Monday Meanderings - 5.29.2017

I'm a couple of weeks into my no sweetener in my coffee regimen. It's best summed up by "drinking slightly less coffee while enjoying it a whole lot less." We'll see.

 

 A significant aspect of producing audio books at Learning Ally is the checking of the audio files against the written word. It's a tedious, important part of the process, demanding your total attention while you listen and compare. It's easy to get caught up in the story, or to read ahead a bit, or just lose your focus. One of our best checkers is a retired judge who comes to the studio daily, dressed in coat and tie, and checks for hours at a stretch, relentlessly picking up on each and every error.

I've mentioned before that all of us readers make mistakes, such as transpose words, or substitute 'a' for 'the' or just flat misread the material. And sometimes, it doesn't have anything to do with how you read. The other day I got a folder from an earlier project that had a couple of errors to be corrected. When I opened the files and brought up the error listings, they said "Background noise."

This puzzled me, because we record in sound-proof, heavily padded isolation booths. How could there be background noise in that environment? But when I listened, I clearly heard... my stomach growling!

The Next Door neighbor bulletin board recently had a listing of a $500 reward for the return of a grey lost cat. That got me thinking about the strays that come around our house and a spray can of grey paint. Nah. Probably couldn't pull that off.

My driver's license is up for renewal and this time it was necessary to show up at the DMV. The entire DMV experience has become synonymous with bureaucracy, poor customer service and long lines, so I set out early on a day with no other commitments to get this task completed.

The letter advising me of the need for renewal was full of requirements of documentary evidence; passports, IDs, SSN card, proof of residency, filled-in-forms and, of course, payment. I gathered all the documents, checked the website for the form to complete, and saw a note about "Get in Line Online." There is a big office relatively near our home and they allow you to log in with your mobile phone number and get a place in the line. A text appeared that said my turn would come up in about 40 minutes. Subsequent messages kept me updated with my status, along with options to request "more time" or "step out of the line."

I got to the facility with about 10 minutes to wait; they called my phone number in about 9, I only needed my old driver's license for ID, smiled at the camera, read line 4 on the chart, paid my money  and I was done in another 10 minutes! The clerk did mention that I was smart to come in before school was out!

 

There was a fender bender accident out at ABIA the other day, involving 2 passenger planes. Okay, it was more of a wing-tip bender when the 2 jets got a little too close while they were positioning at the gates. Some one texted, "Did the pilots get out and exchange insurance information?'

DNA, the Tree, and me

I finally did the Ancestry.com DNA test. I demurred for quite a while because when all is said and done, the test is simply going to tell you that most of your ancestors came from Europe, with a smattering from other areas. Since my tree is well researched, I was pretty sure there would be no great surprises, like being a direct decedent of the Ethiopian Eunuch.

But I got a 25% off offer and my research has been stalled for a while, so I figured I might as well join the DNA age. Ancestry needs to step up its game, though - genealogical researchers tend to be old, and a 2 month wait might not be timely enough for some of us. But I finally got the results. And...

As expected, no great surprises. The big 4 are Great Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia, and whatever else makes up Europe West (Germany, in the main). I'm a bit surprised that Scandinavia beat out Germany, but only by a couple of percentage points.

Next is an analysis of where people matching my DNA located in America. That's sort of a no- brainer, too

And then there was a puzzling statement that "We haven't found a New Ancestor Discovery for you yet." I'm still reading all the information and I'm not really sure what this statement means because I'm pretty sure none of my as-yet-unknown grandparents submitted a DNA test back in the 1700s.

What the test did accomplish was to find several hundred 2nd, 3rd and 4th cousins. Like Jacob Gann and Chadric Head, who both had their DNA tested, but as of yet don't have any ancestor trees on Ancestry.com. Not sure what's up with that. The other 1,829 4th or closer cousins I have yet to meet. Of those cousins, Ancestry has matched common ancestors between my tree and theirs in about 60 instances and matched common, but not directly related, people in both trees in all the rest.

That's interesting, because I have fewer than 500 ancestors from the tree uploaded to Ancestry; my local genealogy program database has more that 8,000 people! I will add more names to Ancestry, but I'm waiting on an upgrade to my genealogy software that will manage that for me.

Meanwhile, I'm checking out the cuz's with common ancestors, looking for lost relatives.

Monday Meanderings - 5.22.2017

The church Barb and I attend partners with Anderson High School, located just across the street. That means we actively seek ways to be a good neighbor - such as providing proctors for examinations, drivers and buses for off-campus activities, and the ever-popular "Lunch for the Teachers" at the beginning of every school year.

We also host events in our auditorium throughout the year - especially around graduation time. This week we hosted the Student Awards ceremony and the Baccalaureate service. I ran the sound for both these events this past week, as I often do, and once again I was impressed by the future generation.

The Awards ceremony was particularly impressive; several hundred students were honored for their academic achievements, and the list of accolades for each was lengthy. The members of the senior class each spoke of their college destination and field of study and there was a long list of prestigious colleges and universities and some serious career choices presented. Well done, class of 2017.

I do have one question, however, concerning the ritual of graduation. Have you ever considered just how weird the caps are?

I mean, just what is the significance of that flat "mortar board" fastened on top of a skull cap? I sorta get the gowns (though the Student Body President did comment, "Our parents want us to 'be real' but they dress us up in Hogwarts outfits"), but the caps are just strange, dear hearts

Coinciding with the Anderson Baccalaureate service, yesterday was "Senior Sunday" at our church, honoring our own graduating seniors. We have a family with 4 daughters graduating; 3 triplets and a younger sister who graduated a year early. Can you imagine 4 children heading off to college all at once? We gave today's collection to the poor dad. It was the right thing to do.

Speaking of scholarship, there was a viral Facebook post recently of a letter that some parent wrote to their child's teacher that basically said "Stop assigning so much homework. Our kids are loaded to the point that they don't have time to be kids anymore." A similar post was from a teacher, who stated that, for the same reason, she was no longer assigning homework. Both got a lot of likes, as I recall.

Which caused me to think of my own homework boycott back in the 3rd or 4th grade. Basically, I told my teacher that my mother didn't want me to bring books and stuff home anymore because I couldn't keep up with it and often left it at home, requiring a parental trip to school. I'm sure my mother did say something to me about forgetting my books and assignments, but I seriously doubt that she said "Don't bring any more of that home." That, however, was the message I conveyed to the teacher. And it worked!

I quit taking books and assignments home and I did get promoted out of the 4th grade, so it must have been a successful scam. I don't recall that I tried that again in higher grades, and since I distinctly remember homework I can only conclude that if I did try another boycott, no other teacher bought into it. Pity.

Sir John the Regicide - Tales from the Tree

Last week we looked at Barb's 10th great grandmother, Lady Alice Beconsawe Lisle. Of course, in order for Barb to be in the genealogical succession, there had to be a 10th great grandfather, and a 9th great grandmother, and so on. That would be Sir John Lisle "the Regicide," who married Lady Alice - who, as we saw last week, ended up at odds with the king's court - and their daughter Margaret, who later had troubles of her own.

Sir John, born on the Isle of Wight in 1609, was a lawyer and a politician, graduating from Oxford in 1626 and called to the bar in 1633. He was elected MP for Winchester, and while in Parliament he was chairman of the committee that investigated Oliver Cromwell's allegations against the Earl of Manchester in December 1644.

In 1648 after the second civil war, John Lisle voted against continuing negotiations with King Charles I. Shortly thereafter he was appointed a commissioner of the High Court of Justice for the trial of the King. During the trial he acted in an advisory position and helped to draw up the  sentence, but he was not a signatory of the King’s death warrant. Nevertheless, King Charles was tried, convicted, and executed for high treason in January 1649.

Lisle then helped frame the new constitution for the Commonwealth, and was one of five appointed to the new Council of State. He was also made a commissioner of the Great Seal. In 1653 he administered the oath of office when Cromwell became Lord Protector, and became a member of the Upper House in 1657 ("Cromwell’s House of Lords”).

So, all in all, Barb's 10 great granddad was a big wheel in jolly old England. But, as it almost always did back then, the tide turned and in 1659 the monarchy was restored and Sir John was dismissed from office. Rather fond of keeping his head on his shoulders, John left Alice and the kids to keep the home fires burning (which later proved rather prescient for Alice) and skipped town, ending up in Lausanne, Switzerland.

In August 1664, as he was leaving the acapella service at the Church of Lausanne, Sir John was shot dead by an Irish Royalist named Sir James Fitz Edmond Cotter, doing the King's business under the alias Thomas MacDonnell. Shipping the body home wasn't in the cards, so grandad was buried on the spot, in the courtyard of the Church of Lausanne.

So, looking back at Lady Alice's story from last week, it becomes evident that her harsh punishment was a result of a long-held grudge against Sir John Lisle. The moral here is that Regicide is seldom a good idea.

And what of 9th great grandmother Margaret? Born in 1643 in Temple Church, Hampshire, England,  she married the Reverend Robert Whitaker in 1662. Whittaker, a scholarly churchman from Lancashire. was, however,  a "Nonconformist" minister. In English church history, a nonconformist was a Protestant Christian who did not "conform" to the governance and usages of the established Church of England. If you grew up in the churches of Christ, you understand this concept very well.

Denied a Cambridge degree because of his Nonconformity, he preached as a Presbyterian from about 1662, when he set up an Academy for Dissenting Students for those refused entry to the universities at Stucton, a village near Fordingbridge.

The local Ministerial Alliance wasn't happy that they were there, and the Fordingbridge church wardens excommunicated Whitaker in March 1679 for not attending church, and an arrest warrant followed in September - and while there is no record of its being implemented, it is clear that he and his family (wife and several children) suffered. No doubt they struggled to get by, and when Robert died in 1683, Margaret must called Mom for financial help but the record says the 70 pounds Mom promised never arrived, because Lady Alice had problems of her own. Margaret died on 27 March 1686, a year after her mother's unfortunate demise.

Monday Meanderings - 5.15.2017

I've been saving up some photos to share with you. Some I took; others I just came across and thought interesting.

The 1st, unusual as it is, reminds me of an event I witnessed.

Many years ago, I was with a group of co-workers on a small company retreat over at Bastrop State Park. This was in the era before cell phones, and one of the men had to make a phone call, so we drove back to town and stopped at a phone booth (see, it was a long time ago) outside a drive-in that was similar to todays Sonic. It had a sort of corrugated metal awning covering over the speakers that drooped from support to support.

While we were there, someone on a horse rode up to a speaker, bent over and pushed the button, and when the server answered, "May I help you," the horse gave a startled crow hop and banged the rider's head into the canopy. The guy got the horse settled down just about the time the server, having heard no response, said again, "May I help you," and the horse again bucked the guy into the awning.

The guy wised up and got off the horse to place his order with the server, and in a few minutes they brought him two hamburgers; he ate one and fed the other to the horse. I guess there were no hard feelings on his part.

While on the subject of horses, if this dog gets any bigger, the driver is going to need a horse trailer to haul him around in!

 Somehow, I think it should be obvious that this is a bus, but given Austin drivers, maybe not.

And this Facebook "Do you remember" photo got me to thinking about skating as a teenager. There were a couple of rinks at different times in my hometown. One was under a big tent close to the swimming pool in Miller Park. Sort of made me sad that roller rinks were no longer a thing - but I checked, and evidently they are still around! We have a couple of skating rinks in Austin that apparently do a good business.

And you thought you had a bad day - Tales from the Tree

Most of Barb's ancestors came from England, though there are some Dutch and French and who knows what-all tossed in there. Maybe she should do one of those DNA tests that breaks it all out - let's see, 40% English, 30% Dutch, 20% French, 10% Heinz 57. Okay, maybe not.

 I don't spend a lot of time working with the British ancestors because there's not a lot of information available unless you subscribe to specialized database resources, and even then it's often just Lord so-and-so, 1st Earl of Wishywashy and Dame so-and-so, Countess of Someplace. But occasionally you get lucky and find an interesting story.

Lady Alice (Alicia to her friends) Beconsawe was Barb's 10th great grandmother. The line is quite complete and fairly well documented and we can be fairly certain about this. She was born in 1617 in Hampshire, England, United Kingdom and at age 19 married  Lord John Lisle "the Regicide" on 23 Oct 1636 in Ellingham, Hampshire, England. It was a lovely wedding.

By the way, "a regicide" is defined as a person who kills or takes part in killing a king. That's next week's story.


Sir John and Lady Alice had a bunch of little Lords and Ladies, and the first-born, Margaret Lisle, was Barb's 9th great grandmother, and so on. Everything was fine and dandy, apart from the fact that Sir John got himself assassinated in 1664, while hiding out in Switzerland, leaving Alice and a bunch of the kids to fend for themselves. However, since she had inherited the castle, servants and land from her daddy, Alice and the kids didn't have to take in laundry to survive.

On 20 July 1685, a couple of weeks after the Battle of Sedgemoor (the final battle of the Monmouth rebellion - but you knew that, didn't you?), Lady Alice agreed to shelter John Hickes, a well-known Nonconformist minister, at Moyles Court, her residence near Ringwood, in Hampshire. Hickes, who was a member of Monmouth's defeated army, brought with him Richard Nelthorpe, another supporter of Monmouth and under sentence of "outlawry." The men spent the night at Moyles Court, and in the morning were arrested. Their hostess, who had initially denied their presence, was charged with harboring traitors.

Lady Alice's case was tried by Judge George Jeffreys at Winchester. She pleaded she had no knowledge that Hickes's offence was anything more serious than illegal preaching. Furthermore, she had known nothing of Nelthorpe. Jeffreys, however, showed no pretense of impartiality, and even though the jury returned a verdict of innocence 3 times, he refused to accept the verdicts and sentenced Alice to be burned at the stake! Jeffreys, a real sweetheart, reportedly said that he would have found her guilty "even if she had been his own mother.".

King James II refused to extend mercy to her, though he allowed beheading as befitted her social rank to be substituted for burning at the stake. Lady Alice Lisle was publicly executed by an axe in Winchester marketplace on 2 September 1685; the last woman in English history to be beheaded by judicial sentence. She died with courage and dignity: onlookers remarked that, perhaps due to her age (80 years), she seemed to leave the world without regret (some other accounts, however, suggest she was as prone to napping during the procedure as she had been during her trial).

Next week we'll talk about Sir John "the Regicide" and his daughter, grandma Margaret.

Monday Meanderings - 5.8.2017

I've mentioned before that from time to time I operate the sound system at church. Mostly, these days, I fill in on special events - weddings, baccalaureate services, etc. This past weekend I handled the sound for an orchestra program.

Central Texas Medical Orchestra is made up of volunteer performers who work in the medical field in some capacity; some are doctors, some nurses and many are administrative or staff members at medical facilities. The orchestra does 4 programs a year and each benefits some local non-profit (this time it was Central Texas Epilepsy Foundation). They always have guest performers - one is always a virtuoso of some sort - violin, cello, etc. - and the other(s) are from the current music scene. 

The guests from the current scene this weekend were Lloyd Maines and Terry Hendrix. You can Google them if you want, but the short version is that Lloyd - a long-time fixture in the Texas music scene - was inducted into the Austin City Limits Hall Of Fame as one of the first three members. The other two? Willie Nelson and Stevie Ray Vaughan! He may be best known however, as father of Natalie Maines of Dixie Chicks fame.

Terri is a prolific song-writer (co-wrote the Grammy-winning song "Lil' Jack Slade" by the Dixie Chicks) and is known for her high-energy shows. She and Lloyd have appeared with the CTMO multiple times, as has Sarah Hickman, Gina Chavez & others.

So I'm pumped, because mixing sound for these guys is sort of a high water mark for this old rock-and-roll disc jockey. It was a hoot, primarily because Lloyd and Terri are super-nice people and really, really easy to work with. And, if I do say so myself, it sounded awesome!

One funny story out of the weekend: I'm doing a sound check with Terri before the program and everything is sounding great when I hear this shrill feedback. I'm freaking out, because I spent about an hour earlier that afternoon adjusting the equalization on that channel and monitor to get a really good volume level without causing any feedback!

So I'm looking at the graphic display, frantically searching for a feedback spike at some frequency, and there's nothing! Terri is singing away, graciously ignoring the really obnoxious squealing going on, and I'm losing it!

Then I realize it's a piccolo player warming up! #IndistinguishableFromFeedback

The orchestra normally rotates the performances between larger halls (churches and St Eds) in town but they have asked to have all of next season's performances our facility because they like the sound of the room. And the awesome sound guy, I'm sure.

Here's a video recorded during rehearsal by Cynthia Sadler on her iPhone, I think.  It doesn't have my professional-sounding audio, but it captures the moment pretty well.

Monday Meanderings - 5.1.2017

I am a coffee drinker. A serious coffee drinker. None of the flavored foo-foo drinks, the double-pump soy chia tea latte, or the extra-espresso americano, or the ones they squirt hot milk in. I'll take mine plain, black - and sweet.

OK, the sweet part is a problem. I gave up sugar a hundred pounds ago. It's unquestionably bad for you. But that leaves artificial sweeteners, and besides tasting off, I worry that they can't be a healthy choice. Recent news stories seem to confirm that. Coffee, good. Sugar, bad. Sweetener, very bad.

The only option seems to be black, unsweetened coffee. So this week, I began drinking my coffee without anything in it. Predictably, I'm drinking a whole lot less coffee, so maybe it's for the best. Yeah, right.

This week was the Volunteer Appreciation gala at Learning Ally. I was recognized in two areas - first as an "Overachiever" which simply means that I have volunteered more than 100 hours in the last 12 months. I got what seems to be a dribble cup with Learning Ally printed on it for that honor, and then this, for passing the 1,500 volunteer hours mark.

While 1,500 hours seems like a lot, you have to know that we have some seriously dedicated volunteers at the Austin studio. We have several folks with 2,500, 3,500 and 5,000 hours, and one with a Life Time Achievement of 15,000 hours!

A while back we ordered a product that we saw advertised on Facebook. That was a first for us, but we had been for sometime looking for something to keep a small mat in place in front of the door to the bonus room. It's a heavy traffic area and the mat is there to keep the carpet clean(er) - but, with normal traffic the mat scoots all over the place.

The advertised product was a set of silicon "rug grippers" that were guaranteed not to harm the underlying carpet, but wouldn't let the mat slide. Sounded like what we needed, so I placed an order and charged the nominal $8 cost on PayPal.

The first clue that things were not what they seemed was in the free shipping. It was free, but we were offered premium shipping so as not to wait the 6 weeks (!) free shipping would take. Premium shipping was more than the cost of the pads, so we opted for time over money. The next clue was when PayPal added .75 cents for a "foreign transaction" fee.  Then there was the email that said the product had been shipped and it should be there in a few weeks, but they were not responsible for delays in customs!

And the final part of the story revealed the merchant was, as suspected, located in China, based on the customs declaration on the package.

As the rug grippers themselves? Worth about $8.75. Plus, it would have been helpful if there had been instructions on how to actually apply the grippers. They at least could have followed IKEA's lead with pictures of what to do.