Between the Lines

"There are many stories between the lines."

- J. K. Rowling on the Black Family Tree

Okay, so I'm really, REALLY into genealogy. Truth be told, I find it fascinating. I've devoted much of the past year of my life to researching my family's history and lineage for many reasons, something a lot of people would probably find boring. I don't though, because for me, it's a challenge. Doing genealogy research is like attempting to put together a really large puzzle - only you don't have all the pieces, some pieces seem impossible to connect, and every time you do connect two pieces, the puzzle itself expands. It's frustrating, but it's so crazy, the types of things you can find out.

Before I really started this past year of research, I thought I knew a lot about my family. My father's side of the family was a direct line from a Mayflower Pilgrim, after all. I didn't know much about my mother's side of the family, and I wanted to, but it seemed unlikely that her lineage would trump my father's. As it turns out, both sides of my family have some insane genealogy that I never would have expected.

What would you find among the branches of your family tree?

  On my father's side of the family, I'm a direct descendant of at least two Mayflower Pilgrims (the second which I had no knowledge of until recently), and I'm distantly related to more than a couple of U.S. Presidents and several famous entertainers. I managed to find someone online who's something like the 5th half-cousin once removed of my grandmother, and through his records, was able to trace one half of my grandmother's family not just back across the Atlantic to Norway, but back from Norway to Denmark in the late 1600s. The person I got in contact with had an entire website up dedicated to family genealogy, and through a common however-many-times great-grandfather, I was able to add over 200 relatives to my family tree. Because he lives in Denmark, he also owns or has access to a number of old family artifacts, including a portrait of that great-grandfather I just mentioned. I've always thought my father looked more like my grandfather than my grandmother, but holy crap, my father's nose and lips are identical to that great-grandfather's - even though they lived over 200 years apart!

On my mother's side of the family, I was anything but prepared for the things I found out. As it turns out, my mother's maiden name is a very, very old Italian name, and by very old, I mean it turns up in records as early as the 7th or 8th century. It apparently comes from a man who came from another country and conquered part of modern-day Italy; everyone with the last name in Italy is considered to be descended from him. He settled there and had children, becoming a noble, and along with a number of famous descendants, including at least one (infamous) pope and an old Italian princess, there are a whole bunch of freaking castles that - to this day - belong to, used to belong to, and/or were named for the family. I haven't found a definitive genealogical connection yet, but my great-aunt, who unfortunately passed away long before I began my research, always insisted that we were directly related to Italian royalty/nobility. She'd had information on our direct line going back several centuries, and she was an extremely intelligent but humble woman - unless she verified that information 10 ways from Sunday, I don't think she'd have told anyone. It wouldn't be a big deal to her that she was related to such people; it would just be a big deal to her that she was able to go that far back.

I've also found out a lot of things that probably aren't interesting to other people, but they are very interesting to me. Take, for example, the fact that one of my great-grandfathers was a barber. His brother was also a barber. No one had any idea how my great-grandfather met my great-grandmother, but as it turns out, her brother was also a barber who lived in the same area. Whether they ever worked together I couldn't tell you, but it's something that could easily explain how they originally met. Being related to all those barbers is also kind of funny when I think about the fact that I cut my own hair. To my knowledge, I'm the only one in the family that does, and I'm good at it. I've taken as much as eight inches off and people tell me it looks professionally done. One of my grandmother's also used to sew all the time; she made everything, and she was good at it. As it turns out, her grandfather worked in women's clothing as a "presser," and it seems like his siblings did too.

All in all, it's been shocking to discover the stories between the lines, to realize how much we don't know - or don't expect - about where we come from. There's a lot of truth in the way people say, "It's a small world." In some ways, it feels like that's an understatement; a lot of the time, we may be more connected than we think.

Have you ever looked into your own genealogy and found something you definitely weren't expecting?

Exes + Social Media = Nope, Not For Me.

Earlier today, someone I'm friends with posted this article to one of their social media accounts. It's all about how members of the social media generation can keep up - and apparently frequently choose to keep up, with their exes. I know that a lot of other members of my generation do choose to do this, but I don't understand why.

Ultimately, exes are exes for a reason. I think most people, immediately after a break-up, go through a period where they can't think about cutting their ex out of their life completely. I know I sure have, in past relationships. When you care about someone, it's hard to stop overnight. But as time goes on, eventually, I would expect that the majority of people would not want to keep up with their exes - or at least not with many of them. There are certain situations where I could understand having a way to keep in touch with an ex, but I feel like those are likely to be few and far between.

For example, I currently have one person that I consider an ex friended on one of my social media accounts. We dated for a very short period of time when we were young teens, but since we were both in a special program for "advanced" students in our school, we were stuck together  - with the same group of people - from third grade through tenth, both long before and long after we were a couple. The fact that we were ever together is pretty insignificant to our history; the group of kids we were thrown together with was more like a family then anything. It's kind of uncomfortable to think about the fact that we were ever involved, because looking back, it feels vaguely incestual. Needless to say, I don't believe either of us think of our brief involvement as anything particularly noteworthy or important. We have each other friended because the program we were in created a unique kinship between everyone in it; even those of us who weren't friends or didn't like each other had to get along, and we all bore witness to the trials and tribulations of all of us growing up. We were forcibly connected to each other for almost half of our lives, and so we know each other better than almost anyone else. Even if our connections are now more tenuous, it's not so easy to just completely forget them.

All of my other exes were pretty much written out of my life as soon as I was over the relationship enough to remind myself that it was the healthiest thing to do. Why cling to a relationship with someone that it didn't work out with? Sure, at some point you cared about them, but why waste your energy and emotions continuing to do so when that clearly isn't going to get you anywhere? Why prevent yourself from moving forward by keeping yourself tied to someone? I mean, it's great if you guys had a great friendship first and/or a totally amicable break-up because you genuinely like each other but agree you definitely aren't meant to be together. But why would anyone choose to remain connected to someone who didn't want to be with them, who they didn't want to be with, who didn't treat them right, who they didn't care much about to begin with, or who didn't care much about them to begin with? What in the world is the purpose of remaining connected to someone that was just a fling or who you only casually dated for a few weeks or who had no regard for your feelings?

Do you have exes friended on social media?

The Messy Zimmerman Trial

Disclaimer: This post includes discussion of law-related topics. Although I am a law student, I am not an attorney, and I cannot give legal advice. The opinions expressed in this post are not meant as legal advice and cannot/should not be relied upon in any way. Consult a lawyer if you need legal advice or have questions about your rights.

The trial of George Zimmerman, the man who shot and killed Trayvon Martin in February 2012, is something I've watched extremely closely. As a law student entering my second year of law school this fall, justice is something I'm extremely interested in, and the Trayvon Martin case is something that caught my attention very early on. I remember being shocked when I first found out about it; I could not understand how a grown man could shoot and kill an unarmed teenager but not be arrested simply because he claimed self-defense. I was one of the people who signed the Change.org petition calling for George Zimmerman's arrest, along with over two million other individuals. I believe our justice system is in place for a reason, and when a high school kid gets shot on his way home from 7-Eleven, the justice system is supposed to step in and figure out what happened and what should be done.

I was extremely upset when the jury found George Zimmerman not guilty, but not too surprised. When the prosecution rested, I felt very uneasy. Later on, they had an excellent closing argument, but they should have done a much better job of humanizing Trayvon Martin and presenting their theory of the case. Why didn't they have witnesses that attested to Trayvon Martin's character? Why didn't they talk with his parents or brother about his hopes and dreams? Why didn't they have any witness that talked about what Trayvon's hobbies were, what he did in his spare time? The Miami Herald posted an article about a month after the killing, including quotes from several of Trayvon's friends and his family members. Apparently, Trayvon dreamed of working in aviation, spent hours on his phone and listening to music (like most teenagers), was described as a sweet, respectful, non-agressive kid by the teacher of the honors English class he had taken during his sophomore year, had a "voracious appetite," and wanted to attend college in Florida. Why wasn't any of that information presented at trial? And how had Trayvon ended up dead? The prosecution cast a lot of doubt on Zimmerman's account of the altercation and what had happened before, during, and after it, but until their closing argument, they didn't really hit home with a distinct theory of what actually happened.

The statements made by members of the jury post-trial, specifically Juror B37, reveal disturbing information about how they thought about the trial. It seems like they didn't think race had anything to do with the killing (meaning the prosecution really failed at addressing the racial aspects of the case and the idea that Trayvon was racially profiled), that they wanted to convict Zimmerman of something but couldn't under Florida's Stand Your Ground Law (which appeared in jury instructions but which the prosecution also really didn't talk about), and that they didn't really think of Trayvon as a child - a child that could ultimately have been their own (another failing of the prosecution to humanize him and make him more than a dead body).

Realistically, I believe Zimmerman should have been convicted, if not of second-degree murder, then at least of manslaughter. As a law student who has studied criminal law and related statutes, I feel like he would have been convicted in other jurisdictions where the Stand Your Ground Laws aren't on the books. As quoted in this article, Attorney General Eric Holder believes, "By allowing - and perhaps encouraging - violent situations to escalate in public, such laws [as Stand Your Ground] undermine public safety." I agree 100%. Some people seem to think that without SYG laws, they don't have the right to defend themselves. But people DO legally have the right to defend themselves, AND to use deadly force to do so in a number of situations where it's arguably necessary.

Without SYG laws on the books, an individual who isn't inside their home and who fears imminent death or great bodily harm is permitted to use force, including deadly force, if a safe means of retreat that would avoid the harm is not available. Basically, an individual has a legal duty to leave the situation if they can do so safely. In most situations where a person would feel compelled to consider deadly force, safe retreat probably isn't an option. If someone is holding a gun to your head or is choking you, chances are an affirmative defense of self-defense will be a given if you wind up killing the person.

With SYG laws on the books, a person basically doesn't have a duty to retreat, even if they could do so safely and avoid the harm. If they fear imminent death or great bodily harm, even if that and harm to the other person could be avoided by safely retreating, they're allowed to take the law into their own hands and use deadly force against the other person. The threat of imminent death or great bodily harm doesn't even need to be actual; it can just be a perceived threat.

What did you think about the way the George Zimmerman trial played out?

Allergy Fun

Driving home from Robert Moses State Park



Ugh. Allergies suck. I've had them since I was a little girl, but lately, they've really been bringing me down. Apparently, going to the beach now causes me to break out in a rash (which is not sunburn) and hives. What?

Last Saturday, my boyfriend and I ventured out to the beach. We spent a nice hour and a half or so laying out on one of my old sheets, talking and enjoying the weather. It was hot out, but there was a nice breeze coming in from the water. On the ride home, I noticed that I was starting to get itchy. I thought maybe I had gotten a little burnt or that my skin was just dry, nothing that was out of the ordinary. Then after we got home, my boyfriend went to take a shower, and I realized that the back of my hand was covered in small hives. By the time he was done in the shower, I felt itchy everywhere, hives were also on my feet, and both of my thighs and my chest had broken out into a warm, red rash.

Looking up at the bridge going over the Great South Bay

  Fun, right? Unfortunately, this is the second time something like this has occured this summer. I broke out in rashes on my arms and legs a few weeks ago, also right after being at the beach. I don't know what's going on. It seems pretty clear that it's some sort of allergic reaction, but what am I allergic to? Is it the sun, the heat, the sand? Considering the hives and rash have been coming and going for the last couple of days, I'm baffled. I've been asking myself a million questions. Have I eaten something I don't normally eat? Have I changed any of the cleaning products I use? Is there anywhere I've gone that I could have come into contact with a substance I need to avoid? Are there any non-allergic conditions or diseases that match my symptoms?

Foot hives

It's crazy. Apparently, my mother and sister both sometimes get hives on their hands and feet after being out in the sun, so maybe we're just a family of vampires or something, I don't know. What I do know is that I'm already on allergy medication for about 75% of the year already; I take Zyrtec-D twice a day just to be able to function on a regular basis throughout the spring, fall, and parts of the early winter and early and late summer. I'm allergic to pollen of all kinds, mold, dust, grass, and about every tree that grows in my neighborhood. The past few years, I've all but baricaded myself indoors during the entirety of the spring and fall in order to avoid allergy and asthma attacks. Though I used to have my mother's olive-toned skin, I've become extremely pale, and my Vitamin D levels are startlingly low. I was on allergy shots when I was younger and they were recommended for me again a couple of years ago, but $90/week for only a possible 30% reduction in symptoms after two years? There was no way I was going to afford that as a college student, nor did it seem worth it.

I am so frustrated. Do any of you have really random/unidentified allergy triggers? How do you deal with them?

How Am I Supposed to Feel?

There are a bunch of posts I've been working on finishing up lately, but yesterday, things came to a screeching halt for me when I found out that an old classmate had died.

I am no stranger to death. I have lost a number of family members over the years, as well as friends, pets, and friends of friends. Death has had an enormous impact on how I view life and on how I choose to live it. And while death can be devastating to the ones left behind, it's also something that, for me personally, isn't nearly as scary as it used to be. I think about being born - I have no memory of it, but how traumatizing must it have been? How could I have understood what was happening or where I was going? How could I have had any concept of what living was? Dying is something I've come to view as the natural partner to birth, if you will: everyone who is born must also someday die. In the same way that no one knows what comes after death before they have died (though they may have beliefs about it), no one knew what came after birth before they were born. But being born seemed to work out okay, didn't it?

Learning about my classmate's death has left me confused and wondering how I'm supposed to feel. This guy was in my 7th and 8th grade homeroom. I remember other people talking to him or about it. I know he was very close to another person who was one of the few people who was actually nice to me in high school. (I hated high school. One of the happiest days of my life was the day I graduated. I have a million-watt smile in all of the pictures people took that day, let me tell ya.) He had parents that loved him, a brother, a girlfriend, friends, and extended family. He didn't influence my life until he died, but he influenced a lot of others.

How am I supposed to feel about that? He wasn't my friend. He was barely even an acquaintance. But he was close to some of the people I care about, who are now grieving. I can't really be sad; I hardly remembered him. At the same time, I can't be totally unfeeling: I did know him at some point, he was young, his death was a horrible accident, and he was cared about by people I cared about. How am I supposed to feel?

Have you ever found yourself in a similar situation? How did you feel?

State of the Woman, Part II: Freedom to Choose Our Futures

  As a girl growing up in the 21st century, I grew up in a very different world from my older female relatives. I was raised in the era of girl power, where opportunities for women were cropping up everywhere, and people had really begun to realize that women could do a lot of good in the world without devoting themselves to being mothers and wives. My peers and I were encouraged to dream big and make it happen, to not let our sex ever hold us back. We were taught, generally, to value ourselves as women, to know that we were wonderful and powerful all on our own. No man should ever make or break us, and we should never have to depend on a man. We could make our own way in the world and our own choices. Gone were the days when a woman's only real option in the eyes of society was to get married and have a family. We women could now do whatever we wanted.

Or at least, that's what we were told.

In recent years, I've come to question how much freedom modern American women actually have to choose their own path. I would like to think we've come a long way from our grandparents' generation, where women usually married early and then had children, entering domestic life instead of building a career. The women who came before today's generation worked hard to ensure that building our lives around a husband and children wasn't our only option. In doing so, did they really win the fight for women's autonomy, for our freedom to choose what we do? Or did society just change what it expected from us, without giving us any more real options?

I find myself more and more inclined to believe the latter - that women now having the right to choose what their lives will be like is mostly a bunch of BS. Maybe I'm just naive, but at twenty-three, I don't feel like I have real options. I feel like my peers and I must obtain at least a college degree or technical training. Sure, we can technically still choose to get marry young and have children while doing all of this, but how many of us actually feel like that's a viable option? How many of us are actually comfortable attempting to maintain a marriage and a family at the age our grandparents were able to? As women today, it feels like we have so much more to do before we can "settle down," and the definition of settling down has changed. Settling down used to mean our family became our sole focus, with very few distractions or other things, like a career, to focus on. Women devoted themselves to their husbands and children. Now, settling down is more about committing - to a person, a career, and a more moderate, responsible lifestyle. We're expected to keep a steady head while doing it all: maintaining a marriage, raising kids, and managing a career.

As a society, we have gone from nearly forcing women to sit tight as full-time housewives to nearly forcing women to divide their time and energy between work and family life. Without one or the other, women are so often objects of scorn and ridicule. If a woman wants to be a full-time mother and wife, at the expense of her career, others accuse her of setting women's rights back, because she isn't taking advantage of everything her fellow females fought for over generations. Many will judge her as weak. If a woman wants to focus solely on her career and doesn't care to be a wife or a mother, people will judge her as frigid and odd.

It seems like since America now allows women to be mothers and wives in addition to having a career, American women must do it all, and they are judged harshly by many if they do not. Is that really freedom to choose?