Blathering and Dithering

So yeah, the first week of kicking ass and taking names, also known as dieting and working out, was pretty good, but since then nada, zip, zilch, zero progress. I think I'm still making up for the shit I ate (and guzzled) at that Memorial Day party, which only serves to piss me off further. But enough of the Fat Girl Diaries - I'm sick of me bitching about it, so let's move on, shall we?

The last two and half weeks of school are going at a snail's pace. I think there may be a cog stuck in the space/time continuum, because SURELY it should be June 10th by now. And could they, the ubiquitous, yet faceless THEY of public educational institutions, possibly refrain from asking for yet more money to fund yet another stupid travesty of time and funding wastage - ie: class parties where everything has to be store-bought and preservative laden, lame-ass 5th grade musical productions nobody even volunteered for, but they have to show up for and perform in after school hours are over, buying some piece of lawn furniture in the name of the 5th grade, like they're seniors in high school. Does this sound like Educational Retardation to anyone else? Excuse me, I have to scream primally for a moment-

I whipped through a re-read of the last two Harry Potter books this past week, and now I'm reading "Albion's Seed", by David Hackett Fischer. This book was published in 1989 by Oxford University Press, but I'd never run across it before. I would have loved to have this guy for a history professor, since most of mine were dripping bores. This has to be the most entertaining book of history I've ever read, but I know you're asking, "Yeah, okay, but what's it about?" Alright, let me backtrack.

We were in Barnes and Noble a couple of weeks ago, on one of those Girl's Night Out occasions. I picked up four books in five minutes and was trying to find some rationalization to not buy any of them, seeing as how the money would have come out of our grocery budget, and kids need to eat, even if grown ups don't. So I sat down, on the floor, because the Crabtree Valley B&N has NO DAMN CHAIRS (what the hell IS that?), winnowed out the TS Eliot "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats" (I did already have a copy, even if it's pages are falling out), and "The Annotated Brothers Grimm" (because I do have about 4 different variations of Grimm's already, although a Grimm's scholar can never have too many copies), "The Joseph Campbell Companion" (which I bought because I thought it might help me avoid sharp objects pointed at my throat - not so much, strangely) and started to read "Albion's Seed - Four British Folkways In America".

In my ongoing family history research it's not unusual to hit walls where the data banks out there have nothing to offer up. I've found that going to the history books and getting insight into what's going on during a specific period can often yield a way around those stumbling blocks. This books covers the colonization of America by four separate cultural groups from the British Isles, and how those distinctly individual groups shaped the regional cultures we have even today. The four groups are:

• East Anglia to Massachusetts: The Exodus of the English Puritans, 1629-1641
• The South of England to Virginia: Distressed Cavaliers and Indentured Servants, 1642-1675
• North Midlands to The Delaware: The Friends' Migration, 1675-1725
• Borderlands to the Backcountry: The Flight From North Britain, 1717-1775

Fischer says in his foreword that only about 20% of Americans can trace their ancestry back to any of these groups, but that their early influence set the tone for how this country has developed, and while later groups of immigrants do affect the culture in those areas, they are also subject to a certain amount of assimilation from the culture already present.

Someone asked me once, while we were vacationing in Wales, whether the United States actually has a culture of it's own, other than the omnipresent consumerism. I wish I'd had this book then, because while I knew that America does indeed have several regional mini-cultures, not all of which are British-based, it's hard to articulate that, especially to someone whose country would fit into the state of Texas. We are the size of several countries, and our culture reflects both that size as well as the mixing pot of ethnicities we come from.

But back to the book. I had to have this book, because three of the groups discussed in it are in my family tree, and I'm still trying to figure out where and when those ancestors got here, as well as tracking their migration in the early days of westward expansion.

Example: I'm am at odds with some of my fellow researchers of the Toy family, as to the name origin, and the time frame of it's point of entry into America. Based on a very flawed and limited resource genealogy done in the 1950s, most researchers of the Toy family think the name was tagged onto a Swedish patronymic tradition when the English Quakers showed up in the 1680s to colonize what is now New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Looking a little further south towards Virginia and Jamestown, I found evidence of the name Toy there as early as 1642, and that group had ties to families of the same name in Bristol, England and Carmarthen, Wales, but they didn't stay in the Virginia colony for long; there are records of women with that last name marrying into other families, but very few men. Where did they go, and why did they leave that area? "Albion's Seed" actually answers that question - the elitist hierarchy that governed that area made it impossible for anyone of common rank to move up socially. Even if they had a large and successful plantation, they would have been shunned by the families of "Old Virginia", who were descended from the younger sons of English nobles, and maintained a feudal caste system in that area, keeping the poor uneducated and indentured as much as possible, and providing opportunity only for those of a certain social rank.

Reading the part on the Virginia Cavaliers was lurid, and horrifying. It's not hard to see why anyone of common stock would want to get the hell out of Dodge. Obviously, my roots are not in that tradition, because I was nauseated and incensed by the accounts. An indentured female servant was often casually raped by her master, so that she would have to work a longer indenture to "make up" for the time she spent being pregnant, and that was after she was stripped and whipped publicly. Rape was considered on the level of petty theft in this society, and there wasn't much concern for the rights of anyone who wasn't of the elite.

Right now I'm reading about the Quakers, thank god, which is like a drink of fresh water after the misery of the Virginians. It's interesting to note that while a large number of Quakers show up in the Delaware Valley in the year 1682, there were already settlements of Quakers in that area. The Quakers were prosecuted far more violently in both England and America than the Puritans ever were, and droves of them came to the New World to find religious freedom. Unlike the Puritans, who had zero tolerance for anyone not of their faith, the Quakers actually encouraged religious pluralism, and lived peaceably alongside neighbors of different faiths. Their governing laws lay the groundwork for our system of government, and their work ethic, firmly in the middle between the Idle as a Status Symbol Virginians, and the Work Till Ye Drop of the Puritans, is the basis of the middle class work ethic our parents grew up in. Even their Midlands dialect is the foundation of a large part of our common speech in this country.

I haven't gotten to the Puritans (okay, I skipped them, because they really are kind of a drag - blah, blah, God's Will, blah, blah) yet, but the Scotch-Irish are next, and I'm sure they're going to be a rowdy bunch. They're the other big influence on the American Way - those stubbornly independent, frontier-loving, don't-put-much-stock-in-larnin, man-I-hate-crowds-and-the-government folks. Maybe it's just me, but I love the backwoodsmen. Think of Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln; they are all either backwoodsmen or a product of the defiant spark of that culture.

And now that you've all gone to sleep, or drifted off to read something far more lively than me spouting off about history, I reckon it's time to call it a post.

And yes, there will be a pop-quiz later, just to see if you were paying attention.

Because This Is How Lazy I Am These Days

Hi, this is me, the laziest blogger ever. How lazy can it get, you might ask? I'm posting a letter, fer crying out loud! Granted, I'm going to be a lot perkier when writing the Cuz, because, well, she brings it out in me, kind of like how I desperately need a beer after visiting my deeply religious, teetotalling relatives, or the way I tend to utter random swear words, when passing a particularly large and pompous church. What? Everybody doesn't do that! Seriously?

Anyway, my thanks to the Velveeta Wingnut for her inspiring presence! Oh, and I cut out the parts where I was talking about animals, nudity, sex, and food, in a sort of food processor kind of amalgamation. Because I care.

Hey Woman,
I don't know what the hell my problem is these days - the kitchen is coming along, though I think we're going to hold off on the counter tops until next year, when we can afford to do solid granite, vs trying to lay granite tile. More money, but less bullshit, ya know? But the painting is coming along - about halfway done - the humid weather makes it hard to paint walls, so this week will be another big push to finishing that part. House updates - yikes - I know you
know what I'm saying!

But yeah, I've been in this funk for awhile now. Partly the whole losing several cats this past winter, partly I'm just feeling like a damn ancient whale - fat and old!!! WTF? How does this kind of shit happen? I'm thinking of joining a gym, that's how desperate I am - and I've NEVER joined a gym before. Film at 11.

We're going to be up in PA June 14th-21st, Sunday to Sunday. I want to go up to Buffalo on the 19th of that week, to see my aunt, and take the kids to the Allbright-Knox Art Museum (and hit the grocery store/ butcher shop while I'm there. Oh bright and shining TOPS MARKET, what siren call your aisles sing to me! Oh FEDERAL MEAT MARKET, how I long to stand in silent wonder, gazing at your dazzling array of beautiful meat, to smell your homemade kielbasa and hot dogs!)

BUT I digress -

So when do you want to get together that week? Do you want to go to Kittanning or should we try Butler this time? I've never been to the Butler Historical Society - don't even know if there is one, actually! What are you looking for?

Oh, I knew I had something for you. I found a reference to a Jeremiah Bonner, who was a blacksmith in the Armstrong County area, in the James Whisker book on PA gunsmiths. Isn't he one of your ancestors, or is he just a relative? Either way, I thought it was interesting, and thought it might be pertinent.I'll bring the book with me. I admit, I have a thing for blacksmiths!
By the by, nope, never received the Bowser book. I do remember you ordering it. If your desk is like my desk, it might just have gone to the black hole. I was thinking of dropping into Mechling Books, since they're near Butler. I want to ask them about prices for publishing a couple of different things, about family bible restoration, and maybe pick up a few books from them, if they sell them out of their store, as well as ship them. So if you can't find it, I can
always get a copy from them - I don't think it was a pricey book.

I don't have a ton of research to do this trip, although I could go to Kittanning again. The Snyders I'm tracking seem to have been in Armstrong county by 1800; a Valentine Snyder (nickname, "Felty") in Buffalo Twp (1800 census), and then him and two younger guys in Toby Twp, in 1810, one of which is Peter Snider, which was my grandmother's great great grandfather. So I've tracked back to her 3x great grandfather so far, and then the trail goes to Prussia, which apparently is one of the provinces of the Palatine region. Did you know that? I
sure as hell didn't!

I received an email from a guy in Franklin, PA who actually read the TOY family compilation - go figure! His SIL's grandmother was a first cousin to my grandfather, and she had some info I didn't have. Groovy, even groovier that anybody read and found something in that massive tome! But the goocher is, this guy's last name is SNYDER, which, while it's a lot like SMITH, in terms of commonality, still, he's in the right place to possibly be related. He did sign off with a
"God Bless You", which always puts my pagan neck hairs up, but he might have some useful links, who knows?

Anyway!!!

Just let me know when and where you want to meet up, m'kay? We just have the parental units going with us this year, so I might even be able to leave the kids with them, unless you WANT me to bring the whole circus, 'cuz your mom's going and she wants to see everybody, or something like that! I'm squeezy either way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know - I'm supposed to be out in the kitchen, painting right now, dammit! All right, fine - I'm going!


Sheesh!

(So do you feel kind of voyeuristic now, dear reader, from getting a peek into my personal correspondence? I feel positively nekkid now - which isn't really as titillating as it sounds, sadly! But I'm working on it!)

And We're Back!

View from the front porch

Barn doorway Our vacation to Pa was wonderful. You know it’s a good trip when you don’t want to come home at the end. Our beloved old farmhouse was the same crumbling, creaky, time encrusted place we’ve grown to love as our home away from home. The fields around us abounded with wildflowers more beautiful and fragrant than any hothouse could produce. The long grasses rustled with perky little chipmunks, rotund, waddling groundhogs, and songbirds of every kind.Wildflowers
The weather was a welcome respite from the 100 degree days we were having at home. I think it hit close to 80 a couple of days, but the evenings were downright chilly, and we all huddled appreciatively under our fuzzy blankets. In the morning, we sat up on the back porch, warming our hands with mugs of hot coffee as we looked out at the hillside swathed in ribands of mist.One morning as we rumbled and bounced along one of the myriad dirt roads, looking for old houses and little family cemeteries, we chanced upon a flock of wild turkeys grazing in a field. Our arrival caused them to part-fly, part-trot down towards the woods, and a flock of little goldfinches swirled up out of the bushes by our cars; black winged bolts of sunshine startled into mass exodus.My eldest nephew rode up with my dad this year, and as it was his first trip up we gave him the tour. In spite of my dad’s protestations that he can’t remember anything about family history, while we were up at Cherrytree (oldest church in Venango County, with a cemetery to match) I caught him showing my nephew the graves of Henry Ross and Susannah Baney, and explaining that they were the grandparents of Minnie Gahring Toy, his grandmother. I know that somewhere, maybe in the air all around us, his grandmother was happy to see a tradition of hers perpetuated.Oh, and those stories about Grandpa Jake that I said we would be hearing while we were up here? I laughed to myself all Sunday night as my dad told those very stories to his grandchildren.On Tuesday, we took a day trip down to Kittanning, to meet up with the Velveeta Wingnut, my long-lost cousin and evil twin, and show her around the ancestral stomping grounds. I was really glad I’d gotten lost a few times there before; the main road across the river was under construction and traffic was being shunted in several convoluted directions. We figured it was our karmic debt for getting around Pittsburgh with minimal construction delays.We found a bunch of different old cemeteries that held family members from several of the seven branches we’re researching, and it was really gratifying to see everyone get caught up in finding the headstones of family members. We broke for lunch and ate at the Allegheny Mariner, which is just about the nicest place in Kittanning, with an awesome view of the river from its dining room. I guess we could have been working instead of having a sit-down luncheon, but I thought it would be nice for us to take the time to get to know each other and break bread, as it were, with fellow family members.

Back up in Oil City and Franklin, there's so much to see. This is a place that peaked in the Victorian period and it shows in the architecture. We spent a couple of days just walking around and taking in the sights.

Detail of stairway in the old Transit Building
One of our favorite places, the Yellow Dog Lantern. This is one of two places that have been in business continually for over a hundred years

Interior of the Yellow Dog Lantern

The neck grip helps calm the little critter

The most amazing antique mall/auction house ever

In Franklin, there's an antique mall/auction house housed in the old armory building that's like no other antique place I've ever been to. The owner has one of the most incredible collections of Wild West Show memorabilia, Pennsylvania long rifles, Civil War artifacts, Native American artifacts, flintlock and black powder guns I've ever seen. The regular antiques he has for sale are pretty amazing as well, but we were all blown away by his "museum" upstairs, where he housed his personal collection. I've never seen this many artifacts in one place, not even in a real museum. My dad, who usually doesn't go in for antiquing, was hard pressed to leave this place!

This next week, we're off to the Outer Banks, so I'm up to my ass in packing again. Because Murphy's Law is never more apparent than when you're pressed for time, the washing machine died first thing this week. I've been hoofing it up to Bea's to wash clothes for the upcoming journey until the new washer gets here, so needless to say, I've been a bit busy, hence absent from the blogosphere. I'm totally out of the loop with all of you, but after this week, when the summer doldrums set in, I know I'll be doing a prodigous amount of back reading and catching up with everyone.

Summer night on the porch

Trip to Wales~Part III

The rest of this story can be found here:
Part I
Part II

Because we had missed our original flight to the UK, we lost an entire day of our trip, cooling our heels in that misery known as Newark. For our last full day in Wales we had to make a choice between going north to Aberystwyth and doing research in the Welsh National Library there, or taking our last day and heading to the coast to see St. David's Cathedral and some cairns along the way. Technically, this was a research trip, and we should have gone to Aberystwyth, but we unanimously decided that we would get more out of seeing the coast. We tucked away our last prodigious traditional Welsh breakfast, which we felt compelled to photograph for posterity, before we hit the road. Here you see my dad and the hub-man oohing and aahing over our breakfast, while our lovely hostess looks on a bit nervously. I don't know if anyone had ever photographed her cooking before!

Our hosts were delightful people, and their B&B was immaculate and quite comfortable, but I think we were maybe just a bit too much for them, being Ugly Americans, and all. However they felt about us, the breakfasts were incredible! Fried bacon, which was closer to what we would call ham, fried tomatoes, eggs over easy, and fried toast. Add to this fresh grapefruit, orange juice, toast with the most incredibly tart and delicious marmalade, and fabulous french-press coffee. We did eat breakfast at a couple of inns during our trip, but none of them could touch the home cooking at Cwmgwyn Farm.
We left Llandovery early Thursday morning, headed for St. David's and the coast. We drove through Carmarthen and some other smaller towns on our way east. We were starting to wonder just how far this drive would be, when I sniffed the air and exclaimed, "I smell the ocean!" We rounded a bend in the road and there was the coastal town of Newgale and my beloved North Atlantic. Its kind of an odd sensation, to be looking at your same old ocean from the other side of it. It was breathtakingly beautiful, but I confess; as I looked to the west my heart was thinking of home. Not long after our pit-stop at Newgale, we drove into the very picturesque town of St. David. The sun actually deigned to show itself at this westernmost point of the country and the sky was a brilliant blue. The salty delight of the air paired with a cool crispness was possibly the most perfect air I've ever breathed into my generally allergic lungs and chronically outraged sinuses.

We parked and walked through the town to St. David's Cathedral. St. David, or Devi/Dewi, is the patron saint of Wales, and his Cathedral is considered to be the most sacred site in Wales. It was one of the earliest Christian centres in Britain, dating from the 6th century, and many early missionaries travelled from here to Ireland and Brittany. But considering the Prescelli Hills were just up the coast, I'm not sure I would agree with St. David's being the most sacred site. The Prescellis are the place of origin for the bluestones in the center circle at Stonehenge and are also the site of many Iron-age and neolithic burial mounds. These are the ruins of the Bishop's Palace at St. David's Cathedral. There was scaffolding around parts of this, as a restoration project was underway. I loved the checkerboard mosaic aspect of the upper stonework. The stone used to build St. David's Cathedral is of a local origin and it's purple. It was hard to really see the purple color in the bright sunlight, but it did show up in the photos. Something else I noticed in the pictures that wasn't apparent when standing next to the immenseness of the church is how irregularly it's shaped. The tower is off-center and the back of the church is built into a hill as well, giving it an uneven aspect as well. This is the interior of the main nave of the church. The ceiling was completely panelled in intricately carved wood and the lower arches all had different patterns carved in them. The flat ceiling was put in later, because of structural issues in supporting a stone roof. In the High Gothic style, you would see barrel vaulting or rib vaulting giving the height, instead of these massive rows of arches supporting even more arches above. Don't you just love the Jesus-on-a-trapeze thingy hanging from the ceiling? Who knew he was so talented? Obviously, this church has been added to over the years. I don't know what happened to the original 6th century structure, but what we see here is called Transitional Norman, with an arches supporting arches structure. It was embellished at some point in the Gothic period with the beautiful ribbed vaulting and the intricate coat of arms painted between each rib. I meant to take pictures of the many tombs inside the church, but my camera was not liking the dark gloom of the church's interior. We bought a map of the Welsh coast in the gift shop at St. David's that showed several neolithic burial mounds quite close by. Following the map, we found ourselves on a narrow, one lane, dirt road that turned out to be someone's driveway, more or less. At one point we had to come to a complete halt in this narrow lane, for fear of running over one of the chickens and roosters who had excitedly come out to greet us and now unconcernedly blocked the way. Finally getting past the chickens, we surreptitiously parked our car on the grassy hill behind the house and began the climb up to a peninsula of land known as St. David's Head. As we crested the hill we looked off to our left and saw this:
The sunny and blue skies had disappeared, covered over by a rapidly moving front of wind and rain and lowering clouds. It was so very Bronte sisters-like, to be walking the moors, and watching the storm come in, but I was with three men, so I kept this thought to myself. We struck out across the moors towards the north, with the mist rising and swirling around us. Halfway across, we encountered a quintessentially British couple, and stopped to say hello. The wife had the horsey look commonly associated with the Royal family, and the husband, with his tidy little mustache and tweeds responded to all our remarks with a "Yes, yes, yes!" that we still love to use. They were very nice, really, and I feel a little guilty writing seeming disparities about them, but remember - I am an Ugly American, so I kind of can't help it. We walked out to the water, which was roiling and thrashing up against the rocks that made up the shoreline. There wasn't really any beach at this spot, but we didn't care; walking the moors was a novel pastime, and a plain old beach would have just been a letdown.

Those prodigious Welsh breakfasts always lasted just long enough to find us somewhere without lunch prospects, but this time I was prepared. We propped ourselves against a boulder that blocked some of the wind and ate sharp cheese and crackers we had bought back in Cheddar, washed down with garlic stuffed green olives and water. We gazed out at the rapidly disappearing Atlantic, as the fog came in quickly and completely obscured our vision. as we headed back up the hill to the cairn, I could well imagine people getting lost in an influx of this stuff.

The fog and mist were, in the words of Yukon Cornelius, "thick as peanut butter". At some points we couldn't even see each other as we walked along together, but the obscurity came and went, with helpful gusts from the wind. It did make for an eerie scene as we approached Coetan Arthur, a 5,000-year-old burial chamber, that is reputed to be King Arthur's resting place. Of course, there are a number of cairns throughout Wales that are reputed to be Arthur's tomb!

While my brother and I posed for this shot, the old man headed up and over the hill. We joked that he was looking for the old elephant/ancestral graveyard. What he actually found up at the top of the summit was a concrete pad that had been used as a lookout during WWII. If there had been more time and better weather, I would have liked to explore this area further, because we missed a number of ancient sites here, due to time restraints and fog. Back in the car, we headed north towards the coastal towns of Fishguard and Newport, where there are ferries to take you across the channel to Ireland. In a future trip to this area it might be fun to fly into Ireland and take the ferry from there to Wales - it can't be any further than driving all the way across Wales from Bristol, England, and it would be fun to see a bit of Ireland.

In Newport we made our first pub stop of the day, at the Golden Lion, a cozy little hotel and pub right on the main road. I had tried to book rooms for us here, but a band of bike riders beat us to it, booking the entire place. A shame, really, because it looked like a nice place. We had a few pints, played some tunes on the jukebox and chatted with the guys playing pool, before setting off to find our next cairn.

Carreg Coetan, also a reputed burial site of You-Know-Who, (No, not Voldemort, silly! King Arthur!) was right in Newport, down a side road. It was like a little park, nestled in a small neighborhood. My brother took this picture and he was all excited that he had caught the tiny gap between the capstone and the stone holding it up (look at this picture up close and you'll see it). My dad surprised himself by really loving these ancient tombs. He had kind of scoffed at the idea of seeing ancient sites (its what he does, we just ignore him), but after St. David's Head, he not only understood our fascination, but he was getting into it as well. See the little leprechauns hiding in the cairn? Our last cairn of the day, Pentre Ifan, was the biggest and most impressive. Looking through the cairn you can see the Prescellis and Carni Ingli; Mountain of the Angels. I don't know how we did it, but we encountered very few people at any of these sites, which greatly enhanced our ability to get a feel for the energy at these places. We took a group shot as well, which is a little dark, but I wanted to show the massive proportions of Pentre Ifan, as compared to the smaller cairns we had seen earlier. Because of its size and extreme age (built around 3500 BC) this is considered one of the most important sites to see in western Wales. Pentre Ifan was the last planned stop of the day. We got back into the car and headed a little further north to hook up with the highway that led back to Carmarthen, where we had booked rooms at the 16th century coaching inn, The Boar's Head. Along the way, we noticed signs for a historic castle, and decided to stop and check it out.

Cilgerran Castle, first built in the early 12th century and improved upon in the early 13th century, was the site of quite a bit of Welsh history, both legendary and factual. It sits on the tidal river, Teifi (Tiffy), right outside of Cardigan. Again, we missed the crowds and had the entire castle to ourselves to explore. Unlike the ruins at Carreg Cennen, Cilgerran was more intact and we were able to climb the ancient stairs inside and feel truly immersed in the history of the place. Never a believer in the theory of Ancestral Memory, my father had an immediate connection to this place, and said that he felt like he had been there before. We could hardly drag him away from the place; this from the man who said he didn't want "to see a bunch of churches and castles".
Cilgerran is built of local slate and the construction was fascinating. I loved the stack of slate discs that form the support for this staircase.
It was kind of maze-like to follow your nose around this place, and I got lost from the others more than once! As we were headed back out of Cilgerran, we met the curator, who had just realized there were visitors over at the castle. It had been a slow day, so she had nipped out for a cup of tea. We felt bad for crashing and offered to pay the admission, but she waved us along. So we headed back to Carmarthen and the inn for our last night in Wales.

I hate to even say it, but I'm afraid this is going to have to extend into a Part IV. Even I feel like this is way too many parts but I don't know any other way to do the trip justice. For my rambling and allusions to self-importance, I ask patience and forgiveness of you, dear reader. In the future, I will attempt to only tell short stories!

Part IV: Our night at the Inn and the trip back to England, and then it will be done, done, DONE, I swear!

Trip to Wales~Part II

Part I can be found here.

On our third day we went to the Carmartheshire County Museum, which is housed in the former Bishop's Palace in Abergwili. We stopped off in Llandovery to take this picture of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd (Hloo-well-an ap Griffith, for the phonetically curious) after discovering his line was intermarried into the Toys. He was a lesser Welsh lord and landowner near Llandovery who led Henry IV of England all over Wales for several weeks on a wild goose-chase, looking for Owain Glendower, the other irascible thorn in the king's side and the leader of the Welsh revolters. When the jig was up, he was brutally tortured and murdered as an example to the Welsh up risers. Unfortunately for the English, his martyred death only served to solidify the Welsh cause. To this day, the Welsh are adamant about maintaining their language, their culture, and their right to govern themselves. You can see why we loved them!

The Bishop's Palace in Abergwili was the site of where William Salesbury wrote much of his Welsh translation of the New Testament, a document that Welsh historians agree was pivotal in preserving Welsh as a living language. My interest in seeing this book stems from the knowledge that Humphrey Toy paid completely for the publishing of this culturally vital tome. Granted, he was from an early printing family in England, and I believe he published it at his mother's insistence, but he still is the guy who's credited for making it happen. There is a copy of it in the United States; in the Archives of William and Mary College, in Williamsburg, VA. I'd love to know how it ended up there, as Williamsburg is mighty close to Gloucester County, VA. which was the home of another Humphrey Toy, from 1655 to about 1700. The first printing press in Virginia was also in Gloucester County, which leads to even more speculation.

There were a lot of cool things in the County Museum. They had several standing stones, some outside as well as inside. This stone was probably made long before the Latin inscription was added, commemorating the leader of the Demetae, Voteporix, as their protector. The cross in the circle is an ancient, pre-christian symbol for earth. The early Christians borrowed it and then conveniently forgot where it came from, which is pretty much how they do things everywhere they go.

Outside, on the grounds of the Bishop's Palace, we encountered some odd trees and plants as we strolled around. There were things that looked like Rhododendron bushes, only with bright yellow flowers, and oddly shaped pine trees called "Monkey Conifers". This tree was just an oak, but it made a good backdrop.

Carmarthen and the area around it is reputed to be the birthplace of the Arthurian wizard Merlin, the original spelling being Caermyrddin (Care-Myrthin); Caer, meaning fort, and Myrddin, meaning Merlin. We walked down to the fields and lilypond behind the palace, hoping to catch a glimpse of Merlin's Hill off in the near distance. This Hawthorn tree was immense and if you've ever watched the film Elizabeth, with Cate Blanchett, this is the same kind of tree she meets her new council under when she's made queen.

After the Bishop's Palace, we headed down the road to Carreg Cennen, or at least, the ruins of it. The first castle built here was in the 13th century, but legend has it that Urien Rheged, a knight of the Round Table, built the first fortress here. Modern excavations have also found Roman coins and prehistoric human remains in the cave underneath the castle, so this place has been in use for some time! We stopped in at the Castell Farm below, to pay our admission fees and browse their wonderful shop of handmade crafts, which were nicer and far cheaper than anywhere else we went. I also bought some of their Caramel Sticky Bars as a quick energy burst before climbing the hill. Oh my god - they were Sin Incarnate!

The climb to the top seems deceptively easy, until you've been at it for 15 minutes or so, but the view from the top is incredible.

I had to stop and catch my breath when we finally made it to the top. I love the fact that we're sitting on the wall, right next to the caution sign. "Visitors are warned to take every care to avoid accidents." You think they meant sitting on the wall in a high wind?

The wind was really kicking it up at the top of the ruins. My brother was standing on the opposite wall when I took this, and I swear it looked like he was going to take off and catch a mighty draft! The sun came and went all day, so sometimes we took beautiful, sunny shots, and five minutes later, the pictures would be all dark and cloudy looking. Hey, at least it wasn't hot and there was nobody up there with us, so the experience was that much more intimate and powerful.

" Yes, yes, yes!" The descendant of Welsh royalty tips his hat, and we play along, because we know he's buying the first round at the pub, later on. I should never have told him about Llywelyn ap Gruffydd. There's another guy with the same name who was the last Prince of Wales, but I don't think he was the guy we're related to. Try telling that to His Royal Highness. Yeah, not so much. It was hard enough to convince him that the Welsh would be speaking their own tongue in some places. He was just astounded when he figured it out, kind of like the amazement of toddlers at Christmas. It reminded me of Steve Martin, talking about visiting France; "Its like those French have a different word for everything!"

The coolest and creepiest part of Cerreg Cennen was the natural cave that sits underneath the castle. This is the beginning of the tunnels that take you down, down, down, to the cave. I think this shot is looking back up the way we came.

This would be my Lovely Assistant, coming out of the tunnel above.

This is the view from where my Lovely Assistant was standing. Note the bizarre little red caution sign, showing a guy slipping. My dad, after seeing this sign, responded, "Well of course he fell down. Look at how he's dancing around!" I know- he's just a Laugh Riot, isn't he?

Ahh! Entering the cave! It was so dark and slippery in there I about busted my ass twice. The floor is really uneven, as well as slick, so you can see why that little guy on the sign was looking all discomfuckulated. My brother took these shots, because he had the better camera and let's just say it; he is a far better photographer than I am!

Supposedly this spring in the cave is a magical site. I swear it - I read an entire book about sacred sites in Wales and this one is supposed to be a wishing well. You're supposed to bring a pin with you, wish on it, and throw it in the well. Our B&B hostess even asked us if we had wished while we were there. I am sad to report we did not take advantage of the wish potential of the place, but honestly? It was way too dark and creepy down there to want to hang around for long.

Coming back up and out of the cave, I stopped to take a shot of the farmlands out the window. I loved how the ancient and rough stone made an abstract kind of frame around the view. We are definitely NOT in Kansas, Toto!

We're smiling but my ass is so sore right now! The wind was ripping our hair and clothes so badly, we look like we've been on a bender, but for the moment anyway, we are quite sober.

We left and repaired to a pub for the rest of the afternoon. We actually were trying to find somewhere we could get a bite to eat, but everything shuts down at 3 PM, which is just about the time your immense Welsh breakfast wears off. So there we were, hungry, in a pub, eating "crisps" (chips) and drinking pints, in an effort to stave off hunger. The outcome? Four drunk Americans scaring the hell out of the local color. I do think the barmaids liked us, at least; Tipping is not only NOT a city in China, but it isn't a city in Wales either, which didn't keep us from doing it, no sirree bob. Looking back now, I'm all worried we were Ugly Americans. Aww man! At least we tried to learn some Welsh - cwrw da! (good beer) Iechyd da! (good health) Croeso (welcome) - which is more than I can say for the Ugly Americans we met later in the week. They reminded me forcibly of the tourist couple in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, reading the philosophy trivia cards (do you know who I mean?) We did have to buy Dad a coffee mug with Iechyd da on it, so he could remember how to say it, but does that make us Ugly?

Jesus, so now I'm a pompous serializing windbag (I'm just teasing, Ray!) AND an Ugly American in the bargain as well.

Tune in next week, for the final installment of

The Epic Saga of Our Trip to Wales