Giorgio Sommer: Plaster Cast of Body, Pompeii (1880)

Resonance Of The Many Contexts
I've learned much about myself and my world in the almost seven years since I began writing a new series each quarter. Fambly will be my twenty-eighth series, my twenty-eighth book-length work since I started Another Summer on the 2017 Solstice. As I've mentioned here innumerable times, my original intention was to chronicle some sense of my manner of living because I always seemed to encounter unanswerable manner of living questions when thinking about my ancestors. They didn't leave very much of a clue about how they lived. I sometimes fear that I've left far too much information, for my descriptions sometimes seem, even to me, scaled a little too close to one inch equals one inch, more detail than could ever prove useful. Still, I figure whoever's interested might just as well have too much as too little information. I didn't start this experiment to starve my future genealogists. Those few scraps of writing in my forebear’s own hand featuring their unique phrasing and misspellings are genuine golden treasures. As I have been reassembling the stories of my forebears, I treasure the contexts I discover more than any other part of their stories. Fambly's much more than accomplishments and dates, but the resonance of the many contexts through which we've passed.

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Weekly Writing Summary

This Fambly Story reaches back to the edge of the Middle Ages to introduce one of my more infamous progenitors, Eleanor-of-Castile.

Print: Edward III, King of England and France (1817)
"I might just as well consider myself not even distantly related."
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This Fambly Story, JohnOfGaunt, starts my attempt to explain how my Fambly became commoners after directly descending from kings.

Publisher: William Godwin: Edward I. Edward II. Edward III. Richard II (1815)
"We're certainly directly related to almost everybody."
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This Fambly Story finds me Swirling around in the practices and protocols of the British Peerage, clearly out of my league, thank heavens!

Frans Stamkart: Salome (1910 - 1915)
"This world won't allow what couldn't ever come about."
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This Fambly Story finds me trying on the identity of The37thGreat-Grandson of one of history's most extraordinary men.

Students of Raphael: Coronation of Charlemagne (1514-15)
"I had better consider myself worthy of all that bother."
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This Fambly Story reaches the furthest back of any, back to the fourth and fifth centuries when the Roman Empire was crumbling and utterly relying upon a certain PrefectOfGaul.

Jean-Paul Laurens: C'étaient de ces figures étranges qui avaient parcouru la Gaule au temps d'Attila et de Chlodowig — They were one of these strange figures who had traveled Gaul in the time of Attila and Chlodowig  (1887)
" … some vestigial memory created forty-seven or eight generations ago …"
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This Fambly Story, ProgressReport, finds me nearly halfway through creating this series of stories introducing my family's history. I started with the conviction that the details would matter more than the context I uncovered. I was wrong.


Honoré Daumier: Karikatuur van een ruiter die achterstevoren rijdt Caricature of a rider riding backwards (1856)
" … they were engaged in a diaspora away from their Eden …"
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*The most popular posting this week was the announcement that I would be missing posting a story due to a brief illness.

I have been trying on alternate personalities as I sort through my Fambly histories. Each fresh character brings new perspective and I can't help but imagine if I might have been influenced somehow by the DNA we share. It's a schizophrenic experience that leaves me sorting through possible identities. I recognize some of Eleanor-Of-Castile in me as well as some JohnOfGaunt. The experience leaves me Swirling through possibilities. I deeply identify as the 37th Great-Grandson of the great one himself and with a certain PrefectOfGaul. My ProgressReport insists that I'm making progress, but I'm also feeling a bit overburdened with all the additional identities I'm juggling. Thank you for following along!

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Fambly, #PureSchmaltz