Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Rather than lose today's post like yesterday's, I'm copying this one to the word processor first. There was nothing significant to tell about on Tuesday. Some of the mundane events I record are merely to free up the limited space in my brain. Mike got a lipid profile done and found that his LDL is still too high, so Dr. Fletcher is adding one more drug to his regimen. We ate breakfast at Primo's after leaving the hospital, and a fine breakfast it was, too. We weren't hungry again until suppertime. I accompanied him to the lab because the last time he had blood drawn, he almost passed out. It was at the doctor's office and the nurse stuck him several times before hitting a vein. That would make anybody swoon.

Benji and I exchanged several emails regarding the Irish ancestors and getting into my genealogy database from his computer. Today he's found out that our Ulster Presbyterian relatives were the instigators and progenitors of much of the conflict still going on in Ireland, not a heritage for a peacenik to brag about. It may explain why our protestant families were so prejudiced against Roman Catholics, though. A lot of Southern Baptists still don't acknowledge Catholics as Christian. One of the articles Benji found had this:

It may be worth somebody's thesis to explore whether the subsequent tendencies of the dominant Baptists to theological disputation and local schism owe something to the inclinations of the eighteenth-century Scots and Irish Presbyterians from whom many of them are descended.

To which I can only add Amen. Nobody does disputation and schism like we Baptists. (As Skip tells me, I'll never escape my SouBapt roots.)

Mike has left to run errands - pick up cat food, his new medicine, a check at the g.o., eat lunch with Ron, and work out. That should give me 2 or 3 hours of peace. He pitched one of his hissyfits when, after his bath, I refused to get more clean clothes for him to wear. I had dressed him in clean clothes just two hours prior, so I gave him the choice of wearing them or getting his own, then I left him sitting naked on the tub bench to remember he can't dress himself, and to reconsider his demands. By the time I went back, he had calmed down, and he appreciated my help. I hate it when he is so unreasonable. Maybe I should let him do his own laundry. No, even the meanest part of me would not do that.

4 comments:

Zoilus said...

Well, it's not my pacifist side that recoils from such heritage secrets showing themselves from behind the woodshed. It's just that I imagined such a romantic link to the MOPE (the Catholic Irish say they are the Most Oppressed People Ever--even a bit of a stretch for someone like myself who is so sensitive to the trampled upon. . .what about the slaves? the prostitutes? the poor of every country? the aboriginal tribes of the American continents. . .etc.), and as it turns out there was only consolidation with THE MAN as an Ulster Scot. Still, I guess I could say that we were only one pawn in a long line of pawns used by the British against Eire, so that salves my soul somewhat.

C J Garrett said...

You may be linked to the MOPE, but it's not through the Vance line. After all, you have 60+ other forebears from that generation when the Vances emigrated to America. I guess we all have these warring factions within - the oppressor and the oppressed. I'm glad you sympathize with the oppressed.

Zoilus said...

So what about those other 60+ forebears? Do we have any information on any of them? And was I wrong in thinking that Silas used to say his ancestors were Scotch-Irish [sic]? And when did the Crutchers get here from GB?

I guess now we'll have to visit Scotland. ;-)

C J Garrett said...

Well, son, I might as well tell you the truth. I've not had much interest in the ancestors before they emigrated. The web is so tangled between this time and then that I had more than enough in the USA to occupy my research time. With access to ancestry.com you can probably find answers to some of the questions you're asking. Until my research muse returns, though, I'm not very inspired to dig. And unless you're changing the subject of your thesis to "My Links to MOPE," I'd advise you to proceed cautiously. Genealogy can eat up huge chunks of time.