family

Exploring my roots on two wheels

/ nococlimoprof / 1 Comment

Have you ever arrived in someplace new and felt like you have been there before? I think we carry memories of our ancestors in our genes. Given what people are learning about how environment and behavior affect how genes are expressed, and given that expression of genes might affect how people pass them on to their offspring, I think it’s no longer a big stretch to say that we carry bits of the environment of our ancestors in our DNA. I felt it in Scotland. In Ireland. And in Germany. And I definitely felt it in the Netherlands.

Cycling the pathways that connect Dutch villages sometimes felt like riding a ribbon through a series of fairytales featuring my great-great grandparents.

Based on my 23andMe results, about 50% of my DNA originated in people who came from northern western mainland Europe, in the region that is now western Germany and The Netherlands. (The other 50% is a mix of ancestry from Sweden, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales). This is not a surprise. My maternal grandfather was born in and spent the first 10 years of his life in the region that now forms the western border of Germany and the northeastern corner of Holland. My maternal grandmother’s family also originated in northwestern Germany before they became farmers in ‘South Russia’, what is now the Ukraine.

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Ghosts In the Shadows

/ nococlimoprof / 3 Comments

I’ve lived long enough on this earth to know ghosts. I’ve felt them, seen them when I close my eyes. Heard them when I block out all other noise. Ghosts are real. In my experience, they’re nothing like the ghosts depicted in Hollywood, which usually resemble something out of Dickens novel – ragged clothes and chains and dangling teeth.

They are times gone by. They are faded memories that suddenly adopt a splash of color. They emerge from somewhere deep inside you, dance around, then fade back where they came from. Ghosts are not necessarily scary, creepy, or lonely — at least my ghosts aren’t. They just need some attention now and then so that you can remember to live the way you’re supposed to live.

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Shining the light on the ground beneath my feet

/ nococlimoprof / 3 Comments

Have you ever looked down and found that you are standing on something rather unexpected?

I grew up in a place that experienced frequent small earthquakes. If you have ever felt one, you know that no matter how small the movement of the solid earth beneath you, it always throws you off center. Sometimes you feel like it must be in your head, this sudden motion from something that felt so solid. You might feel a bit queasy, a bit off balance, like the world isn’t as it seems. If you’ve studied a bit of geology, you’ll know that there’s a whole world beneath your feet that you really can’t see with your own eyes – and it’s always moving and shifting.

Walking on solid earth…we hope.
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