Before you read any further know this: I am Canadian. My parents were both Canadians, and my mother’s ancestors came here in the late 1500s. Yes, more than 400 hundred years ago. Some intermarried with the Mohawk First Nation at Kahnawake. I have always been quietly proud of being
Yes, it looks like what you think. The first European description and reference to the plant was made in 1678 by a Polish naturalist Jakob Breyne, a brave naturalist who named it based on a resemblance to the clitoris. What’s in a Name? The Controversy Disturbed by the clear
What a nice day for a family picnic! Sometime during the late summer of 1976, a friend and I were rather aimlessly driving around the Friuli region of Italy. I wasn’t seeking anything in particular but was interested in seeing what had remained of the gorgeous medieval towns that
The Triumph of Literature over Violence Enheduanna is the first author to sign her name to works of literature. She signed her name like this:𒂗𒃶𒌌𒀭𒈾 Think on it: The first and most significant literary event in all history — and it is a woman who first had the notion of appending
Recently the news has latched onto a comment made in the United States’ political arena, and now the word “weird” seems to be everywhere. The word itself has an interesting pedigree. Most etymologies tend to move from the present and go backwards through time, but let’s take a different
From time to time I research and write histories about the ancestors or family members of various people. I am not personally related to John Moore Perkins, but I did write his biography for an individual who is part of his extended family. Perkins’ background and story is fascinating: John