My favorite holiday

I don’t know why, but holidays have become increasingly less important to me. Maybe it’s because many of the really important people in my life have slowly dwindled, including my grandparents, father, and both of my mom’s brothers. They were all very instrumental in shaping me into the person I am today. I do have fond memories of the holidays from my childhood though. Below are a few of my favorite.

  1. Christmas. Christmas was probably my favorite holiday. It was a time when the whole family came together to celebrate. We would celebrate at home, and also go out to my uncle’s house. He was a strong glue to our family. He always wanted to pull everyone in for the holidays. After he died, it became increasingly difficult to get extended family together. Growing up in a Christian family, I also loved this holiday because it is a celebration of Jesus’s birthday. His message is by far the strongest during this time of year, and people just seem to be in a more positive mood. Lastly, Christmas was a time when I got presents, which I think all young children love.
  2. Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving was another holiday where my uncle would try to pull everyone in the extended family together. There were no presents, but there were many excellent cooks in my family. Everything you know about traditional Thanksgiving food was present at the table, and prepared perfectly, from what I remember. I was especially fond of the dressing my grandmother made every year.
  3. Halloween. Halloween was one of my favorite holidays because of trick or treating. We would all dress up in costumes and our parents would walk us around the neighborhood collecting candy and other treats. The hardest part for me was that I was a shy kid, so getting the nerve to walk up and say trick or treat wasn’t easy, but the payoff made it worthwhile. It was sometimes surreal seeing all the other kids in costumes, but not particularly scary. It was just a fun time.
  4. Summer. This wasn’t technically a holiday, but if it was, I would rate it as the best of all holidays. The reason why is because it was a period of time when I didn’t have to worry about getting up every day and going to school. I could just stay home, and run with my dog, or play with my toys, or find some mischief to get into. I’m sure it wasn’t my parents favorite time of year, but it was definitely mine. What I wouldn’t give for a long summer vacation these days.

What is your favorite holiday? Did family play an important role in your holiday celebration? Was there someone in your family who provided the glue? What are some of your favorite holiday memories? What would you do if you had a three-month summer vacation every year? Let me know in the comments, and remember to like, share, and subscribe!

Things I didn’t have at home.

Since this blog is mostly about the things I’ve experience in my life, some of which happened in childhood, I think this belongs here. It marks one of the first times I discovered that I was surrounded by people I didn’t quite understand. Sometimes I truly felt like a stranger in a strange land.

The first time I met him was on the playground when I was very young, probably in kindergarten or first grade. He was a couple years older than me and considerably bigger. He had a football he had brought to school. When he saw me, he said, go out for a pass. I ran out and he threw the ball to me. I caught it and threw it back. The passing went on for a while, then recess was over and we went back inside. It was a fun time.

Back then, my grandmother took exceptional care of me. She drove me to school everyday and picked me up when it was over. She also usually came to get me at lunch to take me home to eat the meal she had prepared, which was always better than what they had at the school cafeteria.

My grandmother lived very close to one of her brothers, and also one of her sisters, so I had cousins living nearby. I was pretty accustom to one of them. He would come by pretty often to play. He was also older than me, and even older than the kid throwing the football, so I sometimes asked him about things that older people do. I guess he was sort of like an early mentor.

My cousin was also fond of riding home with my grandmother and I for lunch because he didn’t want to walk. He caught a ride home with us on the day I was passing the football around. I remember I was very happy about getting to play football with someone at school, so I mentioned it to my cousin on the way home.

I told my cousin, I made a new friend today at school and we played football at recess. He looked over at me, rolled his eyes like I was an idiot, and said, who was it? I told him his name, and then my cousin said, you better not let him hear you say that. I said, say what? He said, that he is your friend. If he hears you say that, he will beat you up.

I gave him a puzzled look. All the way home I thought about what he said. I can’t admit I am friends with someone because they will beat me up? It totally confused me. The world I lived in before grade school seemed more logical to me and a lot more kinder. Why would you beat someone up who called you friend? Was it because he was older? Was there a class difference? Was calling a guy a friend a sissy thing to do? I mean, I knew that being a sissy would get you beat up.

I never asked my cousin for specifics, but I generally found his advice to be sound, even when it didn’t make sense. I never told this guy I was his friend. I also kind of avoided him after that, maybe out of fear, but maybe just because no one wants to be around someone who doesn’t like them. You kind of want to play the odds in your favor to avoid trouble.

I also noticed in later years that this kid became something of a bully. He would often hit other kids and just be mean in general. The worst story I heard about him was he had a girlfriend in high school and he used to hit her. The story was she jumped out of his moving car and ran away just because she was afraid of him. She broke it off with him after that. Looking back, I’m kind of glad my cousin warned me about him, but I still didn’t really understand why he was mean.

When this kid finally graduated, his mom and dad divorced, and his mom moved away to another town. It so happened that my mom and dad relied on her to help with their tax filings, so they visited her once year. His mom told my mom why she left town. She said, she was just staying around for the kids to grow up, but she was getting really tired of covering up all the bruises.

It would appear that when a kid sees violence at home, they sometimes reenact it at school. That was what was missing. There was zero violence at my house and my family members were not mean to each other.


Do you think early home life dramatically changes your perception of the world? Was there any behavior you witnessed that you didn’t understand? Do you think bullying is still a problem in our schools? Did you have an older mentor growing up? What do you remember about your grandparents? Let us know in the comments, and don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe!

Ghosts in the attic

In a previous post, I mentioned talking to someone at a bar about dreams and psychology. I’ve been meaning to write about that particular dream, but just haven’t gotten around to it. It’s kind of a spooky dream, to be honest, but maybe there is something to be learned from it. Hope you enjoy reading about it.

My great grandmother’s house

When I was growing up, my great grandmother lived right next door to us in a house on the same property. The house she lived in was very old, so old in fact, that the indoor bathroom was added on later. It originally just had an outhouse. I remember it being a beautiful home, with a large porch, and a well-tended flower garden out front in a fenced lawn. I have so many fond childhood memories of this old house and my great grandmother’s beautiful flower garden.

The house was really quite a marvel of craftsmanship. Every part of the house was made of solid wood. The walls were not built using plywood like many homes are today. They were constructed of grooved planks that fit neatly together, and the doors and paned windows were all made of wood and looked to be from the original construction.

I remember the windows very well. They were solid and heavy, and would be very hard to lift, except the frames contained a rope and pully system with counter weights that hung inside the walls. Without these counter weight, the windows would prove impossible to lift by a weak individual.

Every ceiling in the house was also quite high by modern standards. I would venture the original ceilings might have been fifteen or twenty feet high. I was told that they used to build houses that way. I’m not sure why. I know the construction of the house predated modern air conditioning, so perhaps the high ceilings added some benefit in cooling or heating the house.

I didn’t realize how high the ceilings were at first, but being the adventurous kid that I was, I once decided to climb up into the ceiling. To my surprise, there was a whole other ceiling above the one I climbed up into. Standing within that ceiling, which was hung in place by wires, I was able to reach the next ceiling and enter the attic. There wasn’t much up there as I recall, just a lot of very ancient dust, but it was fun to explore. I’ve always liked attics for some reason.

I also remember that the roof of the old house was built with a pretty high incline. This allowed snow to slide straight off the roof in the winter. If you haven’t figured it out already, I was a kid who really liked to climb. I had a funny way of getting onto the roof of this old house. I would first climb onto a smaller building that was next to it, then take a running leap across a gap to land on the roof of the old house. Yea, you heard that right. Luckily, I was also quite the jumper, otherwise I would have plummeted to the ground below, probably killing myself, or at least breaking a few bones. I did it many times though, and nothing ever happened. Scaling the steep rooftop of this old house wasn’t easy either, but the view from the top was quite spectacular, at least until my parents spied me on the roof again.

From the rooftop, I could see a brick chimney coming out of the roof, but the house did not have a fireplace inside of it. I remember once asking my grandparents about this and they said the house never had a fireplace, but it did have a stovepipe for an old wood burning stove that used to be in the kitchen. Sure enough, I managed to find a stovepipe sized hole in the kitchen where the old stove must have been. For some reason, this old stovepipe hole and chimney managed to invade my childhood imagination and infiltrate my dreams.

Haunted by dreams of splendor

As a child, I would periodically have this odd dream where I found a secret passageway in the area of that old chimney. It was a small opening, but being a small child, I was able to climb up into it. There was a cozy little place inside of the walls of the chimney where I could just hang out. It was like a clubhouse of sorts, but it only existed in my dreams. In real life, there was nothing but a stovepipe hole. I also remember the space having things in it, but I can’t remember what. It was like a place where someone lived.

There was also another place that began to appear in my dreams. I would dream that the house had an upstairs, which it didn’t. The upstairs was also a secret place, just like the chimney. You had to climb up into it. Once you made it upstairs, there was a fine dining hall with a long table. The table was all set with fine plates and beautiful shiny silverware. There was also crystal everywhere. It had sparkling crystal dishes with covers, and glittering chandeliers hang from the ceiling. The walls were also brightly colored and the whole room glistened with gold and silver trim. It was like the dining hall of a great palace, and I loved to visit it in my dreams.

In time, I moved far away from the house where my great grandmother used to live. I also stopped having dreams about it, but then something very strange happened. I had another dream about the house. The dream made me want to visit the old house again, just to take in the scent of aging wood and old dust, while listening to the creak of settling planks.

The dream was basically like the old familiar dreams I had of the house. I climbed up into the upper floor and once again beheld the glistening dining hall, just as it had always been, but there was something amiss now. The floors were shaking, and the walls were coming apart. I felt like the whole house could come crumbling down at any moment. I walked to the end of the dining hall to look out a window to see what was happening. It was indeed falling apart.

As I stood by the window, I happened to look down. Lying beside the window was the dead rotten corpse of some sort of black feathered bird, probably a crow. As I looked at the body of the bird, it began to move and come back to life. Right before my eyes, it began to shapeshift into a lady in featherlike clothing. I could tell she was very ancient, but she also looked very glorious and powerful. It was like she was being resurrected as the old house began to fall apart. I could also sense that she was somehow connected to me, like maybe an ancient ancestor or something. She looked back at me as she exited the window, and I saw that the look on her face was not disturbed or unpleasant. It was the look of a loved one giving me her farewell.

A week or two later, I managed to break away from my busy schedule to visit my parents, who still lived next door to the old house. When I drove up into the driveway, I was met with a very real surprise. The house was completely gone without a trace. My mom had hired someone to tear it down without telling me. Dating it back, the house was being torn down at the same time I had the dream. The house, or something in it, was literally talking to me from miles away through my dreams.

A great sadness came over me, as I knew I would never stand in those hallowed halls again. I also felt like a great spiritual power had left me, like somehow, this house was a part of me, and now that part of me was gone forever. I wasn’t mad, but I was very disappointed by what my mom had done. It was definitely a very old house but still quite sturdy for a structure that ancient. I had honestly wanted to one day gather enough wealth to restore it completely, but I guess that day will never come.


What do you think happened here? Have you ever had a dream like this? Have you ever visited real places in your dreams? Do you think the house was haunted? Have you ever been in a haunted house? Have you had a dream that somehow connects to reality? Do you think the spirit of my ancestor lived in the house? What does the symbolism of the grand dining hall mean? What is the symbolism behind the dead crow being resurrected? Let me know in the comments, and don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe!

Coping strategies

Today’s question is what strategies do I use to cope with negative feelings? This is definitely an area where I need to improve. I have been dealing with about seven years’ worth of negative feelings, so I should be good at it by now, but I don’t think I have any strategy that works perfectly.

Before I get started on my list, I want to relate something I do that helps me get the motivation to get out of bed. On the days I can’t sleep the day away, I will hit the snooze on the alarm and just lay there thinking. I have this memory of my late grandmother stroking my hair on the days I was ill and feverish and telling me it would be okay. Even though I felt sick enough to die, it somehow made me feel like living. I found that memory also works on days when I am just sick of life. I will lay there in bed and imagine my grandmother stroking my hair and telling me the day will be fine. That memory is really the last time I felt true affection from another person. It was pure and unconditional love. Somewhere along the way, affection became tainted by people using it to get what they want. Pure unadulterated affection is probably the most powerful medicine in the world. Unfortunately, I can only find it in my distant memories now, but it still melts away all the suffering. Thank you, grandma, for healing me through endless ages with your love.

  1. Prayer. I pray to God a lot. It’s not like a traditional prayer, but like a very long conversation, sometimes spanning hours. There has never been a time when I thought I lost God’s attention though. He’s pretty much the only person who listens to me. I am reminded of David’s very famous line, “If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.” (Psalm 139:8). It really is true. He is always with his children, wherever they may find themselves.
  2. Games. I sometimes play video games. I’m not super into it like some people. I think this stems from the fact that I am not at all competitive. I mainly use games as a distraction. There is one thing about them that drags me into them. I sort of connect with the hero archetype that is personified in many games. If the right cause awakens me, I will slay all your dragons. Basically, I have a hero complex, otherwise known as a savior complex. If my people need me, I will rescue them.
  3. Conversation. If I meet the right person while I am out, we will have a wonderful time together, just talking the night away. I love conversing with those people. Sometimes I get to hear their whole life story, and I love true stories! Sometimes they are unloading emotional problems, and I’m totally there to hear them out. There’s also a surprising amount of intellectual, philosophical, and political discussions that happen at bars. I’m a great listener, and it’s definitely a good distraction.
  4. Dreams. Occasionally I have bad dreams, but for the most part my dreams are tolerable, sometimes even pleasant. In my dreams, I am not myself. I am free to be whoever I want. It is so liberating! I sometimes wish I could just change my name, move far away, and start over, meeting all new people. Dreams are the closest I come to that wish.
  5. Reading. I read a lot of books. My record for a year is over one hundred books. That used to be the goal I set each year. I don’t read as much as that anymore, but it has always been a part of my life. A good book is one of the only things that can sufficiently distract me from my troubles. I also listen to audiobooks when I go on walks or drive long distance.
  6. Writing. As you know, I write blog posts quite often. It helps me to get things out in the open. I am probably too open with strangers, but they are mostly supportive in the blogging community. There is some degree of protection from the anonymity of it all I suppose. To me, blogging is very therapeutic. I also dream of being a novelist one day, if I can ever straighten my emotions out enough stay on it.
  7. Women. I’m not going to lie, a lot of the negativity that encroaches on my happiness is from the heartbreak women have caused me. That being said, those same women filled my life with incredible happiness when they were with me. That’s why losing them hurt me so badly. I don’t think women realize how much power they have to heal. I know if the right girl came along, she would easily be able to wipe away all the hurt of those who left me in shambles. It’s almost too much power for any person to wield. I suppose there are women who feel the same way about men.
  8. Thunder. I don’t know why, but rolling thunder and rain help me to relax. I have an app that just plays the sound of thunder and rain. I use it to fall asleep some nights. It also seems to reduce the chances of me waking up over in the night. I suppose it is the remnant of childhood memories where the rain on our tin roof helped me sleep, or maybe thunder just scares off negative forces. Either way, the thunderstorm is one of my dearest friends.

Are there any memories from your childhood that get you through the day? What is your view of affection on mental health? Did you have a good relationship with your parents and grandparents? Do you have any good coping strategies you would add? What’s the biggest source of negativity in your life? Do you have a savior complex?

Let me know in the comments, and don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe!

Also, thanks for being here! Love you all!

My favorite drink.

This is a simple one to answer for me. I love coffee! I used to spend way too much money on lattes, so I bought my own espresso machine. It was one of the best investments I ever made. I use it throughout the day to make lattes for myself. I think I actually make them better than the ones I used to buy, and it has saved me a ton of money. The only other caffeinated drink I consume regularly would be tea, as I cut out soft drinks a long time ago.

Not everyone is a fan of coffee, probably because it is high in caffeine, but I believe it actually adds to my health and wellbeing. I can’t imagine getting through my day without it. I have been drinking it since early childhood, as my parents and grandparents had it every day at breakfast time. I have quit drinking it before, thinking it was bad for me, but in the end, I always come back. I finally just decided to keep it as a part of my daily life.


What’s your favorite drink? Do you love coffee also? How do you like your coffee? Do you own an expresso machine? Do you drink other caffeinated drinks, like Red Bulls, or soda? What do you call soda? Pop? Coke? Let me know in the comments, and please remember to like, share, and subscribe!

My family’s top three favorite meals.

Today’s question is what are my family’s top three favorite meals? Traditionally, my family ate a full three meals a day, including breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Where I grew up though, lunch was sometimes called dinner, and dinner was called supper. That was mainly with the older generation in my family though. I quickly learned that the kids at school called the midday meal lunch. Breakfast was the morning meal, which I ate every day before school. I didn’t really put together what the word breakfast meant until years later though. It is quite literally the meal where you break your all night fast, basically the “break” “fast” meal. The last meal of the day before you started your nightly fast was called dinner, or supper by my grandparents.

For breakfast, one of my family’s favorites was something my grandparents called butter and syrup. You basically took out a plate, poured a little syrup on it, then mixed in some butter and stirred it up. You would then dip fresh buttermilk biscuits into the mixture and eat it. It probably wouldn’t be a good meal for a diabetic. It was loaded with sugar. I basically grew up on this though. I have no idea how I remained skinny back then. I also remember my mom and grandmother getting up extra early every day to make the biscuits and whatever else was used for breakfast. There was also coffee for everyone, so my history with coffee goes way back.

When I was a kid in school, I almost always came home for lunch, because I didn’t really like the food they served at the school. Yes, I was a picky eater back then, and I still am honestly. My grandmother would pick me up in her car at the school and drive me home for lunch. Sometimes I did eat at the school though, depending on what they were serving that day. I may have been a bit spoiled with regard to food. It was one of the few luxuries of my youth.

There seemed to be quite a variety of foods served at lunch and dinner back then, including fried chicken, pork chops, chicken and dumplings, potato dishes, all kinds of beans, fresh garden vegetables, etc. We also had hamburgers, hotdogs, pizza, spaghetti, tacos, enchiladas, tamales, and one of my favorites, lasagna. It’s hard to say what the favorites were because my mom and grandmother were great cooks and could make just about anything. I will say I am very partial to the turkey and dressing that my grandmother used to make for Thanksgiving though. That memory is really on my mind this time of year, and I wish she was still here to make it.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! 🦃


What are your family’s favorite meals? Did you grow up around great home cooking? Are you a great cook yourself? Did you like school food? Were your grandparents a big part of your life growing up? Let me know in the comments, and don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe!

A person in my family.

I will attempt to describe a family member. I am going to choose my mom’s mother, my maternal grandmother. She was a relatively short lady. I honestly don’t remember her actual height, or even if I ever knew it, but she was considerably shorter than my 6’2″ stature. She had brown curly hair before it turned gray, and blue eyes, and she always wore glasses. I also remember she was kind of bow legged, maybe from riding horses as a kid, as she was born at a time when horses and buggies were still in heavy use, and I heard many stories about them.

She was definitely the most influential person in my life growing up. My mom looked to her for guidance and support. My mom also stayed home and helped to take care of her aging parents, so I grew up around my grandmother. She was just like another parental figure in my life, and the one who provided most of the discipline I might add. She was really a very good person, probably the best I have ever known, and most people who knew her would agree. I had many great experiences with her, and I loved her more than I could ever describe here.

In the later years of her life, she ended up developing cancer in one of her legs. They tried radiation treatment, but that didn’t work. They ended up having to amputate her leg around the knee. She was fine for a while after that. She was definitely one of the hardest working people I have ever met. Even with one leg, she insisted on helping out around the house as much as possible. Her family truly meant everything to her and helping them had always been her way of showing love.

Losing her was one of the most difficult things I had to endure. When the cancer came back, they found it in her lungs. This happened quite a few years ago, so cancer treatment wasn’t as advanced as it is now. By the time it was discovered, it was already too late to do anything about it.

I have this really terrible memory still stuck in my head about it. I remember she was at home, and we were talking about it. She said something like, the doctor told me it was all over my lungs. I looked at her and there was this deep feeling of dread on her face like I had never seen before. It broke my heart into a million pieces, but I wanted to be strong so she wouldn’t lose hope. I remember trying to say something positive. I think I said something like, medical science is a lot more advanced these days, so they might be able to cure it.

I knew they were not going to be able to cure it. This was the day I had spent my whole life praying would never come, because I didn’t want to see it, and I honestly wasn’t sure I could endure watching it, but I knew it was inevitable at this point. I knew she was going to die and so did she. She looked at me and calmly said, well, I don’t see how they can do anything about it, then looked away in despair. I held my composure in her presence, and something quietly died inside my heart.


I’m not sure there are any good questions to ask here. It was a part of my life and now it is recorded here. I just hope you don’t have to experience something like this. Thanks for reading.

The trait I value most about myself.

There’s a lot of traits I have that might be considered valuable, but I don’t know that I notice them too much. They are things that other people would notice more than me, because they are external traits, not internal traits. I live on the inside, not the outside. Here are few external traits that people might notice about me.

  1. I am calm under fire. Several of the people working under me noticed this about me. They sometimes worry about the outcome, and I just stay the course unwaveringly. It is impressive to them that I am fearless and calm. When something does go astray, I gently bring it back on course. It’s an odd trait I picked up over the years. I think it also comes from shifting to a growth mindset.
  2. I have some degree of charisma. It’s not overwhelming, but if people are around me for a while, we begin to unite. I think it’s because they figure out that I’m an empathic person who listens to them, and I can also be pretty fearless under normal conditions. I once read that this is what charisma is all about. It’s a combination of presence, power, and warmth.
  3. I have extensive knowledge in a wide range of fields. I spent half of my life reading textbooks, encyclopedias, and other books. I know quite a bit about computer science, electronics, engineering, psychology, biology, philosophy, etc. I’ve even studied subjects that would be considered esoteric. This is on top of degrees in business and information technology.

If you would like to read more about charisma and the growth mindset, check out these books. You won’t be disappointed.

The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism

What if charisma could be taught?

For the first time, science and technology have taken charisma apart, figured it out and turned it into an applied science: In controlled laboratory experiments, researchers could raise or lower people’s level of charisma as if they were turning a dial.

What you’ll find here is practical magic: unique knowledge, drawn from a variety of sciences, revealing what charisma really is and how it works. You’ll get both the insights and the techniques you need to apply this knowledge. The world will become your lab, and every person you meet, a chance to experiment.

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

After decades of research, world-renowned Stanford University psychologist Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., discovered a simple but groundbreaking idea: the power of mindset. In this brilliant book, she shows how success in school, work, sports, the arts, and almost every area of human endeavor can be dramatically influenced by how we think about our talents and abilities. People with a fixed mindset—those who believe that abilities are fixed—are less likely to flourish than those with a growth mindset—those who believe that abilities can be developed. Mindset reveals how great parents, teachers, managers, and athletes can put this idea to use to foster outstanding accomplishment.

The trait I value the most.

After thinking about it, the trait I value most about myself isn’t any of these. The trait I value most about myself is an odd trait that is at the core of my being. I believe it might drag me down, but I still value it. If I lose it, I will lose some aspect of what makes me into the person that I am.

As I went through life, I met a couple of people along the way that I really came to love on a very deep level. When that occurred, I become very scared that something would happen to them. It caused me to try and keep them in my life and take care of them. I think a lot of people hate this type of behavior, calling it clingy, but to me this feeling is the equivalent of deep love.

I believe this is something that was accidentally taught to me growing up. My grandmother was the closest person to me in my childhood and she was very overprotective. She wouldn’t let me out of her sight for fear that I would get hit by a car, or drown in the pool, or burn myself alive, or catch some awful disease, or you name it. I heard that what was modeled to you growing up is what you think is normal, and what I experienced most was the watchful eye of caring grandparent.

This trait probably causes trouble for me because if you are one of these special people it might feel very clingy. I honestly didn’t always appreciate it growing up either, but it still translates to love in my mind. It is definitely something I like about myself, but other people may not. Basically, I want to take care of a special person and help them survive and thrive because that is how I was raised.


What trait do you value most about yourself? Are you calm under fire? Would you consider yourself charismatic? Do you have a trait that’s misunderstood? Are you a clingy person? Do you avoid clingy people? What subjects do you know the most about? Let us know in the comments, and please like, share, and subscribe! Also, thanks for reading!

The aspects of my cultural heritage that interest me.

Many years ago, when my grandparents were still alive, I tried to research my family tree. It was at a time when genealogical research seemed to be popular, and several web sites had popped up that were trying to document human family trees, like Ancestry.com and Genealogy.com. I started with all my parents and grandparents could tell me, then used these online sites to conduct further research. I remember I had very little luck tracing my dad’s family tree. My mom’s ancestry was a different story.

As I started to trace my mom’s family tree backwards, many of the branches did begin to sort of drop off due to lack of documented information available to me, but there was one branch from my mom’s mother’s family tree that seemed to just keep going. It was all documented very well and I couldn’t figure out why.

Then something interesting happened. I noticed that many of the people in my family appeared to be sort of important. There were a lot of lords and bishops coming up, many of them famous enough to have articles about them on the Internet. Finally, after going back many generations, I ran into a very famous historical figure. As it turns out, I am a direct descendant of Charlemagne, who was crowned Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire by Pope Leo III in 800 AD.

This was very interesting to me at the time. I’m very happy with all my ancestors, those that were royal, and those that were not, those that were famous, and those that were not. They came here, struggled through all the hard times that life throws at you, made difficult decisions, and were finally laid to rest. I am very glad they were here, every one of them, and I’d just like to say thank you for keeping this family tree going. Your son is proud of what you did.

After all this, I also decided that what my ancestors did isn’t really going to be my legacy. That was their life and what they decided to do with it. I have my own lifetime to live. I’m pretty sure I won’t become a famous king. I’m still trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up. Maybe, if I’m really lucky, I will be remembered for something that makes it all worthwhile.

On a final note, I hope this doesn’t change anyone’s opinion of me. I am not my ancestors, and I want to be recognized for who I am, not for who they were. Their decisions were not my decisions. I didn’t start any wars, or own any slaves, or change history in any way. I know that people, kingdoms, cultures, and religions have collided over the years, and we are all a part of that, but I don’t think we are to blame for any of it. The future is our story. I’m just Ken, and the past is history.


What about your cultural history interests you? Do you have any famous people in your family tree? Let me know in the comments, and please remember to like, share, and subscribe!

New crystal wine glasses.

I generally only drink when I go out, but I decided to buy a bottle of wine recently because I knew I wasn’t going out this weekend. I’m very fond of pinot noir for some reason, and this brand (Meiomi California Pinot Noir) isn’t too bad, nor is it expensive. It’s a red wine, and it’s not sweet, but not overly bitter either. It’s just right for me.

The only problem is, I forgot that I don’t have any wine glasses in the house, so I made an Amazon purchase to rectify that problem. I have always been drawn to crystal glassware. When I was growing up, my grandmother had some very beautiful crystal glassware, a whole set of them, not just glasses. I was so fascinated by them as a kid, but they became lost over the years. This is what motivated me to pick out a set of wine glasses that were crystal. These don’t contain lead, which can be toxic and not eco-friendly. I think they turned out to be quite a good buy. I’m very happy with this purchase! Can’t wait to try them out!

RCR Cristalleria Italiana Crystal Glass Drinkware Set (Wine Goblet (7.75 oz) – 4 Piece)

RCR Cristalleria Italiana was founded in 1967, Located in the town of Colle di Val d’Elsa in the heart of Tuscany. The Italian brand is leading crystal producer and one of the largest in the world in making home and tableware like vases, tumblers, goblets, bottles, bowls, plates and centrepieces; all the products are made in Italy from eco-friendly lead free crystal glass. RCR products are lightweight and dishwasher safe, as it offers better resistance to detergent action and excellent strength and stability during dishwasher use.

Below is an actual photo of the glasses I received. They were very well wrapped in bubble wrap, and none were broken or chipped in the shipment. They were exactly as described, have a nice feel, and are very elegant to behold. I might decide to buy other things from this supplier.

Picture of crystal wine glasses and a bottle of pinot noir wine.
New set of crystal wine glasses.

What do you think of these glasses? Do you like crystal glassware? Does it remind you of yesteryear? Do you drink wine occasionally? If so, what’s your favorite wine? Let me know in the comments, and don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe!