First, let me warn you, gentle blog reader: this is not going to be anything political! I said I wasn’t going to put any political stuff on this blog, except under the most momentous circumstances, and I’m sticking to that. However. . . .I got an interesting tidbit from this site . It claims both President Obama and ex-President Bush are descended from that great Irish hero Niall of the Nine Hostages! I read last week that the town the Obama ancestor came from, had a huge celebration on Inauguration day, and they even made something called “brack”(guess why, hint, hint), which is apparently an Irish version of fruitcake, for the occasion. I didn’t remember seeing anything about the Niall of the Nine Hostages connection, but that’s all right. Heck, Obama is also related to the unlamented Vice President Cheney, too. But since half of Ireland seems to be in some manner related or descended or connected with Niall of the Nine Hostages, one way or another, I’m probably related in some way to Obama too. I’m of Irish descent, you see, although I don’t make a lot of this connection. I can’t say I’m related to anybody Kenyan, though, unless you want to go back all the way to whoever the ancestor of all “modern” humans was. But then, even some of the descendants of that ancestral “Eve” wandered themselves out of Africa around 100,000 years ago and proceeded to end up everywhere, and probably mixed themselves up with whatever “nonmoderns” they encountered along the way, from time to time, and place to place(yeah, that means Neandertals, too, sorry about that, even if the genes don’t obviously show up in “modern” humans). So if you go far enough back, I’m related to an awful lot of people. That’s nice. I don’t mind. Their stories are all interesting, and I’m writing some of them.
Anne G
