Forebears and Bugbears

Ancestors
Having grown up knowing almost nothing about my extended family, due to the disinterest of my parents in their relatives, it has been a great surprise for me to suddenly develop a passion for genealogy. Unfortunately I have left my investigation rather late, because most people from even my parents' generation have died, but thanks to the intrusive internet it is possible to unearth the sorts of facts previously found only in family stories or possibly the Family Bible.
Disappointingly, I have not yet discovered anyone particularly newsworthy or infamous among the 750 or so leaves of the family tree I have so far identified, but the exercise has given me several points to ponder:

• The general expectation of a young woman in the 19th century must have been that she would bear 10 or more children, usually at intervals of a year or two. 
• She would expect several of her children to die at birth or in infancy, and that she herself would probably die before she was middle-aged, most likely from infection, often as a result of pregnancy or childbirth.
• Young men would expect to leave home in their mid-teens and then to spend almost all of their time working, often away from home. They usually married young, and began almost immediately to produce as large a family as possible.
• It was very common for one parent to die while some of the children were still very young, and the remaining parent usually married again, often starting another family.
• Any parent who managed to survive into old age always went to live with one of their children, usually an unmarried one.
• Hardly anyone got divorced (although there is no reason to suppose that marriages were generally any happier or unhappier then than they are now).
• Young orphans were far more common than today, leading to more formal or informal adoptions.
• Families sailing from the UK to Australia not infrequently lost or gained a child during the voyage.

None of these are fresh or insightful observations, but the point is that these people were my family. They are not characters in a novel or part of a sociological treatise on "19th Century Life in the Colonies". My own (extremely unusual) middle name pops up at least once in each generation, tying me firmly to these women whose lives were unimaginably different from my own.

So one question is foremost in my mind as I unravel these histories ... "Could I have coped with lives like theirs?" Of course that is impossible to answer and therefore pointless to ask, but nevertheless I feel ashamed to say that I doubt it very much indeed.

Incensors

(as in "things which incense me", not "things for waving incense about")

I am implacable about fairness, and this frequently gets me into trouble. My friends charitably call this behaviour "standing up for what is right" or "speaking out against injustice and deceit".

Just as accurately, my critics label me as a "troublemaker", 

or to use a more vivid expression, a "shit-stirrer".

Keeping out of trouble, avoiding confrontation, minding my own business, not fighting other peoples' battles for them, letting things be, remembering my (inferior) position, sticking to battles I can win ... these are lessons I seem to be unable to learn.

Most people very sensibly prefer a quiet life, and try to avoid situations which will cause them distress. Of course that doesn't mean that they are any less fervent about injustice than people like me - they just have a more self-protective way of dealing with it. And if someone else seems not just willing but actually eager to go into battle on their behalf, why not let them?

I have previously described two of my futile battles this year, but no sooner had those wounds healed than I was hurling myself pointlessly back into the fray. The same two "Goliaths" continued to raise my ire throughout the year by persisting in their shabby treatment of students and volunteers respectively, so after a very short period of meekly acknowledging those in "authority", I resumed my doomed campaign on behalf of those they treated with such disrespect. 

Of course the natural reaction of anyone to a persistently annoying pest is to swat it, which is precisely what happened (again).  

Will I ever learn not to keep trying? 

Probably not.

A Few Aphorisms

Nothing original today, and nothing cynical or world-weary either, for a change.
Instead, here are some quotations which mean a lot to me, and which might speak to you too.

The first one is as close as I will ever get to having my own motto.
I discovered it as an embroidered sampler in an historic cottage, with the name and date "Ann Hewson 1780". I was quite young at the time, but even so I felt that it perfectly mirrored my own outlook on life, so I copied the words and laboriously embroidered my own sampler, serendipitously finishing it exactly 200 years after Ann signed hers.
It still resonates with me all these years later ...

Learn by the bee from each event to find
Some hint of use or profit to your mind.
Nothing so small but you may draw from thence
Improvement for your virtue or your sense.

The next one is a lot less ponderous, but a very useful reminder that our lives are neither as important nor as serious as we may think. It's from Jerry Seinfeld.

Life is truly a ride. We're all strapped in and no-one can stop it. ...
Sometimes you put your arms up and scream, sometimes you just hang on ...
I think the most you can hope for at the end of your life
is that your hair's messed, you're out of breath, and you didn't throw up.

Life is full of uncertainty, and sometimes the number of necessary decisions seems overwhelming. Lewis Carroll's eternally untroubled Cheshire cat has the answer.

Alice came to a fork in the road. "Which road do I take?" she asked.
"Where do you want to go?" responded the Cheshire cat.
"I don't know," Alice answered.
"Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter."

It's unashamedly sentimental, but this quote from an American author named Agnes Sligh Turnbull never fails to bring a lump to my throat, and I'm sure it will do the same to anyone who has loved and lost a dog. (Vale Tess, Kimba, Mtani, Zu, Harry, Taka and all the similarly precious memories of my friends.)

Dogs' lives are too short. Their only fault, really.

Then, of course, there was Douglas Adams. Almost everything he said or wrote makes me respond "Yes!", so it is impossible to choose my favourite from thousands of insightful comments. Fortunately, there are many sites (such as this one) which share his witty wisdom, so for those who are unfamiliar with his view of the world, I'll close with this particularly pithy example.

In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry
and has been widely regarded as a bad move.

Shhh. Don't Look Now, But ...

Like many other site owners, I am interested in who my visitors are, how they get here, how long they stay, and which pages they read.
For some people this is essential information in optimising their site for commercial purposes, but in my case it is simply idle curiosity about patterns revealed by the statistics. As you can see from the logo at the bottom right of this page, I use a free Sitemeter account to track visits, and although it shows very few details (just the IP address, for the technically minded among you), the records do provide occasional harmless amusement.

For example, every time I mention "DMOZ" or "ODP", or (nowadays) "DMOZ 2.0", and especially if I write about "Volunteer Admins", there is a flurry of visits from the same IP addresses.
Of course it may be sheer coincidence, but when those addresses match the countries or cities where DMOZ Admins live, I remind myself that I don't actually believe in coincidences.

But it is even more entertaining to see which blog posts attract the most general attention. Besides the above visits from people curious to see what I am saying about them, random visitors seem particularly drawn to posts about the following topics (in approximate order):

1. British railways (yes really!)
2. Ugliness
3. Piratical eye injuries
4. Bullying 

An eclectic bunch of topics, to be sure, and I guess some people might ponder their sociological implications.

Not me though - I just like sitting around, watching people come and go.