History...

Watching a program about Charles Martel and Charlemagne on the history channel. According to my sister's geneaology stuff, Charlemagne is our 39th great grandfather. Me to my mom: "There should be an organization for people descended from Charlemagne. Pish posh, Daughters of the American Revolution!" It seems we are descended via his son Louis the Pious (a most legitimate heir), through my mom's mother Pansy and (I think) her mother Alma. It probably isn't too hard to be descended from Charlemagne, really. I don't know, though. Apparently there are six different charts linking us back to him, due to intermarriage and such. The Plantagenets are in there too. It is interesting. Alfred the Great is also a grandfather on another chart. But Pansy is (according my mom) probably also the reason I have PCOS, and was a great source of mental illness as well. They didn't know they were related to Charlemagne or the others. I wonder who was the last person to know. Did even the first immigrants to America know? Maybe they were tired of being descended from penniless nobility, and didn't even want to think about it. A new life here might've been more compelling to them than anything they'd left behind.
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Okay, something else to think about besides boringish family tree stuff. How does one chronicle oneself? I recently took a look at Susan Orlean's website. After all, I have carried around a photocopy of an article she wrote on surfer girls in Hawaii for more than a decade. I was very eager to find it in her "articles" section. Scroll down...what? It's not there! Why not? This other thing she wrote around the same time, "Girl Power," is, though. But in my opinion it really doesn't compare...it does say she plans to add more. I certainly hope the surfer girls and possibly other pieces can crash "The New Yorker" party soon.