Ok, I don't get angry at the ancestry.com ad, but I do find it amusing how they create narratives out of basic public records. With the [other] white woman one, I always think "I never met my so-and-so, but I looked on ancestry.com, and it turned out she had an address that was at least 1700 miles away, and I can no longer find because of subsequent renumbering of addresses in Boise. And that was worth knowing."

("I never knew my maternal grandfather but I'm glad to have spent the $$$ to find out he was disbarred in Iowa [true]. That was worth knowing.")

That's life!

Seriously. You're African American and you don't think you have ancestors that died free? How does that work, exactly? It's called history, and certain bits of it are pretty much inevitable.

Anyway, I found mediarelations@ancestry.com, and I sent off an angry email that could have been better constructed. Which brings my total of "Are you fucking with me?" emails to only three. Fox, about the Melrose Place gay kiss, DC about tarting up Starfire, and this. I spend so much time mad, and that's it? Huh.

I never knew my ancestor, but it turns out she was probably a prostitute and caused my other ancestor to be disowned from his samurai class family. But I'll never know for sure because the records were blown up in Hiroshima. And that was worth knowing.

My pirate ancestor sacked the Irish coastal town of Baltimore and hauled most of the populace off to the slave markets of Morocco. That's worth knowing.

Oh, and my Puritan governor ancestor tried to sell my Quaker ancestors into slavery in Barbados, but the ship captains wouldn't cooperate.

My great-great-something-grandfather was listed in census records as having the occupation "luftmensch." Roughly translated from the Yiddish, that means someone who doesn't seem to do any work at all, but somehow manages to survive anyway, so as far as anyone can tell, he's living on air. And that was worth knowing.

Some of my ancestors were slaves. Some weren't. It's not just worth knowing, IT'S FUCKING HIGHLY LIKELY.

someone who doesn't seem to do any work at all, but somehow manages to survive anyway, so as far as anyone can tell, he's living on air.

I can just hear someone describing him that way.

How does that work?

Sumi, if I go into half-time pay on illness, which I did when I gave birth and I will this year with Grace's surgeries, then I only get a partial year of service instead of a full year of service which means I have to retire later.

I can just hear someone describing him that way.

The word translates literally as "airman." I'm just wondering how it ended up on a census -- like, did he list that as his occupation, or did the census-taker decide that that was the best way to describe him?

Sumi, if I go into half-time pay on illness, which I did when I gave birth and I will this year with Grace's surgeries, then I only get a partial year of service instead of a full year of service which means I have to retire later.

Ohhhh. I thought you meant you'd have to retire a year from now.