Grandpa Niall

People who mess with me should beware: they're their messing with a royal.

My 23andMe test shows I'm directly descended from a High King of Ireland, Niall Noigiallach—best known to the ages as Niall of the Nine Hostages.

Niall had a lot of kids, including 14 sons. Geneticists today estimate that a full 8% of the world's Irishmen and 2% of the Irishmen from Greater New York carry his genetic signature. 

The latter include the likes of Bill Maher, Bill O’Reilly, and me.

Operating from atop the Hill of Tara, Niall ruled from 445 to 453 CE. His kingdom encompassed nine vast provinces in Ireland, Scotland, England, Wales, and France. Niall earned his nickname from a fondness for kidnapping members of opposing royal families, the most famous of whom was the wealthy Englishman who'd later become Saint Patrick.

Abandoned by his queenly mother, Niall was raised by a poet, who saw in this son of a king future greatness. 

When the young Niall on a dare kissed a witch in the forest, legend has it, she granted him the High Kingship of Ireland, and promised his clan would rule for 26 generations.

As it turned out, the witch was right on target: Niall's dynasty lasted 500 years.

Niall was a badass, pure and simple; so bad, he beat back not only the the Saxons, Britons and Franks, but the Roman legions.

But, bad as he was, he couldn't escape death. Niall was killed in France by an archer, near the River Loire. His troops brought his body back to Faughan Hill, in the heart of his kingdom, for burial in 453.

In 2006, Trinity College professor Dan Bradley showed through DNA analysis that Niall, the "early-medieval progenitor to the most powerful and enduring Irish dynasty," has three million living descendants, nearly on par with Genghis Khan.

In 2015, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates showed through DNA testing that two of Niall's descendants are Bill Maher and Bill O’Reilly.

You can learn more about Niall of the Nine Hostages here.

Prisoners of Progress

For all the badmouthing I do about gross materialism, I am simply apeshit about all of the amazing crap we humans have made via the Industrial Revolution!

— Nick Offerman

An antique engraving graces our family-room. It's one of my favorite possessions.

The engraving depicts the birthplace of George Stephenson, the English engineer who, according to the engraving's caption, "devoted his powerful mind to the construction of the locomotive." A Victorian family gathers in front of the lowly cottage, there to celebrate "the commencement and development of the mighty railway system."

Stephenson was a hero to the Victorians, an innovator akin to Bill Gates or Steve Jobs today. His 1813 invention "induced the most wonderful effects, not only for this country, but for the world," the engraving says.

Railroads made it possible in the 19th century for people, products and raw materials to move overland great distances, and to do so cheaply and rapidly. 

We're so callous in our time, we complain when Amazon's free delivery service runs a day late. How absurd is that?

'Tis the season for mass consumption: for mornings, noons and nights at the mall; towers of empty boxes at the curbside; trashcans overstuffed with trees and wreathes and plastic packaging; trips to southern beaches; gifts for people you don't even like.

Can this way of life possibly be sustainable?

Whether it is or isn't, one thing's for sure: we're all prisoners of progress.

By that I mean to say what the existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger said so well in his 1954 essay, "The Question Concerning Technology."

Heidegger believed the Industrial Revolution marked a radically new age for the human race: a time in history when nature has come to mean resources; and to be to mean to be consumable.

The absolute power of technology, Heidegger said, swamps the human being, because technology reveals all existence—the universe—to be no more than "raw material." 

Everything is inventory, stuff, crap. Crap to be extracted; crap to be requisitioned; crap to be assembled, packaged, shipped, opened, exchanged, consumed; crap to be discarded.

Technology "attacks everything that is," Heidegger said, "nature, history, humans, and divinities.”

And just as the railroad shrinks distance, technology shrinks mankind. 

It boxes us in and makes us pygmies, constricting our experiences to "brand experiences" and denying us connections to things as they once seemed: sources of wonder.

Today, we no longer wonder. We only want and want and want.

What a paltry fate.

Note: You can read more about Heidegger's thoughts on technology in my essay here. I also recommend Nick Offerman's fun new book, Where the Deer and the Antelope Play.

Above: The Birth-Place of the Locomotive. Published 1862 by Henry Graves & Co., Publishers to the Queen, London.

Know-It-Alls

No one wants advice, only corroboration.

— John Steinbeck

My vice is advice. 

I give it freely—often unsolicited.

People say it's due to my "executive personality," and always add their own advice—also unsolicited—about what I can do with it.

The English word advice, meaning a "worthy opinion," dates to the late 14th-century and was borrowed from the Latin visum, meaning "viewpoint."

Advice is simply another's viewpoint.

But no one welcomes advice.

No one.

The reason it is so detested, I believe, is explained by a remark of the late painter Malcolm Morley: "Any artist who asks advice is already a failure."

No one welcomes advice, because to do so is to admit to incompetence. 

And no one wants to admit to incompetence, even secretly.

Psychologists say that dispensers of advice are often "alpha personalities," know-it-alls who are assured of their views and assured of their right to dispense them.

Know-it-alls are also highly compulsive.

"If you know any unsolicited advice-givers," says psychologist Seth Meyers, "you know they can’t stop themselves from giving advice. At root, they are compelled to give it."

Advice-giving is a compulsion among alpha personalities—always anxious to solve everyone's problems.

They rarely, if ever, consider whether solutions are sought after. 

When they offer advice and are met with hostility, they're constantly surprised; even startled. What's the big deal?

Psychologists think that know-it-alls, at bottom, are power-mad.

Studies published in 2018 in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

proved that people who dispense advice, whether welcomed or not, feel a strong sense of dominance and control afterwards. They give no thought to appearing a stuffed shirt know-it-all.

At the risk of appearing once again a know-it-all, let me offer advice to the recipients of unsolicited advice: Be patient with know-it-alls; they don't know they're annoying.

Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich said it best: "Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth."

Adorable

"Sharing photos of adorable animals is a great way to skyrocket engagement," according to lead-generation provider OptinMonster.

To prove the point, I asked Ron to pose for Goodly. Talk about adorable!

Ron, an adoptee from Delaware SPCA, wants you to know that his rate is highly competitive, should you need a professional male model for your next photo shoot. He can be hired through his agent, Pawsitively Famous Talent.

Photo credit: Ann Ramsey

Making Merry

An English Christmas in the Middle Ages would begin before dawn with a mass that marked the end of Advent and the start of the holiday.

The Christmas feast was an EOE affair.

Commoners made sure at least to serve ham and bacon. 

One memoirist of the period described his family's Christmas feast also to include sausages, pasties, black pudding, roast beef, fish, fowl, custards, tarts, nuts, and sweetmeats.

Royalty took things up a notch. In addition to the above goodies, King Henry III added salmon, eel, venison, and boar to his table; King Henry V, crayfish and porpoise.

Royalty also drank heartedly on Christmas. 

Wine was served, not by the bottle, but—literally—by the ton (a ton equaling 1,272 bottles). 

Henry III served 60 tons of wine on Christmas. That's more than 76,000 bottles! 

What will appear on your table?

Above. The Only by Ans Debije. Oil on panel. 6 x 6 inches.