Well, I certainly received some interesting family news from my Uncle Wayne last evening. There has been a family DNA study going on and a particular Y DNA strain has been located and isolated. Apparently, it entered the family line 1500-2000 years ago! Wow! I like geneology, but I never expected to see anything documented from that far back!

OK, now here's the part that got me giggling hysterically while I felt a rush of validation. The gene is only found in men from North Africa. Most likely from Mauretania (from which the archaic expression for blacks -- "Moors" -- derived) and which is present day Morocco and parts of Algeria. Apparently, a large group of men were 'borrowed' from the Moroccan part of Mauretania by the Romans to work on -- among other things -- Hadrian's Wall in the UK. Since the known side of the family comes from somewhere along the English/Scottish border and this is where the wall was...well, you do the math. I was absolutely intoxicated by this news.

For me, it's been difficult to be so thoroughly white in the United States today. I have no Native American blood (as far as I know) and many, many bloodlines that flow through my veins have been traced back for hundreds of years without finding even a single instance of non-Caucasian membership. I always found that a little depressing. I mean...no exotic lines at all. Strictly European with no Spanish/Sicilian/Moorish ties. Until now.

I have harbored a theory for some time and it is this: As long as this planet has existed, you know people have intermingled and intermated since the Stone Age. My theory has been that you could take the "whitest" person imaginable -- always naming myself as an example -- and you could, through hard work and a lot of tracing, find a black or Asian ancestor. Well...using me as an example...it has now been proved! YAY!

I couldn 't help but think of some of my departed uncles and even my dad and what their reactions would have been to this bit of information. Some would be horrified. Even though this connection dates back at least 100 generations. Oddly enough, coming from a line of slave owners in the Connella bloodline, this isn't the line with the Y gene. It's another side entirely.

I have more than a few black Connella relatives who share my forebearers. But now, I can share with them the identification of being black! Can't I? Sort of?? If Pickle Princess Teresa Heinz (who's married now to John Kerry) can call herself African American because she was born on the continent of Africa, don't I have more of a claim to that title? I mean, at least I DO have a black ancestor from a few millennia ago.

Now let's see...phone book, phone book...Ah. Here it is: NAACP. I need to go make a call now...