not native fruit

wild year for roses

mtDNA J2

I finally did the mitochondrial DNA test (mtDNA), which traces genetic ancestry back from mother to mother to mother ad infinitum, or at least ad 10,000 to 45,000 years back.  I came up in haplogroup J2.  Family Tree DNA doesn't have a whole lot to say about this group, nor is there much on the internet elsewhere that I have been able to find so far - although I still haven't gone to the Genographic Project's site, which is the Mecca of mtDNA research, I guess. 

Here's what I've found out so far: mtDNA-haplogroup J2 is found in Turkey, the Mediterranean (Italy, North Africa, Iberia) and as far away as Iceland.  The one thing all of these places have in common is fishing (!) according to on-line sources.  And I might add shipping and piracy in days of yore.  Anyway, pictured above is my earliest known maternal ancestor, born about 1832 in the Pennsylvania mountains.  Her parents are supposed to be from Ireland, which would be on the J2 trajectory, I think.  I've seen a number of photos of other J2 ancestresses and they are surprisingly similar in look. 

germantown

I just picked up Fodor's Guide to Philadelphia at the library the other day, because it was lying right in my path and I couldn't resist picking it up.  Here's part of what it says about Germantown, which is the section of the city where I grew up: "Germantown, about six miles northwest of Center City, has been an integrated, progressive community since thirteen German Quaker and Mennonite families moved here in 1683 and soon welcomed English, French, and other European settlers seeking religious freedom.  The area has a tradition of free thinking - the first written protest against slavery came from its residents.  Today it houses a wealth of still-occupied and exceptionally well-preserved architectural masterpieces."

I think it was pure genius that Barack Obama gave his famous speech in Philadelphia, City of Brotherly Love, and site of a tremendous amount of *racial* mixing and also of racial oppression over the centuries.  I've mentioned several times before on this blog that Philadelphia was built next to and eventually on top of the old capitol of the Lenape Nation, Shackamaxon, which meant something like Center Hearth of the Hearths, meaning (obviously) the center of the Lenape nation.  Then later, Philadelphia became a safe haven for escaping and otherwise freed slaves who were usually people of color.  (I stipulate 'usually,' because apparently anyone of a darker coloration was a candidate for enslavement.) 

I did love the architecture in Germantown, the cobbled streets, especially Germantown Avenue which followed an old Lenape trail. Many of these trails are still known.  From what I've read, William Penn did not wish to restrict his settlement to Quakers only, but still required that settlers be in basic harmony with Quaker values.  The Quakers were among the leaders of the early abolitionist movement, and Pennsylvania was one of the first colonies to abolish slavery.  Nevertheless, people of African descent were strictly controlled by laws (for example, observing curfews, marriage restrictions, etc) and economic policies (very little opportunity for economic advancement through profession, etc).

A friend recently sent me a very interesting link to an article on the impact of Spanish slavery in the New World on African-Americans.  Although Philadelphia is usually associated with the North, it is actually in many ways tied to the South, and it wouldn't surprise me if Spanish influence were not felt in the Delmarva region prior to the oncoming of William Penn.  Certainly Moorish motifs were everywhere there.  At any rate, for anyone interested in learning more about slavery and in particular about African destinies in the New World, I recommend this article from the National Park Service on Spanish Africans in America.

strong medicine speaks

I'm reading a wonderful book called "Strong Medicine Speaks" about the 'hidden' native American people of the place where I'm from: Lenape-Nanticoke territory, the Delaware River, southeastern Pennsylvania, south Jersey, the Delmarva peninsula.  I'm very excited about the book, because I remember these people very well, many of my friends and neighbors were related to them, among them my own mother.  People had been marrying 'out' and then marrying each other for generations, so there were quite a few Euro-American/Native American 'mixt' folks in Philadelphia in my day.  My father had been very attracted to this group, and had many friends among them, choosing to settle near Camden New Jersey to be among them.  His second choice would have been New Zealand.  It was in Philadelphia, just across the river from Camden, that he met my mother and his fate was sealed.

Here's what I wrote a year and a half ago when I was figuring out my connection to the indigenous remnant in our old 'First Contact' region:

"One day I realized that my memories of growing up in Philadelphia had overlooked a whole population in the neighborhood.  They were a quiet-living people, not particularly wild, either as adults or as children, and certainly not overly colorful or flamboyant in comparison to the immigrant communities or the African Americans who were, from my child's eye perspective, the more expressive and dominant populations in our little world."

"When I thought about the individuals who made up this 'background' population, I realized they were not all of the same nationality, although they seemed to be of the same ethnicity.  Some had German surnames, others English, Irish or Scotch, while others may have been Italian or Portugese.  We never heard tell of any Spanish people in our area, although there was a Puerto-Rican neighborhood in Philadelphia, and later Cuban refugees in the early nineteen-sixties. 

"My 'background' neighbors all had the same sallow (? - well, some kind of unique 'color' to their) complections, generally dark hair but not always, and more important than coloring or any physical characteristics, they all seemed to share certain cultural aspects in common.  They were a very quiet, keep-your-head down lot, who enjoyed sitting quietly outdoors, and small family get-togethers on Sundays and holidays.  They did not seek out entertainments often, occasionally attending the cinema, and enjoying listening to music on the radio or on records at home.  They either did not own cars, or owned a car but rarely used it, and took very good care of it.

"They seemed to me, for lack of any better qualifiers, a people who were capable of enjoying life 'just as it is,' without a lot of embellishment.  This is not to suggest that they had no desires.  They wanted things, but not a lot of things.  More like a chosen few.  I often heard the children of the immigrants dreaming of becoming fabulously 'RICH,' wishing loudly for that every time we saw the first star of the evening, or had a wishbone to break between us.  But these other children seemed, for the most part, gently good-humored, and truth to tell, not terribly ambitious.  At least, I don't recall them fantasizing about possible 'grand careers' as entertainers, 'richest man in the world, president of the united states,' or anything else along those lines.  They seemed mostly just to enjoy each other, and I enjoyed being with these people, both children and adults, more than anything.  My mother called these folks 'the old families' of Philadelphia, and she didn't mean the so-called 'First Families' who would have been the rich people who lived out on 'the Main Line.'  My mother's old families were, as she once told me, 'mixed people way back.'"  As another friend with this background once told me: "Way back then, more than a hundred years before the Revolution, everybody was marrying everybody else, and they were all happy about it."

Well, 'Strong Medicine Speaks' is a warm chatty portrait of Marion Strong Medicine Gould, whose 'mixt' forbears mostly married and re-married into the Lenape-Nanticoke lines, were clannish, and lived in rural New Jersey communities primarily among their own clans.  The ghost-writer of the book, Amy HIll Hearth,  is the same author who brought to life "Having Our Say: The Delaney Sisters First One Hundred Years," an absolutely delightful book about two African American centenarian sisters, descendants of slaves, free persons of color, native americans and whites, who had lived in the South and the North, had half a dozen brothers and sisters, and all sorts of stories to tell.  These books are a treasure trove of truths not often told, easily overlooked and forgotten, and worth holding onto, because they tell us so much about who we are and who we have been as Americans.

grackle

When I was in my mid-thirties and realizing after eight years of trying to conceive a child, visiting doctors, adoption agencies, etc, that my husband and I were not going to have children after all, I was very depressed and confused.  I also discovered that I had a terrible physical condition that caused a lot of hormonal imbalance, crying, fatigue, menstrual disorders, and probably contributed to my infertility.  I don’t want to go into the gory details too much, but suffice it to say, I was quite miserable, and extremely disappointed.  Somehow, in my confused little brain, I had had it all figured out that by marrying and having children and providing them with a good home, I would be making up for certain things that had been lacking in my own early life.  And I would be helping to make the world a better place.

During this period in my mid-thirties, I began to realize that these expectations and fantasies about the life I was going to create were actually contributing to my disease.  I grieved the loss of my dreams (and many other losses that piggy-backed onto it) and began to gird up my loins, and make a firm and clear intention to change the way I saw my life, to change my expectations, to try to find a new way of seeing myself and my life.  To heal myself and begin again.

Everywhere I went during this period, I would constantly see a solitary grackle.  I must have seen grackles before, but never really noticed them or thought they were quite ordinary birds, perhaps because they are a simple blackbird in general lineament.  But upon closer observation, I noticed that they had lovely rainbow colors around their necks, a subtle iridescence within their black feathering, and a most startling, sparkling, vivid amber eye.  They made me think of a poem I'd read that included some phrase like, 'to pierce the sour rind' (of life).  I could taste that when I looked at the grackle.  Making the rounds of various parking-lots in my empty circle of household duties, I would spot a grackle again and again.  I began to think of grackles as a kind of ‘totem’ bird in my life. 

gone to croatan

More about the book I'm reading: "Gone to Croatan."  You know, I've been thinking that, in a certain way, all of early America's voluntary immigration was about going to Croatan: about finding greater freedom from the oppressions of Europe, China, and in particular, Iberia (Inquisition)  (Can't say as much for Africa, because I don't know enough yet.)  There was a tremendous amount of utopian thinking about the New World on the part of disaffected Europeans.  Like most people, however, they couldn't get past their own problems and world-view, and hence rode rough-shod over the native peoples here.  By the way, I've found out just recently that my mother's ancestors were among the First Contact indigenous peoples - that means those who made the first contacts with the European interlopers.

Anyway, I should say a little more about the enigmatic title of this book.  Some of the earliest English colonists and their servants and slaves 'disappeared' in the Chesapeake Bay region, and when a ship finally came from England to belatedly support them, they found only an enigmatic word scrawled on a tree: 'Croatoan.'  It was decided that either everyone had perished, or perhaps they had gone off with the local Indians, who were at that time called the 'Croatoans' (now called the Lumbees).  So, the expression 'gone to croatan' means 'gone native,' or 'have chosen an alternative lifestyle.' 

Apparently many early Americans wanted to choose a form of democratic government in which power was 'vested in the people,' not just vested in the representatives of the people.  I don't much about this, but I believe it may have been the position of the Whig party.  Around the time of the Revolutionary War, many Americans were living a lifestyle that was a kind of mix of European farming/homesteading and Native American hunting/gathering, and these folks were very independent.  Not only did they favor independence from England, but independence from many other aspects of government as well.  It seems to me these people are alternately praised and denigrated in our American folklore, and that, to a certain extent, the split still exists among us.  Although many of the people who now choose to 'live outside the law' are actually people who have been barred from participating in lawful society in any kind of meaningful fulfilling way, but who are nevertheless being 'controlled' by the law and living, often, in incarceration.  Anyway, there was indeed a great deal of disagreement during the Revolutionary Period as to just what kind of 'government' the 'United States' was going to have.  If you want to read more about this, from a very different-from-the-usual perspective, yet in a serious, historically well-researched way, I recommend this book, Gone to Croatan.

Part of the problems that confront our country are indeed rooted in these earlier problems, and especially in the legacy of colonialism and slavery.  Not just black slavery either, but immigrant-slavery generally.  In immigrant-slavery, immigrants take on the most menial, low-paying, and dangerous jobs with the chance to make it to a higher socio-economic level, just as many of the early European and African indentured-servants/slaves did.  (Black slavery, after something like 1640, meant life-long indenture, with no hope for chance of betterment, and was obviously much more brutal and inhuman in nature.  But you could be worked to death as an indentured servant as well, having no rights during the time of your indenture.) 

Barack Obama's speech in Philadelphia gave me a lot of hope that maybe this, to my mind, colonial pattern can still change.  What could America be like? 

The answer still lies in the question of Labor, and this is not just America's question.  Who is going to do the s--t-work?  Reading more about the history of Labor is a very enlightening activity.  Changing our attitudes toward Labor is really what is called for.  There must be alternatives to Marxism on this subject.  If anyone would like to recommend some reading to me, I would much appreciate.  Please make it well-written and not too dry.

current reading

Gone to Croatan - this is an amazing collection of essays on the roots of alternative or counter-cultural communities in the United States.  When I began researching my familial roots and came across my connections to the Melungeons, Delaware Moors, Native Americans and early western european and African Americans, I realized that there were definite cultural elements in my own makeup that predisposed me to early interest in communal living (lived in an intentional community in my youth and by the way, it wasn't a 'cult'), in yoga, vegetarian diet (I am no longer a vegetarian, much to my great regret), a health regime based on closeness to nature, meditation, a view of the world, the universe and myself as a self-mirroring unity, and other non-mainstream cultural values, practices and beliefs.

Well, this collection of essays tells it all.  The first essay deals with a community of mixed Native Americans and others, characterized by a Moorish bias, called the Tribe of Ishmael who followed an annual migration path in what is now the midwest, subscribing a rough triangle between towns with names like Cairo, Mahomet, and Morocco.  They were marginalized and eventually obliterated in poverty by the incoming farming culture who despised their peripatetic, subsistence way of life. 

The essays also cover the Quakers and other antinomians in the early colonial environment, the roots of the American Revolution in the new proletariat communities of seamen, freed indentured servants and slaves, and others.  Initially, these 'crowds' - who had power unlike any in the US today, due to the complete absence of any kind of police forces or militia - as the book mentions, most of the militia men were a part of the 'crowds' - anyway, they worked together with the more respectable, settled landowners in the push for liberty, but after 1787, these populist groups began to be repressed and landowning values asserted predominance in the new republic. 

I think part of what forged the alliances among these people, is that so many of the early leaders of the American Revolution came from fairly low artisan classes, such as Benjamin Franklin's candle-maker father, who were bettering themselves but not so far removed from the new 'proletariat'.  The latter were particularly formed by the new mass of seamen as a class of land-free, wage-earning laborer.  Also, some of the lower levels of British gentry who found land opportunities in the colonies also wanted freedom.  But not everyone did, obviously.  There were plenty of Tories about, as well.  Anyway, the whole picture is much expanded by this book.

Many idealistic communities flourished, if briefly, in early America.  The ones we know most about now are the Shakers, the Amish and Hutterites, etc., who have actually survived the test of time.  Well, I guess not the Shakers.  But the book highlights a few others as well. 

I particularly found the Irish-African connections interesting.  All this and I've only read the first third of the book.

Night Train to Lisbon - this book is fiction by Pascal Mercier, and it's in translation.  The translation is not always very good, and in a way, I enjoy that because it gives me a window into how people are thinking in another language.  His name sounds French, but really I have no idea what language the book was originally written in.  One of the main threads of the novel is the idea that language shapes our thinking, and what it means to be attuned to that. 

The protagonist of the novel, Raimundus Gregorious, is a Swiss teacher of ancient languages - Greek, Latin and Hebrew - who becomes fascinated with Portugese and in particular with a dead Portugese philosopher, doctor and resistance fighter.  Gregorious travels to Portugal in search of this maestro of sensitive, self-revelatory, reality-penetrating prose, and finds him - explores and discovers him - through meetings with the people who were close to him in life.  As such, there is a bit more character-study in this book than I enjoy, BUT it is all so beautifully written that it is thoroughly worth the effort. 

Of course, everything Raimundo Gregorious discovers about Prado relates to himself as well, and I find the development of the character of the protagonist to be the one I am most interested in.  What I particularly love about this book is that it goes deep in the area of how much we are all related to one another and how much the past intersects with the present in our lives.  Since I am exploring how much the Spanish and Portugese Inquisition affected my own family, and this is all a new discovery for me, our family having denied our history for so many decades, this approach is very meaningful to me right now.

No Title - I have no titles to share on this, but yes, I am still doing a good deal of reading in the area of my Chinese interests.  Will post more about the 'Four Pillars' soon.

month of rabbit and 'awakening insects'

I love the name of the chinese half-month that begins today: month of awakening insects.  I have a Chinese therapeutic-music CD entitled 'Awakening Insects' and it is the most vibrant, energizing yet somehow ethereal piece of music I've ever heard.  Really, quite unlike anything else, and yet it vividly brings to mind those moments in nature when a chorus of insect-singing begins.

Of course, the awakening of the insects represents the return of life after winter's sleep.  The preceding half-month is called 'Spring Rains.'  What follows the Spring Rains?  The up-burgeoning of life!  But the return of life is still in its early stages.  Yang 'gains influence' as Yin begins to decline. 'Cold' has become 'cool,' with occasional slightly warm days.

This is the month associated with the Earthly Branch known as 'Rabbit.'  "The Rabbit is linked to the colour green, which is associated with the season of spring.  It is the colour of new life, tranquillity and relaxation.  It is said that dreams will end well if they feature the colour green since it is a lucky and influential colour."  (p. 19, Chinese Astrology, by Man-Ho Kwok - this is the one book to get if you are at all interested in investigating Chinese nature-wisdom.  I wouldn't call it 'astrology' since it has virtually nothing to do with the stars.  Unlike western astrology, this system really relies on seasons and time of day, basically with placement in space and time.  They do use a few fixed stars in one branch of the system.  Rather than 'Astrology' the 'Four Pillars' is more like a sort of 'Feng Shui' of the person.  I will be posting on Four Pillars soon.)

Anyway, interesting that we also celebrate the Rabbit at this time of year, here in the West, right?  And that we chose 'green' as the color of our money.

I've introduced a new category with this post: dao and chinese.  As some of you may know I have been an acupuncturist for the past 19 years, and a student of daoism.  I've scaled back my healing work in the past two years and have been doing less demanding work as a personal assistant/elder companion, which harks back to my earlier life.  I guess I must be a born caregiver, can't seem to get away from it.  But I am definitely pulled by this daoist system of healing and would like to do more with it in some way, shape or form.  So, one step in that direction may be to begin sharing this part of myself on this blog.

berkeley wilderness

Does anyone out there remember the book 'In Wilderness Is The Preservation Of The World' ?  Since exploring my ancestry I've joined a number of Native American online groups and have discovered that we do indeed all share a great love of nature, just as it is, with minimal amendments. 

I'm just writing this today, because I am so aware of how wonderful it is to live in a city where nature is appreciated and loved without having to be manicured, sprayed and disinfected.  Interestingly enough, Berkeley was the home place of the Sierra Club and its founder.  I don't reflect on this much, but I love how things are allowed to grow kind of free around here, and how, even though we are in the middle of a huge metropolitan area, we hear birds singing and calling all day, have night-time visitations by deer, raccoon, possums.  And even in the daytime sometimes will have a deer browsing in the yard. 

I think one of the things I found most deadening about some of the more manicured kinds of suburbs I visited as a young woman, was the lack of wildlife and insect life.  The overall 'park'-like feel, which is nice enough in itself, but I still want to feel more wilderness in my environment.  We are so fortunate here in the East Bay to have Tilden Park, Wildcat Park and others.  They may be called 'parks' but a lot of the land is close to being in a wild state.

Right now there's a big campaign to spray Berkeley for the Apple Moth.  If I remember right, we successfully resisted the Medfly spraying campaign years ago, and yes our apples had big larvae in them every year, but so what, we just cut that part out.  Is it such a huge inconvenience that we can't 'just bite in' to an apple?  I realize for commercial purposes it doesn't do to have big ugly insect excresences inside the fruit, but Berkeley is hardly the agrarian capitol of the world.  I agree that Berkeley doesn't need to be sprayed for the Apple Moth!

We need more wilderness desperately.  We can cultivate little patches of wilderness wherever we are, as long as we agree to live alongside the birds and the bees, let them have their own space, their own access to clean air and water, the right to be.  Nature is the real beauty of life.  Let's appreciate it while we can.

moor-indians and portugese-irish

I find it interesting that the Delaware Moors now seem to refer to themselves as moor-indians.  I still don't quite understand what the moorish connection is, but in a certain sense, it doesn't seem as important to me, as it did, to find out.  At last, I understand what the problem was, and why my mother seemed always so anxious about the opinions of others, about 'where she fit' in any given society.   And I understand so much more about just what the nature of her anxieties really were, and also about just how much was thoroughly muddled about the entire issue throughout the whole geographic region and group of concerned persons.  I no longer feel the same drive to know all the details.  Were they Indians?  Were they Africans?  Were they pirates?  Were they Irish?  Were they Portugese?  Were they Jews or Moors?  Were they some mixture of all those categories?  And perhaps most pressing of all, does anyone the least bit care anymore?

Well, people do tell me they find it 'interesting,' but back then they 'cared daggers' about it, and it must truly be said that that is no longer the case.  Yes, it's good to know what my ancestors had to go through, what even the generations directly above mine had to go through.  As one old friend of mine said to me recently, 'I always wondered why your family, who seemed so cultivated and refined, were living in that neighborhood.'  So I guess, even what I had to go through, in a sense, because yes, I did feel that my early environment was difficult.

To say a little bit more about the Native American piece of this, it is kind of odd that I never reflected more until now on the fact that so many families of Native-American or part Native-American ancestry surrounded us.  Our next door neighbor in the back was a full-blood Seneca, and former world war II ace pilot.  Other neighbors were Cherokee, Seneca, or unnamed 'Indians' 'from the mountains.'  My father was a European immigrant, so I guess I was nudged to identify myself as part of the recent post wwII immigrant community who also prevailed in our neighborhood.  It was easy to just slide right on over into their camp, and clearly that is just what my mother wanted for me.  The funny thing is, I never felt very comfortable there.  The kids in the neighborhood with whom I felt most at home were the mixed-race bunch.  The ones who accepted me perhaps best were 'the Irish' - whatever they 'really' were!

As I said to a friend recently, the 'whitest' people in our neighborhood were the Irish, and most of them looked or were rumored to be 'Portugese.'  Now that we know the story on Portugese and Spanish migration from the Inquisition into Europe and the New World, that category is much less unambiguous and makes much more sense too.  I'm wondering now about my mother's mother's mother, and will be taking the Family Tree mtDNA test as soon as they send the swabs to me.  Below is a photo of my grandmother's sister who looks like one of the Portugese Irish to me: