Yesterday, Norman Lear died, at 101. He’s responsible for many of the best sitcoms of the 1970s, including All in the Family, One Day at a Time, and The Jeffersons. Lear gave us what we hadn’t really had before: working class characters, frank discussion of social issues, and families of color in the spotlight.

Maude featured a married woman who had an abortion; Archie Bunker had to accept that one of his friends was queer well before the famous “coming out” tv episodes of the 1990s.

Naturally, The Simpsons owes Lear a debt, something they acknowledged years ago, when they had Homer and Marge sing the All in the Family theme song:

I am unable to hear Henry Kissinger’s name without picturing him as depicted on The Simpsons, having dropped his glasses into the toilet at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant.

Monty’s Python’s song about him gets stuck in my head too:

If my brain has to keep doing this right now, at least it’s because he’s dead.

Mr. Burns says all he needs to be invigorated is “the blood of a young boy.”

Now there’s a study to back that up: <https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/anti-aging-benefits-could-be-found-in-blood>.

#SimpsonsScience #Simpsonology #TheSimpsons #SimpsonsDidIt

I am not going to see it in all its glory, but I’m at the Halloween capitol of Europe.

(Death with a King keyring, in honor of my 6th GG, Thomas M. King, born in Derry on 8 April 1695, who emigrated to the Pennsylvania colony)

I got to Derry on Saturday, after securing what was likely the last room in the city (though it’s across the river, in “Waterside”).

The Derry Halloween festival was running all weekend. The city is decked out, but I have to say I felt out of place being dressed for the season Sunday: only the kids were done up that day.

My festive wardrobe was more appreciated at the conference yesterday, where I gave my paper on Juan of the Dead.

Today, I’m just in my low-key Gaiman’s death get up, sadly, when some of the other adults in town have decided to join in.

My body just isn’t up to more. My IBS has been wrecking its havoc, I had to use my cane a bit already, and I’m definitely coming down with something.

After grading this morning, I managed to go out and get something to eat and hit a store for some provisions in case I can’t leave my room tomorrow: storm’s a-coming!

(What?)

A storm WITH A NAME is coming!

(Like a hurricane?!?)

Yup! Exactly like a hurricane. And since it’s a UK hurricane, it has a name I’m not sure how to pronounce: Ciarán.

The storm is a “danger to life” to Southern England–we’ve got an amber warning here, which means flooding (not a kidnapped child, like in the US).

I couldn’t find a gif of this, but here’s the video of Meryl Streep warning about a storm in Only Murders in the Building.

So: difficulty walking + no cabs at all because of the crowds + cold weather + my cold + my lungs still not bouncing back after COVID + cold weather- and cold-induced asthma + an upset stomach + a typhoon or whatever = me not being out in all the festivities tonight.

(a totally normal decoration to have on a bridge)

All I want are hot toddies and bed, but getting my hands on whiskey at a store has been surprisingly difficult (WTF, Derry?1?!). Thank goodness there’s a pub next door.

Happy Halloween!

(Death with a scarf from Vanessa & a glass of verdejo)

If Republicans tell you not to talk about guns today, that’s fine.

They aren’t just ok with guns.

They’re okay with each ambulance ride costing at least 1,300, out of pocket, even if a survivor has insurance.

They’re ok with survivors paying at least a few hundred to enter the ER.

They’re ok with survivors going bankrupt as they struggle through surgeries and PT.

They’re ok with not funding PTSD help the survivors will need.

They’re ok with uninsured survivors being discharged once they’re stable, with no access to further surgeries, to PT, to medication, and with those people’s crippling debt and bankruptcy.

But, Karma, what if the survivors are disabled?

Then remember they’re ok with Republican states making them wait 2 full years after being certified as disabled before they have access to care, and that they’re actively trying to cut medicaid, medicare, and social security.

Oh, and if the doctor looks at your haircut and decides you’re queer, they ok with the doctor refusing to save your life in the ER, in the operating room, etc. “Religious freedom” laws allow that. In Florida, an insurance company employee can simply take your coverage away under the same policy.

But, Karma, surely Republicans aren’t ok with everything?!?

They’re not ok with white children learning about Rosa Parks.

On a recent episode of his podcast, Conan talked about how gross the writers’ room was. You can read about it here.

Denise and I have been to the fabled room: and it was not pretty.

Here’s how the show depicted the room:

We were still thrilled to be there, though, and the writers seemed to enjoy having us, since our presence meant they could stop pretending to write for a while. In fact, we talked about strategies for distracting ourselves from writing. One writer mentioned that in an episode with Lurlene’s father, they watched hambone videos for much of a day, after deciding the character used that style.

One of my favorite stories they told us about the writers’ room related to Conan, though.

Meal times were sacred, as they are for all writers who desperately want to stop writing for a little while, which is all of us.

Some of the writers would work in a building across the street from the writers’ room, and the staff would use an old-fashioned triangle bell to call everyone together.

Conan was into practical jokes. Once, he came in carrying all of the take out containers for a room of salivating coworkers, only to trip and spill absolutely everything.

Luckily, the containers were empty.

My (Grand)Daddy spent over a decade of his retirement working on our family history. Several years before he passed, he lamented, “I’m not sure what’s going to happen to all of this when I die.”

Grandma: Oh, it’s all going to Karma. She’s the one who really cares about it. We decided a long time ago.

(Grand)Daddy: Nobody told me!

Grandma: (laughing): Well, you’ll be dead!

Daddy started shipping me binders and binders of material.

Towards his end, I tried to get my mom to get him to send me the electronic copies of everything, but his growing dementia and her luddite nature prevented this.

Me: Have Daddy send me the electronic files.

Mom: Let me write that down. Electronic files. Where are they?

Me: On his computer?

Mom: On top of the computer?

If you’re picturing that scene from Zoolander, you’re close. She has never sent or received an email or even a text.

(It’s not an age thing: her father was fluent with technology.)

The electronic files didn’t show up, but Dante and I tried to get what we could off of his computer when we were home for his funeral. We got less than we wanted (the autobiographical stories he wrote, for example, are completely missing) and more than we wanted (I hope you, dear reader, do not come across your grandfather’s porn).

I’ve been working in fits and spurts in the years since.

My (Grand)Daddy had found we were descended from an illegitimate son of a Duke, many generations back. The tree sort of stopped there, though I was excited, because a Duke meant there would be documented family going back quite a ways: and there was. This Duke was related to John of Gaunt, who’s related to most of the royalty in Europe, past and present. I was spending an inordinate amount of time manually adding people to the tree, until it occurred to me that someone must have done Queen Elizabeth II’s tree that I could graft on to mine, since we’re cousins. The only one I found, though, is kinda silly. It claims Jesus is my 55th GG, via a baby he made with Mary Magdalene (his dad is listed as Joseph . . .). I would just cut those branches off, but whoever made the file included all of the relevant myths. Odin (Woden) is a GG too, for example. Leaving them in is a little nod to my (Grand)Daddy, actually. At one point in the tree, when he reached the end of the knowable in his brother-in-law’s line, he inputted someone’s parents as Hagar and Horrible and Mrs. Horrible.

As I worked, mom’s side grew exponentially. My dad’s side stopped at his parents. My grandfather hated my father, so he didn’t spend time on that. (There’s also a family member whose wife he hated so much that he refused to add her at all.)

I started working on my dad’s side last Fall. I found the Native America grandmother he had mentioned, though she was way far back in the tree, when I’d been told she was my great-grandmother (I’m not sure if my dad was mistaken when he told my mom about this or if my mom was mistaken when she relayed it to me). Soon enough, my mom and dad’s trees started merging. One of my most recent immigrant GGs is Angus Anderson, from the Isle of Skye, Scotland in the early 1800s, on my mom’s side (he settled in Bay County, FL). I found an Anderson living in the same place on dad’s side now too. I really missed my (Grand)Daddy in that moment. He would have been thrilled to find that.

In the 1300s, though, my parents’ trees became incredibly intertwined. Any given GG from there back links to both sides of me, because of two families whose kids married each other.

Sir Richard FitzAlan (b. 1313) and Lady Eleanor of Lancaster (1318) had Lady Joan FitzAlan (1348) and Sir Richard FitzAlan (1348).

Sir William de Bohun (1312) and Lady Elizabeth de Badlesmere (1313) had Lady Elizabeth de Bohun (1350) and Sir Humphrey de Bohun (1342).

(Sir William de Bohun and Lady Eleanor of Lancaster were 2nd cousins).

Joan FitzAlan married Humphrey de Bohun. Their progeny eventually marries into the Holland line, including a bastard son whose progeny ends up in Jamestown and eventually leads to Bessie Holland, my great-grandmother (my (Grand)Daddy’s mom), who taught me to play solitaire and knitted my sweaters and let me have the cherries out of her Manhattans.

Richard FitzAlan married Elizabeth de Bohun. Their progeny eventually marries into the Howard line and then the Norris line, including some that end up in Jamestown and eventually James Dean (Skip) Norris, my dad.

I have to actively not let myself just do this all day, since there are papers to grade and classes to plan and conferences to prepare for and friends to see and emails to answer and journal work to complete and meals to make and books to read and queues to watch.

I’m eventually going to post some of the cooler things I’ve found, but I do need to let you know that I know the following:

I’m really privileged to be able to do this: to have some ancestors who weren’t separated from their homes and families in ways that destroyed the knowledge of their lines.

All of this is really specious. I’m counting on records to be accurate that probably aren’t and children to be the offspring of fathers who biologically might not be.

For example, my son’s biological father discovered his father wasn’t his biological father after my son and I did our Ancestry DNA tests.

Thus, this is all a kind of ancestor fan fiction once you go back enough.

But it’s still fun!

After I took a break from online dating right before the pandemic, neither you nor I, dear reader, thought I would be making a wedding announcement afterwards.

My new husband likes that I haven’t written much about him (since my online dating adventures focused mainly on the bad experiences), but here’s a *very* brief overview of how we got here.

Twenty years ago, we met. (I don’t remember him much from way back then.) In 2011, he got back in touch with me on Facebook. I figured he had a crush, but didn’t think much of it. We were in sporadic contact after that. He especially wanted to try to figure out how my awful dating adventures could be made less awful (was there a way to get terrible guys to stop being terrible? No.) and to make suggestions about how to handle my chronic ailments.

When the pandemic hit, I watched him, a first responder (AEMT) argue with all his friends and family on Facebook, furious on his behalf that they would deny the reality of the threat we all faced. When he got Covid (before the vaccines were available), he wrote to me to confess his love.

I told him to back off, for many reasons: a) I was enjoying my break from dating; b) he was entirely too far away (6 hours); c) he had a girlfriend.

And, reader, he did.

Then, in the late Spring 2022, I started to think about dating again. Coincidentally, my AEMT and I had another Facebook conversation. He didn’t have a steady girlfriend anymore (though he was dating a few people), so I told him it was okay to now have dirty thoughts about me.

He talked me into letting him drive down for a date.

There were a couple of weeks between the agreement and him driving down. I gave him permission to wax romantic–and he did. It takes a lot of courage to woo a writing teacher with writing. But he did–and I fell in love.

That date went on for three days. On the first day, he pledged his troth, as they say, and forsook all others.

We saw each other whenever he could drive down, but at the end of the summer, I had to head to Dublin to teach.

At the end of the quarter, he joined me there and proposed (I’ll share that romantic story another time).

And even though I don’t like living with men, and even though I didn’t ever see myself getting married again, I accepted, because he told me we never had to formalize it, we didn’t have to live together, and if we did live together, but I hated it, we could stop living together but still stay in a relationship.

He gets me: all of me.

He also loves all of me, my weirdness and silliness and stubbornness.

And he’s romantic in both of the important ways: in the flowers and poetry way and in the “hey, you said your knees hurt whenever you have to dig in the back of the fridge, so I got you a pad to put down” way.

Though he says I broke my rule about not dating people who live far away, may I present that I never drove the 6 hours to see him, which other men certainly would have expected me to do, and that he moved down here as soon as he could.

Our friend Michael recently invited us to his house in Guatemala, with the hint that he’s ordained. So we eloped in a beautiful place with kind people. Now we’re back, and we’ve filed the paperwork, and so there is officially a Mr. Dr. Karma, god(dess) help him.

Full days in London: 5

Hours of sleep on the way: 4

Hours of sleep on the way back: 0

Servings of lamb:

Servings of gazpacho: 4

Visits to the Barbican Conservatory: 1

Times an emergency announcement said we should leave the Tube station: 1

People other than Melissa and I who attempted to leave the station: 0

Steak and wine fancy lunches: 1 (for just twenty pounds!)

Museums / Galleries: 5 (British Museum, British Library, Wellcombe, Barbican, Tate Modern)

Plays: 4 (Dr. Semmelweis, A Strange Loop, Accidental Death of an Anarchist, Tambo and Bones)

Of the 4, plays about injustice: 4

Of the 4, plays about injustice regarding Black Americans: 2

Of the 4, plays without a curtain call: 1

Of the 4, plays with an actor who was playing a robot who could mime sitting at a desk, for a really long time, despite physics: 1

Of the plays with an actor who was playing a robot who could mime sitting at a desk, for a really long time, despite physics, who then crossed his legs: 1

Nando’s: 1

Pounds off our Nando’s dinner due to my points from Dublin: 3

Times we listened to a French server struggle to pronounce “ham” in a way that English speakers could understand: 1 (two groups, though)

Time I ordered the special, forgetting that “ham” means prosciutto in England: 1

Times I bought a bunch of souvenirs at the British Library, got absolutely soaked when leaving the library, and had all the souvenirs spill into the street as the paper bag they were in fell apart: 1

Time I was glad one of the souvenirs was a purse, because I was able to fit all of the other souvenirs inside it: 1

Times relearning that the Greeks thought Persian men were feminine for wearing eyeliner, jewelry, and pants and that while Alexander the Great adopted Persian horse-riding robes, he drew a line at the pants that surely would have made riding more comfortable: 1

Conferences attended: 1

Days Melissa made the mistake of having the conference coffee: 1

Days when I was about to give the first presentation of the day, but it had to be delayed because someone doing maintenance in the building got out the jackhammer: 1

Times I learned some people thought monk fish looked like monks: 1

Visits to the Coral Room: 1

Times realizing the food there is very expensive, but not very good: 1

Visits with Courtney and Liam: 1

Pubs with Courtney and Liam, including my old neighborhood pub in Bloomsbury: 2

New favorite historical paintings: 1

Times we discovered bank accounts had been opened in our names by a scammer: 1

Amazing Indian birthday dinners, including the best broccoli of our lives: 1

Pimms in a can: 1

Times we dropped in on some old friends before a play and they fed us pasta with homemade rocket walnut pesto: 1

Bottles of wine we demolished before heading to the play: 3

Night we got out of a play, and I marveled at the sky, and how, after all these years, I remembered how to get home from the drizzly London streets: 1

Times our Airbnb host sent someone to meet us with the keys at the wrong time, due to not reading our messages correctly: 1

Times our host was entirely unhelpful about the wifi: 2

Times we found syringes in the Airbnb: 1

Times we discovered our host had left the door from the bedroom to the apartment patio unlocked, after having slept there a few nights and left important things like our passport there during the day: 1

Times we realized, after getting back, that our host had overcharged us by about $500 dollars: 1

Times Airbnb tried to contact him: many

Times he took his whole listing down rather than answer us or Airbnb: 1