About me.

I signed in tonight intending to fill in the 'about me' portion of this little project. But it soon hit me that this entire blog is in some sense 'about me.' I WILL fill in those blanks. It will be the usual stuff I suppose, though I might get a bit creative.
It hit me while I was watching the CBS Evening News tonight that the concept, 'about me' involves an 'infinite idea.' That is to say, 'about me' (also 'about you'), includes, among others, the idea of genealogy. Genealogy is an Infinite Idea. Therefore if I began by telling you who my daddy was and who my mommy was it would tend to be a long night. The night would be devoted to a long series of 'begats.' That series would stretch all the way back to Adam and Eve. You would not stand for that. I know you.

So I came up with a way to skip all those begats: First of all I think you will grant me that somewhere in the dim reaches of ancient history about six thousand years ago my ancestral line connected with Adam and Eve. You will grant me that. So I trace my ancestry back that far with (I presume) no flack from you. We have that common ancestry. But you stop right there, while I go on farther back. I go back to the stone age. I admit that. I go back even further (now I'm wondering about the 'farther-further' problem). I trace my ancestry back to the Pliocene. In fact, beyond.

To make a long story short I trace my ancestry back to Debuchan (deh-boo-chan).
Debuchan means 'fat one' in Japanese. I know this because I asked Kootch during the news. Kootch is my Japanese wife. Debuchan is my name for an obese star which existed five billion years ago. (Over-eating is not only a modern problem.) Debuchan ate too much. Way too much. She became fat. Fat stars burn much hotter than skinny stars, and so, after only a few tens of millions of years Debuchan had used up most of the energy she needed to stay in the fast lane. There came a point where she no longer had the energy to withstand the pull of her own gravity and she collapsed. The result was an explosion. Debuchan spilled her guts, so to say, all over the local cosmosian neighborhood: lots of Iron, calcium, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon... and I could go on and on but you get the idea.

I was, in some sense, present in that debris, which later coalesced into our solar system. Maybe you were too. Maybe not. I wouldn't know.

So I trace my ancestry back to Debuchan. And I suspect that I could even farther back if I wanted to drag this out, but I will spare you that.

Which brings me to Kootch, which is my nickname for my wife, Keiko. 'Kootch' is derived from 'kuchi' which means 'mouth' in Japanese. I gave her that nickname because of something she said one day. I forgot what it was, but clearly the woman had a big mouth. The name stuck with me and I have called her Kootch ever since. She had no objection.

Being married to a Japanese woman has its plusses and minuses. For one thing you get to eat some very strange food. Kootch did not know how to cook when we first got married. I told her that was no problem: in America you only needed to open a can of pork and beans and warm it up and you had a meal. She believed me, and when she arrived in Salina Kansas in 1958 she was shocked by what she tasted. And not only shocked by the taste of pork and beans and other American food but also shocked by Salina, Kansas.

Kootch was from Tokyo. Imagine going from Tokyo, Japan to Salina, Kansas and you will get some idea of the meaning of, 'culture shock.' And even I was shocked. I had spent two years in the most vibrant, fascinating, crowded, odiferous, exotic, joyous place imaginable only to end up in Salina Kansas.

Which brings us to Kathleen. Kathleen was our baby girl. Her name was supposed to be Cathrine but it got lost in translation so to say, and Cathrine arrived in Salina as Kathleen. The mixup had something to do with the way Japanese pronounce the letter 'R.' Japanese persons seem to say 'R' when they really mean 'L' and vice versa. I was ok with Kathleen. No problem. One of my aunts was named Kathleen. No big deal. Furthermore Kathleen did not have a middle name. I had forgot about that, so when I sent the letter to Japan I had only suggested Cathrine.

This brings us to Charlie. Charlie is (boom) the son of Kathleen. I mention Charlie, of course, because Charlie fits in with the subject matter. The geneology ends there because I don't know where Charlie leads. It is a mystery (boom) to me.

Jenniffer showed up several years after Kathleen and this time we got the name right. Unfortunately I am unable to (boom) describe any further geneology. This deplorable fact is one of the reasons I am writing this.

Enough for tonight. I will now do my 'blog bio.'

Nope. The system would not take my username and password.