Lift Up Your Hearts!

Many people travel on business.  It's not an easy life, and different people have different strategies for coping with the stress and boredom.  Some appreciate the opportunity to explore new cities; some enjoy the perks of nicer hotels, restaurants, and even golf courses than they would otherwise be able to afford; some accumulate airline and hotel points and use them to provide their families with otherwise unreachable opportunities.  There are also those who take advantage of the relative anonymity and distance from home and family to indulge in wanton behavior.

Some businessmen, however, wax poetic.  Don't miss this offering from our favorite thduggie.

The European Parliament has awarded its Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought to Chinese activist Hu Jia.  I'm embarrassed to say I know very little about his work, but the fact the the Europeans defied Chinese pressure to ignore him is enough for me to cheer about.

Read more here.

The life of a travelling businessman is not easy, but rain brings rainbows, at least if you look from a favorable angle.  My recent trip to Phoenix was such a rainbow. You'd think that an introvert like me would not be eager to leave home so soon after having been away for a month, but this was the time that was available—and it turned out to be perfect.

Fly Southwest airlines in the middle of the week, and you can get away with forgetting to print your boarding pass until four hours after check-in opens, as I did once and still got a boarding slot in the A-30's.  Fridays, however, are filled with savvy businessmen anxious to return home; Porter still snagged an A-30's number for me, but had to check in during the first couple of minutes to do so.  Due to his many flights on Southwest, his own A-list number is guaranteed.  Southwest is currently my favorite airline, they having so far been able to resist charging for normal luggage, drinks, and snacks.  Little things, I know, but their value in generating positive feelings toward the airline is disproportionate to the cost, at least in my case.  Conversely, I feel a lot worse about USAirways than their extra charges would actually merit.

Be that as it may, I enjoyed the flight, as I usually do.  You can tell I'm still a novice flyer:  I love observing the ground and the clouds; I love having an extended time when I can pull out my World of Puzzles magazine without any guilt feelings.  Well, not many anyway.  I know there's work I can do sitting in an airplane, but I generally give myself permission to ignore it when I'm flying.  After four hours in my seat, however, I could see why these little perks don't have the same thrill for those who fly frequently on business.

Our flight landed about 7 p.m., but as Arizona is a "free" state—refusing submission to Daylight Saving Time—my first ride through Phoenix was in the dark.  Despite the darkness, navigation to our hotel in Tucson was a piece of cake, thanks to the Hertz NeverLost GPS system in our rental car.  We had come prepared with physical maps from AAA and Google Maps printouts, and indeed they were also useful at different points during the week, but the NeverLost was a very helpful—not to mention fun—toy.

Porter had chosen to stay in Tucson to give us a head start on the drive to Saturday's destination:  Chiricahua National Monument.  One doesn't normally associate Holiday Inns with luxury, or at least I don't, but having frequent-stayer status hath its privileges, and we had a nice little suite—not that we had time to enjoy it much.  Jet-lag was making its presence known, and we had a big day planned for the morrow.

We've lived in Florida over 20 years and have had a few interesting animal encounters, like the time we were driving home from choir rehearsal and had to stop while an alligator crossed the road ahead of us.  Usually, though, it's pretty tame around here, once you get accustomed to lizards in the house, palmetto bugs (aka cockroaches on steroids), and spiders half the size of your hand.

There is a small part not far from our house that hosts a suprising variety of flora and fauna for its size.  From pileated woodpeckers to herons and sandhill cranes, from squirrels to gopher tortoises, you never know what you'll encounter on the jogging trail.  Once I even met a red fox.

I try to walk every day for about an hour, and at my pace four times around the jogging trail runs just five minutes over that, so since I had to be out in the car anyway, that's where I decided to walk today.  It was on my second lap that I had The Encounter:  wending its way across the trail just a few feet in front of my striding legs was my first ever, in-the-wild, live-as-it-could be coral snake!

Pencil-thin and about a foot long—perhaps he was a youngster—he was minding his own business and slithered off into the woods on the other side of the trail, so I did not let his presence deter me from completing my circuits.  On returning home, however, I hastened to google "coral snake" to prove my memory, which has been confused ever since I realized that the old jingle, "Red and yellow, kill a fellow; red and black, friend of Jack" (and variations thereon) could easily be reworked to say just the opposite.  It's like when I thought I was clever to remember how to get to the public parking lot near St. Luke's Cathedral in Orlando:  Turn at the first president.  Easy enough; one turns on Washington Street.  But then I realized that when driving one actually encounters Jefferson Street before Washington, so in another sense that is the first president, and I remained confused until I had made the trip often enough to remember to turn on Washington without any clever memory aids.

In the future, I don't think I'll be needing rhymes to help me tell the difference between a coral snake and the harmless scarlet king snake or milk snake.  Those equal-sized red and black stripes separated by narrow yellow bands will be hard to forget.  I've seen coral snakes in zoos before, but that is not the same thing as a personal encounter, and adrenaline sharpens memory.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has recently doubled its recommendation of vitamin D intake for children, from 200 IU to 400 IU per day.  Not only is vitamin D important in the prevention of ricketts, but there is increasing evidence that its deficiency can promote type 2 diabetes, cancer, and autoimmune diseases.  Some doctors think 400 IU may not be enough.

This recommendation is all well and good, but I draw the line at this:  Breastfed and partially breastfed infants should be supplemented with 400 IU a day of vitamin D beginning in the first few days of life.  The reason?  [B]ecause of vitamin D deficiencies in the maternal diet, which affect the vitamin D in a mother’s milk, it is important that breastfed infants receive supplements of vitamin D.

There's a point there.  If the nursing mother isn't getting enough vitamin D, one or both of the pair will suffer.  And I suppose the widespread recommendation of supplementation is the best a group like the AAP can do to address a general problem.  But I would be more inclined to address the real problem by making sure the mother is properly nourished, and in ways as natural as possible rather than through artificial supplements.

How can one acquire 400 IU of vitamin D?  A teaspoon of cod liver oil will get you more that, but if you want more palatable sources, 3.5 ounces of cooked salmon have 360 IU, the same amount of cooked mackeral has 345, 1.75 ounces of sardines in oil have 350, and 6 ounces of tuna canned in oil have 200.

Then there's my favorite source:  playing outside in the sun.  It doesn't take much, although the amount is variable, depending on latitude, time of year, and cloud cover.  The factors that affect UV radiation exposure and research to date on the amount of sun exposure needed to maintain adequate vitamin D levels make it difficult to provide general guidelines. It has been suggested, for example, that approximately 5-30 minutes of sun exposure between 10 AM and 3 PM at least twice a week to the face, arms, legs, or back without sunscreen usually lead to sufficient vitamin D synthesis.

There you go:  permission granted to play outside a few minutes several times a week.  Maybe schools should re-institute a sound recess policy.  Northern children would need longer playtimes, however.  The UV energy above 42 degrees north latitude (a line approximately between the northern border of California and Boston) is insufficient for cutaneous vitamin D synthesis from November through February; in far northern latitudes, this reduced intensity lasts for up to 6 months. Latitudes below 34 degrees north (a line between Los Angeles and Columbia, South Carolina) allow for cutaneous production of vitamin D throughout the year.  [Pardon the source's obvious prejudice against the southern hemisphere.]

Did you note the clever design here?  The northern climes, in which sun exposure is insufficient for at least part of the year to produce adequate levels of vitamin D, have the cold-water fish whose oils are high in that vitamin.  How efficient is that?  It's another indication to me that the system was designed to work, and since babies were designed to subsist solely on mother's milk for at least the first several months of life, it makes much more sense to me for the mother to make sure she gets plenty of vitamin D herself, and to take her baby outside with her now and then, than to give artificial supplements.

Legal disclaimer:  I'm a grandmother, not a doctor.  This is my opinion, not medical advice.  Check with your own doctor, do your own research, and use your own common sense.  [No, I'm not paranoid about the recent lawsuits against bloggers...not really....]

While waiting at the computer, and feeling a little nostalgic for Basel, I found this, which I post for those who wish to see a bit of where they will be in a few months.  Be sure to show Jonathan the Hammering Man.  If I don't look at the feet I can imagine the runner is Janet.  :)

I love to cook, but that's something I keep forgetting.  Maybe I need an audience; it hardly seems worth the time and effort when I'm eating alone, and even when I'm not we're usually so busy it hardly seems reasonable to spend much time cooking.  But Porter keeps talking about how this is the best restaurant in town, so it seems only fair to work towards making that a reality.  On Saturday, we had some of our favorite company over for dinner—the best kind to cook for, because they're always appreciative and don't mind being guinea pigs for whatever I want to try out.

Earlier this summer, my nephew had feasted us on Hazelnut-Crusted Chicken with Raspberry Sauce, a Bon Appétit recipe from Epicurious.com.  The taste was even more amazing than this beautiful presentation (click on picture for larger view):

It was a recipe I knew I had to add to my repertoire, so that's what I served.  Sort of.  Well, actually, that was the starting point, but I never can resist changing things along the way.  One of our guests doesn't eat meat, so I used salmon instead of chicken.  I had the store take the skin off the filet, then sliced it into pieces about two inches wide.  I could have bought hazelnuts, but had pecans in stock, and I used raspberry balsamic vinegar instead of white wine vinegar, canola oil instead of safflower, Cherchies' Champagne Mustard instead of honey mustard, Penzeys' Florida Seasoned Pepper for half the black pepper—you get the picture.  And because it was fish, I baked it for about 20 minutes instead of frying it first.

Despite all the changes, the end result was still really, really good.  I'm going to go raid the leftovers now....

I've never been to the Blue Ribbon Tavern in Grove City, so this isn't really a review, despite the category.  But I hope to get there someday, and since it sits nearly at the intersection of I-80 and I-79 in Pennsylvania, it's likely I will.  Taverns aren't at the top of my list of places to visit, but this one eliminates a huge potential problem by not allowing smoking on the inside.  (Not that they necessarily get credit for that, since I believe it's Pennsylvania law.)  However, this one has a few special attractions.

The bar itself was crafted by a good friend of ours, and I'd like to see it in real life.

The tavern is more than the bar; they have bona fide chefs, not short-order cooks, serving the restaurant.

I love heart-warming stories of dreams fulfilled.  This has been a life-long dream of co-owner Jim Nichelson, which he thought would never come to pass, least of all in his home town, since Grove City had been "dry" since Prohibition.  Nonetheless, he continued to garner work experience that prepared him for seizing the moment last year when the city voted to permit two liquor licenses.  To have a vision; to continue laying the groundwork for achieving it even when it seems impossible, so that you're ready to walk through the door when it opens; and to work hard and succeed because it's your job and you love it—that's a big part of the American Dream.

Here's a story about the Blue Ribbon Tavern, and here's another.

Among the people who read this blog, at least sometimes, there are those who live not far from Grove City, those who went to college there, and those who occasionally have business at the college.  If you find yourselves visiting Grove City and are hungry around lunchtime—or dinnertime, but it's likely to be more peaceful for lunch—stop by, admire the bar, and tell Jim where you heard about the Blue Ribbon Tavern.

Having read this analysis of what the next U.S. president (and other members of the Executive and Legislative branches) must face, I have two questions.

(1) This job clearly requires someone of superior intelligence, knowledge, skill, courage, and moral grounding.  Where in our political process is the ordinary voter given the opportunity to evaluate the candidates on those qualities?

(2) Why would anyone in his right mind want the job?

Read the article.  It's scary, but it's well-written and reasonably non-partisan.

Housing markets are funny.  I know, it's all in supply and demand, but I've found it somewhat amusing, ever since several of our friends in a missionary organization ended up living in upscale houses when the organization moved from California to Florida, because for tax reasons they had to reinvest in housing the large profits they made from selling their missionary shacks in California.  That works both ways:  having moved to Florida from the Northeast, we found ourselves caught in a real estate market that was flat for almost 20 years while places like Massachusetts and Connecticut skyrocketed, effectively precluding a return to our roots.

Yesterday I came across this property for sale in Vancouver, British Columbia, and it got me thinking.  You can have this "attractively priced" home for a mere $709,000.  Assuming that's Canadian dollars, it might be a bargain at about $663,000 in U.S. currency. (Size measurements are given in feet, however, so I'm not sure which units are being used.)

What intrigued me about this home was its surface similarity to our first home, in Rochester New York.  Our house was 1338sqft on a 40ft x 104ft lot; this is 1888sqft on 33ft x 122ft.  Actually, I think they are even closer in size than it appears, since the basement was not counted in our square footage, and it seems theirs has been converted into 750 square feet of living space. The houses were even built in approximately the same era.  Note that our old home is now supposed to have a market value of $110,000.

Location and market demand probably account for most of the price difference.  However, the second intriguing thing is what the owners have done with such a small space.  Whereas our home had three bedrooms and one bath, this one has five bedrooms and three full baths!  Look at the pictures:  they have made full use of every square inch of space.  It's a lovely home—even if I do find it exceedingly difficult to imagine paying seven hundred thousand dollars for a small house on a a minuscule lot, unless it also happened to be sitting on top of a diamond mine.  One thing I know:  Lovely home or not, I'm glad I'm not planning to move to Vancouver.

I like to ignore politics as much as possible.  I want to be a well-informed voter, but I don't believe that political propaganda—whether in the form of paid advertising or news commentary—serves that purpose well, and I'd rather change a dirty diaper than listen to a presidential debate. But as Pericles said, Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you.  And economics even more so.

In the last month I've changed many diapers, and the worst of them did not smell as bad as the current state of our economy and what it might lead to.  I've lived through several economic downturns, and haven't yet found them worth the worry they engender, if one has adhered to a policy of regular savings, avoided the get-rich-quick mentality, stayed out of debt for depreciable assets, and been willing (and able) to take a long-term view.  "This too shall pass" has always been an effective philosophy.

Our current financial situation, however, looks to pass with all the ease of a monstrous kidney stone.  I'm afraid it was easy, at first, to take a rather self-righteous attitude to the subprime mortgage debacle.  Sure, I was sorry for people who were losing their homes, but some of them had been downright crooked in the acquisition of their mortgages (taking on debt they knew they could never repay) and most of the others had violated very basic rules of money management (purchasing homes out of proportion to their incomes).  What's more, the financial institutions that facilitated such loans were either crooked or stupid themselves.

Be that as it may, when they take you away from the accident scene in a stretcher, it doesn't make a bit of difference that you had the right of way.  The many cannot avoid paying for the sins of a few.  No one can say, "It's not my problem."  If you have not a penny in the stock market, if you don't need a mortgage or a car loan or other credit, you still need a job, gas for your car, and food on the table—and all of these are threatened by the economy's convulsions.

For an insightful look at why we should be worried, yet with minimal political spin, check out what John Mauldin has to say in yesterday's InvestorsInsight.  I tried to boil the article down to a few excerpts, since I know many of you will not read the whole thing, but I gave up.  It's worth reading in its entirety.   The excerpts below (with my own emphasis) will only give you a taste.

[Most people] don't understand why taxpayers should spend $700 billion to bail out rich guys on Wall Street who are now in trouble. And if I only got my information from local papers and news sources, I would probably agree. But the media (apart from CNBC) has simply not gotten this story right. It is not just a crisis on Wall Street. Left unchecked, this will morph within a few weeks to a crisis on Main Street.

First, let's stop calling this a bailout plan. It is not. It is an economic stabilization plan. Run properly, it might even make the taxpayers some money. If it is not enacted very soon (Monday would be fine), the losses to businesses and investors and homeowners all over the US (and the world) will be enormous. Unemployment will jump to rates approaching 10%, at a minimum.

Banks can lend to consumers and investors about 12 times their capital base. If they have to write off 20% of their capital because of losses, that means they either have to sell more equity or reduce their loan portfolios.... At first, banks were able to raise new capital. But now, many banks are finding it very difficult to raise money, and that means they have to reduce their loan portfolios.... [But now] the credit markets have stopped functioning. Because banks and investors and institutions are having to deleverage, that means they need to sell assets at whatever prices they can get in order to create capital to keep their loan-to-capital ratios within the regulatory limits.

[P]art of this started when banks and investors and funds used leverage (borrowed money) to buy more assets. Now, the opposite is happening. They are having to sell assets into a market that does not have the ability to borrow money to buy them. And because the regulators require them to sell whatever they can, the prices for some of these assets are ridiculously low.

Last week, I wrote about a formerly AAA-rated residential mortgage-backed security (RMBS) composed of Alt-A loans, better than subprime but less than prime. About 5% of the loans were delinquent, and there are no high-risk option ARMs in the security. It is offered at 70 cents on the dollar. If you bought that security, you would be making well over 12% on your money, and 76% of the loans in the portfolio of that security would have to default and lose over 50% of their value before you would risk even one penny. Yet the bank which is being forced to sell that loan has had to write down its value. As I wrote then, that is pricing in financial Armageddon....  And guess what? There are no buyers.

One of the real reasons these and thousands of other good bonds are not selling now is that there is real panic in the markets.... We are seeing massive flights of capital from money market funds, including by large institutions concerned about their capital. What are they buying? Short-term Treasury bills. Three-month Treasury bills are down to 0.84%.

It gets worse. Last week one-month Treasury bills were paying a negative 1%!!! That means some buyers were so panicked that they were willing to buy a bond for $1 that promised to pay them back only $.99 in just one month.

[T]here is a silent bank run going on. There are no lines in the street, but it is a run nevertheless. It is large investment funds and corporations quietly pulling their money from some of the best banks in the country.... Any whiff of a problem and an institution that is otherwise sound could be brought low in a matter of weeks. And the FDIC could end up with a large loss that seemed to have come from out of nowhere.

There is something called the TED spread, which is the difference between three-month LIBOR (the London Inter Bank Offered Rate which is in euro dollars, also called The Euro Dollar Spread, thus TED) and three-month US Treasury bills. Three-month LIBOR is basically what banks charge each other to borrow money.... Quite literally, the TED spread is screaming panic.

Credit spreads on high-yield bonds that many of our best high-growth businesses use to finance their growth are blowing out to levels which make it impossible for the companies to come to the market for new funds. And that is even if they could find investors in this market! There are lots of other examples (solid corporate loans selling at big discounts, asset-backed securities at discounts, etc.), but you get the idea. Suffice it to say that the current climate in the financial market is the worst since the 1930s.

We are in a recession. Unemployment is going to rise to well over 6%. Consumer spending is going to slow. This is an environment which normally means it is tougher for small businesses and consumers to get financing in any event. Congress or the Fed cannot repeal the business cycle. There are always going to be recessions. And we always get through them, because we have a dynamic economy that figures out how to get things moving again.

Recessions are part of the normal business cycle. But it takes a major policy mistake by Congress or the Fed to create a depression. Allowing the credit markets to freeze would count as a major policy mistake.

Why do we need this Stabilization Plan? Why can't the regular capital markets handle it? The reason is that the problem is simply too big for the market to deal with. It requires massive amounts of patient, long-term money to solve the problem. And the only source for that would be the US government.

If we act now, we will start to see securitization of mortgages, credit cards, auto loans, and business loans so that the economy can begin to function properly.

What happens if we walk away? Within a few weeks at most, financial markets will freeze even more. We will see electronic runs on major banks, and the FDIC will have more problems than you can possibly imagine. The TED spread and LIBOR will get much worse. Businesses which use the short-term commercial paper markets will start having problems rolling over their paper, forcing them to make difficult cuts in spending and employment. Larger businesses will find it more difficult to get loans and credit. That will have effects on down the economic food chain. [We] will see stock market investments off another 25% at the least. Home prices will go down even more. Consumer spending will drop. What should be a run-of-the-mill recession becomes a deep recession or soft depression.

A properly constructed Stabilization Plan...should ultimately not cost the taxpayer much, and maybe even return a profit. The AIG rescue that Paulson arranged is an example of how to do it right. My bet is that the taxpayer is going to make a real profit on this deal. We got 80% of AIG, with what is now a loan paying the taxpayer over 12%, plus almost $2 billion in upfront fees for doing the loan. That is not a bailout. That is a business deal that sounds like it was done by Mack the Knife.

This deal needs to be done by Monday. Every day we wait will see more and more money fly out the doors of the banks, putting the FDIC at ever greater risk. Panic will start to set in, moving to ever smaller banks. Frankly, we are at the point where we need to consider raising the FDIC limits for all deposits for a period of time, until the Stabilization Plan quells the panic.

I understand that this is a really, really bad idea according classical free-market economic theory. You know me; I am as free market as it comes. But I also know that without immediate action a lot of people are really going to be hurt. Unemployment is not a good thing. Losses on your home and investments hurt. It is all nice and well to talk about theories and contend the market should be allowed to sort itself out; and if we have a deep recession, then that is what is needed. But the risk we take is not a deep recession but a soft depression. The consequences of inaction are simply unthinkable.

I've quoted much more than I meant to.  I hope some of you are still with me.  What it boils down to is that this has the potential to have consequences—not only here, but around the world—far worse than we dreamed of in the Y2K panic.  I know people who stockpiled food and water for that one...yet this is receiving a "ho, hum" from most of us.

I'm hardly a fan of most governmental intervention, and one of my greatest fears in all this is that in our panic we will subject ourselves to measures with disastrous long-term consequences, as happened with the Great Depression.  We need to analyze the causes of our woes and how best to prevent them in the future.  We probably do need a serious restructuring of how our society handles debt.  When Mauldin says, "Cheap loans with small down payments are the life blood of the auto selling business" my reaction is to see that as a major part of the problem, and something that needs to be changed.  But not now, not so drastically.  The patient needs surgery—not amputation.  Above all, let's not let the patient die on the table while we argue about who's to blame and who should wield the knife.

In the meantime—where are my old Y2K notes?

Last night the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra presented Fanfare, its 2008-2009 season opener, featuring the U.S. Army's Herald Trumpets.  As always, it was an enjoyable concert, though odd in a way, since I often found the orchestra too loud.  I'm accustomed to that in everyday life, and carry earplugs with me nearly everywhere I go, because whatever is amplified is nearly always amplified too much for my taste.  Yet this was live, acoustic music, and it wasn't just the guest trumpets that were too loud.  Orchestras are supposed to be too loud only if you're sitting directly in front of the percussion or the trumpets—not when you're far away in the balcony.  Weird.  Perhaps my ears are getting better as my eyes are getting worse.

As the oboe section is of primary importance to our family, we immediately noticed a gaping hole—where was Principal Jared Hauser?  And Laura Hauser was not amongst the bassoons, either.  There turns out to be a good reason for their absense:  Jared left to take the position of oboe professor at the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University.  Good for them, but very sad for us.  I'm particular about oboe playing, and I loved Jared's sound.  This reminds me of when Principal Flute Aaron Goldman left to become Assistant Principal Flute of the National Symphony Orchestra.  The OPO seems to be a sending-off point for really good (and nice) musicians.  I'll never forget the fun we had listening in one night when Jared and Janet played baroque oboe duets together.  I was hoping for a repeat some day—but now one is in Nashville, and the other in Switzerland.

Oddly enough, in a concert that featured such greats as Verdi, Shostakovich, and Richard Strauss, my favorite work was Tromba Lontana, by the living composer John Adams, whose Short Ride in a Fast Machine I had enjoyed when Janet performed it at Eastman.

Added 2008-09-29:  Stephan was kind enough to point out that I had written "Tromba Iontana" instead of "Tromba Lontana."  It comes of not knowing Italian, I suppose.  (The title was translated as "Distant Trumpet.")  I will grumble just a bit and ask why the program chooses to use a lower-case letter in a font where the lower case L and the upper case I are identical, and in a publication where most of the other titles have all major words capitalized—but I checked in the pdf version and it is, indeed, a lower-case L.

In my efforts to confirm the true title, I discovered these two YouTube videos, which you might enjoy.  I wonder, just a bit, about copyright issues when works like this are put on YouTube, but for now I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.

Tromba Lontana

Today we celebrated the Smithsonian Institution's Museum Day by visiting The Maitland Historical Society's Waterhouse Residence Museum.  If you're going to get in for free, why not check out a museum you didn't even know existed?  The Maitland Historical Society's museums are located on lovely Lake Lily in Maitland, and we enjoyed a walk around the lake after our tour.  I believe we can call Museum Day a hit; everyone in our almost-crowded tour had brought web-printed admission passes, and for most of us the museum was a new experience.

Since Mr. Waterhouse came originally from "the north," I can't help wondering if he was a descendant of my eighth great grandfather, Jacob Waterhouse, who immigrated from England to New London, Connecticut in 1676.  He had a nice house, much more so than would be expected for a middle class family, because he was a carpenter and buit much of it himself.  Part of the museum is his shop, which is filled with antique tools.  "Antique," I'm sure—but it let us know how old we are when we found ourselves giving a sotto voce commentary throughout the tour:  "This house is the same age as the one I grew up in," "My aunt had a stove like that," and "Those tools look just like the ones in my dad's workshop."

One of my great-great grandmothers, on my mother's side, bore the name Juan Fernandez Pritt.  In various census records she is listed as Penandis, Permandus, Joana P., Juann P., Joanne, and Pernandis E.  Even though one of the most thorough researchers in the area found her listed as Juan Fernandez in the Weston, West Virginia courthouse, who can blame him, and others, for assuming that was an error and calling her Joanna?  Even her middle name would be in question because of the census data.

I'm convinced, however, that Juan Fernandez is her correct name, although she was no doubt called by one or more nicknames throughout her life.  The name in that form shows up in a published biography of her eldest son (my great-grandfather), and also on his official death certificate, bizarre as it seems for a child born in the backwoods of West Virginia, with no Hispanic relatives in sight.

It took only a few minutes of searching to reveal several women with the same odd appellation.  Why would anyone name a little girl Juan Fernandez?  Someone else asked, and answered, that question here, in the case of Juan Fernandez Bennett and Juan Fernandez Cuffee.

Why would someone name a beautiful African American girl, who ultimately graduated from Philadelphia Medical College in 1888, “Juan Fernandez” Bennett? What kind of name was that for a girl? Family research revealed that Dr. Bennett’s grandmother, known as Johanna F. Cuffee, was originally named Juan Fernandez Cuffee. Apparently William Cuffee, her sea-faring father, named his daughter for the Juan Fernandez Islands off the coast of South America. These islands were the first place that ships set into port after the harrowing experience of rounding the Horn. 

Was there a seafarer amongst my great-great-grandmother's forebears?  What I know so far of her ancestry has her roots firmly planted in the mountains, but there's still room for an old salt, or perhaps an unusually literate hillbilly, somewhere in the family tree.

Trying to catch up on my e-mail backlog, I came upon the World Names Profiler through my NEHGS newsletter.  "The site plots 8 million names, using data that comes from electoral rolls and telephone directories around the world. Covering 300 million people in 26 countries, users can see where certain surnames originated, and where they have migrated to."

Here, for example, is the Wightman distribution map.

(Click map for larger image.)

The site also tells me that "Wightman" belongs to the "European-Other Western" group, that's it's an English language name of the English subgroup, that it is most frequently found (relative to overall population) in the United Kingdom, followed by New Zealand, Australia, the United States, and Canada, and that the most common first name coupled with Wightman is John.

Check it out.  It seems to have a limitation when it comes to umlauts, however.  "Stücklin" produced no results; "Stuecklin" occurs infrequently and only to any degree in Germany and Denmark.  However, "Stucklin," without the umlaut, is truly a Swiss name, with very small additional populations in France and the United Kingdom.  The top three cities?  Basel, Binningen, and Riehen.