The Bluestocking - holding the line and losing the thread

[lcakethereforeIam]

All women welcome, pull up a pygmy hog, the bargerbil will serve you a drink, the flying squirrels will bring you something to read and the goats will do...I'm not entirely sure.

There may be more than the usual amount of chaos as we transition to the new thread.

I can understand your DH being chuffed about being 0.6% Denisovan, because when people say they are extinct, he can clear his throat theatrically and say 'Well, actually.....'

Lovely to see you Swash. Keep well ❤

My mitochondrial haplogroup is U4, which is rare in western Europe. It pops up a bit in Scandinavia and the Baltic, and it's most common among what the Russians call "small numbered peoples of the north".

So that suggests a long term journey of indigenous reindeer herders > Vikings > Scots and Irish. We're closer to tribal history than we think.

Hello, Swashy. Great to see you. I think of you often.

(Waves madly through the window of the Bluestocking towards the galleon)

Currently 'Inheritance - what's fair, what's rigatoni'. Not checked but I think I've nailed that one.

Mum's side is Welsh and Londoner. I wish they hadn't died when I was so young, I've so many questions. Rumours of Jewishness but completely unsubstantiated.

Dad's side, don't know and Irish. We think he was killed in ww2 and buried in Tunisia.

I met a Jewish couple on holiday and we were talking heritage. They originally thought I was Russian. I showed them pictures of my mum's brother and his kids. Apparently I am also Jewish. My heritage on my dad's side is Irish via Scotland. My mum's family is from the midlands. But my uncle, his kids and one of my brothers really do look stereotypically Jewish.

I'm not Jewish, but sometimes people think I am. Except when I meet Polish people, who always assume that I'm Russian. I've never been able to figure that out.

The only thing that tempts me to carry out a DNA thingy is to get to the bottom of that.

My dad told me that one of his grandparents was a Malayan woman who his grandfather met while working on a tea plantation, and that’s where I get my skin, hair and eye colour from.

It would be interesting to see if this is at all true - I haven’t found any evidence on Ancestry. I guess I’ll do a DNA test at some point.

Some genetic signatures are very distinctive. One of the amazing things in genetics is the Ashkenazi population bottleneck, where all the Ashkenazi Jews in the world are descended from about 350 people who lived in medieval Italy: Ashkenazi Jews descend from 350 people, study finds | The Times of Israel

In Polish religious art there's a tradition of depicting Jesus with ginger hair, because icon painters in 18th century Poland didn't know what people from the Middle East looked like, but there were lots of Ashkenazi Jews around, and in Poland ginger hair is a stereotypically Jewish trait.

I suppose it's a bit like that stereotypical Irish look of very pale skin and very black hair, and I wonder where that comes from.

Glad to see @Swashbuckled in the Bluestocking <3.
My family line is Very Unposh aside from one great-uncle who was the RC titular archbishop of somewhere Eastern European, but my grandfather on the other side was brought up in a workhouse so I guess that counters it.
DH has a fair share of Neanderthal genes, which occasionally causes amusement whe Neanderthal is used to mean crude or brutish (he is neither).

I've had a couple of people think I was Jewish. One was a CofE woman who didn't know me & who, when I walked into church one Sunday, rushed at me exclaiming, "Here's our little Jew!" 😱😱😱 because she was expecting to meet a Jewish woman there. I mean, FFS what a terrible thing to say to a Jewish woman - I hope she didn't repeat it when the woman actually arrived.

OTOH, I was once stopped in Golders Green by a couple of Jewish guys with a clipboard & asked if I was Jewish. They obviously thought I was because they went from confident to crestfallen & embarrassed when I said no. I wasn't offended as they seemed to think I might be, more intrigued as to why they thought I was Jewish & what they were asking people about - but they were too embarrassed to tell me.

I have some Irish ancestry so maybe that explains it. Sadly, no-one's ever thought I was Russian - or maybe that's a good thing these days.

Actually, I have a missing & unidentified grandfather, so I could have Jewish blood in me. But that wouldn't make me Jewish because that goes down the female line, doesn't it?

I once had a Hasidic guy stop me, who obviously thought I was Jewish because he asked for directions in Yiddish. I'm quite proud of having helped him. I don't speak Yiddish as such, but my German is good enough (or bad enough) that I could understand him.

The Ancestry DNA subreddit is wild. It's full of Americans saying "my test shows I'm 3% Portuguese, can I claim this ethnicity" like it's a weirdly political game of Pokemon. Sometimes there are Americans of vague Irish descent who wander over to the Ireland subreddits, say "how do you do fellow Irish folx" and then come back to the Ancestry sub and complain endlessly about Irish people saying "you're not Irish".

I've been mistaken for Irish on more than one occassion- pale skin, green eyes, dark curly hair. Nope, not one atom.

I’ve never taken much interest in my ancestry beyond my grandparents - parents had a pretty common Welsh name and a very common English ‘trade’ name. I suppose DNA might be fun at some point though I’ve no reason to expect anything other than some north English/welsh type of mix. DH has an unusual surname which might possibly have Flemish origins so perhaps he might turn up a surprise or two. He traced that side of the family far enough to find the probably ubiquitous example of cousin marriage and ‘emigration’ to Australia.

I take after the Scottish side of my family, with a smattering of Irish - pale and freckled, green eyes and dark hair. I apparently look native when in northern Italy though, as that's where I routinely get addressed in the native language.

Double post

Sionnach - I suppose it's a bit like that stereotypical Irish look of very pale skin and very black hair, and I wonder where that comes from

And don't forget the blue blue eyes to go with the black black hair and pale pale skin! It's unusual and very striking.
I think it's most common in the SW, Kerry etc.

In Irish Gaelic, such people are referred to as being 'dubh' [duv], black, [hence the surnames Duff, Duffy etc] so there has to be another word for Black people and they are referred to as 'gorm' [gurrum] which means blue! Names for colours are very fluid from culture to culture, maybe blue had a different significance back in the day..

I've heard that colouring derives from the pre-Celtic, Iberian population, but who knows..?
The Celts were a mixed bunch themselves, although the stereotype is the tall grey or green-eyed Celt with reddish blond hair, 'being Celtic' was more a cultural affiliation than a restricted ethnic group who all looked alike - one of the many things I like about the Celts

I had someone get in a bit of strop once when she asked if I was Irish and I said no...

But I'm not. All my FH says I'm not and the DNA confirms it.

Woley, there weren't many tea plantations in Malaya - only a few, of which Boh, which is still going, is the best known. And 'Malayan' covered a huge range - Malay, Chinese (mostly traced back to SE China, like the Cantonese), various Indians (Sikhs, Tamils, Malayalees, mostly) and Eurasians (of assorted varieties) - and also various indigenous groups. Modern Malaysia is very ethnically mixed as a result. Would Recommend for a holiday for the food alone. Best ever pork with ginger at a nowheresville place next to a main road in Perak... Decor 3/10, but the food went up to 11.

My mum had dark hair and eyes, as iirc her mum did too. Can't remember her father's colouring. We're all very pale. My dad has blue eyes and no hair though it was dark when he was younger. He said his beard would grow out ginger.

I've never been called anything re. ethnicity or religious affiliation.

Lovely to see you dropping in. Hope you are bearing up in the grimness. X

I've never understood the fascination of genealogy and haven't a clue about my antecedents so my contribution to this discussion is a literary tangent, but I thought the discerning clientele of the Bluestocking might appreciate a name check for Ursula Le Guin and her story about the girl who was four percent corn (‘Porridge on Islac’, in Changing Planes and, I think, some sort of collected edition of her short stories).

Yeah, that's his plan :)
He did manage to fill a few gaps in his tree and make contact with a relative who could solve a minor family mystery. My Fil suddenly has three more cousins than he thought he had.

Thanks for the hellos.

I’ve been escaping into hard labour these past weeks. I have another galleon and I’d let another pirate live in it. The pirate left for foreign lands and I decided to take the opportunity to sell it. Me and Bear went to look at it and it was a shithole. We put it on the galleon market. But then Bear said we should renovate it together and make it nice again. So we made a plan and took it off the galleon market so we could work on it together.

Bear died before we’d even started. I was tempted to just put it back on the galleon market, but I felt like I was letting Bear down. So, I started to renovate it by myself. I’ve been going every day and working on it for hours. It has honestly felt overwhelming but I think it has also saved me. I’ve been sawing, painting, fixing everything. Just thinking about the next saw movement, or the next paint stroke. And doing it for Bear. I feel worn out, but would have felt worse just sitting on my own ship with thoughts flying through my mind.

I’m still not finished and there’s a way to go, but I’ve made good progress. Today I’ve been sawing thick planks, and trying to remove huge nails from them. The nails had curved into them like a squashed letter “C”. Lots of hammer work but I failed. The battery on my drill died; no output even though fully charged, so I’ve been using manual screwdrivers. My right hand is a little buggered.

I generally do this during the day, then come home to eat, then walk the hound in the evening. It’s my new routine. I’m not back at work yet.

Anyway, thought I’d pop in, sit at the bar and fill you in on my galleon renovations.

I’ll take a flavoured gin with tonic please, with ice and berries in it. And will think of a snack while I’m sipping.

On geneology. I did one of the saliva things a few Christmases ago. I had grown up being told that my paternal grandfather was Jewish (never met him) and my paternal great grandfather was also Jewish (never met him either). I was fascinated so did the spit thing.

No Jewish genes at all! Mostly Irish (which I already knew about). Not sure where those stories came from, although there was some illegitimacy. Odd.