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What is a First Cousin, Twice Removed?

June 16, 2012 By

Cousin Tree

Hola amigos: What is a First Cousin, Twice Removed? Cousins removed means they are from different generations, so a first cousin, twice removed means there are two different generations between them.You are two generations younger than a first cousin of your grandmother, so you and your grandmother’s first cousin are first cousins, twice removed. ES

 

Cousin Tree Image

 

by Genealogy.com

If someone walked up to you and said “Howdy, I’m your third cousin twice removed,” would you have any idea what they meant? Most people have a good understanding of basic relationship words such as “mother,” “father,” “aunt,” “uncle,” “brother,” and “sister.” But what about the relationship terms that we don’t use in everyday speech? Terms like “second cousin” and “first cousin, once removed”? We don’t tend to speak about our relationships in such exact terms (“cousin” seems good enough when you are introducing one person to another), so most of us aren’t familiar with what these words mean.

Relationship Terms

Sometimes, especially when working on your family history, it’s handy to know how to describe your family relationships more exactly. The definitions below should help you out.

Cousin (a.k.a “first cousin”)
Your first cousins are the people in your family who have two of the same grandparents as you. In other words, they are the children of your aunts and uncles.

Second Cousin
Your second cousins are the people in your family who have the same great-grandparents as you., but not the same grandparents.

Third, Fourth, and Fifth Cousins
Your third cousins have the same great-great-grandparents, fourth cousins have the same great-great-great-grandparents, and so on.

Removed
When the word “removed” is used to describe a relationship, it indicates that the two people are from different generations. You and your first cousins are in the same generation (two generations younger than your grandparents), so the word “removed” is not used to describe your relationship.

The words “once removed” mean that there is a difference of one generation. For example, your mother’s first cousin is your first cousin, once removed. This is because your mother’s first cousin is one generation younger than your grandparents and you are two generations younger than your grandparents. This one-generation difference equals “once removed.”

Twice removed means that there is a two-generation difference. You are two generations younger than a first cousin of your grandmother, so you and your grandmother’s first cousin are first cousins, twice removed.

Relationship Charts Simplify Everything

Now that you have an idea of what these different words mean, take a look at the chart below. It’s called a relationship chart, and it can help you figure out how different people in your family are related. It’s much simpler than it looks, just follow the instructions.

Instructions for Using a Relationship Chart

Pick two people in your family and figure out which ancestor they have in common. For example, if you chose yourself and a cousin, you would have a grandparent in common.
Look at the top row of the chart and find the first person’s relationship to the common ancestor.
Look at the far left column of the chart and find the second person’s relationship to the common ancestor.
Determine where the row and column containing those two relationships meet.
Common
Ancestor Child Grandchild G-grandchild G-g-grandchild
Child Sister or Brother Nephew or Niece Grand-nephew or niece G-grand-nephew or niece
Grandchild Nephew or Niece First cousin First cousin, once removed First cousin, twice removed
G-grandchild Grand-nephew or niece First cousin, once removed Second cousin Second cousin, once removed
G-g-grandchild G-grand-nephew or niece First cousin, twice removed Second cousin, once removed Third cousin
Just When You Thought You Had it

When you are working with older records, be aware that the meaning of the word “cousin,” along with the meanings of other relationship terms, have changed over time. The Glossary section of the Learning Center can help you with any confusing relationship terms, including those in Latin.

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History of PR – First Part Ch.14 by RA Van Middeldyk

June 15, 2012 By

Emperor Charles V

 

Hola amigos: Today we will continue with The History of Puerto Rico by RA Van Middeldyk, First Part, Chapter 14 -  ATTACKS BY FRENCH PRIVATEERS—CAUSE OF THE WAR WITH FRANCE—CHARLES V.—RUIN OF THE ISLAND – 1520-1556. Pirates attack preying upon the Spanish possessions. Depopulation,  King Charles V and his war with France were too much for the island… ES

 

Spain’s King Charles V Image

 

CHAPTER XIV
ATTACKS BY FRENCH PRIVATEERS—CAUSE OF THE WAR WITH FRANCE—CHARLES V.—RUIN OF THE ISLAND
1520-1556

The depredations committed by the privateers, which about this time began to infest the Antilles and prey upon the Spanish possessions, were a result of the wars with almost every nation in Europe, in which Spain became involved after the accession of Charles, the son of Juana, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella and Philip I, Archduke of Austria.
The young prince had been educated amid all the pomp and splendor of the imperial court. He was a perfect type of the medieval cavalier, who could break a lance with the proudest knight in the empire, and was worthy in every respect of the high destiny that awaited him. At the age of twenty he became the heir to eight kingdoms,[33] the recognized ruler of the Netherlands, lord of vast territories in Africa, and absolute arbiter of the destinies of the Spanish division of the New World.
Scarcely had this powerful young prince been accepted and crowned by the last and most recalcitrant of his kingdoms (Cataluña), and while still in Barcelona, the news arrived of the death of his grandfather, Maximilian, King of the Romans and Emperor elect of Germany. Intrigues for the possession of the coveted crown were set on foot at once by the prince, now Charles I of Spain and by Francis I, King of France. The powers ranged themselves on either side as their interests dictated. Henry VIII of England declared himself neutral; Pope León X, who distrusted both claimants, was waiting to see which of them would buy his support by the largest concessions to the temporal power of the Vatican; the Swiss Cantons hated France and sided with Charles; Venice favored Francis I.[34]
The German Diet assembled at Frankfort June 17, 1519, and unanimously elected Frederick of Saxony, surnamed the Prudent. He showed his prudence by declining the honor, and in an address to the assembly dwelt at some length on the respective merits of the two pretenders, and ended by declaring himself in favor of the Spanish prince, one reason for his preference being that Charles was more directly interested in checking the advance of the Turks, who, under Soleiman the Magnificent, threatened, at the time, to overrun the whole of eastern Europe.
Charles I of Spain was elected, and thus became Charles V, King of the Romans and Emperor of Germany—that is, the most powerful monarch of his time, before he had reached the age of manhood. His success, added to other political differences and ambitions, was not long in provoking a war with France, which, with short intervals, lasted the lifetime of the two princes.
* * * * *
Spain was most vulnerable in her ultramarine possessions. They offered tempting prizes to the unscrupulous, adventurous spirits of the period, and the merchants on the coast of Normandy asked and obtained permission to equip privateers to harass Spanish commerce and attack the unprotected settlements.
San Juan was one of the first to suffer. An official report dated September 26, 1528, informs us that “on the day of the Apostle Saint John a French caravel and a tender bore down on the port of Cubágua and attempted to land artillery from the ship with the help of Indians brought from Margarita, five leagues distant. On the 12th of August they took the town of San German, plundered and burned it; they also destroyed two caravels that were there….”
French privateers were sighted off the coast continually, but it would seem that the island, with its reputation for poverty, its two settlements 40 leagues apart, and scanty population, offered too little chance for booty, so that no other landing is recorded till 1538, when a privateer was seen chasing a caravel on her way to San German. The caravel ran ashore at a point two leagues from the capital and the crew escaped into the woods. The Frenchmen looted the vessel and then proceeded to Guadianilla, where they landed 80 men, 50 of them arquebusiers. They burned the town, robbed the church and Dominican convent; but the people, after placing their families in security, returned, and under favor of a shower of rain, which made the arquebuses useless, fell upon them, killed 15 and took 3 prisoners, in exchange for whom the stolen church property was restored. The people had only 1 killed.
The attack was duly reported to the sovereign, who ordered the construction of a fort, and appointed Juan de Castellanos, the treasurer, its commander (October 7, 1540). The treasurer’s reply is characteristic: “The fort which I have been ordered to make in the town of San German, of which I am to be the commander, shall be made as well as we may, though there is great want of money … and of carts, negroes, etc. It will be necessary to send masons from Sevilla, as there is only 1 here, also tools and 20 negroes….
“Forts for this island are well enough, but it would be better to favor the population, lending money or ceding the revenues for a few years, to construct sugar-mills….”
On June 12th of the same year the treasurer wrote again announcing that work on the San German fort had commenced, for which purpose he had bought some negroes and hired others at two and a half pesos per month.
But on February 12, 1542, the crown officers, including Castellanos, reported that the emperor’s order to suspend work on the fort of San German had been obeyed.
In February, 1543, the bishop wrote to the emperor: “The people of San German, for fear of the French privateers, have taken their families and property into the woods. If there were a fort they would not be so timid nor would the place be so depopulated.”
As late as September, 1548, he reported: “I came here from la Española in the beginning of the year to visit my diocese. I disembarked in San German with an order from the Audiencia to convoke the inhabitants, and found that there were a few over 30, who lived half a league from the port for fear of the privateers. They don’t abandon the important place, but there ought to be a fort.”
But the prelate pleaded in vain.
Charles V, occupied in opposing the French king’s five armies, could not be expected to give much attention to the affairs of an insignificant island in a remote corner of his vast dominions. Puerto Rico was left to take care of itself, and San German’s last hour struck on Palm Sunday, 1554, when 3 French ships entered the port of Guadianilla, landed a detachment of men who penetrated a league inland, plundering and destroying whatever they could. From that day San German, the settlement founded by Miguel del Toro in 1512, disappeared from the face of the land.
The capital remained. No doubt it owed its preservation from French attacks to the presence of a battery and some pieces of artillery which, as a result of reiterated petitions, had been provided. The population also was more numerous. In 1529 there were 120 houses, some of them of stone. The cathedral was completed, and a Dominican convent was in course of construction with 25 friars waiting to occupy it. Thus, one by one, all the original settlements disappeared. Guánica, Sotomayor, Daguáo, Loiza, had been swept away by the Indians. San German fell the victim of the Spanish monarch’s war with his neighbor. The only remaining settlement, the capital, was soon to be on the point of being sacrificed in the same way. The existence of the island seemed to be half-forgotten, its connection with the metropolis half-severed, for the crown officers wrote in 1536 that no ship from the Peninsula had entered its ports for two years.
“Negroes and Indians,” says Abbad, “seeing the small number of
Spaniards and their misery, escaped to the mountains of Luquillo and
Añasco, whence they descended only to rob their masters.”
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 33: Castilla and Aragón, Navarro, Valencia, Cataluña,
Mallorca, Sicily, and Naples.]
[Footnote 34: Hista. general de España por Don Modesto Lafuente. Barcelona, 1889.]

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Overcome Your Toughest Genealogy Problems

May 30, 2012 By

 Hola amigos: Today I found this article about “brick wall” solutions to genealogy problems: a book written to help us overcome genealogy research obstacles like recording errors, names changed, family mysteries,… .” The book was not written by a single individual. Rather, this book is a collection of difficult problems solved by genealogist everywhere.” ES

Brickwall Solutions Book Image

500 Brickwall Solutions to Genealogy Problems, by Family Chronicle Magazine; 418 pg; Paperback; ISBN 978-0-9731303-1-7; 2003; Item MM002

By Family Roots Publishing

All genealogists face research obstacles. Recording errors may lead someone to check records based on middle names or unfamiliar nicknames. Sometimes locations seem to disappear off the map when churches and cemeteries move, or roads close and fall into disrepair. What happens when records are misread, or graves turn out to be empty, or when people change their name? These are just a few of the problems genealogists face everyday. Genealogists around the globe have made breakthroughs in resolving these types of difficult problems through creative research and a never-give-up attitude to overcoming obstacles.

Family Chronicle magazine called these breakthroughs “Brickwall Solutions.” Recognizing the value the stories and the examples behind these solutions can have for the day to day genealogists, Family Chronicle collected hundreds of these stories from contributors around the world. The compiled result is 500 Brickwall Solutions to Genealogy Problems, the perfect lead by example book to solving unique research problems.

The book was not written by a single individual. Rather, this book is a collection of difficult problems solved by genealogist everywhere. The editor credits each story’s solution to inspiration and hard work as well as efficient and experienced research techniques. Contributing stories were selected for their inspiring, insightful, and professional resolution to difficult research problems. Each story inspires and gives ideas for new ways to overcome common, and sometimes less common, problems faced by family historians everywhere.

Here are some story titles taken from the book:
· County Poorhouses
· Nun Sense
· Website As A Brickwall Solution
· Funeral Sign-In Books
· Searching Family Mysteries
· Follow the Females
· Glove Marks the Spot
· The Many Wives of Cassidy
· Microfilm Mistakes
· Mapping Your Ancestors
· Different Registered Name
· Maternal Lines and Unusual Names
· They Changed Their Name
· The Mystery of the Non-Existent Grave

The list goes on and on. 500 times actually. I could not possibly list the entire table of contents in one blog. However, 500 Brickwall Solutions is an apt title. Each story runs from a few paragraphs to a couple of pages in length. Contributors are listed, sometime with contact information, at the end of each story. Many of the stories are funny and exciting, while all demonstrate what a little inspiration, creativity, and mostly perseverance can do in solving almost any problem.

 

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New in Genealogy: Ancestry’s Concise Genealogical Dictionary

May 27, 2012 By

Hola amigos: I found this Genealogical Dictionary  where you can find lots of unusual terms defined. It’s a useful and entertaining reference where the authors spent many years researching, collecting and verifying definitions they were discovering while doing their genealogical work.

Image of Genealogical Dictionary

You can go to Amazon where they give this description of the book: “The mystery of terms and abbreviations that many researchers face has been solved with this essential, quick-reference source geared to the needs of the genealogist.”

by mschaff  Articles, For the Public, State Library Collections

Ever wonder what an anaplerotic is?

How about a faldstool or a knockknobbier?

If you’ve ever run across strange words in historical records, Ancestry’s Concise Genealogical Dictionary can help. It defines a wide range of obscure legal and colloquial words and phrases that you may find when researching your family history.

In case you’re wondering:

Anaplerotic: “Medicine which promoted the healing process and helps renew flesh or wasted parts—often found in medical records.”

Faldstool: “A portable folding seat used by a bishop when visiting other churches; a portable stool or desk used in praying.”

Knockknobbier: “The person whose duty it was to chase dogs out of church if they became a nuisance.”

 

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MUSICA/ Music – La Plena, Puerto Rican Music

May 19, 2012 By

Hola amigos: Today I bring you MUSICA, from the Center for Puerto Rican Studies. Música is a broad section dedicated to the exploration of the richness and diversity of music among Puerto Ricans. The section will not only focus on Puerto Rican music but also on those ‘other’ musical styles that Puerto Ricans have loved, adopted, moved to, innovated and changed. Thus inside they have sections on plena, bomba, música jíbara, danza, salsa and reggaeton, as well as on mambo, bolero, Latin jazz, hip hop and others. Música also features Prodigies/Prodigios, a section that honors those exceptional Puerto Ricans that excelled in music and dance. We will start with the Plena or la Plena. Plena, a working-class-related dance and music genre rooted in Puerto Rico, is primarily story-telling in distinctive rhythmic patterns from several Caribbean cultures.

La Plena

THE SOLO SINGER AND THE COPLA

by Edgardo Díaz

Plena singers perform as soloists improvising stories through the use of a type of quatrain known in Spanish as copla. By tradition, the copla follows certain poetic rules: namely, it must be comprised of four-lines, and each of these lines must contain eight syllables. Coplas are derivations of the old Iberian romance, ancestor of the ten-linedécima used today among Caribbean and Latin American peasants who also improvise their stories. Coplas are often metered in a-b-c-b rhymes as seen in the following example:

Ya no tengo ni mi empleo (a)
Se busca donde no hay (b)
Y la gente va gritando (c)
The rent is way too damn high (b)

On the basis of coplas, solo singers improvise the often satirical and humorous stories ofplena. It is common for this singer to start by suggesting a relevant catchphrase suitable to the improvised story. The soloist invites others to repeat the catchphrase out loud and therefore through this slogan to underscore the story the soloist aims to develop. This refrain is best known as estribillo. In staged performances, the estribillo is made by a choir.

At times, copla and estribillo alternate in free versifications that allow the soloist to shape up the intended plena story. The following video shows a performance with Viento de Agua, whose leader, Tito Matos introduces a plena song with the following estribillo:

Oye mi ritmo de la plena
Que te llama y te dice “ven, ven, ven”
[Trans., “Listen to my plena rhythms
Calling you and asking you ‘come, come, come.’”]
Matos then proceeds to warm up on his improvising lines by negotiating with the meter in ways that initially skip the traditional rules of the copla:

Que te llama, que te dice
Ven, ven, ven
Oye
Oye mamá

[Transl., “So it calls you, so it tells you
‘come, come, come’
Listen
Listen. Mamá.”]

Eventually, as the argument is developed, Matos seems a bit closer to catching up on the four-line octo-syllabic shape as well as on the a-b-c-b poetic rhyme:

Mi ritmo te llama (a)
Que te dice ven y ven. (b)
Este no es mío; (c)
Viene de Mayagüez. (b)

[My rhythm is calling you. (a)
So it asks you to come and come. (b)
This is not my own [invention]. (c)
Mayagüez is the source. (b)

Throughout the piece, however, Matos maintains the occasional poetic license along with his ability to follow the above-mentioned poetic rules. Later on, both he and the choir engage in a line-to-line give and take that is followed by solo improvisations by therequinto drummer before the choir brings the song to a conclusion with the refrain orestribillo.

At times, plena songs involve the participation of various soloists who alternately improvise their respective coplas, as seen in this video recorded in San Juan on April 4, 2010.

Uploaded – October 15, 2010.

Content credits Center for Puerto Rican Studies
Image Credits: Cortesy of Edgardo Díaz Díaz|

 

THE CALL-AND-RESPONSE IN COPLA-ESTRIBILLO CYCLES

by Edgardo Díaz

Like many Afro-Caribbean expressions,plena features a choir in charge of a refrain or estribillo and a singer improvising coplas. Once the singer presents a refrain at the beginning, the choir retakes and repeats the phrase as a response, much like themontuno does in a Cuban son after a solo singer makes his/her solo appearance. The refrain is repeated after every improvised copla. Therefore, each plena generally comprises a series of repeated copla-estribillo cycles. It takes as many cycles as needed to complete a story. Within the call-and response form, plenas often show contrasting melodic themes for soloist and choir, as in the popular theme “Tanta vanidad” (performed by Canario y su grupo) whose refrain or estribillo is introduced by the choir itself. The following transcription is an example of the first of several quatrain-refrain cycles in this recording after the choir introduces the refrain:

Tanta Vanidad

Content credits Center for Puerto Rican Studies

BEGINNINGS

by Edgardo Díaz Díaz

PanderosIt is agreed that around 1910, plenaemerged simultaneously in the poor urban and rural barrios (neighborhoods) of Ponce, a city located in Puerto Rico southern sugar-oriented plains. A few years earlier, immigrant laborers arrived from the British Caribbean with some of their own Afro-Caribbean traditions of songs and rhythms, and introduced them to local sugar-cane workers. The names of Catherine George, John Clark, and their daughter Carola are tied to the origins ofplena. It is said that they arrived from the island of Barbados with the pandero and with songs they disseminated with the help of peer immigrants from St. Kitts and Nevis. Their songs quickly raised the attention of worker and plowman Joselino “Bumbún” Oppenheimer (1884-1929), a child of African slaves who improvised Spanish coplas during his work hours at a plantation nearby. Bumbún’s quatrains featured the joys and sorrows of his community and sung a capella with young co-workers doing the estribillo while they guided the ox clearing the land ahead of Bumbún’s plow. In the evenings, back in his neighborhood of La Joya del Castillo (a slum, or arrabal, of Ponce), he introduced the original plena compositions to an increasing number of fellow members (popularly referred to as pleneros). Afterwards, plena rapidly became customary in the south and southwestern areas of Puerto Rico; initially with guitar and tambourine, but later (in the 1920’s) with the addition of a double-keyboard accordion and güiro. Lesser commercial but still popular groups developed ensembles of three or more panderos. At dance parties, these groups played to couples that artfully moved their hips and swiveled their bodies from side to side, while mutually approaching and moving away in an endless parallel motion. The prominence of plena in its beginnings is to be found at these ill-reputed dance parties of arrabales, with at least one plena ensemble (conjunto) for every neighborhood. Chivo Román, Mario Rivera, and the Aranzamendi brothers are three of several group leaders performing plenas in the Ponce area.

Stylistic Sources

Because of its intimate association with working-class and dispossessed groups, plena was often compared with the tango that emerged around the same time in similar marginalized enclaves of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Of major significance in Puerto Rico, however, is that rural workers of white ancestry (known as jíbaros), laborers born of slaves like Bumbún, and immigrants from the English-speaking Caribbean converged to give plena a profile that attests to its kinship with expressions like the old guaracha and several other pan-Caribbean rural forms based on the copla. A musical form also known as “plena” – with related socio-economic concerns and a similar poetic structure – is said to be also reported in the Dominican Republic around the 1890’s, although no clear musical or choreographic relationship with its Puerto Rican namesake has been found so far. In Panama, “plena” is a name used to refer to “reggae”. Moreover, by listening to thepanderos stressing on the last beat of every measure (the so-called up-beat), one may understand how plena has some musical and poetic relatives in other parts of the Caribbean. The list of “relatives” includes versions of Trinitarian quadrilles, of calypso, and Jamaican mento. Similar basic and near-improvisatory rhythms are registered in recordings of Trinitarian quadrilles as well in early-20th-century recordings of Puerto Rican danzas in Ponce.

Content credits Center for Puerto Rican Studies

 

PLENA, MIGRATION AND THE GREAT DEPRESSION

by Edgardo Díaz

Due to Puerto Rico’s condition as a colony of the U.S. resulting from exploitation, social turbulence on the island during the 1910s and ‘20s anticipated, by decades, similar years of misery provoked by the Great Depression in other parts of the world. Unemployment and poverty in agricultural areas forced rural laborers to establish settlements in the swamps and mangroves of San Juan, the city capital. Migration from affected sugar cane areas favored the rapid dissemination of plena, thus securing its place in barrios like La Perla, and among the artisan groups of Puerta de Tierra, one of the island’s oldest working class barrios.

By 1927, the demise of the silent cinema led local musicians to move in great numbers toNew York City. After that year, the Grupo Ponceño and later Manuel Jiménez (Canario) y su Conjunto made the first recordings of plena. Other groups like Los Reyes de la Plena, the Grupo Ponceño, Los Borinqueños, Sexteto Flores and Grupo Antillano also made strides by producing major recordings of plenas on very similar terms. Their contract with major U.S. recording companies entailed plena’s first successful international exposure, but this required a compromise – most often, the subordination of plena and its iconic pandero to a Cuban-conjunto format, thus embracing the use of a solo voice with guitar and accordion accompaniment, but frequently gave the trumpet, bongó and clave an outstanding role.

The standard three-minute limit imposed on each plena recording was in sheer contrast to the aim of having a lively musical environment where, otherwise, singers could adequately develop their improvisations, or dancers enjoyed a musical piece for as long as they wished.

A major difference among the various plenas of the times lay in their thematic content. Some of them – like those by the Grupo Ponceño, Canario y su Conjunto and Los Reyes de la Plena – were tied in great part to the saga of the Great Depression as they were inspired or based on Bumbún Oppenheimer’s own plenas. Other recordings strongly alluded to a sense of nostalgia for the Puerto Rican homeland.

Big-band, elegant plena

During the second half of the 1940s, industrialization, development, and urbanization in Puerto Rico brought in flairs of musical elegance akin to the U.S. lifestyle in major urban centers. Originally an expression consisting of the lively sounds of arrabales and rural barrios, now, in the hands of the Orquesta de César Concepción and singer Joe Valle, plenaassumed the form of a medley of songs, suppressed the characteristic pandero, and acquiesced to soft-percussion styles presented a few years before by well-established ensembles like the Cuban Orquesta Casino de la Playa.

Standardized big-band musical arrangements and simple dance steps were introduced to local upper- and middle-class couples in major hotel ballrooms. These musical changes reflected the lifestyle norms of modern capitalist societies.

http://centropr.hunter.cuny.edu/voices/musica/plena/great-depression-migration-and-canario%E2%80%99s-ensemble

Content credits Center for Puerto Rican Studies

 

 

 

 

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St.Croix and Vieques: Remapping the Archipelago – Part 1

May 19, 2012 By


Hola amigos: The eMagazine Voices from the Center for Puerto Rican Studies of the Hunter College gives us the Barrios, this time St. Croix Barrio. ES

The Caribbean Archipelago Image

St. Croix and Vieques: Remapping the Archipelago
Notes from the Field

Katherine Miranda

Universidad de Puerto Rico, Río Piedras

Center For Puerto Rican Studies

Hunter College

Part I.

      Until a recent fieldwork trip to St. Croix as a doctoral student of Caribbean literature fromthe University of Puerto Rico, what I knew of the island had been filtered through a Vieques lens. About forty miles northwest of St. Croix, the history of Vieques (the island-municipality “isla nena” of Puerto Rico) is intricately linked to that of her U.S. Virgin Island neighbor. Working as a newspaper editor and bartender and volunteering with efforts to stop U.S. military bombing practices in Vieques in 2001, I learned about St. Croix from the Viequenses I worked and volunteered with. I had, of course, heard of St. Croix before arriving in Vieques—I had seen the island on a map—but like many, I knew little of the Virgin Islands aside from tourist brochures. I first learned about Vieques’ connections with St. Croix through informal exchanges: tidbits of conversation about family members who lived there, the cousin of a friend who was visiting Vieques introduced to me as “Crucian” (the first time I heard the term for a St. Croix resident). Activists I worked with told me of the massive Viequense migrations to St. Croix when the U.S. navy expropriated two-thirds of the isla nena in the 1940s. And I saw Diego Conde’s photo exhibition “De Papa Dem” at the Fuerte Conde de Mirasol, which showcased Portocruzans (Crucians of Puerto Rican descent) and how popular Puerto Rican iconography—pinchos, güiros, guayaberas—manifested itself in this neighboring island with a different cultural, linguistic and historical background. But in Vieques, this vision of St. Croix centered around the many whose relatives and friends had migrated, for whom St. Croix symbolized a hollow, a blurry rim on the horizon, a hazy outline that meant disjuncture and loss. And then this vague introduction was cut short when I left Vieques and relocated to San Juan. For years in Puerto Rico’s capital, I learned nothing more about St. Croix, its history or its connection to Vieques or Puerto Rico—not through pieces of anyone’s conversation, not in any art exhibit, not in any of the textbooks I used during four years as a middle-school teacher. If St. Croix was an infrequent and informal topic of conversation in Vieques, in San Juan it disappeared altogether. References to las islitas (the “little islands” as Puerto Ricans often call the Virgin Islands) were made only in passing to describe cruise ship destinations visited for a day or two, a trip to a Crucian reggae festival. But aside from vacation, I heard no other mention of the connections between Puerto Rico and St. Croix. Ever.

The invisibility of these connectionscompels a remapping of the archipelago. While a map of the Caribbean draws a slew of islands that slope in an arc between two hulking continents, the hinge of this larger chain—the nub of islands that lie between the larger Windward Antilles and the more numerous, smaller Leeward Antilles—is an archipelago unto itself. Divided into territorial units by the flat ink of a map, the demarcations that separate the U.S. Virgin Islands(U.S.V.I.) of St. Croix, St. John and St. Thomas, the British Virgin Islands of Tortola and Virgin Gorda, and Puerto Rico’s two island-municipalities of Vieques and Culebra say little of the interconnectedness between these places and the ways they continue to influence each other. Two seemingly unrelated spots on a Caribbean map, the relationship between St. Croix and Vieques urge a rethinking of the way this map is geographically constructed, and insists on broader definitions of connectivity. The fixity of names on paper unravels in the ways the development of these two islands continues to be lived. Here is one place to begin a new map.

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Genealogy Not Only For Humans

May 19, 2012 By

Hola amigos: Genealogy is not only for humans – products have a genealogy too. Products, like humans , are traceable – from manufacturing to product supply chain networks – there is data to research and trace in business.  Apriso, a manufacturing software provider, Launches Global Trace and Genealogy Solution. Apriso’s solution for global traceability and genealogy, referred to as G-TAG™, helps manufacturers to ensure brand integrity by providing the necessary framework for collaboration and visibility in order to perform detailed quality investigations and root cause analysis. Solution includes global repository for detailed product trace abilityand genealogy data; processes spanning from manufacturing to product supply networks.

Aprisco Image

LONG BEACH, Calif.,  (BUSINESS WIRE) –Apriso, a leading provider of manufacturing software solutions, today announced a new software and services solution, Global Trace and Genealogy, referred to as GTAG(TM). This new Apriso offering — with open integration with other systems along the supply chain — can deliver the necessary manufacturing intelligence and product genealogy data to improve accuracy and power trace ability initiatives across global manufacturing operations.
Industry research suggests a key impediment to success with product trace ability initiatives is the proliferation of multiple data repositories for manufacturing product genealogy, trace ability and quality intelligence, resulting in poor data accuracy and untimely access to data. Apriso has overcome this challenge with a collaborative solution built on the FlexNet platform for global manufacturing operations management. This platform-centric solution serves as a track and trace “hub” that spans the needs of manufacturers and supply chain partners. This highly flexible approach to global trace ability and genealogy helps manufacturers to:
– Improve collaboration — between manufacturers and trade partners to better coordinate corrective actions, reducing manual and time-consuming tasks prone to error
– Centralize track and trace reporting — to provide better insight into product genealogy and packaging hierarchy at any time
– Handle high volumes of trace ability data — without impacting operational performance, as data is received from plants, suppliers and logistics providers
– Capture detailed global trace ability and genealogy data automatically — from multiple sources, to help reduce risk, protect brand equity and meet compliance objectives
– Establish unique product identification schemes — that utilize existing RFID and barcode scanning technologies, leveraging these existing investments
– Address the escalating challenge of counterfeit products — by providing readily available, detailed product pedigrees to demonstrate product authenticity
“Few enterprise application software providers offer a global repository for product genealogy and trace ability data capable of spanning both internal systems and complex supply chain operations,” explained Chris Will, chief technology officer at Apriso. “Yet this capability is absolutely required to ensure brand protection while minimizing warranty claims, managing Maintenance, Repair and Operations (MRO) and complying with domestic and international laws required to maintain regulatory compliance. Apriso’s GTAG solution enables these capabilities.”
Ensuring brand integrity is a critical, visible benchmark of a manufacturer’s success. Apriso’s solution for global trace ability provides a framework for collaboration and visibility to perform detailed quality investigations and root cause analysis. With a unified data model that captures and persists standardized data across production, quality, maintenance, inventory and along the supply chain, manufacturers can more effectively take corrective actions and perform continuous improvement that addresses both structured and unstructured quality activities and operations processes.
Apriso’s GTAG solutions will be offered with specific, industry focused best practices so as to offer more capabilities “out-of-the-box.” Initial solutions will be made available for manufacturers in the hi-tech, automotive, aerospace and defense, consumer goods and other industries.
About Apriso Corporation
Apriso is a software company dedicated to helping its customers transform their global manufacturing operations. It does so by enabling manufacturers to achieve and sustain manufacturing excellence while adapting quickly and easily to market changes. Apriso’sFlexNet is a BPM platform-based software solution for global manufacturing operations management. Apriso supports global continuous improvement by delivering visibility into, control over and synchronization across manufacturing and the product supply network. Apriso serves nearly 200 customers in 40+ countries across the Americas, Europe and Asia. Customers include GM, Volvo CE, Honeywell, L’Oreal, Trixell, Lockheed Martin, Bombardier, Textron Systems, MBDA, Saint-Gobain and Essilor. Learn more at: www.apriso.com .

Apriso and FlexNet are registered trademarks of Apriso Corporation. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
SOURCE: Apriso Corporation

 

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Líneas y Grados de Parentesco

May 10, 2012 By

By  Matt M Pérez, San Jose, CA USA

http://www.dropby.com/indexLF.html?content=/Genealogia/parentesco.html

Parentesco

El parentesco se refiere a los vínculos entre miembros de una familia. Estos vínculos se organizan en líneas y se miden en grados.

Family Tree Image

Hay tres tipos de líneas de parentesco:

  • Consanguinidad

Vínculos que existen entre los descendientes y ascendientes de un progenitor común (e.g., bisabuelos, abuelos, padres, hijos, nietos, bisnietos, etc.).

  • Afinidad

Vínculos que se forman a través del matrimonio, que cada cónyuge contrae con los parientes consanguíneos del otro (e.g., suegros, yernos y nueras, cuñados, etc.). Por lo general, los parientes de cada cónyuge no adquieren parentesco legal con los parientes del otro (e.g., legalmente los consuegros y los concuños no son parientes, aunque se traten como familia).

  • Adopción

Vínculo entre el adoptado y los padres adoptivos y sus parientes consanguíneos.

Lineas

Desde el punto de vista de una persona, llamada el tronco, las líneas de parentesco se denominan de la siguiente manera (e.g., para heredar):

  • Recta

Las líneas que se establecen entre personas que descienden unas de otras en línea directa.

  • Descendente

Hijos, nietos, bisnietos, tataranietos, trastataranietos, etc.

  • Ascendente

Padres, abuelos, bisabuelos, tatarabuelos, trastatarabuelos, etc.

  • Colateral o Transversal

Las líneas que se establecen entre personas que no descienden directamente unas de otras pero tienen un progenitor en común.

  • Preferentes

Hermanos y sobrinos (i.e., dos y tres grados, respectivamente).

  • Ordinarios

Tíos, primos, etc. (i.e., del cuarto al sexto grado de parentesco).

Grados

El parentesco se mide en grados. En las líneas rectas de parentesco cada generación cuenta como un grado. Por ejemplo, entre padre e hijo hay un grado de separación y entre un abuelo y un nieto hay dos grados.

En las líneas colaterales los grados entre dos parientes se cuentan por generaciones en la línea ascendente desde el primer pariente hasta el tronco (i.e., antepasado en común) y se sigue contando por la línea descendente hasta llegar al otro pariente. Por ejemplo, entre hermano y hermana hay dos grados de separación: un grado del hermano a los padres, y otro de los padres a la hermana. Entre un tío y un sobrino has tres grados de separación: uno del tío a sus padres, y dos de ellos al sobrino.

Los grados de parentesco se usan, entre otras cosas, para determinar herederos y porciones de herencias. Por eso los testamentos y otros documentos como las Declaratorias de Herederos son documentos muy importante en la genealogía.

Este sistema nos viene de la antigüedad  y ha sido instituido en ley en Puerto Rico, México, Argentina,Chile y muchos otros paises de America Latína.

A continuación podrá encontrar dos paneles que se espera sirvan para ilustrar el parentesco, su medida en grados y los títulos de relaciones entre parientes.

Grados de parentesco de descendientes por líneas de consanguinidad

Antepasado en común  Hijo Nieto Bisnieto Tataranieto Chozno 1G 2G 3G 4G 5G

Hijo hermano tío /sobrino tío abuelo /sobrino nieto tío bisabuelo /sobrino bisnieto tío tatarabuelo /
sobrino tataranieto  1G 2G 3G 4G 5G 6G

Nieto tío /sobrino primo hermano tío segundo / sobrino segundo tío bisabuelo segundo / sobrino bisnieto segundo tío tatarabuelo segundo /sobrino tataranieto segundo 2G 3G 4G 5G 6G 7G

Bisnieto tío abuelo / sobrino nieto tío segundo / sobrino segundo primo segundo tío bisabuelo tercero / sobrino bisnieto tercero tío tatarabuelo tercero /sobrino tataranieto tercero  3G 4G 5G 6G 7G 8G

Tataranieto tío bisabuelo /sobrino bisnieto tío bisabuelo segundo / sobrino bisnieto segundo tío bisabuelo tercero / sobrino bisnieto tercero primo tercero tío tatarabuelo cuarto /sobrino tataranieto cuarto  4G 5G 6G 7G 8G 9G

Chozno tío tatarabuelo /sobrino tataranieto tío tatarabuelo segundo /sobrino tataranieto segundo tío tatarabuelo tercero /sobrino tataranieto tercero tío tatarabuelo cuarto /sobrino tataranieto cuarto primo cuarto
5G 6G 7G 8G 9G 10G

Parentesco de ascendentes a descendientes por líneas de consanguinidad

Tronco Padre Abuelo Bisabuelo Tatarabuelo
1G 2G 3G 4G

Hijo abuelo / nieto bisabuelo /
bisnieto tatarabuelo /
tataranieto trastatarabuelo /
chozno
1G 2G 3G 4G 5G

Nieto bisabuelo /
bisnieto tatarabuelo /
tataranieto trastatarabuelo /
chozno
2G 3G
4G 5G 6G

Bisnieto tatarabuelo /
tataranieto trastatarabuelo /
chozno
3G
4G 5G 6G 7G

Tataranieto trastatarabuelo /
chozno
4G 5G 6G 7G 8G

Grados de parentesco por líneas de afinidad

Cónyuge Padres Hermanos Sobrinos

Cónyuge cónyuges o esposos suegros /
yernos y nueras cuñados tíos políticos /
sobrinos políticos
1G 2G 3G

Padres suegros /
yernos y nueras consuegros
1G

Hermanos cuñados concuños
2G

Sobrinos tíos políticos /
sobrinos políticos
3G

Consigna: · #G significa “grado de parentesco”

 

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The Genealogy of Jesus Christ

May 5, 2012 By

Hola amigos: This is the genealogy of Jesus Christ, according to Mathew and to  Luke.

The genealogy in Matthew was traditionally illustrated by a Tree of Jesse showing the descent of Jesus from Jesse, father of King David

 

Tree of Jesse Image

 

The Genealogy of Jesus Christ

http://www.tempo.com.ph/2011/the-genealogy-of-jesus-christ/#.T5_5KbNSTIY

Matthew 1:1-17
The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham became the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers. Judah became the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar. …Boaz became the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth. Obed became the father of Jesse, Jesse the father of David the king.
David became the father of Solomon, whose mother had been the wife of Uriah. Solomon became the father of Rehoboam, Rehoboam the father of Abijah, Abijah the father of Asaph. …Hezekiah became the father of Manasseh, Manasseh the father of Amos, Amos the father of Josiah. Josiah became the father of Jechoniah and his brothers at the time of the Babylonian exile.
… Zadok became the father of Achim, Achim the father of Eliud, Eliud the father of Eleazar. Eleazar became the father of Matthan, Matthan the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary. Of her was born Jesus who is called the Messiah.
Thus the total number of generations from Abraham to David is fourteen generations; from David to the Babylonian exile, fourteen generations; from the Babylonian exile to the Messiah, fourteen generations.

Genealogy of Jesus according to Matthew
Abraham
Isaac
Jacob
Judah & Tamar
Perez
Hezron
Ram
Amminadab
Nahshon
Salmon & Rahab
Boaz & Ruth
Obed
Jesse
David & Wife of Uriah
Solomon
Rehoboam
Abijam
Asa
Jehosaphat
Jehoram
Uzziah
Jotham
Ahaz
Hezekiah
Manasseh
Amon
Josiah
Jeconiah
Shealtiel
Zerubbabel
Abiud
Eliakim
Azor
Zadok
Achim
Eliud
Eleazar
Matthan
Jacob
Joseph & Mary *
Jesus
David
Solomon
Nathan
Many Generations
Many Generations
Eleazar
Levi
Matthan
Estha
Melchi
Panther
Jacob
(unnamed)
Eli
Anne
Joachim
Joseph
Mary
Jesus

Genealogy of Jesus according to Luke
God
Adam
Seth
Enosh
Kenan
Mahalalel
Jared
Enoch
Methuselah
Lamech
Noah
Shem
Arphaxad
Cainan
Shelah
Eber
Peleg
Reu
Serug
Nahor
Terah
Abraham
Isaac
Jacob
Judah
Perez
Hezron
Ram
Amminadab
Nahshon
Salmon
Boaz
Obed
Jesse
David
Nathan
Mattatha
Menna
Melea
Eliakim
Jonam
Joseph
Judah
Simeon
Levi
Matthat
Jorim
Eliezer
Joshua
Er
Elmadam
Cosam
Addi
Melchi
Neri
Shealtiel
Zerubbabel
Rhesa
Joanan
Joda
Josech
Semein
Mattathias
Mahath
Naggai
Hesli
Nahum
Amos
Mattathias
Joseph
Jannai
Melchi
Levi
Matthat
Heli
“as was supposed son of Joseph”
Jesus
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Voices Barrios/ Loisaida: Community Gardens

April 10, 2012 By

Hola amigos: Today I’ll bring you Loisaida, from Voices/Barrios and the Center for Puerto Rican Studies. LoisaidaLower East Side, the Latino Community Garden of the Lower East Side of New York.

Loisaida, “Spanglish” for Lower East Side … ES

 

Puerto Ricans in Loisaida Image/

Voices/Barrios

Loisaida: COMMUNITY GARDENS

AND THE RIGHT TO THE CITY

by Miranda Martinez

The community gardens of the Lower East Side are enduring symbols of the ongoing Latino struggle for the right to the city. Started in the 1970s and 1980s, in the depths of New York’s urban crisis – when this vibrant, working class neighborhood was in the throes of depopulation due to disinvestment, arson and service cuts – gardens were an important strategy for retrieving vacant spaces, and re-establishing a sense of community and solidarity.

Every garden passes down its stories relating to the labor of clearing a lot of rubble bucket by bucket, or facing down aggressive drug dealers, or picking through soil to clean out discarded needles and other waste so the ground would be safe for play.

Community gardens have an unrecognized symbiotic role in the other counter-cultural grassroots experiments for which the Lower East Side is famous. At their best, gardens are easily accessible technologies of community, deeply expressive across class and culture of the urge to connect. The many different sectors of the Lower East Side’s countercultural milieu drew upon that quality as they imagined new possibilities for the troubled neighborhood. Artists, actors and street poets shared their work in gardens, environmental activists experimented with green technologies, low-income renovators of abandoned buildings honed their skills by working together in garden spaces. All the best and most inventive initiatives for community rebirth on the neighborhood have traced a path through a community garden.

For Puerto Ricans in Loisaida, community gardens have been one of the most visible and effective ways to demand a right to the city. They remain among a diminishing number of spaces that anchor and strengthen the community by evoking Puerto Rican rural life and culture. In most gardens there is the casita, whose design evokes traditional houses on the island and whose construction permits the garden to be used for social gatherings during most of the year. Besides the casita, there are other markers such as shrines, murals, or flags that claim these spaces as familial and Puerto Rican identified. During the most difficult years, gardeners used their spaces as social experiments in healing a troubled neighborhood: community gardens were oases, spaces of welcome where a person would wander in to work, socialize, and learn how to create change. Gardeners such as Carmen Pabón, a community activist and ardent nationalist whose garden Bello Amanecer Borincano was destroyed in 2002, believed that working in the ground and being in nature cured depression in isolated elderly people and calmed unruly youth by reconnecting them with their culture.

As the Lower East Side has gentrified during the past twenty years, many community gardens have transitioned to a more diverse membership, and a number of the largest gardens have become local institutions, with large memberships and varied activities. In these gardens the Puerto Rican presence is attenuated, remaining only symbolically in a garden’s name or in the style of the casita, while the membership has become increasingly white and middle class. Today, in the wake of gentrification, for a garden to be ethnically particular or informally familial can be a death sentence; in a neighborhood with few empty spaces on which to build, garden spaces are considered prime real estate. As the pressure has mounted to develop these sites, so has the pressure for gardens to transform themselves into something analogous to a public park or botanical preserve. While this pressure has created incentives to improve and beautify many spaces, it also threatens the deeply encoded significance of gardens as spaces of autonomous community. Needless to say, in the recoding of garden spaces as “public parks” the explicit Latinidad of some gardens is also increasingly controversial.

The most serious assault on community gardens was during the 1990s. Hundreds of gardens throughout the city faced the threat of destruction by Mayor Giuliani, who aggressively pursued a plan to sell the gardens at auction. Community gardeners mobilized, and successfully generated widespread public opposition to the plan. As a result, the Giuliani administration was forced to bargain to save some gardens by selling them to a Land Trust. In 2003, Mayor Bloomberg, noting the public backlash against garden demolitions, negotiated with a coalition of the city’s environmental and open space nonprofits to protect the majority of the city’s gardens, at least until 2010, but in return demanded mechanisms for ongoing evaluation of gardens according to their aesthetics, membership, programming, and environmental impact. Dedicated greening groups have worked since then to help gardeners access resources that can make their garden preservable in the long term, and have spread the word that gardens are vulnerable to destruction if they fail to make their gardens more beautiful and publicly accessible. The new byword is “stewardship”: community gardeners must show that they can maintain spaces in the public good, with the understanding that the city has the ultimate say in how that defines, and what it means.

The hold on garden demolitions expired in 2010, and the City Council has not yet passed legislation that would offer community gardens any certain protection against destruction. Community gardeners are already mobilizing to make the public aware of the renewed threat to garden spaces. There is support for renewed legislation, but officials in the Bloomberg administration continue to resist any laws that would offer permanent, unqualified protection against development.

Let’s hope in the next round of struggle that gardeners emerge with permanent protections, enacted in ways that remove the disempowering threat to upgrade or face destruction. It should be a basic task of the new garden preservation movement to question the impact and meaning of the pressures to rationalize and institutionalizecommunity gardens. In many cases, gardeners have been forced to pay higher costs in terms of money, time, and labor to provide a free public resource under conditions of reduced autonomy, and implied threat. Stronger protections will preserve not only the space of gardens, but the other characteristics—the chances for joy, experimentation, autonomy and idiosyncrasy—that are also part of the demand for the right to the city. For Loisaida Puerto Ricans, a renewed debate over garden spaces once again opens up the wider question of how the neighborhood’s Latinidad will be understood and protected in the context of gentrification. The casita gardens are needed, as spaces that nourish a spirit of community and resistance to erasure. They keep alive the history of struggle, and the chance to envision future alternatives.

Content credits Center for Puerto Rican Studies

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