Milestones
My grandfather Jerzy Casimir Pajaczkowski turned 109 last week -- belated birthday greetings to dziadzio. This week my parents will mark the 50th anniversary of their own marriage. I can't be there to offer my congratulations in person, but my sister Claire is marrying her partner Barry in a civil ceremony on the day in question, which seems very appropriate. They have two sons, the oldest already ten.
And two days ago we attended the funeral of Walter, my father-in-law's younger brother. His interest in genealogy led him to trace his own ancestry back to the Middle Ages through extensive email correpondence with parish archivists in Norway. Walter encouraged Theo's own sense of history, drawing an elaborate family tree of her Nelson/Nielsen forebears. Of course he found there were Norwegians and Swedes taking Polish princess-brides back around the first millennium. Back then Norsemen or Vikings were skilled at combining raiding with providing what we would now call "security services." More sedentary peoples such as the Franks bought them off with land (the Duchy of Normandy) and money. They had sailed their longboats around the strait of Gibraltar to create kingdoms in Sicily and Apulia, contested by Fatimid caliphs in North Africa. As the Varangians they were professional bodyguards to the emperors of Byzantium. Trading up the Black Sea coast, and up and down the Dnieper, Volga and other rivers they became the "the Rus" for whom Russia is still named. They engirdled Europe and almost certainly "discovered" North America but I suspect they couldn't find enough booty to make it worth staying on. Walter wandered less far afield, moving from Bronxville New York to Long Valley New Jersey, but was a great explorer in his own way.
Closer to home our own Theo (b 1993), who is not descended from the circus entertainer who married Justinian and became Empress of Byzantium (d 548) -- at least not as far as we know -- has her first sleepaway camp upstate this week. Cell-phone communication is making the separation both easier and [a little] harder.
GOOD JEANS
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My grandfather Jerzy Casimir Pajaczkowski turned 109 last week -- belated birthday greetings to dziadzio. This week my parents will mark the 50th anniversary of their own marriage. I can't be there to offer my congratulations in person, but my sister Claire is marrying her partner Barry in a civil ceremony on the day in question, which seems very appropriate. They have two sons, the oldest already ten.
And two days ago we attended the funeral of Walter, my father-in-law's younger brother. His interest in genealogy led him to trace his own ancestry back to the Middle Ages through extensive email correpondence with parish archivists in Norway. Walter encouraged Theo's own sense of history, drawing an elaborate family tree of her Nelson/Nielsen forebears. Of course he found there were Norwegians and Swedes taking Polish princess-brides back around the first millennium. Back then Norsemen or Vikings were skilled at combining raiding with providing what we would now call "security services." More sedentary peoples such as the Franks bought them off with land (the Duchy of Normandy) and money. They had sailed their longboats around the strait of Gibraltar to create kingdoms in Sicily and Apulia, contested by Fatimid caliphs in North Africa. As the Varangians they were professional bodyguards to the emperors of Byzantium. Trading up the Black Sea coast, and up and down the Dnieper, Volga and other rivers they became the "the Rus" for whom Russia is still named. They engirdled Europe and almost certainly "discovered" North America but I suspect they couldn't find enough booty to make it worth staying on. Walter wandered less far afield, moving from Bronxville New York to Long Valley New Jersey, but was a great explorer in his own way.
Closer to home our own Theo (b 1993), who is not descended from the circus entertainer who married Justinian and became Empress of Byzantium (d 548) -- at least not as far as we know -- has her first sleepaway camp upstate this week. Cell-phone communication is making the separation both easier and [a little] harder.
- bruno 7-28-2003 7:59 pm
GOOD JEANS
- Skinny 8-09-2003 9:06 pm