The Sunday Stealing this week, again from Swap Bot, asks where love comes from.
1. Does love come from the brain, the heart, or elsewhere?
Just this weekend, I saw a story from late June on about the importance of compassion. In Davis, CA “is a gathering place known as the compassion bench. David Breaux often sat there and dedicated his life to studying and talking about compassion.”
Perhaps one must be intentional about being compassionate, which will change the [metaphoric] heart. Also, check out this video, which says I Hypothalamus You.
2. Have you ever given a shot?
Sure. Usually whisky. Occasionally, rum, vodka, or a liqueur. Unless this is about an injection, in which case I had to stick my daughter’s Epipen into her leg once.
3. Can you lick your elbow? (Come on, didja try?)
No, and I probably attempted it as a kid. But on the July 25, 2023, episode of the game show JEOPARDY, a contestant did, to the annoyance of some TV audience members.
Where did I come from?
4. If I was going to be talking to you for 10 minutes, what would be something really interesting you know a little bit about but would like to know more??
My ancestry. I can go back to the 15th century on one line, but can’t find my great-great-grandparents on two others.
5. What do you think of The Sopranos?
I have a Leontyne Price CD. Joan Sutherland and Renée Fleming probably appear on albums I own. Oh, wait, you mean The Sopranos TV show? Except for clips during the Emmys, I never saw it except for the last five minutes.
6. Have you ever had a crush on your teacher? How about your boss?
A high school English teacher was less than a decade older than I was; I think her name was Miss Greene. Definite crush. Boss? No.
7. Have you ever seen a movie in 3D?
One or two, probably most recently The Lorax in 2012. I don’t enjoy it much.
Migration
8. How difficult do you think it is for immigrants to enter your country?
Immigration is fraught in the United States. This 2021 article from “Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute [a libertarian think tank with which I often disagree] offers nonpartisan facts in response to common myths about immigration.”
MYTH #9: “The United States has the most open immigration policy in the world.” FACT: The annual inflow of immigrants to the United States, as a percentage of our population, is below that of most other rich countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
9. Do you have what it takes to go live in another country, maybe for years, where you don’t speak the language as your first language?
No. And I don’t learn languages easily. Though the French I took a half-century ago was surprisingly useful when I went to France in May.
Nightmare
10. Have you ever died in your dreams?
I’ve usually been in the back seat of a car falling into a river (often the Chenango River in Binghamton, NY). Water is rushing in through an open window. But dying, I don’t recall happening.
11. What book should our political leaders read and why?
I spent several minutes perusing my bookshelves and yet didn’t pick one. But my wife recommends Listening Is An Act Of Love: A Celebration of American Life from the StoryCorps Project, edited and with an introduction by Dave Isay.
12. What is your favorite glass object?
My Willie Mays drinking glass that I’m pretty sure I got from McDonald’s decades ago. The Say Hey Kid is my all-time favorite baseball player.
13. Do you like to window shop?
Not especially.
14. Are you more likely to buy one really nice expensive outfit or a couple of cheap outfits?
I don’t care much about clothes.
15. If you could, would you wear everything once, throw it out and buy something new?
Why on earth would I want to do that? That would be abhorrent, societally and ecologically. I’m much more likely to join Buy Nothing.
Ancestry.com recently sent me something called an ethnicity inheritance.
Some blogger buddy used to do this look at the previous year. He’d select a post date and a sentence from that post at 
Thomas Eatman, Jr. (1755-1840), the DNA says, is my 4th great-grandfather. Raymond Cone, my newly discovered grandfather, is the child of Willis Cone and Sarah Eatman (1850-1935). Sarah’s parents were Alfred Eatman (1812-1880) and Mahala Price. Alfred’s folks were Kinchen Eatman (1783-1860) and Susannah Gaines.
The tricky thing about redoing the family tree is to be representational. On one hand, I have this whole new biological tribe to represent. On the other, I don’t want to ignore the import of my non-biological grandfather McKinley Green.