Prospero's Books

Spring

I apologize for the long gap in postings. This semester has been an unusually busy one, but it's over. Thanks for sticking with Prospero's Books.

Happy New Year!

Thanks for your patience during a three-week gap in posts. With semester's end, a trip to New Mexico (where we're planning to retire in a year and a half), Christmas week, and now an annual extended-family vacation, Prospero's Books has slid off my to-do list. Expect more from me soon.

Mea culpa

I apologize to readers of Prospero's Books for the lack of posts in the past two weeks. This semester has been unusually busy for me, but now it's over, and I'm eager to start posting again. Fortunately, I've collected a fat folder of clippings as writing prompts.

I'm writing this from Detroit airport, on my way to London for five days of playgoing, friend-visiting, and bookshopping. But I plan to write in odd moments. If you're a Prospero's Books reader in the London area and would like to get together, I may have some time free on Monday (a bank holiday, they tell me) and Tuesday. Just let me know.

I'm back. Thanks for waiting.

Deep ancestry

My wife, Bette, and I recently treated ourselves to National Geographic's Genographic Project Kits. The kits make it easy to submit cheek scrapings for DNA analysis, as part of the society's Genographic Project. The results provide a wonderful perspective on one's place in the great human story.

In Bette's case, mitochondrial DNA carries the chronicle of a 150,000-year chain of mothers and daughters. That chain begins with "Mitochondrial Eve," an African woman who was the ancestor of every person alive today. Around 80,000 years ago, one of Bette's maternal ancestors left Africa, and from there the story continues through the Middle East into Western Europe, until one brave woman made the long voyage to North America.

My ancestral record is etched into my Y-chromosome, which fathers give to their sons. Like Bette, I'd be seen as a WASP, though I prefer to think of myself as a Welsh Celt, not an English Anglo-Saxon.

So my DNA results surprised me.

I'm a member of "haplogroup E3b." Like Bette's—and everyone else's— my ancestral story begins in Africa. But my paternal ancestors didn't leave Africa until just 30,000 to 40,000 years ago. And they stayed long in the Middle East, to become the first farmers.

Today, most men in my haplogroup live around the Mediterranean, making up 10 percent of all Spaniards, 12-13 percent of northern and southern Italians, 20 percent of Sicilians, 20-30 percent of Balkans and Greeks, and a whopping 75 percent of North Africans. By contrast, I share my haplogroup with only 3-4 percent of Irishmen and 4-5 percent of Englishmen.

So am I descended, perhaps, from a Roman soldier who came to Britain under Claudius in 43 A.D.? Or a Moorish trader bringing goods to the island from North Africa? Or an stonemason brought to Britain from Italy to help build the great cathedrals?

Of course, each of us has many thousands more ancestors than just those along our mother-daughter or father-son line. Even so, the Genographic Project can map vividly one of the trails on the journey that led to our birth.

I am it. Now you are it.

Dr. Delaney Kirk, at Ask.Dr.Kirk, has tagged me. Now I'm it. My task: to share five things about myself that others don't know. (I'll interpret others as most others.)

1. Besides a teacher and professor, I've worked as an actor, childbirth instructor and coach, editor, intelligence agent, journalist, magician's assistant, marketing copy writer, photographer, private detective, script writer, stage manager, survey interviewer, technical writer, and television producer.
2. My newest hobby is geocaching. I'm part of a team, Team Chip, that my dog Chip heads up.
3. My greatest fear is of heights, but I'm working at overcoming it.
4. I was in the Supreme Court chamber in 1962 on the first day of the landmark school prayer case.
5. My wife, Bette, and I live with two dogs (Taffy and Chip) and three cats (Tigger, Katie, and Moon Pie).

OK, my turn. I tag Chris Hodapp, Karmen, Sam, Chadwick Seagraves, and Matthew Stibbe. Tell us five interesting things about yourself that most people don't know.

Who, and Some of What, I Am

Kenneth W. Davis

Author. Bibliophile. Brother. Consultant. Episcopalian. Father. Freemason. Hawkeye. Hoosier. Husband. Learner. Playgoer. Professor. Sexagenarian. Son.  Trainer. Traveler. Uncle. Veteran.

The LibraryThing catalog of my home library.

My other blog, Manage Your Writing.

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