29 September 2012

THE SEVEN DAUGHTERS OF EVE : BRYAN SYKES : EXCERPT

C 2001 Bryan Sykes
Norton Publishers
page 190-191 on Y chromosomes (passed on my males) and prolific males
..."It's true that there have been some particularly prolific males. The world record holder is Moulay Ismail, Emperor of Morocco, who is alleged to have had 700 sons (so presumably as many daughters) by the time he was 49 in 1721. He died in 1727 - so there was another six years to have some more. The most prolific woman comes way behind this. She is Mrs. Feodora Vassilyev, a Russian woman who produced sixty-nine children between 1725 and 1765. They were all multiple births - sixteen pairs of twins, seven sets of triplets and four lots of quadruplets - so she was a remarkable woman in that respect as well. The capacity f women to produce large numbers of children is limited by their biology which restricts then to one pregnancy a year at most. Men, on the other hand, are not on a restricted by this timetable and can, in theory, have thousand of children. But the fantasy of enormously prolific males seeding the entire world, thereby reducing the diversity of Y chromosomes by their prodigious feats of polygamy, turned out to be just that. Fantasy. A hard slog in laboratories around the world over the past ten years has found that there are plenty of mutations on the Y chromosome after all..."

19 September 2012

ROGER WOOLER PAST LIFE SITE

"Roger Woolger's first book, Other Lives Other Selves, (Doubleday, 1987) is an innovative synthesis of Jungian depth psychology, bodywork, yoga psychology, psychodrama and eastern meditation principles. It has been translated into German, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese and French. Widely regarded as the definitive work in the field of regression therapy, this and his later works such as Eternal Return (tape set) and Healing You Past Lives (2004) integrates aspects of Tibetan Buddhism and shamanism. The work has evolved in the last decade into the highly original therapeutic tool which is called Deep Memory Process™. "

14 September 2012

ANSWER TO A QUESTION : HOW CAN I FIND WHAT SHIP MY ANCESTOR WENT DOWN ON?

Q: There's a family story that an ancestor "went down with the ship." No, it's not the Titanic. I checked. It was sometime after 1910 because I found him alive and living in a boarding house full of immigrant day laborers in 1910. I find no evidence of this person in the United States after that though I do find a possible wife coming to the US a few years later so let's say he was possibly alive in 1912. I've checked census, city directories, county birth records to see if he fathered a child in the U.S. I know his name could have been Anglicized but I've tried under variations of the most obvious spellings. What do I do now?

A: There could be a manifest that includes him as a passenger or CREW MEMBER, that is if the book was left at port. Many of the databases that have ship records fail to show the CREW LIST because they are focused on the immigrant. Ellis Island for instance shows steerage passengers, but not the passengers on better tickets. New York ship records should show all passengers but we might have to use a utility to read the manifests from page one all the way through, starting with the Captain, the ship Doctor/Surgeon. (The Ellis Island story is in our minds and we forget there were many other ports operational including in the Great Lakes, Galveston Texas, and Baltimore and Philadelphia.) Even if the manifest went down with the ship too, if you can prove this person was a crew member on a particular ship or for a particular ship line, that will help move your research to a possibility that he was working for that ship line or the ship that went down on another trip.

Besides the United States, check the manifests of ships that crossed the Atlantic leaving from ENGLAND, Liverpool or South Hampton being the most popular ports.

There is also the possibility this person was a MERCHANT MARINE or a sailor for the United States Navy, or the Navy of another country.

I'd like to see more on the net about shipwrecks and passenger lists!

C Ancestry Worship - Genealogy 2012 All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights.

11 September 2012

BABY NAMES WILLIAM and ELIZABETH STANDS THE TEST OF TIME

Yahoo news link to this article!

'But one name has resolutely stood the test of time: William. One hundred years later, "William" has fallen only one slot, from No. 2 to No. 3, in the list of popular male names. "James" has also managed to stick around, dropping from No. 3 in 1911 to No. 17 in 2011.

For girls, only "Elizabeth" has stayed on the list, dropping just four spots over the past century, from No. 7 to No. 11."

Looking at the 2011 chart I see that many of the names for girls are not clearly feminine names.

10 September 2012

JEWISH HOMEGROWN HISTORY AT THE SKIRBALL CULTURAL CENTER : WHY HOMEMADE MOVIES BECOME A PART OF CULTURAL HISTORY

Back in the spring I attended an exhibit at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles called JEWISH HOMEGROWN HISTORY. THe USC Casden Institute for the study of the Jewish role in American Life and the USC School of Cinematic Arts were behind the presentation and panel discussion.

A gallery of the center was used to project a series of home movies. taken by families of families and covering various rites of passage as well as everyday life. Most of us have had the experience of being asked to watch a home movie (or maybe one that was taken of a wedding or other family event by a professional) and feeling a little bored with it, especially when it's something that's been shown more than once. The quality of home movies varies, and in the early days of home movies, the stars did a lot of waving to the camera. These home movies are related to the reality TV shows of today though and I think are more interesting the more time has passed.

That's because Home Movies are time capsules. We get to know a lot about the stars - the family - by observing their clothing, hairstyles, and the places they lived and held ceremonies and celebrations. We can tell something about what they thought to be important, what they spent money on film and developing on. We can see them alive and moving, rather than posing for a picture.

HOME MOVIES can be an important preservation of family history, and whatever your family ethnic or religious culture, part of preserving memories of that culture.

C Ancestry Worship Genealogy. All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights


03 September 2012

THIS MORNING I HANDWROTE NINE PAGES OF MY OWN FAMILY HISTORY : CELL MEMORY OR REINCARNATION?

This morning I hand wrote nine page of my own family history, before it was time to leave for the day. This writing was about how finding the historical records contradicted or enriched the storytelling and how the search for ancestors included this question "Who, if anyone, am I like?"

My interest in reincarnation, for instance, seems to be unprecedented in my family. In fact, I am sure that some family thinks I'm a "kook," for considering reincarnation to be the CYCLE OF SPIRITUAL LIFE.

Related to this, alternative spirituality - which is standard in much of the world, I believe that certain of my relations on both sides have had some psychic sense, but one person took it in stride and didn't find it was in conflict with her religion, while another person did a turn around late in life, feared that her interests in such subjects had been demonic, and started to shun those who still had some interest.

Taking reincarnation out of the traditional religious context of say, Hinduism, and put it into the category of modern hypnosis and regression, it becomes something that does not depend entirely on dogma. (There are those who also fear hypnosis and past life regression as demonic, however.)

I wonder about the people whose genes are in my body, at least in part, and if I have what's called "cell memory" of their lives. Cell memory is a theory that on some level our reactions to experiences are not about our lives but was passed on to us genetically by our parents (to whom we are most closely related) and other ancestors. For instance, you yourself might never had the all too common female experience of rape, but what about your great grandmother who might have been and never spoken of it? What if you actually are the descendant of a rapist? Do you hold power or powerlessness in your body?

Theories of reincarnation are far more satisfying to me than cell memory, but that doesn't mean that both can't contribute to who I am today. For those who have actually met grandparents and great grandparents, or an extended family, there may be role models or realizations that they are like someone they've met. For me these people are mostly mysteries. I have no reason to believe that I was one of them or any other known family member in a past life, but I will say that when I saw black and white pictures of a German town in present day Romania, I got shivers as if it looked familiar. Just as I did years ago, when looking over a travel brochure about India and saw a particular temple. One would be through an ancestor and the other through reincarnation.

C Ancestry Worship Genealogy 2012 All Rights reserved including International Rights and Internet Rights.