Posted in Uncategorized on Feb 15th, 2012
Many of you who have been following my posts know that I took a trip to Poland last April. I contacted a Polish genealogist and traveled with her to Kolonia-Osiek, a small town northwest of Warsaw about two hours drive, where we met with a family named ‘Rupinski’. From old documents, we think that this [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Feb 7th, 2012
My youngest son, Chris, gave me a very thoughtful book for Christmas titled Becoming Americans. This is a collection of nearly 100 selections — poems, stories, novel excerpts, travel pieces, diary entries, memoirs, and letters. This book presents the full range of the experience of coming to America: The reasons for departure, the journey itself, [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jan 31st, 2012
Last week as I finished writing the post about U3b and South Asian influences, I found myself pondering whether it is unusual or not for people of European ancestry to have South Asian DNA. The conclusion that I have come to is that it is NOT unusual, therefore I don’t think testing for South Asian [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jan 25th, 2012
A few weeks ago, I posted about mtDNA U3b and the predominance of this haplogroup among the European Roma populations. It is true that 55% of U3b is found in European Roma but U3bers are cautioned by Donald Locke, the administrator of the Romnichel Study Group at Family Tree DNA, not to jump to conclusions [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jan 17th, 2012
Eating in Bhutan was a challenge. I think that most of the time, we were being served food that Bhutanese THOUGHT Westerners would want to eat. I don’t think that in reality we ate much that could be called ‘typical’ Bhutanese food. The only dish that I can think of that we saw at every [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jan 10th, 2012
Probably the most interesting part of any tour to new country for me is experiencing the opportunity to see the local arts and crafts. I realize from my many years of collecting that I love folk art!
During one of our first days of touring, we visited a craft school where children were learning traditional Bhutanese [...]
Posted in Travel, Uncategorized on Jan 3rd, 2012
Our last stay in Bhutan took place at a spectacular hotel just outside of Paro, the capital city. We arrived, tired from our travels, to a truly luxury hotel. We were scheduled to climb to the Taktshang (Tiger’s Nest) Temple on our last day in Bhutan; this hotel would also be the site of our [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Dec 13th, 2011
As much as the concept of Gross National Happiness is promoted in Bhutan, there exists a clash between traditional values and modern development. We had the opportunity during our trip to meet an Bhutanese author, Kinley Dorji, who has written a book titled Within the Realm of Happiness. It is a collection of thirteen short [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Nov 29th, 2011
I recently had the opportunity to visit the country of Bhutan, the Land of the Thunder Dragon (as the Bhutanese refer to themselves….), as part of a Stanford University Study Group. Our trip was described as a ’suitcase seminar’ meaning that a professor traveled along with us who lectured about the history, economics and culture [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Nov 22nd, 2011
Many of us who are U3b may or may not know that mtdna haplogroup U3b is often found in the Romany populations of Europe. 55% of Romany are U3b. The fact is, many of us with the U3b dna have origins in Eastern Europe. Don Locke, the administrator of the Romany DNA Project wants to [...]