The Big Red Pencil

If you look back on your life, or just one theme in it like work, human relationships or what you've produced, unless you're a great egotist or quite unreflective, there must be things that

you'd like to edit out. I guess that is done in obituaries, come to think of it. And Dubya's recent "book."
If you really believe in reincarnation, what is the mechanism whereby you remember what you need to improve on or fix in your behavior or character this time around? If you just return as a spider next time as a result of some really smelly karma, I don't see how that works. And returning without any instructions means we just bumble around again.
So we're propelled forward by the tsunami of time and events, hoping the weight of sin and stupidity won't drag us down as much as we suspect it will.
What would you leave out? A good composer, artist or writer has to master this to produce a good work, a classic. (Short story in six words by Ernest Hemingway: "Baby shoes for sale. Never used.")
If you were Woody Allen, you could eliminate all the noise in a long, checkered career and keep just Sleeper, Annie Hall, Interiors and Vicky Cristina Barcelona. The author of Raintree County killed himself because he had nothing left to write after that. Wrong solution. If you just left behind your best, what's wrong with that?
What if you actually could, at important junctures in your personal time-line, bring out the editing pencil and remove the destructive, bad stuff? That seems to be a better sort of reincarnation: learn, fix it, and grow when it would do some good. That's the enduring appeal of "A Christmas Carol" -- fly and loop freely through time, with or without ghostly guides, and clean up your permanent record. Deep meditation, traditional religions and jails offer the only, modestly successful, attempts at it we actually have. But nothing's really deleted in these processes, it is just archived.
Physicists say time may not exist at the most fundamental level of reality; all the laws of physics would work equally well if time ran backwards. There's your entry point, I think! What we perceive as the relentless forward march of time is the expansion and growing disorder of the universe. Is all of that time still here and can we get into it and change things? It must be inherent in all the universe's matter and energy that cannot be added to or destroyed. Uh-oh. That means we can't edit anything out. Rats. Trapped in my own theoretical web.
Karmic spiders.

The Worm Abides

Considering the amount of time I spend in doctors' waiting rooms, I would be about the best-informed person around if only the selection of magazines provided were better. The dentist and regular doctor's offices are so deficient in free reading material that I bring my own and then leave it to improve the tone. They do have Car and Driver most of the time, so I'll have to give them some credit. The podiatrist has a fine selection of news magazines, but not, alas, The Economist. Quality rag, but way too expensive to subscribe to. The blood lab always has several National Geographics, and that lessens the sting (as it were). The Harvard Library of these brightly lit, but ultimately grim, places is the cardiologist's: not only travel magazines full of impossible dreams, but, lo and behold, Discover too. I get there early in order to read the whole delicious thing. And the view of the river is excellent, too.

There was a mention, in the issue I found today, of research which claims our brains can be traced back to an ancient (600 million years ago ancient) worm, Urbilateria. Well, that had to be checked out (on Neurophilosophy.wordpress.com) when I got home. It seems all vertebrates -- that's us! -- worms and insects are thought to have a common ancestor based on a body plan of bilateral symmetry and organization of nervous systems in centralized cords. And old Urbi was there at the beginning, full of possibilities.

Quite an inheritance from an old, forgotten worm.

WHAT Are My Girls Up To??

I like two for being so classy (Portia and Gwyneth) and two for being so sassy (Katy and Kat von D). But, ladies, you are distressing me lately. Except for Gwyneth, your choice in mates, given that you are out of almost everyone's league, is puzzling at best and very disturbing at worst. Katy and that thing Russell Brand? The "ick" factor is off the charts. And tattooed lady Kat von D dropped the likeable Nicky Sixx (formerly icky, but like Keith Richards he's aged well) for the current king of scuzz, Jesse James. I recommend disease testing, yesterday.

And Portia took herself off the market by marrying Ellen deGeneres (not that there's anything wrong with that). Her mother probably was the first to say she could have done better. (Put your hand down. Not any of us.) Good for her but bad for us when she changed teams.

And they were all in tune with music, until recently. Portia plays bass, Kat has been a big supporter of the art and music scene, and Katy has done as much for the pop single as the Beach Boys. But Gwyneth, for reasons unfathomable, took the stage at the CMA Awards to sing some plastic Nashville. You're not married to some dumb hat act -- why?

C'mon, you're goddesses and higher standards come with the job.

The Cat Whisperer

The year is rushing toward its end, with its promise of holidays, the weather fooling us with deceptive mildness. New year brings the real freeze, taxes, darkness at 4 P.M., and a long stretch without holidays (Valentine's day is good, but you don't get off work for it).

We just use the short form for taxes now, so instead of most of a day it takes most of 15 minutes. You might take a little satisfaction in your progress this past year or plan improvements for the next, but for every simplification or cost saving, I swear, another complication and cost shows up to replace it.

That little black devil in the pictures is the complication that appeared this year. Just like Gilligan 6 years ago, Blackberry showed up as a starving kitten at the back door, and as in the Grateful Dead song where the narrator says to the Dire Wolf, "Come on in," that's what we said. With B.B. Bunny, that makes three orphans taken in from the unforgiving suburban landscape to fill the house with hair, cat toys, and litter pans.

We're doing our part for the jobs crisis, at the vet and Petco. And for whoever makes the litter.

B.B. doesn't have the run of the house due to his love of chewing anything electrical-cord-like, so he can't cause trouble outside his room, and I make his litter in the shredder from scrap and newspaper, and he's never, in 9 years, been to the vet. He never bites or scratches, gives kisses freely, and keeps real quiet.

Cats are smarter, and therein lies one problem. They learn (exactly what they want to, not what you want) and dream up creative but work-producing mischief daily. The other is that kittens get overstimulated easily and could give the Energizer Bunny a run for his money any day. We have learned to put the houseplants way up because Gilligan would pull my minefields of toothpicks out with his teeth and claw the dirt up, like he wanted to, anyway. Any candles or vases have been banished to storage. No flowers in water, of course.

The one thing that will improve things and return the success score for this year back to a draw is that at year's end Blackberry will be old enough for the vet to remove his, uh, manhood and even more important, those front claws. Those two racks of fish hooks have shredded our hands, legs, arms and toes. I used a half-cup of stain remover to clean up the blood all over my pants leg. While front-clawless Gilligan jumps up into your lap for some quality time, Blackberry climbs up you like a human ladder. Once settled in, he goes into a deep sleep, and like a baby, is at his most attractive then. His good qualities will be much more evident once those ninja daggers of death are removed.

Who knows what next year will bring.

Mystery Ranch

Except for its excessive 4000 square-foot size, this house is an environmentalist's dream. Completely off the grid since 2002, it features the latest energy saving and renewable power systems. A passive solar design is backed up by a geothermal heating/cooling system using 300-foot-deep groundwater. Graywater reclamation treats and reuses wastewater, notably in irrigating a fruit orchard. Rain efficiently collected by the roof goes into a large cistern.

It was not built by someone like the Rocky Mountain Institute, but by a nearby religious cult which also operates a tourist trap, Homestead Heritage, for income. And it was not built for a wealthy individual into sustainability and renewable energy. Oh, it was for a wealthy individual -- who knows some things you don't.

This is George W. Bush's Crawford, Texas, ranch. It just doesn't add up. He has no need to save money on heating and cooling. The energy policy of this petro millionaire, while in office, clearly rejected conservation and attacked renewable energy programs. Why would he invest big in something that is in complete contradiction to everything he has said, believed and done? No explanation has been offered; the lack of curiosity about it seems baffling.

Remember when Cheney, as Vice President, ran and hid in an "undisclosed location" immediately after the 9/11 attacks? G. Bush prepared this location for his family's survival when the effects of oil depletion coupled with greatly increased demand and overpopulation hit us. The entire industrialized world should have been doing the same in the almost 40 years since the oil embargo of the early '70s showed us the societal and financial devastation that even a temporary constriction of energy will cause.

In the 1960s, we consumed 6 billion barrels of oil per year, while finding 30 - 60 billion barrels yearly. Free trade, globalization and population explosion since then has sent demand up sharply as the easy to tap reserves were used up. Now we consume 30 billion barrels per year and are finding less then 4 billion barrels annually. Reserves are overstated by the oil industry and sovereign states because an honest accounting would send stock prices into the basement and destabilize nations. No new refineries have been built in the United States since 1976, and mergers are accelerating. If they are not investing, it's clear that the industry, and Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, are preparing for the end of the game. They played it well (knowledge is power, after all), and they'll win.

Three Easy Pieces

Ross Perot reminds me of Henry Wallace, FDR's Agriculture Secretary and Vice-President; both were high achievers from the heartland, brilliant and erratic. Both faded from prominence due to being perceived as off-kilter. They were willing to suffer career eclipse and leave the halls of power rather than abandon their ideas and principles.
When Perot was warning about the proposed NAFTA free-trade agreement in the '90s (with that perfect sound bite, "a giant sucking sound"), I remember the columnists dismissing his prediction of jobs flowing to other shores in the millions; they uniformly said that one of free trade's benefits would be better, higher-tech jobs here and polluting old style industries and occupations being made to move or modernize.
And so, our cranky prophet has lived to see each new WalMart destroy family businesses and local jobs while filling ten acres of paved fluorescent hell with a hundred thousand tons of Chinese junk that lasts a week. Every single thing we see at Kohl's, Staples, the hardware store, any shoe store, anywhere you can think of, is from China. The mainstay of every small Pennsylvania town was a dress factory, followed by shoes and furniture. All gone. Nothing left but pizza and hair shops.
Perot has all the charisma of one of the Perdues, but he has been right about so many things he must have that fine combination of intelligence and insight that is totally lacking in all the standard conservative figures from Coolidge to Gingrich. And despite what I thought, his support was broad-based, his populist supporters coming evenly from across the spectrum. Erratically pulling out of the second election try and the organizational squabbles that ensued have obscured that, if he had held onto his sense and miraculously won, opposed to the first Gulf War he wouldn't have started another, would not have approved the disastrous repeal of the Glass-Steagal act which had separated investment and regular banks, would have tried to increase the gas tax (political suicide but necessary), and tried some serious work on Social Security. How a president could end the massive outsourcing of jobs other than killing NAFTA and China's Favored Nation trade-partner status, I do not know. But how I wish both those things had been done.

***

Right after I read Oscar Lewis' 1959 classic, Five Families, I read a suggestion that we could learn sustainability (after pigs fly) from the slums of the "developing" or Third World. All but one (Americanized, wealthy) family in this study set in and around Mexico City during the '50s was practicing it from necessity. The housing is high density and just affordable, what was not walkable was reachable by numerous private bus lines, each comunidad was mixed residential and commercial, and communal endeavors in food and livestock production were a real source of income and well-being.
Can it be done 60 years later, here, in a very different world ? I had just also read Farm City, by a young couple in the rough urban environment of Oakland doing the same thing, recycling restaurant waste to their pigs and chickens, bartering their products locally, developing a tiny economy that worked in one dead-end block. They got away with it because they were just as marginal as the Mexicans were to their local governments or big businesses.

***

I like second-hand things much more than new ones. If something was designed and built to last, it already has good inherent qualities; older designs often reflect more thought than some quick mass-market item rushed out before it is copied or surpassed. Safety is the one thing that is sometimes better; steam irons, cars and tires certainly. But can a current box- or jellybean-styled car touch an old Buick or a '66 GTO? The Mustang got its mojo back when it returned to old school.
I don't use it due to the certainty that the airlines would destroy it, but I have my father's leather suitcase from WWII. It has brass lockable snaps and two leather belts around it; I had it restored quite a while ago not to re-use it but to acknowledge its value. I like the era of wood, brass, leather and canvas -- people can make useful and durable items with these materials; you can't make an ABS plastic computer case. But the known and unknown human connections as well as some thing's survival through time adds depth and richness.
Oh, yeah, and vinyl records! I really enjoy being in the circulation; mine go to someone who will really value them and I pick up someone else's at the thrift shop, thanking that unknown person for keeping them in great condition.
As the Germans say, das ding an zeit -- the thing in itself.

From the Obscure History Department

St. Fillan

Tartan of Clan MacNab

Brother Steve (the family historian) and I made our annual trip up to Perry County a few days ago to see the progress on the cemetery marker cleaning and repair he has initiated at the mostly abandoned Bull Cemetery near Donnallys Mills. Finally, we made it to the Perry County Historians library, which hasn't been open on most of the days we were up that way. We were also aided by the years of research done by cousin-many-times-removed Perry Brandt of York County; thanks to him and Steve, I finally had enough names and facts to do some digging with. Sylvia, who is of course a relative a couple of times over, helped us navigate; but despite their extensive, accessible records, I can tell you genealogical research is like chasing your own tail. In addition to sketchy records, wildly various spelling and impossible-to-read Victorian handwriting, everyone seems to share just a few first names. I had one question above all that I wanted to resolve, however, and finally did.

It's a shame I was too young, far away and self-involved to question our grandfather on all this when he was "present" enough not to wander off into the same story countless times. I loved the stories, though: Robber Lewis, the Robin Hood of Steretts Gap, the great-uncle who held the same bank job for 42 years and was quite the dandy, his grandfather Ard Brandt who gave him nothing but a nickel once, the relative who enlisted during the Civil War to escape his awful wife, the appearance of the first car in the county, a Maxwell owned by a doctor, and the Revolutionary War stories set in Chester County, the best of which included George Washington (accepted as true by the DAR and in many sources; I was on the dirt road he had taken on the retreat from Brandywine and it passed right by the first Rice homestead).

One story I couldn't reconcile was his statement that his mother's family, the Brandts, were Scots-Irish. Even years ago I could only find this name in German families, so I thought there was a mistake there. Grandad had reddish hair and smooth, fair skin, and I could see that being true but the names, I knew, were all German.

So this History Detective went to work and, having the name Jane Gilfillen from the old Millerstown Memorial Cemetery as married into the same Brandt line, found out that she was Elizabeth (Eliza) Jane Gilfillen (1819 - 1892) who married Charles C. Brandt in 1840. Charles C. was an estimable gentleman, serving as County Commissioner and State Representative in the 1850s. Among their many children were Ard (possibly Arden; saw Howard on one document) and Perry K. Ard is our progenitor and Perry K. is Perry Brandt's. I figure their brother Milton, a prominent businessman in Lewistown, was the source of my grandfather's name.

So, Ard was half Scots-Irish. He married Sarah Jane Cauffman in 1865; Cauffman was a Swiss family while her mother was a Long (English? Didn't get that far). His daughter Anna (Annie) Thompson Brandt married our great-grandfather, Charles Grant Rice (named after the Union general and President) in 1893. Our grandfather Milton was born in 1895, and saw the world going from no indoor water to the computer age.

Being curious, like a cat, about the tiniest thing, I had to know why Annie's middle name was Thompson. John Thompson (d. 1829) married another Jane Gilfillen but died young. The widow was "more than ordinary in ability and enterprise," was owner of the canal boat Dove and put her 11-year-old son Jon to work driving it. This John might be the source of the name, for he became quite a local magnate, building a stone house for $4000 (can you imagine what that is today?). He also ran the Thompson House Hotel in Mechanicsburg, still there, which became famous for being the headquarters of Confederate General Jenkins when he occupied the town during the Gettysburg campaign.

So, having generations of pious and serious German, Austrian, Swiss and Alsatian ancestors, I was intrigued to find some more colorful Scots Irish in there. Most family histories around here begin no earlier than the migration from the German Rhineland in the 18th century. Ships' manifests show the place of origin of the passengers and age; beyond that the curtain descends.

The feisty Scots, however, have a long preserved history. The Highland Gilfillens are first recorded in a charter in 1124, and resided in the area between Stirling and Edinburgh. Their origin was much earlier, on the western Isle of Mull, where they were exterminated by a rival clan. Two widows escaped and bore twin sons each, who were the source of all the descendants.

The origin of the name is Gillie Fillan, or servant of St. Fillan (pronounced FEElan). To complicate matters too ancient to unravel anyway, there were two St. Fillans in the same area doing the same things (a couple of centuries after the Romans left).

Their more peaceful stay in Stirlingshire was disturbed when Robert the Bruce murdered the brother-in-law of Angus MacNab (the Gilfillans were a sept, or division, of Clan MacNab) in 1306. Once he was in full power after 1314, the MacNab lands and charters were forfeit. It seems they thought it would be prudent to lie low and slowly relocate; some decamped to Northern Ireland in the 1600s during the religious and civil wars, and again after 1745 after having chosen to rally behind Bonnie Prince Charlie, the losing side once again.

Clan MacNab (meaning "child of the abbot" -- Abraruadh the Red, a "secular" Pict abbot) has its home near Loch Earn, in Glendochart and Strathearn. Ol' Red (note the hair color) was a son of King Kenneth Macalpine and a descendant of a nephew of St. Fillan. This might explain the inclusion of the Gilfillans.

Sir Walter Scott, in Waverly, mentions the "gifted Gilfillan," described as tall with ruddy cheeks. Who might that have been? I wish I had known to look for Gilfillan Court in Old Town Edinburgh when we were there (we were also all over Stirlingshire finding the locations related to the great Wallace without knowing this connection). A letter written in 1907 about this family states they were talented, but unbalanced. It describes one fellow in northern Ireland as "irascible" in his dotage, then goes on to say this was more normal than not in that family. They did, however, stay clear of the law (keeping a safe distance from English and Scottish kings) while maintaining their fondness for whiskey.

Back to considerably less royal and less bloody Perry County and a rare personal portrait... In the 1860s, Lewis Gilfillan (1813 - 1893) was among the 50 or 60 prosperous farmers in the Pfoutz Valley, and was known as the "best all around fun maker" at the winter turkey roasts held at a score of families' homsteads. "He possessed much native Scots Irish wit and could do a homely anecdote with great aplomb."

A James Gilfillan was Treasurer of the United States in 1884, but the "strong and rugged family lives only in memory and in other names through the female descendants." That is, in Perry County. There are, despite the seeming rareness of the name, many in New England, Ohio, Kansas, California, Australia and Charleston, South Carolina.

Charles Robert Gilfillan was the last survivng male in the line founded by the original Perry county immigrants James G. and Nancy Watts of the mid-18th century. He was a World War I draftee, but was not in the book of casualties at the library. As I said at the outset, tracking people down who all share the same few first names is daunting: James and Charles were used multiple times in each generation. I was looking for a Rice Civil War veteran and found five with the name Samuel, all enlisting at the same place.

The Gifillan motto is Armis et Animis -- Arms and Courage. The same as the Carnegie family's and Virginia's 80th Division's 317 Airborne Infantry. And I was in the 80th Division when in the Army Reserve. History and its actors are twisted up like a Celtic knot, intriguing but devilish hard to unwind.