2017 and the Irish Connection!

*********************************************************************************

         The year 2017 has finally arrived with all of it's usual fanfare and resolutions. Um....maybe not. Actually, this is NOT going to be a "normal" year nor will it be one of grandeur or positive changes when one views the nasty and negative rants from one soon to be president of the USA.  Most of the time, I keep my distance from airing my own political viewpoints regarding human candidates and their own proclivities. This year is an exception as the most powerful (well, used to be) position in the free world is taken over by a human with no real concept of what that means . From tweets filled with complete untruths to racist, homophobic, chauvinistic and mocking words...we in the US have four years of ugliness to get through.

Do we as Americans really want a man like THIS in office? Apparently millions of people are OK with this and the human behind the tweets of a rabid lunatic. If their jobs are saved and their taxes don't go up, it's a fair trade off?
Wow, things sure have changed a lot in the last few decades of the political climate in America.
Will this become the norm or just an anomaly in the course of our history? Oh please, let it be the latter.


Now, I will move on from that horrible subject and catch up with the year's possibilities and goals.
Last post on 28 December, the goals were for me to hit the languages hard and to catch up on running and genealogy. Those are still part of the plan as well as my Celtic flutes and occasional shakuhachi.
The month is passing quickly and I need to get back to a schedule. My photography has also been a focus and will be the entire year as well. Dragon Digital photography has it's own Facebook page

                                                           Dragon Digital Photography

There are two portfolios I'm still working on and soon I'll be adding a third to that. The new camera is working very well and between the two bodies, I'm getting some good shots. Here are a few recent photos that I found rather good. Yeah, I'm a bit biased. :-)

     I'm trying to get more contrasting black and white images in the portfolio as they are my favourite. The D300 is my dedicated B/W Nikon body and gets most of the work. Still, the D7100 has been a beautiful addition to the collection and I have added a battery grip to it, making things a bit easier.
Keep checking back to the Dragon Digital page on Facebook for some new shots over the next few months. Hopefully there will be some that capture the eyes of some billionaire who will want to send me around the globe, shooting photos everywhere I go! Yeah...right. We all deserve and need fantasies, yes?



    On the family tree update...the Ancestry DNA sample has been sent back and received at the lab for processing. It will be six to eight weeks before the results come back so the research on the websites around the globe continue. Yet some good news has been found regarding my heritage: finally, the Irish connection I thought MIGHT be there on my father's side has indeed been found!
My grandmother's grandmother was an O'Hara and married to a Kirkpatrick, both of therm arriving from Ireland on the US shores in the nineteenth century at New York harbor.

This is a photo of James Kirkpatrick, born in 1800 here in Pennsylvania. His father was Archibald and the Irish born connection!! His is the gravestone you see in the photo, which is located in the Old Welsh Cemetery in Pennsylvania.



This proof is in the form of the landing certification and the ship manifest. How delightful! My Celtic heritage is something I'm very proud of as is the Germanic/Swiss side through my mother. I will be blogging more about this later as the DNA results arrive or I have more information come to light with the addition of new facts online. It is indeed a grand time to be a genealogist with the internet and new records adding daily.
Some people don't care about their heritage. I'm not one of them. It is of immense importance to me and I will continue to research every corner of my family's heritage.

The six month subscription to Ancestry gives me complete access and I will be working hard on the Ross/Masten/Guerassio family trees for the next half year! More to come later!

*********************************************************************************