It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard to imagine that the staff of Dr. Cordell Halverson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s office will ever forgive (or at least forget) my deception. Halverson, a long-time Ob\/Gyn, had my wife, Bonnie, as one of his patients. His office was at Eighth and University, close to Highlands.<\/p>\n
At the time, Bonnie was teaching school in Anton Chico. I received a call from her (in that pre-cell phone era), at my office, in Mortimer Hall, telling me she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d forgotten to deliver a certain specimen to Halverson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s office, on her way to work that morning.<\/p>\n
Apparently, in those days, a urine specimen was used to determine whether the woman was pregnant. As I had a full morning of classes, I pondered whether I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d have time to make the delivery. We had only one vehicle at the time. Bonnie carpooled, and it was her day to drive.<\/p>\n
I hitched a ride, and a short time later entered Halverson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s office and announced, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Bonnie forgot the specimen, so I decided to provide my own.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d That caused a bit of consternation among the staff, who told me \u00e2\u20ac\u201d redundantly \u00e2\u20ac\u201d that my idea simply would not work. My announcement also drew scattered tee-hees.<\/p>\n
Then, a bit later that day, I received a call from one of the staff members who gave yet another message: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We went ahead and used your specimen, and \u00e2\u20ac\u201d congratulations! \u00e2\u20ac\u201d It looks like Bonnie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s carrying a healthy child.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
I absolutely love it when people pay me back. We still talk about it, even though our third-born, Benjie, is now 36, and just Sunday came out 20th overall, in the Duke City Marathon.<\/p>\n
We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve often wondered about attempts at humor, and whether people have ever gotten away with this kind of parental\/prenatal\/paternal switcheroo.<\/p>\n
And I wonder now what the next set of results will bring \u00e2\u20ac\u201d not regarding any kind of pregnancy \u00e2\u20ac\u201d but now about ancestry.<\/p>\n
Ever wonder why tracing one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s roots has become a hot topic? I hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t thought much about it until a relative announced he suspected he was Jewish, not Latino at all, as we all had surmised. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153See how I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even like pork?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he once asked.<\/p>\n
He probably had trouble convincing his own parents of their now-altered heritage.<\/p>\n
I believe it is interesting and beneficial to explore our roots. Bonnie recently came across an ad in National Geographic about \u00e2\u20ac\u0153where people come from.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Accordingly, we took a simple test from a kit Sunday, which involved swabbing both inside cheeks and placing the material into a tube, sealing it and mailing it off.<\/p>\n
Naturally, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re curious about what the results will show in a few weeks. Did I originate along the Mediterranean? Were Bonnie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ancestors, some 40,000 years up the evolutionary ladder, based in northern Europe?<\/p>\n
What if we were to order a DNA kit from a company other than National Geographic? Would the results show a different line of ancestry?<\/p>\n
The year we spent in Virginia, in the early \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc70, I showed home movies of the Navajo Reservation, around Cuba, N.M. These were silent flicks, but our hostess-landlady, who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d invited friends to the gathering, kept asking, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What are those Indians saying?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know, as the school children had been speaking a tongue I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t familiar with. But since other guests kept insisting, I thought seriously of fabricating a script to make the dialogue plausible. Who could tell the difference? A couple of the guests at that dinner continued to think of me as a member of the Navajo Tribe.<\/p>\n
When I ran a newspaper in a mostly white suburb of Chicago, I was a Latino. And once, when I was a guest at a home in Warrenville, Ill., the husband made a linguistic request: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Welcome, but please don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t speak Mexico in front of my children. It confuses them.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Up until we scraped our inner cheeks with a tiny brush Sunday, I had not been overly concerned about my origins.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the results of the DNA kit will locate us somewhere besides San Miguel or Colfax counties. The highly sophisticated procedures experts use to track genetic markers might delve eons into our past.<\/p>\n
National Geographic says that, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Before modern humans arrived in Iberia about 40,000 years ago, Neanderthals ruled Spain. And although most anthropologists agree that humans and Neanderthals mixed, a point of interest among the participants was the unusually low percentage of Neanderthal in their DNA.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
And even though my high school prom date once labeled me as a Neanderthal (or Cro-Magnon \u00c2\u00ad\u00e2\u20ac\u201d I forget which), I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d rather learn that fact from experts.<\/p>\n
And if the results show a pre-historic place of origin we haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t expected, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll keep you posted.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2\u00e2\u20ac\u201a\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2\u00e2\u20ac\u201a\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
When is enough just too much? There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been public criticism of a dumpster parked in the southeast corner of a downtown business lot.
\nMaybe gravity, lack of friction or even strong winds and harsh weather have combined to slide the huge brown trash container toward the sidewalk.<\/p>\n
Any trip on foot to Douglas Avenue necessitates walking past that container and often, stepping on the goo.<\/p>\n
Obviously the container is receiving regular use, as foul, organic, fetid odors seep out of the base. The waste that oozes out of the base runs down the sidewalk and past the curb, making its way to Lincoln Avenue.
\nSeveral months ago, a resident complained about the condition of the dumpster, in a letter to the editor, urging officials to remedy the matter.<\/p>\n
Has anything been done? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s worth a trip and a sniff.<\/p>\n
We can do better. Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s remedy this noxious problem. Now.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2\u00e2\u20ac\u201a\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
Heard on radio Monday: The National Labor Retaliations Board.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard to imagine that the staff of Dr. Cordell Halverson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s office will ever forgive (or at least forget) my deception. Halverson, a long-time Ob\/Gyn, had my wife, Bonnie, as one of his patients. His office was at Eighth and University, close to Highlands. At the time, Bonnie was teaching school in Anton Chico. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1284"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1284"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1285,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1284\/revisions\/1285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}