Honoré Victorin Daumier:
“Sir… Sir… Siiiirrrr… Christ, it’s annoying to have a colic
when the supervisor is supervising,”
plate 13 from Professeurs Et Moutards (1846)

Some Statement of Gratitude

I carefully tot up the page views each of my postings receives through the week to create what I call my TotList. This one-page weekly writing summary serves as my analytics since the analytics others provide don’t work for me. I understand that my analytics would seem primitive to anyone in the actual business of analyzing web traffic, but my writing’s nobody’s business but mine, and I don’t care about making money posting it. I seek some confirmation that you, my audience, have been out there. Unlike many of my much more famous royal ancestors, I don’t seek fealty from my readers, and I’m proud for my writing to serve as no more than a mild, if regular, distraction from more troubling issues. I count views because I care that someone’s there, that these stories end up somewhere. Some weeks, like this last week, my stories produce far fewer hits than my other doings. One photo of a plate of oyster shells might receive twice the number of views as the best of that week’s stories, as if that mattered. What matters for me here must be the engagement. That’s what gets me up and writing even when I can’t quite decide what to write about. That’s what encourages me to produce these Weekly Writing Summaries, even though they’re by far the most difficult posting I produce each week. I delight in framing each writing week, however difficult, in some statement of gratitude. Thank you for following along.

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Weekly Writing Summary

This Fambly Story investigates the many singularities lurking in my family tree. My Fambly features many individuals designated THE something or other. I marvel at this audacity.

Ethelred the Unready, circa 968-1016. Illuminated manuscript, The Chronicle of Abindon, c.1220. MS Cott. Claude B.VI folio 87, verso, The British Library. Scanned from the book The National Portrait Gallery History of the Kings and Queens of England by David Williamson, ISBN 1855142287., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6639643
"I can't quite wrap my arms around the title Emperor THE Chuck."
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This Fambly Story speaks to the insistent unknowability of history as each of us experiences it. Every player engaged ignorant of the effects and ultimate meanings to which their efforts might reduce, if, indeed, they ever produced any specific effects or meanings other than subtly influencing a Transpositioning into something unimaginable in their own time.

Miniature of Edward the Martyr in a royal genealogy of the 14th century.
" … the terribly fortunate ones, the benefactors of almost endless Transpositioning."
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This Fambly Story introduces my first attempt at Visualizing a part of my forebears' migration path. This story proved to be the most popular this period!

Wilbur Henry Siebert: "Underground" routes to Canada: showing the lines of travel of fugitive slaves (1898)
"Until then, I will be fueling renewed frustration."
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This Fambly Story, UnderConstruction, finds me fumbling my way toward completion. This morning, I'm distracted, trying to master some technology I believe might help me complete this series. This belief might prove to have been naive. Progress always involves entirely too much apparent lack of progress.

Mary Cassatt: Under the Lamp (c. 1882)
" … this series remains UnderConstruction and strenuously avoiding completion."
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This Fambly Story finds me DeconstructingHistory in a perhaps vain attempt to better preserve it. Genealogy might, at its root, be a vanity.

Mary Cassatt: The map (1889)
" … anybody interested in this Fambly's history will have to rediscover it for themselves …"
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This Fambly Story, FeepingCreaturism, finds me backing away from the ever-expanding exposition of my extensive history. However impressive the sheer size of my Fambly's history, nothing's improved by attempting to produce a story that seems too detailed. The more complex insists upon the most straightforward explanations.

Various Unnamed European Artists (19th century), compiled by Queen Adelaide of England: Queen Adelaide’s Album (1823–1837)
" … something quite the opposite of an encyclopedic rendering."
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This writing week came after I'd converged all the Fambly Tree branches, spokes, and threads. I encountered the WhatNow? WhatNext? point without definitively deciding the answer to either question. I dabbled in presenting a few curious highlights: The Fambly THEs, The paradox of choosing a particular perspective to represent such many and varied ones. I realized that I was reporting while under construction and deconstructing my history. I wrestled with complexity until it started teaching me again why I shouldn't wrestle with such things. It might be better for me and this universe if I at least try to aim to keep my explanations simple. I'm uncertain as of this writing if history ever needs explaining. It might always be just whatever it was, slightly beyond understanding but well within my ability to appreciate it for having been, and somewhat inscrutable. Thank you for following along.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Fambly, #PureSchmaltz