker (series of 6) by Orson Scott Card – Yes, another series by Card. I’m currently finishing rereading this series. This one is set in the early 1800s of the United States. It is a mix of fantasy and alternate history. This series is based on what could have been….if people really did have special abilities that would have marked them as ‘witches’ in Europe, and Europe had sent them to North America instead of hanging or burning them. Hm.

The story starts out with Alvin’s birth. He was born a Maker. There hasn’t been a Maker born in about 2000 years. You can do the math and figure out what that means.

Through the 6 books, you follow Alvin as he learns about himself and his gifts and tries to figure out what they are good for. He knows he’s supposed to build the Crystal City (aka, City of God), but he doesn’t know how or why. And there are forces at work to stop him at all costs.

There are also a lot of friends. Peggy, the torch, can see within everyone all their possible futures. Arthur Stuart, the child of a runaway slave, can mimic everyone in their own voice and can talk to birds. Card always does names so well in his writing, too. Alvin’s brothers are named Vigor, Measure, and the twins Wastenot and Wantnot. His brother-in-law is Armor-of-God Weaver.

He also meets a lot of people from our own history, but they are rewritten into different characters: Abe Lincoln, Daniel Webster, William Harrison, Tecumseh, and John Adams all make appearances. The story of how General George Washington was tried and put to death for treason is told in the first book. My favorite is William Blake, who is called ‘Taleswapper’ in this series.

This all sounds incredibly silly, and I’ve never really liked ‘fantasy’ because it always sounds so silly and childish and unbelievable. This is believable. Again, these aren’t kids books. There is a lot of humor in these books. A lot of humanity, an awful lot that makes you think about you and your place in the world, with other people, with religion, humanity as a whole. I cannot recommend this series enough.

First chapter of Seventh Son

First chapter of Heartfire.

Kate Shugak (series of ?) by Dana Stabenow – This is the only series here that isn’t SciFi or Fantasy. This is a mystery series based in Alaska with a female Alaskan-native protagonist. Over the course of the 15 or so books of this series, Kate goes from fingers-in-ears no-don’t-wanna-be-involved to tribal elder of her local Aleut tribal conference. She is tough, she is funny, she has a wolf. Ok, only half, but still.

One of my favorites (and a good place to start for a good ride, novel-wise) is Breakup. Breakup is the time in Alaska when everything starts to thaw out….snow….ice on the rivers….and people. By which I mean people coming out of a long winter and going a little stir-crazy….as well as murdered people actually thawing out. In this novel, a jet engine lands on her homestead, a shoot-out takes place (twice) at the roadhouse, a bear attacks a woman, the Snobs from Nob Hill visit their daughter, a bunch of hikers have a shot of Middle Finger, and several moose and elk run around, scared to death. Some people do, too.

Kate Abridged video on YouTube. I don’t think I’ve read the last 3-5 of these. Yet!

Author’s website

What do all these have in common? I’ve identified several things:

• All the protagonists are alone, singular, solitary people.
• All these novels have something to do with an exploration of religion and/or culture, and
• All the protagonists are trying to find their way (job, mission, purpose) in life.
• In a less serious vein, all the books have a wonderful witty and sharp humor to them. The kind I really enjoy. No puns. Just dry wit.
• I’m sure there is another that I haven’t noticed yet.

And because I want to share them so much I’m going to do a giveaway. Rules are:

-Comment on THIS blog entry,

-I’ll pull a random number on Thanksgiving, or the next day if I forget, and

-If you win, you tell me which book from any of these series’ you are interested in and I’ll send the paperback to you.

Please pass it around, a random number between, say, 3 comments is no fun.