Busy morning in Arlington. I had a pop-up 0900 conference call that I almost forgot to dial in to. Then the Porters showed up to prepare and inspect the unit for the cut-over from heating to cooling season. You know, rhythms of the season and all that, and I as pleased the unit looked all right after the plumbing flail of earlier in the week. And the management volume that I am supposed to submit by the end of the day, blah blah blah.

You know, the ordinary miasma of the working week here in DC. But what was lurking in the extended chain of fresh mail (why am I getting so much garbage)? Honest to God, having more than a hundred incoming on five or six separate accounts is becoming too much to manage!

But among them was one that I had been expecting, in addition to two marvelous strings dealing with the KAL007 shoot-down, and Operation EAGLE CLAW, from the intelligence professionals who managed both extended crisis events. I would like to collect them and cast it as a adult-beverage fueled barroom encounter between the extended cast of players: Vince, JoeMaz, Mules, Pete et all. It is fascinating to go back and relive some of the adrenaline-fueled activity that surrounded both events, and for which we were all minor spear-carriers. I just wish I had more time! I need to get back to the Mac Showers book- the air came out of my sails once I had the first draft pretty well tied up, and need to get hot again before the 75th Anniversary of the Battle of Midway in June.

have always had an interest in genealogy, and reconstructing the lives of my forbears. There is a marvelous cache of Civil War material on the family, including the ravings of the Mad Irishman who was my great-great Uncle Patrick, and the service record of my Union Great Great Grandfather, who deserted the army to stay with Patrick’s sister.

Mom did a commendable job in stitching together her lineage and that of Dad’s family, marvelously complete due to my Aunt Barbara’s research to qualify for membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution, which takes us back to Scotland, and the flight to the New World after the battle of Culloden Field in 1745. That was the one in which King George’s red coats crushed the Highlanders, and turned Highland glens that once had supported a few dozen doughty lads with broadswords into ones that held a hundred docile sheep.

There the trail goes cold. We know something about the village in Galway that spawned Mom’s line, but beyond that, the Socotra clan’s whereabouts before the arrival in North America is a mystery.

As you know, there have been some remarkable developments in genetics, and in human DNA in particular with implications for law enforcement, healthcare and a host of other applications. The 23 pairs of chromosomes that make us who we are can be mapped, and that capability has spawned a new industry testing and reporting on individual DNA composition to provide predictive information for personal health and genealogy. I had been hearing from friends who had done the process with Ancestry.com and had it on my list of things to do. On a slow day (and there are a depressingly small number of them) I finally got to the bottom of the list, compared commercial services, and paid about a hundred bucks to an outfit called “23&me.”

It was a piece of cake. I paid, a package arrived about a week later, I provided some saliva in a kit with a postage paid label on it, and this morning the results appeared in my email queue.

There is nothing particularly surprising in the results, though the percentage of Scots-Irish was higher than I thought- almost 50%. With my Grandfather being the last 100% Irishman in the family, I thought it was going to come out closer to a quarter than a half. It is also possible that it is all mumbo-jumbo, but from what I already know, it looks reasonable.

I have no idea where the Iberians came from- the “Black Irish” who survived the sinking of the Armada? The Scandinavian touch no doubt reflects the lust of a Viking on a voyage of conquest directed against a woman in a coastal village in Ireland or Scotland. What did surprise me was the fact that my chromosomes reflect more Neanderthal than 72% of the customers who have been test by the company- about 4%. That may be the hardest thing to get my brain wrapped around- and account for some of my baser instincts. It also makes me feel a little swagger as I stalk my way down to the fire-pit at the farm.

Anyway, the kids may be interested in where their Old Man’s line came from, and I am pleased to welcome some bold Spanish sailors into the family circle, and allow some of the German line to be suitably minimized from the previous assumption that they were the majority of Dad’s line. There are no protected groups in my past, so I am afraid that until Northwestern Europe becomes a minority group I am part of the lightning rod for protest from the Social Justice crowd. Screw them. I do not think they want to get my Irish up.

It was an interesting excursion into the history of the clan- and gave me new things to ponder about fresh lines of research the next time things slow down a bit. All you have to do is provide your credit card and spit into a cup. Even a Neanderthal can do that.

Copyright 2017 Vic Socotra
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