·.¸¸..><((((º>.·´¯`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸><((((º>`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸><((((º>`·.¸¸.· *
I hold open my heart to the possibility that my Father’s testimony to us was born of love and his keen sense of drama. He had a preference and flare for creating fanciful truths, rather than sticking within bounds of what most people consider “actual reality.”
Were we descended from James Clerk Maxwell, originator of electro-magnetic theorems? That’s what he told us. Was Grammy Florence Whitehead Maxwell truly a full-blood member of the Cherokee Nation? Did she and her brother, my Great Uncle Ed, really survive removal from their land, a brutal orphanage experience, and mission schools? Or were these dreams of my father born of wishes for a more flamboyant ancestral stock?
A simple check of Wikipedia shows that James Clerk Maxwell and his wife Katherine Mary Dewar Maxwell had no children. The lineage stops there… unless there were wild seeds sown. My father may have known something about such matters in his own life, but I doubt he had clairvoyance about J.C. Maxwell’s carnal history.
I share my father’s enthusiasm for fantastical flights of fancy. I just don't claim them as real. In profiles of J.C. Maxwell and my father, I see the same high forehead and Roman nose. While experimenting with light, heat, electro-magnetism, and the physical world might he also have experimented with his own physicality? Likely not, but it is a convenient explanation of my own quest to understand how things work in the world and my fascination with all science. Could the genes have come through some imprint running down the branches of our family tree?
Perhaps ancestors.com or twenty-three and me could tell. Someday…
Open-Hearted Plagiarism
We stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. (Truisms R Us.)
I attended a “Death Cafe” coffee and conversation with friends recently and we each told the other five women at our tables about one death related experience we’d had or heard about that impacted us. The last woman of six at our table to tell her tale mentioned a book called “Parting Gifts.” It’s a children’s book about the gifts that our dying loved ones give us during or after their leave-taking. I remember shaking my head quickly - like a double take - when I heard that. Years ago, I wrote a piece called Parting Gifts about some of the many things I learned from people and critters I loved who died.
Spontaneous combustion, I call it, when two or more have the same idea in relatively similar time frames but disparate locations. No looking on our neighbor’s test papers involved.
In his book, How to Fly a Horse,Kevin Ashton tells stories of inventors and scientists whose work built on specific work of folks before them. Not one of us pulls a unique idea out of the ethers that isn't linked to other ideas.
I have a heart full of gratitude for so many humans whose thoughts and inquiries have influenced my thinking process and prompted generation of my own ideas.
In this time of a Bully in the Pulpit, heading our country, troubled souls are emulating the bully's hit-and-run tactics. Emboldened by the Alt Right at the helm, they think they can act with impunity.
I'm betting we common citizens will start to show our better nature coming forward from a long lineage of folk doing the right thing. Even his own party is complaining about the Trumpeter's lack of firm boundary against racial hate crimes.
Standing up and being counted makes sense.
May peace prevail. May cool-headedness prevail. May de-escalation reign. May we cultivate compassion, a plan, and fierce watchfulness.
* Fishies whole-heartedly copied from Lori G. from an email with same. Sweet, huh?
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