You are of royal descent because everyone is.

                                                                                         --Adam David Rutherford

When Edward Longshanks came to the throne of England in 1272, he literally stood out among my 4 million or so relatives in the 13th century. At a time…

Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great question.

                                    ... Alice, Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

Like Alice in Wonderland, many of us spend inordinate amounts of time trying to figure out who we are. Some put little…

... Lost Whilst Driving to Sea

I was fortunate to have visited the tomb of Mahatma Gandhi. Inscribed on the slab of black marble at Raj Ghat, New Delhi, are the words, Hey Ram, roughly translated as 'O, Lord.' They…

 Back in 1899, when everybody sang auld lang syne...

                                                               Steve Goodman, The Twentieth Century is Almost Over.

Expressions of sorrow and condolence appeared regularly in newspapers of the day. A notice in The Twillingate Sun in October 1891 was typical:…

Someday, you'll be an ancestor too

If truth be told, I have always been a Walter Mitty type, day-dreaming about my exotic origins, living in heroic times, wielding the pitiless sword of righteousness.

I first became aware of this tendency…

 Little Flowers of Love, That Blossomed but to Die...

Stories of survival, determination, and tragedy dominate our history. This one begins at the tail-end of the nineteenth century and continued into the waning years of the twentieth. On June 29,…

The past is never dead. It's not even past

                                                                 ...William Faulkner

The photograph, remarkable for its detail and clarity, was taken at L'Anse au Pigeon (Lancy Pigeon) on the French Shore of northern Newfoundland in the summer of 1910. Many…